November, 1886.

Smell.

The acrid stench of horse sweat crushed into his nostrils.

Cold.

His thin flannel shirt fought uselessly against the night mountain air.

Pain.

The sandpaper abrasiveness of the tightly-knotted pegging cord chafed his wrists and cut off circulation. His hands were numb.

Gagging.

The thick snot rag someone had crammed into his mouth brought agony to every breath.

Jolting.

His legs flopped awkwardly in rhythm with the unhurried plodding of the pack horse beneath him.

Minutes passed.

The deep fog that clouded his brain continued to fade, only to intensify his misery.

Sound.

A lilting melody of a familiar tune filled his ears, The Yellow Rose of Texas, a cheerful song from his childhood now clashing with his present agony.

The Jew's Harp ended its joyful music. He heard voices, indistinct at first, but they sounded familiar.

A moment later a hand gave a convivial pat on his buttocks. "Ride comfy, good buddy," a cheerful voice said. "It'll be a couple of hours til we dump you."

His gagged protest went unacknowledged.

April 1886.

Fewer than thirty trips around the sun had been enough for Deputy Sheriff Blake Longworth to see through the deceptive lies his mother had drummed into him. "Hard work and clean living," she had insisted, "those are the secrets to a successful life." He'd tried both, sometimes even together, and where had it got him?

Located astride the old Oregon Trail, the small town of South Pass City—"city" only by courtesy, reflecting more the unquenchable optimism of its denizens than any present reality—was home to a population approaching one hundred fifty on weekdays but swollen to double that on Saturdays as scores of cowhands from nearby ranches cluttered the street and filled the saloon as they sought their pleasures. The settlement consisted of no more than a stage flag stop, a single saloon, a general store, a barber who ran the livery stable, a two-story rooming house flattering itself as "South Pass Hotel" and a smattering of other dismal store fronts. It was large enough to have a two-bunk jail and a room above the cell where the town's sole deputy spread his blankets, but small enough to smother a man's ambition.

Like every one of the five hundred sixty days he had worn the tin badge, the morning Longworth's life changed began routinely with a purposeless amble through town from Landry's Livery at the west end, past the Broken Arrow Saloon with its pretentious false front, past Randall's general store, past the diner where the boardwalk ended, and on to the final block and Anderson's Feed Store at the east end where the town disappeared. In ten leisurely minutes Longworth had measured the limits of his world. As usual, he ended his peregrinations ten paces beyond the feed store where he could breathe deeply of unpolluted Wyoming air and gaze out at the expanse of grasslands of the high prairie in its spring lushness, a sight certain to quicken the pulse of any cattleman, even one whose herd grazed only in his dreams, dreams getting further from reality every time the sun sank in the west.

His mother's useless advice reverberated resentfully in his head as Longworth found himself reflecting about his wasted years. Had he not given hard work a fair trial since he first drew wages on the sweaty trail drive up from San Tone, then in fighting frostbite in winters a Texas boy could barely imagine while he drew a cowhand's meager thirty-and-found for the three years he wasted bunkhousing at the Flying M spread or finally, for the two years wrangling with uncooperative teams of horses on the stage line between Lander and Rawlins? Where had it got him? No closer to owning the small ranch of his aspirations than when he first learned to throw a riata. He'd learned some ways not to get rich, like the two boys he rode with on Flying M until they split off to make more money with less work, as they told him. He was still hearing his mama's voice so he passed up the opportunity. It wasn't but six months before he saw them again, kicking the air blue as they stretched an angry rancher's horsehair rope.

After he had his fill of stage-coaching, he let himself be gulled into wearing the badge only to find himself condemned to officiously jiggle door handles every evening with the only break in the monotony coming when he manhandled a drunken cowhand or two to jail, his days spent aimlessly walking the street, or listening to someone like that old biddy of the mayor's wife complaining—three times this month!—that her neighbor's rooster greeted the sun every morning doing what roosters were put on earth to do.

