Seven hardened killers stood in the blinding midday sun, their rifles trained on a solitary dust-covered stranger.
The heat shimmered off the parched ground like a fever dream, warping the distant horizon into hazy illusions of water that would never quench the thirst of this godforsaken land.
Drop it, boy, their leader spat, his voice echoing across the dead silence of the prairie like the crack of a whip.
But the legend was true.
The Nameless Drifter never dropped his iron.
He just pulled the trigger.
The year was 1882, and the town of Dusk Creek, Texas, was a place where hope had long since evaporated, leaving behind only cracked earth, weathered buildings leaning like tired old men, and souls who had forgotten how to pray.
The relentless sun beat down on the main street like a blacksmith’s hammer on an anvil, warping the air above the dry dirt into shimmering mirages that danced mockingly before the eyes of anyone foolish enough to linger outdoors.
It was a Tuesday afternoon, oppressively quiet, the kind of stillness that pressed down on your chest and made every creak of wood or whisper of wind feel like an omen.
That was when the riders came.
There were seven of them riding abreast, a phalanx of leather, sweat, and cold steel that moved with the predatory confidence of men who had cheated death more times than they could count.
At their center rode Gideon Miller, a man whose reputation was written in the jagged scars that cross-crossed his cheek like a roadmap of violence and the tally marks carved deep into the walnut grip of his Winchester ’73.
Gideon wasn’t just a bounty hunter.
He was a harvester of human lives, a grim reaper in a duster coat who left nothing but widows and unmarked graves in his wake.
Alongside him rode his regular associates—men whose names struck fear from the Kansas border all the way down to the Yuma territorial prison.
Emmett Cole, the twitchy, wiry gunslinger with lightning-fast hands and a nervous laugh that preceded every kill.
Wade Granger, a massive brute of a man with a black patch over his left eye and a double-barreled shotgun that had ended more arguments than any judge.
Jebidiah Stone, cold and calculating, always the one to take the high ground.
Harlon Brooks, hatchet-faced and cruel, preferring to kill from the shadows.
Tobias Hayes, sharp-eyed and relentless.
And Wyatt Reed, the youngest, still trying to prove his worth with trembling hands and false bravado.
They were not lawmen.
They were opportunists, authorized by the state to do the bloody work that men with shiny badges found too distasteful for their delicate sensibilities.
Recently, they had collected the reward on the infamous Miller brothers up in Abilene, and rumor had it they had left the outlaws’ bodies burning in a barn rather than haul them back to a magistrate.
The scent of charred flesh still clung to their clothes in the minds of those who whispered about it in saloons across the territory.
The seven men reined in their horses outside the Broken Spur, Dusk Creek’s only operational saloon.
The creak of their saddle leather and the jingle of their silver spurs were the only sounds piercing the suffocating silence.
Inside the saloon, Mayor Ezekiel Pratt, who also served as the town’s undertaker, quietly set his whiskey glass down on the scarred wooden table and retreated toward the back door, his face pale as fresh linen.
Amos, the balding bartender with sweat beading on his forehead, grabbed a dirty rag and began furiously wiping down the mahogany bar, his hands trembling so badly he nearly knocked over a bottle.
He had seen killers before, but seven of them moving with such coordinated predatory grace meant only one thing: someone in his establishment was about to die.
The swinging doors groaned on their rusted hinges as Gideon pushed his way inside, followed closely by Wade Granger and the twitchy Emmett Cole.
The remaining four men fanned out with military precision—two securing the dusty boardwalk outside, two taking positions near the saloon’s shattered front windows.
They operated like a pack that had hunted together through countless blood-soaked nights.
“Amos,” Gideon rumbled, his voice like grinding stones in a mill.
He stepped up to the bar, bringing with him the sharp stench of unwashed bodies, gun oil, and the metallic tang of old blood.
“Whiskey.
Leave the bottle.”
Amos obliged, his hands shaking so violently that the bottle clinked loudly against the dirty glass he set down.
“What brings you boys to Dusk Creek, Gideon?
Ain’t much out here but dirt and bad memories.”
Gideon poured a measure and downed it in a single violent gulp, slamming the glass down hard enough to make the bar jump.
“Looking for a stray calf, Amos.
A boy with a $5,000 price tag stamped on his head by Governor Wallace himself.
Wanted dead or alive for a train robbery down near the Pecos River.”
