The Sheriff's Journal

He slipped a finger into the opening, then a thumb: grasping something between thumb and two fingers, he drew out a worn leather covered book, held shut with a black ribbon: its spine was worn out, long broken, the cover was cracked, worn, the corners chafed and threadbare.

“You look like you’ve been through the war,” Richard murmured, slipping the black silk ribbon off and opening the cover.

He read the inscription on the flyleaf.

Linn Keller, he read, the precise script showing the dark-and-light line of a dipped quill: His Boke.

He turned the page, reached up and turned on the green-shaded banker’s lamp.

I brought the Navy Colt level on the second soldier and shot him through the palm of his upraised right hand. The ball pierced his black heart, and he fell dead across the carcass of the first soldier I shot.

The third soldier dug his heels into the dirt and scuttled backward on his hinder, away from me, like a frightened crab. His drawers were around his ankles and he opened his mouth to say something.

I wrapped my thumb around the stand-up hammer spur and brought the Navy Colt down level again, and shot him through his open mouth before he could speak.

Throwing a leg over my mare’s head, I slid out of the saddle, the pistol hard in my fist: I turned its handle forward and thrust it savagely into the cavalry holster I wore.

I bent and took the girl under the arms, and brought her to her feet.

She could not have been fourteen.

She shivered in my grip like a frightened baby rabbit.

“Child,” I said in a gentle voice, “you are safe. No harm will come to you.”

Her eyes were those of a wounded animal -- or, rather, her left eye was: the right was swollen shut, victim of the hard-swung fist I’d witnessed, and now avenged.

The other soldiers stood, undecided. One, then another turned as if to slink away.

“Hold!” I barked, and the girl flinched in my hands. “The first man to leave, dies!”

There was a movement on my right.

I ran my arm around the girl, drawing her hard in against me to prevent her collapse: the pistol was in my grip again, then I thrust it back into its leathern home.

A little boy came hesitantly out of the brush.

“Boy,” I said, not unkindly, “did you see what happened here?”

The boy took off his hat, worrying its frayed brim between his hands, and he nodded.

He opened his mouth, then swallowed and tried again, and spoke in the high, piping voice of a child.

“Mister,” he asked, “are you gonna rape my sister too?”