Session Nine

Everything went pretty much as Jim predicted. Him and me and Ardell and Roy, we all took shelter among the trees lining the Miami’s south bank, where we could keep an eye on the settlement, while Casey and Punch circled wide to the east to follow the beach in search of the horse herd. Although I was anxious to start looking for Lena, Jim held us back. He was afraid that once we entered the village, our chances of being discovered would “jump over the moon,” as the saying goes.

“That happens,” Jim had warned me as we crossed the Miami three at a time in a tiny skiff, “we’ll have to forget them Flatiron horses and make a run for it.”

Which is what we should have done to begin with, forgetting about the horses and focusing on grabbing Lena, then hauling our butts out of there as fast as our ponies could carry us. But I got greedy, wanting both the girl and the horses, and before the day was through—hell, before the sun came up all the way—we’d pay a hefty price for my avarice.

I saw a postcard of downtown Miami a few years ago that I found hard to accept. It was a night view, with streetlights glowing off wet pavement and automobiles parked nose-first along both sides of the street, like marshtackies hitched to cypress rails. There was a sizable crowd of men, women, and children—entire families—moseying along the cement sidewalks, peering into brightly lit storefront windows. Everyone seemed to be laughing or smiling, and save for the palm trees in the distance, it reminded me a lot of Fort Worth on a Friday night. The decent part of town, not the Acre. [Ed. Note: McCallister is referring to Fort Worth’s notorious red-light district, known as Hell’s Half Acre, often shortened to “the Acre.”]

Miami wasn’t like that when I was there in ’64. Back then, there was but a single, wide street, sheeted in mud from the recent rains, and maybe a score of buildings, most of them little more than shacks with palm-frond roofs. There was a store on one side of the street, and the saloon was on the other. Both were built close to the river, to catch the eyes of the sailors who occasionally docked at the Fort Dallas wharf. Dense jungles surrounded the settlement like a thin, green rind, separating it from the sawgrass flats of the Everglades that stretched all the way to the distant Gulf coast.

Other than the store and the saloon, there wasn’t much to see, and the sharp odor of damp rot, penned hogs, and human waste smothered any scent of fresh fruit or verdant gardens—and I’m just assuming there were some at that time. Although I couldn’t see the hog pens from where we were crouched along the river, I could hear the low, discontented grunts of the swine as they moved about in their enclosure.

I was looking east, past the sloping palm trees to Biscayne Bay, and noticing how quickly dawn seemed to be taking shape above the mangrove forests of an island way out across the water, when Ardell whispered: “Here they come.” [Ed. Note: McCallister is probably referring to Virginia Key here, part of the barrier islands that form the eastern boundary of Biscayne Bay.]

Cautiously lifting my eyes above the lip of the bank, I spotted Casey and Punch entering the village from the south. Disappointment cut deep when I saw that they were still afoot, and my gaze slid resentfully toward the gray bulk of the saloon.

“We be out of time, marse,” Jim said gently, then squeezed the top of my shoulder as if in commiseration. “Come on. Your daddy’s got plenty of horses, and we’s already wasted too much time.”

Well, there was no arguing that. Waving my hand for the others to follow, we surged over the top of the bank as a single entity and quickly made our way toward the center of the ramshackle community. As we exited the knob-kneed mangroves along the river, I began to realize just how late the morning had become. I have a kind of internal benchmark about what constitutes day from night, since “dawn” and “sundown” can often be ambiguous. For me, it’s when there’s enough light to read a newspaper and not have to squint to make out the words. There wasn’t any doubt about it as we entered Miami that day—it was a fine-print kind of morning.

Spotting a couple of Negroes stirring outside a hut at the southern terminus of the street, I told Jim to go see what they could tell him. “The rest of you spread out,” I ordered. “If you find Lena, get her back here quick as you can.”

While Jim headed toward the distant Negroes, I hurried across the street to intercept Casey and Punch. Casey started shaking his head while I was still some distance away.

“Couldn’t find ’em, Boone,” he said as I came up. “We saw some ’tackies about a quarter mile south of here, but nothing carrying the Flatiron brand.”

