The Kid and the Stranger looked at each other and they were in agreement, and they made to move to the door.

“Hold up,” the Pilkington man, Clem, said. He turned to the bar owner. “Is there a reward?”

“The mayor offered one, before he was taken,” the woman said. “That was back when we still had hope. Now there are only the empty graves in the cemetery, waiting.”

“What was the last reward?” the Pilkington man said.

The bar owner named a figure, and Clem whistled, then laughed. “Triple it, and I’m in.”

“You can claim anything in this town, if you kill him,” the bar owner said.

Clem shrugged. “Not much of a town,” he said. He pumped his shotgun and joined the other two. “But I was getting restless anyway.”

The Kid and the Stranger exchanged glances again, and the Stranger nodded.

He looked to the piano, where Temperanza sat.

“You coming?” he said.

She sent a trail of notes his way and shrugged.

“I’ll mop up the mess if you can’t finish,” she said. “Have fun playing Dead Man’s Bluff.”

She kept playing.

“Come on!” the Kid said. He pushed the door open and the three men stepped outside, guns drawn. Pogo was still up-road from them. He had captured a victim outside of one of the bars and the man was convoluting in his arms as he died. The three men began to march, wordlessly. They fanned out, with the Stranger in the middle and the other two flanking him, a little behind, on either side of the street.

“I see you!” the Stranger called, and he said a name. It was the name of a murderer who once lived in that other place. “I know what you are!”

Pogo turned his head sharply. He dropped his victim on the ground with a careless shove and stepped over him as the man died. His face filled with an animalistic fury that only seemed to animate his painted grin.

“I . . . am . . . Pogo!” he bellowed.

The Stranger fired a shot in the air. “You died once,” he said. “Now you’re just a bad dream, Gacy.”

“I . . . am . . . Pogo!” the thing howled in rage, and the Kid muttered, “All my dreams are gonna be bad dreams after this.”

The three men progressed, Clem and the Kid in the shadows, the Stranger right in the middle of the street. The faux clown stood facing them now. He looked from side to side, as though not quite believing anyone would dare come after him.

“Fire,” the Stranger said.

The three men shot at the faux clown. The Kid squeezed out a round of shots and methodically reloaded. The Stranger fired more sparingly, alternating his two revolvers as he let off shots. The Pilkington man, Clem, fired steady bursts of shotgun explosions. The air filled with the smell of gunpowder and smoke and, still present, that smell of rancid custard.