You get to the point where everything's so much dust.

It's in your clothes. In your hair. You breathe it. You eat it. You walk in it, sleep in it, ride in it, work in it, wait in it. 

The moment you glimpse the first outbuildings on the horizon and know you're about to make town, you have that one brief shiver across your body at the thought of getting out of the dust.

That's New Mexico to me, see? Dust.

And there's no running from the dust there anymore than there's any running from who you are. You carry them both with you in this pitiable place of sand and cactus.

She was standing in my way, bold as you please, not too long after I came in off the trail. I was heading for the bathing house, lugging a bottle of whiskey. All I wanted was a soak and to get the edge off. I had one foot on the stairs leading up to the walkway; just figured she'd move, like all the other girls in towns like this did when a man heaving the heavy, stinking dirt of the ride was heading their way.

But she didn't. No, sir.

"You don't remember me, do you?" she asked me.

And I didn't. No, sir. I sure didn't. But I should have.

I looked her right in the eyes. Advanced up another step. She hesitated, like she was considering backing down from me. But she didn't. Me, I never hesitated. I knew just what I was going to do to her from the moment I realized she thought she knew me. When she stood her ground, I grabbed her around the waist, pulled myself right up into her face and then kissed her. She had both fists up on my chest, trying to pry me off her. She refused to open her mouth no matter how hard I tried to pry it open. By the time I figured I'd taught her the first lesson, I was kissing on her so hard, I had her bent backwards.

When I let her go, she staggered back. She wiped her mouth clean of me, using both hands. Her eyes were filled with fire. I gave her a slow grin as I dragged my tongue over my lips.

"No, ma'am. You're right. I don't remember you. Guess it's been too long, hasn't it?" I said to her.

She turned on her heel and took off. I stood there, with one foot on the top step, leaning in on that knee, and just watched her move. I was figuring she was heading for the whorehouse because that's where I assumed she lived, in one of the rooms I'd be visiting later. But she didn't. I saw her dart around a corner and disappear from view.

Later, lazing in the warm water and feeling like a different man, I slugged back a mouthful of whiskey and wondered about that woman who'd thought I'd been someone she knew. Jesus, under the layers of dust I had been sporting, my own mother would've had a tough time knowing me.

She'd been angry, I mused. Even before I'd kissed her.

You wouldn't think a man'd forget a woman who looked like that. It wasn't that she was a great beauty, though she was cute enough. But she had these parts of her that stuck with a man and you'd think if I'd ever met her well enough for her to be that angry with me, that'd I'd not forget a woman with lips like that, even a whore. Whores in towns like this don't usually have that look and if they do, I cannot imagine I wouldn't remember her. Soft. Plump roundness where it should be. Eyes that didn't blink or shy away. Breasts that had pressed against me and were ripe, firm, abundant. Her dress hadn't disguised her body's shape; I'd noted it right off.

Jesus. Would you look at me, I thought with this grimace. Beating off before I can even ...

That's when it started coming back to me. It wasn't like this rush of memory. It was this niggling, can't-quite-catch-it, annoying sense that there was a memory back there that I sure wished I could yank out and examine.

There was something about her mouth. And had I noticed her hair? I thought it was just brown, like the color of damp earth that gets just barely licked every so often by the lazy movement of a stream cutting through a sloping hill up near Phoenix. I got this visual memory ... a woman's hair against burgundy ... light brown hair ...

My eyes opened. I was suddenly alert.

I knew that woman.

What did it say about me that I'd forgotten her? Maybe it said that had been another life, another man. Maybe it said, I had wanted to forget her and a lot of other women I'd maybe met in another life ... a life I never seemed able to outrun, no matter how hard I scrubbed at my soul to get rid of the dust that had once choked it.

People think you make choices in life. They never really think about how life sometimes doesn't give you a choice. They also don't think that sometimes your choices in life come along once and if you choose wrong, then you're left with only one real choice after that and it's called survival.

Not that I'd ever excuse what I've done in life. I won't. But I see it a lot clearer now as a man than I did as a kid.

Does it ever really matter how I came to be where I was? Course it doesn't. Not really. Least, not to the people who ended up meeting me during that hard period. They didn't care why I was the way I was; they only cared if they'd survive the meeting with me.

I used to like that back then. I truly did. For a while.

Worked hard to get there. To where a stare at someone was all it took to see them hesitate. To where a smile could make them more worried than all the threatening things I might have said.

I was good. No two ways around it. Fastest, best shot around. Used to make men shake to face me because they'd see the way the gang I rode with would snigger and sit back for the show.

And I was damned proud, too. I liked showing off. I liked scaring people who would have thought nothing of shooting me in the back if they thought they'd be able to get away with it.

Sure liked the way women looked at me. Oh, the fancy ones might pretend they wouldn't give me any more time or mind than a dirty wild boar rampaging down their town's main drag. But they still looked. And they blushed far more often than they simply looked on like they hadn't seen something worth putting inside them some desire they never knew they had.

But it was a hard life nonetheless. 

