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  He’d stopped in Deep Flood because he didn’t want to bake in the sun any more, and it happened to be on the way to Purgatory City. On a whim, he’d decided he did not want to eat in the town’s café, and the waitress who doubled as cook decided that she could manage to bring him some supper to his hotel room as he had offered to add fifteen percent to the regular price for his order. He would tip her, of course.

  And, bless the saints, he’d been walking back to his room, minding his own business, when Hans Kruger decided to show up to rob the First Bank of Deep Flood.

  Well, it might not be Hans. It could be the bank robbing fiend’s twin brother, Otto. A man—even a judge, coroner, or county sheriff—would be hard-pressed to identify one from the other. Not that it truly mattered. Both Hans and Otto were posted for five-hundred dollars each, dead or alive, in Texas and three territories. Breen didn’t think the constable at Deep Flood would mind which Kruger it was.

  One little matter concerned Breen as he adjusted his rear sight. He had seen only one of the Kruger boys. Granted, warrants had been issued for a Kruger here, a Kruger there, another Kruger for some crime—one burglary, one horse theft, one murder. Sometimes they did not work together, and often split up. A robbery of a bank in a town of this size could possibly be handled by one man, but Breen had trouble recalling any banks that had been robbed in Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, or Colorado in which only one of the Krugers had been seen—and charged. Not that he was an expert on the Krugers. A horse theft or two, and the time Hans Kruger—or was it Otto?—had gotten upset at losing at a faro layout in Laredo and had robbed the entire gambling parlor of a little more than nine hundred dollars and put a bullet through the faro dealer’s elbow were the types of documented crimes attributed to just Hans or Otto, not both.

  Breen peered down the streets, checking for a horse or a man paying too much attention to the bank. No one was on the street that he could see. He didn’t have much of a view for the street below him. He studied the rooftops, such as they were, and found no one.

  Well, he couldn’t wait anymore. Breen carefully slid the window up about halfway and then moved back, taking the Sharps with him. He lifted the heavy weapon and aimed at the front door to the bank, making sure that the barrel did not poke out of the window. If someone saw that—especially if the bank robber’s pard saw it (if the robber had a pard) looking out for his well-being—then things might get a bit ticklish, and Breen would have no reward to cash in.

  Breen’s plan was simple. When the robber stepped out for his horse, Breen would blow a fist-sized hole through his middle. Hell, bank robbery was a crime no matter if it were being committed by Hans Kruger, Otto Kruger, or some out-of-work cowboy who made the mistake of robbing his first bank and looking too much like one of those Huns. If Hans, or Otto, saw Otto, or Hans, lying in the dirt, most likely the surviving Kruger brother would ride over to assist his dead or dying brother, and even more likely to ride over to get the sack filled with the bank’s money. By that point, Breen would have reloaded the Sharps and after taking quick, deadly, careful aim, he would see the button on the last Kruger brother’s shirt and shoot that bank robber dead, too.

  Simple enough. Breen relaxed, controlled his breathing, made himself as comfortable as possible, and stared through the telescopic sight at the bank’s front door.

  A church bell in Deep Flood, Texas began ringing five long, drawn out, drowning out, drones that echoed. Finally, the last of the ear-splitting noise ended. Breen sighed. Five o’clock. The bank would be closing. The robber had timed his job perfectly, knowing few people would be inside at this time of day. Well, Deep Flood didn’t have more than a few people living and working in town anyway.

  The door to his room—the one he had kicked open and broken the lock—pushed open.

  Breen did not look back, but he cursed the bit of poor timing. He should have ordered his steak well done, and his potatoes peeled before being boiled, and a fresh pot of coffee, and maybe even a slice of cake that hadn’t been on the counter, uncovered and attracting flies most of the day.

  “Sweetheart,” he said without looking back, “If you would be so kind as to just leave the food on the dresser and leave, I’ll be with you shortly. And then, please, just wait out in the hallway. Things are apt to get a little hot in here. Don’t worry. I’m a lawman, sweetheart. Your bank’s about to be robbed.”