“It doesn’t matter,” I replied, but before I could add any more, a scream pierced the air. I flinched, and all three of us—me and Casey and Punch—palmed our six-shooters. From the far end of the street, I saw a tiny figure burst through the sagging door of a palmetto hut and race down the middle of the street. Her cries rang over the slumbering village like church bells: “Papa Jim, Papa Jim!”

Jim ran to meet her, motioning desperately for her to keep quiet, but I guess she was too young, had been terrified for too long, to heed such good advice. She kept hollering shrilly until she just about crashed into Jim’s arms, wailing in earnest now, her emotions breaking loose. It would have been heartwarming if not for the confused cries coming from the saloon, the certain knowledge that all hell was about to break loose.

“Find the others,” I instructed Casey and Punch, then took off at a lope.

Jim was still hugging the sobbing young woman in his arms when I came up, but he knew we were in trouble. Although he kept telling Lena to hush, she seemed too far gone to reach with logic and continued her terrified wailing. Meeting my gaze, Jim said: “We gots to get outta here, marse.”

I glanced toward the saloon. A man with a scraggly beard nearly to his navel had stepped out of the building, carrying a brown jug in one hand, a rifle in the other. He stopped uncertainly on the roofless stoop, his gaze sweeping the street.

“Don’t move,” Jim whispered, easing his body around to shield Lena from the bearded man’s view. I froze as well, knowing what Jim had in mind. If we didn’t panic, if we just stood there like a couple of passersby in quiet conversation, maybe the bearded man would decide there was nothing amiss and go back inside.

It might have worked, too, if a shout from the Miami hadn’t signaled fresh trouble. It was the lookout we’d left tied up in the woods along the north trail, scrambling up the bank and raising seven different kinds of hell, all the while pointing toward me and Jim. If I hadn’t been in such a rush, I might have cursed our poor luck. Instead, spotting an empty lot between a couple of nearby buildings, I said: “Over there. Let’s get out of sight.”

Jim peeled the trembling woman from his arms. “Hush, girl. We gots to run.”

But Jim didn’t get to run. He’d barely turned toward the empty lot when a bullet caught him alongside his head. His body seemed to convulse in mid-stride, and he dropped limply to the ground. Blood spurted from his torn scalp. Lena screamed and threw herself across his chest. I think I might have cried out a hoarse protest myself. Then I spun toward the saloon with the Sharps coming up instinctively. But I didn’t fire. A shot from Ardell had already sent the bearded man stumbling backward into the front of the saloon. Another from Roy spun the lookout into the river, clutching his chest.

I froze there for a moment, my finger taut on the trigger. Men were spilling from the saloon like rats off a sinking ship, and I’ll make no apologies for the comparison. Within seconds it seemed like guns were blazing from every direction.

You know, I’d expected the Klees to fight, but I hadn’t considered the possibility that the rest of Miami’s lawless element would join the fray. It didn’t dawn on me until later how our presence might be mistaken for an all-out attack on the village, something I suppose I should have anticipated, considering the settlement’s population of deserters, murderers, cattle rustlers, and horse thieves.

My brief moment of paralysis broke at the sound of a bullet whuffling overhead. Grabbing Lena’s wrist, I hauled her to her feet. She struggled against me at first, until I gave her a hard shake. “Let’s go!” I shouted in her face.

She shook her hear. “No, massa, I can’t leave Papa Jim.”

“It’s too late for him, Lena. We’ve got to get out of here before we all die. Come on.”

I don’t know how much weight my argument carried, but the bullet that cut through the shoulder seam of her gingham dress as neatly as a seamstress’s thread ripper sure seemed to capture her attention. I pulled her forward, across Jim’s body, and we began a mad dash for the empty lot between the two cabins.

Bullets splattered mud and sod at our feet and whined past our ears like angry hornets. I heard a man cry out in pain, but didn’t look around to see who it was. We were still several yards shy of the nearest cabin when something like a mule’s kick tore the Sharps from my grasp. I did a little howling of my own at that and actually stopped to retrieve the stubby rifle until I saw what the bullet had done to its lock.

“Massa, we gots to run!” Lena cried, and then it was her who was tugging on my arm, pulling me away from the broken weapon.

“Go!” I shouted, shoving her toward the closest building, and I was right behind her, my revolver in hand as we sprinted past the cabin’s corner.

