In the night they made a fire and put down a rolled-up blanket and camped away from it in the trees. But nothing came to the fire. Jim hardly spoke. Paddy watched him, now drinking whisky, now with his eyes half-closed against the fierce light that burnished the horizon. Staring across the border of this world into some other, as though he barely heard or saw anything that was before him.

They rode back to McCulloch’s for the third time. Jim winced on sight of the woman alone on her veranda.

He drew his Colt.

‘Where is he, woman?’

‘I don’t know. He never tells me. Why would he tell me? He keeps company like you men. Perhaps he’s dead.’

Jim’s head fell.

They rode back to Tom who was sitting on the plain chewing tobacco.

‘No money?’

‘No,’ said Paddy

Tom shook his head.

At dawn Paddy descried a solitary rider coming from the south. Paddy kept the rider in his rifle sight all the while he was in range. Till he could see the man’s face.

Elden approached the camp and Paddy shouted across the plain.

‘What the fuck are you doin here?’

‘I got bored at Tiger Scrub.’

‘You fuckin idiot.’

‘I ran outta money.’

‘How do you know you weren’t followed?’

‘No one’s lookin for me particularly.’

‘How did it go with Joe?’

‘There was an altercation.’

‘And?’

‘And I decided Joe Rhine could not be trusted.’

‘So you killed him?’

‘I never seen him die. He may have.’

Paddy Kenniff backhanded Elden off his horse. Elden stood up grinning.

‘Well that’s fine thanks for keeping you cunts off the gallows. Fine fuckin thanks indeed!’

He looked to Jim for sympathy.

Jim only stared at him.

Jim’s eyes closed then opened wide as though waking from out of a dream.

Tom Lawton spat a stream of tobacco and shook his head and laughed without mirth. ‘How many friends we got back there now, Paddy? That’s why this cunt’s run back here. He’s scared someone at home’s gonna try and kill him.’

Elden stared at him blankly.

Tom went on,

‘That’s one hundred more miles of the fuckin hills we can never go into again. You think you kill one informant and you reduce the number by one? You increase it by ten, you fucking idiot. Fuck me!’ He looked at Jim. Then he wheeled his horse around and hit its flanks with his boot heels and swore now to himself. ‘Fuck me fucking roan.’

Then he wheeled the horse back around and looked at Jim.

‘You know we can’t ride back now! Not with him.’

Jim said nothing. He looked at Paddy. Paddy looked away at the horizon. Jim took his revolver from his hip holster. Elden had been brushing the dirt off his stovepipe hat and now put his right foot in the stirrup iron and saw Jim’s gun trained on his head. He grinned. He mounted his horse.

‘You think you’re invincible, Jim Kenniff?’

Jim said nothing.

‘Say something, you fucking mute.’

But Jim said nothing. Only held the revolver and stared at the man who threatened him with near-closed pale eyes. Elden shook his head.

‘We can all of us see how weak you’re getting, Jim. You can’t lead us anymore. You’ve lost your nerve. And Paddy’s never had it.’ He waited. ‘Say something, you fucking spook!’ Then he nodded. ‘Alright, then.’

His right hand went quick to his saddle holster and he had the Remington across his body and levelled when Jim fired two bullets into his chest.

Elden stayed on his horse. Still grinning. He turned and watched the sun dying on the horizon. All four men stood their horses. The three without mortal wounds watching Elden till he fell to the ground.

They buried him in sand.

Tom went to dig for water, Paddy took Jim aside.

‘We cannot wait longer, brother.’

Jim said nothing, drew on his smoke, looked down towards Jericho, then up at the desert sky.

‘Every day we wait,’ said Paddy, ‘the authorities are gatherin forces against us. And if there’s something in Tom’s suspicion … Brother, we cannot wait.’

Jim looked down at Jericho.

‘I would never have left you.’

It was dusk and a wind that could cut a man in half rose in the south. The wind tore ash from Jim’s cigarette.

‘Jim, the police will shortly find us. They may be circling. But if we backtrack a way, send whoever’s followin us astray.’ He looked across the plain. ‘See those rocks? We can ride on the shale in there and no one will know.’

Jim nodded.

‘Jim, we can come back for the horse money next season.’

Jim nodded and turned to face Jericho and the freezing desert wind.

‘Aye, next season.’

The last green glow of twilight drained out of the day. The stars rode the horizon. They mounted their horses and rode into the teeth of the wind.