CHAPTER VII

                Walker spent the next two months convalescing.  He was weak from the beating and the fever and he was drained in energy and weight from the coma.  When he had finally come to from the coma he was hardly a shadow of a man.  Skin and bones, he could have weighed no more than 85 pounds.

                  In those two months Leigh acted as his nurse, his doctor, his cook, his mother and his wife.  She cared for him and she loved him.  And for the first time in a quarter of a century, she was talking everyday.  She was talking just as if nothing had ever happened in her life since she left school.  She talked about her life, her schooling, her family, her lost lover and her work on this farm.

                  She was talking and she was taking better care of herself, though she was a long way from returning to the beauti­ful woman that she had once been.  She was probably far beyond the point of return to that beauty.  Even if the hard life and the heavy burden could have been cut away, the years alone had taken a heavy toll on her beauty.

                  Yet with all of her talking and with all she had told Walker about herself, she had learned very little about him.  Part of this was because she had talked so much that she never gave him time to talk.  But even if she had paused for him, he would not have talked.  She didn't even know his name, where he was from, what his business was, who or why he had been beaten, and if he had any family.

                Anytime she would bring up any of these questions he would skillfully plead a headache or some pain, and then twist her talk to herself.  He was guarding his own identity and purpose careful­ly.

                Leigh talked to him as if she planned for him to stay with her forever.  She talked as if she were still 20 years old and he was only 21.  She talked of things they would do when he was well, of the weather and crop plans for the weather for the coming winter and then for the winter after that.  She talked about chores that he would do and housekeeping that she would do.  It seemed that it was all planned in her mind; her punish­ment was over and she had been given the chance to start all over again.  In her mind it was just as if she had never been caught at school.  It was just as if she had Howard Planer had moved from the east to the west and were now ready, in their youth, to set up housekeeping.

                Walker said nothing to either encourage or discourage her think­ing.  For the most part he remained passive to every­thing she said, playing the part of a sick man trying to recover.  He talked to her about trivial things; the weather, the animals, her fine cooking, but nothing important.  And this seemed to satisfy her fantasy about him.

                  She was taking a bath every two days now.  And she was coating her skin with the fatty oil from sheep, trying to smooth her skin.  At long last she was trying to become a woman.

                During the third month Walker began to rapidly regain weight and his strength.  Into the third month he began to regain some of his speed and constant alertness, which he tested by snatching pebbles from the ground throwing them in the air and then hitting them with a second pebble that he snatched before the first hit the ground.  He did this out of sight of Leigh, while she did farm chores.

                Their strange relationship continued, and even though Leigh recognized that he was getting well she did not seem to acknow­ledge that it would being any change to their relationship.

                Well into the third month of his recovery, as they sat at the table beginning to eat chicken, she began one of her endless and pointless conver­sations.

                  "Did you ever meet any show girls?"  she began before giving him a chance to answer (For she had learned through conditioning that he probably would no answer or would just nod for her to continue... and that suited her fine because she took it to be conversation from him) she continued her conversation.

                "Right after I came out west I met one of the girls.  She had been born in a bar.  Of all places, can you imagine that?  Barn in a bar?  Her mother had been one of those girls that sold herself to cowboys.

                  "Do you know the kind of girl I mean?  There were some of those in Baltimore, for the sailors I mean.  Of course we never knew much about them then. Howard, you remember Howard; he was a boy that I...used to know...knew before I knew you," she rambled.

                "Her mother had died when she was born and it was a miracle that she had lived so long.  I would think that a ladies mission or someone would have taken the child in.  But, can you imagine this? she was raised by the other girls in the bar.

                  "But that is not the strangest part.  Her father was a preacher.  Just like...just like my...just like the man who married my mother.

                "Well don't you see:  The preacher and this pleasure girl.  Anyway, when she was 14-years-old am man named Culley something or another or something Culley had come to town to open another bar..."

                  For the first time in any of her ramblings over the months, Walker perked up and showed real signs of interest.

                "This Culley opened a bar with a game room right across the street from the Sundowner.  I mean, can you imagine how the owner of the Sundowner felt?  That would be like opening another town right across the street.  And this Culley or whatever his name was let the girls in the game room.  He even had the girls keeping part of the money they made instead of getting paid a salary like they did over at the Sundowner.

