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night.
    A
few others began to back away muttering and turned to follow.
    “There’s
somethin’ else to think about,” the Colonel said loudly. “Cashion’s
widow Marina and her boy. I ain’t for leavin’ no woman and no baby boy
to the mercy of a bunch of killers.”
    Some
of the shadow men slowed and rubbed the backs of their necks, though a few kept
walking. Through the open doorway, the woman could be seen leaning over
Triburcio, her boy dozing in her skirted lap.
    “Mexican
or no,” the Colonel reiterated in a louder voice that quelled the remaining
excuses.
    “I’m
staying,” Gersh announced in his deep voice. He stood beside the Rider.
    Out
of the dark stepped Hashknife, rubbing his chin.
    “Well
hell. You’re my bread and butter, Gersh. Guess I got no choice.”
    A
spark of fire struck in the dark among the men, the light glancing for a moment
off a pair of square spectacle lenses. It was a slight, balding little man with
wiry reddish hair and a toothbrush mustache lighting a ridiculous calabash
pipe. He had the look of a professor, but his cream colored greatcoat, matching
topper and pants cheapened his mystique, making him seem more like a carnival
huckster.
    “I’ll
stay,” he said in a high, tiny voice. “I’m not much with a gun, but I imagine
it’s safer here, and I can lend a hand however I can.”
    “This
is the doctor,” the Colonel said. “He came in this morning from Elmira, goin’
to hang his shingle in Tucson. Sheldon was it?”
    “Sheardown,”
said the doctor, extending his hand to the Rider. “Amos Sheardown.”
    “Rider,”
said the Rider, taking the doctor’s light, soft hand. It was useless he knew,
to keep withholding his true name. The only ones the practice protected him
from already knew it. Old habits died hard, though.
    “I’ve
got to say,” said Sheardown, “You’ve some unorthodox notions about medicine,
but I can’t deny the results. Where’d you learn that anyhow?”
    “Just
something from one of my teachers,” he smiled.
    “Ah!
You’re an educated man? That’s a rare thing in this country. What’s your field?”
    “Theology,”
said the Rider.
    “Ah,”
said Sheardown, visibly souring.
    “Hell,
I guess I’ll stay,” the red head in the duck pants said reluctantly. “Bill
Owen. I run freight. I can’t shoot worth a damn either, though.”
    The
man in the sack coat turned from the light, but the red head grabbed his arm.
    “You
ain’t leavin,’ are you, Jiminy ?”
    The
man paused, took off his hat, and put it back on. As if the sound of his own
name being spoken had obligated him, he turned back.
    “Nah,
I guess not.”
    “He’s
Jiminy Baines,” said Bill. “He once killed an Apache with a scattergun.”
    “I
don’t know if I killed him,” Baines added hastily.
    “Well,
how many’s that make?” the Colonel asked.
    “Not
countin’ Trib and that man Wilkes what busted his arm gettin’ throwed against
the bar by the Chinaman, they’s eight of us now, Colonel,” said Purdee.
    “Well,
there ain’t a really defensible structure here,” the Colonel said, looking over
the stone huts and tumbledown picket shacks with disdain.
    “There’s
a cuesta about a half a mile out to the northeast,” said Bill. “Lotsa boulders and suchlike.”
    “Yeah, but no water,” the Colonel said, turning in place and
sucking on his teeth. “Bullets’ll fly through that saloon like bees
through an open window. Still, we’ll be able to see anybody comin’ for a long
way off with all that empty land, and the structures’ll force them to get
close. We could arrange the wagons, make some cover…I’d say put ‘em right there
around the tanks, so we got water. We could hold off for a long time if we have
to.”
    “We
can help with that,” said Gersh, though Hash cringed visibly.
    “You
two are freighters,” said the Rider to Bill and Baines. “What are you hauling?”
    “Nothin’
useful,” said Bill doubtfully. “I’m carryin’