*   *   1   *   *

He came on the summer solstice, walking out from under the sun’s setting orb into the town, and he had upon his head a black hat, upon his feet black boots, free of dust, upon his shoulders a wine-red cloak, unadorned save for the silver brooch which completed its loop. At his side was a revolver, long in the barrel and engraved with silver, with a worn leather grip. The town watched him, and some said they knew him.

One said he was Tom Bratwaithe, who had died of pneumonia five months back and left his cripple brother alone.

One said he was Jeremiah, who old man that had fainted upon the steps of the courthouse. They didn’t add a last name; he’d died before he’d woken.

One said he was the farmer, what was his name, that had staked his claim on the richest pasture for a full day’s journey. They were noticeably more tentative than the rest. That one had left long ago, when his child disappeared for a time. Indians, some said, or robbers. Judge Willis had said it was sorted, and so it was.

Of them all, only the shopkeeper stood straight before him: ‘Thomas’ he called himself, and ‘Thomas’ everybody called him, once they realized his sweaty palms had no relation to help given. He was a short, loose man, with a mustache he had too much pride in, and a longing to have friends around whenever he got into a quarrel. He was stood in front of his store, watching the sun set, considering if he would mislay the keys to his medicine cabinet next time. He didn’t think so, but he always had a faint interest in it, the way he might have watched a horse considering a thirty-foot cliff. When he saw the stranger, he didn’t try to name him.

The stranger neared, passing the gallows set up on the roadside to his left and continuing on straight for the door of the general store which Thomas stood in front of. Blue eyes, the shopkeep thought. For a moment, they seemed soft, unsure. Then they settled on Thomas’s face, and he was too still to flinch.

To Thomas’s gaze, the stranger held no other man in his face. Of course, Thomas hadn’t seen the farmer; he’d come after that one’s time. He had seen Jeremiah, though, after he died, and Tom Bratwaithe. Bratwaithe’s wife and kid too, which was what Thomas didn’t like to remember.

The stranger walked straight forward, towards Thomas, and his hand rested on his gun.

Thomas flinched now, but his voice wouldn’t wake.

The stranger continued walking, past Thomas, up to the door of the store behind him. Thomas didn’t turn his head; the door behind him didn’t open. The sound of the stranger’s steps faded away into the distance, never deviating from their steady tempo.

Thomas breathed in.

*   *   2   *   *

Helen watched as the sun finished setting. Her hands were shaking, but she didn’t want to turn around to find something to still them. It wouldn’t help, anyway, and she didn’t want to see her son’s pallor, white underneath tan. Ned had been gone so long, now, and this town was no friend to the woman of virtue. She’d thought about it once, when Judge Willis passed, slightly rounder than he was in his courthouse photograph.

She breathed in, held her breath, and breathed out again. Her feet pressed minutely deeper into the dust, and she decided she couldn’t look away any longer, not if she wanted to keep herself from running off into the night. Not that looking would help the shakes; Ned’s money had ended half a week back.

She hadn’t gotten up the heart to pray since then.

Her dress shifted as she turned, the worn fabric looking a bit less dirty in the tired light, and her shoulders stiffened. She looked up into his eyes. He wasn’t taller than her, true, but she had to look up nonetheless, or so the vertigo in her gut informed her. Blue eyes, she thought, like the sky. They might be kind eyes, but she could hardly tell in the dark.

He had a gun, she noticed. Bad, that. Her tongue was dry, as it had been for an hour, and she didn’t know if she could speak if she tried. She took a step back, at once glad and terrified that she had no wall at her back. Her son was behind him, inside the dying house, and the sun cast one side of his face into orange-and-red tones, left the other side’s features too dark to distinguish.

“We’ve no money,” she said, no time taken to mourn her diction, lost with her husband and her dinner and that one thought taken in secret as the judge passed. She nearly took another step back, but her son was in the house beyond the law-man.

He watched her, and for a single moment, as the sun seemed to shift, she thought she saw Ned’s jaw, the cock of his hat. Then sanity assailed her, and she knew it was only a memory dimmed by time. The stranger’s face was….

He tilted his head forward, saluting her.

She felt her nerves begin to creak and took some comfort that the dark would conceal the shivering at the corners of her mouth.

He stepped aside, soft as an adder about to strike, his hat set firmly on his head, his wine-red cloak a shade brighter near the sun, like blood not yet scabbed.

She stepped forward, dress rustling, and chanced a glance at him as she passed.

He was watching her, and a smile was on his face.

She reached the step of her door, turned almost convulsively to guard herself.

He had left no footprints where he stood.

*   *   3   *   *

Sheriff Judith knew when a man was worth talking to. It was the way he walked, the way he dressed, how he looked at law-men. Still, once nigh fell he preferred to lay aside that skill, keep his company to those he knew, those who knew him, or perhaps a woman. Today, the sun was set, and he was headed for the saloon. They knew to keep a room there, with his sort of company avilable, even if it was the manager’s bedroom. Old Button was a weakling, but being his friend- Judith snorted- had its benefits

A man was standing at the roadside, watching him, back to the general store, smaller than Judith’s six-foot-ten, midnight against the moonlight, and with a gun-glint on his hip. Judith slowed his step, considered. Law-breaking was not allowed in this town, but his mood was good, so he’d give the man a chance to mend his ways, like Willis was giving the widow Thorne.

“Hold,” he said, loud, and his left fist was already balling up when the stranger looked up against him. Blue eyes, he realized; he caught a glint of gun-steel in them, but he denied the fascination there, turning to more important things. The stranger was small and slight, and his hand hadn’t dropped towards his gun. The man had seen the gold-star badge, and he’d heard what they did to those as shot at law-men in this town, heard about the pan they fried on.

“You can’t have that gun round here,” the sheriff said, hand already reaching for the revolver. He’d have to be careful, if he didn’t want his first blow to end it all. “Give it here, though, and we can forget the crime.”