                "Well this fellow got some of the Sundowner's girls to quit and come to work for him.  He let them keep part of the money, did I say that already?"  she asked, not really expecting an answer.

                "Yes, but go on with the story," Walker answered, "Tell me more about this Culley man."

                Encouraged by this first interest, she continued her story.

                "This girl, her name was Kate, stayed at the Sundowner.  After all, the Sundowner had raised her.  But she had been curious about what was going on over at Culley's place.  I guess it was like any little girl wonders what is going on.

                "She wandered over there one day to peer in a window and this Culley caught her.  She told me that at first she thought that he was going to beat her or something.  But instead he just talked to her.  Imagine that, a big man like that talking to a little girl.  But that's not the half of it.

                "She, Kate I'm talking about, told me that she talked to this man for most the rest of the afternoon.  God only knows who was running this bar.  He must have had people to do that.  I don't know, the place isn't there anymore.  I don't even think it was there when I moved out here.  Least I don't remember seeing it...though it would have been.  But it would have to have been where the bather house is now and I don't  hardly think the bath house is big enough for what she told me about...unless they tore it down after the trouble and just started building the town all over again.  I just don't know about that.

                "Anyway, it ended up that this Kate married ol Culley.­..when she was just 14-years-old.  And believe me, that was just the start of her troubles.

                "Turned out that he was a bad man.  He did beat here some-times.  And he plotted.  Evil plots.  Planned killing people and burning down homes and I don't know what else.

                "She stayed with him almost two years.  She was 16 when he shot her.  He was drunk and mad.  He had beaten her for some reason and she told him that she was going to leave him and go back to the Sundowner.  So he said that if he couldn't have her then nobody would and he shot her.

                  "It wasn't bad though, because she got better.  Doc Billy tended to her and when she got well she went to the Sundowner.  I guess that was like going home to her.  I mean she was born there and had lived there, raised there for all her life and then just moved across the street.  I think he beat her everytime she went back over there to see her friends.

                "That's when the big saloon war broke out.  This Culley man had been meeting with some mighty strange men, Kate told me.  She said they talked about keeping somebody from moving out here and how they were going to kill them.

                  "I personally think it was some kind of possession by the devil that got into him.  Or maybe he was born with it all along.  "Cause Kate said that he took to holding meeting with these other men late at night after the bars had closed.  They're only light one candle and not even use lanterns at all," she said.

                  "My daddy...he was a preacher you know...used to say...well I once heard that he had said that men could worship the devil and the devil would take them over.  I bet that's what happened to this Culley man.

                  "To hear Kate tell it, they'd dress themselves in robes and make strange signs and chants in the dark.  Devil worship for sure.

                  "Of course I never believed any of that kind of stuff...one way or the other.  It's all just something a bunch of men made up to get you to do what they say and go by their rules.  I just don't know about it.

                "Kate said that one night after she'd gone back to the Sundowner that Culley and his strange friends started shooting into the Sundowner.  It was already closed, but he just started shooting.

                "The folks in the Sundowner started shooting back and somehow, Kate said she didn't really know haw it happened, Culley's bar caught fire.  It burned up and Culley and all his friends took off.  Best I know he was never seen in these parts again.  I know I never heard of him and he'd been gone a long time when I got here.

                  "I did find out that he wasn't all that old.  I guess Kate, being just 14 then, thought he was old.  But the best I can figure by what she told me, he was about 25-years-old then.

                "Now this girl, Kate, kept getting letters from his and finally she decided to go to him, where ever it was that he was.  Can you understand what would make that girl want to do that?  I mean would you go back to the arms of somebody that had shot you:  Would you go see somebody who dressed up in a robe and chanted to candles?  I just can't understand it.  I didn't understand it then and I don't understand it now.  Love doesn't make any sense.

                "Well, she went off to see him where ever it was.  And he started beating on her again.  I could have told her if I'd known her.  Men like that can't be understood.

                "She was beat up so bad that she barely got on her horse.  SHew must have passed out up in the saddle and her horse stopped here at my place.

