“Eyesight’s good,” he said.

“But it’s more than that, isn’t it?” Allie said. “You always see everything.”

Virgil didn’t answer. We rode in silence for a while.

Then Allie said, “You know what I’d like to do again?”

Virgil didn’t say anything.

So I said, “What’s that, Allie.”

“I’d like to be Allie again.”

“Be nice,” I said.

“It would,” Allie said.

Virgil was looking at the landscape again.

“Virgil isn’t very talkative,” Allie said. “Is he, Everett.”

“Don’t seem so,” I said.

“Used to be a talker,” Allie said.

I nodded.

“How come you don’t talk to us, Virgil?” Allie said.

“Got nothing to say,” Virgil answered.

“When we were together in Appaloosa,” Allie said, “you used to talk a lot about nothing.”

“Lotta things happened since Appaloosa,” Virgil said.

“You thinking about all those things, Virgil?” Allie said.

“Yep.”

“Wasn’t easy on me, you know?” Allie said.

“I know.”

“You gonna stop thinking about all that, one of these days?” Allie said.

“Might,” Virgil said.

Nobody said anything else. I looked over at Allie once and saw that her lips were moving. Appeared she was praying again. Other than that, we bumped along in silence until we reached the Paiute River, where we made camp and slept under the buckboard.

11

WE HEADED NORTH ALONG the Paiute at sunrise, and by the middle of the afternoon we were in a hotel in Brimstone, Allie and Virgil in one room, me next door.

“Heard you was out of the law business,” Dave Morrissey said when we went to see him.

“Was,” Virgil said.

“What changed your mind?” Morrissey said.

Virgil was silent for a moment.