And the failed lives he encountered in South Pass were no better. Tom Landry over at the livery stable would spend the rest of his life smelling like horse manure. Frank Wilson, behind the bar at the Broken Arrow could brush quarters into his apron and think he had a done a good month when he had a silver dollar left over after paying old Mrs. Gilbert at the boardinghouse. Only Silas Randalls at the general store had any hope of escaping his current peonage, and only then if South Pass prospered. And how likely was that? Every time he looked back down the dusty street of the pimple on the prairie that was South Pass City, he felt the juices of life desiccating.

With his newly acquired wisdom that a lifetime of hard work earned a man nothing more than six feet of dirt in the cemetery while he molded into dust, discarded and forgotten, Longworth understood that only by determination, calculation, initiative could a man remove the boulders on the road of his life and grade it into a thoroughfare of easy wealth and importance. Take your hard work to your grave, mama, Longworth resolved. Me, I'll be making up for lost time.

Opportunity knocks most loudly on doors that are already open.

Thus it was that late one night not long after he attained his new wisdom, Longworth eased noiselessly into the cellblock and paused outside of the cell of what had seemed merely a 25-year-old saddle tramp caged for drunk and disorderly until Longworth's afternoon perusal of the newly-delivered stack of wanted posters transformed one more useless derelict into a tool that would serve a man's ambition.

As expected, the man who had given his name as Cass Parker was asleep, lying on top of his bunk, stripped down to his dingy union suit against April's unusually stifling imitation of summer. Longworth turned the greased key in the lock slowly, quietly. He was in the cell bending down over Parker and snapping the handcuffs over one wrist before Parker began to stir. With both wrists secured in the iron cuffs, Longworth jerked his prisoner fully awake.

"On your feet, Parker," Longworth said. "You been lying to me."

Out in the office, Longworth shoved Parker heavily toward the chair facing his desk, showing no more courtesy than the prisoner would expect. The change would come later if the prisoner measured up. Longworth seated himself on his side of the desk and picked up the paper laying there. His eyes flicked from it to the prisoner and back, his silence designed to build the prisoner's apprehension.

The Wells, Fargo wanted poster offered five hundred dollars for delivery of an outlaw it described as twenty-five, 5'10", bulky of build, blond hair, brown eyes, with jowls covered by a light brown beard. It all matched the prisoner. But most important to Longworth, the slack and receding jaw proclaimed someone who could be easily manipulated person to serve the purposes of a man of initiative. Just the kind of useless human fodder who could be harnessed to make Longworth rich.

"Money on the hoof," Longworth muttered, just loud enough for the prisoner to hear. Longworth reached down and slid open the lower drawer to his desk and extracted two shot glasses and a dark brown bottle. As the prisoner watched, he filled both glasses and, surprisingly, passed one across the desk to the man called Parker. "To our health and mutual prosperity."

The prisoner greeted Longworth's unexpected action wordlessly, suspiciously, but he'd been three weeks without whiskey. He drank.

"Two years locked up in Laramie builds a thirst, don't it, Wheeler."

Suddenly the prisoner's eyes hardened and hooded over. "Name's Parker," he said, "you got that written down in your book there."

"Wheeler, Parker." Longworth shrugged. "A man can change his name as easy as he changes his shirt, if he wants." Longworth slid the paper he had been studying across the desk. "Hard to change much else, though."

The prisoner contemptuously tossed the poster back at Longworth without giving it a glance. "Ugly looking fellow," he said. "Don't know nothing about him."

"Let's start with his beard," Longworth began, "covering his cheeks and jowls, while you're clean-shaven except for jailhouse stubble, but your cheeks are ruddy, like they haven't seen much sun until lately. Then you wear your hair short, no longer than the two months from Wheeler's last prison haircut." Longworth looked down at the dodger again. "From Laramie this man went to Medicine Bow then to Rawlins, then swung north to Muddy Gap, fattening his money belt whenever he saw a Wells, Fargo stage and moving at a pace that would get him here at the end of March about the time you got into that saloon fracas that ended up with you as my guest for thirty days."

Parker had turned surly now. "You're not listening to me anyway, law dog," he muttered.