Lena fell to a crouch beside the wall, sobbing hysterically as she stared back to where Jim lay, a pool of blood shining wetly around his head. I stood with my shoulders to the same wall, my pulse thundering. Grief tore at my heart for the old man. Out front, the shooting continued unabated. It sounded like an army, like a thousand men battling for control of the city.

After we caught our breath, I took Lena’s hand and led her around back. As I turned the corner, I was surprised to see nearly a dozen men and a couple of women fleeing toward the beach. Although the men were carrying their long guns, I could tell from the blur of their feet that they wouldn’t be coming back anytime soon. And when you think about it, that also makes sense. Miami was filled with deserters from both sides of the war. They’d already fled once. Why wouldn’t they do it again?

Hanging onto Lena, we cat footed across the back lot to the next corner. Peering around the ragged edge of the log shack, I saw three men bent over a fourth and knew instantly what they were up to. Even in southwest Florida, we’d heard about the two-legged scavengers that would slip onto a battlefield late at night to rob the corpses of whatever plunder they could find. If they were caught, they’d be hung or shot, but the word we got was that they were seldom caught.

I didn’t care what they did to one another. I just wanted to get over to where the rest of my crew was pinned down across the street from the saloon. After warning Lena to be real quiet, we eased into the gap between the two buildings. I don’t know. Maybe we made some kind of noise that I didn’t hear. Or maybe that guy in the middle of the pack sensed us, rather than heard us. Whatever the reason, Lena and I had barely stepped into the open when he whirled toward us, clawing for a revolver thrust into the waistband of a pair of butternut trousers.

There ain’t a doubt in my mind what that boy intended, but he had to draw his revolver first, and mine was already in hand. I fired before the deserter got his front sight clear of his pants, and my bullet caught him square. He crumbled like a marionette with its strings severed—straight down, limbs akimbo. The other two spun around, and I swear one of them snarled like a cornered wolf when he spotted me and Lena, but I bulled on, telling them to drop their guns quick if they wanted to live to see tomorrow.

Maybe it was something in my voice, but they practically flung those pistols away. Their hands went straight up without being told, as if this wasn’t the first time they’d been thrown down on. In as mean a voice as I’ve ever heard come out of my mouth, I said: “Are you Klees?”

Both men shook their heads.

“Are you a bounty hunter?” one of them asked.

“No, we came here after Klees.”

“Well, hell, son, you can have ’em,” the other deserter said. “They been here barely three days, and they’re already treatin’ this place like it’s their own private kingdom.”

“You boys can run, or you can fight,” I said. “What’s your choice?”

“I’m running,” the first deserter said, and the second one started bobbing his head like a flathead piston on a short connecting rod.

“Then get,” I growled, motioning toward the beach.

Well, they got quick enough, and I was already on my way when something snagged at my mind, bringing me to an abrupt stop. I remember just about wailing as I ran toward the man those sons of bitches had been robbing. Casey was sitting sloped into the side wall of the cabin, his feet splayed out before him, head tipped toward his chest. If I hadn’t recognized his clothes, I probably would have passed on by. Blood covered the front of his shirt, turning what had once been deep yellow and cream into bright crimson.

Falling to my knees at his side, I put a hand on his shoulder and gently spoke his name. He raised his head with difficulty, squinting in the still-gray light.

“Boone?” he said uncertainly.

“Where are you hit, Case?”

“Damned if I know. I got knocked off my feet by something, and when I come to, them buzzards were all over me.” He grinned, revealing blood-stained gums, and I knew then that it was bad.

“Massa?” Lena said tentatively.

Grabbing her wrist, I pull her down by my side. “Find something to bandage his wound,” I said, my voice harsh with fear.

“Where?”

I jerked my head toward the body of the man I’d just shot. “Use his shirt.”

Lena shook her head emphatically. For a second, I thought she was going to refuse. Then she flung the hem of her skirt out in front of her and said: “Gimme a knife.”

I handed her my folder, then gently pulled Casey forward to look at his back. I cursed softly when I saw the wound, and my vision turned misty as I eased him back against the wall.

Watching me with a sad smile, he said: “You’re looking peaked, Boone.”

“Shut up,” I replied, awkwardly patting his shoulder.

“Ease up on yourself, hoss,” he said mildly. “We all knew the odds when we came down here.”

