If he’d had a gun, Fenimore could have taken advantage of the situation to send a bullet into the goon’s belly to make a lovely commotion. Because he was gunless, the commotion would have to wait. He’d have to be more creative. Chaos would have to be patient.

The riders were followed by a cloud of thick dust, which overtook them when they reared to a stop and made it momentarily difficult to see and breathe. Fenimore lifted the poncho to his face. The crowd, which through the dust was but a single black mass, swelled and converged on the riders, leaving their ragdolls and trinkets unattended. The ones not already in the square ran out of the surrounding buildings. Fenimore moseyed over to the trader woman’s crate and slid one of her forks into his pocket. He’d found a good deal after all. Her bloodlust ran deeper than capitalism.

The goon had retreated to lean against the wall of a nearby building. He was focussed on the riders more than on Fenimore, who was focused on everyone. A few other Picassos lingered nearby, equally attentive but separate from the crowd. Fenimore wondered why the Picassos, if they were feuding with the Rhodes, acquiesced to the Rhodes making such a show of their enforcement of the law. Fenimore had seen his share of feuds and this struck him as unusual. This feud was cold. But he’d also seen that it doesn’t take much to turn from cold to hot what’s already dry, and the earth, Fenimore noted, dried quickly in Hope Springs. Things were prone to evaporating.

When the dust settled, the riders were in the process of unloading a bound figure from the back of one of their horses and prodding it up the platform steps. Although a potato sack covered the figure’s face, it was obvious to Fenimore that the figure was a man, and young. Perhaps the trader woman had been right about her orphan.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” one of the riders said, “it is time for the redemption.”

The hooded man struggled against the two grey-coated Rhodes holding him by the forearms. Unlike yesterday’s shadow, today’s victim had some kick left in him.

The crowd roared.

Fenimore stole an apple to go along with his fork and glanced back at the Picasso goons, who were tense but disinterested. One of them fought with a fly that buzzed in the vicinity of his sweaty head. Two others, including the one Fenimore had talked to, just were. The three of them stood spread out about a hundred paces apart, one in the middle of the back edge of the square, directly behind the marble Rodriguez, and the two others in the back corners. If push ever came to shooting, they’d have an easy time blasting into the densely packed bodies in front of them.

Fenimore took a bite of the apple, which tasted as soft and rotten as it looked, swallowed one mouthful, and discarded the rest of the fruit. It was less edible than The Starman’s soup.

In the centre of attention, the Rhodes riders had forced the sack-headed man to his knees, but he was still fighting, still trying to save himself, though instead of words to go along with his stunted jerks, he just made sounds—bestial wails and inhuman ululations.

The Picasso in the middle of the square was the one playing catch with the fly, and that’s the one Fenimore approached. He did it with a smile, which was the inverse of the Picasso’s frown, and said, “Good afternoon, senor. May I interest you in a poncho?”

The question stunned him.

Fenimore lifted his arm and draped the poncho over it.

The fly settled in the Picasso’s greasy hair.

One of the riders backhanded the sack-headed man in the face. That shut him up. He fell backward. He hadn’t even seen it coming.

“The poncho,” Fenimore said, “do you want it?”

The trader woman felt behind her and felt wood where a metal fork should have been. Her nostrils flared.

“The man you see before you”—The sack was puffing out and contracting at the mouth. Blood was soaking into its light brown fabric.—“was a caught trying to flee his work duties.”

The crowd hissed.

The Picasso smacked himself in the head, crushing the fly, which fell to the ground, and said, “Why would I want to buy your poncho? I got more than one of my own. Better ones. I ain’t a poor man.”

The goon to his right, the one Fenimore had already irritated, took a few steps closer to his comrade. “Git back to up front where you belong,” he barked. “I told you we don’t need your weaving, and you don’t want our attention.”

The goon to the left glanced over. He was chewing on a long piece of dry grass.

The rider was orating: “…to abandon his duties as a citizen of Hope Springs, to avoid the lawful labour that is good enough for your sons, your brothers and your husbands. To transgress the Ironlaw. To freeload.”

“Hurt him deep!”

Fenimore inverted the poncho so that the chainmail was showing. It shone in the daylight. “You don’t have one like this.”

“What’s that?” the Picasso asked.

He extended his neck to get a better look. He shone in the daylight, too, like a kidney bean.

The goon was closing in on them. “I told you already, or don’t dumb gringos learn their lessons with nothing other than a beating?”

The other one spat out his grass.

One of the riders grabbed the bloody, puffing sack and pulled it off the figure’s head. The young face beneath was bruised gruesome. Its nose was broken and its swollen eyes slits, hurt by the light and defiant in the mad faces of the angry, merciless crowd.

“And what is the only just punishment for the crime of freeloading, for dereliction—nay, for complete abandonment, of duties that are necessary for the survival and thrival of this here our town, duties parcelled out in equal proportion to the abilities of each and performed by the majority for the good of the all?”

The Picasso fisted a bunch of the poncho. The rings of chainmail pressed against each other, making a sound like heavy rain. “Nah,” he said to the goon, whose hand was reaching for one of his two revolvers, “ain’t ever seen one like this before.”

He asked Fenimore, “It stops bullets or knives?”

“It stops both.”

“Death!” the crowd shouted.

The Picasso waved at the one who’d been chewing grass. He started walking on over.

“Death!”

The figure threw up on the platform floor, a mess of yellow, pink and white, then straightened its back without getting off its knees and spat words no one could understand through lips so purple, black and thick that they looked like a fish’s.

“Look what this—”

“Passerby,” Fenimore said.

“—what this passerby wants to sell.”

