My uncles Jack Henry and Will Henry were ten and twelve years older than me, and I thought there was no one could cut a patch on them. I mean, they were everything I wanted to be. Both could shoot, but Jack Henry could shoot the head off a crow at two hundred paces or more.

One time we were going through the woods and he stopped and said, "See that piney there? There on that log." I looked and didn't see a thing, just a downed tree and some brush. "On that log there this side of the crick. You must be blind, boy." He raised the rifle and fired. We walked over to the log and there was a strip of skin and flesh where a chipmunk had been.

Both had the name Henry because that was Pa's name and he wanted his sons named after him. He was my grandpa, but I never knew him because I was born in '67 and he'd been killed in the war. 'Course I didn't know my pa either, if the truth be told. My mother come home when she was big with me and dropped me and left again. She never came back.

She told Ma she wanted me named Algernon and Ma said she'd be God damned if any grandchild of hers would carry such a burden. So I was named Matthew and called Matt.

Well, Ma died in the spring of '83. She come down with a fever in January but hung on until the thaw but her heart couldn't really stand it. Will Henry said he thought that coward Ford shooting Jesse broke Ma's heart since she was second cousins on her mother's side and he was a hero still fighting those Yankees and those damn Radicals and those free-soil sucks. I just know she looked all right to me till she got that fever and had to fight to breathe. It sounded like her lungs were full of water and when she coughed her whole body shook. She'd rise up in the bed and fight to breathe and kick out and swing her arms every which way and then she'd just fall back and stare at the ceiling.

Anyway, she wasn't under the ground three weeks when the Webb boys, Robert and Randal (my uncles called them Rob and Rand) showed. They wore new store-bought clothes—I mean, trousers and coats and dusters—and new boots with all kinds of fancy stitching on the sides.

They even carried Schofields in their holsters. The tall one with the beard, Rob, he pulled out a bottle of store whiskey and said, "Well, boys, let's have a drink and sit a spell."

We all went into the house and sat around the kitchen table and Jack got out a couple good glasses and three tin cups and even I had a drink. I didn't care much for it, though. It was thick and burnt tasting, not like good 'shine or applejack.

Will said, "Looks like you boys have done all right for yourself."

Rand said, "You know it. We did a good business relieving some establishments of the burden of their riches. We made good Christians of them . . . those that lived."

Rob laughed and said, "They was all carpet baggers or railroaders or such. We never raised a hand to one of our own."

"That's right," Rand said. "And now we got to strike out for new territory. I think this land's been played out and there's a few sheriffs and railroad detectives wanting to speak to us in unfriendly ways."

"Well, you don't want to go up Minnesota way," Will said.

"You sure as hell are right there, cousin. No, we plan on heading west where the gold is."

"You going to dig for gold?" I asked.

"Dig? Hell, no. We'll wait till it's out of the ground and put into nice shiny bars or coins with an eagle on them."

They talked and drank some more and Will and Jack got to telling how bad things were here and how working the land didn't seem to pay. So Rand asks them to go along to the west. Will said, "But what about Matt here?"

"Hell," Rand said, "he looks big enough. Can he ride and shoot?"

"Good as me but not up to Jack . . . but nobody is."

"Well, bring him along. We're to meet up with Ab and Earl Morton at the Colorado border and go on from there."

Will asked, "The Mortons? Same Mortons from over by Palmyra?"

"Yep. They was with Archie Clement in '66 when he robbed Clay County Savings. They've been in our business a good while now. They know all the whys and wheres of it, I tell you. They taught us a thing or two there in Lexington and then in that little dust-up outside Charleston."

"Charleston?"

"West Virginia. Rob got to try out his new Schofield."

So they kept drinking till the bottle was empty. Will said he had to go out back and left. Jack asked to see one of the revolvers and Rob handed him his Schofield.

"Try it out," Rob said.

The revolver only had a five inch barrel. Jack looked it over and said, "This pistol's been marked, stamped with more than a serial number. See."

I looked and saw "W.F. & Co." on the barrel.

Rob said, "We're kind of partial to their strongboxes."

Then we went outside and Jack kind of weighed the pistol in his hand and then he raised it up and looked down the barrel.

"It don't have the balance or heft of my Colt," he said. "I like a longer barrel."

"Jesse liked it," Rand said.

Jack thought about it a bit before he said, "See that knob on the outhouse door?" He brought that revolver up, cocked it, and fired in one smooth slick motion.

The doorknob flew apart and there was a hell of a shout and the door bust open and there was Will with his trousers and drawers down to his knees.

Rand said, "I reckon that scared the shit right out of him."

The Webbs were doubled up laughing and I had to smile too. Will stood there in the outhouse doorway shaking his fist at us.

