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ate the Arapaho woman’s food, thinking that if Etta knew he thought he was saving them from her cooking, she never let on. It was, of course, possible that she considered
him
the poor cook and had been humoring him. After the meal was over, Longbaugh refused the offer of white man’s whiskey, as he had many things on his mind and he didn’t want an intoxicant to distract him.
    He stayed long enough to be polite, and saw they were glad when he was ready to leave. He mounted his horse and rode away from the tepees. The three-quarter waxing moon lit the hillside that carried him out of the valley. He traveled a long time until he was far from other human beings, in a barren place where the moonlight made few shadows. He consulted the angle of the Big and Little Dippers and judged the time to be near midnight. He was close to the canyon walls of an old hideout. The land was stark and silver with moon. It fit his state of mind. He hobbled the horse and left it behind, furthering his isolation. The ground was hard, cracked into puzzle shapes that curled up at the edges and crunched to powder under his boots. He found a tree standing alone, its trunk thick and gnarled, its arms weblike and almost without leaves.
    He sat under it. Lightning flashed on the far side of a distant range and exposed its shape against the sky. He waited for the next flash. He was glad to sit alone and think, and he knew exhaustion in his bones. The past simmered and he allowed his mind to wander.
    He thought of his time in prison. He had given himself up to protect her and was awarded more years than he had anticipated. Two different times in prison he had been involved in violent incidents. The first came early on and was unavoidable, but it had served to inoculate him for the rest of his stay. The second had happened recently and had surprised him. He had not expected it, a spasm of brutality from deep in his gorge. Old man Orley had pegged it. There was a story there, and in retrospect, it brought him grave discomfort. He had always defined himself a certain way, and now he struggled with his recognition of another side, no matter how he hoped to disguise it.
    He was confused as to his true nature. How different was he fromthe man the world had defined? He was an ex-con as well as the man who had died a myth in South America, perceived as affable by the dead son of a dead sheriff, among others. In the first instance, he had been arrested and served time. Yes, he was changed, but in what way? The authorities used prison as a cudgel to punish a man’s outlaw acts. Had he been punished enough? Or did he still owe? Perhaps twelve years was too long a sentence, perhaps he had been overpunished and was due a peccadillo or two.
Interesting thought
, he mused. So who was he now? Despite the opinion of the state of Wyoming, he did not believe himself to be immoral. His code was strong, severe in many ways. He had paid a price that the rest of the gang had not. Were they better men for not getting caught? Or did they owe on their debt?
    He flashed on the dead young man. Could the moment have been avoided, or did he secretly welcome the violence? He had killed in self-defense, but that did not help him. He grieved for that arrogant boy.
    His mind drifted again. Silent lightning struck miles away revealing a foam of clouds on the far side of the mountains, followed in time by a curl of thunder no louder than the growl of his belly. She had stopped writing to him two years ago. The real hard time of his incarceration had begun with her sudden, unexplained silence, impossible to believe from the woman he loved. Sitting under the tree in the moonlight, he heard metal gates clang, clang open, open to corridors of cells on a steep grade, sucking him back inside, and his brain warned that he was somewhere between awake and sleep, where he could not know reality from illusion. Gaslight flickered between bars, with unseen men taunting him from the far side