                "Except for you she's the only person that's ever stopped here.  Seems funny, you both came hurt and all.  She was well in a day or so and she told me her whole story.  Said she was going back to the Sundowner.  I haven't seen her since.  That was 25-years ago I reckon.  Far as I know she's still there.  That would make her about 41 now and I guess Culley would be near 50.

                "Lordy, you just can't tell about a person like that.  It's strange that everybody that stops here is hurt.  First Kate and now you.  I just don't know..."

                From there the conversation rambled as they finished dinner and she cleaned the plates.

                About a week later Leigh was making plans for her quarterly visit to town to get supplies.  She was really planning a surprise for the man who lived at her house.  She was going to buy a dress...a real, honest-to-God store-bought dress just like she had hears ago burned.  She was ready to call herself a woman again.

                  She was planning to be a woman for this man, and the thing she could best  remember that she did differently in her life when she thought about being a woman was wearing dresses.

                Walker had almost thwarted her plan for a surprise by announcing to her that he would be riding to town with her when she went.  At first she had feared that he might not come back, but he had assured her that he just wanted to see the town again and he would be riding back with her.  She quickly put the idea that he would even think about leaving her out of her mind and continued to plan their future life together.

                  But, she made him promise that he would not follow her as she did her errands.  She told him that she didn't want him in her way, but the truth was that she didn't want him discovering that she was going to the dress shop.  When he offered to help load the wagon as she shopped, she told him that he wasn't needed for that.  She was at first afraid that she had hurt his feeling, then when he smiled she knew better.

                Having been though of as a man in town for all those years, Leigh never stopped to think that the people in town would find it strange that she was now acting like a woman and would be buying woman's clothes.  It never entered her mind that the woman in the dress shop might think it odd that she (or he) wanted to try on a dress.

                  In her newly found role of a woman, she was so wrapped up in planning that she never bothered to think what the people in town would do or how they would react.  The people in town were not important to her thoughts.  Her mind was on her man and her new life.

                  The day of the trip to town finally came.  Walker helped her hitch the wagon and together they loaded the back with skins, crops and other farm products that she would trade or sell in town for the supplies, and for her dress.  Beneath the seat of the wagon, as she always did, she tucked her pistol.

                  The gun had only been fired once or twice in the fifteen or so years that she had owned it.  SHe had brought it to carry to town and to keep at the cabin in case Indians or outlaws ever tried to harm her.  She had, of course, never had need to use the weapon.  She had only fired it to see if it worked.  She had never cleaned it.  It was just habit to tuck it beneath the wooden seat of the wagon.

                  In town, Walker bought a newspaper and then returned to lean against the wagon and wait for Leigh to return.  When they had first arrived in town, he had noticed that most of the people didn't notice that she was a woman.  It had seemed to him that she was considered as an old man farmer.

                  He saw the group of men step out of the Sundowner saloon just as he saw Leigh step out of what looked like a dress shop carrying a box.  He recognized two of the six men in the group as being part of the other group that had beaten him and left him to die.  But he didn't see Davis Culley with them.

                  The six men were joking in a half-drunken state of loud talk.  They held tightly together like a fraternity pledge group during rush week.  They didn't see Walker, which was fine with him because he was not ready to take any action until he could find Davis Culley with the group.

                  But the group of men did see Leigh coming out of the dress shop.

                "Hey old man, what you gonna do with a dress?  You know a lady somewhere?"  one of the men called out.

                  It might have been that Leigh didn't heart the call or it might have been that she thought of herself now as a woman and didn't realize that the call had been to her.  Or, it could have been that she heard the call and chose to ignore it.

                  In either case, her action made the man yell more and thus made his whole group call to her.  They made so much noise and so many calls that several of the girls stuck their heads out of the bar to watch.

                "Old man, I'm talking to you," one of the men called as Leigh neared the wagon.

                Walker was on the wrong side of the wagon to have been seen by the group of men as the crossed the street and walked toward Leigh.  Before he could round the wagon to face them, they were upon Leigh.

                  One of the men grabbed her arm and spun her toward them.  She jerked away and the powerful fist of another man slapped, back handed, across her face.  They were drunk enough to be too loud.