Jack said, "The Schofield'll do, but I still like my Colt."

And that's how I got to be part of the Webb-Morton gang.

We headed west the next morning and took our time. Kansas country's not as pretty as Missouri and the folks aren't near as friendly. They just gave us hard looks as we went by. We kept out of towns mostly because the Webbs wasn't sure if there was any posters on them. Rand did steal a chicken from a farm and I ended up plucking and cleaning and cooking it.

We'd set up camp near a stream and spend the night. The Webbs and Will and Jack would hit the bottle before hitting the sack and in the morning I'd make the coffee and make enough noise to get them up and going. All the time the Webbs bragged about their raids and who all they ran with and I got to riding ahead so as not to hear it. It's one thing to have done something and another thing to talk about it and too often the talking is a lot bigger than the doing. I was young but I wasn't such a fool as to believe everything they said.

Abner and Earl Morton were sitting under a tree next to a stage station when we come on them. They had a bottle of some rotgut whiskey they shared with everyone but me. I didn't like the looks of them:

Abner was scrawny and shaky and what teeth he had was rotten. Earl didn't look much better and both had holes in their boots. Their horses wasn't much to look at it either—stolen plough horses, I'd say.

The Mortons had a plan all worked out. A train delivered a military payroll and supplies to Westchester Junction just across the border in Colorado and from there four troopers escorted a wagon to Fort Wadell.

We would wait alongside the road, jump out and shoot the soldiers and take the payroll. It was simple and should get near ten thousand dollars.

I asked, "You just going to kill them?"

Abner said, "The soldiers? Hell yes."

Rob Webb said, "All them is Yankees. They deserve killing."

"Damn right," Abner said.

"When's this happen?" Will asked.

"End of the month—next Tuesday. In the mean time we got us a cabin just outside Westchester Junction."

It was more a shack than a cabin and when it rained—which it did for three days—the roof was more a strainer that cut the size of the drops than anything else. The dirt floor turned to mud. Even field mice didn't bother to hide in it.

The sun was out and the day was shining bright the afternoon we waited in the woods just past the railroad station. The four troopers and the wagon had passed us around noon. I stood beside my horse while the others stayed mounted. I didn't see the sense of that. I was the only one with a rifle—Jack's Sharps carbine—while the Webbs had Schofields and the Mortons and Jack and Will had Colts.

They were passing a bottle around and I moved away and stood close to the road. I'd never shot a man before and I was worried about it. Not that I couldn't do it, but I wasn't sure it was right. I mean, I know they was Yankees but the War was a time ago and I didn't have anything against them. And I wasn't sure it was right to steal the money. Jack and Will didn't seem to be bothered and I respected them more than I ever respected anybody . . . still, it didn't feel right. I mean, somebody shoot at you or come at you, then it's right to shoot them but this was different.

Then we heard the train coming along the other side of the woods, the engine smoke rising above the trees like a trailing cloud. There was loud shrill whistles and a loud clanging of a bell. That set the horses to snorting and shaking their heads and pawing the ground. I held mine by his ear and whispered to him and stroked his face from forehead to nostrils. He calmed and I rubbed his neck.

For a time it sounded like the locomotive was resting and breathing heavy, then the bell clanged again and those loud hard whistles cut through the air and I had to hold my horse's head still and stroke him again. We could hear the train chuh chug chugging and slowly moving away, the sound fading out and there was only the stirring of the horses and their breathing. We waited.

We heard their voices and a wagon creaking along. We didn't see them until they come round a bend. Two rode beside the wagon and talked to the driver. Behind the wagon rode two more jawing away too.

Ab Morton said, "Get ready."

I got on my horse and cocked the carbine. The others had their pistols out.

Just as the wagon passed Ab shouted, "Now!"

Everybody but me came out firing and the troopers didn't know what hit them. Jack and Will got the two behind the wagon and Earl and Abner and the Webbs charged at the other two and fired shot after shot and a few hit and one trooper fell off his horse. The other trooper crouched low and slapped his horse and the horse took off at a gallop down the road. The Mortons and Webbs fired their pistols at him but didn't land a shot.

Ab yelled at me: "Use that damn rifle!"

I fired too quick and shot over the trooper's head. I reloaded and Earl grabbed the rifle from me.

"Damn kid!" he said and turned to shoot but the trooper was nowhere in sight. So mad he was shaking, he looked at the driver standing there in the wagon with his hands raised. Earl pulled the trigger and the shot knocked the driver back into the wagon.

While the Webbs reloaded their pistols, Abner got into the wagon and found the strongbox. He said, "Earl, toss me that carbine." He took the Sharps and used the barrel like a crowbar to bust the lock and opened the box. He pulled out a thick sack with handles, opened it, and said, "We got it." He looped the sack handles over his saddle horn and mounted. "Now let's get the hell out of here."