The stranger considered him for a short moment, then his hand drifted downwards towards his hip, as if to ask if that were the gun in question.

A fine piece, Judith noted. The stranger might know how to use it. Judith held out an open hand- his right. Nobody out-of-town expected the left hand first. The day they knew enough to look for that fist first, well, that was the day Judith gave them something real special, just in celebration. He liked how they squeaked to see him, once they could walk again.

The stranger had a smile on his lips, Judith realized. And he had a gun in his hand, which was worse, that same silver-crusted revolver he’d been pointing at, with its barrel pressed into Judith’s chest. The sheriff had shot enough men to know where the barrel was aimed, and he didn’t dare twitch. He was sweating now, worse than before, but his heart was racing faster and faster, and something in his back shivered. It had been a while since somebody’d dared to try and kill him, after what he’d done to McReary, the little imp. A pretty wife that man had, at the time.

The stranger stepped forward, pushing Judith back a half a step, a full step. The smile on his lips was steady and genuine, quiet even, and his finger on the trigger didn’t waver.

Judith looked down, and he saw the stranger’s hand, iron-banded and slim, slowly tense. The hammer was cocked already, and he knew he wouldn’t have time to swing before it fell, wouldn’t be able to after. His eyes shut, almost on instinct, and the press of the gun’s mouth against his chest disappeared.

He opened his eyes to an empty street, but his heart was racing still.

*   *   4   *   *

Thomas watched Sheriff Judith as he stepped through the door of the general store. His hand twitched, as if to check for the key, but all that should be locked up was, and he could feel the right weight in his pocket. If he needed to unlock a cabinet, the sheriff would be welcome to a key. About that Old Button had been clear, for which Thomas was glad. He’d not like to have to choose between Old Button and the sheriff, whose name he couldn’t seem to disconnect in his mind from the title, the revolver at his side.

The sheriff was frowning today, squinting against the light, and Thomas’s heart sank. What was he doing out here, all hungover still? Nobody would rouse him, if he wanted to sleep.

Thomas looked up into Sheriff Judith’s eyes, then hastily dropped his gaze to the man’s upper chest, where the two sides of his shirt parted ways, keeping his eyes down and still.

“Have you seen a stranger in black, with a red cloak?” the sheriff asked. Thomas felt his heart jackrabbiting, but he didn’t fear it showing. The sheriff had beat him up enough by now; fear wouldn’t make him violent, just contemptuous. Should he mention the stranger? How he’d walked away from Thomas hadn’t sounded natural, but he’d spent an hour or so last night remembering that, and he was sure he’d just missed the man slipping off the porch and around the side of the store.

“I seen him,” he said, “He came to town yesterday, foot only, no horse, which is odd….”

The sheriff’s hand arrested his words, and he recollected, perhaps a might too late, that the sheriff was always open to renewing the impression he left behind last time. “Keep your tongue in your head,” he said. He considered Thomas. “Keeping your hands clean?”

“Yeah.” Once, Thomas had thought about skimming away a few cartridges, finding a revolver to filch, giving old Button a surprise, or maybe the sheriff. He’d given up those thoughts long since, except in the smallest hours of the night or when he had to wonder if the medicine he stocked would ever find its way to the woman with the nasty cough. The day after those thoughts surfaced, though, she’d be locked in her house, and he wouldn’t have to see her, so he’d try to forget her. He’d been trained, a bit, back east, and he knew what medicines would have given her a fighting chance.

“Tell Old Button a stranger’s sticking his head up.” Sheriff Judith chuckled, but Thomas thought the laugh was a mite higher than usual. “I would deal with the issue myself, but it only seems prudent to take a few of the boys. Desert rats sometimes know a bit too much about guns for their own health.”

Thomas nodded, dull-eyed. His back was sodden, now, and he wasn’t even hot, not like he would be later in the year. Old Button wouldn’t mind. He’d just smile, say he liked to see a man who’d been doing some honest work, maybe mention that somebody having to work on their back wasn’t an unfamiliar condition for him. Thomas would laugh, unsure if the discomfort was offensive but unable to get rid of it, and he’d give the message. Then he’d have time to change his shirt, once this errand was done.

After the sheriff left, he glanced around the store, considering if he ought to lock it. Theft wasn’t much feared in this town, true, and nobody was particularly starving or sick right at this point, except Old Man Henderson who was half-way through a lawsuit and couldn’t look at the town without catching a lawman’s eye. The sheriff wouldn’t appreciate it, either, if he sent a man for something to chaw on and found the door locked. Thomas would know if the sheriff didn’t appreciate it.

He left the door unlocked when he slipped out the back, hoping the sweat in his shirt back wouldn’t be noticeable.

*   *   5   *   *

Helen swept her floor for the third time, felt the sun’s heat despite the curtain, and wondered how she was supposed to eat around here. The town of Fallard didn’t like those that didn’t fall in line, and she knew the judge had been looking at her. Charity…. She snorted.

The stranger last night was on her mind too. He hadn’t seemed the common sort of lawman. No badge, no speech, not even a touch upon her, light footed in the way the lawmen round here delighted in eschewing. He’d wanted something, and her feet hurt as she wondered what. Her stomach too, but she intended to grow used to that.

She had no farm to speak of, nor any beasts. A few had disappeared, the sheriff’s tax at work, and the rest she’d sold for the money, not being able to keep them alive on her lonesome. Nor had she any prospects for work; the town didn’t have money to spare, as a rule, and she’d already said no, that one time in the window, to what working in the saloon would mean. She considered applying at the general store, but Button wouldn’t let her get away that easy.

She began to sweep again, half an ear out for her son, squabbling with the dust and sticks out front of the cabin. The stranger was probably dead, by now, with no-one here to bury him proper. Or he was baking, like she’d heard they did.

She heard her son’s silence, and her heard dropped, and she heard a knock upon the door.

