Lefty and Boyd laid low on the range until they ran out of food and Lefty's arm went septic.
They rode in to the seedy little whistle-stop of Pigeonroost Hollow in search of a decent sawbones and some good whiskey. They trotted cautiously through the south entrance, Boyd eying each window and silently daring each timid towns-person nervously looking out to kick up a row.
He looked to the horses while Lefty sought out Doc Wedemire at the far side of town. The animals were dragged out. It'd been some hard yards coming and they showed. He rubbed them down with liniment and braced their legs before loosing them in stalls thick with bedding and mounded with timothy.
It had been weeks since the train and the boys felt the long arm of the law lurking around every corner. Seeing their faces on wanted posters had them both spooked.
Boyd had become harder in the days following the shoot out. Boyd was apprehensive and unstrung, anxious to plug anyone asking too many questions.
The world didn't end when he killed those men. God didn't cut him down where he sat, crying, steeped in blood and sorrow. In fact, he'd suffered no consequence what so ever, from God or from man.
A world without law was murky and confusing, but also terribly liberating. He was now willing to end lives to keep breathing the free country air.
He'd even thought of offing Lefty when he started lagging with infection and slowing down egress.
He still had nightmares about the gang's vacuous eyes set in contorted cadaverous faces, pupils blown wide with death, their souls escaping from them and boring holes into his being as Lefty dragged him away.
But nightmares are a trick of the mind, a betrayal of your humanity. In the real world, Boyd Crowder had become the cold-blooded killer the wanted posters needed him to be.
Lefty looked as though this town would be his last.
His face was sallow, eyes rimmed with blue-purple shadows, sweating and shaking with fever. He sought solace in a dark saloon with a filthy, fat woman who laughed too loud and a ball of dope. He was tying one on good and tight, nothing to lose.
Boyd was itching to get a move on.
He sat bending an elbow on the saloon steps, nursing a whiskey and smoking a cigarette he'd lifted off a stone-faced young whore while she saw to his needs.
A group of roostered crusty polecats, grey-haired and grizzled, crashed through the door laughing and leaning on each other and blabbering about a stage coach on it's way bringing new Chicago-style strange and a magistrate from the old states.
Boyd was only one man, but an officer of the state is bound to have some money, and those whores might have some jewelery. It would be a modest take, but might could give him enough to get him to the next town, buy an acre and disappear.
Lefty was dieing- Boyd could smell the festering wound from there. He was a mean old cuss and would beat the devil around the stump til the end, die game, but he was no good to Boyd and it was too risky to bring a stranger in. He'd have to do it alone, perhaps under cover of darkness. He rode out alone that night, on his colossal bay steed.
The following is a wire to Marshal Givens at Fort Stockton:
Four fatalities. STOP. Magistrate was knocked galley west, had his plow cleaned with the butt of gun. STOP. Highway man got away clean. STOP. None of the victims got a clear look at the man, but all described a tremendous spirited stud horse, solid in color, burly, with a large C brand on his hip, not unlike the one detailed by surviving fireman at train massacre. STOP. Magistrate indicates gunman was carrying matching set of pistols and single action rifle. STOP. Have reason to believe he may be headed south to hunker down. STOP. He's got his back up and is looking to let fly so watch yourself. STOP.