He pulled a crumpled, sweat-stained wanted poster from his duster pocket and slapped it onto the wet wood.
The drawing was crude, depicting a young man with a wide-brimmed hat pulled low over his eyes, a heavy woolen poncho, and a distinct lack of identifying features.
No name was listed.
The bold letters simply read: WANTED: THE LONE DRIFTER.
$5,000 REWARD.
“He’s a ghost,” Wade Granger sneered, his lone eye scanning the dimly lit room like a predator searching for weakness.
“But ghosts don’t leave tracks in the mud, and they sure as hell don’t bleed when you graze them.”
In the darkest corner of the saloon, half-hidden by the shadows of the staircase, sat a solitary figure.
He had been there for three long hours, nursing a single lukewarm beer that had gone flat.
A wide-brimmed Stetson was pulled low over his face, obscuring his features.
A heavy, worn woolen poncho draped over his shoulders, concealing his arms and waist.
He didn’t look like a legendary train robber.
He looked slight, tired, and remarkably young—barely more than a boy in the eyes of hardened men.
Tobias Hayes, standing near the window, was the first to notice him.
He nudged Emmett Cole, jutting his chin toward the corner.
Emmett’s hand drifted instinctively toward the butt of his cold single-action Army revolver.
The saloon plunged into an agonizing stillness.
The rhythmic ticking of the grandfather clock behind the bar suddenly sounded like a gavel striking a judge’s block.
The air grew thick and heavy with the metallic tang of impending violence.
Gideon Miller slowly turned his back to the bar, his hand resting casually on his hip.
He looked at the solitary figure in the shadows, then back down to the crude drawing on the wanted poster.
A slow, cruel smile split his scarred face.
“Well, boys,” Gideon whispered, the malice dripping from every syllable, “looks like today is payday and we don’t even have to ride out into the sun to collect.”
Gideon took a slow, deliberate step toward the corner.
The floorboards shrieked under his heavy boots like living things in pain.
Wade Granger moved to his left, sliding a double-barreled shotgun from under his long coat with a ominous click.
Emmett Cole moved to the right, cutting off the escape route to the back door.
Outside, the remaining hunters gathered at the saloon doors, boxing the stranger in completely.
Seven pairs of eyes locked onto the solitary figure.
Seven hardened killers, fresh from a string of successful bloody bounties, against one exhausted-looking boy.
“You’re a long way from the Pecos, kid,” Gideon called out.
His voice was casual, almost friendly—the way a butcher speaks to a lamb before the blade falls.
The boy didn’t move.
He kept his head bowed, the brim of his hat hiding his eyes.
His hands remained hidden beneath the heavy fabric of his poncho.
The silence stretched, unnerving even these veterans of death.
“I hear you’re fast,” Gideon continued, closing the distance to within ten paces.
“I hear you shot two Pinkerton men in Waco and rode off before their bodies hit the dirt.
That’s a mighty tall tale for a boy who don’t look old enough to shave.”
Still no response.
The silence was unnerving.
Amos had long since dropped below the bar, curling into a tight ball behind the counter, praying to any god that would listen.
“Now I’m a reasonable man,” Gideon said, stopping in the center of the room.
He unhooked the leather thong securing his revolver in its holster.
“You come quietly.
Maybe I tell the magistrate you were cooperative.
Maybe you avoid the hangman’s noose and just rot in a cell for fifty years.
You try to play hero and I let Wade here paint this fine establishment with your insides.
It’s your call.”
Wade Granger cocked both hammers of his shotgun.
The loud click-clack echoed like thunder in the confined space.
Emmett Cole drew his revolver, aiming it squarely at the boy’s chest.
“Drop it, boy,” Gideon demanded, his tone dropping its false friendliness and hardening into a lethal command.
“Whatever iron you’re clutching under that rug, let it go.
Move slow.
I want to see your hands.”
For a long, agonizing moment, nothing happened.
The tension coiled tighter than a spring in a trap.
Then a voice drifted from the shadows.
It was quiet, calm, and chillingly steady.
It lacked the tremor of fear that Gideon was so accustomed to hearing.
“You’re making a mistake, Gideon.”
Gideon’s brow furrowed.
“How do you know my name, boy?”
“I know all your names,” the stranger replied slowly, lifting his head.
The afternoon sunlight caught his eyes.
They were pale, flat, and devoid of any emotion.
They were the eyes of a man who had stared into the abyss and found it boring.