Her stomach twisted. For a moment she wished he had the decency to ignore the niceties. It would be easier, almost, if he simply burst the door in when he pleased, rather than forcing her to walk over, open the gate, and let him in as if he were a guest, like she was doing now. The house had a loan on it, after all, the type of loan that only one side remembered signing, for all the sheriff’s name was its witness, alongside one of his men’s.

She smiled, bright and stiff, eyes catching her son squirreled out away from the cabin, watching her from behind a rock, only half hidden. “How do you,” she said, the words sapped of question.

Judge Willis’s eyes bulged a little bit, less than his gut, and he had never called her anything but ‘Missus Helen’. Her skin squirmed when he greeted her, though, always did, and the hunger just added depth to it today. “Well,” he said, “and I see you have a fine morning too.” He paused. “Missus Helen.”

She didn’t step back from the doorway.

“Missus Helen,” he said again, “I came to see if you were well.” He chuckled, and Helen could see why he laughed. “Word has it, a stranger is in town, armed and dangerous. My men are putting up posters on the courthouse, and with you living here all alone….”

Her son was still watching from behind the rock, and Helen wished she was with him. “Aye,” she said, “I’ve heard.” She wondered if God forgave them as hated their fellow man without ceasing, and she prayed He did, for else she was damned. “Me and…. Me, I’m all well.” She thought of mentioning the knife- a table knife, sharper at the end than was conventional, sitting in her pocket.

“You look very well,” he said, tongue rolling around the words like a dog licking steak, “Missus Helen.”

“My thanks,” she said. Her feet hurt, and her head, and her stomach, and she could remember that instant in the window. He’d not been passing by this out-of-the-way cabin without a purpose, after all. And it would be pay, enough to eat for a while, maybe enough to leave. Not that she could leave before she was used up; this place didn’t let go easy.

“The courthouse calls me.” The judge’s jowls were sagging just a bit more, and Helen wondered if she’d angered him too much, been too laconic. “Justice never sleeps- though,” and here he smiled- “he is not blind either.” He turned to leave, paused after two steps, looked back. “Farewell, Missus Helen,” he said, and she kept her fingers from curling into claws.

“Farewell,” she said, and she knew she meant it at least as much as he did.

Helen watched him leave, and she wondered how many days she could starve for. More, she thought, than she could live for, but it wasn’t her starvation as would tempt her.

*   *   6   *   *

Judge Willis was not much troubled by the stranger. He had not seen him yet and had no intention to- guns were not his bottle of whiskey, not when he had the finest wine in the west waiting in the courtroom-, but he had heard what the sheriff had said about him. A thug, that man, but physically able and acquainted with a judge’s authority. By his word, the stranger was slight, slow to violence, and quick-footed, a bit of a coward. The judge grimaced. He would take some time to apprehend.

He did hope that the sheriff would rein in his men. In fact, he would make a note of it: he wanted to see the miscreant face to face, himself in the pulpit and the criminal in the dock, where criminals belonged. He was guilty of something, after all, else he would have given up his gun when the sheriff asked.

“Judge Willis?” A querulous voice interrupted him; that was the court clerk. A disgusting little man, built like a starved rat, eyes a bit too squinty for Judge Willis’s taste, but he listened when he was bid, and that was all the judge would expect from one of these western hicks. Someday he would move back east, when this town was finally put in order, back to civilization.

“Speak,” he said, settling a little deeper into the chair. These rooms in the courthouse were small, smaller than they would be back east, but he lacked trust that the carpenters in this place would keep from spoiling what comfort he had scrounged out of them.

“There’s a case on the docket,” the clerk said, “Benjamin Ippsin, sir, versus Bartholomew who plays in the saloon.”

Saloons were dirty places, for all Button appreciated their profitability, and the judge found himself unsurprised by the news. Benjamin Ippsin, of course, he knew as well. The man was of good European stock, honest as the judge himself. He occasionally found the bottle too lovely for his restraint, though, and did the most regrettable things. Button had made him pay for the singer he cut up, but that debt was over and gone. Even had the judge cared much about it, it would not have mattered. Ippsin was a reputable man, much more than Bartholomew, a man so nothing that his last name had never been procured.

Willis had told Button to shutter the saloon, time and again. A liquor store was, of course, quite right and proper, but this place needed no public barn, free for all to carouse at. Even an establishment of the sort they had back east, where gentlemen met and drank, undisturbed by the dusty cast-offs which populated this town, would be preferred.

The singers too were a bit distasteful. Judge Willis, of course, understood the urge. He had satisfied himself that way before, but the whole affair at the saloon was anything but discrete, anything but refined. A bit of money, a few minutes, and you acquired the same thing the last thirty, thirty-five hicks had, perhaps for a bit less because Button liked winning an argument. No, Judge Willis knew himself a sportsman. Missus Helen, as he called her, had caught his eye, and he would enjoy it when she listened to her better. Her get, of course, he could do without, though he was not a monster. An orphanage, perhaps, would do, if they had any around, or enough money to get to the nearest city with one.

He squinted at the clock. Court would start in an hour.

Time enough for a light repast.

*   *   7   *   *

Thomas didn’t like the whiskey. It made his throat hurt and made his stomach twist, and it made his eyes go wobbly. He didn’t want to spend the money for anything pricier, though, so swill it was, highest alcohol-to-price ratio he could find.

The bottles glittered, a little, in the light of the lamps, and Thomas considered night he’d chosen. He had counted the money in his pocket twice: enough to get drunk, no more. So long as Button hadn’t changed the price, the coins would get him sleepy-drunk and no farther. If he was lucky, he’d have the sense to sit somewhere out of the way a little before the drink caught up to him; if he wasn’t, he’d wake up on the floor with a few bruises on his ribs, bruises he wouldn’t care to inquire into the origin of.