No sooner he spoke when Jack pointed up the road. Coming toward us was a bunch of horses carrying blue riders. They grew from dark moving smears of black and blue to ten or more troopers charging at full gallop.

We took off as fast as we could going the other way. The Mortons first, then the Webbs, then Jack and Will, and then me. But my horse was the best animal and in no time I was in the lead. I glanced back and saw they'd got to the wagon and were looking around. Then they started shooting at us with rifles and Will yelled and Jack went over to him.

"It's his arm," Jack said.

Will held his right arm and Jack took off his neckerchief and tied it around Will's elbow.

"We can't stop here," Rand Webb said. "Can he ride?"

"It's not so bad," Will said.

I heard bullets whizzing by and saw some kicking up dirt.

We went round a bend and Abner stopped us by holding up his hand.

"I don't think we can outrun 'em. If we git in the woods here we can put up a fight. Maybe surprise 'em."

Earl and the Webbs agreed.

Jack said, "No, best we keep going."

Abner said, "Our horses can't do it."

"Ours can," Jack said.

"Then give 'em to us," Abner said and he and Earl and the Webbs pointed their pistols at me and Jack and Will.

"Hell I will," Jack said and Earl shot him in the shoulder and Jack fell back and off his horse.

"Now you two git down," Earl said.

I dismounted and helped Will off his horse. He winced and grabbed his arm at the elbow.

Then Rand Webb grabbed the reins of our horses, laughed, and they all lit out down the road.

Jack got up, blood coming out of his shirt, and pulled his Colt. He cocked, raised it, and fired. Earl suddenly straightened up in the saddle, went stiff, and fell off his horse. Jack cocked again but Will said, "The army."

That bunch of troopers were just turning the bend.

Jack motioned to me: "Matt, take to the woods. Get going, boy."

"I can't. I can't let you—"

"Listen, this means hanging. You didn't kill no one but that won't mean squat to them. Run now. Now!"

I took off through the brush and into the woods. I looked back and saw Jack down on one knee and Will standing beside him. Will had his pistol in his left hand and he fired at the troopers. Jack fired too.

I heard a roar of gunfire as I ran, pushing through brush and briers.

I kept running with the sound of pistols and the crack of rifles echoing through the woods. Then it was quiet. I came to a stream and waded maybe a hundred paces with the current and then crossed to the other side. I sat down to rest a spell and listened. It was still except for a bird or two skipping from tree to tree and squawking about me. I waited but no one had followed.

It took me nine days of walking and running and cat-napping rather than sleeping and stealing eggs from hen houses and stoning chasing dogs to get back to the homestead. I figured nobody knew where I'd been or what I'd done so I could make out nothing had happened. I decided to live there and farm the place.

I went to Carver's Corners where there was a general store run by Pa's cousin John Clarence. All he wanted to know was where were Jack and Will and I said they'd gone west with the Webbs. He staked me to a mule and seed and flour and beans and such. His wife Clara said it was only right to help kin get a leg up.

I kept mostly to myself and got the place doing good, especially the apple orchard that Jack and Will had let go wild and never cleared the brush or pruned and deer and coons and whatever would take all the fruit. I got me an old Sharps to shoot varmints and now and then a deer when they showed when the leaves changed. I even planted cabbages to bring them in and they thought my back garden was their own supper table. So I had venison in the winter.

Pa had an old apple press that I cleaned up and John Clarence convinced me to get a roller cider mill and go into that business as a way of making extra money. I don't know why or what was so special about it but Matt's Country Cider and Country Applejack did real well.

I had to hire apple pickers and two strong boys to help with the press and mill come the fall.

I lived like that for fifteen years, alone—the few young women there was weren't interested in an ornery rough farmer like me and I was never the courting type. John Clarence had a widowed daughter of thirty-one who had something like consumption and she visited me every now and then to cook me a decent meal and such and we did what you'd expect. But she didn't want another husband and I didn't want a wife.

One winter she came down with a fever and died a week later. So that was that.

In all that time I only heard once about the Webbs. In '93 or so, Rand came back to Missouri and gave himself up. They tried him for shooting a Wells Fargo shotgun guard and a bank robbery over to Liberty, but he was acquitted. That was no surprise because half of the jury was cousins and his uncle Jefferson ran the newspaper. I never heard anything about Will and Jack. I figured the troopers killed them and there was no way you could know who they were. I missed them and thought about them—mostly on quiet evenings after supper when I sat on the stoop looking at the sky with the stars just coming out and the woods slowly getting dark.

I never fixed the door knob on the outhouse.

