On a wide purple evening in June, a ’41 Ford drove up to the red farm. We were all on the porch and so share this memory among us. The car was covered with pale dust and jounced slowly into the yard as though cresting surf. It came right to the house and stopped. Then Swede squealed and flew off those steps, for Davy was standing from the Ford, laughing and genuine and abruptly powerful before our eyes, scooping Swede up like some wee twerp; and as we knotted round he said, Wait, wait, and the other door opened and Sara also stood out, clearly withholding expectation, one hand atop the car as though she might duck back in. How could she foresee the warmth awaiting? How predict the radiant comfort that was Roxanna’s gift? What I remember is clutching my brother’s side as we walked up the porch, and Swede’s feet scissoring in the air; and I remember a strange melodic sound that was Sara’s laugh as she entered the house, and I hoped to hear it more.

And did—much more, as you will see. Though neither of them said Waltzer’s name, what had transpired was clear enough to me. The man decided Sara had been his daughter long enough. I could shut my eyes and see him. He wanted a wife.

You think my brother Davy would’ve let that happen?

So they bolted one morning—just five days previous—in a car Jape had bought off a farmer in a corner of Wyoming, where they landed after fleeing the Badlands. Having no better opportunity than Jape stretching his legs they walked calmly to the Ford, scanned the foothills against detection, “and motored on out of that frying pan,” Davy said, the wicked old maxim evidently not worrying him at the time.

“I thought,” he added, “maybe Sara could stay with you.”

“Of course, and welcome,” said Roxanna.

“What about you—are you staying?” Swede asked Davy; having weaseled onto his lap, she wasn’t about to throw him easy ones.

“I can’t,” he replied, after a moment. “You know that, Swede.” He looked, right then, for the first time in years, his age, which was seventeen.

Back home he was our leader again, however briefly. He told us how the night he broke jail he walked to and fro wearing Stube Range’s jacket against the freezing rain; how on the edge of town he located a one-ton Chevy with the key in the ignition; how, when he’d climbed in the cab, he glimpsed a police car moving laterally in the rearview mirror, combing a cross street. Shortly more police and county cars entered the vicinity. Davy crouched low in the truck until what seemed a ripe moment, then bobbed upright and turned the ignition, to find it dead.

Swede said, “Reuben and I would’ve broke you out if you hadn’t beat us to it.”

“Thanks, Swede, I knew you would,” Davy said cheerfully, putting an end to my sudden dread Swede would bring up our silliness with the DeCuellars’ steak knives.

With nothing to do but put up Stube’s hood and walk, Davy cut across fields, navigating by farmyard lights until a horse nickered to him out of the dark—Nelson Svedvig’s mare, you may recall. Encountering barbwire he reached into Stube’s front pocket and withdrew a candy bar, a Salted Nut Roll. The horse trotted up without suspicion. It led him to a fence gate. For two days Davy and that horse were best friends.

There followed on demand more details of this sort: of meanders alone or with troubled companions, meals rendered almost mannalike in hard circumstances, narrow spots departed in the nick of time. Three days after leaving August Shultz’s he’d stopped at a bakery and been recognized by its grandmotherly proprietor. She gave him four loaves of bread, a bag of currants, and a fruitcake, and admonished him about shopping for groceries in plain daylight. Nights later in an alley in Mandan he fed the fruitcake to a choleric hound, then slid through the back window of a grocery store. Walking the dark aisles he pocketed tins of sardines and deviled ham until every light in the place suddenly snapped on, rendering him briefly sightless, while a door squealed open and slapping footsteps approached. Slapping, that’s right; for into view walked a naked fellow, streaming wet, colossal annoyance in his eyes and a baseball bat in his knotty hands: no doubt the store owner, roused from his tub in the residence upstairs. Straight for Davy he pranced, picking up speed, while Davy went leaping away toward the window. Had the man not opted for a late soak my brother’s career might’ve ended on the spot, but wet feet and wood floors make jeopardous allies, and the storekeeper went down in a sensational and profane tangle as Davy’s shoulders were clearing the sill. Yes, he went out head first, thumping onto his chest in the alley. Backing out the Studebaker in the truest spirit of retreat he saw the storekeeper arrive at the window upright and purple; the baseball bat came twisting out, snaked over the hood and laid a long silver crack across the windshield.

In all these things Davy was expansive and good at the telling; despite the hour Roxanna served juice, brewed coffee. Yet he mostly kept quiet about Waltzer and the Badlands cabin, out of consideration, it seemed, for Sara. She’d lived with the man for years, after all. She owed him little, but not nothing.

He did allow they’d had a hard scrape getting out of the place. He and Sara had scratched a checkerboard on the dirt floor and were outwaiting a blizzard when Waltzer rode up on Fry. His nostrils were iced, his skin burnt with cold, his eyes prophetic. A vision had come to him out of the snow, a glimpse of horse soldiers. He feared staying put. Following the vein of smoking lignite he’d arrived at a capacious hole in the native sandstone. He brooked no complaint but packed the disbelieving horses and drove them toward this haven at a pace so fast it was nearly a rout. Here they all spent a whole day and more, eating bread from their pockets, sitting until the cold made them stand blanketed beside the animals. The wind died, the sky cleared. Still Waltzer would not let them return. Once they heard a rifle shot far off—a barbed sound, a long decay. Dusk of the second day Waltzer sent Davy to scout. The cabin was full of boot marks, the snow around it sacked with hoof tracks and horse manure.