  He wasn’t a lawman exactly. He just helped lawmen out. By bringing in outlaws, for which he was generally paid a pretty decent reward. Folks called him a bounty hunter, and though that was a fairly correct description, Breen liked to think of himself as a . . . professional.

  He smiled at what one of the newspapers had called him. A jackal. Well, yeah, you could argue that point, but the newspaper had also called a former Texas Ranger named Matt McCulloch and a hard-drinking Irish cavalry sergeant, Sean Keegan, jackals, too.

  Breen hadn’t seen Keegan or McCulloch in months. When he got to Purgatory City with his five hundred bucks for Hans or Otto Kruger, he’d buy them a beer or whiskey.

  The hairs on his neck started tingling, and he let his eye rise from the telescopic sight even before he heard the revolver behind him being cocked, and the German-accented guttural voice say, “Ja. I know it be robbed. Too bad ya not live to see us spend all dat money.”

  Well, Breen thought as he eased down the hammer on the big rifle and slowly brought the rifle up and leaned it against the wall beside the window. Nobody told him to raise his hands, but he figured that was the general idea. By the time he turned around on his knees, his hands were high, and he saw the big man with blond hair and a Remington revolver aimed at his chest.

  “Kruger.” At first he thought Hans, or Otto, must have hurried away from the bank, climbed to the second floor—the church bells drowning out the noise of his spurs on the stairs—and figured to dispatch Breen before robbing the bank. But no, that wouldn’t make any sense. The bank would be closed by the time that happened. Suddenly, he remembered the Kruger that went into the bank wore striped britches. This Hun’s pants were checked.

  “I am Otto,” the German said with an even-toothed grin. “And ya be dead ven da shooting starts.”

  “Maybe there won’t be any shooting.” Breen smiled.

  “Ha. Alvays dere be shooting ven Hans rob bank.” Otto Kruger walked to the foot of the bed, never lowering the revolver.

  Every plan that passed through Breen’s brain never slowed down. Every idea he thought of that might not leave him dead was stupid, hopeless, and would have him deader than dirt.

  Then a lovely woman stepped into the room, carrying a tray that brought with it the aroma of fried steak, boiled potatoes, hot coffee, and chocolate cake.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  As captain of the wagon train that had left Dead Trout, Arkansas, the Reverend Sergeant Major Homer Primrose III called every man, woman, and child he was leading to the promised land to kneel in the camp’s circle. He was captain of the train, but preferred his rank of sergeant major, which he had earned through hard campaigning with the Thirteenth Arkansas Infantry for the late Confederacy.

  All twenty-six people knelt, bowed their heads, and took hands as the Reverend began to pray.

  “Dear Lord,” he said, “Please guide us safely through the evil, sinful town that blocks our path to the glory that awaits us in Rapture Valley, Territory of Arizona. God, spare our children from the sights of debauchery, lewdness, smut, immorality, and from the offensiveness and drunkenness. Spare them, Lord, spare all of us, from the wretched, the gamblers, the confidence men and, Lord have mercy, the confidence women. And the fornicators—especially the fornicators, prostitutes, the soiled doves, the bawdy women, the strumpets, concubines, the harlots, the ladies of the evening, the courtesans, the lost lambs. Oh those poor lost souls. Lord have mercy on them—those scarlet women, those Jezebels, shameless hussies, the dance hall girls. Oh, God, if you could just strike down all those dancers with a thunderous bolt of lighting—and the flooz
ies and the tramps and the trollops. And God, please spare us from the nymphomaniacs, if thus be Thy Will!”

  He went on for deliverance from the evils of the gamblers and the confidence men (again), and the cutthroats and murderers and any Jayhawkers that might have drifted down from Kansas into the Panhandle of Texas, and any Yankee-loving son of a cur dog that dared slight the great Confederate States of America and, in especial, the state most noble to that glorious of now lost cause, Arkansas.

  “Lord, you know after years of Yankee rule and the curse of Reconstruction, there was nothing left for us, your poor servants in Dead Trout, but you showed us the glory that awaits us if we make it to Rapture Valley,” he prayed on, sweating. “And if by your grace we survive this Sodom of Texas, the Gomorrah of our travels, if we can live to see New Mexico Territory and aren’t bushwhacked, raped, pillaged and tortured to death—all for your glory—by Mexicans or Apaches, and maybe Mormons if any of them live in the territory, and get us to . . .”

