“Get back!”

  Randall’s eyes fluttered open just in time to see Marshal Tory fire a second pistol shot into the air above his head, filling the Lincolntown street with thunder and smoke to underline his point. The sound made Randall flinch as his head pounded in rhythmic spasms of splintering pain.

  “All of you stay back!” said the Marshal, “Or we will have to quarantine this whole damn town.”

  Randall was laying face down in the street, no doubt precisely where he had fallen.

  His whole body ached and trembled and his mouth was so dry that when he tried to swallow it felt like someone was pouring sand down his throat. He groaned and tried to push himself out of the dirt. The weight of Billy’s corpse lashed to his back immediately protested and his weary arms failed him. Down he went, back into the dust, with a grunt of pain. He lay there heaving searching for strength to move and finding nothing to draw from. He could only lay there, spent, fighting the urge to pass out again.

  The crunch of boots in the dirt alerted him to an arrival. Randall looked up weakly at the man as he kneeled beside him.

  “Gus!” shouted the Marshal, “What the hell are you doing?”

  “For God’s sake, Marshal,” said the man, “You want us to watch the man expire in the street?”

  The Marshal apparently had no reply to that. The man extended a hand toward Randall, offering him a sweating canteen. Randall took it eagerly, throwing back his head and letting that sweet, cool water run down his throat and over his sun-baked face and chest. It seemed to him he’d never felt anything quite so wonderful in his life.

  When the last drop possible had been coaxed from the canteen, Randall let it fall and looked up into the face of his new best friend. He had to blink to make sure his eyes were working right.

  “Gus?,” he said.

  “Augustus Bunsall,” said Mr. Bunsall, “We’ve met before, Mr. Geets.”

  “I remember.”

  Mr. Bunsall stood up and offered an empty hand to Randall. It was gloved, of course, but at that moment Randall could have kissed that hand. He reached out and took it and Mr. Bunsall applied all of his squat little frame to heave Randall to his feet. When Randall swayed, Bunsall caught him and held him up.

  “Come on, now, Mr. Geets,” he said, “You’re almost there.”

  “What about my vapours, Gus?”

  “God damn the vapours.”

  Uneasily at first, Gus and Randall took their first shaking steps down the street and poor Billy dragged behind. Randall was leaning heavily on Mr. Bunsall within only a few minutes, but Gus didn’t complain. The squat little man kept his eyes fixed ahead on the street, half-helping half-dragging the cowboy and the corpse along.

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  “I can see the church, Mr. Geets,” he said.

  “You hear that?” said Randall, “We’re almost there.”

  “Sure we are,” said Bunsall.

  Randall didn’t bother trying to explain who he’d actually been talking to. Not that he could have if he’d wanted to. The heat and the exhaustion and the pain had his brain fuzzy. He couldn’t tell where the street ended in the endless desert began, could hardly distinguish between the murmurings of the crowd behind them and clanking links of the devil’s chain.

  Dream and reality blended into a slurry of dulled senses in his sun-baked brain. He had no sense of time, could hardly register the impact of his weary feet on the ground. It seemed to Randall that he had been born walking, would die walking.

  Then, from somewhere far off on the plains, Randall felt the slightest brush against his face of something cool and damp. It faded as rapidly as it had come, just the gentlest caress of a passing breeze. For a moment, he wondered if he’d imagined it that his ears caught the distant rumble of thunder.

  “What was that?” he asked, his voice betraying the flurry of emotion springing to life in his aching soul.

  “Thunder,” grunted Bunsall, struggling to speak under his exertion, “Dark clouds ahead. Looks like a summer rain blowing in.”

  Randall laughed. It sound manic even to him so he tried not to think about how it sounded to Mr. Bunsall.

  “A summer rain!” he said, “Did you hear that? A summer rain?”

  “Sure,” said Mr. Bunsall, “I heard it.”

  Once again, Randall did not correct him. He just kept laughing, consumed with a joke that no one could share in.

  He was still laughing when they reached the gate of the church courtyard. Randall barely seemed to notice. He was too busy watching the sky. By then, the wind was picking up, tugging at the edges of their clothing and the black clouds were rolling over Lincolntown like a blanket, cool and comforting.

  “And beautiful,” he said, “Don’t you think it's beautiful?”

  He actually gave a start when the Reverend’s voice answered him.

  “Mr. Geets,” he said, “I heard you were coming. I took the liberty of marking out a plot for him. A few volunteers have already dug-”

  “You hear that, Billy?” said Randall, “Ready and waiting.”

  The Reverend gave Mr. Bunsall a concerned look.

  “Excuse me?” he said.

  “Nothing to worry about, Reverend,” said Randall.

  He scanned the graveyard. Billy’s plot was not hard to find. In the southwest corner a little mound of soil punctured with a spade marked where the earth waited to take poor Billy into its eternal embrace. Randall straightened himself and tried to look dignified.

  “Thank you both,” he said first to the Reverend and then to Mr. Bunsall, regarding each with grave sincerity, “I will take it from here.”

  With heavy steps, Randall turned and dragged Billy into the graveyard, the short, final stretch on the road to eternity. He dimly heard the Marshal behind him ordering Bunsall sequestered and his clothes burned. He heard Tory say something else to the preacher, something about keeping his distance from the crowd. He didn’t bother to look back, he had come too far, suffered too much. His brain swam with an ecstasy like drunkenness to be so near the end after so much labor.

  The open grave yawned before him. Dark, cool, soft, comforting.

  “It's a nice place, Billy,” he said as he worked loose the ropes that had cut deep into his burning shoulders. Randall turned and with a final heave let Billy tumble off his back into open earth. Randall stretched his shoulder for the first time in what seemed like endless hours. It felt like being born again.

  He turned back toward the grave and looked at the crumpled form of Billy, laying in his grave, curled up not unlike a child in a crib.

  “We made it, Billy,” said Randall, “Rest now.”

  Randall reached for the spade but as he did something caught his eye. Clenched in Billy’s rancid hand there was a small square of folded paper stained with blood. Randall kneeled down over the body, reached out and plucked it loose.

  Billy’s hand fell open, the muscles relaxed, and on that bloated, purplish face there seemed to Randall a look not unlike contentment.

  Randall stuffed the letter into his pocket and took the spade with both hands.

  Just as he sprinkled the first layer of moist earth over Billy’s face, the first drops of summer rain began to fall from the dark clouds above.