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it?”
    â€œWe’ll burn any house and you in it if you don’t leave. We didn’t invite you here.”
    â€œThis here is open land,” Pa said. “I’m only the first. There’ll be many more along this way ’for long.”
    â€œThere’ll be nobody. Now I’m through talkin’. I want you out of here.” He looked around. “Where’s that loud-mouthed boy of yours? One of my men wants to give him a whippin’.”
    I’d dropped from the loft and stood just inside the barn. “I’m here, and your man ain’t goin’ to give me any kind of a whippin’…not if it’s a fair fight.”
    â€œIt’ll be a fair fight.”
    The words come from the steps, and we all looked. Owen Chantry stood there in his black pants, his polished boots, a white shirt, and a black string tie.
    â€œWho in hell are you?” The brawny man was angry some, but not too worried.
    â€œThe name is Owen Chantry,” he replied quietly.
    The stocky man I’d met on the trail got down from his horse and come forward. He stood there, a-waitin’ the outcome.
    â€œMeans nothing to me,” the brawny man said.
    â€œIt will,” Chantry said. “Now take your rope off that post.”
    â€œLike hell I will!” It was the man with the rope who shouted at him.
    In the year of 1866, the fast draw was an unheard of thing out west of the Rockies. In Texas (so Chantry told me later), Cullen Baker and Bill Longley had been usin’ it, but that was about the extent of it ’til that moment.
    Nobody saw him move, but we all heard the gun. And we seen that man with the rope drop it like something burned him, and something had.
    The rope lay on the ground and that man was shy two fingers.
    I don’t know whether Chantry aimed for two fingers, one finger, or his whole hand, but two fingers was what he got.
    Then Owen Chantry come one foot down the steps and then the other. He stood there, his polished boots a-shinin’ and that gun in his hand. First time I’d ever seen that gun out’n the scabbard.
    â€œThe name,” he said, “is Owen Chantry. My brother lived on this place. He was killed. These folks are living here now, and they’re going to stay.
    â€œI, too, am going to stay, and if you have among you the men who killed my brother, your only chance to live is to hang them. You have two weeks in which to find and hang those men.…Two weeks.”
    â€œYou’re slick with that gun,” the brawny man said, “but we’ll be back.”
    Owen Chantry come down another step, and then another. A stir of wind caught the hair on his brow and ruffled it a mite and flattened the fine material of his white shirt against the muscles of his arms and shoulders.
    â€œWhy come back, Mr. Fenelon?” Chantry said pleasantly. “You’re here now.”
    â€œYou know my name?”
    â€œOf course. And a good deal more about you, none of it good. You may have run away from your sins, Mr. Fenelon, but you can’t escape the memory of them.…Others have the same memories.”
    Chantry walked out a step toward him, still with that gun in his hand. “You’re here already, Mr. Fenelon. Would you like to choose your weapon?”
    â€œI can wait,” Fenelon said. He was staring at Chantry, hard-eyed, but wary. He didn’t like nothin’ he saw.
    â€œAnd you?” Chantry looked at the stocky man who was settin’ to whip me. “Can you wait too?”
    â€œNo, by the Lord, I can’t! I come to slap some sense into that young’un, and I aim to do it!”
    Chantry never moved his eyes from them. “Doby, do you want to take care of this chore right now, or would you rather wait?”
    â€œI’ll take him right now,” I said, and I walked out there and he come for me, low an’ hard.
    My Pa come from the old country as a boy and settled in