“Gideon Miller, Wade Granger, Emmett Cole.
I know about the barn in Abilene.
I know about the stagecoach you liberated in Fort Worth.
And I know about the little homestead down in Sonora.”
Gideon’s blood ran cold.
The Sonora homestead was a job they had taken off the books—a brutal dispute over water rights.
They had been paid handsomely by a local cattle baron to ensure the family living there never bothered him again.
There were no survivors.
There wasn’t supposed to be anyone alive who knew about it.
“Who the hell are you?”
Wade Granger barked, his finger tightening dangerously on the triggers of his shotgun.
“I’m the man who printed the poster,” the boy said softly.
The words hung in the air, confusing the bounty hunters.
“What poster?”
Emmett Cole stammered, glancing nervously between Gideon and the boy.
“The one in your pocket, Gideon,” the gunslinger replied.
There was no train robbery on the Pecos.
Governor Wallace never issued a bounty on a lone drifter.
I paid a printing press in Dallas $20 to make a hundred of those flyers and scatter them across the saloons you frequent.”
Gideon’s mind raced, trying to process the twist.
The prey hadn’t been cornered.
The predators had been lured into a cage.
“You’re telling me you put a $5,000 bounty on your own head just to get us here?
Why?”
“Because,” the nameless gunslinger said, shifting his weight ever so slightly in the wooden chair, “the Pinkerton agency put a $10,000 bounty on your gang for the Sonora massacre.
Dead only.
But I didn’t want to chase you across four states.
I figured greed would bring you straight to me.”
“You arrogant little fool,” Gideon spat, realizing the boy was alone.
“You brought us here—seven of us.
You’re outmanned, outgunned, and cornered.
You’ve signed your own death warrant.
Drop it, boy.”
Wade Granger screamed, his patience gone.
“I’m blowing him to hell!”
“Seven men,” the boy murmured almost to himself.
“That’s right,” Gideon snarled, his hand gripping the butt of his revolver.
“And you only have two hands.”
“I don’t need two.”
The explosion of violence was so sudden it defied human comprehension.
Gideon Miller was a veteran gunfighter, a man who had survived a dozen quick-draw duels.
He moved fast, but the boy moved like lightning striking the earth.
The heavy poncho didn’t hinder him—it had concealed his coiled posture.
He wasn’t sitting relaxed.
He was ready.
In a fraction of a second, the boy’s right hand whipped out from beneath the wool.
He didn’t draw from a traditional hip holster.
He had a custom-rigged shoulder harness.
Before Gideon’s revolver even cleared leather, a deafening crack shattered the saloon’s heavy silence.
Gideon Miller’s eyes went wide as a heavy lead slug caught him squarely in the center of his chest, right through the silver star on his vest.
The force of the blow lifted the massive bounty hunter off his feet, throwing him backward onto a poker table, scattering cards and chips in a chaotic shower.
Blood sprayed across the green felt as he gasped his final breath.
Wade Granger roared, pulling the triggers on his shotgun, but the boy had already shifted.
He kicked the wooden table upward, the heavy oak absorbing the brunt of the buckshot.
Wood splinters exploded into the air like shrapnel.
Mid-kick, the boy cocked the hammer of his Colt with his thumb and fired blindly through the splintering wood.
Wade dropped the shotgun, clutching his throat as a crimson blossom erupted from his neck.
He gurgled horribly, collapsing onto the sawdust-covered floor in a widening pool of blood.
Emmett Cole fired wildly, his bullet shattering the mirror behind the bar and raining glass down on the cowering bartender.
The boy dropped into a crouch, fanning the hammer of his revolver with the palm of his left hand.
Two rapid shots roared out.
Emmett’s gun flew from his hand as the first bullet shattered his wrist.
The second took him in the shoulder, spinning him like a top before he crashed into the piano with a discordant crash of keys.
In less than three seconds, the leader was dead, the enforcer was bleeding out, and the twitchy gunman was incapacitated.
The Nameless Drifter stood up from the wreckage, the barrel of his Colt smoking in the dim light.
Outside, the remaining four bounty hunters—Jebidiah, Harlon, Tobias, and Wyatt—heard the chaos.
They kicked the swinging doors open, rifles raised, stepping into a saloon choked with gunsmoke and the smell of death.
Through the haze, the boy stood perfectly still, his eyes cold, his weapon reloaded with mechanical precision.
The standoff wasn’t over.
It had only just begun.