  By that point, raven-haired Annie Homes’ neck hurt from such an eternally long bow, and her knees hurt from the prickly pear cactus on the flat expanse of Texas. She lifted her head and looked beyond their camp at the trail that led to Five Scalps, Texas. She breathed a little easier seeing that Winfield Baker had stopped praying, too, as had Betsy Stanton. Betsy, harlot that she was, began rolling a cigarette.

  “You better hope the sergeant major doesn’t see you,” Annie whispered.

  Betsy licked the paper and stuck the cigarette into her mouth.

  “Got a match?” she asked Winfield, who tried to stifle his laugh. After winking at Annie, Betsy unbuttoned the top button on her blouse and dropped the unlit cigarette between her ample bosoms. “I’ll smoke it later, I reckon.” She giggled.

  Winfield Baker’s eyes bulged.

  That didn’t make Annie happy, but she held her temper and tongue and made herself look down the road at the dust sweeping across the first buildings on the outskirts of Five Scalps. Maybe, she prayed, that was the Lord hearing the long prayer of the reverend and sending his vengeance to destroy the evil that awaited them just a mile down the trail.

  “Amen,” the preacher said.

  Annie, Winfield, and Betsy quickly dropped their heads, answered, “Amen,” and then raised their heads and looked up at the heavens. They thanked the Lord again, helped each other off the cactus, thorns, and ants, and slapped at the dust and bits of gravel. Cactus spines stuck in their clothes and flesh.

  “Reverend Sergeant Major Homer?” Annie heard her father Walter ask. “Flat as this country is, wouldn’t it make sense to just ride around Five Scalps, and not go through it?”

  “Yeah,” said Horace Greeley, whose name often was the butt of many a joke. The Horace Greeley from Dead Trout, Arkansas, only touched a newspaper when he took one to the privy since he could neither read nor write. But this Horace Greeley was going West—just like that other Horace Greeley had invited and urged Americans to do.

  “Well,” the preacher said in a blast of fire and brimstone, “You may flee if such is your will. Ride around a test that God himself has put before us. Nay, say I. Nay, will I. As a sergeant major in the Thirteenth Arkansas Infantry, I, the Reverend Sergeant Major Homer Primrose the Third, will see what is God’s will.”

  He had already preached too much fear into the hearts of his fellow Arkansas travelers. Twenty-one of them elected to ride around Five Scalps, so Annie climbed into the back of the covered wagon, settled on the blanket and sack of flour between the chifforobe and her mother’s pie safe, and felt the oxen start walking. As the wagon lurched, Annie bumped her head against the wagon and cursed—but not loud enough for her parents or the pious sergeant major to hear. She bounced this way and that, although she really could not tell the difference between the path they had been following and the plains they crossed to go around the nefarious town.

  Eventually, the wagons stopped, and she heard her mother and father climb down from the driver’s box. Annie pulled herself out from between the two pieces of furniture and rubbed her upper left arm where she felt certain she would see a bruise by tomorrow. She crawled through the tangle of blankets, clothes, and sacks, and peered through the rear oval opening in the canvas covering the wagon. Other members of the train—men, women, girls about Annie’s age, boys a few years older, and the little kids, were gathering and looking back east at the town of Five Scalps.

  “Huh,” Winfield Baker was telling Jimmy Donovan when Annie came up beside him. “From all the stories we heard, I figured that Five Scalps would be a great deal larger.”

  “It sure ain’t like the picture of that wicked city of Gomorrah that we got in our Bible,” Jimmy said, leaning forward and grinning. “Howdy, Annie.”

  She returned the greeting and took a step closer to Five Scalps, Texas, so she could always say she got closer to that evil place than any of the other members of the Primrose Train.

  “I don’t see the captain,” said one of the men off to Annie’s left.

  “Or the others,” an old lady murmured.

  “My God,” said Aunt Rachel, the oldest woman on the wagon train, who, as far as Annie knew, wasn’t related to anyone in Dead Trout, but everybody called her Aunt. “ Maybe they’ve been taken in by those evil villains.”

