“Nothing else to do,” he thought, and resigned himself to pulling his guns.

As his hands descended two of the riflemen tensed up, but the others didn’t notice.  He was about to touch the tip of the guns, when he remembered Kipp, and the thing that Kipp had given him for safe passage.  He pulled back from his guns and stuffed his right hand in his pocket, and there was shouting from everywhere, and the Chieftain grabbed his arm and yanked it back.  The thing went flying and landed on the dirt.  Gobble tightened himself in anticipation of what was to come.  The yelling continued but no guns went off.  Gobble opened his eyes to it, and saw that one of the older men was walking out of the semicircle that had formed around Gobble, and picked up the trinket and looked it over in the midst of the madness.

“JUST KILL HIM,” the Chieftain was yelling, fingers tightening further on triggers, but no bullets flying still, unrest and indecision keeping everyone alive a little longer.

Gobble looked at the riflemen.  He saw that the older man with the trinket was saying something.  He was holding the eyes of the riflemen, who listened to him without indecision, without question, as they had listened to the young chieftain.  Silence fell as the young one turned to the old one who was kneeling and yelled some kind of reproach.

Suddenly the moment elongated as it does when true action is going to occur.  Starting with a look into the eyes of the old man, Gobble stood in a vortex where he was given the time to make the decision to strike.  He had time to calculate the possibilities.

Gobble drew his pistols in a motion.  He felt the most satisfying slide of the metal against the leather of the holsters, the pommels cool on his hands.  It was such a quick and clean motion that it hung there for a minute and Gobble savored it.  The perfect movement and the perfect sound, the perfect rhythm, and the perfect climax too.  Hollow yelling, and unnaturally slow turning of the back of the enemy in front of him, colors blaring out of the desert ground, oranges and yellow’s and scrubby greens exploded in Gobble’s eyes and ears as he pulled the trigger.

There were two cracks like lateral lightening and the Chieftain punctured in a still explosion of blood.

He fell like a tower in utter silence, moving more slowly than time had ever allowed before, finally hitting the ground with a muffled nothing thud.

And then no rifles went off.

Gobble savored the ivory on the palms of his hands and the deafness in his ears and the acrid smell of gunpowder hanging like a cloud around him.

And he slid his tongue around in the acid dryness of his mouth.

He liked it.  He was a hero.

The silence remained after the chieftain hit the ground and as time regained its normal speed everyone just looked as the dead body beat out blood.  For a moment every mind was caught in unison.

What is going to happen now?

Kindry felt aroused when she woke up from a fitful nap.  She noticed immediately that the rain had finally stopped.  She stretched her arms and twisted her body to relieve it of the stiffness of sleep.  She put her arm over the fifteen-year-old girl who lay in front of her, already touching her.

“Kindry, will you stay with us from now on?” the girl asked.

Siene looked at her, distorted just a little because her head was twisted back, and her eyes were so pleading.  Kindry could see the danger there, and she was frozen. The situation was beyond her understanding.

Kindry and the Dougans had become family, but they had only been travelling now for…days?  Maybe a little more then a week?  Love can come that quick.  But a week in the bosom of a mother and a family wasn’t enough to hammer ties that stay, or to change a girl who had seen as much as Kindry.  Kindry didn’t understand love, but here she thought she was learning, and still she didn’t understand this love from Siene.

She knew something was wrong, lying there with her arm extended up, but she wasn’t afraid of much and she didn’t know how to worry about the future, even though, for the first time, in what seemed to her like forever, she had something she could lose.

She didn’t know how to deal with it but Kindry didn’t want Siene to admire her so much.

Kindry returned to sleep then and dreamt about the train that was trailing off in front and behind her.  Then she saw an ocean and it wasn’t the Atlantic, which she’d seen once when she was really little when her parents had taken her to New York because one of their parents had died.  She looked out at this ocean and it was more powerful and free than the one she’d seen.  Somehow it seemed like it was more magical here than anywhere she’d been.  Something about that ocean and the highlands around her and the California coastline made her float.  In her dream she floated in the tall blue sky of the bay, the bay became the dessert and she saw Santa Fe and landed there.