In a more sane town, he’d be staggering back down the street towards his own place to slump into unconsciousness. It wasn’t far, only fifty feet as the crow flies and slightly more when you factored in the stairs up to the general store’s attic, so he could probably get most of the way there, wake up with bruises from his own mishandling and not somebody else’s, but here the sheriff enforced curfew with pleasure.

There was a reason he’d figured out whether he got fighting-drunk and promptly taken to drinking through that stage as fast as he could, as early as he could. He had so far, thankfully, kept himself from indulging with Button’s girls, mostly by not bringing enough money- and even the dead-eyed barman would keep him from wandering out past curfew to refill his pockets.

The crowd in here was the usual this late- one man on a plan similar to Thomas’s, one hustling out the door for home, a few eyeing the girls and fingering money in their pockets, the barman, and three of the sheriff’s men, all of them newly tipsy. They had no regard for the curfew, not with their badges polished. Though, Thomas reflected, he didn’t know why those four in the corner were here. They were worried enough to drink, sure, but they hadn’t touched a drop. The barman didn’t care. They would drink eventually, or sit in empty chairs till morning.

The stranger was going to die, eventually, if he didn’t wise up and leave. Sheriff Judith had led a posse around town, guns loosed, till the sun fell. The three at the bar, the ones Thomas knew he shouldn’t be watching while he was too inebriated to keep himself from drawing attention, had ridden in the party. They still had their carbines slung on their backs, still had their six-shooters holstered. If they started unslinging the weapons, Thomas would dive for that bit under the sturdiest table; he’d marked it out when they walked in.

Curfew, he noted, hadn’t quite fallen, and the sun was still showing on the horizon. He could cut his drinking short and scuttle home. That, however, would be a waste, and if Button taught his employees anything, it was to avoid waste. This was Thomas’s one night of the month to get drunk, and he was going to get drunk, if he had to learn how to make wood-liquor to do it.

The door was swinging in, and Thomas looked up. His heart dropped, rather like a lizard in a waterfall, complete with the pounding weight pinning it down to the bottom. Old Button, small, wiry, with a bald head and a sharp nose and a permanent crease outlining his mouth, stood in the doorway. One of the girls scuttled backwards, and Button stepped in, as if filling her space, though she’d been clear across the room.

His eyes found Thomas first- an unpleasant feature of taking the man’s pay, that-, then skimmed in utter disinterest over the girls, assessing, Thomas was sure, precisely how much their clients could be expected to pay. His lips thinned just barely, and he had the gait of a bantam rooster as he moved over to the bar, slipping behind it and taking his place on a stool already provided by the barman.

The four in the corner came over, now, and Thomas realized what was happening: debtor’s court, and Button was the law. He hoped they had enough, briefly, then wondered if the conference would keep him from his second bout of whiskey.

*   *   8   *   *

Helen knew she should be heading home now.

However she put it in her head, her feet didn’t want to move, and her shoulders hurt. Her stomach grumbled occasionally, but it was starting to learn. This town didn’t have work for her, even if she’s had servants’ wrists and not these dainty things. People didn’t have the money to pay for what they didn’t need; what little she could do, they’d been doing for themselves already. A few might have given charity, but Helen couldn’t bring herself to ask, though her resolve faltered whenever she tried to move faster than a steady walk. That rumor had noticed the judge’s interest in her hardly helped. They feared to interfere, feared to draw attention. She could see it in their eyes, in the way their shoulders twitched back when they registered her face.

The street wasn’t a place fit for a lone woman, not at this time, when the sun was beginning to drop. Curfew would be enforced, after all, and she didn’t particularly want to find out how many bruises she could walk with. They wouldn’t do worse in the open.

She wondered about the stranger she’d seen. His clothing had been well-made, if plain, and his gun was graven with curled silver. Would he have enough money to pay for her passage out, the gun to let her pass the sheriff’s men? It would be charity and lawlessness, but….

She leveraged herself away from the walling, both hands pressed flat, arms trembling. Her feet hurt, clad in shoes a bit too worn for the walking she’d done, and she felt as if the butt of a rifle were being pressed painfully deep into her backbone just below the neck, a pain that groped for a new home every time she twitched. She hated this town. She had a knife, even now, in a pocket she’d sewn into this dress a year after she made it, the week after she first met Judge Willis, the day before Ned’s work with the cattle took him south. It was not a good knife, but she wanted desperately to use it.

She forced the thought to the ground, beat it to death with great heaving blows, and managed three prayers, each one cracked apart in the middle to be replaced by its successor. Her fists were clenched, so she opened them. The sun would have fallen when she reached home, but the sheriff’s men stayed to town most nights, and if she hurried she could clear their sights before the sun did.

She hoped the stranger would shoot one of them, cringed at how they’d respond, and shivered when she realized what she’d wished. Whatever she read in the Psalms, she didn’t want to be the woman who’d wish death on another merely for her own injury, who regretted the wish only because it rebounded on her. With Judge Willis such moderation was harder.

The sheriff was an evil man, but he was straightforward, violent and open with his violence. Helen feared him, but he had not that element of the despicable which made her hot-blooded hate him. The judge watched, and he plotted, and Helen struggled not to hate him as much as she feared him.

She hurried down the road, turning the corner to head down main street before she realized where her course was taking her. She didn’t have the time to renege. The saloon door was open, and somebody was highlighted in the light spilling forth. The stranger was standing there, black and red and surrounded with light, hands resting gently at his sides.

She hurried onward; tomorrow, tomorrow she’d try to decide if she would steal to feed her son.

*   *   9   *   *

Button licked his lips, once, only once, then ran his finger swiftly down the small ledger on his lap. He found the line he needed, swiped his finger left then right to ensure he had the right entry and checked the value he’d written there earlier that day. Etton owed him fifteen dollars and five cents. He was, in other words, owned.