"Prove to me you're Parker," Longworth challenged. "Unbutton your union suit and show me you got no bullet scar where Wheeler took one from the posse." When the prisoner sat sullenly in response, Longworth chuckled loudly. "Seems I'm looking at three months pay. All I need to do is send a wire to Wells, Fargo."

Parker's eyes took on a caged intensity. "You believe that, you just wasted your whiskey."

"What puzzles me, Wheeler, is why you haven't taken a step up." Longworth gave a short laugh. "Smart man like you should know banks are where the money is."

The silence grew between them as Parker grasped for a way out of a quick trip back to the territorial penitentiary at Laramie. "Don't know nothing about that Wheeler fellow," he finally said. "But say a man like that got out of prison and wanted to go into the banking business. Where would he find his partners? Put an ad in the Laramie Record? Walk into a bar and shout 'anyone want to rob a bank, come see me?'"

Longworth made a show of considering the point. "I can see that could be a problem," he conceded. "Unless this man Wheeler met someone who put him in touch with folks who would follow his lead."

Longworth saw Parker's eyes narrow as a glimmer of calculation crept into the dimness of an outlaw's brain. "Suppose this fellow Wheeler would be choosy in picking someone to do his work with."

"Should be easy enough if a fellow knew the town. Someone like Jay Huntley, a local kid, his paw died when he was fourteen, and his ma died before that. Don't know how to do anything except roll drunks. He needs a strong leader to teach him how to be a man."

Parker mulled the suggestion over before replying. "Can't see this Wheeler fellow taking down a bank with nothing more than some green kid as his back-up."

Longworth nodded slowly, letting his prisoner lead him where he intended to go. "Not good for much besides holding the horses while the action is going down," he acknowledged, "but that's an important job if there are several men doing the work."

"Still got to get those other men."

"You'd want—I mean Wheeler would want a couple of dependable workers, men who could be relied on to hold guns on the teller and customers without getting spooked into the trouble that comes from gunfire." Parker's head was bobbing, Longworth noticed with satisfaction, like a trout on the line, nibbling at the bait.

"Maybe a couple of fellows like the Gaddis brothers," Longworth continued. "Friendly young fellows not fussy about the 'Thou Shall Nots' and looking for an easy life. Two-bit rustlers, they are, supplying the local butchers in Lander and Rock Springs. I run them in every now and then just for practice and let them pay me a fine I tell them is for the county. Likely they know better, but they'd fit right in with any group Wheeler was trying to put together."

"I suppose Wheeler would need to pay."

"Putting the gang together, sounds like that would be worth a lot to Wheeler. Especially if Wheeler's contact had something to do with the law, and could make sure he wasn't troubled by wanted posters and such-like. Probably that would be worth a full share, don't you think?"

"Parker" was silent, while Longworth let the lure of replacing a quick trip back to Laramie by a ready-made gang with him running the show percolate through the outlaw's limited intelligence. Presently, the prisoner raised the glass to his lips and emptied it. His handcuffs rattled as he reached across the desk, shook Longworth's hand and the deal was struck.

"You got a week to run on your sentence," Longworth said. "Been a while since I jugged Huntley on anything. In the next day or two I'll pick him and stuff him in the cell with you. Since he don't have an old man, what he needs is a trail boss. Give him someone who don't just consider him a nuisance, he'll latch on like a two-day-old calf suckling his mama's teats. You can let me know what you think."

And that easily, Blake Longworth's rise to riches began.

May, 1886.

"How much I got to fork over to spring my brother this time?"

The lanky tow-headed 21-year-old that braced Longworth in the middle of the street was Jack Gaddis, the older of the no-account brothers. "You mean the Fremont County fine for cow theft, less the standard discount for not making us take you to court?"

"Billy and me know where the money goes, Longworth," Gaddis snarled. "Not saying we like it, but you keep it reasonable, and fattening your poke ain't no worse than facing down some old black-robed judge. "

"Been trying to do you boys a favor," Longworth told Gaddis. "You go on stealing a couple of cows every month, you'll never grow up to be more than saddle trash. It's time you turn yourself into men."

Gaddis sighed noisily. "I heard the lecture before, Deputy. Pretty much know it by heart, but go ahead, fan your lips, then tell me how much."

