My ragged, bloody feet were leaving a trail in the snow that even the greenest greenhorn could follow and I’d lost any feeling in them hundreds of steps before, but stopping wasn’t an option. Even through the delirium that had been growing all afternoon, I knew that if I stopped without finding shelter I’d die there—and I wanted to live.

So I fixed my eyes on a copse of pine trees in the distance and counted off another hundred steps. Each time I picked up the wooden blocks that had been my feet, I imagined myself driving a shovel into the dirt. Each time they descended into the freezing snow I imagined raising another shovel to the pile. Step by step and shovel by shovel I was digging a grave for the man who'd left me out here to die.

I counted another hundred steps and then another and more besides before I reached the grove that was my goal. The snow through which I’d been slogging was all but nonexistent under the towering pines, but the long shadows bore mute testimony that a much larger problem was at hand—night was falling. Before I’d gone a hundred more steps I came upon a rock formation that looked like books scattered by a careless giant. Where they came together, time and wind had hollowed a shallow impression with a small overhang that provided shelter from above.

I wasn’t the first person to find refuge in that spot. I could see evidence of many another fire that had blackened the stone walls and overhang. In the back of the fissure was a stack of wood left by another traveler who’d passed through here—perhaps hoping to return. I tried to take the final steps but found my energy stores lacking and dropped to my hands and knees to finish my trek. As I crawled into the cave, I dragged along a bundle of pine needles for tinder.

With survival in sight, I dared not stop for even a moment and forced myself to build a small teepee from the dry wood. I made a small hollow in a handful of pine needles and pulled my striker and flint from the pouch at my belt. My hands—now cold almost beyond feeling—fumbled the strike again and again—failing to drop a single spark into the tinder. I stopped for a moment and warmed them—first under my arms and then by blowing what little warmth I could muster from nearly frozen lungs.

Pins and needles jabbed mercilessly at my fingers but I raised the striker and brought it down on the flint—No spark—Again—No spark. Fear threatened to overwhelm me but I took a deep breath and held it. I raised the striker and brought it down hard and fast against the flint. This time a spark fell into the needles. I cupped my hands around the small bundle, moving slowly lest any motion extinguish the tiny ember. My life hung in the balance.

Jesse huddled closer to the small fire that was burning in the old mine. He rubbed his worn and callous hands together hoping to warm up his body quicker. His face looked like an old treasure map with lines of hatred running through his forehead. Jesse was a man with a purpose partially fulfilled. He had found Ralston.

The flickering shadows from the flames danced along the dark walls of the mine revealing the eerie markings that had been carved into them. As he kept looking at them, they seemed to have a life of their own, swaying and twitching in the firelight. They almost appeared to be Indians circling in a war-dance. The cold wind howling outside mimicked the war cries that those phantoms wanted to scream. Jesse knew what they felt. He was on a warpath too.

It was lonely and it was cold. Bitter cold. But not as lonely and bitter as Jesse’s heart. There’s a companion that all cowboys ride with on the plains. Each cowboy has his own ghost that rides within his heart. Jesse knew his well. Like an old partner, about to die, Jesse was getting ready bury this ghost. He had spent twelve long years riding with this phantom. The ghost of his murdered brother was going to be avenged.

“Revenge is like a woman,” he thought to himself. “Sweet and alluring at first, seducing you and lying in bed with you at night, whispering in your ear. Intimate, touching the deepest part of your soul, tucking you in at night with sweet dreams. In the morning she’s there, all cozy, waking you up and starting your day with her warm presence. But then one day you wake up and she’s changed. She’s become nothing more than a nagging companion always demanding more.”

The fire was warm, but the old mine was still dark and damp. A little warmth entered his body, but his soul was still ice-cold. There’s something about killing a man in cold blood that makes you go numb inside. You have to close a door within yourself and shut out the light of morality to consciously pull that trigger and enjoy it.

Jesse stood up and walked to the entrance of the mine and looked down into the dark valley where the lights of San Bareo glowed in the dark. The cold rain ran down his leather cowboy hat and avoided his stubbled face. He didn’t know exactly where Ralston was, but he knew that one of those lights would go out tomorrow.

Jesse’s hand pulled out his six shooter and he studied the Colt 45. He ran his fingers over his steel friend as he talked out loud to no one in particular.

“I found you, Ralston. You don’t know it yet, but tomorrow you’re going to Hades.”