Try living that way. No roots. No family. No one you could trust. No one you didn't begin to hate the sight and smell of. On the trail too much. Never allowing yourself to get attached to anyone. Anyone. Ever. Because the minute you did, that was the minute you got weak enough to be taken.

I remembered that woman from a chance encounter during my later times riding with and doing the bidding of John Herod. He kept telling me, one more big score and we'd live like kings. But there was really never a chance of that. John was never the kind of man who ever just stops. And he never lets you go. Ever. You always belong to him. Took me a whole mess of hard growing up to learn that lesson. I thought I'd done all the maturing I was going to do, what with the stuff I'd done and seen. But I was wrong. About a lot of things.

But for a long time, I didn't let things bother me. I liked what I felt like. I felt like a man. I was into things. When I entered your life, you fucking paid attention. You knew you'd just come across someone who'd not think twice to hold your life in his hands. Sometimes, it was the best it could be for you because afterwards, you knew a bit more about what it felt like to live again.

So for all that time, all those years, all those dusty miles ... I didn't long for more than what I had. I never mourned what I'd lost because I'd walked away from all the fruitless misery. I also didn't mourn for what I'd never had because I didn't really want more. I think it never dawned on me to want more. What else would I have wanted?

Safety? Yeah. Right. An illusion. Security? Only security in the world is a gun and the mind to use it. Love? It hadn't exactly been high on my list. Sex was as close as I came. Sex was damned good, let me tell you.

John Herod worried about the big things for us. That was his role. I mean, I thought ahead a lot, wondering how things'd work out, how we'd get out of whatever he'd get us into, but what the hell. You only got one life to live, right?

And John always had schemes going. He never let you know it all. You'd think you did, but you didn't. Eventually I got to realizing that he'd have at least one trick left and that I'd better never make the mistake of getting too comfortable around him. For a long time, I liked that about him. It added an element of excitement that was amazing for how it made you sharper, more aware.

After a while, I got old enough and wise enough to buck Herod every now and again. He liked that. He wanted it. It meant things to him. He could make you pay for it, but he could also reward you in ways that meant something. In my case, he rewarded me with his trust. He told me things he never told the others. Details, plans, schemes. Deceit, double-dealing, tricks ... he loved to tell me just before one kicked in to pay off all his planning and double-dealing. It's how he kept us in line, those of us who rode with him.

I can remember the day in question so clear. The mind's great that way. It's also unforgiving when the memory of something gets inside you like that. Sometimes, it doesn't even matter if you're remembering something right or just remembering the memory right.

It was a cold day. The kind of cold you get in the mountains north of Tucson where it starts out clear and you know by nightfall it's going to be snowing so bad you won't be able to move in it. The wind starts up when you're about to enter a canyon and for a moment you forget it because it gets blocked by the canyon walls. But eventually, you come out of the canyon. The wind slices through you by then.

Snow comes down so dry and brittle that it hurts when it hits you. Then it comes faster and the wind drives it straight at you so when you turn around to see if everyone's with you, you can't really tell and you figure it's their tough luck if they don't keep up.

It was one of those kinds of days. By noon, we knew we needed shelter. We were looking for a cave so when the fence heaved into view and we knew a ranch had to be around, we felt like the luckiest men in the world. We followed wagon wheel ruts we could barely see in the swirling snow that had not yet begun to really stick. We followed them through the break in the fence line until we hit the barn.

There were five of us. John. Buster. Riley. Coombs. Me.

Coombs and Buster wrestled the barn door open and we blew in with the howl of the wind. Spooked the animals inside. Two horses in stalls; eight cows and a bull hovering in a communal stall. We heard pig sounds from another one. The rancher must have figured this was going to be a storm and a half to have them all inside.

John said he wasn't staying in the barn, not with all those wet, stinking, crowded animals.

Not that he would have stayed in there anyway, mind you. He deserved better. He was proud to tell us that. He liked to say a man's only as good as what he takes and that he's only as low as what he'll accept. Besides, Riley was injured and a soft, warm bed wouldn't be a bad thing for a man who'd been shot in the shoulder.

It was John, me and Coombs that went to the ranch house. It was a big house. Wide porch all around. Healthy smoke billowed out of the chimney. The glow through the windows was that amber color that always made me think rich folks never understood what it's like to be standing outside in the cold dark looking in on a life you know will never be in your reach. They just don't think that way. They'd be standing out there wondering what the woman of the house will serve them for dinner.

That's one of the differences between the haves and the rest of us.

It was a big difference between John and me. John was a have; I wasn't. John came from money; not wealth, but comfort. He stood outside that ranch and never once thought he didn't belong inside the house. I stood out there and wondered if I'd break anything if I wasn't real careful moving around in there. Not that I ever did. But it was just one of those things I thought about then put aside with a touch of anger in me that the people inside there could make me know my place and they hadn't even seen me yet.

We didn't exactly knock. John kind of brushed the door with his knuckles then invited himself inside. They were gathered around their dinner table. That seemed odd to me; wrong time of day ... but it's how I remembered it was a Sunday. People ate their big meals earlier on Sundays. People did; not us. One day was pretty much like the other for us unless we were camped out in a town somewhere for a while.