The goon snatched the poncho off Fenimore’s arm, tried ripping it apart, couldn’t, and he and his two comrades ogled the craftsmanship, as if the fact that poncho had withstood the goon’s strength meant there was truly something to it. “Says it’ll stop blades and bullets.”

The crowd roared with approval as the orating Rhodes removed a pistol from the inside of his grey coat and brought the end of its long barrel to rest on the kneeling figure’s forehead.

“Is there anyone who, in the name of mercy for this criminal, will take punishment upon himself?”

There was silence.

“If he says it let him show it,” the goon said, grinning and reaching for a knife he kept hidden in his leather boot. It was a curved knife with a carved ivory handle. It was, Fenimore had no doubt, stolen.

The grass-chewer watched with quiet interest.

“Put it on, gringo.”

Fenimore put on the poncho.

The Rhodes’ pistol travelled down the figure’s beaten face to the groove between its fat lips.

The goon slid the knife blade gently over the navy-white material of the poncho.

“Open your mouth, boy.”

The figure refused.

The goon slashed at the poncho. Fenimore narrowed his eyes. The blade ripped through the navy-white wool, but not the chainmail.

“Open.”

When the figure still refused, the Rhodes pulled back his pistol—and smashed it straight through the figure’s bloody teeth.

The figure recoiled, spitting white shards.

The goon sliced diagonally. But, again, the knife failed to penetrate the chainmail.

“Looks like gringo got weaving talent,” the grass-chewer said. He traced along the two cuts in the material that the knife had made, with his finger.

The goon tossed the knife from his right hand to his left and placed the former on his revolver, ready to draw. The middle Picasso stayed his wrist. “Boss said no shooting, remember.”

Fenimore pulled off the poncho.

“So, senors, what do you say, shall we do business?”

The goon glowered.

“One more try,” the grass-chewer said. “Toss me the knife.”

The Rhodes inserted his pistol barrel into the figure’s smashed mouth through what remained of his teeth. He inserted it so deep the figure gagged.

The goon switched his knife back to his right hand, sent it looping once above his head, caught it, then palmed the blade and threw it handle first toward the grass-chewer.

Fenimore saw his chance.

The Rhodes cocked his pistol.

The blade floated, slicing, through the air.

And in that one moment of anticipation, as the goon watched the knife and the grass-chewer waited for it and the middle Picasso followed its trajectory with the pupils of his eyes, as the crowd waited for the Rhodes’ trigger to be pulled and the figure’s young skull to be as smashed as his teeth, Fenimore:

Threw the poncho at the goon’s face.

Snatched the knife.

Spinning, drove it into the grass-chewer’s gut.

And, having spun behind the middle Picasso, unholstered both of his revolvers.

The poncho caught on the goon’s face like a net. He bent and clawed at it.

The grass-chewer clutched at the knife.

Fenimore pulled back the hammers of both revolvers.

The middle Picasso bent his legs.

Fenimore aimed one arm left—at the grass-chewer, whose tongue was flapping out of his mouth—and the other right—where the goon had managed to rip the poncho off his face—and fired one bullet in each direction.

Both bullets hit.

As the middle Picasso sprung himself backward, taking Fenimore with him.

The goon scratched weakly at his revolvers.

Fenimore and the middle Picasso landed on their backs on the ground.

The grass-chewer fell against the wall of the building he’d been leaning against. His boots kicked out at an unnaturally painful angle.

And as the middle Picasso tried to flip from his back onto his knees and chest, Fenimore lifted one of the revolvers straight ahead, squinted—and put a bullet into the knob on the back of the Rhodes orator’s head.

His knees buckled, his grey coat creased, he let go of his long revolver, which remained firmly between the figure’s teeth, and fell flat on his face on the platform floor beside the figure’s kneeling body.

The grass-chewer slid down the wall until the only thing propping him up was his head.

The crowd became a single, intensifying scream.

The goon pulled out his revolver with twitching fingers and with a weak wrist raised it to the level of his eyes.

Fenimore dropped his revolvers, grabbed the middle Picasso by his half-turned neck and scampered backward into the darkness between two buildings.

The goon’s head exploded.

Smoke spilled from the long barrel of a pistol held by one of the two remaining Rhodes riders.

Bodies ran.

In the narrow alley, Fenimore kept up the pressure on the Picasso’s neck. The Picasso tried to pry himself free. He couldn’t. He couldn’t breathe. Fenimore didn’t stop moving until he felt the comforting tap of a wall against the back of his head and knew he was as deep in the alley as the alley went.

The deepness dulled the noise of the chaos erupting in the square and amplified the hoarseness of the Picasso’s struggle to breath.

Through the vertical slit of light at the alley opening, Fenimore saw flashes of criss-crossing motion.

The Picasso was flopping like a boiled snake.

Fenimore flexed the muscles in his left arm, the bend of which further constricted the Picasso’s throat, and reached with his right hand into his pocket. His fingers dug through seven coins before finding the shaft of the trader woman’s fork.

They closed on it.

“Gringo,” the Picasso wheezed, “I’ll kill—”

But he didn’t have time to finish the sentence. Fenimore stabbed him in the neck with the fork.

The Picasso gurgled.

Blood sprayed out of four small holes in his skin.

Fenimore stabbed him again.

The Picasso flopped more weakly and his grip on Fenimore’s left arm loosened.

Blood now poured from eight fork holes.

Some of it got on Fenimore’s cheeks, into his eyes, his mouth. The blood was warm. It tasted of rusted iron.

Fenimore stabbed again.

This time, he kept the fork tongs buried inside the Picasso’s flesh until the Picasso’s blood pressure fell, the squirting became a trickle, and the Picasso—gripping, flopping, gurgling—finally stopped living.