                  As the fist hit Leigh, the dress box fell from her hand and flew open.

                "Ain't that pretty," one of the men mocked.

                Before anyone could react, Leigh took a swing at the man and punched him in the chest.  And a second later the other five men were on her.

                Walker rounded the wagon yelling.  He broke their attention just long enough for Leigh to break loose and jump on the back of the wagon.  She made a desperate dive across the bed of the wagon toward the front to the seat.  She grabbed the gen on the bottom of the seat stand and in an instant she swung toward the men pointing it at the whole group.

                "Look here old man, you don't know what you're fucking with.  You're about to bit off more than you can chew," one of the men yelled at her.

                "Leigh, toss me the gun," Walker pleaded.

                  In the confusion, one of the men in the back of the group drew his gun and fired it.

                  The bullet caught Leigh just below her right cheek.  She fell dead to the ground.

                  It is easier to look back at last thoughts than to examine them in the midst of violence.  Leigh's last living thoughts were of her father and his dying words, "Lord forgive her, it's a devil in her hands...":

                Before that last thought, she had been walking in a daydream of wearing her new dress for Walker.  She dreamed of him seeing her in the lantern light of night in the cabin as she first tried on the new dress for him.

                  She had not heard the first call from the man who walked out of the saloon.  When the calling got louder and became mixed with the cuss-calls, she realized that she the "old man" they were yelling at.

                  As the group neared her she understood what they were saying and the insults that they were throwing, but she ignored them.  Finally, when one man had spun her around, she had muttered, "Go to hell, calf scum."  That had triggered the anger that brought the back of a fist into her face and the dress box flying.

                  For some reason, unknown to even her, Leigh took that attack and the powerful grip of the other man to be a final test for her.  She saw herself standing between Howard and her Father... but Howard's faced kept flashing from Howard to Walker.  In her mind she had to choose between her father or Howard-Walker.  Her only hope was to get a gun.

                  She made the dive for the gun beneath the seat as what she really believed to be a final rest between lives...as a struggle between Walker and her father.  This was her last test to see if her punishment was over.

                  And finally, her father won as her last thoughts were his last words.

                  The reflexes of Walker Mosley snapped with the energy that had made him a legend.  He knew what was going to happen before it happened and the men in the group closest to him could see a hungry gleam spark to his eyes.  He saw the smoke and the flash from the gun before the speed of the sound reached his ears.  In his stomach he felt a burning acid climb to his throat.  He felt his back muscles flex and his spine stretch him to his full height from his stooped-over stance.

                From inside the bar, where a crowd had now rushed to the door, all of this happened in less than a second.  But for Walker each fraction of a second passed like a minute.  The people at the bar door saw this man move with a speed that seemed inhuman or superhuman.  The men in the group before him didn't really have time to see him move; they were frozen by his gleaming eyes.

                Before Leigh hit the ground in her fall from the wagon bed, Walker was at her side.  She fell, but her gun fell to his right hand.

                  By the time her body hit the ground, Walker had aimed and fired and killed the man who shot Leigh.  All of this happened in less than a second.  The impact of what had happened didn't have time to register in the minds of the other five men before Walker was yelling at them.

                "Face your God and draw you mother-fuckers," he screamed.

                Three of the men managed to clear leather of their holsters before they died.  The other two didn't even try to draw, and because of that they were saved from death.  His last two shots wounded the two men so that they would not be able to draw, but they would live.

                  The shooting of all six men had taken less than fifteen seconds and the first man had died before his own victim had his the ground.

                Walker stepped across the two wounded men, across the bodies of the others and stopped at the first man...the man who had killed Leigh.  He threw the empty pistol against the dead man's skull and then he turned his back to him.

                Looking directly at the wounded men, he spoke sharply and clearly, "God forgives; an outlaw seeks revenge."

                Then he looked at the crowd, now streaming from the bar, and saw that a sheriff was walking toward him with gun drawn.  He raised his own hands to the air and walked toward the lawman.

