Despite the fact he was being shot at—a situation known to cause excitability in some folks—the lean man stood with a lazy slouch. Bullets whizzed and pinged and spat up a mighty impressive spectacle of dust around him as "Jingle" Bob Barker angrily fanned the hammer of his Colt, slipshooting at him from forty paces down the dim street. But of the six bullets that blasted frantic from the gun’s barrel, all shared the unique trait of completely failing to hit their target.

Which was not unusual.

"That was real nice, Bob," said the lean man as he slowly clapped his hands, "A-list shootin’ from a A-list gunman. Now, just so’s you feel you got a fair shake, I’m gonna give you a second chance." He brought his hands back down to his sides, resting his right lightly on the handle of his own ugly Colt holstered low at his hip. When "Jingle" Bob did nothing but gape stupidly—Bob was a master of the stupid gape, his mouth incapable of closing because of his swollen red gums—the man nodded impatiently.

"Go on Bob, reload your pistol. I’ll wait."

A murmur rolled through the crowd on the boardwalk as the lean man drummed idly on the butt of his gun, listening to the train pull into town in the distance. It was eight-forty-five p.m., hardly a fitting time for a showdown, but it gave the solemn moon a chance to officiate over a trial usually reserved for the sun. After another moment of bewildered inactivity and heavy mouth-breathing, "Jingle" Bob fumbled some more bullets from his belt and began to load them. Bob’s feet shuffled nervously, tinkling his heel chains and the silver metal danglers that hung on the backs of his prized dress spurs. When all his bullets were in, he had filled only five chambers, and so stared dumbly at the last empty hole, like it was some brain-teaser, one of those pairs of horseshoes attached together with a ring in the middle.

He turned to his right, where his companion stood a short distance from the crowd. This man, a squat little dump in a bowler, long mustache, and wide chaps, reached to his belt, slipped out a bullet, and tossed it to Bob, who missed the catch badly. The bullet landed in the dirt and skidded a few feet away. Bob gave a worried look at the lean man, who nodded politely, motioning for Bob to fetch the cartridge. He did so, jingling over and bending to pick it up, and while still low to the ground, he slid the bullet into the last chamber, snapped the pistol closed with a wrist flick, and whirled around to fire.

A sharp shot split the windy Wyoming night, bouncing off clapboard buildings, sounding off tin roofs, and "Jingle" Bob Barker jerked over onto his back, the dry street soaking up the blood that pumped out the hole in the rear of his head, a rattling puff of white breath gasping out his chapped mouth.

The lean man’s pistol exhaled a similar cloud as he holstered it with a leathery crunch, and he accepted the light round of applause that the already dispersing crowd paid him with a grip of his hat brim. Sheriff Conroy gave him an enthusiastic "thumbs up" before he ambled his aged body away, and two of the younger serving "sisters" from The Bishop’s Basement smiled at him with looks that were lengthy and daring. He kept his head tilted down, so his brim blocked the light from the sputtering streetlamp and threw a shadow across his angled face. The sweat that shined up his brow didn’t come from nerves, but the folks wouldn’t know that, and they didn’t need to see it. Still, his chest itched like a pair of tight trousers packed to bursting with an intimate rash, and he calmly gritted his teeth against the pain as a few more drops of perspiration squeezed out into the headband of his Plainsman.

Bob’s companion in the tattered bowler departed noiselessly, without a backward glance at his dead partner. Two looters moved in on Bob’s body, orbiting it in a slow, hunched caper, chittering and clucking back and forth at each other before they finally homed in and started pawing around his vest pockets and fingering his shiny spurs with delighted wheezes. Another figure separated from the crowd and came up to the lean man, carrying a small, flat wooden box and wearing an eager smile below a fresh, amateur mustache.

"Excuse me sir," said the young fellow—clearly an Easterner, thought the lean man, discernible not so much by his accent but by the fact he was about to bother him for something. The man had short blonde hair pasted flat to the top of his head, a flecked gray Easterner coat, white narrow-collared Easterner shirt with black Easterner bow tie, pressed gray Easterner trousers, and black Easterner wingtips, meticulously shined. His smile was even an Easterner’s—more excited than the occasion merited.

"My name is Igor McQuethy, I’m a photographer doing a piece on the West for the upcoming centennial issue of the Philadelphia Examiner..." He paused to see if the name of the paper sparked a glint of recognition or admiration. Neither.

"That’ll be a big piece, ‘The West’," said the lean man, gesturing panoramically as he turned toward the looters. "Might be the bi-centennial issue time you finish."

The photographer gave an overeager laugh, and scratched his mustache. "Heh, yes sir, yes, you are right there. Ahm, more specifically, what I’m doing is a piece on gunfighters, ‘Gunfighters of the West’," now he gestured panoramically, "and I was wondering if I might take your photograph. I’m willing to pay a dollar for the privilege."

"All right ladies, let’s move on," said the lean man as he waved his hat at the looters, "this ain’t no Sunday social." The two matted, dirty forms hissed and grunted at him. "Yes, I see you’re both very insane, now take it somewhere else." Both figures slumped dejectedly and hurried off.

"Well Igor," said the man as he squatted down by Bob’s face and closed the thug’s eyelids, one of which had filled with sticky blood from the hole above it, "you wouldn’t be gettin’ your money’s worth, but you can perpetuate any kind o’ myth your paper’s willing to print." He rose and clapped a firm hand on McQuethy’s right shoulder, wiping off the blood from his fingers as he removed it.

"Thank you, sir, thank you," McQuethy said, reaching down to his side and retrieving the flash gun that hung on his belt alongside a wide pouch. "Would you mind drawing your pistol?"

"Igor, drawin’ my pistol’ll make me look like some fool on the cover of one o’ yer dime novels." He put his hat back on firmly, dragging the base of the crown over his damp forehead. "I don’t wanna be enshrined in Beadle’s Library with a name like ‘Blaze Bonfire’ or ‘The Karnage Kid’ with a ‘K.’"

"‘With a K,’ that’s funny, funny," nodded McQuethy happily, wobbling a little. The photographer opened the camera with one hand and slid the base back, expanding the red accordion bellows, while the other shook some magnesium powder from his pouch onto the flash gun he now had clenched between his knees. The lean man marveled at this juggling act, then looked down at Bob’s stubbly, wind-bitten face and wondered what the hell—apart from his bullet—had gotten into the man’s head. Usually he and The Thimble, the fella in the bowler, required a bit more provocation to resort to gunplay and a showdown, and there certainly wasn’t enough to warrant it tonight. Maybe they’d gotten into the Bishop’s Cloister Brew again. Or maybe tonight they’d had their fill of the lean man’s interfering ways.

"Okay now, sir, look over here, please!" Despite his prior awkwardness, McQuethy now held the camera as steady as a human tripod. He flicked a small lever on the bottom that slid the lens cap to the side.

The lean man turned toward the camera. McQuethy’s thumb poised above the switch on the flash gun. A breeze allowed a bit of the powder to escape into the night. "All right, here we go, and..."

Foosh!

#

"Chance Black, the Second," Igor McQuethy said to Arnold Kopelson, editor of the Philadelphia Examiner, and Major Tipp Diggs, executive publisher of same and the deep pockets that allowed the frequently faltering paper to continue. The picture McQuethy indicated was the first in a stack of nine Kopelson held in his soft, buttery hands, seated at his teak desk with the Major hovering over his shoulder, as stiff and alert in his crisp blue uniform as if he expected a brigade of severely tardy bayonet-waving gray-coats to come charging in at any moment. McQuethy stood on the opposite side of the room from the fireplace beside the gentlemen, for it was the middle of May, and he was plenty warm enough. Also, he found that if he stood too close to Kopelson, he couldn’t help but gag at the man’s body odor and stare at the thick brown cyst ringed in blue on the very top of his bald head.

"He told me his name after this picture was taken," continued McQuethy, "but then informed me some folks called him ‘Second’ Chance. This was due to his...," he rubbed a finger thoughtfully across the heavy bandage taped to his upper lip, "...his unique ability to avoid assaults from others, and his chivalric trait of allowing foes another opportunity to try their luck. The gentleman at his feet, one ‘Jingle’ Bob Barker, is an example of how these conflicts typically end."

Kopelson shifted his sweaty bulk in his chair, tugging uncomfortably at the sleeves of his olive green jacket, and examined the man standing in the portrait. He was a tall, black-haired individual, probably thirty, with dark, heavy-lidded eyes and harshly geometric features—his brow, his jaw, his nose, all looked like they could shave a rock. He was dressed how Kopelson usually saw pictures of cowboys, with a low, off-white hat they called a Plainsman, dirty, loose scarf with the knot tied in back like bandits wore, thick white shirt, dark pants, scuffed boots. In a holster and ammo belt the ubiquitous gun hung low at his side. His vest seemed unusual, though, covered with Oriental patterns sewn in a light thread. The man had a slouch to what could only be termed his lean frame, and a grin on his face that made it seem like he thought this fella from the East taking his picture was a pretty funny thing. Kopelson had to agree.

"This is all positively wonderful, um," Kopelson said in his whisper of a voice, and suddenly peering up with a queried look beneath his wet, pencil-thin eyebrows, asked, "what did you say your name was?"

"McQuethy, Igor McQuethy."

"Yes, the thing is, I’m not sure I see where this little story of yours is going, and if I can’t tell right away, I’m not sure my readers’ interest will be engaged. I mean, I’ve seen hundreds of pictures of cowboys..."

"Hundreds," belched the Major while boring him with his round, pink-rimmed eyes.

"Oh, you may have seen hundreds of pictures of cowboys," enthused McQuethy with a wag of his finger, "but you have never heard a story like this. ‘Jingle’ Bob Barker was a gun-for-hire and partner of another fellow called The Thimble who fled the scene when the fight was done. The altercation between these men and Chance Black originated at the local saloon called The Bishop’s Basement." McQuethy stepped forward excitedly as he mimed his actions. "Completely out of the blue, Bob and The Thimble come into the place and start raising what you’d call a ‘ruckus’, shooting out the mirror behind the bar, punching out a few men, and firing their pistols into the ceiling, which incidentally sent a bullet through my wash basin and leaked water onto one of my trunks. Fortunately, it was the one containing my lotions and not my photographic equipment."

