The girl rattled into Epitaph on the back of an open buckboard, riding on a pile of bear pelts with her hair tucked up under a man’s felt hat. Gaunt and unsmiling on the pine wood bench and looking sick from the jostling sat her twin brothers both in dark suits, white shirts without collars, and shiny black boots, and one of them was holding a double bore Lee Enfield shotgun and they both had pistols stuck in their belts. Their English was stammering and imperfect. They had to point for what they wanted at the Dry Goods store and they garbled a bit between themselves over each purchase. Meantime the horses slurped from the communal trough and the girl stood by the buckboard brushing dust from her black skirts and all the men came out of the saloon to look, some still holding their whisky glasses. Young Henry Clay had been smoking a cigarette on a chair by the saloon door and when he saw her he tilted the chair back down onto its four legs, stood slowly as a man in a trance and came forward into the hot sunlight. She took off the hat and shook her hair out looking up at him with a wide smile. Her teeth were white and perfect and her skin was olive and all of her seemed to blaze with virgin beauty. Henry Clay dropped his burning cigarette and crushed it out with his boot heel but he did not speak; nor could he. He was twitching like a ridden out horse.
When the twin brothers came out they said nothing to any of the silent gawkers but solemnly loaded their purchased goods in the trap and climbed onto the bench as the girl retook her seat on the pelts and the one with the reins shook them and the horses dragged the trap off, bouncing on ruts so the girl had to cling onto the sides.
Henry Clay walked out into the dirt street to watch the girl rattle off. The next morning he took his brother’s horse and rode out of Epitaph.
He came home on the train by baggage car, jammed into a pinewood box that was too short for his stature, so they’d had to break the knees. His face was gray and half his skull was missing and when William Clay saw it he fell down and rolled on the street, his mouth foaming, and some men carried him up to the brothel and put him into the tender care of Ming Lee, the Chinese whore.
The next day William Clay purchased a new pistol and a suit of clothes at the Dry Goods store and boarded the evening train. He was gone a month. When he came back his hair was long and he looked ten years older, and he was riding his horse that he’d claimed from the stable in Washo. He went to the saloon and stood at the bar drinking, the pistol stuck in his belt. Somebody asked him if he’d taken care of the Sicilians. He nodded and drank. They poured his glass full again hoping for the story. After a few glasses he told it. He said he’d trailed them to Abilene and there he had found the pair drinking wine in a tavern and without a word he’d taken out his pistol and shot them dead. He asked some others present where the sister was and heard that she was at a hotel. So he went down to the hotel followed by a crowd and climbed the stairs to a dingy room and found her lying naked in bed. He cut off her hair with his knife and left her there all balled up with fear and weeping into a pillow.
William Clay now took a package wrapped in oiled paper from his coat pocket and opened it on the bar and there it lay, the virgin’s crow-black hair, gleaming and scented womanly. Then he re-wrapped it and put it back in his coat. He took another drink and excused himself from finishing the bottle saying he had to go to the cemetery now and lay the parcel on young Henry's grave. They watched him go out and past the windows, his spurs clinking, nobody saying a god damned thing.
(2004)
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