Button knew how the men of this town, his own ‘equals’, thought of him. The sheriff hated him; the judge despised him; the people wished they could disregard him entirely. They did not, in Button’s estimation, matter. He had no need of gun or whipcord muscle or shiny-coated horse. Money gave him his power, and to money all he needed could be reduced.

He looked up into Etton’s eyes. “You owe me,” he said, words precise, feeling the smile in the corner of his eye and pointing still to the line in the ledger where the debts were summed.

“Yessir,” Etton said. He hadn’t any gun at his side, but Button wouldn’t have cared if he had.

“You will repay the debt, Etton,” Button said. He kept their eyes connected, aware that the other three were watching. The barman put a lamp down beside the ledger, anticipating Button’s need.

“Yessir,” Etton said, and his voice trembled.

Button let the smile wriggle across his lips. He watched.

“What do you need me to do?” Etton gulped, then hurried to add a “Sir” on the end of that. Everybody knew how to address Button, after all, or they learned.

“Need?” Button turned the word over in his mouth. “I hardly need you. No, Etton, I will be generous.”

Etton’s feet shifted under the table, and he was sweating worse than under the noonday sun. “Thank you, sir.”

Button nodded; it was harder for men to disagree after they’d thanked you. “It will be,” he said, “a loan. At interest: five percent, I think, per month, interest added to capital.” He paused. “You can pay what you want now, or in sixth months, or in a year.”

Etton nodded, though Button knew he hadn’t comprehended yet. He pulled out two coins, put them on the table. “S’all I have.”

Button picked them up. Two dollars, that was a start. Interest would be lower than he’d thought, but two dollars in the hand was better than a dollar and sixty cents that were never to be repaid. He nodded, and looked to the next man.

Something caught his eye, and he looked up.

A stranger stood in the doorway. Blue eyes, Button thought, eyes like the summer sky, dry heat that curled men’s skin off their bones. His teeth were clenched, suddenly, and his heart was rushing. His finger pressed into his ledger, hard enough to hurt.

The stranger took a step forward.

Button stood. These were his lands, but the stranger had a silver-crusted gun at his side, and hands long and sinuous, fit for the trigger, hands held softly at his side where the sheriff held them when he was thinking about shooting. Button misliked it, so he stood, shoving the stool back with a rattle that seemed too loud in the strange silence.

“Have you come to drink?” Button said, and he hardly recognized his own voice in the hush. His throat hurt.

The stranger’s eyes stayed steady, and his ruddy cloak grew more vibrant as the lamplight waxed. The sun’s light died, and Button breathed. Time had come to run.

He reached out towards his ledger, noting how he had knocked it aside when he stood. It was between him and the lamp, now, and the lamp between him and the stranger.

A loud report filled the room, and a moment before he recognized the sound as that of a revolver, Button felt a terrible pain shoot up his hand, saw the lamp shatter and spread kerosene around itself. Fire followed, and Button knew he had a hole in his hand, red and ugly, not round like he’d thought bullet wounds might be, jagged and torn. He held his hand there, in the air above his ledger, and he stared at the stranger, whose gun was still outstretched towards him.

“What do you need me to pay you?” he said, the familiar words tumbling off his tongue just slow enough to be understood; slowly, he brought his hand to his chest and tried to figure out how to hold it, not daring to look down at it, not daring to look away from the gunman. Could he get into the back room and out of it before the next round found him? The stranger, he realized, had shot him in the hand, and Button did not trust that it was simply a lucky miss.

The gun spoke again, and red blood erupted out of Button’s throat, out the back of his neck, spraying the meager line of bottles stood behind him on the wall. One shattered, and a fragment grazed the cheek of the nearest of the saloon girls.

Button slumped to the ground, a corpse.

Fire spoke to liquor, and dry wood listened well.

*   *   10   *   *

Thomas vomited onto the ground behind the store, stood up, and wondered what he was to do. Button wouldn’t have left a will, and even if he had, it wouldn’t matter. The judge would ignore it; the sheriff would tear it in half and hold his gun to any man as chirped. Which of them he’d be working for at the end of the day, Thomas didn’t know. Both, maybe.

The saloon had burned last night; four men were dead, too drunk to run, one of them in an upper room, with the girl dead under him. A few more had scars. Button’s bullet hole had been noted beneath the ash. Thomas himself had gotten out unscathed, and he’d made himself as scarce as he dared since, only touching the store’s counter when he could no longer pretend the sun hadn’t risen. He’d sneaked a look at the saloon’s remains, however, had crept down there as the sun began to show. The building had stood alone, and last night had been still, so the fire hadn’t spread.

The sheriff didn’t like Thomas, he knew that. Judge Willis, though, he looked at Thomas the same way he looked at the clerk, Abernathy. Once, the disregard had made Thomas’s back bristle, but he’d learned from Button that eating was better than not, just like he’d learned that letting out his anger didn’t heal the bruises the sheriff left him with. The judge, like Button-that-was (Thomas blinked, but he didn’t have any tears for the man, just a heart that seemed to run backwards for half a moment whenever he remembered it), the judge didn’t care about Thomas at all, and that meant he didn’t care to make it not-Thomas.

The sheriff liked to watch Thomas jump.

He would starve, if the sheriff took the store. This place didn’t have work for them as didn’t already have it, after all, and if the sheriff took the store he’d soon find a dog more to his liking, one who’d never been messenger for his worry, one without potential of a corpse’s secrets. On the other hand, Thomas might be saved from starving, but he didn’t like a quick death any better.

If the judge took the store…. He walked back into the store, letting himself back down onto the chair gingerly. He’d not gotten as drunk as he’d have liked last night, but his head felt like a barrel freshly equipped with a hoop, red hot and and too tight for his skull. He didn’t know if it was the first or second shot that had killed Button. He hoped, with something like a grin in his thoughts, that it was the second.

Somebody was on the porch, walking quick and heavy, steps ending in question marks instead of periods. Thomas straightened up and hoped they had a quiet voice.