When Kopelson and the Major had no response to this, McQuethy cleared his throat and continued. "It would seem purely coincidental that Chance Black was in The Bishop’s Basement at the time of Bob and The Thimble’s display, but I would later learn it was anything but. Chance advised the gentlemen to take it outside, and that is when Bob challenged Chance to a duel in the street. He accepted, because if he could rid Cheyenne of ‘Jingle’ Bob and The Thimble in an honorable way, the town would be a safer place."

McQuethy’s voice assumed a dramatic, theatrical tone. He wished he had better lighting, and maybe some music. "The fight was taken outside. ‘Jingle’ Bob Barker drew and fired on Chance, and even though he was a crack shot, every one of his bullets from this initial attack missed. Then, in his style which I alluded to earlier, ‘Second’ Chance gave Bob a second chance. Bob used this show of professional courtesy to pull a fast one on Chance, but Chance pulled a faster one on him." McQuethy pointed at the picture to show the gentlemen the results.

"But what got into these fellas? Well, we were to find out later that evening that they were both operating under the orders of one Lieutenant Colonel Ben L’Hunger, commander of Fort Russell, the military outpost in Cheyenne."

At the mention of a fellow officer, Major Diggs finally took an interest.

"Foolishness," chuckled The Major. "The armed forces have no need for riffraff."

McQuethy shrugged. "With all due respect Major, my information is first-hand."

The silence that followed told McQuethy he had overstepped his bounds with the man who might soon be signing his check, so he smiled lightly to smooth the edge off his words.

Rather than continuing to scowl, the Major seemed to brighten.

"I’m sorry," the Major smiled, "I am out of line, aren’t I? Continue, please." He turned about slowly, knocking the holster of his Army-issue .45 loudly against the side of the desk.Kopelson began to rifle through the pictures, seeing only hasty images of a young Chinese woman, Chance opening his shirt and exposing his chest, a dark structure of metal with Chance standing on it, and a conflagration burning from a large building before McQuethy reached across the desk and slapped his hands over them.

"Ah ah ah, no skipping ahead to the end," he chided gently to Kopelson, who didn’t hide his annoyed look.

#

"I find it a fascinating aspect of your character, Mister Black..."

"Please, Igor, Chance. Or Second. Or Second Chance. Whatever. ‘Mister’ makes you sound like a kid and me like a geezer and then we all lose."

McQuethy smiled at the feeling of familiarity he had already won in this tough cowboy. "Chance. Yes. Well, Chance, I find it fascinating that after shooting ‘Jingle’ Bob in the street, you are now on your way to make arrangements for his burial."

"Well, the way I see it Igor," Chance said as they made their way down the wide main street of Cheyenne, favoring the potholes and horse manure to dodging folks on the boardwalk, "my eccentric ways of handlin’ order in this town needn’t negatively impact the citizen’s tax dollars. Besides, Igor," he hushed his tone, looked around cautiously, and leaned in towards him, "I’m kinda keen on the mortician’s daughter."

McQuethy pointed at Chance with a knowing wink, as the Westerner looked down the street toward their destination. Pinched between the colorless office of an attorney and an impromptu brothel called The Longest Ride was the House of Emerald Rest, Cheyenne’s funeral home. Two finely carved granite tombstones flanked the narrow doors. The one on the right said, "DON’T SKIMP ON YOUR ETERNAL REST..." and the other, "...TRY PO-FUNG—HE’S THE BEST!" Both stones were illuminated with chiseled Foo-dogs twirling long .45’s. The two men stepped inside.

A short hallway heavy with the aroma of cigars led to an ornate showroom that displayed caskets, tombstones, and afterlife fineries, while a side archway carved with more gunslinging Foos entered into another room. Chance removed his hat and passed through the arch, followed by McQuethy. Beyond was an office hung with mournful red silk tapestries, furnished with a desk and a young Chinese woman staring absently at an inkpot. She looked up at the two men when they entered, her round white face sunburnt across the forehead and down her nose.

"Hello, Chance," she said in a low voice that betrayed no ancestry. She smiled slimly, and if there was happiness in it, it was crushed by her drab black attire. She also gave a polite nod to McQuethy, who offered a sort of half-handed winking salute, the kind he knew the ladies loved. "What brings two fine living gentlemen to a funeral home at this hour?"

"Evening, Li," Chance muttered almost shyly. "I’ve got a man for you to take care of. ‘Jingle’ Bob Barker."

"Was that the ruckus I heard earlier?"

"I believe they would be one and the same ruckus, yes. Li Po-Fung, this here’s Igor McQuethy, photographer fresh off the train from Philadelphia doing a story on... well, I’m not sure, but he seems to be followin’ me around so maybe it’s me." Li Po-Fung stood to shake his hand. Hers was rough and indelicate, and it made McQuethy self-conscious about the smooth state of his own.

"Hello, ma’am," McQuethy said. "Your place here is indeed splendid."

"Thank you, but if my father were here, he’d tell you it’s his place. So I’ll do it for him." She smiled. "It’s his place."

"You would have seen Li’s handiwork on the way in, Igor," said Chance, pointing backwards. "She’s the resident tombstone artisan and mausoleum architect." Then he leaned in close to McQuethy, "She’s also the mortician, since her father passed in his sleep a year back. But if the locals knew a girl was running this by her lonesome, they might look at her queer, ya know?"

McQuethy looked at her queer.

"Like that," she said.

"I’m sorry," stammered McQuethy. "It must be difficult for you."

"Why do you say that?"

"Ah, well, it simply seems as though it’s a... difficult situation."

Chance interrupted. "Bob is in the street between the Basement and Ed’s stables." He pulled ten dollars out of his tattered wallet and put it on Li’s desk.

"It’s five dollars, Chance. It always is."

"Keep the rest, Li."

Li’s mouth was tight. "Could I speak to you in private, Chance?"

McQuethy hastily acquiesced, stepping outside.

"Nice fella," said Chance. "Twitchy."

"Yes." A pause. "You did a really good job with the vest." She indicated his velvety purple garment with the silver thread in Oriental designs of flowers and birds. "I think you have a real talent."

Chance puckered his mouth and tilted his head down. "Well, mom always said it’s foolish for a man to not be able to cook or sew, since he eats and wears clothes ‘most every day of his life."

She smiled, then paused and frowned. "So I wish you’d stop telling people I gave it to you."

"Who told you I said that?"

"I wish you’d just stop everything, Chance."

"What everything?"

"What everything. The money, the presents, the business. Especially the business." She let three seconds pass, so what followed would hit Chance unimpeded. "I mean, am I wrong, or do you kill men so that I can stay employed?"

Chance stood in angry silence.

"Li, that’s the most insulting thing I ever heard from anybody, and I have been lashed by my share o’ tongues."

"You have some sort of unhealthy feelings toward me, Chance, and the thing is, I don’t know how far they go. I know you’re a protector. But I don’t need your protection. So just... just... stop giving me money, stop telling people I make you vests, and stop manufacturing work for me. I don’t know what you think we are, Chance, but let me clear it up for you. Nothing. I mean we’re not anything."

Chance lowered his head. "Shoot, Li, I..."

"I hope I’m not interruptin’," said another voice. Chance and Li froze and looked over at the broad-shouldered gentleman in the wide, double-breasted black coat, military pants and boots, and bright yellow scarf. His wide grin showed he was delighted to be interrupting. The man turned to Chance and took a slow step toward him while running a hand covered in gold rings through his spare gray hair, careful to not disturb the overhang that badly hid a missing right ear. "Mister Black."

"Evenin’, Ben," muttered Chance, as he and Li relaxed stiffly. "What brings you by this hour?"

"Well actually son, it’s you." Lieutenant Colonel Ben L’Hunger’s whole body leaned strangely to the left, and in that side’s hand he carried a gold-knobbed cane, the head of which he tapped lightly to Chance’s chest, the exact spot that had burned earlier with the ferocious itch. That area was soft to the touch, and may have shifted imperceptibly when the cane contacted it.

"Word has it it was you, son, shot up ‘Jingle’ Bob Barker," L’Hunger said, "and since he was in my employ, I feel I should settle up his affairs. Course, tomorrow I shall pursue legal action against you, son, so go home and get some rest."

"Well Ben, I was gonna pick up the tab, but since he was in, uh, ‘your employ’..." His eyes moved to the Colonel’s jewelry-laden hand. "Nice rings."

"What is that supposed to mean, son, ‘nice rings’?"

"It means I was admiring your rings, Ben." He paused while the Colonel curled his lip. "‘Course it’s funny, ‘cause in my experience blood tends to be red instead of gold..."

"If you don’t mind, son," the Colonel interrupted while maintaining a rigid smile, "I have some business to settle up here with the lady’s father."

Chance donned his Plainsman, then turned to Li.

"We’ll talk later, Li, all right?"

"Okay," she agreed, tired.

Chance nodded, gave another sideways glance at the Colonel like fellas do when they walk by someone they don’t like, and stepped out into the cool, breezy night where McQuethy waited.

"Let’s get us a drink, Igor. They got whiskey in Philadelphia, or just them fancy likoors?"

"Oh, I’m a beer man, myself," he responded proudly. "Say, do you think I could go back inside and take Li’s picture?"

"Wouldn’t you rather take her to a sittin’ room?"

"No, no, I like the un-posed, ‘you-are-there’ look. It’s where the photography movement is headed."

"Is it, now?" Chance looked in through the window as McQuethy politely interrupted Li’s conversation with the Colonel. She was confused by the notion of just ‘taking her picture’ right there, but as McQuethy shook some powder onto the flashbar, he assured her it would turn out great. The Colonel acted put out, and moved to the side until McQuethy, looking into the back of the camera, told him he had left the frame.