John put on a show for them. He liked that aspect. He talked in that low, rich voice that was cultured, malevolent and invincible. Coombs and I flushed the remaining residents of the household from the kitchen and from the servants' area. We figured the ranch hands were hunkered down in their bunkhouse. We'd worry about them later if we had cause to. The storm's winds by then were howling loud enough that a cannon could have fired from the main house and those in the bunkhouse would never have heard it or they would have dismissed it as an echo of the wind's rage.

First, John's show. It was his method for shocking these genteel folks into docile compliance. He took the middle son, maybe all of 12 years of age, and he became the target. I demonstrated the precision with which I handled my gun. The women screamed. The father was driven to his knees, begging for his son's life. The only thing I ever hated in moments like that was seeing a proud man brought down like that. Men like that, they were your enemies for the rest of their lives. Sometimes I thought it was smarter to just kill them out right. Leave them alive and you had to watch for them for a long time.

If we'd killed the boy, we would have had to kill them all. They were a tight family. I admit, it surprised me the strength of their bond.

The boy's older sister told me she'd find me some day and make me pay for what I'd done. She told me this while she held her brother after John untied him and told me the show was over. The boy's name was Jeremiah. I remember that. I never really forgot it; just didn't think I'd come to the name that quick these years later. Jeremiah.

When I think on it, I can remember all their names. The father was Patrick; the mom was Lillian. The oldest brother was Michael, the youngest was Stuart. Damn. My memory's still good for such details. The two little girls, the babies of the family, they were Rachael and Rebecca. They were twins. Blond hair, deep blue eyes.

And then there was the girl who swore to make me pay. Hannah.

Yeah. That was her name.

She was wearing a burgundy dress that night. Her light brown hair and burgundy dress. I'd forgotten them. That's a shame a man can forget a girl like that. Memory. Does some odd tricks on a man.

John sat at the table with Lillian by his side. He had Hannah serve us our meal. We had their servants bound in the basement. Had to manage the situation, John said. We had hog-tied Patrick and Michael. We strung them up in the barn and left them there with Buster to watch over. Strung them up so the only thing keeping them from hanging by the nooses around their necks was their ability to balance on the chair they shared between them.

Frankly, we didn't expect them to make it in that cold night. But they did.

The whole family made it through the night.

They might not have made it through quite the innocents they'd once been, but they did make it through with a minimum of damage.

Am I chickening out on my own memory? Sometimes, a man looks back and wonders where it all comes from. The rage. The way you go from being amused to being so close to killing someone you think you'll burst from it. The way it feels like you can see yourself doing the worst you can ... shooting the kid, raping the girl, letting the dad and brother die, watching the house burn as you leave the next day.

But sometimes, you see someone else about to do what you're thinking you have no reason not to do. And it sickens you, what you see. Because that could be you. If you'd moved a little faster, been a little less calculating. And it's seeing the way it looks on someone else that stops you, that actually disgusts you to your marrow.

These people had done nothing to us. We'd never given them time to. All they'd done was live in a house where we happened to be needing shelter in a snow storm while we were being chased back to Mesa.

The mother. John Herod made her sit there next to him. She cried. She didn't sob or howl or wail. We dragged her husband and son off; she didn't know what we were going to do. But Herod told the rest of them they would survive if no one left in the house did anything stupid. When I got back from the barn, she was sitting there next to John and tears were turning her collar damp. She was trembling. She was ashen with these tiny spots of color on her cheeks. She was a beautiful woman in a lot of ways. If she'd been my wife, I would have killed Herod.

John kept talking to her, carrying on this conversation like they were dating, like she was there by choice. Like she really wanted to hear all about him and his outlook on life, women and family.

Hannah stood beside John, serving him whatever he required. She just stood there until he'd lean back and say something like wine or beef or gravy or bread. And then she'd slowly, gracefully get him whatever he'd demanded.

I saw the look on his face each and every time she bent over the table to get something. I knew what he wanted with her. Except I also thought he preferred Lillian, the mother. But you can't always tell with John. He would take anything he wanted, age or marital status was of little mind to him when he wanted a woman. I'd seen it often enough.

When I returned to the house, John told me to take a seat and he had Hannah serve me from the platters of food. There was something about joining him at that table, about sitting in a chair I wondered which member of their family sat in. I was disgusted that he was actually sitting down there choosing which woman he was going to have that night.

When he chose, I know Lillian didn't know it. I know she only went with him when he ordered her to because she thought she'd protect her kids better that way ... by leaving with the chief monster. I think Hannah knew, though.

She was young and in shock, though; I don't think she quite knew what to do. And she was scared, for all her proud carriage and resolve.

I told her to take the little ones in their big drawing room; to get the fire going better in there. I wanted them all together, someplace compact where Coombs and I could keep watch.

We all heard it when Lillian must have realized what was going to happen to her. I caught Hannah around the waist when she tried to run to her mother. Coombs thought that was a signal that we were going to share Hannah. But before he could make more than a step, before it was so obvious what he was thinking that he'd have to fight me before he'd be stopped, I told him to go check on Riley.