The heavy oak doors of the Broken Spur slammed against the outer walls, their rusted hinges screaming in protest as the four remaining bounty hunters breached the entrance.
Jebidiah Stone, Harlon Brooks, Tobias Hayes, and Wyatt Reed stepped into a nightmare.
The familiar, comforting scent of cheap whiskey and stale tobacco had been completely erased, replaced by the suffocating acrid stench of black powder and fresh blood.
Thick gray smoke hung in the air like a localized fog, catching the sharp rays of the afternoon sun filtering through the shattered front windows.
Through the haze, they saw Gideon Miller sprawled backward across a poker table, his lifeless eyes staring a hole into the tin ceiling.
Wade Granger lay twitching in a pool of dark crimson, clutching his shattered throat.
Emmett Cole groaned near the splintered remains of the piano, his gun hand obliterated.
It had taken less than five seconds for their invincible gang to be cut in half.
The Nameless Drifter, the boy they had come to slaughter for an easy payday, was nowhere to be seen in the immediate line of fire.
He had vanished into the shifting shadows and dense smoke near the back of the room.
“Spread out!
Find him!”
Jebidiah roared, his voice cracking with a mixture of raw fury and creeping terror.
He pumped the lever of his Winchester, the mechanical clatter echoing loudly.
“He’s just one pup.
He can’t reload fast enough to take us all.”
But the boy had not retreated to reload.
He had repositioned.
Training under the legendary frontier detective Charlie Siringo, one of William A.
Pinkerton’s most ruthless and effective operatives, had taught him that survival in a gunfight was rarely about who shot the fastest.
It was about who controlled the angles, who used the environment, and who kept a cool head when others panicked.
Harlon Brooks, a cruel, hatchet-faced man who preferred killing from ambush, slinked toward the long mahogany bar.
He kept his rifle shouldered, his eyes darting toward the darkest corners.
Under the bar, the terrified bartender Amos whimpered quietly, clutching a bottle of rye like a makeshift shield.
Harlon ignored him, his boots crunching on the glass from the shattered mirror.
“Come out, you little coward,” Harlon hissed, kicking over a wooden stool.
A heavy glass whiskey bottle suddenly sailed out from the shadows near the stairwell, arcing high over the room.
It smashed against the wall just above Harlon’s head, raining amber liquid and glass shards down upon him.
Harlon flinched instinctively, turning his rifle toward the distraction.
It was a fatal error.
The boy stepped smoothly from behind a structural support pillar on the opposite side of the room.
He didn’t shout.
He didn’t rush.
He simply extended his right arm, the barrel of his Colt Single Action Army leveling perfectly with Harlon’s temple.
The gunshot cracked like a whip.
Harlon’s head snapped sideways violently, his hat flying across the room as he crumpled to the sawdust-covered floor, dead before his knees hit the ground.
Nearby by the stairs, Tobias Hayes screamed wildly, fanning his revolver in the boy’s direction.
Lead slugs chewed into the wooden pillar, sending a shower of splinters into the air.
The boy dropped low, diving behind an overturned card table.
Bullets thumped heavily against the thick oak top.
Tobias, driven by blind panic, emptied his six-shooter.
The click-click-click of his hammer hitting empty chambers cut through the ringing in their ears.
“I’m dry!
Cover me!”
Tobias yelled frantically, fumbling with his gun belt to retrieve fresh cartridges, dropping several shiny brass ones onto the blood-slick floor with trembling fingers.
Wyatt Reed, the youngest, raised his double-barreled shotgun, aiming at the overturned table.
“I got him!
I got him pinned!”
Wyatt shouted, his hands shaking violently.
But the nameless gunslinger wasn’t pinned.
He was calculating.
As Tobias struggled to reload, the boy reached into his coat and withdrew a second revolver, a shorter, stubbier Smith & Wesson Schofield.
He shoved the table forward with his boots, sliding it across the slick, bloodstained floor.
Wyatt fired, the blast of buckshot obliterating the top of the moving table but completely missing the boy, who had rolled in the opposite direction.
Rising to one knee, the drifter leveled the Schofield and fired twice.
The first bullet struck Wyatt in the thigh, shattering the bone and sending him crashing into the wall with a howl of agony.
The second bullet tore through Tobias’s chest just as he finally managed to snap the loading gate of his revolver shut.
Tobias gasped, his eyes wide with shock, before collapsing backward over a brass spittoon.
