The man slumping on the post before her had voided himself. A pool of dark red liquid surrounded by buzzing flies marked the packed dirt at his feet; two holes on the opposite sides of his head were red, horrific.

She screamed but heard nothing . . . except Jack Slade as he stepped before her, still in his shades of black and white, worry lines dug into his face. He wasn’t the only man there, but the two other cowboys, both vivid in life as Jules Beni was in death, stood with disgruntled expressions, waving at the body and seeming to yell at Jack. Clare couldn’t hear them.

Jack angled to follow her gaze. “They aren’t really present, just part of my torment, the continuing loop. I just told them that they wouldn’t be getting the larger reward for Jules Beni, since he wasn’t alive.” Jack sounded as if he spoke, words forming in air, not mind-to-mind.

The apparition turned fully around to survey the scene with her. His hands rose and dropped in a futile motion. “You know I went to Fort Laramie and told the commanding officer I’d be hunting Beni. He gave me his blessing, such as it was. I’d boasted I’d cut Jules’s damn ears off and wear them, and I had to do it.”

A deeper timbre entered his voice along with an edge. Jack rubbed his chest over a couple of the bullets left in him. “I’d been avoiding Jules as long as I could.” Jack’s lips curled. “Scared then of getting shot and more hurt, like I’m scared now I won’t pass on.” He didn’t look at Clare. “I had to cut off his ears, to keep my reputation, and once I saw him dead, I wanted to. So I did.” He shook his head, sighed, glanced sideways at her. “All right, maybe I was a little wrong about the first part. I didn’t have to cut off his ears.” Jack rubbed his own. “I knew no matter what happened that day, people would say I was the one who killed Beni; my rep woulda been fine without the ears.”

Clare nodded. “They said you tied him to a pole and shot bits of him for hours.” Instinctively, she looked at the dead man again. He’d lived to be significantly older than Jack Slade, and she couldn’t tell how many times he’d been shot because his shirt was so stained she couldn’t separate the fresh blood from anything else . . . but she didn’t think he’d had a six-shooter emptied into him like Jack had.

“I didn’t torture him or kill him,” Jack Slade said simply.

Enzo appeared. Why are you still here, Clare? The cold is killing you and you haven’t even merged with Jack yet? The ghost dog asked telepathically.

“I had to tell her my story,” Jack said.

Enzo snorted, glaring at Clare. You don’t have to listen to their stories. You can’t afford to.

She moved cold lips, answering aloud. “I think I do. To understand my . . . my place in this . . .” So hard to lift a hand and gesture, her fingers a tiny flick instead of a wide movement. Alarm flared in her mind and sent a spurt of warmth through her.

Jack sighed and it was more hollow and otherworldly than his words had been.

“Do you have the ears?”

They were in her jeans pocket. She nodded. Her lips turned down. Time to get on with the whole weird business.

Take my hand. Slade’s voice was back to ghostly thought echoing in her mind.

She knew what that meant; when she initiated contact with the ghosts, the cold was so much worse. Freezing enough to stop a heart. She stared and stared at his hand. For once Enzo didn’t prod. Zach wasn’t near, but he wouldn’t attempt to stop her from doing her job. He understood. She wished she did.

 • • •

“Just what are you all doing on my land at two in the morning, messing around with my crop?” snapped a weathered older man in a cowboy hat, holding a shotgun.

Zach didn’t answer, more focused on a blurry movement in the brush to his right, the crack of the breaking of dry branches. If he pulled his gun, the farmer might shoot him.

“Well?” the guy demanded.

The tiniest glint on a gun barrel in the draw. Zach leapt forward into the big farmer, knocked him aside, fell himself.

Ted rushed from deep shadows. The bastard had another gun. “You can’t make Jack Slade move on before he tells me about the gold.” He shot but missed Zach since he was already rolling away.

“What the hell!” shouted the farmer.

“I’ll get her, slow her down.” Mather panted, pivoted, and aimed at Clare.

Zach reached for his gun, shot.

So did the farmer.

 • • •

Take. My. Hand, Jack Slade said.

She was too tense, too wired, all her muscles tight, her nerves quivering through her body, but Clare reached out, grasped the ghostly hand. And it seemed he moved into her, slowing her motions, stopping her heart in truth for one terrible second before she, they, took up a stance before the ever-running, looping scene. He settled in her, not as a man, but as a hard ball of ice in her torso.

And she was blazing color, too, seeing the events take place, feeling what Jack did, his continual agony of the bullets and buckshot still inside him, his fury at Jules Beni.

She strode up to the corpse and a knife was in her hand, and then she watched as she deftly cut the ears off with a couple of slices. “He’s dead right enough,” Jack said, the only words she’d actually heard, though the cowboys had come and their mouths had moved and arms waved in a heated discussion with Jack. He poked a hole in one of the ears and threaded his pocket watch chain through it, the ear now a bloody fob. Then he stuck the other in a pocket. Her gorge rose and she stumbled a couple of yards back.

Got the ears? the phantom asked. It’s time.

It’s time, Clare! Enzo chimed in.

She wanted to rub her arms, but her hands were bloody and one held a knife and the cold numbed her fingers. She could feel her energy draining as she swayed.

THE EARS! both Jack Slade and Enzo shouted.

The gunfighter’s image rose in her mind, his determined expression let her know he wouldn’t let her give up. He’d haunt her for sure, as a mad specter, if she didn’t do this for him, she just knew it. His face began to fade to a skull, then gained substance again . . . repeated the cycle.

Reaching into her jeans pocket, she fumbled to find the opening. She should be able to see her breath, she was so cold . . . dangerously cold.

Clare, Clare, hurry, hurry, hurry. You have to do this fast! Enzo whined and jumped around her. When he lit on her feet, she could swear she could feel his weight.

Better get it done, Slade said. Or we’ll both die . . . or go mad.

Her focus narrowed to one thought, too late to think the whole thing was weird and crazy and unreal. She managed to thrust her fingers into her pocket and touched the earlobes. They felt warm and plump and throbbing.

THIRTY-EIGHT

ZACH GRABBED HIS cane, levered up to his good foot, went over to where Mather shrieked and thrashed. Zach scooped up his gun, then hit the kidnapper’s jaw harder than he had the night before, and Mather lay still. Zach took the handcuffs he’d had attached to his belt and restrained the perp.

“Godamighty,” said the farmer, slower getting to his feet. “What’s going on?”

“He’s a kidnapper,” Zach said.

“He’s a crazy.”

“That, too.”

“And who might you be, Mr. Colorado License Plates?” He examined Zach top to toe. “What are you doing here? And what the hell is she doing?” The farmer turned and stared at Clare. She seemed to be sleepwalking, her fingers curved around what Zach knew was a pair of ears. Zach tensed in case he’d have to hold back the man if he went after Clare.