Who goes in looking for trouble? 10 men. Easy. Maybe more. You said before dawn.
That's right. How do you know it was 10? tracks. Apache scout counted the hoof prints, the bootprints round the fire pits. Whitfield paused. Something crossed his face.
Hesitation maybe or memory. Found something else too. A brand burned into a scrap of leather. One of them dropped near the corral. Odd mark circle with a broken line through it like a snake cut in half.
The square kept moving around Ezra. People kept talking, kept laughing, kept being exactly as small as they'd been a minute ago. But Ezra didn't hear any of it anymore because that mark, that mark he knew, not from a wanted poster, not from a story somebody told him once around a fire from memory. The real kind, the kind burned somewhere behind the ribs where it doesn't fade no matter how many years you stack on top of it. He was 17 the last time he saw that brand.
17. Hiding behind a water trough on his family's ranch. Watching a man with that exact mark on his saddle blanket set fire to the barn. Watching his father go down trying to stop him. Watching and not moving because his legs had turned to stone and stone doesn't save anybody.
His mother lived another year after that, just long enough to finish dying slower. You all right? Whitfield asked. "You've gone pale, son." Ezra realized his hands had curled into fists, made himself open them one finger at a time. Because you don't get to fall apart in a town square.
"Not with everyone watching. Not when there's still something left to do." "I'm fine," he said, which was a lie. Which everyone standing there could probably see was a lie. But nobody pushed. "You still thinking of riding out there?" Whitfield said.
Not really a question. I am alone. Looks that way. Harmon laughed again from the wagon bed. Short, ugly.
Well, it's your funeral, stranger. Literally, probably. He turned to the crowd like Ezra had already left. Now, anybody here actually got real business? Or are we all just going to stand around admiring this fool's death wish?