flapping in the breeze. It took him a bit to sound out the name then staggered backward in shock.
KIOWA BILL
God all mighty! He knew the name, but he hadn’t seen the face in more than twenty-five years. Images he’d long ago buried suddenly flashed through his mind.
A squirrel barking at him from a nearby tree as he knelt at the creek to draw water for his mother’s laundry.
The sound of gunfire, then his mother’s shrill screams.
The answering belch of his daddy’s buffalo gun.
The water he spilled in his shoes as he dropped the bucket and ran up the hill toward the house.
The way the rafters caved in on their home as fire ate through the roof.
His little brother’s screams from inside the house, then the deafening silence as the fire continued to consume.
After that came the shock of seeing his mother’s blood soaking into the dust and the hard-eyed young man on the Appaloosa horse who’d come riding down on him. The half-breed outlaw they called Kiowa Bill was already responsible for the deaths of nine people and now he’d just added three more.
Eulis shuddered, remembering his mad dash for freedom, and then knowing he couldn’t get away—of grabbing his daddy’s chopping axe and drawing back and flinging it high in the air toward the man who was riding him down.
He grunted, remembering the spurt of blood and the outlaw’s wild scream as the axe hit him square in the face, then seeing him fall back off his horse and into the dirt near his mother’s foot.
At that point, Eulis had grabbed the horse’s reins and vaulted into the saddle.
“I’ll make you pay!” he shouted.
But by the time he got back with help, the fire was nothing but smoldering ashes and Kiowa Bill was nowhere to be found.
A fly landed on his cheek, breaking his visit to the nightmare of his past. Eulis brushed it away and then touched the poster, tracing the dark line the artist had drawn from the outlaw’s right eye, then angling across the bridge of his nose, to the edge of his left cheek.
“I put that scar on his face,” he muttered, and yanked the poster from the side of the building.
When he turned, Will the Bartender had come outside and was sweeping the sidewalk in front of the White Dove Saloon.
“I put that scar on his face,” Eulis shouted, waving the poster under old Will’s nose.
Will frowned. “Dagnabit, Eulis. The Marshall was just through here putting them up and now you done went and pulled it down.”
Eulis smoothed out the paper, pointing with a shaky finger to the scar on Kiowa Bill’s face.
“See that? I done it. I was only twelve years old, but I done it. I put that scar on his face.”
His drink forgotten, he clasped the poster to the curve of his belly and walked away, leaving Will to make what he chose of Eulis’s outburst.
Meanwhile, Alfonso was scurrying to keep up with Sophie’s quick steps. He was so close upon her heels that Sophie had no time to fret over the fact that she’d been manhandled, however innocently, by Eulis. She reached the door to her house, pausing at the threshold and lifting the sack from Alfonso’s hands before he could find an excuse to follow her inside.
“Thank you for your assistance. I’ll be seeing you this evening then. Don’t forget the cinnamon now… you hear?”
Alfonso’s head was still bobbing as Sophie shut the door in his face. He couldn’t find it in his heart to be miffed that she hadn’t even said goodbye, because he was already planning what he would wear.
In the space of time it took to get back to the bank, his imagination was running rampant. He began to picture her naked, knowing she would be soft everywhere it counted. Shame rode his coat tails like a leech as he entered the bank. His face was flushed and he was afraid to look at the customers for fear that they could read his lustful thoughts.
That evening, Alfonso stood beside his bed, looking first at the clothes he’d laid out, and then at his own skinny legs beneath the hem of his muslin drawers. Shrugging at the hopelessness of making himself into something he was not, he reached for his best suit of clothes and began to dress. A few minutes later he was standing before the mirror, smiling at the results. So he wasn’t the tallest man in Lizard Flats, and so what if his shoulders