“We’ll take care of you,” I promised.

“No, you need to start scootin’. Right now, before Jacob Klee realizes how few we really are.”

“I ain’t going nowhere without you,” I replied, then turned to Lena to ask what was taking so long with those bandages, but she handed me a strip of gingham sliced off the bottom of her dress before I could speak.

“It’s cleaner than that thing he’s wearin’,” she said, tipping her head toward the dead scavenger.

I accepted the cloth without comment, but when I turned back to Casey, he was shaking his head. “Get outta here, Boone,” he whispered, in a voice so low I had to lean forward to make out the words. “It’s just gonna hurt like a son of a bitch if you try to wrap it, and won’t make a damned bit of difference in the end. Those boys killed me, and there ain’t nothing we can do about that. You’ve gotta get Lena outta here, so I don’t have to think I died for nothing.”

“Casey . . .” I choked on whatever it was that I wanted to say, shaking my head in helpless frustration. Although I wouldn’t have admitted it to anyone at the time, I’m not ashamed to confess now that I had tears streaming down my face as I tried to say good-bye to probably the second-best friend I had in those years.

“Get movin’, boy,” Casey mumbled, but he was no longer looking at me or Lena. His face was turned toward the bay, an expression of wonder transforming it into something I’d never seen before. “My God, how beautiful,” he whispered. “Like a river of gold running straight across its surface.”

I twisted around to stare at Biscayne Bay, but didn’t see anything that even remotely resembled a sheet of gold. There was just the gray dawn outlining the ragged cap of the distant key. Laying my hand atop his shoulder, I squeezed it probably harder than I should have and said: “I’ll come back if I can.”

Although I waited for his reply, it didn’t come, and his chest was no longer rising and falling. Pushing clumsily to my feet, I told Lena that we needed to go, and she took my hand and led me toward the rear of the lot.

I don’t want you to think I was so incapacitated with grief that I couldn’t function, but I do want you to know what a good girl Lena was. I’d liked her before the kidnapping, but I didn’t truly admire her until that morning in Miami.

I also don’t want you to think there wasn’t a lot of shooting still going on while I sat there with Casey, because there was, although I noticed even then that its intensity seemed to be ebbing. I’d find out later that as the fighting continued between the Flatiron crew and Klee’s outfit—most of that bunch holed up in the saloon—the town’s less ambitious residents were busy slipping out windows and back doors to skedaddle into the swamps or down the beach.

I paused briefly at the rear of the empty lot for a final, backward glance. It was hard to believe Casey was gone, that our boyish adventures had come to a permanent end. I think, for the first time, I began to wonder if we wouldn’t all be dead before the sun finally pulled free of that distant island.

Tight chested, I turned my back on Casey Davis and slipped around the rear corner of the second cabin. My Colt pointed the way, and I had Lena’s fingers wrapped in a too-firm grip with my other hand, although she didn’t complain. We stopped again at the far corner, but before I could take a peek around the side, I heard the rustle of scrub from behind us and turned with my throat nearly closing off.

“Drop the gun, McCallister!”

“Son of a bitch,” I said raggedly, using my elbow to nudge Lena behind me.

Pablo Torres stood about a dozen yards away, an already-cocked horse pistol—one of those old, single-shot percussion pieces with a massive bore—clutched in his stubby fingers. “I will shoot if I have to,” he threatened.

I believed him, too, although I didn’t drop the Navy, afraid that if I did, it would be all over for me and Lena. Not knowing what else to say, I blurted: “Why’d you do it, Torres?”

His reaction surprised me. I expected denial or, at the very least, an attempt to shift the blame onto me or one of the others. Instead his head jerked back as if he’d been slapped, and his lips drew into a thin, taut line. “I said for you to drop your revolver,” he repeated. “I do not wish to shoot you or the niña, but I will if my hand is forced.”

I hesitated a long time, but that huge pistol never wavered in Torres’s hand. Finally I opened my fingers, and the Navy tumbled into the grass at my feet. “You still haven’t told me why.”

