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the only person in the entire world?
    â€œHey! Here!” Tib stage whispered.
    And damn I was glad to hear another voice.
    The woods did a damned good job of hiding them. Not even the moonlight exposed them. They couldn’t have been much more than a few feet inside the shifting shadows of the woods, but I hadn’t seen them until Tib spoke up. I eased my way between two hardwoods and some oaks.
    James told me that he’d climbed up in a tree for a better look at the barn. He hadn’t seen or heard anything. He said he still didn’t think the barn was empty but Tib just shook his head and said it was, the Indian was crazy.
    Everything we said was in whispers, three men huddled together on a sandy little trail.
    â€œNothing in the house?” Tib asked.
    â€œNothing.”
    â€œThen they’re in the barn,” James said.
    â€œIf they’re here.”
    â€œYou thinkin’ they’re gone, Noah?”
    â€œConsidering it. I didn’t think so at first. But it’sawful damned quiet. You said you didn’t hear anything. I didn’t, either.”
    Tib said, “Even if they’re gone, we still get paid, right?”
    â€œHell, yes,” I said.
    â€œJust checkin’.” I must’ve sounded harsh to Tib.
    â€œI want you two to find an angle on the front door. Then open fire. That’ll give me cover to get into the barn the back way.”
    â€œWhy not just sneak in the back door without no gunfire?” Tib said.
    â€œGood chance they’d hear me. I need to surprise them.”
    â€œIf anybody’s in there,” James said, “I guess we’ll know pretty fast.”
    â€œWe should get closer than these woods, if we’re going to do any good,” Tib said. “Then we’ll just make a run at the front doors. Soon as you hear us shootin’, that’s when you head for the back door. Is that right?”
    â€œRight,” I said.
    I was getting suspicious again. They didn’t seem bothered by charging the front door of a barn that could very well be hiding a powerful new kind of weapon and maybe three or four men besides. Maybe they were just eager for action, or maybe the people inside the barn—if there were any—were in on the whole ruse.
    James said, “We can sneak up on the barn from an angle, pepper the front doors, but be in a place where they can’t get us with their guns. There ain’t no windows on this side of the barn. They want to hit us, they’ll have to come out of the barn to do it, and I doubt they’ll do that.”
    â€œAll right,” I said. “Give me a few minutes to get to the back of the barn. Then you open fire. You ready?”
    Tib said, “I’ll count to a hundred and then we’ll start shootin’.”
    I backtracked pretty much the same way I’d come. I tried to keep any noise down, not only so they wouldn’t hear me, but so I could hear them if they made any sound. If they were in there, they sure knew how to wait somebody out. Not a sound. And by this time, the chickens and the roosters had long been quiet, too. We were back to the wind crying in the spare autumn trees.
    I found the hayrack and crouched behind it. Soon as the gunfire started I’d sprint over to the door.
    I started to wonder if something had gone wrong. Tib had had plenty of time to count to a hundred, but still there was no gunfire. A coyote, loud and lonely; night birds crying, entangled in the maze of the woods. But no gunfire.
    Finally, it came. Harsh and harrowing on the air. Tib firing his six-gun, James firing his carbine.
    I used the noise and the time to race to the back door of the barn. Weather had warped the wood so that the door had swollen tight against the frame. I reached behind my back for my knife. I’d have to slit the swell open sufficiently to pull the door wide enough to slip through.
    I didn’t notice it at first, the fact that