The woman next went to the veteran with the bees, who beat against the walls in their glass prison, but the woman ignored them. She killed the man with the same easy motion. When he died, the materiel in his thigh did not change but the bees with a soft sigh sank to the floor of their cage and expired.

The third man was different.

Perhaps he had imbibed less than the others, or perhaps what horrors he saw of that other world, with its traffic-choked streets and its electric lights, the call of sirens, with its accountants, banks and accruements, the ring of phones, the smell of grease and diesel, had pushed him back to the Escapement.

As the one-eyed woman brought her knife to his throat, the man’s hand flew up and grasped her wrist, taking her by surprise. With a scream, the man, small and wiry, leaped at the one-eyed woman, pushing her off balance. As she fell the man reached for his gun and the woman desperately tried to reach for hers.

A shot rang out.

The sound filled the air before it was snatched away at the edges of the maze, and there it echoed queerly, carried from one path to another. For a moment the two adversaries seemed frozen, as though not sure which of them had been shot. Then the man, slowly, toppled to the ground, half his head missing from the rifle shot.

The woman stood up. Her hands and her face were covered in gore from the killings, but she did not seem to mind. She let go of the knife and her hands rested on the butts of her pistols, but she did not draw.

She watched for where the shot had come from.

The Stranger came out from behind his rock. He was holding the rifle. He was not quite aiming it at the woman, but he wasn’t not aiming it, either.

The woman watched him. Her single eye was very blue. She did not yet draw her own guns, but the Stranger assumed she could draw them very quickly if she wanted to.

He took a few steps down to the camp. He saw that some of the dead man’s brain had sprayed the wall of the old mill house. The woman watched him calmly. She did not take her gaze off him as he approached.

“They’re mine,” she said.

The Stranger approached. He nodded. He pointed the rifle low, and shot the nearest of the two still-living men. He then went and stood over the other of the two veterans, the one with half a clock embedded in his abdomen.

“Bounty?”

“They’re mine,” the woman repeated.

The Stranger pulled the trigger and shot the man who was fused with materiel. It was a head shot, like the other.

Now all five men were dead, and he was left alone with the woman.

“Why a knife?” he said.