Jim heard the rifle reports behind him and the whine of bullets glancing off rock. His mare slipped. He tried to hold her in, but the horse was already side-slipping on the loose shale. He turned and ran her sliding across the loose rock, barely gripping it, then rode down onto a level of broken slabs. He heard another shot. He stood his horse and readied his rifle. But nothing came behind him. He ran the horse west. He kept looking over his shoulder. But no fire came. Sandstone became foothills. And from one of these he could see the fire in the north and the storm wind blowing a sheet of rain. Before him black ash fell like snow. And beyond that black line, through the storm, was the way into endless western plains, unhindered. He turned around and called his brother’s name blindly at the rock wall behind him.

He waited for Paddy. The night air cooled the burning plain. He stood on the hill with a stolen horse and his rifle across his shoulders, with all the plains before him as the stars came into the sky. But Paddy did not come.

He walked his horse down out of the stones. He waited by a cypress tree. Still Paddy did not come.

Then it is done, he thought. And he thought of that last rifle report that had sounded behind him when he came down the rock. ‘Then it is done,’ he cried. And he walked his horse through the falling ash and smoke onto the plain.