Riley's wounds had been tended by the only person we thought to trust for that. She was an old Indian dressed in deerskin who worked as a cook for the family. By the time she'd finished cleaning out his wound and binding him up, he was feeling good enough to eat for the first time all day. I told Coombs that if Riley looked worse, he should go get the old Indian woman from the basement and let her tend to him again. Maybe a poultice this time, I told him.

Hannah didn't put up much of a struggle. We didn't hear much from her mother after the first cries. But we heard noises from in there. I wondered if Hannah was too innocent to know what they were.

I made her sit with the kids. They huddled around her. She kept the fire going all night. She watched me intently in the light from the fire and the amber glow of the oil lamps. I watched her right back. I kept thinking that she had no idea how close she'd come to getting what her mother was getting. Not from John. From me.

But I couldn't. Not seeing the way it'd transformed John into something less than a man. It was the first time I'd ever felt that way about John. First time I'd thought about how weak he had to be to do that. He had to keep finding new things to excite him, scare him, rev him up. It was never enough for John Herod.

At first light, John swaggered into where we were. He ordered Hannah and Stuart to get breakfast going. He told Hannah to prepare food for us for the road as well. She never looked at John. She looked at me. I felt like she was trying to get a message to me but if so, it never got delivered.

I went down to the barn on John's orders. Buster was drunk on his ass. He'd found a way to keep warmer than he was with the fire we'd set up for him in the barn's stove. Jesus. I kicked his ass from one side of the barn to the other. The horses shimmied in their stalls, snorting and calling in alarm. The cows bayed and huddled together while the bull rammed the walls of their stall. Pigs squealed.

Patrick and Michael, though, they never made a noise behind their gags. They just watched me explode. I took out on Buster every impulse of anger and humiliation I'd felt inside that house all night ... and the rage that'd been building for months only I'd never known it until that night in that house and the moment I'd realized John Herod was a weak man underneath it all.

There is nothing ... nothing ... more dangerous than a weak man with a sadistic streak who thinks the world and every single person he sees is against him. He will always be a man seeking approval and never satisfied with the fact that the only way he can get respect is through fear. That's not respect; it's fear. It's not enough for a man like that but it'll do in the meantime, I suppose.

When I was done with Buster, I wheeled on a dime, drew both guns and shot the ropes holding those two men's necks. The ropes had been attached to nooses that I'd have sworn they'd have been swinging from by then. I never once thought they'd make it through that night. But they had. And I had seen why. It was because the father had supported the son and the son had supported the father. I could see what they'd done, their legs wrapped around each other, their bodies close for support and warmth.

It made me sick.

I saw myself shoot them. Nice round holes through their smug faces and another one for each of their hearts. Let them help each other survive my bullets. I saw the smoke of the gun after each one bucked in my hands. I saw the surprise on their haughty faces. I saw them dying where they should have been ... on the cold earth inside that barn.

But I didn't do it. I let them live instead.

I made Buster tie them up with chain and leather leads for their horses. I had him string them up by their wrists, hanging at least a foot off the ground. I had him make sure their gags were tight. I made him put them at opposite sides of the barn. They could see each other, but they couldn't help the other.

Fuck 'em.

They could die for all I cared.

Buster beat them both as he tied them up. Claimed they resisted. Didn't like the way they cooperated. It was an excuse. He just didn't like having been humiliated before them. And I also know for sure he was threatening them because he wanted them quiet when John came in to mount up.

He knew I wouldn't tell John he'd been drinking while on guard duty. It wasn't my way. I dealt with shit like that on my own; figured I'd dealt with it fine already. No sense making more of it. It had felt good to let myself explode; I was getting tired of keeping it inside.

By the time we rode out of that ranch, the snow had long since stopped. Flecks of flurried white granules would come down from a bright blue nearly cloudless sky on and off while we rode, but no real snow for the next two days.

We made Mesa the next day. Those who were following us gave up at some point when they realized they'd never get us before we reached the rest of our group.

So that's her.

That's where I knew her from.

Hannah. That girl was now a woman and how incredible was it that she'd crossed my path in Yuma City of all towns? Border of New Mexico and Arizona. God forsaken place I got to maybe every three or four months. Often enough to have a routine when I got there; but not so often it ever felt that familiar.

I never did know the family's last name. It never even mattered to me. I don't think I thought about them but maybe once or twice after that trip was over. But when I looked back on it that afternoon all those years later and safe in the steam of that soft bath that was getting rid of the dust, I realized that whole trip had been a turning point for me.

Or more accurately, it had been a fork in the road. I could have gone on the way I was and I'd still be on the run with John to this day, I suppose. But once I recognized that John was manipulating and stoking that rage inside me, I just never was the same. He was a weak man. He needed to break down men like me, keep us thinking we were beholden to him, that he had some magical ability to get us what we wanted that we couldn't get ourselves.

But the thing was, he couldn't. He didn't have a clue what I wanted in life. Not that I did, either, at that time. Maybe not even now.

Even now, I've got that rage inside. It's what has helped me settle down a bit lately, I think. I've learned how to accept that rage, embrace it, use it for something good: determination.

