John rubbed his palms on his jeans. "How far back do you want this to go?"

"You're the one who said it was a long story so I'll assume you've got a starting point in mind." Anna tapped her rifle, "I don't like waiting."

"I wouldn't have thought so." He cleared his throat, "Then I guess I'll start at the beginning. My mother and father came over as immigrants and settled for a time in New York City but they didn't take too well to the crowding there."

"Not many did."

"Nor should they. It's a dark and grimy city just crawling with horrible people and even more horrible realities for the immigrants who live there." John shuddered, "They'd tell me stories and I couldn't ever comprehend how so many people choose to live packed together like pigs for slaughter."

"I think you're losing the train of your own thought, Mr. Bates."

"Right," John waved a hand, "I apologize."

"Just continue."

"They moved west and settled in Ohio for a time before making their way with a group traveling west. I was born in the thrashing of winter in Nebraska, place called Winter Quarters."

"Sounds dismal."

"Not as dismal as my mother was when my father died that spring near Wichita." John sighed, "She stayed there because she didn't have the will to go anywhere else without him. My father's grave is one of my only distinct memories from an otherwise brown-colored childhood."

"You visit it often?"

"Every Sunday after Mass." John sighed, "From what my mother always told me my father was a good man and she wanted me to be like him."

"But you aren't?"

"I don't know." John patted a hip, "The guns I wear were his."

"Then you disappointed your mother?"

"I can't say."

"Can't or won't?" Anna adjusted the gun on her knees and noted John's eyes dart toward it a moment before swallowing.

"She died before I ever used my father's guns."

"Did you kill her?"

John shook his head, "I may be a great many things, Ms. Smith, but I'm not one for patricide or matricide. I've committed a great number of sins but not that one."

"Then I guess there's hope for you yet."

"Interested in saving my soul Ms. Smith?"

"I'm interested in not being murdered in my bed if I leave you breathing in my barn." Anna nodded at him, "What happened after your mother's death?"

"I left. I sold what she had and just took my horse. I didn't have any reason to stay."

"And a certain female acquaintance of yours didn't play a part in any of that?"

"If you mean Vera-"

"She's the only person I know with a face on more wanted posters than yourself, Mr. Bates, and I don't fancy her coming here looking for you if you're here because you had a failing out." Anna stopped, "Is she who wounded your leg there?"

John looked down at the haphazard bandage he wrapped over his leg. "It's through-and-through so it just bled like anything but it'll heal."

"Once it's well enough you're gone and you take whatever demons hang off your back with you." Anna stood, "I don't plan to greet the fearsome Vera Bates anywhere near my home."

"And I wouldn't want you to." John held up a hand, going to stand until Anna held her gun in her hands and he sat again. "That's why I'm turning myself in."

"Grown tired of your wife Mr. Bates?"

"First off, she's not my wife."

"She's not your sister."

John huffed, "No, she's not."

"Then there's only the idea that she's your relation by blood or marriage. If she's not a cousin, distant or otherwise, I'll assume that some hapless preacher had to bind you both in unholy matrimony."

"The term she used was 'common law'."

"And excuse to get to know you in a very intimate way I'd imagine."

"I hope you don't imagine too much."

"Please Mr. Bates, don't be worried one lick about my sentimentality or about me being even slightly unaccustomed to what happens in the dark, cold nights with a shared sleeping bag." Anna looked at the ground a moment, "I know what happens when people get lonely at night."

"Then I'll spare you the unnecessary details." John stretched back, "I enjoyed it at first. A kind of frightening rush that always meant we pushed to our next limit. It was passion guided only by greed and lust, nothing more."

"I'm not your priest, Mr. Bates so I don't need your confession."

"But I'll give it anyway." John gave a little laugh. "Maybe the practice'll make it perfect for when I've got to tell the Sheriff why I'm giving myself up."

"I'd stick to the facts and not your rhetorical musings. He's not a man to waste time our Sheriff Carson."

"Then I'll just say that after Vera did something particularly heinous I realized I'd done enough. I'd fallen so far that not even the light of God could've reached me until he sent His angel to pull me back from the brink."

"Did He now?" Anna snorted, setting her gun on the barrel but keeping a hand on it while she leaned back against the wall. "I'd imagine your Damascus experience must've been something."

John nodded, "I watched her burn a town to the ground, setting fire to the church with women and children inside, because they wouldn't give her what she wanted."

"Which town?"

"Kirby."

"That's not very far away Mr. Bates." Anna immediately straightened, pricking her ears to listen, "She could've followed you here."

"If she had a better tracker than me who could take them over the rocky canyon I used and the river that almost drown my horse and I, maybe, but I doubt it." John settled back, "I shot her second-best tracker in my escape."

"But not her?"

"Her horse reared at the wrong moment and I put a bullet in that magnificent animal. The only thing that could be meaner than her but wanted so desperately to be kind."

"You speak about horses like you know them, Mr. Bates."

"Before I met Vera and ran off into the poisoned sunset with her that's what I did. I took care of horses in the Army."

"You left the Army to join up with a mad woman?" John shrugged and Anna rubbed at her eyes, "You're either crazy or stupid and I'm not opposed to suggesting it's both."

"Neither am I, truth be told." John moved his leg and winced, "But if she'd been a better shot she would've gotten me a little higher and then I'd be in more trouble."

"I imagine a great many women'd be sorry too." Anna smiled at his face, "As I said, no need to worry about delicate sensibilities."

"I'll remember that."

"Why she'd burn the town?"

"She planned to rob their bank just after receiving a large cash deposit. Unfortunately for her, I planned on stealing it out from under her."

"Which you did?"

John nodded, "Which I did. She chased me in a rage for it but I evaded her."

"With Heaven and Hell I'd imagine."

"And my rifle." John pointed to the floor, "Mind if I stretch my leg out?"

"You'll need it to leave so no, I don't mind."

John moved to the floor, "She got me in the leg from a distance, one of her luckiest shots since she can't shoot worth a damn with a rifle, and I took a tumble."

"But survived."

"Because of my rifle, my guns, and my horse." John turned to his horse, calmer in her stall. "She didn't leave me behind."

"You left that town behind."

"I didn't know she'd take her rage on me getting away out on a town of innocent people." John sighed, "If I'd known that I would've given my life to shoot that woman in the head."

"And now you're handing yourself over to the Sheriff to do what? Serve your time? Repay your debt?"

"In a way."

Anna narrowed her eyes, "No, you've got something else planned."

John met her gaze, "I plan to draw her out and finish what I didn't at Kirby. I'm going to kill Vera."

Before Anna could respond the door to the barn opened. She turned, hand on her rifle, as the little girl ran to her. She bent when she impacted her legs, and hauled her into her arms. Turning to take her gun back brought her to John's gaze again. His mouth dropped open and Anna shrugged.

"Whatever plans you have, Mr. Bates, I'd suggest you get to them as quickly in the morning as possible. Goodnight."

Anna went out the open barn door and closed it with her shoulder. Her head faced the girl in her arms and she sighed, "I told you to go to sleep little miss. What are you doing awake?"

"I heard noises."

"If you'd been asleep you wouldn't have heard anything." Anna grumbled, adjusting the girl in one arm and her rifle in the other. "It's a miracle every creak of the house doesn't wake you with as lightly as you sleep."

"Who's that man?"

Anna felt his arm point over her shoulder but she did not look back. "He'll be gone by the morning so you just forget you ever saw him."

"But-"

"No buts Lizzie. You don't pay that man or him being here any mind. You focus on getting yourself back to sleep the minute your head hits that pillow." Anna opened the door to their house, muttering to herself, "If it weren't for men and their evil ways."