"Not good enough anymore, Jack," Longworth said. "This time you'll need someone standing up for Billy, and you too, going surety that you won't continue your rustling ways, maybe even apprenticing you for a new line of work."

"You know there ain't no one in this dinky little burg that thinks any more of us than the dust they sweep off their walk."

"Maybe so, maybe not," Longworth replied. "There's a new fellow in town, room seven of the hotel. He tells me he's looking for some workmen for a project he's got. Go see him, Jack. Talk it over and see if he'll stand behind you."

An hour later Jack Gaddis swung open the door of the jail house, interrupting Longworth's afternoon nap. "Got to talk to my brother."

And so, Parker's gang had two more worthless creatures whose destiny was to transform Longworth into a successful man of substance.

July, 1886.

As the fresh spring turned into Wyoming's sweltering summer, the steel strongbox under Longworth's bunk received a meager addition every two or three weeks, following his "suggestion" to Parker of a stage on the road north of Lander, another on the Rollins-Casper stage line, a third on the road between Rock Springs and Pinedale, none of them suggesting a robber gang based in South Pass City.

After the disappointing take from the Pinedale robbery, Longworth counted the stack of greenbacks in his strongbox again and did some discouraging calculations. Like he had told Parker, big money would not be found in stages. His share amounted to only a hundred dollars here, fifty there, and the sum Longworth would need to buy his ranch was accumulating with the galloping speed of a spindly day-old colt. Two years it would take, maybe more before he could toss down the badge, an intolerable delay to a man already seeing himself as a rising member of the Wyoming Stock Growers' Association.

Four men of limited ability and even less ambition were disrupting Longworth's well thought out plan as they settled easily into a comfortable life of indolence, satisfied as long as they had enough in their pockets to buy whiskey and such other pleasures is they inclined to. The time had come to goad Parker into directing his larceny toward the bank up in Casper.

It had been Longworth's suggestion that they take over the Huntley farm house, a two-story frame building five miles out of town and a half mile back from the county road. It kept them from conspicuous mischief around town, and enhanced his control over them, for from the outset he had anticipated the time when his arrangement with them would have served its purpose.

To keep the gaggle of outlaws focused on business, Longworth developed the practice of swinging by each Monday for a game of poker. So it was, on the first Monday of July, Longworth stirrupped down outside the Huntley house, loosened the cinches, and mounted the steps.

The poker game was already in progress when Longworth arrived. While Parker noisily shuffled the cards for the next hand, Longworth let his gaze wander around the table at the card players, worthless dregs of the frontier, all destined to fall before posse guns or shrivel up in the Laramie lock-up but for his initiative in transforming them into tools to serve the driving force of his ambition.

Now they sat self-satisfied in their new prosperity. Look at the crimson silk shirt Jake Huntley sported, replacing the washed out, many times mended, flannel he had worn; or the Gaddis brothers, engaged in a meaningless competition over who could twirl the best sandy-colored mustache or Parker, his trimmed and waxed facial stubble giving a rugged image of strength, never mind how much he had been stinking in jail. Animals still, nothing more than horses to be ridden, cows to be milked, and sheep to be fleeced.

Longworth donned his best "no-tell" poker face as he picked up his hand—a pair of fours—barely worth an opening bid, but he tossed in a white chip. And so, the game began. In their eagerness and inexperience, the Gaddis brothers and Huntley would have been easy pickings for any serious poker player. But more money was to be made by cultivating their outlawry. By the end of the evening he had lost a small amount, enough to maintain the semblance of camaraderie.

Finally, after the last hand, when Parker walked him to the hitching post, Longworth was ready.

"We got us a good operation, and Wells, Fargo don't got a clue on where to send their bloodhounds," Parker bragged as Longworth tightened the cinches on the grulla. "We do our jobs smooth. You putting us together sure worked out fine."

"Buffalo chips," Longworth snorted. "You're playing penny ante poker."

Instantly, Parker became defensive. "I'm working with what you gave me, Mr. Badge Man," he reminded Longworth. "We hit a stage, disappear into the hills and down-saddle back here before anyone thinks to look for us."

