He rolled himself a cigarette, but he didn’t light it. He stuck it in his mouth and tasted the sweet Carolina leaf and wished he wasn’t a ghost.

“Ain’t that bad to be a ghost, John,” O’Neil said from the darkness next to him, as if he was reading his mind. He wasn’t. They’d talked about this so many times in ten years, they sometimes joked about switching sides in the conversation. O’Neil could talk about how he missed Penny and sometimes regretted leaving the way he did, and John Marshall could talk about how it was a fine thing they were doing on the Tennessee Road.

Back on the Tennessee Road. Six years since they’d done Laramie and high-tailed it because of the heat that one had raised. Laramie had been different, a beloved and popular man, with a hard-headed family.

“Ain’t that good to be a ghost, either,” is what Marshall said back to O’Neil, and O’Neil laughed almost as quietly as the wind in the trees over them.

“Least you ain’t dead, John.”

“Yet,” Marshall responded, and checked his Colt.