The sun was just breaking the horizon when Chris Larabee stepped from the hotel onto the boardwalk to make his way to the livery in order to pick up his horse. Not knowing his final destination, he'd packed his saddlebags with extra ammunition, a few cheroots wrapped in a neckerchief, Arbuckle's coffee, hardtack, jerky and a change of clothes, in that order, everything he would need on the trail.
"Mr. Larabee." The voice, that of a mature woman who would brook no trouble and who was usually up before cockcrow, caused him to turn.
"Ms Potter," Chris said with a dip of his hat brim and a guarded smile when he saw the look of consternation on the mercantile proprietress' face.
"Someone…" she paused knowing exactly who the culprit was but not certain as to why, "has broken into my store and I'm afraid he's…well, not exactly stolen various items so much as left collateral for them - which is not store policy."
"Vin?" Chris guessed correctly as he followed the woman into her well-stocked store, stepping over shards of a broken pane of glass from the door.
Stopping at the counter, Mrs. Potter pointed first to a Sharps model 1853 rifle and then to a small pile of price tags which lay on a piece of wrapping paper on which three letters had been hastily scrawled. Chris picked up the tags and read them with a perplexed look. Vin hadn't left his rifle and his IOU in exchange for the necessaries of a trip to God knew where but for a consignment of curious and sundry items.
Looking up at Gloria Potter as he set the hand lettered tags gently back down on the counter, Chris shrugged his shoulders by way of an explanation and told her, "Ya know he's good for it."
Her lips pursed, she took in a deep breath through her nose then asked, "For the window as well?"
"Yes, ma'am, for the window, too."
Mrs. Potter circled around the counter, picked up the Sharps and held it out to Larabee.
"Then I'd appreciate it if you would give this back to Mr. Tanner. This is a mercantile not a Dolly Shop," she said formally but with a smile.
Chris nodded and, hefting the rifle in his hands, left Potter's and continued on to the stable where he mounted his black and headed east along the same route, according to a sleep-deprived Yosemite, that Vin Tanner and his own young apprentice blacksmith Ned had taken a few hours earlier.
Two hours later, as Chris came over a rise, he spotted a lone oak tree and the wagon whose tracks he'd been following. Vin's horse, along with the team that had pulled the wagon, grazed on the short, brown prairie grass nearby while young Ned slept away what was left of the morning in the wagon's bed. As he dismounted and walked to where Vin knelt beside a carefully dug pit, Chris saw Molly.
Dressed in a frock of sky blue she was laid out on a striped blanket made of wool, her body in repose as if she were simply asleep. Her long hair, freshly brushed and smelling of perfume, was held back with two tortoise shell combs, one behind each ear, and fanned out around her, shining like obsidian. Her small delicate hands were encased in white lace gloves and crossed over her breast, a small silver crucifix wrapped around them, a talisman to help her find her way in the Christian spirit world.
As he drew closer Chris, saw that the woman's face had been painted, the right half red and the left ocher.
According to Vin, the paint defined the two worlds in which Molly had lived and, while he felt her death commanded sacrifice, she had neither slaves nor a favorite horse to help her travel the spirit world. Her only remaining link to the white man's world was a cowardly bastard of a former husband who's sacrifice was highly doubtful - unless the Lieutenant Governor took issue with the tracker and what he had to say when he finally confronted the man.
Looking up at Chris, Vin asked, "Would you mind rousting Ned and getting the shovels out of the wagon?"
"You alright?" Chris asked in return and Vin nodded.
When he reached the wagon, Chris shook Ned's shoulder awakening him from a sound sleep. Leaning in for the shovels laying next to the boy, the hair stood up on the back of Chris' neck when a sorrowful keening shattered the vast stillness of the prairie. Turning toward the tree the two of them watched in stunned silence as Vin Tanner began to mourn.
Vin was now Molly's only family and he would wail that day and, if he were still alive, he would return and cry one year later. He continued to keen steadily even as he cut off a length of his own hair and sliced vicious groves in his skin to scar each forearm, his way of honoring her death, his sacrifice for her - his pain.