It was in Indianola that Boyd got married. Not legally, of course, but his soul was joined eternal to that of a warped and wickedly sinful desert rose bursting with love just for him.
He held a bead on the comely little chiseler with eyes as deep and blue as any desert oasis he'd ever seen, keeping her pinned to the wall of the cooperage just out of view of the street.
He had ideas about plucking the glistening silver earrings from where they sat in her petite lobes beneath her lavender scented mane as free and gold as the wheat swaying softly in the Texas breeze on the endless prairies outside of town.
That little four-flusher fought like a Kilkenny cat, clawing and biting, and threw him to the ground like he was nothing.
He managed to hold fast, drag her into the dirt and subdue her, though he lost his iron and suffered a split lip.
She smiled big and beautiful and threw her head back with a laugh fit for an angel. He returned a toothy, red-tinged grin and they'd lingered a little longer than necessary there in each others embrace and the mud.
She was a skilled pickpocket and scam artist and she proved an indispensable ally in his stagecoach ploy. Together they cut a swath of vicious death and destruction through the west toward Abilene.
Outside of Elmdale they'd heard of a Marshal looking for them from a squat, mean, old petticoat just before Ava caved in her skull with the butt of her pistol. Boyd wasn't worried. There had been other lawmen and bad men and they were nothing but notches on his belt, graves without flowers, now.
They killed everyone on board and took anything of value- horses, gold, jewelery, paper, food, even stripped the clothing and shoes from the corpses.
Later, beside a kettle of bubbling beans and beneath the hundreds of thousands of stars twinkling, they fucked on a bed of blood-stained personal effects and laughed at the coyotes howling with them.
They woke to the crack of gunshots and whistling bullets. They scattered for cover from the barrage raining down on them from bluff by the light of the moon.
Ava hit the dirt and crawled to a tree stump.
Boyd's face contorted as a .44 Centerfire ripped through his thigh and he stumbled toward Ava.
A lean, hard man appeared on the trail south of the bluff and stalked toward him, closing the distance fast with long, purposeful strides.
He drew down on Boyd and directed his attention to the stolen horses, still in harness, hitched to the high-line. He seemed at sea, like he was looking for something and wasn't quite finding it.
He barked some orders at Boyd on his back in the dust. Ava couldn't make out what was said, but the Marshal's meaning was as plain as the tin star pinned on his chest. He was cold and calculated, mean. She could tell the lean lawman didn't waste any energy on emotions or actions superfluous to the task at hand.
She readied her weapon from her hidey-hole behind the stump and screwed her courage to her soul before popping up swiftly and smoothly steadying her elbow on the rotting wood.
With a lick and a promise she squeezed off a single shot and it went hopelessly wide, ricocheting off the sandstone but coming no where near the curly wolf looking to plant her man in the bone orchard.
Before the Marshal could clear leather and spin in her direction, Boyd had dropped the hammer.
The bullet tumbled through the flatfoot's torso and he fell like an ancient redwood. He stared down at his stomach as though he couldn't believe his eyes. He was bleeding to beat the Dutch and his crisp, button-down shirt quickly turned ruddy and wet. He ghosted ashen fingers over the wound and struggled to lift his body out of the dirt.
Ava and Boyd lit a shuck for the hills, she astride the Marshal's horse, him on a stolen draft and their take in stow. Come sunrise the Marshal would be gone up the plume, cooked in his own juices. They ran until the horse was played out and they walked the rest of the way to Hendersonville. They hung fire in the town for a few weeks, sleeping where they could and eating was they were able. Ava got the Consumption from some hard case lunger and died on the road to the next camp as Boyd stroked her hair.