I've learned to control it better. I've learned it can keep me sharp when I've got it under control. The priest in Nogales taught me that. The one who put my life together after John and I had been wounded in that shoot out with federal troops.

A man's dignity is his shield against the injustices and cruelty that descend on us from the truly evil, the priest told me. I learned a lot about dignity from the priest. No matter what John did to him, the priest never once lost it.

I have a lot of pride. Always did. It was nearly my downfall with John Herod. I thought I could outrun him, outlast him, outmaneuver him. I was wrong. The only thing I could ever have done with John was to face him. To let him scheme and plot and manipulate me all he wanted until it was just us, me and John Herod, facing each other and seeing who'd walk away with who's life.

That's how it is for some people in this world. You can't outrun them. They won't let you walk away. They will never forget you. They will always find a way to make you pay for what they feel you have done to them. They will always most despise that you were strong.

People talk all kinds of shit about having 'come to Jesus' moments in their lives. I've heard a lot of them; people tend to tell you things like that when you wear the cloth and the collar. They think it's what you are interested in. I never was. Tell you why: no one 'comes to Jesus' in one big step when their whole life has been about not having choices.

People who tell you things like that have either never strayed far from Jesus so the path back is not so hard to walk or they're hoping you won't notice that they are prideful, mean people.

The truth is, it's never one specific thing that happens that makes you decide you're making a major change in the direction of your life. The moment you realize that it's not about having choices but that it's about reacting to the way life chooses for you, that's when you just begin the journey. From then on out, it's about making your way in life and not about excusing your actions anymore.

There is no way on earth I'd ever say that night with Hannah's family 'changed' something in me. It didn't. It didn't even really 'make' me think. I'd already been thinking. For months. I just hadn't really realized that these vague feelings I could not define had a name: desire.

My sweet Lord. I desired.

A man of God isn't supposed to desire, is what most people will tell you. Course, those people aren't men of God, are they? If they were, they'd know that desire is not a bad thing; it is natural, it can be good or bad.

So that night didn't change me, and I never said it did. But it was a catalyst. One of a series of them that built up to bigger and bigger ... until the force of one broke me free from who I'd been. I didn't change overnight; no one does. I might have not raped her, but that doesn't mean I didn't want to. It also doesn't mean I didn't grope her and enjoy her fear after Coombs left and she thought I was going to make her pay for what she'd said to me about making me pay. And it doesn't mean I stopped for a noble reason; I didn't. And it doesn't mean that I didn't have nights I wished I had done it because she was young, clean and ripe. There were some nights I dreamed I'd done it. I never saw her face in those dreams; I just knew it was her or some other woman I'd had the power to do that to. There'd been more than her in those years.

She was never really a person to me. She was in my dreams later as manifestations of my rage. It wasn't rage at women; it was rage at myself, at my life, at my lack of control, at John, at my father, at God. Prayer brought me that insight. See, I never hated women. Ever. Women had been good to me; maybe the only good I'd gotten was at the hands of women. My mother, God rest her soul, had loved this boy I had been. Other women had helped me over the years; they opened their bodies to me and they opened their soft hearts.

Women fascinated me. Still do.

It's that way they have of being stronger than men. It's that they give life. They are a miracle of creation. And when they are under you and you are all hardness within their softness, you get the measure of how strong a person must be to open themselves up that way.

There have been many women open to me. Even those years with John Herod, I had no problem finding a soft woman to take me inside. And I'm not talking just whores, although they were easier to arrange when a man's passing through.

Sometimes when I am with a woman, I get the urge to rise from their beds in the middle of the night and just observe the specific ways their rooms reflect their essential differences; the things that make women such mysteries and so sweet to men. Little bottles with perfume and oils and colors. Delicate scents. Ribbons, hats, lingerie, unmentionables. Sewing, pictures, flowers, curtains, lace.

They can make the roughest place a bit softer, more civilized.

If it weren't for women, men would never bathe, I thought as I slipped beneath the water in the steel tub at Olsen's Bathhouse to rinse the soap from my hair. Christ, it felt so good to be clean again. Even though I knew within a few minutes of walking out of here that the dust would begin its work on me and my clothes, I still had hopes that maybe today would be the day the dust would settle. But it was that time of year when even off the trail, dust never let up.

Olsen'd taken my dust-soaked trail clothes to wash for me; he'd have them put in my room at the hotel later. I dug out a change of clothes from my saddlebags. I felt almost like a new man except that I was troubled. My fingers quivered ever so slightly on the buttons of my pants.

Hannah. What was she doing there in Yuma City? Where had she found the courage to confront me like she had? Or was it more that her rage had given her no choice but to come after a man she must surely blame for atrocities whose impact I could never do more than have slight guesses at? And ... what would she do now that we had crossed paths? Should I look for her to apologize? Jesus Lord, no apology was ever going to make things right. If she wanted retribution, now ... well, now we might be able to make a case for that.

Outside on the walkway, I scanned the main street of red dirt. My eyes were searching for Hannah; I was hoping I wouldn't see her. I wasn't afraid to face her; I just was enough on edge that I wasn't sure I could give her whatever she might need to be satisfied she'd dealt with me and put me behind her. So I made my way to the saloon. Never did see her. Inside, I joined two men I knew at a table, kicked back and enjoyed the bite of whiskey. Belle joined me there.