Pablo hesitated so long that I began to think he wasn’t going to reply, but then he started talking. “They caught me that day on the Caloosahatchee. I thought I was being quiet, but I was found and taken to where Jacob Klee was sitting in the shade of a cypress tree, waiting for his men to bring me in.” Pablo bit at his lower lip, and his eyes took on a faraway expression. “They threatened to brand me if I did not do as instructed.” He touched his cheek with his free hand. “With a running iron, like this.” He made a trio of slashing motions across each cheek, and I could tell from the jerkiness of his fingers that he was reliving the moment. “I had no choice, Boone. I did not wish to be marked in such a way.”

“What did they want?”

“To know where we were going, who your buyer was. Jacob wanted to know about you, too. How old you were, and if you had ever been in such a fight before, with guns.”

“And you told him?”

“Sí, I told him, and he promised that when they stampeded the herd, I would not be harmed.”

A flash of memory shot across my mind. “But you told us anyway, when you got back. You told us who it was, and . . . no, I guess you didn’t, did you? You said Jacob only had six men with him, but he had nearly twice that number.”

“I had no choice.”

“Bullshit,” I said softly. “You’re through, Torres. You’re through on every cow outfit across southern Florida. I’ll see to that, or someone else will. Word of this will filter back to my pa and brothers, and your life won’t be worth a lead plug.”

“I will stay with Jacob and his men, and ride for the Klees.”

I glanced at the huge pistol, still pointed at my midsection. “Where are your revolvers? You used to carry a brace of them.” Pablo’s face flushed with humiliation, and I laughed. “Jacob took them away, didn’t he?”

“I will get them back when I have proven myself,” he replied defensively.

“By turning me over to him?”

“Sí. Jacob Klee wants you, and I will give him what he wants. Alive if possible, but dead if I must. The choice is yours.”

“No,” a voice said from behind Torres. “The choice is mine.”

Pablo started to turn, but he was too slow. The shotgun’s blast caught him dead center from less than five yards away and threw him nearly halfway across the empty lot. At my back, Lena screamed and darted past my elbow. “Papa Jim,” she squealed, racing toward the older man. “Papa Jim, you’re alive.” She just about bowled him over as she wrapped her slim arms around his waist.

Crossing the empty space between us, stepping over Pablo’s torn-and-bloody corpse without a glance, I said: “I swear to God, Jim, I thought you were dead.” Staring at the bloody gash across the side of his skull, I wasn’t sure at that point that he wouldn’t be.

“You done right, marse,” Jim said.

“I wouldn’t have left you if I’d known,” I continued hoarsely, the horror of what I’d done filling me with raw emotion.

Easing Lena aside, Jim said: “Get your revolver, Boone, and don’t ever take another step without it.”

I hesitated, caught off guard by the authoritative tone of the older man’s voice, his unprecedented use of my first name without the familiar marse preceding it. Then I did as I’d been told. After we reloaded, Jim motioned for me to follow him back to where I’d left Casey. I had to resist the urge to double-check for a pulse. We stopped at the front corner, and Jim peered cautiously around the edge. I noticed that even though he was propping himself against the wall, he was still pretty wobbly. Like everything he’d done since crawling out of the road with his scalp laid bare was beginning to take its toll.

“Why don’t you sit down before you fall down?” I suggested.

“No time for sittin’. Come here.”

I moved up beside him, leaning out carefully for a full view of the street.

“They got our boys corked up tight inside that store,” Jim said. “What we’s got to do is get a man across the street so’s he can come at that saloon from the rear.” He gave me an appraising look. “I can’t do it, Boone. I’m so twirly headed now I can barely keep my feet. You is gonna have to do it, son. You is gonna have to get over there and give Jacob Klee and his boys something else to think about, while me and Lena sneak around behind the store. When you open up on the saloon, I’ll pull our boys out the back way. If we can get down to the river, we ought to be able to hold ’em off long enough to get ever’one across. You savvy?”

“Yeah, I savvy.”

“Boone.”

I looked at him, puzzled by the strained tone of his voice. “Yeah?”

“Once we pull outta that-there store, you is gonna have to find your own way to the river. Think you can do that?”

“I can do whatever I have to do. Just tell me what it is.”

“I wish I could, son, I surely do, but when you get over there, you gonna be on your own.”

I nodded grimly, determined not to let him down a second time. “I’ll do it,” I vowed.

“Lena, honey, grab me a couple of them revolvers, will you?”