Not one of us asked about Andreeson, though he lit on my heart, staying there like a guest on the porch you hope will give up and leave.

Sara was asleep in her straight-back chair. It was past eleven. When Dad went upstairs to see about her room, I tagged along.

“It’s great, isn’t it, Dad?” I asked. The truth is I could’ve wept, such sadness hung about us. I fought it back. My brother was returned; exultation was called for. Why couldn’t we have the fatted calf and tambourines? A little insouciant rejoicing?

“Why, of course it is, Rube. Here, grab the corner,” he added, spreading a spare blanket on Sara’s bed. It was chilly, that spare room; we’d kept the door closed until now.

“He seems real good, don’t you think?”

“Yes, he does. Yes.” Dad shook up the pillow, leveled the dresser mirror on its pivot, pulled down the windowshade. He wound an old clock on the bedside stand, remarking on the hour.

“Do we have to go to bed, Dad? Can’t we stay up?”

He held out his arm toward me and I went and put my head against his chest. He felt strong and thin—I could feel his pulse in my ear. He said, “Well, of course, stay up—unless Davy wants to sleep. Then we’ll let him be, right?”

I nodded. It should have been the best of nights.

Downstairs we found the others subdued as well. Roxanna sleepwalked Sara to bed and turned in also; Dad asked Davy would he rest, and Davy replied no, he’d be going shortly. Repairing to the front room we doused lights and sat in comfort while the moon rode up over the farm. Strangely, we talked little of present quandaries. There was no speculation on Davy’s plans. Andreeson hovered but was not mentioned. Davy said he sure liked Roxanna, he was happy for us all. They talked about Sara, where she’d come from, her fears of this revised future; then conversation dove and resurfaced in history, picking up happenings from the great long ago like curiosities from a ruin. Therefore Davy remembered the time, in North Dakota, when a red fox came fearlessly toward us as we lay in a fencerow awaiting geese. It was full daylight and the fox performed stilted circles as it approached. Its head seemed askew. As Davy recalled I stood and would’ve tottered out to meet this doglike and sorrowful spook, but Dad put me behind his back and shot it. Along these lines, Dad remembered the time he was a boy and a neighboring farmer walked rabid through his yard. This fellow, name of Hensrud, got bit on the ankle by a spring skunk, quit worrying when the wound healed clean, and was taken by fits months later, after harvest. What Dad recalled was Hensrud walking between house and barn, nothing on but a union suit, an early snow curling round him. Poor Hensrud’s neck cords stood forth like pump rods. Later that day, gone blind, he stumbled off a bank into the George River to drown—a merciful turn preventing some unlucky neighbor’s having to shoot him.

“The Lord protects us,” Dad said.

Davy didn’t reply. It was deepest night. I remember his shape in the stuffed chair next the window: clean map of chin and cheekbone, cup of coffee under drifting steam. He was watching the meadow and after some silence rose and stood close to the glass. A herd of deer had come out from a black tangle of trees. They were crossing the meadow, so shapeless at this distance seeing them was an act of faith.

“Well,” Davy said.

Then Swede, desperate to keep him and honor him, begged that he wait; off she ran, returning with her tousled binder. With remarkable bravery she turned on a lamp and read aloud all there was of Sundown, beginning to end. Davy was a better listener than me—he loved it all, Sunny’s doleful intervals as well as his triumphs. He wondered over plot, exclaimed at turn of phrase. He was particularly attentive to her treatment of the bandit king Valdez, who he said was exactly right: savage, random, wolflike—and also probably uncatchable, right down through time. Though, he amended quickly, if anyone living were up to the job, Sundown was that man.

We had him till dawn. By then Roxanna had got up and baked her great-uncle’s rolls, which Davy ate with energy to be envied, given no sleep; and finishing up we cleared our throats and armored our hearts and stepped out into the sunrise.

Jape Waltzer was sitting beside the granary with a rifle. We didn’t see him at first, though he’d not worked hard at concealment. He’d simply picked a spot—in view of the house and shaded from morning sun—and sat still. He’d even entered the barn and retrieved an old straight-back chair to ease the wait.

I am haunted yet by his patience in this business.

Davy was standing by the car, fishing for keys, when Dad fell across the hood, his forehead smacking like an echo of the shot. From the porch I spotted Waltzer sighting through smoke. He fired and the Ford’s back-door windows sprayed across the gravel. As Dad skidded off the hood to flop by the front wheel, Roxanna clutched my shoulder and tugged me backward. No one screamed, though the air against my eardrums seemed beaten or flailed. As Roxanna got me to the door I heard Dad murmuring, broke her hold, and flung down off the porch.

I suppose Jape led me, like a flaring goose.

What I recall isn’t pain but a sense of jarring reversal, as of all motion, sound, and light encountering their massive opposites. I felt grass and dirt against my cheek, and sorrow that Dad was shot, and confusion that I couldn’t reach him.

Here my terrestrial witness fails.

I shut my eyes, the old morte settled its grip, and the next country gathered itself under my feet.