Jesse reached over and threw three more pieces of oak into the fire. He spread out his bed roll close to the fire and curled up to it like a baby. His companion talked to him all night long.

Someone was trying to kill me.

Those words were racing through my head as I crouched in the dark stall, watching the light at the stable’s entrance for sign of pursuit. I rode into town as the sun was settin’ and as was my custom, I was feedin’ and combin’ my horse before seeing to my own needs. I have to admit to a bit of carelessness because I hadn’t been expectin’ trouble, so after I forked fresh hay into his stall and added a scoop of oats to his feed I’d thrown my saddle bags over my shoulder and headed for the hotel and cookin’ that wasn’t my own camp fare.

Had the fella’ shootin’ at me been somethin’ of a better shot I’d be gettin’ measured for a nice pine box and my days on the plains would be history. When I’d stepped into the light of the lantern hangin’ at the stable door, a shot rang out across the street and sent a spray of splinters into my face when it ripped into the door frame scant inches away. More from habit than actual thought, I’d thrown myself backwards into the dark stables and immediately took cover behind the heavy beam that held up the loft above.

Now Momma Travis hadn’t raised any slow children and I wasn’t going to be the first. I was in a passel of trouble and me not knowin’ who was mortally angry with me, or why. I’d just about decided on a course of action when someone outside the barn opened the dance, so to speak.

“Hello the barn,” came a yell.

“Hello yourself,” I yelled back, letting some of my ire sound in my voice.

“This here’s Sheriff Watts. We didn’t mean to shoot at you, mister. That was just that idiot boy Sal gettin’ excited. Why don’t you come on out here where we can see you and we can make some palaver?”

“Well, Sheriff, since I’m new to these here parts maybe you can tell me why you all would be waiting for a stranger like me? Don’t seem right friendly.”

“Don’t make smart, boy. We’re waitin’ for you to come out here and tell us what side you’re liftin’ iron for.”

I was just about to yell back so as to tell him that I didn’t know what he was talkin’ about and how it didn’t make no never mind ‘cause I don’t carry guns for any man, when I heard a panicked neighing from one of the horses. Then I smelled it my own self—smoke.

Darkness. The kind of absolute darkness you find only in death.

I figure it’s just possible that I did die and it’s my eternal damnation to slog endlessly through this maze of tunnels and frigid water. A bleak and blind journey through the bowels of the earth occasionally interrupted by sudden plunges into the water as I step into unseen sinkholes. Floundering my way across these seemingly bottomless pits, I usually find the far side by barking my shins up against the tunnel floor where it resumes it’s winding course.

The absence of light plays funny tricks on a man’s mind. Tiny sounds take on a greater gravity when you imagine they might be the start of a cave-in or water dripping down from a vertical shaft that might lead to the surface. The worst trick is with your time sense. I have no idea if it’s been a score of hours or just a couple since the water came smashing down the entrance shaft. In my mind, it feels like days since I last heard my partner’s voice calling out for help. By the time the raging floodwater had receded to a constant waist-high flow, we had been swept apart and deposited in the dark completely lost in this warren of tunnels and caves. I figure it was only through the grace of God that we had survived drowning in the initial flood.

Unlike Noah's Flood, it certainly wasn’t an act of God that started this particular flood. No, this water could only have come from the dam a couple miles up Cooley Creek. And that would have taken the hand of Man to do. The way I see it, that man can only be Billy Rydel. This used to be his mine before I won it from him with a King-high straight at the Red Horse Saloon.

Seems like Billy and me were always banging heads over something. If it weren’t over the affections of some dance hall girl then it was usually over just how some of my employer’s cattle managed to find their way into Billy’s herd. My guess is that Billy Rydel got the bright idea that he could cancel his gambling debt and myself by passing the Cooley Creek mine onto me and then rigging an unfortunate calamity. Once I was out of the way, he’d have no more problems. In fact, he’d probably be able to reclaim the mine with me being dead.

However, Billy now has three more problems that he hadn’t figured on. First, I am still very much alive. Second, I am very, very pissed off. And the third? Billy Rydel’s biggest problem is that my hand just found the first rung in the shaft ladder leading up to the mine entrance.

It was the summer of ’79 when I first remember seeing him. He rode slowly into town as though he weren’t sure if he should be there at all. He even looked about slowly, his head turning ever so slowly from side to side. I remember thinkin’ to myself that day that he was the first person that I ever actually seen look at somethin’. He’d soak it right into himself. Some people got real jittery when he looked at them.