"Everyone still, great, and now, here we go..."

Foosh!

#

"The woman behind the desk is Li Po-Fung, devoted love interest of our protagonist," explained McQuethy to Kopelson and the Major, "while the fellow lurking at the edge is the sinister Lieutenant Colonel Ben L’Hunger."

Kopelson studied the picture. "Why is the Lieutenant Colonel ‘sinister’?"

"Oh... well, he’s not yet, but he gets to be later," McQuethy explained.

"Is this story aimed at defacing soldiers of the American Army?" asked Diggs sternly, standing up straight with a run of cracks popping down his back. "Because we read plenty of those in the other papers, and we will not..."

"I assure you, Major, this is nothing of the sort," interceded McQuethy with an amiable laugh. "It’s interesting, really, Li’s father has been dead for a year, but the town is totally unaware. Whenever he’s called, he’s always ‘away’ or ‘meditating’ or ‘studying mystic Taos’. She keeps his favorite cigars burning so the smell never goes away."

"You said the Lieutenant Colonel had these two hoodlums in his employ," grumbled the Major. "I assume you will tell us why?"

"Well Major," said McQuethy coyly, "that will be answered soon. In another couple of pictures, actually."

#

"I can’t believe you’re traveling America’s west and won’t have a smoke with me, Igor," Chance complained at their corner table of The Bishop’s Basement, the cowboy’s back to the wall as he lit up a cheroot. "You’ve got a mustache, why not complete the illusion?"

McQuethy felt his upper lip. "You think it makes me look like a rough trail-rider?"

Chance shook his head and blew a cloud of smoke. "Banker."

"Hmm." McQuethy took a pull on the harsh, thick beer he’d been nursing since their arrival. For a moment he absorbed the sounds of the saloon, the steady, non-stop clink of dirty poker chips, hoarse voices oiled by liquor, braying laughter from women of questionable virtue, and the occasional slurred shout of "Flapjack!", all weaved together by the bubbly tunes a robed man dressed as a vicar played on a small pipe organ, currently "The Girl I Left Behind Me." McQuethy wished, very strongly, that he could handle a smoke.

"So, Chance, since you appear to be the most fascinating fellow in all the Wyoming Territory, you have volunteered yourself as the topic of my pictorial tribute to the West. So why don’t you tell me a little about yourself? Where are you from?"

Chance coughed a little laugh as he puffed at the cheroot dangling in the right corner of his mouth. "Where you from, Igor?"

"Me? Well, born and raised in Philadelphia, son of a well-to-do teamster specializing in the transport of large, wounded animals—horses, elephants, rhinos. Um, as a boy, little Igor loved drawing and storytelling, but when this lovely device called the camera came into his possession, he realized he wouldn’t have to rely on his feeble talent as a graphic artist to make his way in the world." He pointed at himself. "We skip ahead to a grown Igor McQuethy, who had the good grace to take a trip to the west, funded by a dubious elder McQuethy, where he hopes to take a story with pictures that will capture the imagination of America, and more importantly, the publishers of the Philadelphia Examiner."

Chance squinted suspiciously at McQuethy. "I thought you said you worked for the Examiner?"

"Did I? Well, perhaps I was trying out how it sounded."

"Uh-huh."

"So, now it’s your turn."

Chance ran a thumb thoughtfully along his dramatic angle of a jaw. "Well, not to disparage your own hair-raising tale, but I’m afraid mine is a bit more... layered."

"All right, what if I offer a topic? Where were you born?"

"In a little three-house town without a name in Ohio. Between two of those three houses, actually, under a drainpipe, beside a foaming dog that had to be killed later that day."

"And how does one get from between two houses, under a drainpipe, beside a dog in Ohio to Cheyenne?"

"Well Igor, it was a string of jobs got me here. First there was the Pony Express..."

"Be quiet! You rode for the Pony Express?"

"I didn’t say that." Then he went back to counting. "Cowboy for Charles Goodnight..."

"Be quiet! The Charles Goodnight, the cattle baron?"

Chance frowned. "Yes, Igor. I worked for Goodnight ten years, everything from chuck wagon to point man to trail boss, and about a dozen side projects involving hay. Then one day a drive of ours reached the end of the Goodnight-Loving Trail here in Cheyenne, and I just kinda stayed. Didn’t go back to Texas with the boys. Musta been tired or somethin’."

He fell silent, and stared into his freshly-filled shooter, swishing the whiskey around inside. "Hell, it got to where my damn legs would get so swollen with the rheumatism I’d have to slit the sides of my boots just to pull ‘em off. Then when I’d get my money for the drive it would go to a new pair of boots. You can see how that cycle perpetuates itself." He flicked his cheroot ash idly, almost sadly, into a spittoon. "That was three years ago, an’ here I’ve been since. It ain’t so bad, what with the Union Pacific, you get a lot o’ interesting traffic. Yellowstone’s close by. Bears."

"And since you decided to stay, you’ve been working as a law enforcement official."

"In some capacity, Igor, yeah I have."

"A job that suits you well, due to your uncanny ability to cheat death."

McQuethy grinned knowingly, and got wide-eyed with anticipation. Chance looked up at him and cocked an eyebrow. "Have another whiskey, Chance, and tell me why none of Bob Barker’s bullets hit you from a hundred feet away."

Chance swished his drink some more, then leaned in slowly and stared hard at McQuethy. Then he leaned back in his chair, tipping it on two legs, and ran a thumb along his jaw. Then he put back the shot, got up and moved to the chair on the opposite side of the table. He undid the first buttons of his shirt and opened it, showing McQuethy his chest. The photographer looked without blinking and said, "Do you mind if I get a picture of that?"

"Go ahead, Igor."

McQuethy brought out his camera and flashbar and moved to Chance’s previous chair, despite the rude looks from the patrons at the bar behind Chance who turned their backs to the camera, folks who were obviously not fans of the modern photography movement.

Foosh!

#

"I am going to ruin this in the retelling, but I will try and do it justice," said McQuethy as Kopelson and Major Diggs looked at the picture of Chance in the bar with the top of his shirt open. On Black’s chest was some kind of ebon design, maybe a brand burned there, rendered indistinct by the uneven light of the flash.

"You know, my boy," said Kopelson, squinting at the picture, "I appreciate this style of bringing the camera wherever it needs to go, but do you think next time a tripod could go with it?"

"I don’t think a tripod would have rendered that symbol on Chance’s chest more clearly. Because it wasn’t a brand, or even a tattoo."

The two men looked up from the picture.

"Well, what is it," asked Kopelson inquisitively. "A birthmark? A smudge on the camera?"

"Grit?" blurted the Major angrily. "Grit!"

McQuethy held up his hands.

"Here’s what Chance told me, and not only is it incredible, but within its story is an incident that leads me to believe Chance ended his trail-riding days for reasons besides rheumatism." He paused, and rubbed his hands together.

"Chance is on a trail ride with two thousand cattle up through New Mexico and Colorado..."

"When?" interrupted the Colonel, his arms crossed above his sizable belly.

"Three years ago," McQuethy answered politely. "He’s on the trail, right at the top of Colorado. He’s the trail boss, so he’s up scouting ahead with the chuck wagon and the cook, a Mexican fellow called Neville, and one of the point men, Sparky Jewel. Suddenly, from along either side of the hilly trail comes a contingent of Cheyenne."

"Indians?" asked Kopelson, leaning forward.

"Indians," answered McQuethy. "They’re not painted up, so Chance relaxes a bit, but Neville hides in the wagon while Jewel undoes the tie on his carbine scabbard and looks agitated. Jewel does not like Indians, regardless of tribe or intent."

"Why should he?" offered the Major, as if McQuethy had just said "Jewel never swallowed burning coal."

The photographer blinked slowly, then continued. "As the chuck wagon rattles to a halt beside the two men, the lead brave stops about fifty yards before Chance and raises one finger high." McQuethy did so as well. "He’s saying to Chance the toll for passing the herd through Indian land will be one dollar per head."

"Two thousand dollars?" the Major coughed. "I wouldn’t have paid it!"

McQuethy grinned meanly. "Then you would have had a two-thousand-cattle stampede on your hands, Major. Because that’s what the Indians would do if the toll wasn’t paid, stampede the herd."

"So what did Chance do?" prompted Kopelson.

"Chance nods his acceptance to the lead brave, and reaches down for the chest of money that Goodnight gave him for just such a contingency. Well, Jewel would never give the Indians money, and after shouting a few select oaths at the natives, he unsheathes his carbine and fires at the brave with the upraised finger, with the intent, I am sure, to dramatically shoot off the man’s hand. Well, he misses the Indian entirely, as he’s a poor shot. As he’s cocking his carbine for another, Chance whips out his Colt and presses it to Jewel’s head."

Making his hand like a gun, McQuethy pointed it against Kopelson’s wet temple, right below his dark, ripe cyst. The editor gave a small start of delighted alarm. The Major rolled his eyes.

McQuethy was perspiring even more now. Sweat began to soak the bandage applied to his upper lip, loosening the tape. "Chance says, ‘Since you’re just the point man, Sparky, I don’t think you’re required to make that decision.’ Jewel has frozen, and the braves have their rifles and bows at the ready. So Chance says, ‘Now, so we don’t rile up these nice folks, how about I give them the money they want and we can be on our way? We probably owe it to them anyway for something, so it all evens out in the end.’"

Pantomiming the action that followed, McQuethy went on. "Jewel sags down like he’s defeated, but then shoves the butt of the carbine hard into Chance’s face, knocking him off his horse. Then he starts unloading his carbine into the pack of braves, urging his mount behind a high boulder. The Indians scatter for cover and return fire, while Jewel falls off his horse and stakes out behind the rock, ready to take them all out, a real hero. He crouches down and there’s a hot barrage of bullets up against the rock that ricochet and chip up the stone—bang bang bazing bang bang!—and then it’s quiet. Jewel laughs and stands up, taking aim at the Indians. But he feels a little dizzy, and when he looks down, he realizes he’s been shot in the stomach. As he slumps up against the rock, breathing what will soon be his last air, he looks over where the shot came from, and there’s Chance, holding his smoking Colt, this grim, pained look on his bloody face. Jewel mutters an obscenity appropriate to the situation, and dies."

