“That's the truth. And if I ain't being too nosy, what was it happened to Ola May?”

“Rattlesnake, I guess. Didn't know about it until she was gone. She'd been out riding fences. Seems her horse got spooked by a rattler and dumped her right on top of it.”

“A rattlesnake in the winter? Well, that doesn't make any less sense than a lot of the stuff we been hearing about it. Some folks have been saying some pretty nasty stuff, though I didn't take a lot of stock in that kind of talk.”

“I'll bet a lot of folks is saying a lot of things. Ola May was who she was. She was my sister, and I loved her, but there was some who didn't. A lot that did, though.”

“I guess that's right. She was something, all right. Did just as she pleased, no matter what anyone else thought. Kept true to herself. Looked like a woman, acted like a man. Hope that's all right to say.”

“Hell, Poke. It's all right. Ola was who Ola was. We don't have no delusions about it. She grew up with men, except for Granny Jane, who was tougher than the Eighth Cavalry. There's no offense there. That's who she was.”

“Well, all right then. I wish you luck. I'll do my best to get you a good head start. Vaya, friend, vaya.”

“You doing all right?” Sisson asked John. They were deep in the bosque, hunkered down on a patch of ground Sisson had cleared of mesquite beans and sticks and cholla joints that the rats had dragged in.

“Did that really happen?” John asked. “I feel like I'm just waking up from a dream. A really bad dream.”

“Afraid it did, John. Afraid it did.”

“Crap. We should have stayed with the Old Man until he died. I been thinking on that. We should have stayed.”

“I feel bad, too, leaving him like that. But you can't say that Tom was all that wrong. There's going to be a posse, and they're going to be plenty pissed about the killings. We hung around, we'd be killed, too. Your brother is right. We got to run. There's no other choice.”

“Crap.”

“Yeah. Crap. And here's more of it. I got to look at your eye. How's it feel?”

“Hurts, Sisson. It hurts like hell. But it will be all right. Just leave me be.”

“No. It ain't going to be all right. It ain't ever going to be all right. I got to take a look. And it's going to be painful.”

Sisson gathered up small handfuls of mesquite twigs and beans and made a fire just big enough to heat up the blade of his jackknife. “You ought to stick something in your mouth so you don't yell. We're pretty well hid in here, but we don't need no yelling.”

John put the fleshy part of his right hand, between the thumb and first finger, into his mouth.