The judge entered. He had a cane in one hand, gold topped, and a tall black hat on his head, the type that would have bumped on the doorway if he’d been the sheriff’s height, and he had a black coat buttoned around his corpulence, a little longer than his knees and a little tighter than it looked to want to be. His shoes were sturdy, though, the type of shoes that could walk quite a few miles before they laid suit against your feet, and his left hand gripped an empty burlap sack quite tight. He was puffing.

Thomas considered how best to show respect- best to make a good impression on his future owner, after all-, but before he could figure out what to do, where to deviate from old Button’s protocols (dead, Button was, and Thomas’s fingers twitched with the thought), the judge was standing in front of him. He shoved a sack onto the counter.

“A revolver,” he said, “and fifteen cartridges. Ten tins, too, of whatever fruits Button had.”

Thomas could feel his brow wrinkling, but he couldn’t stop it. Why fifteen rounds? He looked at the judge’s hand, palm down on the counter next to the sack. A stupid way to carry a revolver, that. He stood.

Fifteen cartridges it was, and a good revolver; they came out of their box quickly, and he locked it tight behind them. Judge Willis hadn’t shot a gun in his life, so why start now? He carried it all back to the judge and put them in the sack, then retrieved the fruit tins. They weren’t the most common item on his shelf, but he had eleven, so that was enough. When he got back, the judge was counting out money on the counter. Thomas flinched. The sheriff and Willis, they had a running line of credit here, private with Button. Why pay in front of the help?

“That’s the money,” the judge said, “Tell Judith he has no reason to follow.”

Thomas nodded, slowly. His gut had disappeared, somewhere near the end of that sentence, and he wondered if this was how sailors felt when their boat found a wave bigger than itself and began to climb. The judge picked up his sack, wobbled a bit, and steadied himself. He walked out the door.

Thomas wondered how long it would take to starve. Longer, at least, than baking or bleeding.

*   *   11   *   *

Helen wished she was inside her house when she heard Judge Willis approach. She was in the yard before it, though, and she had to time to change that, not at the pace he was coming. So, instead of fleeing, she stood straight and set her mouth to stone.

“Missus Helen,” he said, his lungs too empty to manage all of the fatty filthiness which the address usually contained, “I have come to bring you with me.”

She didn’t let her mouth move except to form her words. “I must mistake your meaning, judge.”

“I leave on the next stage-coach,” he said, “at noon. I have come to bring you with me, back to the east where your beauty will be appreciated.”

Helen looked at him again, and now she inspected, rather than simply spectated. The judge, a little pudgier than his frame would advise, was sweating profusely under garments more suited for a city than this backwater town, garments nearly as black as the stranger’s. His hat was on, though every bit of breeze made his hand spring up to catch at it, and his eyes were slipping sideways, not merely up-and-down as she was used to. He was fleeing, she realized, and she wondered if the two gunshots she’d heard last night had anything to do with it. Had the army come to town and taken offense at finding the stranger’s body in the saloon?

 “Come,” the judge said, and his foot was tapping quick, “We have no time to dawdle.”

“And my son?”

“Devil take your son, ma’am,” he said, and only seemed to realize what he’d said when the words were already out. He shrunk a little back, then recovered himself, composed his face into what Helen might almost have thought gentility. On another day she’d have considered him a fine actor; today she could feel her back stiffening, her shoulders hardening their set, her jaw thrusting forward. She felt an inch taller, now, and she wanted desperately to use the extra height to leave her hand’s mark on the judge’s face.

Her eyes caught another form, and she blanched, her anger flooding out her toes. The stranger was stood behind the judge, a little off-angle, a black silhouette against the rocks, his wine-red cloak wrapped around him, one hand raised to point towards them. The sun glinted off the end of it, and she realized suddenly that the two shots she’d heard last night had the sound of the same gun.

She looked back at the judge’s face, bloated and red with heat and sun and whatever mix of fear and anger he felt. She wondered, briefly, if the bullet was for her or him; the way life was these days, she hardly dared guess.

She prayed.

The judge took a deep breath and prepared to speak again.

“God bless you,” she said, and the gun sounded.

*   *   12   *   *

When Sheriff Judith found the widow, she was standing stock still in front of the judge’s corpse, looking down at him. She had no weapon in her hand, and he didn’t see one around her, but no one else was there. Judith set his jaw and dismounted his horse, taking care that he was in the lee of the rock to any as came from the other direction.

He pulled himself up to his full height, breathed in and out, and mindful of his posse watching, marched up to the widow- Thorne’s, he thought, which made her Helen.

“Missus Thorne,” he said, and she jumped. She looked at him, slow.

“Sheriff?”

Judith felt his hand spasm, and he reminded himself that the stranger was long gone, wouldn’t have hung around after shooting Button, not with Judith on the case. His eyes caught for a moment on the oozing hole in the judge’s back, behind his heart. He slotted his fingers into his belt; the widow was the only one here. “I’m gonna need you to hand over your gun,” he said. His revolver was holstered, but he didn’t expect he’d need it.

She shivered so hard she nearly staggered just standing there, and her head shook slowly, like she didn’t realize she was doing it. She didn’t speak.

“Your gun, ma’am?” he said. He didn’t want to have to frisk her, he realized; the duty was usually pleasant enough when it came to women, but he couldn’t bring himself to want it right now. He hoped she handed over the gun.

“No gun,” she said, the words breathy and vacant, “He had it.”

Judith felt a little hope in his soul. The judge having a pistol was, after all, not impossible, though he’d never carried in all the time Judith had known him. His eyes cast around, and he saw a sack, its top still clutched in the judge’s hand where he lay. He reached out and nudged it with his toe, heard it clink.