Belle wasn't her real name, of course. Seems lots of whores do that; find other names they think add something to them when they feel their lives belong to a woman they don't recognize.

"Take me upstairs, honey?" I whispered to her finally, after she'd killed about a third of the whiskey from the bottle I'd bought to ensure her company without competition. She had me needing relief only she seemed capable of giving me just then. I'd waited a while longer than usual to take her up to that hovel of a room she used. For some reason, that night, I liked the way it felt to wait so long that I knew when I took her, it would be fast and mean. She'd be squealing my name soon enough, I thought as I meandered up after her. I liked following her hips as they swished up the stairs before me. The sight filled me with the need for woman.

I used to think a man was weak to give in to such needs. I'd reconciled with that. Man's meant to procreate; it's part of God's divine order. That's the seat of this particular need. There's nothing shameful between a man and a woman fulfilling the urge with each other as long as it's equal desire on both their parts.

The door was barely closed when Belle was stripping for me. Her fingers fumbled over the buttons way up high on her back; I shoved her hands away and undid them. And then I was getting my shirt off; yanking it off while I followed her across to the bed. She was out of the dress, out of the pantaloons, out of her camisole, out of her knickers, out of her stockings.

Damn. I couldn't wait to just touch her skin, all plump and pink.

She giggled at me as she turned to find me shoving my shoes off and trying to unbutton my pants. And then she was all over me. Her hands everywhere. I grabbed her up in the middle of that first madness kiss; she wrapped her legs around my waist and I twirled with her in my arms.

Kissing so hard. Feeling her wet against the opening in my britches that were only partly up. She had this way of wiggling against a man that was pure obscenity and a man of God might have called it wrong.

I only knew it felt right.

But then, I hadn't been a man of God in a good number of years.

So I liked the way she did that. I liked it even more the way she snaked one of her arms between us, grabbed my hardness and positioned it right at her opening. When she sunk down on it, her mouth formed an almost lazy 'O' and she gasped. I liked how she overacted that part. A woman doing what she did would never really suffer when taking in a man, even a man my size.

But the thing I like best about Belle, the thing that made me look her up each and every time I made it to Yuma City was what she'd do next.

She'd rise and fall on me a few times. I'd be just about to the point of stopping her and slamming her down on the mattress so I could just fuck away at her ... except she always picked that exact moment to rise off me, slither out of my arms like a wayward toddler ... and she'd sink to her pudgy knees and take me inside her mouth.

You don't think that didn't always get a groan from me? Christ, but it would leave me weak with the desire to be driving inside her while I fought for control. She knew that, too. The first time she'd done that, she'd been planning to just finish me off that way. But I'd eased her off and asked to come inside. I'd seen her at least six more times after that; each time, she got better and better at judging how far to take it before she'd suck her way off me, look up with expectation in that smile.

I yanked her to her feet and then we fell into her bed. I was inside her some insane seconds later. And I didn't have it in me to do much more than just drive to my release. Not that I lost sight of Belle; I wanted her to have a good time, too. It made me feel good when she'd come. I'd feel her spasm around me; she'd fight it but when she gave in, man, she never looked as beautiful as in that moment. Only then did I feel like coming in her. She was good for me; any wonder why she was a treat at the end of a dusty, hard trail?

"What's wrong, sugar?" she said a while later. She was up lighting the oil lamp that sat on the little dresser by her bed. She looked down at me. "You been acting so sad all evening. Wanna tell Belle about it, Cort?"

"Not sad, honey. Little Belle ... how could any man be sad around you?"

"You are so sweet. Sweet enough to eat ..."

"Which you already proved but, honey, if you wanna prove it again, by all means ... have a taste." I lunged for her and dragged her down atop me.

"Hush, Cort! Stop tickling me! I'm trying to have a serious talk here ... And don't sigh all so dramatic. You look me in the eyes, cowboy, and tell me you ain't sad."

"I'm not a cowboy, Belle. How many times I gotta tell you that?"

She giggled in response. "Cort! C'mon now. I can see in your eyes ... something's bothering you. Is it home?"

"No." I rolled on my back and she crawled up against my side so I could hold her. Lord knows why I ended up telling her. Maybe it's because I figured she'd heard lots worse so maybe it wouldn't even stand out to her. "Today, when I was coming into town, I saw a girl I last saw about six years ago and way in another area of this state. I didn't recognize her but she knew me, sure enough. But now I've remembered who she was. She was someone I was bad to a long time ago. It made me think on the fact there's some things a man can't make up to a girl, aren't there?"

Her fingers played along my chest. "Now, Cort, I cannot believe you would ever do something really bad to a gal. Not really bad. But every man breaks a few hearts along the way. If it makes you feel any better, so do most girls. So chances are, she's done some bad along the way, too."

"Not like this."

