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Remorse smiled. ‘‘Ah, Thad, you’re getting your nerve back, aren’t you? Soon you’ll start thinking that you can take me, and then you’ll begin to believe it, like you’re beginning to believe it right now.’’

‘‘Maybe I can take you. You don’t know that I can’t.’’

‘‘It’s just as I feared, Thaddeus, you’re beyond redemption.’’ Remorse looked around him. ‘‘Where is the undertaker?’’

‘‘Down the street a ways, just before you reach the livery.’’

‘‘Good. I’m buying you a coffin, Thad, with your name on it. You can go see it later. It will be a nice one, I promise.’’

‘‘Maybe it will have my name on it and your body in it, Reverend.’’

Remorse nodded. ‘‘I’m glad you’re feeling better now, Thad. I’d so dislike killing a man who’d turned yellow on me.’’

‘‘We could always decide the thing right here and now,’’ Harlan said. He was stiff, but looked ready to uncoil fast.

‘‘Now you grow tiresome, Thad.’’ With his left hand Remorse reached into his shirt pocket and took out the makings. As he built a smoke his eyes lifted to the marshal. ‘‘Why are you in such an all-fired hurry to die?’’ He thumbed a match into flame and lit his cigarette. ‘‘Dying with your face in the dirt with a bullet in your belly and black blood in your mouth is not much fun.’’ He opened his fingers and let the smoking match fall to the ground. ‘‘Come talk to me sometime and I’ll tell you how it feels.’’

Chapter 22

McBride stood at the door to the livery stable as Remorse and Jed Whipple dickered inside. He could not shake the feeling of being watched and his hand was never far from the gun in his waistband.

The early afternoon sun lay heavy as an anvil on the street, and the air was still and thick, the heat oppressive. To the north the Capitan Mountains looked like a low, lilac cloud, half-hidden behind a shimmering haze that made the brush flats dance. A skinny, tan dog nosed around a clump of yellow groundsel growing out from under the boardwalk across the street and Sammy wedged himself between McBride’s feet and watched it, growling softly.

After a couple of minutes, McBride walked away from the barn and stepped into the street. There! He saw it, a curtain twitching shut on the second floor of the Kip and Kettle Hotel.

It had to be Dora, a lady he planned to have a serious talk with later. Was Clare with her? If what Remorse had implied was correct, then she was bound to be.

But what could he do to Clare? It was his word against hers that she’d tried to kill him. Even if he managed to get Harlan to arrest her, and that was highly unlikely, no jury you could assemble in Rest and Be Thankful would convict her. She need only dab her eyes with a scrap of lace handkerchief and say that John McBride attacked her and she’d shot him to defend her virtue.

The most likely outcome to a trial would be a rope around his own neck.

Maybe Remorse would come up with a plan to punish the guilty. But the reverend’s solution would likely be to gun down everybody in town, like an avenging angel sent to smite the wicked. There had to be another way.

McBride recalled the plan he’d made the day he first met Dora Ryan. It wasn’t perfect and might address only part of his problem, but maybe the time to put it into effect was now—

McBride’s train of thought was interrupted by Remorse calling him from the door of the livery stable. He stepped beside the reverend, who was scowling. ‘‘John, do I have scorch marks on me?’’

‘‘Not that I can see.’’

‘‘Well, I should,’’ Remorse said, clearly irritated. ‘‘That old man burned me on the horses and guns. I got less than half of what they’re worth.’’

Whipple cackled from the doorway, then yelled, ‘‘Hey, Reverend, remember that he is richest who is content with the least, for contentment is the wealth of nature.’’

McBride grinned. ‘‘Did you read that in the Bible, Jed?’’

‘‘Nah, I read it in a book on the philosophy of Socrates.’’

Not for the first time, McBride was amazed by the learning that even the unlikeliest of some western men possessed. But Remorse seemed unimpressed and continued to fume.

‘‘We’ve got company,’’ McBride said, nodding in the direction of the street.

Thad Harlan, riding the Appaloosa he’d taken from the man Clare had shot, swung toward the livery and stopped a few feet from Remorse.

Still smarting at getting bested by Whipple, Remorse snapped, ‘‘Did you bring my money?’’

Harlan shook his head. ‘‘You’ll get that from Mr. Josephine. He’s at his bank right now and wants to talk to you both.’’

‘‘What about?’’ McBride asked.

‘‘How should I know? He doesn’t confide in me.’’

‘‘That, I doubt,’’ Remorse said. His eyes pinned Harlan to the blue sky behind him. ‘‘Where is this bank?’’

‘‘It’s the Lincoln County Bank and Trust, on the corner past John Sewell’s Hardware Store. You can’t miss it.’’

‘‘Go tell your boss we’ll be there,’’ McBride said.

But Harlan sat his horse, and a sneer twisted his lips. ‘‘How does it feel, McBride, to hide behind another man’s gun?’’

‘‘He says it feels just fine,’’ Remorse said quickly. ‘‘Now toddle along, Thad, and do as you were told.’’

The marshal ignored Remorse and said to McBride, ‘‘One way or another there will be a reckoning between us. There are too many things left undone, half finished. Right now everything is topsy-turvy.’’

‘‘How do we finish it?’’ McBride asked.

‘‘When you dance at the end of a rope, McBride. Then it will be finished.’’

McBride smiled. ‘‘Tell me something, Harlan—why do you hate me so much?’’

‘‘Because you disobeyed me. When you first came to this town I told you to ride in, ride out and say nothing. You ignored that advice and all you’ve done is cause trouble. After I hang you, we can all get back to normal.’’

‘‘You’re forgetting something,’’ Remorse said.

‘‘That getting back to normal business—you won’t be around to see it. I plan on killing you before I ride on, Thad. You are beyond saving.’’

‘‘Then say your prayers, white-haired preacher man, because it ain’t going to happen the way you think.’’

‘‘You can’t shade me, Thad. You know that.’’

‘‘Could be I can, and you know why?’’

‘‘Tell me.’’

‘‘Because I got hell on my side,’’ Harlan said.

He swung his horse away and rode slowly up the street. Crows lining the peaked canvas roof of the Lone Star Dance Hall squawked and quarreled as Harlan drew near, then fell silent, their heads turning, glittering black eyes watching him as he passed.

McBride saw it and felt a chill he could not explain.