McQuethy laid still on the floor with his tongue hanging out, then got up and brushed down his jacket, scraping at the dried blood he just now noticed on the right shoulder. Kopelson wanted to applaud.

"What has this got to do with the picture of the man’s chest?" mumbled Major Diggs, who was now leaning against the editor’s table, too bored to stand.

"Major, you set up these transitions beautifully, and for that I thank you. The Cheyenne did not stampede Chance’s herd, despite the fact that Jewel had opened fire upon them. Rather, they admired the spirit of this white man, Second Chance Black, who was willing to kill his own kind before he would let this lunatic slaughter the Indians. They approached Chance with a kind of friendliness, the lead brave helping the cowboy to his feet, and indicating with a small smile—and what Chance thought was a strange look of realization—that no harm would come to him. While Neville the cook cowered in the chuck wagon, the lead brave took Chance over a nearby rise and a half mile away to a Cheyenne encampment, twenty tepees large. They went to one dwelling in particular, from which thick gray smoke rose in a solid column from the top."

The photographer paused for a moment, turning to examine the cherry wood paneling of the editor’s office, some old awards for the Philadelphia Examiner framed on the wall. He pictured his name on one of them. Then he said over his shoulder, "Chance has no recollection of what transpired within the tepee. All he is sure of is that he was awakened some time later by the other point man of the drive. It was night, he was inside the chuck wagon, covered with a blanket, and so fiercely hungry that he started eating handfuls of raw pinto and coffee beans from Neville’s bags. The story the cook told was they were ambushed by Indians, Chance fell off his horse and knocked himself out, Jewel was killed by hostile Indian fire, and the natives made off with a couple thousand from Chance’s lockbox before the rest of the drive showed up."

"Brigands," blurted the Major.

"So how does this thing on Chance’s chest figure in?" Kopelson asked, pointing at the picture.

"That thing was on his chest when he woke up. For some strange reason, or perhaps for some plausible reason that I simply am unaware of, it didn’t photograph well. But if it did, you would be looking at a circle of jagged rings with a central figure inside, a sort of raven-like coyote man-beast, the whole design made of—and here’s where things get odder—hair."

The two men at the desk were silent, Kopelson’s pale-lipped mouth open and one of the Major’s eyebrows suspiciously arched.

"Hair?" asked Kopelson, then peered closely at the picture. "What, like a pattern shaved out of his chest?"

"Chance had a clean chest. Actually, they were more like long, black hairs adhered somehow to his skin and fashioned into that pattern."

"A raven-like coyote man-beast," confirmed the Major.

"Yes," said McQuethy, his muscles tensing. "You know, Chance doesn’t show that symbol to anyone except those he trusts." He threw this statement out proudly, which impressed Kopelson and amused the Major. "And as for what it actually is... even Chance doesn’t know for sure. He does know two things, however. The first is since he got that thing, he has never been shot, or stabbed, or punched, or spit on, or anything else, in any combinations of attempts, at least on the attacker’s first try. If the assailant mounts a second attack or series of attacks, he could harm him, but Chance is usually too swift to let a second blow land." McQuethy tapped a finger on the desk next to the picture of Chance with "Jingle" Bob Barker at his feet.

"The other thing is that it was given to him for a purpose. He believes the Indians saw in Second Chance Black a white man whose continued existence could only be to their benefit."

#

"That is an unbelievable story," said McQuethy, shaking his head as he and Chance left the Bishop’s Basement after midnight and took back to the boardwalk.

"Which is why I deigned it safe to relate, Igor," said Chance, picking a chunk of lettuce from his all-vegetable plate out of his teeth, then inserting another cheroot and waiting for the wind to let him light it. "You can tell all the folks you want, an’ nobody will believe you." He looked over at McQuethy, then clapped a hand on his shoulder. "Well, I’m headin’ back to the funeral parlor to talk to Li now."

"She seems like a really special woman, that Li."

The boardwalk was interrupted by a vacant lot, upon which a tent was pitched. A caller stood outside the tent flap.

"Evenin’ gents," he said warmly. "Care to step inside and see the Spider-pig and the Wolf-duck? They play together like they was friends!"

McQuethy stared at the entranceway and reached for his wallet, but Chance urged him on with a grip of his hat brim to the caller.

"You were sayin’ somethin’ about Li, Igor?"

"Hmm? Oh, yes," McQuethy stammered as they passed the tent. "Just that I know women, and I really think you’ve got something special there."

"That’s a true thing to say, Igor. I just wish that..."

"You should see the Spider-pig and the Wolf-duck," intoned a low voice from the deep shadows of the building before them. Both men halted. "They play together. Strange."

Chance relaxed while McQuethy tensed. The two men faced the shadow and walked closer as it slowly moved into a sliver of lamp light that barely illuminated a face, burnt-red in color, with a wide nose, high upper lip, and long, inky hair pulled back. The hard brown eyes moved from McQuethy back to the cowboy.

"Evenin’, Chance," said the Indian in a steady voice, holding up a hand in greeting and then pointing to his mouth. "You got something in your teeth."

"Evenin’, Fish. Thanks," Chance said, holding up his hand in a like manner and then picking out another leaf of lettuce. He gestured to McQuethy. "Fish, this here’s Igor McQuethy, a photographer from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Igor, this is Fish-From-The-Sky, a friend of mine from Cheyenne. The tribe, not this city here, obviously."

McQuethy held up an unsteady hand and said, "How."

"Don’t say ‘How’, fella," Fish responded glumly. "A member of another tribe said ‘How’ to some white man long ago, and now that’s all we get. It’s not something any of us really say." Noticing the frozen expression on McQuethy’s face, he raised his hand.

"How," he said, tired.

"It really is a pleasure to meet you, sir," McQuethy said, expelling a breath he had been holding in. "When you melted out of the shadows like that, you startled me."

"Sorry."

As the two white men’s eyes adjusted to the darkness, the native’s features became more distinct, like he was materializing before them. He wore leather leggings and a breechcloth decorated with a somber rat motif. His cloak was made of beaver and otter, and served to barely hide the two six-shooters in buffalo-skin holsters at his sides.

"Say, nice breechcloth, Fish," said Chance admiringly.

Fish looked down. "Thanks. My, uh, my squaw made it. I didn’t make it. She made it."

Chance turned to McQuethy. "Fish and I keep in contact about what our peoples are up to," he explained. "We find this practice helps avoid... unusual circumstances."

"Which is what brings me around this evening," said Fish. "You see what the train brought in tonight?"

"The train? No, when it came in I was dealing with a problem on the other side of..." He stopped, and looked at McQuethy with his mouth half open. Then he closed it, and turned grimly back to Fish-From-The-Sky. "I never miss the train comin’ in, do I Fish?"

"Except for tonight, it would seem," the brave said. "It was pulling a piggyback flatcar with something big on it covered by a tarp. I saw it come in, but guards rode with it to the roundhouse, so I did not get close enough to steal a look."

"Guards? What kind of guards, Fish?"

"Army cavalry. Dressed to the nines."

Chance took the unlit cigar from his mouth and tossed it away. "Has the train left the roundhouse?"

"Nope. But there are guards set up around it. You would need the body of the snake and the wings of the eagle to get in, and you are notably lacking in both."

The cowboy clapped Fish on the shoulder. "What about the cunning of the fox, Fish?"

The Indian shrugged. "It is overrated, since the fox has been known to eat its own dung. But he seems to do okay for himself." He grinned slightly. "What do you have in mind?"

"It would appear that Colonel Ben L’Hunger utilized a distraction to get the train into the roundhouse tonight without me noticin’. Seems only fair we utilize a similar strategy to get ourselves in."

"This will require my ‘crazy Indian’ act, won’t it?"

"It’s an act?"

McQuethy piped in. "If you want a distraction that turns peoples’ heads, this powder is good at grabbing attention."

Fish-From-The-Sky took the offered pouch of magnesium powder suspiciously and looked at Chance, who nodded.

McQuethy was thrilled to be taking part in things. "Yes, just strike some flint over it, the sparks ignite it, and it goes up in a flash of light and a cloud of smoke."

"Can I use a match?" asked Fish, producing a box of matches from a buckskin satchel.

"Um, sure, a match is great too," said McQuethy. Then he said, "Oh, hey," and suddenly took the flashbar off his belt, emptied some powder onto it, and held up his camera. "Would you mind if I took a picture of you, mister Fish-From-The-Sky? By the way, where did you get your name? Was it from one of those strange storms that drop buckets of fish out of the sky?"

"No." Then Fish turned to Chance. "I’ll circle around and be on the north side of the roundhouse. When my signal goes off, do your stuff."

"Couldn’t do my stuff without you, Fish."

The two men clasped hands, as McQuethy said, "Okay, and..."

Foosh!

#

"Well, this is a lovely picture of the side of a building," said Arnold Kopelson with a chuckle.

"Good thing you snapped it before it got away," Major Diggs added dryly.

Igor McQuethy smiled politely. "Yes, that was ‘the one that got away’, Fish-From-The-Sky, the Indian spy."

"That has a nice lilt to it," Kopelson said. "May I use that name for a serial story?"

McQuethy walked around to the front of the desk, looking out the window of the second-floor office onto the cool stone streets of Philadelphia below, where horses were being used to pull things, not being ridden. He gave a wistful sigh.

"Let me think about that," McQuethy said, pasting down the bandage on his lip. Then he turned back around. "Anyway, that picture will have to stand, because I would never again get another opportunity to photograph Fish-From-The-Sky."

#

"So the visit to Li is off for the moment, I presume?"

"Well, yes it is Igor, but that don’t mean you..."

"Are you going to tell me that something newsworthy may be in the roundhouse, but that I should go back to my hotel room and stare at the bullet hole in my wash basin?"