"Don't matter. I know you well enough to know ... you ain't like most men, Cort. There's a way about you that a woman sees right off. It's the way you look a gal in the eyes when you talk to her. It's the way it means something to you when you touch her and when you let her touch you." Her voice sounded almost sleepy; I figured she was feeling nice that I'd told her something so personal. "It's the way you like it, Cort. Cuz, you do ... like it, I mean. You come real pretty."

I turned and gave her a long look. Her eyes were almost shut. She had this satisfied smile on her face. For some reason, that look got to me. It was a look of total trust. It was trust I'd never earned. It was trust she took for granted because I wore a silver star and because I treated her with more respect than she thought she deserved. She didn't really know me. She had no idea what I was capable of in the right circumstances.

Still ... a woman like Belle ... surely she saw men for what they were? I just watched her as she fell to sleep beside me.

And I thought about another woman. A woman back home waiting for me to return. There was coming a time, and it'd be soon, when stopping in for a bit of Belle was going to be wrong. Time was coming when I'd ask that woman back home to marry me. Maybe it'd be next time I saw her. I was pretty sure what I wanted was her. I was almost positive I wanted a future with her, our children, that town, this life.

I rose and turned the wick down to almost nothing. The room fell into deep shadow with only the faint glow of the lamp. I could hear the ruckus downstairs and out in the street. Parting the curtains, I stood still in the moonlight and surveyed the scene below. Nothing seemed of real concern. I realized only then, standing there naked and defenseless, that I'd stopped taking it personal when I thought about whether or not I could be in danger.

When had that happened?

It wasn't because of the star I wore on my vest. I'd been wearing that for three or more years now. A star never does anything but put a target on a man's chest.

What kind of life was that to offer a woman? Takes a real special woman to accept that about a man and still fall in love with him with wide-open, all-seeing eyes. Hazel eyes, I thought as I saw the flecks of gold flash before my eyes.

I looked down at little Belle sleeping on her bed. If she could see me standing there with that smile on my face, she'd not think I was sad. Don't know that I was ever sad when I thought of my hazel-eyed beauty waiting for me on the other end of the trail of dust that spanned the space between Yuma City and Gila Bend.

We had met a year earlier. I'd been just settling into her town. She'd been living there for two years. She'd come with her husband to run his uncle's mercantile. She'd lost her husband within six months of arriving in Gila Bend. She told me about that only once, really. I mean, like in detail. She'd looked off over the picket fence that surrounded her neat peach-colored house and just said it matter-of-fact. He'd died to save her life when an out-of-control horse came charging at her and her feet got stuck in the muddy tracks of the road in front of the store. He'd come charging out of nowhere to shove her out of the way. He lingered on for maybe a week with broken bones and a collapsed lung before fever started setting in. And there was nothing they could do then.

She stayed to help her husband's aunt. Two widows now running the business and keeping each other from getting too lonely.

Or maybe it was like her husband's aunt told me one time. Maybe she'd stayed so I could heal her.

Jessie.

And maybe I'd come there so she could heal me, I had told myself.

There's only so much to be said for living your life to make up for your past. You can do it for a while. But some day, you have to make up your mind to move on without the ghosts clinging to your soul.

I'd been a U.S. Marshal for just a bit more than three years by that day I saw Hannah in Yuma City. It'd been official for about two and a half years. It just happened. I didn't plan on changing my life. It was a choice that I let my life decide for me.

My life's been an odd mixture of paths. Every time I started down one, I was so sure this was what I'd be doing forever. Left home to be an outlaw. Never thought I'd want more; never wanted more. It was a good life to me.

Until it wasn't anymore. Until I met a priest who helped me understand the rage inside me was something I could control but that it would take real strength of character. He never promised me the rage would go away; he never tried to pray it away. He just accepted me how he found me. But he's the one, the first one, who really told me the next choice should be mine.

That I'd killed him hadn't been the choice he was ever talking about, I think. That was my life choosing for me, yet again. No, my real choice had been about two months later when I planned my escape and then just did it. Rode clear away from Mesa where John had his compound in those days. Headed due south, past Tucson, to Mexico. Stayed there only a few weeks and learned why it may sound like the place for a desperate man, but desperate men never make it there very long. They either end up in prison, dead or heading back across the Rio Grande.

Some instinctive need for making reparations brought me to that little orphanage. The nuns thought I was a priest; why else would a young man come there without guns and in silence. They accepted me; they let me be who I wanted to be. It's the first choice I think I really made as a man about how I'd do my life if it was in my hands.

I'd been raised a Catholic; I knew the rituals because my mother took her religion serious. I told myself that this was like the apostles; that God had appointed me the leader of that flock for a reason. That I was a man of God doing God's work. That these people's souls were being helped because they believed I was giving them Communion, and commending their souls to God upon their deathbeds, and absolving them of their puny sins.

Their sins were so minor it made me wonder what they'd say if they knew their priest had committed sins so black that their God would never let him in Heaven.

And then everything was taken from me. My peace. My purpose. My choices.

John liked that the most about dragging me to Redemption, you know. Oh, sure, he wanted to break me down and take away my pride and dignity, but most of all he wanted to show me that a man like me never had a choice. Not in this life.

He'd been wrong.