Wyatt, screaming in agony and clutching his ruined leg, dropped his shotgun.
The fight had drained out of him, replaced by raw primal terror.
He looked at the boy who was calmly standing up, the smoke swirling around his woolen poncho like a phantom shroud.
“Please,” Wyatt begged, blood pooling rapidly beneath him.
“Please, I didn’t shoot nobody in Sonora.
That was Gideon and Jebidiah.
I just held the horses.
I swear to God.”
The boy walked slowly toward Wyatt, his boots making a heavy rhythmic sound on the wooden floorboards.
He looked down at the sobbing bounty hunter.
“A man who holds the horses for murderers is just a murderer who doesn’t like to get his hands dirty,” the boy stated, his voice devoid of sympathy.
Before Wyatt could plead further, a deafening roar erupted from the balcony above.
Jebidiah Stone had used the chaos to silently slip up the back staircase.
He stood near the railing, his Winchester aimed directly at the boy’s back.
The bullet struck the drifter high on the left shoulder, tearing through the heavy poncho and spinning him around.
The boy grunted in pain, staggering backward as his Schofield clattered to the floor.
“Got you, you little bastard!”
Jebidiah howled triumphantly, racking the lever of his rifle for a second shot.
Despite the sudden searing pain radiating down his arm, the boy didn’t panic.
He fell backward, deliberately collapsing behind the thick wooden frame of the saloon’s upright piano.
Jebidiah’s second shot splintered the ivory keys, producing a jarring, discordant musical crash that echoed through the room like a dying man’s scream.
“You’re done, kid!”
Jebidiah taunted, slowly descending the staircase, keeping his rifle trained on the piano.
“You took out my crew, but you ain’t walking out of Dusk Creek alive.
I’m going to take my time with you.
I’m going to make you regret printing those damn posters.”
The boy gritted his teeth, pressing a hand against his bleeding shoulder.
He checked the cylinder of his Colt.
Two rounds left.
He was outgunned, wounded, and cornered.
The air tasted of copper and sulfur.
He needed a distraction.
He glanced at Emmett Cole, who was still slumped nearby, unconscious and bleeding out.
Emmett’s dropped revolver lay just a few feet away in the open.
“You hear me, boy?”
Jebidiah sneered, his boots hitting the main floor.
He was moving cautiously, methodically.
“I’m going to mount your head on the front of my saddle.”
The boy took a deep breath.
With his uninjured right arm, he scooped up a heavy brass candelabra that had fallen from the piano.
He hurled it to the left toward the broken front windows.
Jebidiah snapped his rifle toward the movement and fired, blasting the candelabra out of the air in a spray of molten wax and metal.
In that split second, the boy lunged to the right, sliding across the blood-slicked floorboards.
He grabbed Emmett’s discarded revolver with his left hand, ignoring the agonizing flare of pain in his wounded shoulder.
He didn’t bother trying to aim properly.
He just pointed and pulled the trigger.
The shot caught Jebidiah in the hip.
The bounty hunter roared in pain, his leg buckling beneath him.
He crashed to his knees, his rifle firing wildly into the ceiling, sending plaster dust raining down.
The boy pushed himself up, stepping out from behind the piano.
He walked toward the fallen bounty hunter, his primary Colt raised and steady, the hammer pulled back.
Jebidiah glared up at him, panting heavily, blood soaking through his denim trousers.
He dropped the empty rifle and raised his hands in a mocking gesture of surrender.
“All right, kid.
You win.
You got us.
But you’re a fool if you think killing me ends this.”
The boy stopped a few feet away, the smoking barrel of his Colt aimed dead center at Jebidiah’s forehead.
The saloon was finally quiet, save for the ragged breathing of the dying men and the distant terrified shouting of townspeople gathering outside.
“The Pinkertons will pay the bounty,” the boy said coldly.
“That ends it well enough for me.”
Jebidiah laughed—a wet, hacking sound that sprayed blood over his lips.
“You really are a naive little pup, ain’t you?
You think this was just about a cattle baron and Sonora?
You think Gideon Miller took orders from some dusty cowpuncher?”
The boy’s pale eyes narrowed.
“Speak.”
“We didn’t just wipe out that homestead for water rights,” Jebidiah sneered, clutching his bleeding hip.
“There was a man hiding there.
A former government clerk who ran off with a ledger.
