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was here for the adventure, and it didn’t mean much to me whether we was at a whorehouse in Minneapolis, poker table in St. Paul, or the bank in Mankato.
    So there we was one afternoon, on some sorry country road near nothing, a-waiting on Charlie Pitts to finish his business in the woods, and arguing, for the umpteenth time, on which way to travel. Dingus said we should spend a while in St. Paul, and Chadwell agreed, allowing that we’d be safe there, Cole and Jim a-spouting off their complaints, Bob a-cussing his brothers. Frank said it didn’t mean a damn to him if they done St. Paul or Mankato but we’d sure as hell better get our horses trained or find better mounts. I hooked a leg over the saddle horn, lighted my pipe, a-trying to figure out who I’d bet on once the fists started a-swinging.
    Yes, sir, we was in the middle of the damned pike, a-bickering like we done most of the time— wouldn’t them damned Pinkertons loved to have come along on that scene—when that farmer came a-trotting down the road and scared the blazes out of all us.

C HAPTER F OUR
J OE B ROWN
    Just wasn’t paying attention is all. Coming from town like I always do after selling produce and buying coffee, flour, and sugar, plus ordering those plowshares at the mercantile, following my wife’s orders, I didn’t see the men in the road till I topped the hill and rounded the curve. No, actually, I didn’t even see them then. Mind was wandering, and I was looking down, trying to cut off some tobaccy with my jackknife, because you could ride betwixt my farm and town and not see a soul nine times out of ten, so the men saw me before I heard them.
    “No, Dingus!”
    That’s when I looked up to see those strangers. The name struck me as funny—Dingus—but I thought maybe I misheard. Could be that man’s name is Darius, which was my grandfather’s name.
    Well, there they sat on their horses like they owned the road, seven of them, all looking at me. One fellow, the one called Dingus or Darius or maybe it was Augustus or could have been just Gus, he had been reaching inside and behind his duster, and only slowly pulled his hand back after the taller man with the beard kept talking to him, whispering now.
    “Hold up there, mister!” one of the other men shouted, spitting out his pipe and trying to control his skittish mare, and only then did I realize that I was still riding right toward them, and if I didn’t rein in ÏÃ Jezebel, well, I’d either ram those horses or they’d scatter, and the men, except for the one riding the nervous brown mare, didn’t look like they had any notion to scatter.
    “Sorry,” I said, tugging on the reins. When I stopped, I set the brake and reached down to pick up my knife and the tobaccy I had bought and was in a hurry to have my afternoon chaw before I got home to Matilda. She didn’t care for my habit.
    “Dropped my tobaccy,” I said, without looking up, and, when I sat up straight and tried to give the strangers a smile, well, practically every one of them was looking hard right back at me. Three of them had dismounted so that I couldn’t see nothing but their hats and legs, and most of the rest had reached inside their dusters.
    Struck me as odd. So did the fact that I counted eight horses, but only seven men, every mount saddled, too. Maybe they were highwaymen, I thought, but if they held me up, it would be downright comical what they got. Still, I was nervous. Like I said, the men were strangers, fancy rigs on their horses, and dressed in linen dusters and good clothes. And, like I said, as lonesome as this country was, if they killed or maimed me, nobody would find me for a ’coon’s age.
    But the taller man, he had trotted his big dun horse over toward me and bowed. He wore a gray hat and black broadcloth suit, with a silk tie. Shamed me, what dressed in muslin and duck trousers, boots covered with mud and muck from all the rain we’d been having. Surely admired his saddle. Never