On August fifteenth in 1903 I was over in Belleville, Illinois. I remember that date exactly because it was my thirty-sixth birthday. I was there to make a deal for my cider with a man, Josh Harding, who had a string of grocery stores through southern Illinois and Indiana.

They had a fair then just outside of town and that evening he talked me into going with him to take a look.

A one-horse-buggy race was going on at the main fairgrounds where they had the stands and there was all kinds of shouting and cheering and general hooraying. They had a pony ride for the little ones and sideshows for the grownups. There was a woman who was supposed to be a mermaid and a fire-eater and strange looking things in bottles that were two-headed chickens and a squirrel with three tails and such.

Then there was a big tent with a poster of two women in clothes that didn't cover much. Music and men shouting came from inside.

Harding said, "Hoochie-koochie. Want to see it? At the last show they go all the way to stark naked."

"That's not for me, but I've no objection if you want to. I'll just go on a bit."

He paid at the entrance and went in. I strolled on until I came to a tent with a large poster showing a man with a thick mustache pointing a revolver straight at you. Big black letters at the top read: "Rand Webb Notorious Gunfighter." At the bottom, under the picture, it said:

"Rode with Quantrill, Bloody Bill, Jesse James, Wild Bill Hickok, the Murderous Mortons, and others."

Inside was filled with cigar smoke and it was hard to see with only two small lanterns hanging from a wire run across. When I stepped in I bumped into a table holding a bucket with the sign: "25 Cents." I tossed in a quarter and joined the group listening to the man on the poster. He was twenty years older now but I recognized him. He wore his hat pushed to the back of his head and stood kind of sideways and cocky. He wore a holster with a revolver.

He was telling some story about a gunfight he had with Sudden Sam Stone in Nevada. He said Stone was one of the fastest gunslingers ever and had killed thirty men, but he, Rand Webb, had a surer hand and killed Stone with one shot to the heart. Then he turned to show his left ear which was missing a piece, had a notch in it. "That come from Stone's Colt. That's how close I come to being number thirty-one." He went on telling other stories that I didn't believe anymore than the last one.

After near an hour he asked, "Anybody got any questions?"

People asked about Quantrill and Jesse and what it was like to rob a stage or a bank. I couldn't see how he rode with Quantrill and them when he would've been ten years old or so, but I said nothing about that. When there came a pause I stepped to the front and looked him in the eye. I asked, "What ever happened to Robert?"

He looked hard at me but didn't seem to know me.

"My brother Robert?"

"Yes," I said.

"He died in Yuma prison. They caught him when he stopped to see a senorita after we robbed the stage out of Contention."

"Was Abner Morton with you then?"

He came closer to me and cocked his head like he was considering something but wasn't quite sure what. His breath smelled of whiskey and he said, "No. Abner was hung by vigilantes in Silver City."

He stepped back away then and said, "Now I'll demonstrate my shootin' prowess. See those four cards over there." Four playing cards—ace of spades, ace of diamonds, ace of hearts, ace of clubs—were pinned to a board about twenty feet away.

We all looked that way and Rand quickly drew his pistol and fired three shots and a hole was in the center of each card except the ace of clubs. There were shouts and then we all clapped.

Rand said, "It's more impressive, gentlemen, when the target has a gun and is shootin' back. Now would anybody like to try and hit that last card? Anybody?"

I came forward and said, "I'd like to try."

"You sure? You ever shoot a pistol like this? It's a Schofield and it has a hair trigger."

I reached for the revolver and he handed it to me. I held it in my hand, kind of weighing it, and I said, "This doesn't have the balance or heft of a Colt."

"No, it don't, but the shorter barrel makes it an easy draw."

I cocked the revolver and said very low: "This is for Will and Jack."

He leaned toward me and said, "I didn't quite catch that."

As I brought the gun up I said, "Will and Jack."

For that second I could see it in his eyes that now he knew and I pulled the trigger and his hat flew off when his head snapped back and he fell to the ground with a hole above his right ear.

I dropped the gun and jumped back and there was shouts and commotion and somebody yelled, "He killed him!"

And everybody just looked at me and I said, "The gun just went off."

And a man to my left said, "It had a hair trigger."

At the inquest there were nine witnesses that said it was an accident and Harding spoke up for me as a solid citizen and the county sheriff said he'd examined the pistol and a light touch on the trigger fired it. So I went back to my place satisfied. Some times I feel I should've told the truth but then I'd think that it didn't matter much in the long run. He deserved killing and, anyway, it was between me and God. I mean to spend the rest of my life here alone except for the deer and the other critters.

I did buy a Colt with the seven inch barrel, though, and shoot it now and then. Jack was right—it has more heft than the Schofield.