A ledger containing the names of corrupt judges, politicians, and rail tycoons, all taking kickbacks from the Union Pacific.
We were hired to burn the house down, kill everyone inside, and retrieve that book.”
The boy’s grip on his revolver tightened.
The massacre in Sonora had haunted him.
Charlie Siringo had sent him to investigate the aftermath, and the sheer brutality of the crime scene—charred bodies, bullet-riddled walls, the cries of the dying that still echoed in his nightmares—had sickened even the most hardened Pinkerton agents.
But this new information changed everything.
“Who hired you?”
The boy demanded, stepping closer.
Jebidiah grinned, his teeth stained red.
“You think you’re fighting the wolves, kid, but you’re working for the very man who holds our leashes.
The man who paid us to burn that family alive was William A.
Pinkerton himself.”
The silence that followed was heavier than the gunsmoke.
The boy stared down at Jebidiah, his mind racing.
If the bounty hunter was telling the truth, the entire foundation of his mission, his very allegiance, was built on a monumental lie.
The agency that had trained him, the men who had paid him to hunt down these killers, were the ones pulling the strings all along.
It was a perfect cleanup job.
“You’re lying,” the boy said softly, though a sliver of doubt crept into his steady voice.
“Am I?”
Jebidiah coughed, his breathing growing shallower.
“Look in Gideon’s coat pocket—the inside breast pocket.
He kept the telegraph receipt, the payment authorization signed with the agency cipher.
Go on, look.”
The boy didn’t take his eyes off Jebidiah.
He backed up slowly, keeping his gun leveled until he reached Gideon’s lifeless body.
Without looking away, he reached down, his fingers brushing past shattered glass and sticky blood, and dug into the dead man’s coat pocket.
His fingers closed around a folded piece of heavy parchment.
He pulled it out and flicked it open with one hand.
It was a standard telegraph transfer receipt from a bank in Chicago.
The sum was staggering, but it was the signature at the bottom that made the boy’s blood run cold.
It was a series of numbers and letters, a cipher he had been taught to read during his first week in the Pinkerton barracks.
It unmistakably translated to the direct executive office of the agency.
Jebidiah let out a triumphant gurgling laugh.
“See?
You’re just a dog chasing its own tail, boy.
They used us and now they’re using you.
You turn that bounty in, you’ll be the next one sleeping in the dirt.
You kill me, you’re just doing their dirty work for free.”
The boy stared at the bloodstained paper.
He thought of the charred remains of the homestead in Sonora.
He thought of the innocent family caught in the crossfire of corporate greed and agency corruption.
The line between the lawmen and the outlaws hadn’t just blurred.
It had completely vanished.
“So, what’s it going to be, kid?”
Jebidiah wheezed, his strength failing.
“You going to be a good little dog and shoot me, or are you going to wake up and realize we’re on the same side of this rigged game?”
The boy slowly folded the telegraph receipt and tucked it securely into his own pocket.
He looked at Jebidiah, his pale eyes entirely hollow, stripped of whatever remaining innocence they might have held an hour ago.
“We aren’t on the same side,” the boy said quietly.
He raised his Colt.
Jebidiah’s eyes widened in sudden desperate terror.
“Wait, I can help you.
We can go after them toge—”
The gunshot cut him off, echoing through the shattered saloon.
Jebidiah collapsed forward, dead.
The boy stood in the profound silence of the Broken Spur.
Seven of the most feared killers in the West lay dead or dying around him.
He holstered his smoking revolver and winced as the adrenaline began to fade, allowing the burning pain of his wounded shoulder to crash over him like a wave.
He walked over to the bar.
Amos, the bartender, was still curled in a fetal position underneath it, trembling so violently he was vibrating against the wood.
The boy reached into his coat and pulled out a thick leather pouch.
He tossed it onto the bar where it landed with a heavy metallic clinking sound.
It was the $200 he had brought for travel expenses.
“For the damages,” the boy said, his voice flat.
Amos slowly peeked over the edge of the bar, his eyes darting frantically from the gold coins to the carnage filling his establishment and finally to the nameless drifter.
“Who?
Who in God’s name are you?”
The bartender stammered.
The boy adjusted his woolen poncho, pulling it carefully over his bleeding shoulder.
He stepped over the body of Harlon Brooks and pushed open the shattered swinging doors, stepping out into the blinding, unforgiving glare of the Texas sun.
“I’m the man who’s going to Chicago,” he replied, and vanished into the dust.
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