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strained whisper.
    “You need to stop talking.”
    “We should friend each other.”
    “Hush!”
    A sliver of yellow moon emerged from behind the clouds. Nearby an owl hooted. I kept my eyes fixed on the trailhead, refusing to look to my left even as I heard the sound of Annie shuffling in my direction. Gradually I became aware of her warmth next to me. In school I almost never stood this close to a girl. In the cafeteria line, sometimes, but this was different. I found myself listening to her breathing, watching her heated breaths congealing into fists of gray mist as the cool air settled upon us. I still wasn’t sure how she’d known I would be at Boot Hill. Sure, she
could
have followed me. Maybe it’d been her I heard banging into the trash bins back in town. But it made more sense that she’d planted the note. Question was, whenwould she have had time? She hadn’t been at the stagecoach when we’d arrived, and my knapsack hadn’t been out of my sight except when Mom and Dad and Wendy were unloading the car and I was in Lazy Jack’s. Unless she was the one I’d seen exiting the barn.
But what are the odds that she and Jesse James wear the same type of shirt?
    On the other side of the graveyard, rocks skittered away. Footsteps approached. Our hideout suddenly seemed small and exposed. Annie sucked in a breath, tensing up. She looped her arm into mine, and with our faces close together, we peered out across the graveyard.
    “Listen, if anything happens,” I whispered, “I want you to run back to town as fast as you can and get your uncle.”
    Annie hugged my arm tighter and said nothing.
    A dark figure appeared, slowly moving through the gate toward the lone tree. He led a horse by the reins, the clomping of hooves muffling our own excited breathing. Looping the reins over a low branch, the stranger struck a match against the side of his boot and lit a small camping lantern. The mantle swelled, growing bright and illuminating the yellow bandana covering the lower half of his face.
    “Is that him? The guy you saw in the barn?”
    I clamped my hand over her mouth.
    The man—and I felt confident it was a man—strolled past the first row of graves and paused, making a slow three-sixty turn before stomping down the weeds and carefully placing the lantern on the matted area. Once more he hesitated as if listening. I knew he heard my heart beating. A base drum would’ve made less noise. Annie nibbled on my finger. I removed my hand from her mouth.
    “Don’t you ever do that again,” she hissed.
    “Then please be quiet.”
    The man approached his horse and fiddled with cords and knots and, dropping into a half crouch, rolled something long and as large as a man’s body onto his shoulder. Staggering under the weight, he walked back toward the lantern and dumped the heavy object onto the grass. In the glow of the lantern I could almost make out the shape of a head and shoulders pressing against the black plastic.
    “Oh, this is bad,” Annie said, her voice shaking. “When Uncle Walt said you witnessed a murder, I thought he was kidding.”
    “Will you pleeeease stop talking,” I said, my voice barely audible.
    The stranger walked back to his horse and returned with a collapsible shovel. I guessed the recent rains had made the ground soft because within minutes the man had dug a shallow trench. He leaned on the handle and, using the shovel like a fulcrum, rolled the body into the grave.
    “If we hurry we can reach his horse before he can,” Annie said.
    “And why would we do that?”
    “To catch him, of course. Don’t you want to know who it is?”
    “Sure,” I said, turning toward her. “But I don’t want to die finding out. We’ll wait for him to leave and dig up the body. I can snap pictures with my phone. That’ll convince your uncle I’m telling the truth.”
    Covering the grave took less time than digging it. The stranger stomped down the dirt and then, rather than goingback to his horse