Lena rushed to comply, returning within seconds with all three of the handguns I’d ordered the scavengers to leave behind. Jim took the guns one at a time and checked their loads. Then he shoved two inside his belt and handed the third to me.

“Shove that in your britches,” he instructed. “It’s loaded. When it’s empty, don’t waste no time reloadin’. Just give it a toss and keep runnin’. The only revolver you needs to hang onto is your own. Understand?”

“Yes, sir,” I replied, unaware at the time of the irony of my response—a white man calling the family slave sir.

Then Jim did something I never would have expected. He handed me his double-barreled shotgun, the one Pa had given him so many years before. “That there scattergun is loaded full-bore, Boone. She’ll kick like a mule when you pull the trigger, but she’ll do the job.”

I nodded solemnly. I knew Jim loved that old smoke pole. It represented something between him and my pa that I couldn’t begin to fathom.

“You be ready, son?”

“Yes, sir.”

The old man smiled affectionately. “You’ll do fine, Boone. Just remember to duck when you see someone shootin’ your way.”

I swallowed and nodded and moved out in front of him. The firing from the saloon seemed to intensify, and I sensed that time was running out. Taking a deep breath, I bolted from the shelter of the log cabin like a rabbit startled from its hedge. I was heading for a small lean-to stable just south of the saloon and was just about there when a man stepped out from behind a corner of the stable and pulled the trigger on a large-bored carbine.

Getting shot was like running full tilt into a chest-high log placed across my path, with about the same results. My top end stopped instantly at the bullet’s impact, but my legs kept pumping. I believe if there had been a wall in front of me, I might have made good progress going up its side. Unfortunately there wasn’t, and I landed hard on my back and shoulders, rapping my skull in the process.

I laid there for a good, long bit, listening to the roaring in my ears while the sky danced and shimmied overhead. I don’t know why the man who shot me didn’t finish the job. Jim said afterward he’d taken off like a scalded cat as soon as he saw me go down. It was Jim’s speculation that the shooter wasn’t a Klee man, just some deserter caught up in the fight.

After a while I became aware of a distant ache in my shoulder and soon came to wish that it had stayed there. But you don’t get your hide drilled without paying a price in pain, and mine wasn’t long in coming. Groaning, I pushed over on my right side, protecting my left shoulder as best I could under the circumstances. I was starting to become aware again of what was going on around me and took notice when a bear-like roar from the saloon was following by a ragged cheer. A knot of men burst out the front door with their guns blazing, fat Jacob Klee waddling swiftly at its head. They were rushing the store, pouring lead into the building like they meant to blast it off its limestone foundation.

Swallowing back the bitter taste of bile, I shoved awkwardly to my feet, drawing my Colt as I did. I wouldn’t have been able to handle Jim’s shotgun even if I knew where it had flown, and I clean forgot about the spare revolver that had bounced out of my waistband on impact. I don’t know what came over me in that moment, but I’d suddenly had a gut full of Jacob Klee and his lawless clan. Drawing a deep breath, I bellowed his name into the street.

You know how when the action is going fast and furious and everything seems to be happening all at once, and then, in the middle of it all, there’s that tiny fraction of time when complete silence falls over the scene? That was the void my challenge filled, and I truly doubt that anyone would have ever heard it if not for that brief moment of quiet. But they did, and Klee’s men came to an uneven stop in the middle of the street, half turning toward me while still keeping an eye on the bullet-riddled storefront.

“Jacob Klee!” I yelled again as loud as I could.

The shooting tapered off, then ceased. Klee’s men—maybe ten of them altogether—backed away uncertainly. At the store, Ardell and Punch stepped outside with their revolvers drawn, though sloping toward the ground. Nobody spoke. Every eye was locked on me.

“Jacob, if it’s me you want, then come and get me.”

The old man pushed to the front of his crew, and as much as I despised that belly-jiggling skunk, I have to admit that at least he’d been out front leading the charge. It was more than a lot of those generals up north were doing.

“You killed my nephew, McCallister!” Klee shouted.

Just so you know, all of our conversations that day were spoken in loud voices, what with the distance and the ringing in everyone’s ears from the gunfire.

“You killed your own nephew,” I retorted.

“That’s a damned lie.”

