Carl said, “First he tells how he was blown off the Maine and held in the Morro for being a spy.”

Virgil said, “Once that’s out of the way I tell how you shot the cow thief off his horse from two hundred yards, with a Winchester.”

Carl said, “You remember his name?”

“Wally Tarwater. I got all their names written down.”

“I see him moving my cows I yelled at him.”

“You were fifteen years old,” his dad said. “The marshals were ready to hire you.”

“I could see he knew how to work beef without wearing himself out.”

“Later on,” his dad said, “I asked if you looked at him as he’s lying on the ground. You said you got down from that dun you rode and closed his eyes. I asked did you feel any sympathy for him. Remember what you said?”

“That was twenty-five years ago.”

“You said you warned him, turn the stock or you’d shoot. I imagine all the cow thief saw was a kid on a horse. You said to me later on, ‘Yeah, but if he’d listened he wouldn’t of been lying there dead, would he?’ I said to myself, My Lord, but this boy’s got a hard bark on him.”

Narcissa, who had nursed Carl for the first months of his life, placed the Mexican beers on the table and stooped to put her arms around his shoulders. Now she was touching his hair saying, “But he’s a sweet boy too, isn’t he? Yes he is, he’s a sweetie pie.”

Finally they let Carl Webster step down as acting marshal of Oklahoma’s Eastern District and gave the job to a marshal from Arkansas, an old hand by the name of W. R. “Bill” Hutchinson. He and Carl had tracked felons together and shared jars of shine over the years, each knowing the other would be watching his back. Today in the marshal’s office was the first time Carl had seen him without a plug in his jaw, in there behind his lawman’s mustache. Bill Hutchinson asked Carl if he was sure he wanted to go to Detroit.