"When we had our talk, I sized you up as a bigger man. We agreed banks are where the money is," Longworth said. "Looks like I need to dig out that Wells, Fargo wanted poster."

"No need for that," Parker protested hastily. "But banks are special," he insisted. "Spent some time with a cellmate who'd worked stages like me, but then got the big head and done one bank. After two days of running, he lost his partner to posse guns, and ended up counting the flies on the wall in our 10 x 6 cubicle."

Parker tried to make Longworth see what he had learned. "Like Jessup told me, taking a bank ain't easy. You got no quick way out of town, and a posse'll be on your tail right quick." Parker told Longworth. "So, for now, me and the boys are happy making our living off stages." He shrugged indifferently. "Maybe next year we'll think about it."

And so, Longworth learned he had ridden himself into a box canyon.

August, 1886.

Longworth rested his bulk against the mahogany bar, one boot braced on the brass rail along its base and let the golden liquid flow down his throat. It being mid-week, the central rounder lacked its weekend complement of cowhands testing their poker skills. Landry was at the table by the front window having an after-work moment of conviviality with Randalls before facing his shrewish wife, and there was a stranger settled in at the shadowy back table as far distant from the flickering oil lamp as he could be.

Longworth studied the man in the mirror, and compared him to the drawing on the paper in his hand. Stocky build, dark-haired and mean of face, his eyes hard to study at a distance, but the way they flicked from one patron to another until they locked in on Longworth assured him that he had the right man.

After learning what a washout Parker turned out to be, Longworth had eyeballed any stranger to town, looking for some lone rider who he could use to drive Parker, or maybe push him aside. Most newcomers showed no promise, some vagabonds of the range, with deep calluses on their hands from working cattle and riding the grub line; others, no account drifters, scared of their own footsteps by the way they walked. When a trail-stained man swung down in front of the saloon, a nondescript horseman wearing a faded flannel that once had been plaid over Levi's that had traveled many a mile, and a dirty black Plainsman's hat that had begun to lose its shape, he could have been easily dismissed as another worthless prairie flotsam.

But Longworth saw beyond the superficialities. What set the stranger apart was his self-assurance as he strode down the boardwalk, unaffected, perhaps even unconscious as he deferred to no one. Not short, he was, but under average in height, something that taught most men to mind their manners and accept their place in life, but built in others an ambition to equalize their status with others, men who knew that fists and muscles that powered lesser men were no match for the little pellets spit out by Mr. Colt's marvelous invention. The stranger sported two guns; his normal holster rode tight against his right thigh, but he carried his left gun holstered in an efficient cross-draw rig. Not a cowhand, not a casual drifter, but a man comfortable with the ways of the gun.

Back in his office, Longworth had quickly found the dodger which proclaimed that Luke Addison, prison escapee, had robbed four Wells, Fargo stages since he achieved his freedom, a man not stingy with gunpowder if a stage shotgunner took his job too seriously, just outlaw riffraff, of course, put on this earth only to be used by better men, but his stride on the boardwalk revealed an arrogance that could be manipulated to add rapidly to the stack of greenbacks in Longworth's strongbox. Whatever he was, Wells, Fargo wanted him enough to post a $1000 bounty on him, in whatever condition he was produced. Just the kind of man Longworth needed.

Longworth folded the paper and slid it into his pocket. No need to let Luke Addison know that Longworth would receive a nice bonus if the outlaw didn't measure up to Longworth's needs.

Glass in his left hand, his right hand swinging free, Longworth crossed the room slowly, aware that his deliberate pace had already fixed Addison's attention on him. Addison pretended to ignore Longworth's approach as he casually turned over a card on the solitaire tableau in front of him.

"That's cheating," Longworth said.

"It's called winning, law man." Addison snarled. "I live by my own rules."

Longworth let his badge assert his right to sit uninvited.

"Private table," the outlaw insisted. "Scat!"

"Know what I see when I look at you?" Longworth asked, taking no notice of Addison's hostility. "I see a strong man, a man who wouldn't be satisfied with a twenty dollar take he might get in the local stage stop, so I'm wondering . . . "

"Whiskey's whiskey," Addison replied. "Where I'm riding's my business."

