He pulled Gladys along with him. She looked over her shoulder at me, worried. She had a folded pink parasol clutched tightly in one gloved hand and held across her waist instead of down at her side, and when she turned to climb the steps, she poked Isom in the side with it.

“Damnation!” he exclaimed. “Them bastards try to git smart I’ll just let you stab one of them.”

We must have climbed two dozen steps and I was breathless at the top. The Baldwin men stared at us. Albion took my hand, placed it in the crook of his arm like we were at a dance. Isom spied someone he knew, raised his hand, grinned. The Baldwins stepped forward, pulling guns from inside their vests. When I cried a warning, the guns grew larger, the noise they made filled the whole world.

A wet spray struck my cheek. Albion’s arm stiffened beneath my hand and he stumbled and fell. I tried to hold him up by the arm but he fell away so the arm was twisted behind him and I feared I had broken it. Each time I screamed another crimson gash ripped through his chest. In the ringing silence that followed I cried out for help. People ran from the courthouse, but they stopped short when they spied us and turned away with their hands over their faces.

Isom lay face down beside Albion in a pool of blood. Gladys knelt over him, her face frozen and contorted. She stared straight ahead, the pink parasol open in front of her like a shield. One of the gunmen, a short man with a long, curled moustache, strolled up. He leaned over, put his gun to the back of Isom’s head. Gladys swung the parasol wildly.

“Dont shoot him again! Please dont shoot him again!”

I pulled Gladys toward me so she wouldn’t see, and the gunman fired. A piece of skull struck me in the face and opened a cut on my cheek. Gladys screamed and struggled against me.

Then Violet Marcum was there. She knelt, gently took Gladys from me and wrapped her arms around her.

“Oh, Mommy, Mommy,” Gladys moaned.

Violet smoothed Gladys’s hair back from her damp forehead and rocked back and forth with her daughter in her arms.

“Where’s Ermel and Annadel?” I asked.

“In the Courthouse. Annadel took a spell and passed out. Ermel’s still with her.” She touched the cut on my cheek with the tip of one finger. “Dont be fretting over them right now. You got to cry too. Go back to yourn and cry.”

I stared at her. For a moment I had thought I might turn from their sorrow to seek comfort from Albion. But he lay still, staring at the sky. I stroked his cheek.

“Please wake up,” I pleaded. “Dont be gone from me.”