“Damned if I know. Last I seen he was heading for the creek.”

Beside the toe of my boot, a piss ant struggled to escape from a spreading pool of blood. I offered Isom a pinch of snuff and he poked it behind his lip with one grimy finger.

“This here going to hurt your strike?”

I put my arm around his shoulders.

“Son, you kill a man in a suit, hit aint just a strike no more.”

We erected a new sign at the train depot that proclaimed FREE ANNADEL in letters two feet high. Armed miners stood guard at every street corner. Only hours after the shootings we had moved into Jenkinjones like an occupying army. The red bandanas around our necks served as a uniform and we carried rifles on our shoulders. Many of the women were also armed. We went straightway to meet the newly evicted families, still gathering up their belongings beside the railroad, and told them to go back to their homes. Jenkinjones belonged to them.

The next day we held C.J.’s funeral in the main street at Annadel. We bore the coffin to the porch of the Alhambra Hotel, accompanied by hundreds of miners and their families. They came in their Sunday best, men and boys in suits and ties, women and girls in neatly pressed cotton dresses except for the Italians, who wore embroidered blouses and brightly colored skirts. Many of the children were barefoot.

Albion Freeman preached the sermon. Mostly he said the same old things preachers say, about how a man must die because he is a sinner, about the next life and how sweet it is. But one thing he said caught my attention.

“Most of you got your guns there,” he said. “Hit’s a sin to have them. Hit was a sin to shoot down them gun thugs, even if they was bound to shoot you first. I’ll not have a gun with me for the purpose of shooting a man, and I bid you to pledge the same. But I’ll not condemn you for carrying those guns. You carry those guns in God’s freedom. You make mistakes because you are alive and free. You cant escape your sin, so sin boldly and know God loves you. Only try to do good for the glory of God.”

I thought these were strange sentiments for a preacher, although Doc said later that Albion was preaching straight from St. Paul. After Doc took over and launched into a tearful recitation of C.J.’s virtues and contributions to the struggle, I kept thinking about what the preacher said.

“This was a good man we lost,” Doc said.

“A good man,” I repeated, and thought of the road C.J. had urged me down so many times, the road which lead to the place where we stood that day, a terrible place which would bring all the world down upon our heads.