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to the street, capped it, and fired it, uncharged and unshotted, into the ground.
    The dust jumped.
    “You want to do some serious bird hunting, that’s your gun,” the storekeeper said. Otto closed the deal.
    He went across the road through dust and skittering chickens, past a gaunt, three-legged dog, and into a dramhouse, where he ordered a beer. There was only one patron at the bar, a husky fellow about his own age, clean-shaven, with long blond hair. He wore a heavy gray Confederate officer’s greatcoat and a straight-brim gray hat. His boots had seen some wear.
    He would prove to be Raleigh McKay.
    He was drinking red whiskey. He looked at Otto’s slouch hat. “You’re one of them black-hat fellows,” he said. “Iron Brigade, wasn’t y’all called?”
    Otto nodded.
    “I was on the other side,” the Rebel said. “Eighteenth North Carolina. We bumped against y’all a few times, you Black Hats, don’t know who got the best of it, though. South Mountain. Brawner’s Farm. Second Manassas and Fitzhugh’s Crossing—suchlike places. Dutchmen mostly, wasn’t you?”
    “Not all of us.” Otto finished his beer. He was unarmed.
    The Rebel wore a holstered pistol beneath his unbuttoned greatcoat. It looked like a Whitney five-shot rimfire. He had it rigged for a left-handed cross draw.
    “A silent Yankee, ain’t you just? No need to be unneighborly, though, not because we fought once in the ‘way-long-ago. Hell-fire. I don’t harbor grudges, and it weren’t a personal thing, not for me anyways.” He frowned, then smiled suddenly, bright as a sunrise. “Say, Black Hat, I’ll buy you a beer!”
    He pushed a cartwheel dollar toward the barman. Then he took off his hat, combed back his hair with hooked fingers, and smiled again at Otto, a boyish grin empty of guile. He drew his pistol slowly and sent it skidding across the smooth wet wood.
    “I’ll let the gentleman behind the bar hold on to this for a while,” he said. “I see you’re not carrying one, or at least I trust you aren’t. Now we’re on even terms, I’d be obliged if you’d accept my hospitality. Fact is, I haven’t talked to another white man in a good long spell. Hey, what say ye, let’s tell us a few war stories? And have you a whiskey instead of that swampwater they sell for beer in these parts. Hell ain’t half full yet, or so they tell me . . .”
    That was the beginning of his partnership with Raleigh Fitzroy McKay, Esq., late Captain of Infantry, 18th North Carolina regiment, C.S.A.
    W ITH A SUDDEN, clattering change in the roar of its wheels, the train rolled onto a trestle. They were crossing the Mississippi River. Otto gazed down at the coiling, dun-colored Father of Waters and suddenly felt sad. No, perhaps only apprehensive. This is truly the Great Divide, he thought. The nation east of the Mississippi was now the country of comfort, or at least what passed for it in the America of that day—a land of farms, towns, homes, jobs, libraries, newspapers, churches, schools, a country suited to sensible men, level-headed women, and their gentle children. West of the river lay wilderness, dry plains and bleak mountains, wolves and buffalo and wild Indians, a vast reach of country nibbled at only feebly by the main-chancers and the desperate—railroads, mountain men, hide hunters; soiled doves, homesteaders, gamblers, and cowboys.
    He felt at home in that far country, but he feared that Jenny would not. Her presence alone would change things for him, he was sure. The joy he’d felt in his solitude and self-sufficiency along the Smoky Hill River would now be diluted by his concern for her welfare. And how would his partner, McKay, react to her presence? Raleigh was ostensibly an officer and a gentleman, if only by act of the Rebel Congress, but he was also a hot-blooded Southerner and a damned handsome man. Women melted in his company—even tough old horn-hided hookers turned giddy as schoolgirls when McKay switched on his