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can get himself.”
    â€œYou don’t need to explain nothing to me,” I said.
    â€œI know I don’t.”
    Then we stood there waiting for the train to shudder to a stop.

Chapter Five
    T he Cap’n slept on and off as the train rolled through countryside that was mostly tan hills shaped like the crowns of sombreros, and laced with ocotillo that glittered in the sun like the white of an old man’s hair. The red country turned to brown and the creek beds and washes we crossed were mostly dry, strewn with rocks and boulders—here and there thin streams of water laced down through the sandy draws.
    Once I saw a herd of antelope way off in the distance grazing contently, their tails swishing the flies.
    The Cap’n would wake every now and then and say, “Where are we, Jim?” And I would guess and he’d nod and then close his eyes again, and I thought, You must be plum wore out, Gus, go ahead and sleep in peace while you can .
    His coat was parted open and I saw the familiar pearl grips of his Smith & Wesson Russian model—something he’d always carried ever since I’ve known him. It was a .44 caliber that had seen its fair share of work. I knew because I’d seen it in action up close and personal on more than one occasion. The Cap’n was a dead shot even under fire. I asked him about that, how he never missed.
    He said, “You just can’t think about it, you just aim and shoot what you’re aiming at. You start thinking, you’re probably going to hesitate, and that can be a fatal mistake in a gunfight.” He proved his point that time in Caddo when we ran this half-breed gang to ground. We’d been dogging their trail for weeks over some robberies and killings they had committed in the Panhandle. Our party of Rangers took them on in a last stand they’d made there in that little town, and we killed five of them and they two of us.
    We thought we’d killed them all, and while the Cap’n went to send a wire to our headquarters in Fort Griffen that the Juarez Gang was no longer, the rest of our party licked its wounds and set about burying our dead. Then when that was complete, we allowed as to how we needed to rest our horses a day or so before starting home. I took the opportunity to go into the town and get myself a haircut and shave.
    It was while I was there in the barber’s chair with a hot towel on my face I felt something small and hard suddenly pressed against my temple and the stink of bad breath. I heard the hammer of a pistol being thumbed back, accompanied by a rough Spanish voice saying, “ Señor , usted mata a algunos de nosotros, nosotros mata a alga de usted , eh? ”
    I’d learned enough Spanish to understand he was telling me it was my turn to die, to more or less even the score for the ones we’d killed of his. I peeked up through the towel and saw it was old Vaca Juarez—a half Apache, half Mexican—himself standing there, short and heavyset like a man who ate too much beans and fried bread. With him was a rough-looking character of about the same stumpy stature, holding a Walker Colt the size of a small cannon. Cross-eyed little bastard with a wispy mustache and whiskers looked like they were made out of black silk threads sewn into his upper lip and chin.
    I eased the towel from my face and saw the barber standing there holding his straight razor down along his leg, looking about as fearful as I was beginning to feel. You always think you’re ready to die when the time comes. But the simple truth is, you never are when it actually comes. You could be eighty years old and bullet shot and still not ready. I was still relatively young at forty-five and in pretty good health, and sure as hell not ready to cash in my hand.
    I saw the bottles of shave lotion and talc sitting on the shelf in front of the mirror, saw my reflection and that of the three men standing—the barber and the