One thing he had no trouble remembering at all—his recollection was refreshed by the miserable flare of pain he suffered each time he bumped his wounded finger. That one thing was a promise to himself that he would see Dearborn, Stockworth, and Heath laid out dead in a row, hand to outstretched hand like a little girl’s paper dolls. He intended to unlimber the part of him which had longed so bootlessly for Her Nibs these last three weeks and use it to hose down their dead faces. The majority of his squirt would be saved for Arthur Heath of Gilead, New Canaan. That laughing chatterbox motherfucker had a serious hosing-down coming.

Depape rode out the sunrise end of Ritzy’s only street, trotted his horse up the flank of the first hill, and paused at the top for a single look back. Last night, when he’d been talking to the old bastard behind Hattigan’s, Ritzy had been roaring. This morning at seven, it looked as ghostly as the Peddler’s Moon, which still hung in the sky above the rim of the plundered hills. He could hear the mines tink-tonking away, though. You bet. Those babies tink-tonked away seven days a week. No rest for the wicked... and he supposed that included him. He dragged his horse’s head around with his usual unthinking and ham-handed force, booted its flanks, and headed east, thinking of the old bastard as he went. He had treated the old bastard passing fair, he reckoned. A reward had been promised, and had been paid for information given.

“Yar,” Depape said, his glasses flashing in the new sun (it was a rare morning when he had no hangover, and he felt quite cheerful), “I reckon the old bugger can’t complain.”

Depape had had no trouble following the young culls’ backtrail; they had come east on the Great Road the whole way from New Canaan, it appeared, and at every town where they had stopped, they had been marked. In most they were marked if they did no more than pass through. And why not? Young men on good horses, no scars on their faces, no regulator tattoos on their hands, good clothes on their backs, expensive hats on their heads. They were remembered especially well at the inns and saloons, where they had stopped to refresh themselves but had drunk no hard liquor. No beer or graf, either, for that matter. Yes, they were remembered. Boys on the road, boys that seemed almost to shine. As if they had come from an earlier, better time.

Piss in their faces, Depape thought as he rode. One by one. Mr. Arthur “Ha-Ha” Heath last. I’ll save enough so it’d drown you, were you not already at the end of the path and into the clearing.