                Walker recognized the face of the lawman as the face of a third member of the group that had beaten him, but he had no choice but to allow himself to be arrested.  The flood of his jail cell was broad-board pegged.  Each board was about a foot wide and was held in place with inch-thick round pegs rather than nails.  Nails count be bent, but a wedged pet was almost immov­able.

                  The walls were adobe much which would have been easily dug through, except the digging of a past tenant had reached deep enough into the wall to reveal six-inch steel shanks set all through the wall.  The walls were carved scratched and etched with names, dates, drawing and the poetry of past prisoners.  Most of the words on the walls were either names of people who had been there, fantasy drawings or poems about women, please for alcohol, or talk of God.  Get religion fast when they are behind bars.

                  The bars were not the traditional solid cage bars that Walker was used to seeing.  Instead, these bars were custom prison-type made from two flat but slightly concave steel beams.  For each bar these beams had been welded together to form a hollow pole-like bar.  These ran verticle along the front of the cell and in the door of the cell.  About every five inches from the ceiling to the floor, one of the hollow poles ran horizontal­ly across the verticle bars.  Then on the outside of the bars, out of the cell itself, a sheet of flat wire-like metal covered the entire cage.  This flat sheet was made up of a number of small flat strips of steel with half the strips running at a 45 degree angle to the right and the other half running at 45 degrees to the left.  This made an "X" effect and made hundreds of little diamond-shaped opening in the sheet.

                Walker could reach through the bars, against the sheet and just fit two fingers stacked on top of each other through the height of any on diamond.  Only one finger would fit through the width.

                  The only break anywhere along the cell was a slit-like opening about waist-high in the door.  The slit was about two-feet in length and about six-inches high.  This was the opening for a food tray.

                  A wooden slated cot lined mattresslessly one wall of the cell.  The corner in the back of the cell and away from the cot held a wooden tray set in and pegged to the wall at another 45 degree angle.  The tray was set so that everything put at the top of the tray would roll down the tray to the bottom of the angle.  The bottom of the angle was fitted about an inch from the wall at the corner and three wooden slats followed that angle opening down the corner of the walls to a hole in the floor.  These slats formed a three-sided box around the corner.  This was the toilet.

                There was almost no light getting into the cell.  Light from the front of the sheriff's office filtered down the hallway that led to the cells, but was almost lost trying to filter through the diamond openings in the sheet metal.  There was a window in the cell about four inches square and probably there more as an air vent than as a window.  Earlier digging showed that the diamond sheet and pole bars over that window reached into the mud walls.

                  One of the first things Walker did inside the cell was to take the tight boot that were hurting his feet off.  Leigh had found him in the sand without clothes and he had been wearing some of her clothing.  The canvass pants were two large and the rope that tied them was too rough.  The shirt was too baggy and the boots were too tight.  So despite the sand fleas in the cell, he took them off.

                  He tried to listed carefully to every mumble from the front of the sheriff's office.  Sometimes he could hear full conversa­tions and sometimes he couldn't hear anything but mutters.

                Right after he'd been locked in the cell he heard the sheriff and at least two other men talking about him.  He was sure that they were discussing that he was the same man they had beaten.  The sounds were unclear, but he thought he heard the sheriff order one of the men to ride to ask Culley what to do and it they should kill him.

                  It was late in the night, a long time after they brought him his dinner of cold beans and rough, dry bread and then come back to take his tray, that he heard a woman's voice with the sheriff.  It sounded like she wanted to see the prisoner and was having to bargain her favors with the sheriff in order to get back to the cell.  But Walker couldn't really make out the sounds clear enough to be sure of the conversation.

                About a half-hour later he was sure.  A woman in her early forties walked back to his cell.  She was painted and powdered like a saloon girl and the twisted smile on her lips told Walker that she had been forced to bargain to get to see him.

                "Hon, I don't know who you are or anything about you, and I don't really care," she began.

                Walker said nothing.

                "They just found out tonight that the old man that was shot was a woman and I pieced the story together and figured that it was Leigh...after all these years," she continued.

                "Then you are Kate.  You lived with Davis Culley," Walker now answered in a full tone but as quiet as a whisper so that the sheriff would not hear.

