Rochester Knockings. Hubert Haddad

of birds, no sound rose from the village.

      William Pill pulled the bridle in the direction of these habitations, curious by their silence. Quick to change course, with one ear back, Her Highness ascended onto the main street. Her hooves rang in quarter-time rhythm, raising a white dust. The man had started to have a doubt in this desert; he had seen more of it in the south, where entire villages were empty of inhabitants. People around here had held on to their own good land, but California gold had driven many others mad. However, two young Mohawks crouching on the church steps gave him pause: Indians don’t like abandoned houses. He greeted them by raising a finger to his hat and continued his distracted visit of the place. An old man in suspenders smoking on his doorstep, some toddlers hanging from the skirts of a black nurse, a horse hitched to the gate of a grain counter, a band of cats around a tanner blind in one eye: these fragments of life in the flying dust were part of a community still intact, probably gathered together elsewhere, by the attraction of a healer come from Boston or Rochester, some itinerant preacher or the lynching of someone who’d been stealing chickens. At the window of a rather nice building that he recognized to be the home of Reverend Gascoigne, the tulle curtains parted to reveal a woman’s face, so luminous with her blonde hair let down, that he froze on his saddle to the point that his surprised Quarter Horse turned her neck and flinched.

      Piqued by a sensation of unspeakable emptiness somewhere between his diaphragm and throat, William Pill took his reins in hand. He signaled a trot, eager to get back to Long Road, and his horse, mane in the wind, started to pick up speed. That’s when the click of a gun barrel engaged nearby.

      “Stop there or I’ll shoot!” yelled a man, rushing over without losing sight of his target in the middle of the road.

      The newcomer obeyed in good faith. He had recognized the marshal despite his heaviness and wrinkles. Was it possible that Robert McLeann would have remembered him?

      “Get off your horse and approach with your hands up, Willie the Faker! We’ve got a lot to catch up on, the two of us . . .”

      Knowing the unreliable trigger of the type of firearm being pointed at him, he did as he was asked. This McLeann, with his migraine-inducing integrity and respect for procedure, had always amused him.

      Seated behind the office desk, gun lowered, the marshal had to admit his blunder while unrolling the Certificate of Merit personally signed by General Zachary Taylor.

      “If it weren’t for your name and birth date written out, I might believe that you won this in a poker game from some other heroic fellow!”

      “I won it with my own blood!” Pill replied with a certain emphasis, exposing the nasty scar on his shoulder. “And if you were only equipped with a telegraph, like all respectable sheriffs are, you could avoid these unfortunate mistakes . . .”

      “That’s not going to prevent me from sending a request for information on your record first thing tomorrow by post!”

      Pill laughed, one eye on the closed saloon door through the window, the other across the road.