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across a boulder. Blood bibbed the man’s vest and pin-striped, collarless shirt, even staining the gold pocket watch dangling just above the ground from the dead man’s vest pocket. It completely covered the copper badge attached to the vest, so that Cuno, keeping an eye skinned on the terrain around him, in case the shooter was still around, had to lean down to make out the words TOWN CONSTABLE etched across spread eagle wings, with BUFFALO FLATS written across the furled flag upon which the eagle was perched.
    He also had to look close to see the two, quarter-sized holes in the man’s upper chest, spaced about six inches apart in a straight line. Dead, no doubt, before he’d hit the ground.
    Cuno straightened and looked around carefully. A vinegar dun cropped bluestem a ways down the hill and off the trail’s right side, near the cottonwoods lining the stream. Aside from the horse, there was no other movement.
    The man had only been dead a half hour or so, but it appeared the killer or killers were gone. Inspecting the two-track trail, he saw that a half dozen or so riders had passed recently, as had an iron-shod, wide-wheeled wagon.
    Probably the jail wagon.
    He looked around again, then let his gaze fall back upon the dead lawman. Perplexity needled him, and his inner voice began to whisper. Stop thinking, it told him. Your business—your only business—is in Crow Feather.
    Cuno turned away from the dead man and stepped into his saddle. He had no time to waste. He had to get that contract secured before someone else beat him to it. Western military outposts offered only a couple of contracts each year, and if the bid was right, they were usually awarded on a first-come, first-served basis.
    But he couldn’t leave the man draped over the boulder for the scavengers.
    He rode too quickly out to where the vinegar dun grazed. The horse spooked, jogged off downstream a good hundred yards, nickering and fiddle-footing and stepping on its reins, before Cuno finally got it cornered in a thick stand of willows and poplars.
    Grabbing the dun’s reins, he led the still-nickering horse back to its dead rider. Neither Renegade nor the dun cottoned to the smell of fresh blood, so Cuno had to tie both horses to separate pines along the trail.
    Wrapping the constable’s blanket roll around the body, Cuno back-and-bellied him over his saddle, and tied his wrists to his ankles beneath the horse’s belly. When he’d draped the man’s hat, which he found along the trail, over the saddle horn, he aimed the horse back toward town, then slapped his hip with the flat of his hand.
    The horse whinnied and, shaking its head at the blood smell, galloped buck-kicking down the trail and around the bend behind the darkening pines. The hooves’ drumming dwindled quickly beneath the stream’s incessant murmur.
    Cuno sleeved sweat off his forehead and looked around the slopes and the streambed once more. He walked over to where Renegade stood tied to the pine, swishing his tail. A late breeze had lifted, blowing the silky clay-colored mane. The skewbald paint regarded Cuno expectantly over its shoulder.
    “What do you say we try this again, fella?” Cuno said, grabbing the reins and swinging up into the saddle.
    He backed the horse onto the trail and urged it downstream. Renegade nickered as he lengthened his stride down the long, gradual hill cloaked in shadows angling out from the ridge and turned at the bottom around a cedar-clad scarp. As horse and rider progressed down the long, narrow valley, following the twisting course of Buffalo Creek, the light faded and the breeze gained a chill, late-summer edge.
    Wanting to keep pushing—he’d stop only when he could no longer see the trail, in another hour or so—Cuno reached behind his saddle and fished his red-and-black mackinaw out from under his bedroll. Wrapping his reins around the horn, he shrugged into the coat and, raising the collar, put Renegade into a ground-eating lope across