“Help!” Arbuckle cried toward the Deputies on the scaffold. “Help!” he called again, louder, but they either did not hear or would not hear for the Deputies stayed where they were, spinning their chains and lighting their torches. Lady Mae saw the veins in Edmonds’ forehead, his bulging eyes. She couldn’t kill him even if he’d come at them, even if she wanted to, and so she let go. Arbuckle grasped Lady Mae’s shoulders, tried to pull her from the man who lay in the dust choking on his own sick. He lifted Lady Mae off the ground, held her up with his strong arms and made sure that she was steady on her feet.

“We need help!” Arbuckle yelled toward the Deputies on the scaffold.

By this time, the square was silent but for the cries of the man the Deputies surrounded. He lurched and fell and climbed to his knees, which were bloody and raw. Lady Mae and Arbuckle watched him, and though Lady Mae knew what would happen, Arbuckle did not; his self-imposed exile had sheltered him as much as it had exposed him to the harsh realities beyond the settlement’s boundaries. They watched as the Deputies wrapped their chains around the man’s feet and wrists, looked as they laid him out on the wooden planks.

“No, shhh—be quiet,” Lady Mae said. She began to brush off the dust that covered her skirts, but Arbuckle dragged her toward the scaffold. She pulled back, tried to twist out of his grasp, but he held tight. As they neared, she heard the man, stretched out on the wooden stage with a Deputy at each limb, cry out. She looked up and saw the Deputy nearest his head—the one with the megaphone—kick him in the skull and the man’s shrieks abruptly ceased. Lady Mae heard the clanking of chains, watched the Deputies slinging them over their shoulders and turning to face away from the man. They hoisted the chains, pulling them taut before standing still.

“He shall be redeemeth!” the Deputy called not arm’s length from Lady Mae. She looked away from the man on the scaffold and toward the Deputy. She couldn’t breathe, and the heat and wind danced around her. She strained to get a better look at his face, but the sun obscured her sight again. Was that him? The one that—Maybe it wasn’t him, but did that matter? She was so close to him, to his head in which coursed blood the same as her mother’s. Would it pour out of his skull the same way, bubbling and pulsing its way out of him? His words scattered and dripped around her, and she remembered that day in the road long ago when the children had accosted her. A strength, however brief, had revealed itself, and she felt it again there in front of the scaffold. The Deputy looked at her then, just as a cloud passed across the sun. Their eyes met, and she felt the fire on her skin and a searing in her heart, for there on his face were four long scars.