He leaned over and yanked it out of the judge’s hands, not difficult with this fresh of a corpse, and opened it up. He smiled; there, mixed in with a surprising number of tins of fruit (fugitives really did make the oddest choices, though Willis had no reason to be a fugitive), lay a pistol, with loose cartridges rattling around beside it. He fished out the gun and handed the sack to one of his men, which one he did not note.

“You shot him with this,” he said, though he flinched from pressing the gun’s mouth to her chest, as he might have done usually. Somebody had to be guilty, though, and he could make it her. “You shot the judge.” He was faintly displeased with himself for repeating the accusation.

“No,” she said, and as she spoke, some sort of life came back to her eyes. She breathed in, out, and spoke again. “No, I haven’t seen that weapon in my life.”

“Lying to the law, Missus Thorne?”

“I tell the truth, so help me God.”

Judith laughed. “No help for the murderess, Missus Thorne, not when you’ve shot a man in cold blood with his own gun.” She opened her mouth to respond, but he cut her off. “Brown!” He waved to the nearest of his men. “Give me some rope.”

*   *   13   *   *

Thomas watched as the widow walked into town, hands tied behind her, head high, dusty. The porch of the general store had been claimed for the trial, and the street to the front of it had been claimed by a small crowd, including the saloon girl with the burn across her cheek. As the widow passed, they huddled back against the buildings which lined the road, watching her and watching the gallows which stood opposite them. A stool was under the gallows, Thomas’s stool from behind the counter. Thomas felt sick, and he couldn’t keep his eyes on her long, not when he knew his part in the play. The sheriff’s message had been clear, before he’d gone back for the widow.

Sheriff Judith was walking beside her, rope in hand, and he brought her up on the porch of the general store before he spoke. “Citizens of this fair town,” he said, his voice deep and rumbling enough to match his fine physique, “I come to present to you a murderess.” He gestured towards the widow. “Missus Thorne stands before you, guilty, for she gunned a man down while his back was turned, with his own gun no less.”

The widow made to speak, but he didn’t stop.

“Judge Willis, a fine and upstanding citizen as you all know, was sweet on this woman, thought her worthy even to be his bride.” He sneered. The crowd was watching him, and Thomas was watching them, a sick fascination binding his limbs and eyes.

Thomas could imagine any man or women killing the judge, but he’d seen the stranger execute Button (he’d seen the first shot, at least, had heard the second from entirely too close). For Button’s ilk to die to the stranger’s hand made more sense than the widow Thorne, gentle as she always was, shooting a man in the back.

He’d also been told, sideways-like, how many bullets they’d found.

“She hid the gun where she’d found it,” the sheriff continued, “She hid it in the judge’s own sack, foisting on a corpse his own murder weapon.” He accepted the revolver his deputy handed him, a gun the same model and make, Thomas noted, as the ones in the store. It had been there that morning, after all. Judith held the pistol up. “With this weapon she shot him in the back, one shot and his heart, which would have ached for her, stopped beating.” He lowered the weapon.

Thomas’s foot started tapping the ground convulsively; he stopped it.

“I speak no idle claptrap,” the sheriff continued, his voice a little lower, a bit friendlier. “We’re not a hanging jury, after all, just folks worried for the law.” He retrieved a small pouch from his belt, keeping it in one hand as he spoke. “Judge Willis, my friends, had no gun, relying on the law for his disputes. This morning, sense prevailed, and he bought one from the general store.” He waved to Thomas.

Thomas hesitated. He knew his line, and he knew its intent. He had sold sixteen bullets, he would say, and that would be that. He’d let people die before. Why stop now?

The sheriff glanced over at him, waved again, and Thomas felt his stomach crater underneath his shoulders. He stepped up on the porch, and he knew their eyes were on him. It didn’t matter anymore that the sheriff would be inheriting the store.

“Thomas, here,” the sheriff said, his left hand heavy on Thomas’s shoulder, “can tell us how many bullets, loose, he sold to the judge. He remembers, don’t he?” He looked at Thomas, with the friendliness a dog might show towards a meal it doesn’t intend to eat quite yet.

Thomas nodded. He couldn’t speak, and he knew he was sweating a little bit more than the heat alone warranted.

“How many, Thomas?”

The sheriff’s voice rung in Thomas’s ears, and he gulped. Sixteen, fifteen, sixteen, the chant ran, and he had been silent too long. The sheriff’s arm tensed, and Thomas would have bruises tomorrow on his shoulder where the sheriff was gripping, if he had a tomorrow. “Sixteen,” he said, but his voice came out too quiet for any but the sheriff to hear.

“Care to say that again?” the sheriff said, just as quiet, loud enough for Thomas to hear in his ear.

Thomas cleared his throat and breathed in. He spoke loud, clear, and steady. “Fifteen,” he said, and suddenly his shoulder hurt under the sheriff’s grip.

The sheriff huffed a little, smiled to those who watched, and released Thomas, who walked with slumped shoulders off of the porch. He wondered what would happen next. The sheriff held up the little bag, let the metallic tink of the cartridges inside be heard. “I have fourteen bullets here,” he said, “which with the one in the judge makes fifteen.” He motioned his man to come forward. “Here, I’ll count them out to Brown, so you can see.”

Then, one by one, the sheriff produced the rounds, handing each one to his man as it was counted. “One, two, three,” it went, and Thomas flinched when he heard ‘thirteen’. Then came fourteen, and the sheriff stopped, and he stuffed the little sack back under his belt.

“Let ‘er talk,” one of the spectators said. It was James Bratwaithe, leaning on his crutch.

The sheriff turned to look at the widow. “Talk,” he said, and he grinned.

“I did not kill the judge,” Missus Thorne said.

“You hated him,” the sheriff said.

“I did not kill him,” Missus Thorne repeated.

She breathed in and began to speak again, but the sheriff had already turned to face the crowd. “Guilty of murder,” he said, “and we know what to do with those as are as murderers.”