  “Either that or the prairie swallowed ’em up,” someone else said.

  A few of the men huddled together to determine their next course of action.

  Annie inched her way about another foot closer, though Five Scalps still had to be a quarter mile, from where they had stopped.

  “Huh,” she said, holding her scarf when a gust of wind blew.

  The town might have five scalps somewhere, but it didn’t have five buildings, even if you included the privy.

  A good-sized adobe structure, two stories with a high wall enclosing the flat roof, and gun ports on all sides. Too small for a fort, certainly not a jail, but from the number of horses at the hitching rail, it had to be the center of town. In fact, it was the town’s center. To its left and across the trail stood a smaller building, but it wasn’t anything more than a sod hut. To the big adobe’s right and on the same side of the trail stood another soddie, but a mite larger than the one on the left-hand side of the trail. Three buildings. Four if you included the privy. Five if you wanted to count the corral.

  Annie pointed. “Isn’t that the Reverend Primrose’s wagon?”

  It was hard to tell. The wind had picked up again and was blowing dust.

  Her father tensed. “By the terrors, those dirty dogs must have bushwhacked the Reverend. And Thad, Jim, Hawg, and Muldoon.”

  Another man said, “Isn’t that our captain wandering to that hovel across the street?”

  Added Hawg’s cousin, “With that gal hanging on his arm?”

  For about the time it took the man who looked a lot like the Reverend Sergeant Major Homer Primrose III cross the dusty street, no one in the Primrose Train spoke. The wind blew dust as the man managed to keep his hat on with one hand, his other hand holding on to the scantily clad damsel in distress. A moment later, the reverend—or someone who looked a lot like the reverend—and the girl were inside the soddie.

  “Maybe that’s the church,” said Mrs. Primrose, whose husband had insisted that she travel with Aunt Rachel around Five Scalps. Mrs. Primrose said it again and nodded in affirmation. “Yes, that is the church.”

  “What are we to do?” Aunt Rachel asked, then spit out juice from her snuff.

  “Wait for the baptism,” Hawg’s cousin said.

  Winfield Baker could not stifle his snigger, which caused him to get a quick scolding from his mother, father, and grandmother.

  Annie’s father pulled his hat down tighter and turned around. “Let’s just see to our teams and our families. We’ll wait here. Stay close to your families, and I’m sure the captain will rejoin us later when he has . . .” His voice trailed off as he sighed.

  Annie followed her parents back to the wagon.
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  She liked the way her father prayed. He sounded sincere, never so pompous as the Reverend Primrose. Her father prayed like he meant it. He didn’t ramble like the wagon train boss, but got to the point and wrapped it up. When he thanked God, he sounded sincere.

  Annie’s family had corn pone, salt pork, leftover beans, and hot tea for their supper. They rolled out their bedrolls and sat on them, watching that big ball of orange slowly sink in the west like it had found quicksand in the distance and was being pulled underneath. The skies turned red, orange, purple and yellow, and finally the tip of the sun bid good-bye for the night.

  “We never saw anything like that in Arkansas,” Walter said. “Did we, Mother?” Annie’s father often called his wife Mother.

  “Too many trees.” Harriet shook her head. “Never thought I’d miss those trees till we got out here. When’s the last time we saw a tree?”

  He laughed. “We’ll see them in Rapture Valley, Mother.” He winked at Annie. “The hillsides are filled with trees, piñon, and juniper, even pines farther up the hills. But the valley is wonderful and lush with grass. Paradise for sure. I’ll build my two girls a home in the hills, and the rest of the valley I’ll cover with my cattle.”

  He had been talking about this for years.

  The Reverend Primrose said the residents of Dead Trout had been driven out by carpetbaggers and Yankee scalawags, but Walter had been dreaming of leaving the Arkansas hills since even before the War Between the States. When that flyer showed up from the Concord mail stage, and someone posted it on the wall at the general store, he had seen it. He had been the first to suggest that a few families set out for the new country. Get away from the poverty and mosquitoes of the hills. Do what Horace Greeley—the newspaper man—said. Go West.