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remember.”
    Flintlock fished something out of his coffee. “Did you hear me say that Lizzie Doulan should talk to you?”
    â€œYeah, I did.”
    â€œShe’s a crazy lady.”
    â€œShe believes she can never die,” O’Hara said.
    Flintlock nodded. “Wild Bill Hickok believed that as well and look what happened to him.”
    â€œI’ll talk to her,” O’Hara said. “Pontius Pilate.”
    â€œHuh?”
    â€œLizzie says she was visiting Pontius Pilate, the man who condemned Christ.”
    â€œBy the time you talk to her, O’Hara, she’ll probably believe she was Pontius Pilate himself. Crazy folks have all kinds of notions. I mind one time up in the Montana Bitterroot Mountains country an English feller thought he could fly.”
    â€œAnd could he?”
    â€œWell, he jumped off Trapper Peak and flapped his arms all the way down. He must have dropped ten thousand feet before he hit ground.” Flintlock shook his head. “There wasn’t much left of him to bury, so they planted him in an Arbuckle coffee sack.” His face creased in thought. “Yeah, now I recollect that his name was Professor Ezra Shoredish and he was as crazy as a loon.”
    â€œHe’d have to be to jump off a mountain,” O’Hara said.
    â€œO’Hara, when you talk with the crazy lady tell her to steer clear of mountains. She might just take a notion to jump.”
    â€œSuppose Lizzie is telling the truth?” O’Hara said.
    â€œIf you think that, you’re as nuts as she is,” Flintlock said.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN
    â€œWhere are the people?” Biddy said.
    Flintlock had just gotten through forking some of the rapidly dwindling supply of hay to the horses and he straightened his back. “That’s a big mystery. How do you expect me to answer your question?”
    â€œYou were out in the flat but didn’t see a living soul,” she said. “If the citizens of Happyville ran away from the plague, some of them must surely have headed farther west into the long grass.”
    â€œI reckon they put a lot of git between them and the town and are scattered to hell and gone. We could only see as far as the horizon, and they’re likely well beyond that by now.”
    â€œI still think it’s strange that they vanished without a trace,” Biddy said. “While you were gone, me and Margie counted up the houses and the shacks and reckoned that Happyville had at least five hundred people who called this place home. Five hundred men, women, and children don’t vanish off the face of the earth without a trace. Do they?”
    â€œI don’t know and to tell you the truth, I really don’t much care,” he said. “We’re pulling out of here tomorrow and I hope we don’t carry smallpox with us.”
    â€œFlintlock, I want to find Morgan Davis first,” Biddy said. “I owe him that much.”
    â€œHe’s a damned pimp. You owe him nothing.”
    â€œMorg saved my life in Fort Worth. Shot a man in a Hell’s Half Acre bawdy house who was about to cut me up real bad. I told him then that I owed him. That was two years ago and I’ve done nothing since to return the favor. If I can find Morg and give him back his money, I’ll consider us even.”
    â€œYou’re on your own, Biddy,” Flintlock said. “You want to find Davis. I want to find my mother, so we’ll go our separate ways. What do the other women plan to do?”
    â€œLizzie will stay with me. I don’t know what Jane Feehan and Margie Tott have decided.”
    â€œI’ll ask them.” He walked to the door of the barn.
    Biddy followed. She had shadows under her eyes and curled tendrils of hair tumbled onto her forehead. The woman looked tired, the kind of soul-numbing tiredness that comes from the wear and tear of living and not lack of sleep. She sniffed and said, “The smell of