Some, James Bratwaithe among them, murmured discontent. The sheriff’s men had guns, though, and Thomas didn’t doubt they could, would use them. The sheriff manhandled the widow off the porch, across the few feet which separated her from the stool, the gallows, and the noose.

James Brathwaithe punched one of the sheriff’s men in the nose, staggering him, but another kicked him in the stomach, and he tumbled to the ground, crutch bouncing off out of reach. Thomas started, almost wanting to help him, but the man behind him gripped his arms. “You’re the sheriff’s,” he said, and Thomas shivered.

Nobody else moved.

The sheriff hoisted the widow up on the stool, rough and quick, his face a bursting red and his movements harsh. She stood there, wobbling only slightly where she was perched, and a man rode up beside her, slipping the noose over her neck. The sheriff had set her so she faced out of town, away from the crowd; he was stood in front of her.

A silence fell.

“God bless you,” the widow said. Thomas found himself praying, and he saw the black-clad stranger standing there in the middle of the road, watching. The sheriff stepped back a few paces and looked up at the widow. He opened his mouth.

The shot rang out suddenly, and the horse behind the gallows screamed in fright. The sheriff’s knee came open, knee cap blown out the front, and his legs buckled. He landed on his knees, terror on his face, and the second shot took him through the head from behind.

Thomas could see the blood on the widow’s skirt.

*   *   14   *   *

Helen accepted Thomas’s help down from the stool, though she’d rather never have been on it. She’d be washing her dress before mending the holes, no matter what her mother would have said. Blood and brains did not belong on the skirt of a lady’s dress.

She breathed in and breathed out. She’d have the shakes later, no doubt about it, and she’d probably sob. Not with sadness, the way she’d been after Ned, sitting where her son couldn’t hear and heaving till she hurt. What it would be with she wasn’t sure.

She’d hug her son first.

Thomas was staring down at the sheriff’s body, a small pouch in his hand, the one the sheriff had taken the cartridges from. The sheriff’s men had scattered, and nobody had the nerve to touch his corpse, barring James Bratwaithe, who hadn’t the strength to move him.

She shook herself, a full body shiver that felt like a shower of mountain water even in this weather, and stepped forward. “We must take care of the body.” Her voice came to her from a bit far away, but the words were understandable and that was what mattered.

Thomas nodded, stomped each foot once, and walked off towards the general store, shoulders high, fists clenched at his side. The crowd that had gathered to see her die began to melt away, and Helen let each one of them decide if they would meet her eyes. Bratwaithe did, and she nodded at him. He nodded back.

Thomas returned with a stretcher and enlisted a boy, one of the last few lingerers, to help him carry the corpse into the general store, the both of them quiet despite the obvious effort. He returned with a slower step and an uncertain curve to his lips, stopping a few paces from the widow. The stranger watched it all.

Thomas looked from Helen, still standing beneath the gallows, to the stranger, still and silent, and the shop-keep’s hands, open now, were trembling a bit. He reached into his pocket, pulled out the sheriff’s pouch, and retrieved a single cartridge from it. He held it in his right hand as he walked past Helen, not quick but steady, and stopped a few feet from the stranger.

“I’m not innocent,” Thomas said, voice calm, just loud enough for Helen to hear in the sudden silence of the wind. The stranger didn’t speak; instead, he reached out and took Thomas’s left hand in both of his, clasping it between them for a moment. He looked into Thomas’s eyes.

A shudder ran up Thomas, but he didn’t try to move his hand, not even when the stranger’s right hand descended towards his holster.

The stranger’s grip changed, his pistol barked, and Thomas lost a finger.

The stranger left as silently as he had come, and Thomas turned back towards the town. He walked slowly, but steady, holding his hand as still as he could, a smile on his face despite the pain. He got wraps from the general store, and as Helen bandaged Thomas’s wound, she hoped she’d find some work soon. Her son would be hungry.

*   *   15   *   *

Sheriff Lee found the empty lock-up before him congenial for meditation. He was new to town, old to his badge, and unsure if he was less worried than he should be or more, given the trio of problems he faced. Thus the staring. He found problems generally got smaller and clearer when you talked to yourself like you were a stranger.

First, the shop-keep at the general store. Thomas had claimed his employee’s property right quick after the man’s death, but he’d kept the store well for the two-weeks-and-change it’d taken Lee to get here. Besides, Richard Button had left no will and had no family. The smallest problem, Lee decided, and not really a problem at all.

He shifted in his chair, trying to find that one comfortable spot in it, and set to on the second problem: Sheriff Judith’s murder. He’d been killed, a bullet through the knee and a bullet to the head, both from behind, and buried three hours after he died. The man who killed him had vanished, and Lee didn’t even have a name. The description was little help: blue eyes, black clothes, red cloak, somewhere between the tallest man around and dead average. He got the feeling that every person who’d seen him would recognize him on sight.

Worse, he knew he’d have thought about shooting Sheriff Judith too, if he’d been here three weeks ago. Judith had nearly hung a widow for being too close to the stranger’s second kill. Further, the man had a history, according to the whispers, of savagery Lee’d hoped was confined to Indians and some parts of the Army. Not scalping or cutting people up, at least, but death by exposure wasn’t any better.

Lee scratched his chin. The answer to that part of the question wasn’t relevant now, even if he already knew it. Murder was murder, after all. If it hadn’t been for shooting off Thomas’s finger, he might have asked the stranger to join him for a drink before the handcuffs came out, though Thomas hadn’t seemed to bear a grudge. The shop-keep had almost been smiling when his story finished, still rolling a loose revolver cartridge between his fingers, one with the powder drained out of it.

The third problem had the simplest morals and the touchiest solution. Simply put, this town feared the law, the way a wife fears her drunkard husband. A shout startled him out of thought. He stood, checking that his badge was pinned on right and donning his hat. He couldn’t fix that last problem today, and he had a job to do.

He walked out of the door.