Chance looked over at the Easterner as they hurried through some poorly lit back streets to the train yard.

"You want to photograph it? Well gee Igor, I don’t know, seems if the Army wanted it photographed, they might have eschewed the whole bring-it-into-town-under-a-tarp thing. What do you say?"

"I say your rheumatism must be bad if that’s as fast as you can walk."

"We’ll see what the situation warrants," Chance muttered.

The Union Pacific station was on the opposite side of town from where they started, but all streets in Cheyenne led to it. The ticket and passenger building was dimly lit, with one attendant inside who had just nodded off reading a dime novel about a cowboy called "Red" Gore.

Chance and McQuethy crept to the edge of the gray building and peered around the corner. An open-hopper car, two boxcars, and a gondola were scattered about the yard, none of them close enough to provide cover. A water tower stood a couple hundred feet to the northeast, and all around that were ten corrals filled with longhorns and Herefords. Across several sets of tracks and three hundred feet to the northwest was the roundhouse, permeated all about with wide doors. Lanterns burned around the place, and dark figures moved within.

"We need to get closer," Chance said. "We need to be behind that big coach." He indicated an immense wagon that sat between the tracks about sixty yards away.

"Do you think these fellows, have, um, have weapons?" McQuethy asked carefully.

"If they didn’t have weapons, they would be ill-suited to guard, don’t you think Igor?"

"Um, yes."

Chance turned to him and put a hand on his shoulder. "Don’t you worry about weapons, because this ain’t about weapons. It’s about getting’ inside, havin’ a look, and gettin’ out. They’ll never see us, they’ll be distracted by Fish. Right?"

"Right." McQuethy nodded vigorously. Chance returned a shorter nod, then drew his battered pistol and dragged it along the arm that held the younger man’s shoulder, checking for bullets as the chambers rotated with easy clicks.

"Uh," McQuethy said calmly, pointing at the gun. "‘This ain’t about weapons?’ The conversation we had seconds ago?"

Chance ran a thumb along his jaw, nodded, then turned back to the roundhouse. He knelt down and picked up a rock an inch or two wide. "Whaddya think, Igor? Can I hit the roundhouse from here?"

"No."

"Thanks for the vote o’ confidence, Igor."

Chance stepped out, lobbed the rock with a savage swing, then hopped back behind the depot. The rock disappeared into the night sky, then called back to them a second later with a "Clunk! Clunkclunkclunkclunk! Clunk!" The dark figures in the roundhouse suddenly moved off to their left, out of the two men’s sight.

Chance gave McQuethy a haughty smirk and sprinted out from behind the ticket building. The photographer hesitated a heartbeat before he ran after him.

They scurried low, crossing the set of main tracks and heading for the heavy wooden coach, shuffling beneath the horseless vehicle as one of the dark figures came back to his post.

Now in viewing range, they could see the guard was in a blue Army uniform, covered by a long black cloak and mantle. On his head he wore a Union cap, and he held a .45 repeater rifle at the ready. He glanced over and past the direction of Chance and McQuethy, who remained motionless behind one of the giant wheels of the coach. Sitting quietly on the ground, Chance realized something he hadn’t before.

"This coach has ten wheels," he whispered, breathing hard.

"Is that strange?" heaved McQuethy, his camera wedged up tightly beneath his chin.

"Only when you consider most have four." Chance looked to the front of the vehicle, where thick leather and chain harnesses were laid neatly out on the ground before it. Chance did a count of the bridles.

"Eighteen horses to pull this thing," he mused, then reached up to feel the underside of the flatbed. "Heavy wood, pine maybe, shod in iron."

"Twenty horses," McQuethy corrected him, doing his own count.

Chance gave McQuethy a puzzled look. Then two gunshots rang out.

Chance fell flat on his stomach and looked to the roundhouse. The guard closest to them ran off to his left, leaving the partially open gate unattended. A few spare lights burned within, and Chance could see people exiting the roundhouse through a far gate, towards the same direction the guard ran. Chance gave the situation a few seconds to solidify, then sprinted out from underneath the coach, kicking dust at McQuethy, who rolled onto his knees, crawled forward, got up, and hurried after.

In the dash to the gate, Chance saw a white flash far to his right. Out of this flash rose a ball of gray smoke, and as it dispersed, it revealed Fish-From-The-Sky, standing in the middle and firing his pistols in the air. When the chambers were empty, he slipped them back into their holsters, picked up a .38 repeater rifle off the ground, and started shooting at the roundhouse, just over the roof. As he did, he began a little jig, first firing, then dancing, then firing again. He even sang out a chant: "Oh, I’m a crazy In-di-an, and I want scalps for my col-lec-tion!..."

When the soldiers composed themselves enough to return fire, Fish-From-The-Sky dived behind a derelict rail car, poking out his head out at regular intervals to yell "Scalps! That’s all I want! Scalps! Mmmm, I love ‘em!" and firing above the roundhouse roof.

Over the soldiers’ shots and angry cries of "dirty Injun won’t get my hair no way!", Chance made it to and under the half open gate, with McQuethy on his heels. Ducking inside, they hid behind an engine car and took in the sight before them.

A sight which rendered both men incapable of speech.

In the middle of the roundhouse was the long piggyback flatcar Fish-From-The-Sky had spoken of. Only now the tarp was raised, revealing a cargo whose shape almost defied physical laws. Upon the flatbed was a cannon, perhaps ten feet long and a foot and a half wide, forged of thick, ebon iron. Above that was another of the same dimensions, attached to a curving circular brace.

And above that, another.

And above that, another.

In all, Chance counted twelve cannons, rigged up in tight spring cradles around the perimeter of a deep and monstrous steel wheel, which in turn was attached to a multi-legged brace fitted with locked rollers. At the back of the brace was a mad contraption of levers, with a horizontal cone to the right set above a small box, and a hopper with a chute to the left. The thing was thirty feet high, and at the moment, was pointed slightly up at an angle.

The utter blackness of the cannon barrels absorbed all the lantern light thrown upon on them, the twelve bores gaping open like the round mouths of a silent, unholy choir.

Chance scanned the roundhouse for any sign of guards, but it seemed all had been drawn outside. He stepped from behind the engine and moved through the shadows towards the flatcar. McQuethy stood frozen to the spot, but when Chance left, it didn’t take him long to hurry after him, keeping his eyes on the huge black beast and stumbling once on a railroad tie. He regained his balance, but never looked down. The thing on the flatcar simply demanded that it be the center of attention.

"What...?" was all McQuethy could breathe as he crouched down with Chance behind a row of crates stacked on the ground nearby.

"I wish I had an answer to that, Igor," Chance whispered as he shook his head slowly. "Got the look of a Gatling Gun, only you’ve probably noticed it’s about fifteen times bigger." He looked across the roundhouse to his right at the open doors, where in the dim lantern glow he could make out the backs of some of the guards, still earnestly firing at their crazy Indian, some having broken off to try and get closer to their target. Fish wouldn’t be able to endure their attention much longer before he’d have to pull one of his famous escapes. So with the notion that his time was limited, Chance crept from behind the crates, and staying low, moved to the flatcar.

Hefting himself onto it, he ducked under some steel support beams and stepped to the hopper on the left-hand side, opening the lid with a low metallic creak. It was neatly lined with cannon shells, each twenty inches of cold, gleaming bronze from tip to charge, and half that in width. The hopper was long and deep, and was stacked with at least a hundred of them. Closing the hopper lid, he tried to trace a shell’s path from here to one of the cannon barrels. Each of the thick black tubes was breech-loading, and assuming the wheel of guns rotated, it looked as if a mechanism on top opened the back of the cannon, a stoppered chute slid the shell from the hopper inside, and another mechanism at the bottom closed and locked the door, making the cartridge ready to fire by the time it reached the metal cone that rested on its side opposite the hopper. As his eyes wandered this impossible route, a copper plate at the base of the machine caught his attention.

It read, in proud, engraved letters, "GATLING CANNON". Beneath that, "prototype designed by Richard Jordan Gatling", and beneath that, "March 5, 1876".

Chance’s mouth hung open like a simple person’s, and he put an arm against one of the creature’s thick black legs. His own legs suddenly felt like they might betray him, and it wasn’t his rheumatism.

A scrape came from behind him, and Chance turned to see McQuethy opening his camera on top of one of the crates. As Chance glanced nervously to the far roundhouse doors, he saw one of the guards was turned halfway towards the interior of the place. The cowboy raised his hand to McQuethy and shook it, but the photographer’s thumb was already on the flash switch.

Foosh!

#

"That’s what we saw in the roundhouse."

The muted crackling of the fire was the only sound in the editor’s office as the picture in Kopelson’s plump hand simply sat there, begging for comment and receiving none.

Kopelson stared at the picture of the Gatling Cannon on the flatcar in the Cheyenne roundhouse, with Chance Black the Second standing on it, his hand a blur. He wasn’t sure what to say.

When McQuethy looked over at the Major, however, his blood chilled. The Major was staring right at him, eyes encircled with coronas of flaming pink. The look on his face was one of shock, disbelief, anger, and... something else.

McQuethy found it difficult to stand under the Major’s direct gaze, so he moved from the front of the desk to Kopelson’s side, where the editor’s mass made for fine cover.

Just then, the bandage on McQuethy’s upper lip slid off onto the corner of Kopelson’s desk with a light splat of perspiration and blood. The photographer looked down with embarrassment as he picked it up and tried adhering it back over his slim gash of a lip wound. He glanced over at the Major as he did, and saw the soldier’s gloved right hand was rested on the side of his stomach, right above his Army revolver, his index finger twitching oddly.

#

A bullet from a carbine slammed against a metal crossbeam near Chance’s hip and shot away, the sound so hot and hard the cowboy jumped back as if he’d been hit. He felt the hairy symbol on his chest give a rasping squirm, like a lick from an old cat’s tongue, before the skin around it began to burn with the itch, as if to remind Chance why he was still alive -- a point not lost on him.