"It's a dinky little town," Longworth said. "A saloon where a man can wet his throat, play some poker on the weekend." Longworth smiled. "But not a bank in sight, and the stage that comes through once a day never carries more than an occasional schoolmarm or drummer. And a man of the world like you will be knowing banks are where the money is."

When Addison made no reply, Longworth continued. "My job is to size up strangers. Keep the town safe." He paused and took a sip of his whiskey before continuing.

"I already got to keep my eye on one group of troublemakers," Longworth said, "based in their farm house five miles west of town. Just good for stages they are. Them and me got a deal. They don't do their work near South Pass City and I ignore any dodgers that come through. What they do out of town concerns Wells, Fargo more than me."

"Makes your life easy, sounds like." Addison said.

"It takes some attention keeping it that way," Longworth replied, "keeping an eye on any newcomer who drifts in, so I don't have rival groups I have to worry about."

Longworth knew how to lead the conversation from there. He had had practice with Parker. "Wyoming banks are lucky this fellow Parker who runs the show don't see their potential," Longworth said. "With Parker's crew behind him, a bold man who knows the business could pile up a stack of greenbacks in no time."

A few minutes later he watched Addison batwing his way back to the street, on his way to the Huntley house, another expendable saddle tramp added to the group serving Longworth's plans.

September, 1886.

"Raking in twenty-one hundred in greenbacks is mighty hefty pay just for riding a lawman's swivel chair," Addison told Longworth while Parker counted out the deputy's share from their visit to the Merchants Bank of Casper. When Parker had swaggered in to the jailhouse carrying the saddlebags with Addison close behind, Longworth had quickly taken the two outlaws to his room above the cell block where they would be secure from the eyes of any busybody who might happen by.

"How you feel wearing a heavy money belt around your belly?" Longworth asked the outlaws as he counted the greenbacks a second time before adding them to his strongbox.

"We ain't hardly started," Addison replied. "Watching some sniveling moneybags brown his trousers facing a real man holding a drawn six-gun shows how the world is run, don't it, Parker?"

Parker took it from there. "Like Luke figures, we got time for two maybe three more jobs before snow starts sprinkling the range and making a trail too easy for them stinking posses to follow."

"Rawlins is your next trip," Longworth said. "The Farmers and Merchants Bank sits on Front Street close to the Union Pacific Depot. It's an easy in-and-out. You'll be halfway to the Green Mountains before the law can even say posse," Longworth told the outlaws. "You have the boys drift in separately. Then you two take turns going to the bank to change a twenty-dollar bank note and then—"

"We know our business, lawman," Addison interrupted. "Parker and me had talked Rawlins. Then on to Laramie and Cheyenne before we mosey down to overwinter in Denver spending the bankers' money."

With a mixture of satisfaction and impatience, Longworth watched the door close behind the two outlaws who would never see Cheyenne. The haul from the bank in Casper had been merely enough to remind him that he was falling behind his plans. Rawlins, then Laramie, would be larger, moving him closer to his ambition, but not near fast enough.

A weak-minded man would wait another season, but Longworth had wasted years listening to his mama. With the arrival of winter, the thrown-together gang would have served his purpose. When the five of useless outlaws came back from filling their saddlebags in the Laramie bank, there would be whiskey celebrations all around, and when they were sleeping it off, a strong man in control of his own destiny would make a quick midnight visit and turn the Laramie haul into a one-way split.

Then South Pass City could find some other patsy to tromp its dusty street.

November, 1886.

With five thousand dollars added to his strongbox, the Rawlins bank had been as generous to his plans as Longworth had hoped. He had spent his recent afternoons perusing his new subscription to the Wyoming Cattlemen's Weekly and considering various notices of ranches for sale.

On a Monday early in November, with the outlaws not planning to slip away for the Laramie job until after midnight when no one would wonder about their destination, Longworth journeyed out to the Huntley house for the regular evening of poker. The game had begun by the time he arrived and cards and poker chips were scattered across the table. He shucked out of his sheepskin and took his normal chair. As usual each player had his own bottle opened in front of him. Longworth's own glass sat at his place already poured and waiting.

