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cactus needles, one bloody hand pressed to the side of his wounded throat, Moore let out a breath.
    â€œYou’re lucky I didn’t shoot you . . . walking up on me that way.” He saw the gun in Carnes’ hand, pointed at his chest. They lowered their guns in unison.
    Carnes limped forward, past Moore, toward the leaning stagecoach. His duster was shredded by the barrel cactus where he’d fallen. “Where’s the loco sumbitch soldier that caused all this?” he said, gesturing his gun barrel back and forth. Along the trail both carpetbags and leather travel bags had busted open upon impact. The contents lay strewn about amid spilled mail, newspaper and magazines.
    Colonel Tanner’s raspy voice called out from a ditch running alongside the sheer rock wall, “Here I am, you saddle tramps.” He scrambled up onto the trail and stood facing them, holding the double-barreled shotgun with one hand, but with both hammers cocked and ready to fire. “Let us . . . continue on, then.”
    The shotgun rose with a heavy kick as its first blast hit Carnes full in his chest, picked him up and hurled him backward to the ground. Carnes’ Colt flew from his hand and landed in the thick brush off the edge of the trail.
    Moore, even with his gun hand slick with blood, fired the last rounds in his Colt. One bullet hit the colonel squarely in his chest; the second shot nailed him in the forehead. But he didn’t fall right away. Instead, he wobbled in place, pulled the shotgun’s trigger and sent Henry Moore flying backward, a stunned look of disbelief on his face.
    From around the curve in the trail, Buckshot Parks heard the shooting and instinctively flung himself behind the cover of a rock. “What does it take to rob a damn stage here?” he asked himself, staring from around the edge of the rock for a full two minutes before easing out onto the trail and venturing forward.
    Having lost his Colt, rifle, hat, horse and boot heel, he limped around the curve, unarmed. He stopped and stood for a moment, staring at the dead, at the debris and at the dog hanging still and silent out the open stage door. “Holy Joe and Mabel,” he murmured, limping closer to where the stage leaned at a dangerous angle against the rock wall.
    Stepping into the space between the open door and the dog, he took a knife up from his boot well. “I never seen anything like this in my whole worthless life.”
    Parks cut the leash a few inches from the dog’s collar and let the big cur drop to the ground with a thud, giving himself more room to look inside the stage. Stooping down, he peered inside at the two bodies, one of them staring blankly at him through a face covered with blood. “It wasn’t our fault, if you want to know the truth,” he said to the dead blank face, “it was that crazy soldier. He wouldn’t stop fighting for nothing!”
    Walking back to where Moore’s bloody body lay faceup in the dirt, Parks stooped down, picked up the empty blood-slick Colt, checked it and shook his head. He reached and checked Moore’s gun belt for bullets and found it empty as well. He shook his head again and dropped the Colt where he’d found it. Then he pulled off the dead outlaw’s left boot and looked it over.
    Moments later, he stood up, wearing Moore’s black left boot in place of his own heelless brown one. Leaving his broken boot lying in the dirt, he jerked the torn flour sack from around his neck and flung it to the ground. He stamped his feet, getting adjusted to the new boot, then walked among the strewn baggage, looking for the strongbox.
    â€œThere you are,” he said quietly, finally spotting the metal box lying on its side twenty feet from the stagecoach. “At least I’m going to get something out of all this.”
    He dragged the box a few feet into the shade of a large trailside boulder and looked all around for something to pry