acorn. Lige says his reputation were for a coward but he don’t look like a coward this bright cold morning. We got two rifles and our two muskets and Rosalee and Winona are detailed to reload them when needed. Rifles just quicker and a store of shots. Lige and Tennyson take them and draw a bead along the barrels and they sitting in old chairs and from behind they look like children asleep on a father’s shoulder bent like that. But they watching Tach. Lige as all the world knows is a sharpshooter and there ain’t a trace of doubt in him. Three men going to die and it ain’t going to be anyone he loves or likes. Goddamn foolish yellowlegs, is what he says. Lost the war and going to lose this too. Then up from behind Tach Petrie somewhere rises after all about half a dozen more men. This makes Lige raise his head from his gun. He don’t say a word. Best check out back, he says to Rosalee. Stick your head out and make sure we not cooked on both sides. Rosalee clatters back through the house. Now fear creeps in like a hungry cockroach. Pit of the stomach troubled by it. I think I just might throw up that coffee. We got muskets trained on the two flanking men but we don’t have no troops in reserve to serve death to those new men. We still got the shelter of the house. Guess they’ll be happy if they can kill us today. Guess that other evening must have rankled. Crazy thought jumps into my head that I should don that dress. Crazy head thinking crazy. Tach Petrie comes on. It got a kinda military feel to it. Now the men go down and start to work along fallen trees and fences and woodpiles and whatever shelters. Now they maybe in range. Rosalee comes back and says she can’t see nothing sinister. She put the bar on the back door. Shutters fast on the windows. There’s been rain and floods so great just recent the ground between the house and the creek be only a quagmire. No man would try that slope. That’s true, says Lige. But this no man, this a devil and killer of men. Rosalee Bouguereau puts a hand on her bosom. Even so, even so. Now the wide land in front of the house looks empty. Where those boys? It’s cold just waiting and the fire ain’t lit. We got the windows up for firing and here comes the frosty wind crowding in. Porch keeps our place in shadows and hopefully the front looks just blank and black. Then you see a man running like a jackrabbit to make a new hide. Down he goes. There’s another. Creeping up on you like a childhood game. Lige has his snout down on his gun muzzle now and his head cocked sideways and he’s still as a painting. No, he won’t want to fire till he sees at least three men and then he’ll be happy to let them know we’re awake. Probably don’t have a God’s clue. We hope. But anyhow then Lige fires. Beautiful long clean shot that tears the hat off a running man and top of his head too, you can see far off as it is the big splash of blood. Man falls heavily and then Tennyson got a bead on one and fires. Man that can split a twig at fifty feet ain’t got no trouble shooting a running man. That’s two, we’re thinking. Fire’s returned and they’re just hoping to pot a rabbit blind. Everything quiet for a little and then I see three men reach the tobacco sheds. Get in behind the gable. A long cloud of dark unhelpful rain takes the pitch of colour off things. Brown and black world suddenly with the old smear of red paint across the sheds. Weather and time a good stripper of paint. We know straight off someone’s going to have to go out and head them off. This creeping up and waiting no good. Got to make a new vantage. Looks like the other four keeping well spread apart. But the three at the sheds ain’t peering out so that must mean they’re snaking round the back. That’s got to be down to me since my brain thinking that way. John Cole knows what I’m doing. He gets it without a word. So then I’m stooping and cross the floor and I lift the bar on the back door and Rosalee puts it back behind me, I hear the loud scrape. Just got a little ways to go in the open. I’m going to make my way round the big barn and then expect to see those creepers. I got a musket but also Lige’s repeating pistol, I ain’t naked. Feel cool and calm like I was going quiet for trout. Trout lying under a dark rock and don’t make a noise on the bank. Go, go, go. I hear firing behind me, a big clatter of firing, and bullets whining, both from the house and from the field. That puts vinegar on my cuts. Where are these lousy sonsabitches? Lousy sons creeping up and why didn’t their mothers tell them it were wicked to kill men? I inch my face around the barn gable. I see the three now, faced away at ninety degrees. The rain suddenly falls and steams down on their heads and my head. They’re more in the wind’s way and the wind burns against them like an ally. Only one has a long black coat and the rest look cold as orphans. I shoot the back man with the musket, drop it down, and pulling out the pistol fire on the second. Think I only wing that man and then I got to rush the first man or the deal is done. Still the big firing from the house front, but I can’t see. I don’t have no contract with no God and I ain’t God’s soldier nohow but I’m praying He will guard and keep Winona. You in the middle of a gunfight all you will think about’s Winona. John Cole can watch hisself. He’s canny. Lige and Tennyson. Rosalee she grown and wise. But Winona a flower of a girl and she’s our task. This man I’m bearing down on I see him clearer now. One of those ragged blear-eyed wandering types. Looks like a man might have walked out of some old life. Irish, God knows where. Walked out of some old life to here, with some crazy man he don’t know running at him. I get off two shots but my wanderer he quick and gets behind a trough. Then I’m the duck in the window and I got to throw myself through the air to make a shelter. Big old lump of iron was the case of some old boiler. The man’s bullets strike the iron, one, two, and make a sort of chord of noise. The Tennessee rain stops short and anyone would swear that Mr Noone or his celestial brother raised a great curtain from this stage of death. Big light of Tennessee dropped down. A flood of white and silver. The house is firing like a great corps of men and between the sheds and the barn I spot that Tach Petrie running, and waving his hand at his men out of view. Ain’t going to hit with a pistol from where I am. Going to have to storm that damn trough and the pig behind it. Well, God help me too in this endeavour, I’m thinking. I make my play. Here is the one big card of Life thrown down. God assist me, won’t You? Up I leap and try to make the gap. I feel a bullet tear across my shoulder. Or maybe my ear. I can’t tell. Or maybe my head. But down I go. Goddamn fool. The pistol bursts from my hand and goes skittering across the ground. My foe jumps out and runs at me back-bent. Don’t move, don’t move, he says. All hisses and curses. Stands on my hand and says, you move, you dead. Just move that hand one inch, you dead. I believe him. I look up and his dark and bitter face looking down. Strange eyes and face all puckered with scars. Looks like the world’s worst tailor stitched him. Still the guns blasting away and then suddenly silence and then voices. You move, you dead, the man says again. I’m surprised even by his mercy so far. Why don’t he just kill me? But men are strange and killing men are stranger. Then the big shooting starts again and I see flashing in the gap the running men, maybe Tach Petrie and his men are trying a rush. Firing and firing and men calling out. Queer to be there at the back of the barn with the new sky rearing like horses and as if we was breathing in a puddle of quiet. Me and that squinty man. This where it going to end then I don’t want to live without Winona and John Cole. Great clatter of bullets again and then silence again. My man looks left quickly to see what’s what. He don’t know the outcome no more than me. Hey, Tach, he calls, Tach Petrie? He don’t get no answer back. Tach Petrie, God damn it? But then a miracle occurs. There’s another man comes stepping round the sheds. Another man, not ours or theirs. A big solemn hefty man with sweating face. Heavy staring oxlike eyes. I know that face. My foe don’t even see him. The fat man fires. Takes off half my new friend’s face. The blood falls on my head, mingles with my blood. Jesus holy Christ. Where did he come from? Starling Carlton.