Looking toward the roundhouse opening from where the bullet came, Chance saw the guard spitting the empty cartridge from his carbine and cocking up another. He had seen McQuethy’s flash, but the photographer had pulled himself out of sight and was scurrying low to the ground back toward the locomotive. Chance jumped off the flatcar and ran towards a door opposite McQuethy’s, to draw fire from the Easterner, who didn’t seem to have been spotted. The guard fired again, missing badly as his carbine was shoved by a guard beside him, who shouted sternly that firing weapons at the Gatling Cannon displayed poor judgment on his part. Chance ran full speed toward the door in front of him. He was within thirty feet when four men appeared from around the corner and skidded dustily to a halt in Chance’s path, their cloaks flapping, their carbines trained on him.

Four men, whose first attacks would all miss. Followed by four more. Chance considered these odds, and after one full second of contemplation, he put on the brakes, stumbling to a halt with his hands up near his shoulders, hoping surrender was on their agenda.

It was, for they did not shoot, and as Chance stood breathing heavy and even, around the corner jogged Colonel L’Hunger, his sideways lean making his lope ungainly. He had a pistol in one hand and his cane in the other, and his face stretched down in a long scowl as he stopped before Chance.

"Evenin’, Ben," Chance said in the same tone he had used earlier at the undertaker’s. "That’s a mighty nice piece o’ hardware over there. Since I’m a taxpayer I thought I’d have me a look, see what my dollars are up to these days."

The Colonel grabbed Chance’s Colt from his holster and threw it behind him, where a soldier tried to catch it but missed, and so made a big show of ignoring it. L’Hunger stuck his own pistol in Chance’s face and showed off a mouth of skinny gray teeth in a wide grin.

"Son, no less a man than President Grant himself has given me the authority to eliminate anyone who comes in contact with that device whom I would deem a threat to its security."

"What’s it for, Ben? If I’m gonna die you may as well tell me."

"What it’s for? Ain’t it obvious what it’s for? It’s a big gun, son. It shoots things! Destroys them completely. People. Buildings. Large hills. Enormous sections of land."

"What people?"

The Colonel holstered his pistol, looked him over, and rubbed his gold rings. Then he began to pace slowly. It was storytime, he had rehearsed it, and he was hoping someone would ask.

"Well, as you are probably aware, son, about two years ago, gold was discovered in the Black Hills of the Dakotas. Repeated attempts to buy this choice chunk of real estate from the Sioux fail, so this last fall, the United States begins a... relocation project."

"Despite the treaty in Sixty-Eight, which..."

"‘Thar’s gold in them thar hills!’ goes the popular cry," continued the Colonel, undaunted, "but the Indians do not care about us or our commerce, and in a move that would be crippling to our young nation’s economy, they refuse to budge from what they call ‘their’ land." He gestured grandly to the engine on the flatcar. "It is now time to bring in the big guns, and it just so happens this is the biggest in the world."

L’Hunger strolled over to the flatcar. "Designed by Richard Jordan Gatling, for use by the US military in their campaign against the savage Indians of the plains." The Colonel slapped a crossbeam towards the back of the mighty gun. It gave a dull clang that echoed through the roundhouse. "This pretty little thing is only in Cheyenne for the evening. Tomorrow it goes out by coach to rendezvous with General Terry, who will soon be departing Fort Abraham Lincoln in northern Dakota."

The pupils in Chance’s eyes grew small as the rest of his eyes widened and his heart began to thump blood to his head.L’Hunger saw Chance’s reaction, and his voice dropped resonantly as he continued. "Our agents report that hostile forces of Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho are assembling in southern Montana, in a place called the Little Bighorn River Valley. General Terry is bringing his army to engage them. He will hand over the Gatling Cannon to one of his soldiers for a dangerous and heroic flanking maneuver that will block the Indians’ escape from the battle and destroy them. And I cannot think of a finer soldier for the job than the one selected by General Terry...," and here L’Hunger stood up straight for the first time, with his arms stiff at his side, "...Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer."

"Custer?" Chance laughed weakly. "There’s no way Custer’d be given that command, Ben." Another weak laugh. "Go on, you can’t fool me."

"The only thing I regret about sending this magnificent weapon on its way," the Colonel continued, grasping one of the support legs and looking up romantically at the enormous barrels, "is that I won’t get to see it in action." Then he brightened, as if an idea just came to him, and he slowly craned his head toward Chance. "Or will I?"

The Colonel gestured grandly to a group of men who were standing off to the side. "String ‘im up, boys!" Two of the men, one the stubby fella in the dirty bowler called The Thimble, moved up to Chance and brought a thick hemp noose around him, pinning his arms to his side. Chance writhed around and swung his head and knocked his Plainsman off and spasmed and growled, but he was held fast.

While one of the soldiers tied a rock around the free end of the rope and hurled it up into the rafters of the ceiling, where it cleared a sturdy beam and thudded to the ground, The Thimble took a swing at Chance’s face. Of course he missed, stumbling as his fist sailed by Chance’s jaw, causing the patch of hair on the cowboy’s chest to wriggle and burn. The Thimble uprighted himself, straightened his hat, looked around at the other men, then gave an even fiercer swing. This blow connected hard on the side of Chance’s head, and momentarily blacked his vision except for twinkling lights. Then the rope was hauled on, and the stunned Chance was airborne.

As he rose, The Thimble snarled in a rough voice full of anger and contempt, "Ya call that a vest, ya snake-sniffer? Ya couldn’t sew if yer name was Granny Apple and ya worked at Granny Apple’s Fabric Supp...OOF!" He was cut off as Chance kicked him hard at the top of his nose, causing him to blow out a spurt of blood before collapsing onto his back, his bowler tumbling off and rolling away.

Chance swung in an oval pattern as he ascended to ten, twenty, thirty feet off the ground. Up to this point, he had avoided looking at the Gatling Cannon, but now it loomed before him, the stark lightlessness of its bores a preview of the void they promised to deliver. He rocked toward the cannon, then away, then toward again. Looking below, he saw his Plainsman, near where his rope had been secured to a railroad tie, and realized he was about to die without it.

The Colonel squinted one eye closed and cocked his grinning head up at Chance, then sauntered over to the crates nearby the flatcar. He shouted to one of his men, "Percy, go tell the town to expect a loud disturbance." Prying open one of the crates, he reached in and removed a couple sticks of dynamite from the top of a large pile inside. He tossed them to Percy as the eager young soldier hurried up. "Wave these around to illustrate your point. And apologize on my behalf."

The Colonel sent him off, and he exited quickly through the back roundhouse door. Then L’Hunger turned to the soldier who had stationed himself at the back of the Gatling Cannon, the one who was familiar with its operation. "Captain, please, stoke ‘er up!"

The soldier saluted and pulled a metal helmet over his head, then set to work throwing levers on the machine, which responded with velvety smooth clicks, clacks, and sliding snaps. At the tip of the horizontal cone, a small blue flame flickered to life, and thin strings of smoke began to unravel from grates in the side of the box upon which it was mounted.

"Everybody back, now," L’Hunger said waving his arms as if he were shooing children from a cookie-stuffed oven. The soldiers lined up against the walls and plugged their ears. Then L’Hunger stepped aside to give the monster a wide berth.

As the cannon barrel shifted, waggled, and rocked into place ten feet directly before him, Chance’s whirling, throbbing mind focused on the figure drawn with human hair on his chest. The figure. A raven-like coyote man-beast. It occurred to Chance for the first time at this very moment that he didn’t even know what the hell the figure was.

Then he thought of Li.

Then L’Hunger swung his cane down silently.

Then a blazing, noisy hole opened to Armageddon.

When the Gatling Cannon fired, it destroyed the senses. All that could be heard was a dull, dreamy roar as the machine quickly blew through its shells at two per second out the right-most cannon while the wheel they were mounted upon spun and spun and spun. The shells were slammed into the bores in the same circuit around the wheel that Chance had traced earlier, and when they reached the horizontal cone, a concentrated beam of fire was thrown onto the backs where the charge was touched off and the payload blew out the front of the gun as the recoil springs kept it from tearing itself apart. After the first shot fired, Chance vanished in the muzzle-flash and a cloud of greasy smoke. The Colonel screamed something above the din, but his lips moved quietly. If he said anything, even he could not hear it inside his own head. The deep shriek of the thing was like a thick wetness, that soaked everything around and made it heavy and numb.

THOOMTHOOMTHOOMTHOOMTHOOMTHOOM.

It took under a minute for the Gatling Cannon to empty its hopper of a hundred shells. When the ammunition was spent, the great smoldering wheel continued to twirl for several seconds before the gunman threw some levers and it clattered to a stop. Smoke choked the entire roundhouse, although much of it was dispersing through the north wall and the ceiling above it, which were completely gone. Sizzling splinters rained down to the ground, landing with tiny hisses on the crossbeams and shredded sheets of metal that had fallen from the roof.

When the doorway back to the mortal world cracked open, the Colonel stood. He found to his dismay that he’d actually been down on his knees with his hands over his head, but at least he was the first up, and since everyone else was prostrated in the same manner, no one was the wiser. But his throat was dry, so when he called for everyone to rise, the words were strangled nonsense. Perhaps the cannon had robbed him of the hearing in his other ear. Or maybe it had destroyed his vocal chords, causing him to pull them apart himself when his neck had violently clenched.

The power of the thing seemed to extend beyond the obvious.

L’Hunger surveyed the area. The devastation wrought by the Gatling Cannon was overzealous. The back of the roundhouse had vanished, as the shells had torn through it like rice paper and presumably found a section of forest a ways off in which to come to a gentle crash landing. But the Colonel could imagine what the effect would be if it was aimed directly at land. At buildings. At people.

At people. The Colonel looked up at the dangling piece of broken, burned rope that swung gently from what was left of the ceiling in the night’s breeze. Staring at it, the corner of his open mouth bent into a smile.

So full of smoke was the roundhouse, and so fixated on that shred of rope was the Colonel, that he didn’t notice the sudden small, bright flash that came from the locomotive car far off to his side.

