Clive Kensington counted coins behind the teller window until his fingers went numb, then he counted them again. Three years he had worked at the bank in Gritstown, and three years he had walked the same short path at noon to buy sugar he did not need from Dorothea Callahan. He wanted to marry her before anyone else in town thought to ask. He had a plan for that, the way he had plans for every column in his ledger, but plans did not account for the red-bearded stranger who had been loitering outside her shop for two days now. At noon Clive stepped out of the bank and saw the man still there, planted by her door like a fence post. Josiah "Dust" Mercer wore a brown coat gone pale at the shoulders and stared through folks as they passed. Yesterday Clive had turned back at the corner. Today he did not. He crossed the packed dirt with his hands loose at his sides and stopped an arm's length away. "Move along, friend," Clive said. His voice came out thinner than he wanted. "You've been standing at this lady's door two days. She's got customers to see." Josiah's yellow eyes settled on him. "The teller boy walks up to the wolf," he said, low. "Count your fingers before you count your coin, banker. She ain't the one needs guarding." He touched two fingers to his hat and stepped past Clive, close enough that Clive smelled sage and horse. Then he was gone down the street, unhurried, whistling something flat and tuneless. Clive stood a moment with his heart knocking. He pushed open the shop door. Dorothea stood behind the counter with a rag in her hand and green eyes already on him, calm as still water. "That was brave of you, Mr. Kensington," she said. "And foolish. Do you know who that was?" Clive shook his head. She set the rag down and came around the counter, closer than she had ever stood to him. "Josiah Mercer doesn't linger without a reason. He was watching me, not the shop." She studied his face for a long second, weighing something. "Come back after sundown. Use the back door. There are things about me you ought to know before you keep walking up to men like that on my account." Clive opened his mouth, closed it, and nodded. He walked out into the noon light with the sugar he had not bought still on the counter and a meeting that felt nothing like courtship waiting for him at dusk.

Clive locked the bank at six and walked home the long way, thinking. Dorothea had told him to come after sundown through her back door. The problem was plain. Gritstown watched. If any tongue caught him slipping behind the sundries shop at dusk, her name would be dirt by breakfast and his suit for her hand would be finished before it began. He needed to arrive unseen, and he needed to leave the same way. He took stock of what he owned. A gray banker's coat everyone knew on sight. A pale hat. Boots that clacked on plank walks. None of it would serve. He remembered a trunk his uncle had left him three winters back, still shoved under his bed. Clive dragged it out and lifted the lid. Inside lay a long dark riding cloak, black wool heavy in his hands, and a wide-brimmed hat worn soft at the crown, the band sweat-marked from miles Clive had never ridden. He tried them on before the small mirror. In the low lamp, he did not look like the teller from the bank. He looked like any drifter passing through. He waited until full dark. The moon was thin. He kept off the main street and cut behind the livery, then along the wash where the ground muffled his boots. Two men stood smoking outside the saloon and did not turn their heads as he passed the mouth of the alley. He pulled the brim lower and kept walking, slow, the way a stranger walks who has nowhere to be. At the rear of the shop he stopped and listened. Nothing but wind and a dog somewhere three streets over. He tapped the back door twice, waited, tapped once more. The door opened a hand's width. Green eyes found him under the hat, then the hand pulled him inside. Dorothea shut the door and slid the bolt. She looked him over, the cloak, the hat, the mud he had not thought to knock off his heels. "You learn quick, Mr. Kensington," she said, quiet. "Half the town would trade a week's wages to know you stood here tonight. You didn't give them the chance." She took the hat from his head and hung it on a peg by the door, as if it belonged there. A single lamp burned on the table behind her. Two cups. A folded paper weighted with a stone. She turned the lamp lower and sat. "Sit down," she said. "There are things I will only say once, and I need you to hear them before you decide whether you still want to walk up to my door in daylight." Clive pulled out the chair across from her. He had made it in unseen. Whatever she said next, he could not unhear.