Oh, I’d seen people stare at stuff and look at girls and sunsets and such, and I’d done my fare share of lookin’ at candy in Hank’s general store, but he looked at things. I found out later, that he remembered most everything too. He was turning round carefully on his black horse the first time he looked at me. I stopped breathin’. He sized you up before he’d let you go with those steel gray eyes of his.

He leg rode over the finely tooled saddle clean as a snake slipping into the creek. He was smooth, his movements, that is. His wrist flipped slightly and his reins flipped through the air and wrapped themselves round that post. The whole time his eyes never left me, but they never missed anythin’ ‘round me neither. I swear, I never saw his legs touch the ground but for what he was already moving. There weren’t no dust when he walked. I don’t know how he did it, but he never stood still and he was just as calm as Thomson’s lake at sunrise.

“What’s your name, boy?”

I felt a sudden chill as his voice caused my heart to pound. First time in my life that I’d ever been this close to danger. All the time he was movin’ towards me and comin’ forward. I know’d right then that he weren’t the type of man who’d ever retreat from nuthin’.

“You name, son. What’s your name?”

That voice rode right into my heart. He was easy set and relaxed like a coiled rattlesnake warmin’ himself on a summer day. His clothes were finely tailored, not like what we got here in Baker’s Landing. They weren’t dirty neither.

“My name’s Timmy. Timmy Mathers,” I said.

He was restless, you know, alert. He weren’t the type of man who’d lean against the bar, if you know what I mean. The whole time his body flowed and moved as he stepped closer. He coulda gone any direction, you just couldn’t tell. That’s when I noticed his gun, hanging from his side. The holster was the same color as his deep gray pants. You knew by lookin’ at him that he’d used that gun before. It was part of him and his sure movements.

“Mathers? You Jim Mather’s boy?” he asked.

“No sir. That’s my uncle. My daddy’s Frank Mathers. Uncle Jim’s in the bar,” I said.

I saw a quarter spinning in the air towards me and caught it. He smiled and said, “You go tell Jim that he’s got company.”

“Oomph.” The lanky cowboy next to me grunted as I fell into him. The stagecoach might be the fastest way to get to Kansas City, but it certainly wasn’t the smoothest.

“My apologies,” I said, as pulled myself back into an upright position. We might be in the middle of nowhere, but a lady still remembered her manners.

“No problem, ma’am.” Was there a hint of a smile on that cowboy’s face? “You just feel free to fall my way anytime.” The drummer sitting across the coach snickered, while the banker’s wife gave a ladylike sniff of disapproval.

I was preparing to put the laid-back cowboy in his place when the first shot rang out. Before the echo died, the stagecoach driver had whipped the horses to a frenzy and the coach was careening down the trail. I reached under the seat for a rifle, only to discover that the cowboy had beaten me to it. The carefree cowboy was gone, replaced by a man who looked like he’d seen his share of action.

Holding out a rifle, he gave me a sharp glance. “I don’t suppose you know how to load one of these,” he stated dubiously.

I grabbed the Winchester and checked to make sure it was loaded. Then I turned to the window, leaned out, and took aim at one of the men chasing the stagecoach. “I don’t suppose you know how to shoot one of these,” I countered as I squeezed off a round. I saw a puff of dust rise from the man’s shirt before he and his horse parted ways.

“I’ll load for you,” I heard the drummer say. The cowboy started firing from the other window, and I saw another man throw his hands in the air before he slumped forward over the saddle.

The next few minutes were filled with the deafening sound of gunfire and the acrid smell of gunpowder as the cowboy and I shot lead at the would-be robbers. As soon as we emptied a rifle, the drummer had another one ready for us. Seeing they were outgunned, the pursuers broke the chase, regrouping for another stagecoach that wasn’t so well armed.

I reloaded, then settled back into the seat. After reloading his rifle, the cowboy did the same. I pulled a small mirror out my reticule and set about straightening my hat.

“Ma’am, that was some fine shooting,” the drummer said admiringly.

“Why, thank you, sir,” I answered in my most cultured voice. “Although I am a mere woman, I do try to be useful.” I glanced sideways at the cowboy, and was rewarded by the stain of color on his cheeks.

“Ma’am, you do know your way around a Winchester,” the cowboy grudgingly admitted.

“That’s not the only thing I know how to handle,” I replied. “I’m heading toward trouble, and I need a good man to cover my back. Are you interested?”

