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boardwalk.
    â€œJane!”
    Spurr started running toward where the girl lay faceup on the boardwalk six feet away from him. But when the men on the far side of the street began opening up on him, the roar of the revolvers echoing loudly off the buildings lining the narrow, shadowy street, Spurr wheeled and returned fire.
    The men were each taking their own horse’s reins and trying to get mounted. But the horses were screaming and fidgeting as the men triggered their pistols at Spurr. Their wild shots broke glass and thumped into building facades or awning support posts around the old lawman, who, down on one knee, quickly emptied the Starr.
    He pinked one of the bank robbers as the man was climbing onto his horse. The man yowled and clutched his right buttock and fell backward out of the saddle to hit the cinder-paved street, mewling.
    But Spurr did not see the man hit the street, because just then an invisible mule kicked him in the chest and threw him backward into a slight break between two business buildings.
    He lay flat on his back, gasping, his left arm feeling heavy and dead, the mule that kicked him now sitting on his chest. Time slowed down, as did his mind, and he fought to stay conscious and aware of what was going on across the street. As if from far away, he heard several more gun pops, and then he felt the reverberation of galloping hooves through his back.
    He felt naked, lying there, that invisible mule sitting on his chest, keeping him from dragging a full draught of air into his lungs. His vision blurred, dimmed, and his tongue grew thick and dry. Nausea caused his belly to contract, and he managed to roll onto his side as sour bile exploded up from his chest and splattered onto the spur-scarred, sun-silvered boardwalk.
    Then the morning light dimmed. He wasn’t sure, but he must have passed out for a time.
    He was drawn back to full consciousness by the sounds of men shouting and horses galloping. He lifted his head to see two Denver policemen approached the bank at a hard gallop, the city badge toters shouting and gesturing. As they pulled to skidding halts in front of the bank, the one nearest Spurr leapt out of the saddle of his long-legged bay, while the other ground the heels of his high, brown boots into his own bay’s flanks and continued south along Arapaho.
    The other policeman, attired in a blue, cavalry-like tunic with gold buttons, corduroy trousers, and a copper badge on his left breast, dropped his horse’s reins and, holding a Winchester carbine in one gloved hand, ran up on the boardwalk. His boots tattooed a frenetic rhythm as he hurried over to where Jane lay unmoving, her blond head nearest Spurr, her hair having fallen from the neat coronet she’d started the morning with.
    The cop knelt beside the girl, touched a finger to her neck.
    Spurr was grunting against the pain in his arm, shoulder, and chest as he lay on his side and looked at the cop. “She . . . ?”
    â€œDead,” said the policeman, whose granitelike face and walrus mustache marked him as Mark Trumbo, ex-cavalryman and lieutenant on Denver’s sixteen-man police force. The man’s pewter brows beetled as he walked over to Spurr and stared down, incredulous.
    â€œSpurr?”
    Spurr stared at the girl in shock, unable to wrap his mind around all that had just happened so quickly, so out of the blue.
    â€œWhere you hit, Spurr?” Trumbo asked, dropping to one knee beside the old lawman.
    Spurr shook his head. He rolled onto his back. “Reach into my pocket . . . shirt pocket. Little bag in there.”
    Trumbo reached inside Spurr’s thigh-length elk-skin vest and hauled the small hide sack from the pocket of his hickory shirt. “This?”
    Spurr swallowed, licked his lips. “Take one o’ them pills out, stick it under my tongue.”
    â€œHeart?”
    Spurr nodded.
    Trumbo’s big fingers were awkward, but he managed to get the