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The deputy rolled cigarettes for the outlaw and himself and most of the time they smoked in silence. Once Kidd asked him what time the train left. He told him shortly after three, but Kidd made no comment.

Scallen went to the window and looked out at the narrow rutted road that was Commercial Street. He pulled a watch from his vest pocket and looked at it. It was almost noon, yet there were few people about. He wondered about this and asked himself if it was unnaturally quiet for a Saturday noon in Contention… or if it were just his nerves….

He studied the man standing under the wooden awning across the street, leaning idly against a support post with his thumbs hooked in his belt and his flat-crowned hat on the back of his head. There was something familiar about him. And each time Scallen had gone to the window—a few times during the past hour—the man had been there.

He glanced at Jim Kidd lying across the bed, then looked out the window in time to see another man moving up next to the one at the post. They stood together for the space of a minute before the second man turned a horse from the tie rail, swung up, and rode off down the street.

The man at the post watched him go and tilted his hat against the sun glare. And then it registered. With the hat low on his forehead Scallen saw him again as he had that morning. The man lying in the armchair… as if asleep.

He saw his wife, then, and the three youngsters and he could almost feel the little girl sitting on his lap where she had climbed up to kiss him good-bye, and he had promised to bring her something from Tucson. He didn’t know why they had come to him all of a sudden. And after he had put them out of his mind, since there was no room now, there was an upset feeling inside as if he had swallowed something that would not go down all the way. It made his heart beat a little faster.

Jim Kidd was smiling up at him. “Anybody I know?”

“I didn’t think it showed.”

“Like the sun going down.”

Scallen glanced at the man across the street and then to Jim Kidd. “Come here.” He nodded to the window. “Tell me who your friend is over there.”

Kidd half rose and leaned over looking out the window, then sat down again. “Charlie Prince.”

“Somebody else just went for help.”

“Charlie doesn’t need help.”

“How did you know you were going to be in Contention?”

“You told that Wells Fargo man I had friends… and about the posses chasing around in the hills. Figure it out for yourself. You could be looking out a window in Benson and seeing the same thing.”

“They’re not going to do you any good.”

“I don’t know any man who’d get himself killed for a hundred and fifty dollars.” Kidd paused. “Especially a man with a wife and young ones….”

Men rode into town in something less than an hour later. Scallen heard the horses coming up Commercial, and went to the window to see the six riders pull to a stop and range themselves in a line in the middle of the street facing the hotel. Charlie Prince stood behind them, leaning against the post.

Then he moved away from it, leisurely, and stepped down into the street. He walked between the horses and stopped in front of them just below the window. He cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted, “Jim!”

In the quiet street it was like a pistol shot.

Scallen looked at Kidd, seeing the smile that softened his face and was even in his eyes. Confidence. It was all over him. And even with the manacles on, you would believe that it was Jim Kidd who was holding the shotgun.

“What do you want me to tell him?” Kidd said.

“Tell him you’ll write every day.”

Kidd laughed and went to the window, pushing it up by the top of the frame. It raised a few inches. Then he moved his hands under the window and it slid up all the way.

“Charlie, you go buy the boys a drink. We’ll be down shortly.”

“Are you all right?”

“Sure I’m all right.”

Charlie Prince hesitated. “What if you don’t come down? He could kill you and say you tried to break…. Jim, you tell him what’ll happenif we hear a gun