14
BLACK BEN
When Ben opened his eyes, he found himself surrounded. They didn't look at all like angels, so Ben decided he wasn’t dead after all. Maybe God hadn’t given up on him just yet. The people around him were scrubby, but they didn’t look like the devil’s minions, either—though one or two of them looked close.
“Good morning, sunshine,” a man said. He was wearing a Confederate army cap and had a necklace of ears around his neck and his teeth were dirty yellow and rotten. He had intense gray eyes and a dark tan.
“Glad you fellas found me,” Black Ben said, “or I would have died, sure.”
“What the hell are you doing out on the Llano in the middle of a winter squall anyway? Don’t you know this is Indian country?”
“I’m on my way to the Robbers Roost," Ben said.
The man with the bad