“A woman and trouble are never far apart,” he said with a slight smile. “Count me in.”

“Go! Go!” I yelled, jumping into the saddle, snapping the reins hard on her thick neck. The warm night air rushed by, whipping my hat off my head, swirling my long, brown hair behind me as her strong legs pounded the dusty ground below. Behind us, I could hear at least a dozen sets of hooves beating the ground furiously, cutting through the cloud of dust we were leaving behind.

“Oh please go fast, Rosey. Please please just get me there fast,” I said over and over, kicking my feet into her sides. “You can do it, girl. Come on!”

She picked up her pace, and we bounced over the rocky desert, weaving in and out of the joshua trees like a rattlesnake, as fast as her legs had ever moved. The noise of the hooves behind us started to fade. I could see we were losing them. A loud CRACK from a gun startled Rosey, causing her to lurch forward, and me to fall back. I dropped my bag in the dust. “Keep going, girl!” I shouted.

That’s what I always loved about that horse. She never asked questions; she just did what I said. And at that moment, that’s what I needed. She didn’t need to know what had just happened in that saloon. She didn’t need to know that the bag I just dropped carried more gold than either of us had ever seen. And she certainly didn’t need to know how I got it. All she needed to know was how to get to Wayne’s ranch, and it looked like she knew that just fine.

I looked back one more time to be sure we had lost them, then pulled on Rosey’s reigns, slowing her down to a trot, and giving me a chance to regain my bearings. In the distance, I could see the ranch standing alone, draped in the light of the full moon. A deep feeling of relief washed over me. I knew it was only a matter of minutes before I’d be in the comfort and protection of Wayne’s arms.

I knew in a few moments I would knock on his door and he would answer it wearing his usual tattered shirt and dark brown trousers. He would smile and shake his head, and offer me a seat on the rug in front of his fireplace. We would both sit, staring into the fire, not saying a word, until he would finally ask if I was ok, and I would say yes, and…

CRACK! The sound of another gunshot ripped through the valley.

Rosey reared up onto her back legs, throwing me out of the saddle. I flew through the air, landing hard on the ground, the side of my head smashing into a rock. I sat up and blinked, trying to clear the blood from my eyes, when I heard a low moan coming from my left. “Git outta here,” a familiar voice moaned.

“Wayne??” I gasped. He was slumped over a rock, with blood pouring out of a hole in his side.

“Git outta here Jane!” he cried. “Go.”

The urgency in his voice told me now was not the time for questions. I jumped on Rosey and kicked my feet hard into her sides. “Go, girl! Just go!”

Nothing moved in the desolate wilderness save one desperate man. He moved with the confidence of someone who wasn’t unfamiliar with the hard country he was crossing but with a sense of urgency that made him just a bit careless. He kept the sure-footed little mustang below the ridge-line so that he wouldn’t show against the sky and gave the pony its head so that it could pick the trail ahead while his eyes roamed back and forth, picking out the details of his surroundings.

I knew from his track that he’d be heading for the wells at Sweet Water, but I was just as sure that he wouldn’t be welcome. I’d crossed the trail of an Apache raiding party the evening before when I was making for the same watering hole. It was a good thing that the raiding party was returning from their mischief instead of going because they hadn’t bothered with a lookout. I figured out my mistake soon enough to keep my scalp and drew back from the wells and setup a dry, fireless camp a couple of miles away. Those Indians had kept at their celebrations late into the night until they were gorged on army mule and cheap liquor. The worst part was listening as they had their sport with a captured soldier. He’d lasted almost as long as the liquor and his screams would always haunt my nightmares.

I stepped into the saddle and began to work my way down from where my camp had set up against the rim of the canyon. When I reached the relatively easy going of the canyon floor, I eased back the thong that held my Colt securely in the holster on long rides.

“Well, boy. I’m about to do something folks would call stupid. You be ready to run now. I don’t mind being called stupid, but dead is something of a different color,” I spoke aloud to the pinto. His ears cocked forward and then he looked back at me as if to cast some doubt on my choice of morning activities.

I pulled my Colt from the holster and fired two .44s into the air. The other traveler stopped like one of those shots had hit him square in the chest and looked back to where I sat. I took a second from reloading to gesture past him to the end of the canyon. He turned just in time to see the Apaches boil out of that watering hole like a hornet’s nest that’s been kicked over.

As one, we turned our mounts and broke into a fast gallop across the canyon floor with the Apaches coming on fast behind.