I chose to fight him. But I chose how I'd do it, too. I did it proud. I refused to bow down to him. I refused to be weak before him. I refused to not have a choice. Even when I pulled the trigger, that was a choice. It was an instinctive choice for life and hope. But I hated what I'd done. Hated it.

For the first time in over a year, I'd let the rage peek out and had lost some control of it. I had felt such blinding rage at the injustice. I tried to hide it. Only Ellen had ever really seen it. She told me that one night we spent together that she'd seen it when I'd smiled at Herod because she knew I would bend but I'd never break ... and that I knew John was too weak to do anything but break. It was always all or nothing for John. He just played every angle, stacked every deck, cheated every corner so he could have it all his own way. He just never counted on other people not being sheep; he never counted on us changing the rules on him and having our own card up our sleeves.

When it was all over, Ellen rode out of town and thought she could leave me to clean up the mess. 

Redemption was a shit town. Bunch of sheep. About the only people living there of any redeeming value were the whores. I stayed to clean up the mess. I had planned to return to the mission orphanage when I'd done my duty by the people Ellen had left in my care. But by then, too much had changed thanks to the choices I'd made to survive John's test of my soul. I could never again be mistaken for a man of God. All it ever took was a look in the mirror and seeing the way the people of that town regarded me with a mixture of fear and respect.

I took the job of Marshal serious. All I had was the star that had belonged to Ellen's dad. But I upheld the law as I saw it. Did the best job I could along the way. Saved some lives; doomed others.

Then one day a few months into that, three U.S. Marshals rode into town escorting two prisoners bound for Phoenix's prison. I thought, 'here's your out, Cort. Here's where you can hand this town over to the real lawmen and you can ride on out to make a choice about what you'll do with your life.'

They heard my story only because they stowed their prisoners in my jail. I stayed up all night watching over the prisoners while they slept in the hotel. People opened their mouths, told them about me, about our town ... they heard things over dinner at the Pigeon's Nest. They heard other things at the saloon. They heard more things walking from the hotel to the jail. And they heard things from me, too.

When they were hitching up to go, I asked them when I might expect a Marshal to come to the territory and take over this flock. They'd deputized me on the spot; I got my 'official' commission by wire two weeks later. A month after that, one of the Marshals from Phoenix came to stay with me for two weeks. He taught me as much as I needed to know about being the law out there. They started paying me a salary.

I thought I'd be there forever. But I woke up one morning about a year after I'd been in Redemption and realized there were other places a Marshal was needed. That's how I found Gila Bend. My territory stretched from halfway to Yuma City back to near Benson. Gila Bend has always been a crossroads. You can't go too many places in south Arizona without going through Gila Bend.

The choice to accept that life and to do it the best I could, with spirit and resolve ... might have been the best choice I'd made. Sometimes, I remember why I decided to leave Redemption. Most times, I realize a man can only carry so many burdens and I had my share. But staying there never settled on me. I could never be anything more than a killer there.

In Gila Bend, I was the Marshal.

I never intended to hide my past; I just never talked about it. It just wasn't anyone's business what I'd done to get where I was. 

At least, that's what I thought until the day Hannah came back into my life in Yuma City.

The next morning, I left Belle after rising to the morning and having her help me greet a bright day. I got to the jail with the papers for my prisoner shortly after it opened for business. I walked in, expecting to simply hand over the paperwork and find out what time the Marshal from California was due in to pick up the prisoner I'd escorted there from Benson where he'd made the mistake of crossing paths with me. I never forgot a face on a poster.

I was already smiling because I knew I'd be signing the prisoner over to the jail, taking the bonus that came with the capture and escort duty ... and that I'd be home and near Jessie in two days.

Then I saw Hannah in there. She was sitting in front of a desk, twisting a lace-edged hankie in her fingers and describing me to the deputy on the other side of that desk. When I came in, her eyes glanced my way to see who'd entered. It was like time slowed to nothing. She rose with this guttural groan and pointed at me. When she charged me, I didn't try to fend her off. She caught me good across the face before the deputy dragged her off.

I don't know when I've felt sorrier for another human being in a long time. All these years, all these miles, all these terrible memories for her ... she comes face-to-face with the one man she wanted to make pay for what had happened to her and her family ... only to find out he's reformed and is now a Marshal. She didn't believe the deputy when he told her. Not until he told me to move my jacket and show her the star pinned to the vest underneath.

There was no way I'd have robbed her of what she had coming. She told the whole story. But no one was going to do anything about it. I'd been absolved of those crimes when I'd become a Marshal courtesy of the Governor and his desperate need for men to wear that silver badge.

I was also not going to give her excuses or apologies. A part of me shut down. I tried to think about what I could do to make her feel better. Money? I offered; she slapped me. And then she walked out.

It was like the air got sucked right out of the building when she left. All that righteous anger and desire for revenge had filled that place ... when she took it away, for a long time, nothing took its place in the vacuum.

I rode out of town two hours later. I'd left behind a murderer being brought to justice. My saddle held a murderer who would face judgment from his God when he stood before Saint Peter, it looked like, and not a minute before.