As Longworth seated himself in his chair, he raised the glass. "To success in Laramie and bulging saddlebags on the ride back" he toasted the five outlaws making him rich. As he set his glass down, Jack Gaddis reached over and refilled it from the bottle in front of Longworth.

"And to Blake Longworth," Parker said, "the man who saw what we could do together." Longworth emptied his glass as he accepted the tribute. The whiskey had a sharper bite to it than usual, but it was warm going down and Longworth felt relaxed as he let his gaze make the round of the five poker players who had no notion how soon he'd be cashing out their chips.

"And to the Lone Star State that birthed him," Addison added after the men had drunk their toast to Longworth, a patriotic salute certain to get Longworth's enthusiastic participation. "And to the men of the Alamo," Longworth added as he emptied his glass a third time.

Addison passed the stack of shuffled cards to his right, Longworth cut the deck and Addison began to flick cards around the circle of players.

As the deal was completed, Longworth fumbled with his cards. Was that a Queen or a Jack? Why did the cards seem blurry?

After the five-mile ride from town in the cool night air, the warmth of the fire in the corner stove was making him drowsy. He reached for glass to steady himself. Why did he see two bottles in front of him now? The circle of outlaws had stopped paying attention to their cards and were watching him intently, waiting. He shook his head to dispel the dizziness that was suddenly taking hold of him.

"Nee . . . fre . . . shair," Longworth mumbled. He braced his hands on the table. As he struggled to lever himself to his feet, Addison hooked his boot under Longworth's chair leg and twisted it out from under him. Longworth went sprawling, sliding hard across the wooden floor.

"Lash his wrists tight, Parker," Addison ordered. Longworth weakly tried to resist as his arms were yanked behind him. In his failing senses he could hear the poker game resuming.

Saddles creaked as men down-stirupped and began the bustle of making their camp. Horses were picketed, firewood was gathered all while Longworth remained awkwardly draped over the pack horse. Finally, the crunch of boots neared as someone approached and then a knife sliced through the rope that bound Longworth to the horse. He thudded to the ground, hard, like a hundred-pound sack of potatoes, his breath knocked out of him.

Addison grabbed Longworth's shoulder and roughly yanked him to his feet, not minding that he had nearly dislocated the shoulder. Over by the horses, Jack Gaddis was tapping tobacco into a cigarette paper and conspicuously avoiding Longworth while Billy was likely off in the bushes attending to personal business, but bright-eyed and enjoying the show, Huntley's hand snapped up in a crisp mock salute.

"After a long ride, likely a man wants to stretch his legs," Parker told the prisoner. "We'll take a friendly stroll to the overlook where we can admire the view down to the river."

Longworth stumbled awkwardly as Addison began frog-marching him away from camp, while Parker's hand closed on his other shoulder. Longworth tried to protest through the gag, but even he knew that only inarticulate sounds came out.

"Like you taught us, banks can make us a pile of money," Parker was telling Longworth as he yanked him along. "Really made us a good haul at Rawlins," he continued. "When we was counting out the take, Luke here showed us that the Laramie haul will be too big to split with some jasper who don't do none of the work."

After five minutes of stumbling helplessly across the rocky ground, Longworth was jerked to a halt at the edge of a sharp precipice. Far below in the canyon, he could see the ribbon of the Sweetwater River shining in the false dawn. From the cliff, a jumble of rocks and boulders had carved off the cliff face over the centuries. Big, sharp, unforgiving boulders.

"Them rocks are five hundred feet down," Parker said. "You think—"

Addison grunted. "Sorry son'll go splat and be done."

Frantically, Longworth struggled to make his pleas, his promises understood through the gag, but no one was listening.

Addison's hand spread out across Longworth's back impassively. Longworth resisted futilely as the outlaw tilted him forward.

Then Longworth was leaning over the edge of the cliff.

Then he was hurtling downward, screaming through the gag as the sharpest of the boulders accelerated toward him.

Then—