“Is it? If you hadn’t been following us to steal our herd, he never would have died. He never would have even been there.”

Klee started forward, and I have to admit he seemed to be moving fairly nimbly for a man of such girth. He was grinning as he approached, like he’d already finished the job and was anticipating the celebration.

“You don’t look so good, McCallister.”

Well, I don’t know what I looked like, but if it was anything close to how I felt, I suspect Jacob was being kind in his assessment. I know I was swaying on my feet and that the entire left side of my shirt was sodden with blood. Lena said later on that I looked as pale as a ghost and that she’d been half afraid that’s what I was, standing there to take revenge on the men who’d killed me.

“I’ve got ambition enough to finish this chore, if that’s what you’re wondering,” I replied. “You and your kin have been a burr under the Flatiron’s saddle for long enough, Klee. I’m going to end it here.”

Laughing, Jacob said: “That’s brassy talk, boy, but I’ll be your huckleberry. Lift that pistol anytime you see fit.”

Jacob had been walking steadily toward me, but then he stopped about forty yards away. Gritting my teeth against the deep throbbing in my shoulder, I started forward. He looked surprised by my move, but held his ground. We both had our revolvers drawn, though hanging, muzzle-down, from our fists. I’d covered maybe twenty feet when I stepped on a clod of dirt no bigger around than my fist, something so slight and soft I wouldn’t have even noticed it if I hadn’t been so foggy headed. As it was, the clod staggered me to my right.

Laughing, Jacob took a half step forward. “The hell with you, you little pup,” he called, and began to raise his revolver.

The difference between me and Jacob that day was that Jacob tried to bring his gun up to eye level so that he could aim—which is smart if you’ve got the time. I didn’t. Jerking the Navy to waist level, I snapped off a round before Jacob even knew what I was doing.

I still remember the look of astonishment on Jacob’s face when my bullet struck him in the gut. Jim said he grunted loud enough to wake the dead, although I didn’t hear it. Then the look of surprise vanished, and Jacob raised his gun with an oath vicious enough to peel paint. I got off a second round before Klee could fire his first, but my aim was all out of whack by then, and my bullet plowed into the dirt between the big man’s feet, doing no harm.

Klee’s luck was better, and his slug caught me just under and to the outside of my ribs. It wasn’t a bad wound, as far as those things go, but I was so addled by the first that I went down instantly.

Klee stood where he was, one hand covering the wound in his belly, the other still hanging onto his revolver. I could see blood seeping through the fabric of his shirt between his fingers, but he didn’t look especially weakened. Raising his head from where he’d been staring at the wound, he started cursing me for a trouble-making fool whose family thought they owned all of southern Florida—the usual trash you’d expect from a horse thief and slave stealer—but he was also lifting his gun for a second shot, and I knew I couldn’t just lay there and let him take it without challenge. Pushing to my knees, I brought my revolver around in a slow arc, settling the tiny brass post at the muzzle end on Jacob’s chest.

Klee got his shot off first, and I swear the bullet came close enough to clip off some of the hair above my ear. But it didn’t hit me, and my shot sailed true. The Navy’s ball struck Jacob solidly in the chest, but the son of a bitch still didn’t fall!

“God dammit,” I shouted in frustration. “Klee, drop your gun!”

Instead, he spat a bloody glob into the dirt at his side. Looking at me with those little, pig eyes blazing, he started to bring his revolver up one more time. That ol’ boy was determined, but so was I, and I got my final round off before he could pull his trigger. This time, Jacob Klee went down hard, a hole about the size of a dime centered just above the bridge of his nose.

It’s taken me a lot longer to tell you about this than it did for it to happen. I suspect the whole thing—from the time I shouted for Klee to come and get me, until he hit the ground like a load of bricks—didn’t take more than a couple of minutes. What I didn’t know at the time, as focused as I was on Jacob Klee, was that Ardell and Punch had taken that opportunity to walk out into the street behind those Klee boys, so that after the old man fell, they were standing right there with their guns drawn. I don’t think Klee’s gang knew they were there until Ardell told them to drop their guns or get the same treatment as the old man. I guess with the snake’s head chopped off, those boys had lost their will to fight, because they threw their weapons down without protest. That much I saw. Then I keeled over unconscious.