The wagon now approaching the station was from the convict camp. Karla was certain of this from the moment she’d heard the first faint creaking sound from the willows. She kept her eyes on the wagon, watching the driver gradually turning the team to come in broadside to the adobe.

Now one of the riders, a shotgun across his pommel, spurred to swing in on the near side. As he did, Karla said, “Mr. Renda himself.”

Demery half turned from the door. “I’ll get the voucher. The sooner they’re out of here the better.” But he hesitated, looking out toward the wagon again. “Is your friend along?”

“I don’t know,” Karla answered, not looking around, her gaze still going out across the yard. “He could be one of those two in back. But I can’t see their faces yet.”

“Or their numbers,” Demery said. He turned back into the dimness of the adobe.

Frank Renda, with the shotgun, was coming directly toward her; but the second rider crossed the yard diagonally and remained on the far side of the wagon. He carried a Winchester straight up, the stock resting on his thigh and his hand gripping it through the lever.

The two men whom Karla could not yet see, who sat in the back of the empty wagon with their legs hanging over the end gate, and the driver, looked toward the adobe as they drew nearer. They wore curl-brimmed, preshaped straw hats. Their shirts and Levi’s were faded and sweat-stained and a number was stenciled on the right thigh of each of the three men’s Levi’s. The same number was stenciled in back, below the beltline. The driver wore number 22; the men on the end gate, 17 and 18.

Frank Renda dismounted. He let his reins trail and came toward Karla carrying the shotgun under his arm-a man about her father’s age, in his mid-forties, but heavier than her father, thicker through chest and shoulders, and wearing a mustache, a full, untrimmed tobacco-stained mustache that almost completely covered the firm line of his mouth.