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hand-picked saints.”
    “I ain’t worried.” Ian shrugged. “I carry a six-shooter.”
    “If you’re bound and determined to stay here for the next stage, not much I can do but warn you. At least you’ll see a smiling face when you go out. Superintendent Peyton always smiles when he passes judgment.”
    “If you feel the need to fortify your courage, son,” Mr. Bain said, “drinks are on the house over at my place, if you don’t mind drinking in the company of women.”
    Behind Bain, Ian could see the soft oval of Gabriella’s face harden into disapproval.
    “I appreciate your offer, Mr. Bain, but I done took the temperance oath.”
    Gabriella stepped forward. “Ian, don’t listen to these calamity howlers and tempters. You’re safe, at least till Tuesday. Mr. Peyton won’t get to his father’s place before midnight, and Mormons don’t work on Sunday. Then they won’t meet till Monday to take a vote. You come in here with me and wash that blood off your hands.”
    “Woe, woe unto Shoshone Flats,” Mr. Bernbaum intoned. “It is written, selah. Sodom shall be destroyed and with it all the Sodomites.”
    Ian let himself be led into the restaurant. As she added more water to the kettle on the stove, Gabriella said, “Ian, using your own bandanna to stance Mr. Peyton’s blood was a magnanimous act.”
    “I hope ‘magnanimous’ means something nice, Gabriella.”
    “It does. Magnanimity was the old Roman ideal of behavior. A magnanimous man treats friend or foe with equal compassion. Besides, the way those people were talking, you’d think the Mormons were a bunch of scalawags. They just have the wrong religion, that’s all. Of course, Mr. Bryce Peyton hears voices, but, from all I hear, they’re reasonable voices. He says they’re his angels and he may be right. If the committee decides to hang you, it’ll be justice by their lights, and you’ll have the satisfaction of knowing you died legally under their law.”
    She was wrong, he thought, about his magnanimity. Something happened to his head when he took that tumble in the stagecoach. The old Johnny Loco would have killed his best friend over a girl, but Ian McCloud had let a stranger off with nothing more than a nipped finger. When he winged the Mormon, he had not been himself.
    “Gabriella,” he said, as she fetched a washbasin, “seeing as how your escort won’t be able to make it to church tomorrow, I’d be right proud if you’d let me rent a rig and drive you to the meeting.”
    “Why, Ian, I’d be pleased and honored,” she answered, blushing at the spontaneity of her reply. “You come out and have breakfast with mama and me. I’ll tell you how to get there, but if you should get lost, anyone in the valley can tell you how to get to Widow Stewart’s chicken ranch.”
    “I’ll be there, ma’am washed and shaved.”
    Something was definitely wrong with his head, he decided. If he had wanted a woman, he should not have waved Bain away when the saloon keeper came piling out of the barroom with four prime, crib-gnawing females already broke and gentled. So why, he wondered, was he planning to wash, shave, and hire a rig for a girl a man would have to court a week before holding her hand?
    Ian had lost the answer long ago, in the whine of minié balls and the gut thrusts of bayonets. Violence had borne his gentleness away, but the being within, judging the man with abstract compassion, held him blameless. Ian could relearn gentleness, and the girl with the enigmatic name and delightful lilt to her breasts would be the outlaw’s teacher.
    With the immaculate honesty of its kind, G-7 admitted to itself that Ian’s hormones, reinforcing its ancestral ardor, had led it to choose the girl, but in the matter of Gabriella Stewart, it and its host were functioning as a single entity.

3
    From his second floor room in Taylor’s Hotel, Ian watched the shadows of the Tetons stretch eastward across the valley and fade into night as he