When she woke up she made up her mind to leave them in Santa Fe.  What she wanted and what she needed now seemed more and more discernable.  It was like a realization granted by the afterglow of the dream:  She didn’t need to go all the way to the coast, because she didn’t need the weight of that kind of accomplishment sitting on her unstable head.  She could barely hold it up now, here in the Plains, even with the help of the Dougans.  This time with them had been exactly what Kindry had needed, but now this train pulled too hard in one direction for her to ride it anymore.  She could feel the destiny in the creaking wheels, the ultimate power pulling it west.  Something about lying on a floor that never touched the ground made Kindry feel the need for earth.

They stopped again for the night, forming a small circle inside larger and larger ones.  Men stood on the outskirts with rifles prepared to fire at any bandits or Indians that might want something from their cherished stores.  Kindry walked out between little fires and children laughing and fighting and stretching legs after long days.  The concentric circles seemed to ripple out forever amidst the sounds of people unloading and relaxing and exploding out of wagons that were much too small.  The smells were the most perceptible part, and the rise and fall of the sounds like an ocean.  She eyed a single man out of the group that was watching with cigarettes and wide brimmed hats.  She took her time walking up to him.

“Hey there, Cowboy,” she said.  “You got a cigarette for a nice young lady who wants to talk?”  She had seen this one around the train almost every day for a week or so.  She liked him for some reason, but she couldn’t put her finger on why.  She thought she just wanted to get some socialization away from children and mothers and fathers.  She missed Teena.

“Now then, Miss.  I don’t believe that it’s exactly ladylike to smoke the tobacco,” he said and spit off to one side.  She looked at him, and teetered on the edge of anger, trying to decide if he was joking.  He gave her a sly smile.

“Don’t get excited,” he finally assured her.  He handed her a smoke and then offered her the edge of his as a light.  She puffed until it was evenly lit, and then settled into it, and took a long drag.  She looked at the man as she exhaled.

He looked at the sunset and said something about what kind of night it was gonna be.

It was camaraderie.  It was something he would have done with the other men who stood watch with him.  He could tell that’s what she wanted.

“Kipp,” he said to her.

“Is that a name?”

“Yesm.  It’s my name.”

“Well, Kindry’s mine.   Nice to meet you.”  She smoked like a man, and Kipp liked that.

“I enjoy my usual company, but it’s nice to see a woman not afraid to come out here and take part in something that’s her God-given right.”

“What d’ya mean?”

“Well, I just think that this is the part of my life I most enjoy, this small moment witnessing the beauty of nature, the evening smoke, and some talk to fill the air.  I don’t see why a woman can’t stand out here with me and do the same.  Hell, pick up a rifle if you want,” he said.

Kindry laughed.  She finished her cigarette in silence, smiling, witnessing, and then she put it out on the ground.

“I bet there’s some extra dinner back at my friends’ wagon, you want to come back there with me and eat some?”

“Naw.  I got some watchin to do, but thanks.”

“No problem, thanks for the tobacco. Maybe I’ll see you around.”

“Maybe.  Maybe not though.   I got a long road ahead of me, someone to meet out West, and I ain’t gonna stick with this train too much longer. My ghost gets restless.”

“Yeah.  I know what you mean.”

“I bet you do,” he smiled at her. “Maybe I’ll see you on the road somewhere.  A man can’t have too many friends.”

“Yessir.  Maybe,” Kindry said.  Yessir.  She tipped her hat to him while she walked off around the perimeter.  The sun had gone down, but the fire that hangs on the horizon when it is first dark was perfect white orange and yellow tonight, and a tree way off in the distance with no leaves, only a complex network of tiny branches, cut a pattern on the west that made it look even better.  It reminded Kindry a little bit of her life, and all the life around her: That intricate display back-lit by the emenesence at the end of the sunset.