She shrugged. “Why waste a bullet.”

“How did you get through the maze?”

Her gaze was icy. “I’ve been here before.”

“They killed eleven clowns, three days’ ride from here.”

“They killed many more than that,” she said. “You just shot two of the Thurston Brothers.”

“They were brothers?”

“Only the gimp leg and the first guy you shot. But that’s what they all called themselves, as a gang.”

“It isn’t much of a name.”

“They’re worth two hundred ducats each,” the woman said. “Paid by the Central Bank of Jericho.”

“For killing clowns?” the Stranger said, surprised, for the hunting and murder of clowns was often encouraged by the rough settlers of the Escapement.

“For bank robbery,” she said.

“Ah.”

The Stranger looked at the corpses. “Two hundred ducats each? That’s a lot,” he said. “They don’t look worth shit to me.”

“They’re mine,” she said, again, patiently, as though explaining a complex problem to a child. “I’ve been following their trail for a while, you know. Since outside of Marxtown, where they hijacked a shipment of substance bound for the rail terminal there. I lost them in a symbol storm somewhere in the Doinklands, and by the time I got out they’d gained a lead on me. . . . I finally tracked them here, but by then they’d gone off on a scalping raid. I breached the maze . . . and waited. The only thing I wasn’t counting on was you.”

The Stranger nodded.

“That’s fine,” he said. “I wasn’t after them for the money.”

“Prospector?”

“Sometimes.”

“I’m Temperanza,” she said. She said it a little expectantly, as though he should know the name.

“You’re a bounty hunter?”

“Aha. Do you mind . . . ?”

He shrugged. Temperanza removed her hands from the butts of the pistols and picked her knife up again. The Stranger watched her. She worked efficiently, with quiet confidence, until she had taken the scalps of all five men, or what was left of their scalps.

“I really would have preferred if you hadn’t shot them,” she said.

“Are you complaining?”

“I didn’t need your help, stranger. Don’t flatter yourself.” She sawed off ears where the scalps were too damaged to collect.

The Stranger picked up the bottle of Sticks. Only a tiny bit of dirty-white residue remained at the bottom of the bottle. He tossed it at the mill house wall, where it shattered.

Something moved behind the walls of the mill.

“What was that?”

The Stranger held his rifle, and Temperanza had drawn a gun before he’d even noticed.

That sound behind the walls came again, louder.

The Stranger and Temperanza exchanged glances, wordlessly, and then they moved in tandem, circling the mill.

The Stranger saw that an old wagon was hidden behind the walls of the mill. A faded yet garishly painted sign on the side of the wagon said Professor Federico, the Magnificent.