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in your damned face.” He let go a foamy string of spittle and wrapped his hand on his gun butt, ready to draw. “Now, what are you going to do about it,
coward
?”
    â€œOh no,” Little Deak murmured.
    The rest of the men fell silent as stone.
    â€œJesus, Simon,” Dave Coyle cut in, “you just spit on my horse.” Coyle’s dusty bay gave a low grumbling chuff and swung its head away.
    â€œSee what I mean?” Reye murmured. He shook his head in disgust.
    â€œHell, Dave, I didn’t mean to do that,” Simon said. He raised his hand from his gun butt and reached out for the horse’s muzzle. “Sorry there, horse,” he said, missing the horse, mistaking Dave’s face for the horse’s muzzle.
    Dave ducked his face away from Simon’s reaching hand.
    â€œCan you come get him, Little Deak?” he said. The men milled in place and looked away.
    â€œSimon,” said Reye with a tinge of remorse, “I don’t know what the hell I was thinking, saying all that to you and the little fellow, about the circus and all.”
    â€œWhere are you, Reye?” Simon asked, turning his head back and forth.
    Reye sidestepped farther away from Simon before answering.
    â€œI’m trying to apologize here, Simon, damn it,” said Reye, “to both you and the little fellow.”
    â€œIt’s
Little Deak
,” said Deak, correcting him again.
    â€œAll right,
Little Deak
, then,” said Reye, relenting his sarcastic position.
    Hearing Reye’s voice, Simon turned to hone in on it. But Reye sidestepped even farther way without speaking.
    â€œStage is almost there,” said Sieg, drawing their attention toward the rise of red bluish dust drawing closer on the trail below.
    â€œAll right, everybody mount up,” said Dave Coyle. “Let’s get down there first. My brother don’t like being kept waiting.”
    The men turned to their dusty horses and stepped into their saddles. Little Deak grabbed the rope from his shoulder and flipped one looped end deftly up and over his saddle horn. He stepped up into the loop with his left foot, into his stirrup with his right. Chic Reye and Karl Sieg watched him swing his short leg over the saddle.
    Beside Little Deak, Blind Simon adjusted himself atop his horse and shoved his walking stick down into his rifle boot beside his Spencer carbine.
    â€œThere’s some things takes me a whole lot to get used to,” Reye said sidelong to Sieg, eyeing the two. “Other things . . . it ain’t ever going to happen at all.” The two turned their horses along with the others and rode away.
    â€¢Â Â Â â€¢Â Â Â â€¢
    At the stage depot on the valley floor, Oldham Coyle stood up from the space he’d cleared for himself on the rear luggage rack and shook thick red dust from the breast and sleeves of his duster. Rifle in hand, he lifted his hat from his head, slapped it against his thigh and put it back on. As the shotgun rider stepped down and helped four disheveled women passengers off the big Studebaker coach, Coyle reached into the luggage compartment, dragged out his saddle, shoved his rifle down into a saddle boot and shouldered the load. Dust billowed.
    As if from out of nowhere, a hooded four-horse double buggy rolled up to the four women and stopped with a jolt. Coyle stood watching, his coated face and mustache appearing as if molded out of red-blue clay.
    Assisting the women into the large, stylish rig, the shotgun rider shut the buggy door and turned to Coyle.
    â€œStranger,” he said to Oldham Coyle, “we’re mighty obliged to have you riding our tailgate. As much trouble as we’ve had with road agents of late, I can’t seem to keep watch on everything at once.”
    â€œDon’t mention it.” Coyle smiled and touched his hat brim.
    â€œI’m Wilson Tash. I didn’t catch your name,” the shotgun rider