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trousers that were a few inches too short and a pair of rough brown brogans.
    He reached in his pocket and took out his makings and extended them to me, and I thanked him and rolled myself a shuck, then handed his makings back. He handed me a match, and I struck it off the side of the car and cupped the flame in my hands to light my smoke, then snapped out the match and flipped it away. I never smoked before I met Luz. She’s the one got me into the habit, just watching her smoke there in the evenings out on the porch of my place after supper. I liked the smell of it and I had her roll me a shuck, and after the first few draws I got used to it. She’s the only woman I ever knew who smoked cigarettes and looked good doing it.
    The porter and me stood there smoking with the rocking of the car beneath our feet, not saying anything because we were of two different worlds, the porter and I, but maybe not so different than a lot of people might think. I’m sure, like me, the man had seen his share of troubles andheartache. And I’m sure, like me, all he mostly wanted was a decent life, a steady job, and to live in peace.
    â€œYou like horses?” I said.
    He smiled broadly.
    â€œI used to ride ’em in the army,” he said. “I was a buffalo soldier with the Ninth. Fought the Comanche, the Apache and Kiowa too. All over Texas mostly.” He had a wistfulness about it when he spoke of it. He took off his cap and rubbed his shaved head.
    â€œThe Indians gave us the name because they said our hair reminded them of the buffaloes. I always kept mine shaved because I figured if they ever killed me I didn’t want them to hang my scalp from their belts.” The corners of his eyes crinkled when he smiled.
    â€œWe got that in common,” I said, thinking aloud about how in my early years as a Ranger we fought some of those same peoples at places like Adobe Walls and Palo Duro Canyon.
    â€œHuh?” he said.
    â€œNothing,” I said. “Just talking to myself.”
    â€œIt ain’t no problem,” he said. “I best get back on inside.”
    I nodded and watched him take one last precious draw from his shuck, then grind it down under his shoe heel.
    Light lay along the twin ribbons of steel tracksthat ran like two thin rivers behind the train. The smell of hot cinder rose from the track bed as a black erratic cloud of engine smoke floated lazily overhead. I thought of the thousands of Chinese that laid these tracks in their cotton pajamas and coolie hats, their backs bent to the task, how they must have squatted in the shade of their own making for lunch and the few daily breaks from the onerous work and chatted in their own language about their faraway homeland, wondering no doubt if they’d made a mistake coming here to this wild and endless frontier. I guess in some ways they were like that black porter; designated to their lot in life by the color of their skin and nothing else. Just men trying to make it from one day to the next while waiting for something impossible to happen that would change their circumstances, like a man who waits for love or money or God.
    I went back in and sat across from the Cap’n. A woman in a dark blue gingham dress sat across the aisle from us reading a small book with red leather covers, her feathered hat resting on the empty seat beside her. She glanced up when I came and took my seat, and our eyes met, and she smiled and I returned the smile, then she returned to reading.
    We rode on through the day and into evening, into the darkening land that lay ahead of us anddescended behind us. We rode on like two errant knights off to slay the dragon—only the dragon was a kid named Billy, son of the Cap’n’s daughter who always made poor choices when it came to men.

Chapter Six
    W e stepped off the train in Tucson at around noon the following day. It looked ramshackle, like a bandito hideout. Up the street a group of men were