Clive sat across from Dorothea with his hands flat on the table. The lamp threw a small circle of light between them. On the shelf behind her stood a glass jar of colored candies, the same jar he had bought from a hundred times as a paying customer. Nothing in the room told him what he was about to hear. Only her face did. It had gone still and careful, the way a person looks before they step onto thin ice. "Once I say it, you can't give it back," Dorothea said. "You can walk to my door in daylight, or you can walk away tonight and forget the alley. But not after. So choose now, with your eyes open. Do you want to know?" Clive's throat felt dry. He thought of the courtship he had planned, the slow proper visits, the ring he had priced but not bought. All of it depended on her name staying clean. A secret could sink that faster than any gossip. He did not know its weight. He only knew that refusing would tell her he loved the idea of her more than the truth of her. "I want to know," he said. Dorothea reached past the lamp and turned the wick lower. She unfolded the paper weighted with the stone and slid it toward him. On it was a rough sketch of a masked rider, drawn by some frightened witness. He had seen the like nailed to the post outside the jailhouse. "The town calls this rider the Prairie Phantom," she said. "The one who fights Scofield in the storms. The one nobody can name." She held his eyes. "It's me, Clive. I ride out when the dust comes. I'm the Phantom." Clive did not move. The words did not fit the woman who sold him candy and folded his change into his palm. Then they fit too well. The nights she closed early. The mud on her boots. The green eyes that missed nothing. "You could hang for it," he said. His voice came out thin. "I could," she agreed, calm. "Now you carry that too. If you court me openly, Scofield's people will watch you. They'll wonder what a bank teller knows." She folded the paper again and set the stone back on it. "That's the price of my door in daylight. I told you it was consequential." Clive looked at the candy jar, at the small ordinary life it stood for. He could not have both that life and this woman. He understood that now. "I still want to walk up to your door," he said. "In daylight." Dorothea let out a slow breath. For the first time all night she looked younger, unguarded. "Then it's done," she said. "You know me now. And knowing me makes you a target too." Outside, the wind picked up sand against the shutters. Clive had won her trust. He had also just made himself Scofield's problem.

Clive lay awake all night in his rented room. Dorothea's secret sat in his chest like a stone. Scofield's men would watch him now. He owned no gun. He had never fired one. If they came for him in the street, he could not protect her or himself. By dawn he knew he needed help from the only man in town paid to give it. He found the sheriff at the open booth near the edge of town, where new arrivals first stopped. Sheriff Harlan Jones sat on a low stool, a worn guitar across his knee. He wore two pistols and did not look up when Clive approached. Jones was the grizzled lawman who had shot two of Scofield's drifters dead in the saloon. Clive had always kept clear of trouble. Now he walked straight into it. "Sheriff," Clive said. "I need a gun. And I need to know how to use it." Jones plucked one string. It hummed and died. "A bank teller wants iron," he said. "Now there's a thing." He set the guitar aside slow, like it pained him. "Who put the fear in you, son?" Clive kept his mouth shut about Dorothea. "Scofield's people. They think I know something." The old man studied him a long moment. His blue eyes missed nothing. "Scofield," he said, and the name came out like a curse. "That man's mine to settle. But he won't waste a bullet on you himself. He'll send a boy with a grudge." He stood, joints creaking. "I can't guard you day and night. I got a whole town." "Then teach me," Clive said. Jones weighed it. Then he reached behind the booth's counter and pulled out a spare revolver, plain and heavy. He pressed it into Clive's hand. The weight surprised him. His fingers did not know where to sit. "Grip it like you mean it," Jones said. He turned Clive's hand, set the thumb, squared his stance. "Elbow soft. You jerk the trigger, you'll shoot dirt." He walked him behind the booth, propped an empty bottle on a barrel, and stepped back. "Now." Clive fired. The gun kicked. The bottle stood untouched. He fired again, and again, until his ears rang and his wrist ached. On the sixth shot the bottle burst. Jones grunted. "That'll do for a start." He reloaded the cylinder and handed it back. "Keep it loaded. Keep it close. A man who's scared and armed lives longer than a man who's just scared." Clive holstered the revolver under his coat. For the first time since the alley, he could step outside without feeling naked. "One thing," Jones said as Clive turned to go. "You carry that iron now, folks will notice. Scofield's people will know you're expecting them." He picked up his guitar again. "You just told the whole town you got something worth defending."