Foosh!

#

Kopelson turned the picture in his hand on its side, to try and make more sense of it.

"What am I looking at?" he asked McQuethy, who didn’t hear the question, transfixed as he was by the cold gaze of the Major.

"I’m sorry?" mumbled McQuethy as he attempted to paste his sweaty bandage back upon his upper lip. "Ah. I was, um, I was hiding in the locomotive, and I tried to capture the devastation wrought in the roundhouse by the Gatling Cannon. There’s a great deal of smoke obscuring the picture, but through the back of the roundhouse you can make out the moon, there. And Colonel L’Hunger, there, looking up. And this across the bottom right is a fallen beam from the ceiling. You can very clearly see the condition the end of the beam is in. Shorn off and... um, and charred."

McQuethy wandered to the front of the desk.

"I know what you’re thinking," he said with a half grin to the two men before him. "You’re thinking, ‘With Chance in such danger, how could I hide the whole time?’ How could I just watch? Why didn’t I move to stop it?"

He took a deep breath, and detected a warmness on his lip. He was bleeding from his cut. Pulling out his handkerchief, he pressed it against the wound.

"Well," he continued, nodding slowly and stuffing the wet bandage in his pocket, "I wasn’t capable of doing anything, was I? I mean, these men had rifles! Or... carbines! Whatever they were! How would my waving my arms and yelling ‘Stop! Stop!’ possibly have changed anything? Except that I’d be dead now as well."

"‘As well?’" asked Kopelson eagerly, shifting his weight in his chair. "Chance was killed, by the cannon?"

McQuethy shook his head absently. "Besides, I know it sounds corn-ball, but my journalistic integrity—whatever that is—kept telling me to stay objective, that this story is not about me, that I could help more by not getting involved..."

"Oh, you’re involved, Mister Journalist," the Major said suddenly. It quieted the room, except for the roaring snap of the high, yellow fire. "You can’t un-remember things you’ve seen."

McQuethy stood completely still as he looked at the Major.

"Why would I want to, sir?"

#

"It’s okay folks, nothin’ to get worked up about," said Percy the soldier as he walked down the main strip of Cheyenne, holding out his sticks of dynamite in what he was sure was a soothing manner. "Colonel simply found some things needed detonatin’ behind the roundhouse."

The citizens along the street stood in the doorways of their shops, leaned on railings, and poked heads out of windows as they gazed in fearful wonder at the glowing embers and plumes of smoke that rose from the back of the roundhouse at the dark edge of town.

"What the hell he settin’ off dynamite fer this hour th’ night?" one grizzled old drinker wanted to know.

"Tree stumps," Percy said, then shook his head with great fervor. "Injuns."

"That’s mighty peculiar yew should say ‘Tree stumps’ when yew was meanin’ ta say ‘Injuns’."

Percy blinked rapidly, then drew his gun. "Don’t make me shoot you, old man."

Li had heard enough. Whatever the excuse, it was a cover story for something else, so what was the use in listening? She tightened her robe and went back inside the House of Emerald Rest, through the main parlor, and into the work compound in back where small paper lanterns threw spectral shadows on large blocks of stone and wood.

And Chance.

Li gave a gasp of surprise when she found him laying against a tombstone, his face sooty and bruised, his clothes burned black in a dozen places, his body bound about the chest by a thick, frayed rope. In his right hand he held his pistol by the barrel.

"Ain’t it a little premature," Chance groaned painfully, "to be carvin’ your own tombstone, Li?" He rolled his eyes toward the slab of granite against which he was propped, to the words "Li Po-Fung", chiseled in elegant gothic onto the hard parchment.

She rushed to him. "Chance, what...?"

"Would you mind undoing this rope, Li? I’d be so grateful."

Li removed a knife from her tool kit and severed the rope. Chance fell out of it and pulled in a deep, hoarse breath, expanding his chest wide. Li cradled him upright in her arms.

"Are you all right, is anything broken?"

"I’m sorry Li, you’re gonna have to speak up, I can’t hear a word you’re sayin’," grunted Chance.

Li opened up his shirt, and her hands sprang back like they’d grazed a hot stove. The symbol of the creature on his chest was writhing, each strand that formed its shape undulating. Tendrils of hair had risen up into pseudopodic tentacles and were quickly tapping all around Chance’s skin with seizure-like spasms. Beneath the symbol, the flesh had darkened to black and purple, with mottled patches of slick, jelly-like grays and yellows. The wide head of the raven-coyote-man shivered, and Li thought she saw its beakish maw open and snap closed, screeching but making no sound, its tiny eyes rolling about madly in their flat, suffering sockets.

Li gasped loudly.

"I see by your expression that my friend is putting on quite a show," Chance said, wincing. "It hurts so much, Li, I wonder if getting hit by a cannon shell could have been any worse."

Li’s eyes were circles of incomprehension. "What is it? Why is it doing that? What happened?"

He could only pant and shake his head sadly. "Gosh, Li, I don’t know where to begin. It’s the army, they got a big gun, and they’re gonna wipe out the Indians up north. Who knows if it’ll end there. And I didn’t do anything to stop it. I got caught, and they..." Chance grunted some more as pain flared on his chest. "God, Li, it feels like they killed me."

"Chance, now listen, you’re gonna be fine, do you hear me? Just... fine." Li gingerly closed his shirt over the symbol.

"Li, tell me something."

The cowboy looked up at her clean, round, sunburnt face, as smooth as her hands were rough.

"Li, will you leave here with me?"

The sound of someone stumbling into the funeral home, thumping noisily down the hall, and crashing into Li’s work yard interrupted them. Clutching his camera and flash bar under one arm and panting heavily, McQuethy’s jaw hung down when he saw Chance stretched out by the tombstone. In fact, he forgot where he was going and slammed his knee into a piece of marble.

"Cha--oww!" He hobbled over to lean on an unfinished pillar."Igor, you made it out," Chance breathed happily, standing under his own power.

Tears flowed from McQuethy’s eyes, but he looked pleased as well. "Chance, I... I don’t how you did it!" He shook his head in disbelief. "How’d you make it here?"

"I came in through the back way, Igor."

"No no no, how’d you make it here," he gestured around the tombstone yard, "to the land of the living?"

"Well, Igor, all I really had to endure was a fall about thirty feet or so when my rope gave. Luckily I broke it by landing on The Thimble, beneath me."

"I saw you knock him out from the locomotive car. That’s where I hid."

"How’d you escape?"

"Well, when no one was looking, I ducked out."

Chance narrowed his eyes. "You sure no one saw you?"

"Absolutely."

The door to the front of the funeral home burst open, and footfalls clamored down the hallway. Chance motioned for Li and McQuethy to hide, so she got behind her tombstone and he jumped into a pine box and closed the lid. The cowboy gripped his Colt by the handle and pointed it at the door. When Li saw Chance wasn’t hiding, she stood up to grab him.

"Chance, what’re you..."

"Get down!" he whispered harshly, but too late. An army soldier came into view in the window by the door, and when he saw Chance, he raised his carbine, getting a bead. Right behind was Colonel L’Hunger, who flashed a quick look of complete stunned surprise, pointed his own pistol at Chance, then stepped carefully through the door.

"Evenin’ Ben," Chance said, his Colt steady in his hand. "I left my hat at your place, can I pick it up tomorrow?"

Colonel L’Hunger nodded, with a smile of wonder on his face. "You have every right to be confident, son, especially considerin’ what I’ve witnessed tonight. I used to think you were just lucky. Now I don’t know what to think." The Colonel flashed a quick glance at Li, who stood behind the tombstone, eyeing his pistol fearfully. "Where’d your photographer friend get off to, son? We saw him flee the roundhouse and followed him here."

Chance shot a sideways look at the back gate, which was still open from his entrance.

"He ain’t here, Ben. Haven’t seen him all night."

The Colonel saw Chance’s glance, and motioned with his cane to the soldier with the carbine. "He went that way, son, go get ‘em." The soldier jogged past Chance and Li and out the back gate.

Chance stared hard at the Colonel. "You know, Ben, I can’t let the Gatling Cannon leave the roundhouse."

L’Hunger squinted one eye, the one on the side he favored with his lean. "I’m not sure how you’re gonna stop it, son. You gonna shoot me? You think shooting me will stop the cannon from leaving? Son, I don’t have anything to do with this any more, and it goes on its way whether I’m vertical or horizontal."

"Regardless of what plan I come up with, Ben, the first obstacle is you, so you might have to step out of the picture."

"My first priority is not my survival, son," L’Hunger said with a resigned shake of his head. "It’s the secrecy of that cannon. Knowledge, you know, it’s like a germ, which current theory would have us believe is what makes us ill. It gets into someone’s head and infects it," he tapped his cane against his temple, "then he tells someone else and they ‘catch’ it, so forth. I can contain the epidemic, if I act now. And if I go down fighting, well, that’s how every good soldier should go."

He paused, staring gravely at Chance with his mouth hanging open. "But, you seem difficult to kill, so I’ll see what this does..."

He swung his pistol at Li, and fired.

Acting purely on reflexive instinct, Chance leapt into the path of the bullet. He would have made it in time to stop it with his body and save Li’s life.

Except that the bullet missed him.

Which was not unusual.

Sliding under Chance’s arm with a wild burning in his chest and a distant bird-like screech that sounded of desperate sadness and loss, the bullet tore into Li’s chest through the ribs below her heart. She did a quick half turn to her left and collapsed, banging her head on the top of the tombstone cut with her name as she went down.

Chance didn’t dare look at her. He fired his Colt at the Colonel. The Colonel fired back.

L’Hunger died when Chance’s bullet punched into his chin and blasted out his head in a red burst.

Chance died when L’Hunger’s bullet punctured his neck and exploded out the top of his back.

Neither man fell right away, but as the strength drained from their legs and blood choked their throats, they collapsed. L’Hunger crumpled backwards onto a jagged pile of broken granite. Chance fell against the opposite side of Li’s tombstone. As the life poured from his neck, it ran like a mudslide over the image of the coyote-raven man-beast, which was silent and immobile on his chest.