Whoever said you see your life play out in a flash before you die, well, they were lying.

Death doesn’t give you that comfort.

Instead, my mind was black. No warm memories of my Mama’s baking, no visions of Pa teaching me to handle his rifle. Nothing. Just the cold, dark reality that soon a few tiny ounces of searing lead would write the end to my thirty-one years.

“Walter, you don’t need to die here, you know you can stop this.”

Elijah Fischer, an English gun. For three months, he’d been tracking me west over the Ozarks. I understood him now, and he me. Our desperate relationship was a paradox, if it weren’t for the guns in our hands, we could have been brothers.

But no, the county had deep pockets and a bounty to bring my body back. “Dead or Alive” was just a pleasantry. A corpse was much easier to work with.

“Its not going to end, Elijah. You know that.”

I looked down at the gun in my hand. My father’s Colt Single Action. The metal was worn, the once bright polish replaced by a dull, battered finish. Rust was beginning to send its tendrils out, the crimson scars snaking their way over the barrel. The weapon was old; it had been in the family three generations. Still, I prayed it would last to save one more life.

I sucked my breath in and dived from behind the bar. Fischer’s face betrayed his cool words, he was scared. In a single fluid pull, my arm brought the gun to bear and fired. The shot exploded into the wall beside Fischer, the wood splintering as the bullet dug into the boards. Fischer shot, cutting deep into my left arm. Falling to the floor, I thumbed the hammer, the cylinder rolling a shell into place one final time. I pulled the trigger…

The muzzle exploded in a fiery cacophony. The tiny metal shard screamed through the air, through flesh and muscle, finding a home in Fischer’s heart. A single, startled gasp, and he slumped to the floor, his jaw hanging open.

Five seconds. In that single moment, my life changed again. I looked at my hand, then down to Elijah Fischer and the growing red pool underneath him. I had taken two lives with this gun; in three months it had spilled more blood than it had for its entire existence. In the relentless shadow of guilt that tore at my mind, I knew I was not the man my parents had raised, not any more. I had killed. I fell to my knees, grabbing my head as if I could shake the bitter truth from my mind, but it would not leave.

Two men were dead, and I was glad.

Then, in my minds eye she took solid, almost sensual form. The warm, brilliant figure I knew so well, and the beginning of my lament.

Annabelle. It all began with Annabelle.

Most people think it’s pretty easy being a piano player in a saloon. You get to sit on a bench all day, having fun banging away on the keys. No one worries about whether or not you even hit the right notes since they’re too busy drinking and gambling to worry about someone like the nice, quiet fellow in the corner. And you get to watch the girls.

That’s okay. I just let them think that, but let me tell you the truth. No tips. Well, maybe a few, but it’s usually the smallest coins that make the loudest, “most impressive” clinks and you have to fish the coins out from around the cigar butts. The clientele may not notice the notes, but the boss hears every one. Anything out of place sounds like lost money to him. And the girls? Haven’t you ever noticed that the piano always faces the wall? They can’t dance without you playing, and when you get that kind of distraction, the whole place just goes silent at the same time you do. No one notices you when you do it right, but one little mistake and you are the focus of the room.

Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not complaining. This job has its ups and downs just like any other, but there’s something about this job that no one else knows but us quiet, little people in the corner. Just think about it for a minute: Have you ever seen a lowly, broken down, festively-dressed piano player begging in the streets? Do they ever really seem like sad people to you? Do you even know where in town they live? How do they even live on that measly penance of a wage that they make? You know that the bar man keeps a tight fist on every cent.

We have our lives pretty well taken care of. You want to know how? It’s the things that you overhear that make this job worth it. See, if you’re nice, quiet and virtually unseeable in the corner, everyone just forgets you exist. All of the shady deals take place in those same corners. Yes, you see where I’m going now, don’t you? The little woman in the country store may know a lot of gossip, but she doesn’t have anything on the piano man.

The best gamblers in the world and the crooked-est horse thieves in the state can’t make a tenth of the money that one observant person can in selling information discreetly to the person who needs it most (You don’t think the sheriff is really that smart, do you?), using that information to insert oneself into the right situations (You really think the judge got there on his own with his drinking habit?) and blackmailing those who need their dirt hidden (The best thieves have the most money and can’t afford to have it known).

Let me tell you the story about how I convinced old parson Claymore that cheating with his parishioners was not as wise as using the church offering to help out the music man in his church...