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clothes mostly, hats, pants, coats,
bolts of fabric, that kinda thing.”
    “Halite,”
said Baines. “Six barrels full.”
    “That
might be useful,” said the Rider.
    “How?”
said Dr. Sheardown.
    “Do
any of you men have shotguns?”
    Bill,
Wilkes, Baines, and Purdee all did.
    “I
believe Cashion kept one behind the bar too,” Baines offered.
    “Doctor,
take a man and gather up all the shotgun shells you can find. Open them up,
empty half the buckshot, and replace it with rock salt. You can reseal the
shells with candle wax.”
    Purdee
slid a bandolier of shells off of his shoulder and passed it to Sheardown, and
Bill took a sack of ammo from his coat pocket and handed it over.
    “I
can show you how to do that, Doc,” Baines said. He went off toward the saloon
to fetch Cashion’s weapon. Dr. Sheardown followed.
    “They’re
gonna be shootin’ real bullets,” said the Colonel, “and you wanna give ‘em a
rash?”
    “You
saw what salt did to the poison they exuded,” the Rider said. “That stuff runs
through their veins instead of blood. Salt’s what killed the two in the
saloon.”
    “Salt?”
    “Just
plain salt in a hollow core bullet,” he said. “The only other way I know of to
kill them is silver. Salt’s more affordable.”
    “It
is at that,” said the Colonel, shaking his head. “Where do you think we should
put the lady and her boy?”
    The
Rider looked around. A high wind looked like it would blow down most of the
structures.
    “I
would say put them in one of the stone huts. Put the wounded in there with her.
That man Wilkes can still hold a shotgun with a broken arm.”
    “That’s
what I was thinking. You were in the war?”
    The
Rider stiffened. Sometimes hard feelings bubbled up when men talked of the war.
It wasn’t like a foreign war where you never had to see the enemy again. These
days you shared a coach with him, roomed with him.
    “Yes….,”
he ventured.
    “I
could tell by your bearing. I was with the Fifth Minnesota since the Sioux
Uprising at Redwood Ferry.”
    “Second
Colorado,” the Rider admitted. He still didn’t care to talk about the war.
    “Cavalry?”
    “That’s
right.”
    “Well!
Here’s your mule!” the Colonel laughed, and struck him on the arm soundly.
Thankfully it was the unhurt arm, but it was still hard enough to cause him to
suck in his breath.
    The
Rider found himself grinning.
    “Let’s
get to work,” he said, rubbing feeling back in his arm.
    They
labored through the rest of the night, hitching the freighters’ wagons, drawing
them in a rude semicircle around the tanks, unhitching them. They emptied the
crates and barrels and built breastworks, Gersh working at a phenomenal pace,
hoisting hundred pound barrels two at a time and springing back for more. In
the midst of this Baines and Sheardown returned with their reconstituted
shotgun ammunition, and Wilkes was given back his weapon and told to watch over
the delirious Trib and the woman Marina and her child.
    Purdee
came back from that task.
    “How’s
Trib?” the Colonel asked.
    “Still
out his head,” Purdee replied, hunkering down beside the wheel of the wagon and
tearing a piece of tasajo apart with his teeth.
    They heard thunder boom then.
    “It
figures,” Baines remarked. “Sound like we won’t need the water after all,
Colonel.”
    The
sky was lightening in the east, and all was blue. The Rider saw no clouds.
    Nevertheless,
soon rain burst down on them, pattering on the wagons and on the ground all
around. It was a strange precipitation, though. It was over in a few seconds. Just a sparse desert shower, apparently.
    “What
the hell?” said Hash. “Look at the Doc’s coat.”
    They
did. In the predawn light Sheardown’s apparel seemed phosphorous, like a patch
of snow. It was spotted and stained now, as if he’d slid down a muddy hill.
    Sheardown
peered at it, and flicked something off his shoulder. It landed at Hash’s feet,
and he stooped and picked it up,