                  The woman didn't answer his question but continued talking, "The territory beat me to paying for a proper burial and putting her in the ground.  But I figure I owe her something.  She did save my life one time a long time ago.  So I figured I'd come see you.  You must have been important to her for her to be buying a dress after all those years and then for you to shoot six men for her.  I just thought I might could do something for you to pay my debt to her.  She was decent to me then.  Can I send a telegram to your family or something?  Do you have people that need to know where you are?"

                This woman provided an answer to all the planning and plotting Walker had been doing since he was arrested.

                "Yes, please send a telegram for me.  To Colonel Bradford at Fort Bates.  Tell him where I am.  Tell him I am ready.  Oh yeah, and tell him to bring me some clothes," he told her.

                "You gotta name you want me to sign it?"  she asked.

                "Just sign it W.M.," he answered.  Then as an after­thought he added, "I'll remember this.  That is a promise.  Thank you."

                "You got it, hon, " she called back to him as she walked away from the cell door and back toward the outer office.

                  It was mid-morning, there had been no breakfast, when Walker heard the sheriff yelling.

                "There ain't no damn way," he yelled.

                  "I'm telling you that's who he is; how else do you explain him taking out six men so fast without a shot fired at him?" a second voice was answering in an equally excited and loud tone.

                  For an instant Walker was worried that they would not only discover who he was, but that they would kill him before the colonel could get to him.  But as he listened to the conversation he relaxed.  It sounded like neither man believed that they had Walker Mosley locked in the jail.

                "Why would he send a telegram to the army if that's not who he is?" the second man was saying.

                "We don't know he sent it," the sheriff was justifying.

                "What about the initials, W.M., who in this town had those initials that would be calling the army?" the second man answer­ed.

                There was silence for a minute or two and then the sheriff spoke, softer now, "I don't want to take no chances.  Ride out and try to stop Davis from coming into town.  If this man is who you say and the army is really on the way, then all these years of work will be wasted if Davis gets to town with them here."

                Walker's fears and the men's speculations were answered before the second man had a chance to move on the sheriff's order.  The front door of the sheriff's office opened and Walker heard the feet of many men walk inside.  There was total silence for a couple of seconds and then he heard one booming voice.

                "Sheriff, I am Colonel William T. Bradford, United States Army, fifth cavalry, special assignment division.  By the order of The President of the United States, The Territorial Governor and United State Marshall, Walker Mosley, I am placing you under arrest for treason against the union."

                Silence again followed, this time it was broken by Walker's voice, "Bill did you bring me some damn clothes?"

                  He dressed in the cell, in his own clothes and his own boots.  The colonel had even brought him his own hat back.  Once dressed, he stepped into the front of the office.  He looked slowly at the two prisoners and then smiled and shook hands with the colonel.

                Colonel Bradford pulled open a small leather pouch and fished out a badge.  Walked pinned it to his vest.  "United States Marshall," was etched around the shield.  Inlaid in gold in the center of the star, at the middle of the shield, was the tiny word, "Walker."

                  An aide to the colonel handed the marshal a gun holster and a second aide opened a larger leather pouch to remove a finely carved box.  It was a mahogany box with two gold inlaid hinges and latches.  Walker slid open the latches and opened the box.

                Two prisoners watched as the lid of the box tilted toward them.  They could see the finely carved scene of a stage coach rolling along a dusty trail with two Indians pointing arrows at the rode toward the coach and a cowboy with a long-barrel pistol drawn toward the Indians.

                Walker carefully removed the gun, stroked the etching on it and then holstered it.  He closed the box and handed it back to the aide.  Then he turned toward the two men.

                "Where is Davis Culley?" he demanded.

                  The second man was silent and the sheriff answered, "You will never know.  I won't let you destroy what we've built for all of these years."

                Coldly with hesitation, threat, warning or second thought, Walker drew his gun and fired it point blank into the sheriff's still open mouth.

                  The colonel nor any of his men flinched at the brutal act.  They had worked with this man called Walker before.

                There was an explosion of bone and blood from the sheriff's head that splattered over his lifeless body, the desk, the floor and the second prisoner.  The sheriff's last living thoughts had been of the deathly gleam in Walker's eyes.

                  The Marshall now turned toward the other prisoner.  With the same tone and the same expression, as if nothing had happened and without a threat, he asked that man the same question.

