Friends

Back in the winter of ’77 I was deputying up in Two Scalp, Dakota Territory; waiting for my friend Clete Shannon—who was the Sheriff there at the time—to say the word for us to quit our jobs and head south…Being Clete’s deputy give me mighty little to do but think things over, morning or night. Two Scalp’s deader’n a sucker in a sandstorm.

This lazy peace would not last.

Willie Goodwin had seen a lot of life; he knew how the death wind could blow into a man’s life on a clear sunny day without...