From inside the pine box, McQuethy heard shots fire, heard bodies thud heavily, heard nothing. Fear flooded through him, but he raised the lid of the box to look out. No one was standing outside triumphantly over a fallen foe. No one was standing.

McQuethy threw the lid off and clambered out, tipping the box on its side and dropping his camera and flash bar. He stumbled over to Chance and Li and stood above them for several long seconds, his face like soft rubber. Then he fell to the ground, folding his arms up against the tombstone.

He had only known these people five hours. But judging by the tears he cried, one would have thought he’d known them a lifetime.

A part of McQuethy’s frightened mind searched for a reason to leave, and it found one. The soldier he heard L’Hunger send off would be back soon. His face wet and runny, he raised his head from his arms and looked around Li’s work yard. He stood, his body heavy, as if his clothes were lead. Picking up his camera, he opened it, filled the flashbar, and squinted through the distancing lens at the tableau.

Although it was right in front of him, it seemed miles away.

Foosh!

#

"This is preposterous!" shouted Major Diggs as he tossed the photo on the table, his ruddy cheeks wobbling. "If you think we’re going to publish your fable about Army officers shooting citizens..."

"It is not a fable, sir," McQuethy growled back, his grief manifesting itself as anger, "and the fact that you find it unbelievable means it should be told!"

"All right! That’s enough of both of you!" The Major and McQuethy looked down at Kopelson, and the brown cyst on his head seemed to be pulsing. "Good Lord men, let’s get to the end of this, can’t we? I mean for God’s sake, my five year old son doesn’t carry on like this, and he’s funny in the head!"

The two men had no suitable reply to this. McQuethy stood down and assumed a humble stance, wiping more blood from above his mouth, but the Major continued to seethe, his lips repeatedly puckering.

"Besides, Thomas," Kopelson said quietly without turning towards at the Major, "if any of this can be verified, then the man is right. It may be too important to not tell. This could be our cover story." He glanced up at McQuethy, but he did not smile. The photographer returned a nod, keeping his elation inward. McQuethy hazarded a quick look towards the Major, but he was not looking back. With a blank, zombie-like stare, Diggs was throwing another six logs on the already roaring fire.

#

The two hours of tossing sleep McQuethy managed to scrape for himself that night did nothing to make him feel rested. Apart from the terrible thoughts of what had occurred to his newfound friend Second Chance Black and his beloved Li Po-Fung was the fear that any minute Army soldiers would storm into his room, blow twenty holes in him, and steal his photographs.

But no soldiers came. The death of their Colonel had left them directionless, and between the upcoming transport of the Gatling Cannon and keeping folks from the open side of the roundhouse, the soldiers of Fort Russell had their hands full.

So McQuethy stayed out of sight in his hotel room above the Bishop’s Basement. From his window he could see down the street to the House of Emerald Rest. He had witnessed Sheriff Conroy and a deputy milling about, Army soldiers here and there, and grieving citizens craning their necks to see what the picture in his trunk could have showed them. He watched the bustle of activity through a careful crack in his curtains until his sore eyes could hardly stay open, finally drifting off around four in the morning.

Waking in a soupy haze two hours later, the only thought churning through his mind was that he should shave off his mustache. He stumbled to his wash basin and poured in some water from the pitcher. As it slowly leaked out the bullet hole in the side, he threw some on his face, took out his straight-edge razor, and started to remove his "banker"-like growth of hair.

He was nearly completed when the explosion startled him, causing him to slice a long gash on his lip.

McQuethy blinked around as the reverberation from the blast died out, the bottles of lotion by his bedside tinkling together. Blood dripped from his cut into the now-drained wash basin. Touching the wound and drawing back his fingers to examine the blood, McQuethy pressed a digit to his lip and hurried to the window. A ball of black smoke was rising from the railroad roundhouse into the morning dawn. The fire and searing bits of chaff that arced in all directions from the charred skeleton of the building below it was brighter than the rising sun that came up from the other side of town.

As pieces of the roundhouse rained on the ticket booth and surrounding buildings, folks rushed to the street to get a glimpse and to steady their spooked horses that were already trying to bolt. One well-dressed fellow was attempting to calm the horse on his cart, when suddenly something huge and heavy landed in the back of his wagon, breaking it in two with a monstrous crunch. The fellow fell backwards onto the thing, and the horse tore off in a panicked gallop with the front two wheels of the cart chasing after her. The gentleman looked woozily around, then slowly behind him at the black, smoking cannon barrel he was laying on.

Dribbling a trail of blood over to his suitcase, McQuethy retrieved his camera and ran back to the window. He probably wouldn’t need his flashbar to capture the inferno that raged at the edge of Cheyenne that morning.

Click.

#

"What caused it?" asked Kopelson over the roar of the absurdly high fire under the mantle, pointing to the picture of the blazing building.

"Sheriff Conroy would later tell me it was the dynamite the soldiers had in the roundhouse that got touched off by something and blew the place to hell," McQuethy said in a dry, nervous voice.

The Major grinned a wrinkled little snarl. "How convenient a huge explosion should destroy everything you’ve described, so there is absolutely no evidence to back up your little fable."

"If you did think it was a ‘little fable’, Major," McQuethy said, putting his hands and bloodied handkerchief on the desk to steady himself, "you wouldn’t keep saying it over and over, like some... foolish parrot. The fact you’re so emphatic about not believing it betrays how you really feel."

Diggs slowly worked his mouth open, and was just about to say something he deemed very important, but got as far as "You..." before Kopelson interrupted.

"Hold on," he said, annoyed, looking at the last picture in the stack. "This one’s gotten out of order. What is it, where does it go?"

He held up a blurred picture of Chance. The cowboy’s darkly stained back was to the camera, but over his left shoulder he looked at the photographer. His face was ashen, like a block of wood with the life burned out of it, fixed with round eyes that were nothing but two drops of black oil suspended in water. Running down a hill into some trees before him, he bore the body of Li draped over his right shoulder.

"It’s not out of order," McQuethy said solemnly.

Kopelson stared up at McQuethy, then back at the photo. The Major looked down at it as well.

"So, Chance didn’t die?" Kopelson said.

"Chance died. I saw his body." McQuethy slowly uprighted himself. "After I took the picture of the fire, I ran to the roundhouse with my camera to see what else I could find. Nothing could be seen to the front, so I circled to the rear. I saw the back of someone’s head dip behind a hill a short distance away, and my first instinct was to call for the sheriff. But, I didn’t, I hurried over there alone."

McQuethy dabbed his lip and swallowed some buildup in his throat. "At the top of the hill I looked down, and below me was Chance, hefting Li’s body up onto his shoulder. I called out to him, but he ran. He was moving very quickly, and I knew I wouldn’t catch him, so I took the photograph. When I looked up from the camera, he was gone, into the woods."

Kopelson squinted, as if that would somehow make the picture clearer for him. "So, what does this mean?"

"It means, gentlemen," McQuethy said gravely, pausing to scratch his chin, "that our cowboy friend, Second Chance Black, was given a second chance."

Leaving this last statement hanging in the hot air of the room, he stepped back so the two men could examine it, and gave a short, polite nod. "I will be in the bar downstairs." Without another word, McQuethy strode out of the room. Although he wished he could have seen the expressions on their faces, he kept his eyes ahead as he opened the door, relished the drop in temperature in the hallway outside, and exited.

When the door closed and they heard McQuethy’s footsteps moving away, both men looked at one another, Kopelson sporting a face flush with near-gibbering astonishment, the Major a mask of placid serenity.

Shaking his head, Kopelson rifled through the pictures. "What do you make of this, Thomas? Jesus, if any of it is true, I..."

He trailed off, then held up the last picture of Chance and stared into those black pearl eyes.

His voice became almost schoolboyish. "...and even if it’s not, it’s certainly sensational. Think of the papers we’d sell."

He grinned up at the Major, and flinched only slightly before the hot iron poker slammed him on top of the head. The Major aimed for the cyst as if the blue ring around it was a target. Its brown, fatty contents sprayed out upon the poker’s impact, and Kopelson’s skull caved in just as easily. The editor continued to look up at the Major as if he had no idea what he was doing, while Diggs flailed him again and again and again. Finally, Kopelson died, his wide body rocking forward and his moist head bouncing wetly upon the desk.

The Major paused and wiped the strands of saliva hanging from his lips onto his coarse sleeve around the bright silver buttons. Then turning around—quickly, before he gave any thought to what he was doing and risked losing his resolve—he shoved the poker into the fireplace and levered out a few burning logs so they tumbled onto the red carpet. As it and the wooden floor began to smolder, he collected the pictures on Kopelson’s desk, two of them puddled in the editor’s blood, and tossed them into the fireplace.

Smoke began to billow in gray wisps into the already unbearable air of the hot room. Coughing harshly, the Major steadied himself. That Custer would prevail without the Gatling Cannon, he was certain. But now his country was issuing a silent call for his help, Major Tipp Diggs, so keeping in mind that he was simply wiping out the germs of knowledge before they spread and infected others, he drew his pistol, opened the door, and set off downstairs to kill Igor McQuethy.

In the fireplace, the pictures browned and sizzled, Kopelson’s blood stains bubbling at the edges. When the flame touched the photo of the burning roundhouse, and the fuzzy, dark speck flying high in the sky above it that McQuethy had assumed was a piece of debris, the fire from the logs licked up through the fire in the photo, creating a real "you-are-there" kind of look.

---

Chris' previous story for Neverworlds, "How A Victor Was Determined At The Battle Of Moorgan Moor," will soon be hitting the multiplexes as a major motion picture starring Martin Lawrence, Dame Judi Densch, and Matt Damon as "Legless Corpse." The only thing that could possibly derail this surefire blockbuster is if Chris—who has final script approval—throws one of his patented prima donna fits. Chris resides in Los Angeles with his wife Alysia and pug Gladys. Drop him a line at E2ChrisP@aol.com.