                "Where is Davis Culley?"

                Choking to get his words out and to hold down the puke that had risen from his stomach, the man answered.  "He's on his way to town right now.  May already be hear.  Please don't shoot me."

                "Where is he" the marshall pressed.

                  "If he's here, in the back room at the Sundowner.  He owns it.  Bought it years ago.  Are you going to shoot me.?" he answered as he shook.

                "Bought it and staged a big deal about his own saloon?  Burnt it down? Right?" Walker pushed on.

                "Yes.  If he's here, he'll be in that room.  If he's not here, that's where he'll come.  Please don't shoot me,' the man answered.

                  If he had watched closely, the man would have seen the gleam was gone from Walker's eye...that his life was safe.  But the pres­sure, the fear and the sight of what he had just seen were more than he could handle.  He felt his bowels first give way, flooding himself with his own waste.  Then he passed out.

                  It was the classic scene from a movie of the next century when Walker stepped into the Sundowner Saloon.  The music stopped.  The drinking stopped.  The laughing stopped.  The teasing stopped.  All was quiet.  Word had spread fast that the man who had shot six men was Marshal Walker Mosley.

                  As he passed each table toward the bar and the backroom, people at the tables stretched their necks to read the famous old name on the butt of the gun.

                  But this man Culley had been waiting for the Marshal.  He had heard that he was the man in the jail...the man they had beaten... to what he thought was death.  He had seen the army ride into town and he had heard the shot at the sheriff's office.  He had recognized that it was only one shot and that one of the two men had revealed his location.  He had fought for too many years to let one man destroy his dream.  This would be better than the old South if it lived.  This would be far greater than the union of United States.  One marshall was not going to destroy it.

                Without warning call or any noise, Culley planned to shoot Walker in the back.  he stationed himself on the balcony opposite the bar and the back room.  He waited until the Marshal was in the saloon and headed toward the room.  Then, in what he thought was silence, he pulled back the hammer of his gun and pointed it at Walker.

                  The familiar "click" of the hammer, quiet as it was, registered in Walker's brain and sprung reflexes.  Men watching him near enough to see his face could have recognized the hungry gleam in his eyes that sparked when the hammer cocked.  In less time than it took for Culley's thumb to pull the hammer back to the locked posi­tion, they could have seen, had they known what to look for, Walker's back muscles flex and his spine stretch him to his full height.

                  As if an instinct of his conditioning, Walker spun, drew his gun, cocked its hammer, fired in the direction of the "click" all in one smooth less-than-a-second move.

                  The gun flew from Culley's hand and as it fell through the air toward the floor, Walker's nest shots caught it twice, splintering the metal.  Two more shots caught one arm and one leg as Culley tried to move.

                  "I'll not reward you with death.  You'll face what you've done," Walker growled at Davis Culley.

                  The sound of the shouts brought the colonel and several of his men into the saloon.  The amazing speed and accuracy of Walker had again stunned the colonel like it had so many times before.  These guns used then were single action ball guns.  To fire one shot, the shooter had to cock the hammer of the gun with his thumb, release his thumb so the hammer could lock into place and then pull the trigger.  To fire the next shots the whole process had to be repeated.  Beyond that, these guns held only about twenty-percent accuracy...with an eighty-percent chance of missing.  Walker's shots were near impos­sible...they always were.  It was as if his hand were guided by something beyond human control.

                  The Ku Klux Klan was born in Tennessee as the brain­child of one Nathan Bedford Forrest (1821-1877), a general for the Confederate States of American.  General Forrest is honored to his day...that's right honored...by the State of Tennessee with a bigger-than-lifesize bust in the main hallway between legisla­tive chambers in the state capitol building in Nashville.

                Forrest was born near Chapel Hill, Tennessee shortly after the state changed its name from The State of Franklin to The State of Tennessee, for the Tanasi tribe of the Cherokee people.  From birth­rights Forrest became a wealthy planation owner with a slave row and a field of slave hands.  Shortly after the formal outbreak of the Civil War he formed a persona cavalry unit to protect his holdings.

                  As a military style he adopted the darin