Tennessee "Tennie" Smith Granger looked out the jailhouse window. With a Comanche moon shining above, she could see the sign on the butcher shop across the street almost as clearly as she could during the day. The saloons had finally shut down. The raucous laughter had ceased, and the loud banging of rinky-dink pianos had quieted. Everyone was asleep except the small shadows she could see scurrying in and out of the alleys.

Smoke began to billow upward from the middle of the road. The dark phantoms scampered to another spot in the street. A match was lit, and more smoke began to rise. Tennie left her place by the window and made her way to the jailhouse desk, stubbing her toe on its corner.

"Ouch," she whispered, hopping on one foot. Fumbling for the matches, she reached for the lantern hanging on the wall next to the windows. She lit it, taking another look through the glass. The flickering light showed only the reflection of a sleepy browned-eyed eighteen-year-old wearing a slightly vexed expression.

She headed back to the living quarters, passing through the hallway that held the staircase to the cells above, into the one large room she and her stepsons lived in and the alcove where she slept. She glanced at their empty beds before drawing back the curtain to her bed. Pulling off her nightgown, she slipped into a dress, trying to hurry with her shoes and stockings.

A roll of thunder reverberated overhead. Tennie paused, remembering the cloudless sky she'd seen earlier. With one last twist, she had her shoes buttoned enough to stay on and went out through the office and onto the wooden sidewalk in front of the jailhouse.

A stench like rotten eggs filled the air. The smoke rising up and down the street was becoming so thick, Tennie could barely make out the inhabitants of Ring Bit exiting groggily from their homes, holding lanterns and making their way up the street to the "bad" part of town. A tall, rather lanky newcomer held himself away from the others.

The noise of rolling thunder increased, and the sound of hoofbeats could be heard coming from high above their heads. Tennie's eyes searched the sky and the tops of the store buildings. She couldn't see anything except an orangey moon and a few stars.

The murmurs of the crowd increased as acrid smoke filled the night air, and the smell of sulfur began to choke them. The voices of confused people became louder and louder until one woman, staring at the sky, began to scream between crashes of thunder.

"It's the death angels coming to get us!" she hollered, clutching her face. "The Lord is sending down fire and brimstone!" "It's the end!" another woman cried.

Something belching smoke and rattling like the wheels of Hades rolled down the street while the hoofbeats coming from above became a frenzied stampede. People jumped away in turmoil, stumbling in the smoke. Women screamed, clutching their shawls and beseeching the heavens.

"Jesus save us!"

"It's the devil come to get us on his fiery horses!" A rangy fellow, not quite sober from his previous revelries, beat on his chest, looking up at the sky and proclaimed, "I'm ready to meet the saints."

Another woman fell to her knees, clasped her hands together and began to pray. "Lord, I confess! That traveling salesman ..." she cried.

"Tennie!" a stern voice said, cutting through the night and interrupting any more revelations.

Tennie's eyes searched until they found Shorty, the stationmaster from next door. In the glowing dark, she could see him getting ready to explode.

She turned to the tops of the buildings before he could really start yelling at her. "Rusty! Lucas! Badger! You get on down here this minute. You stop that and get down here right now."

A small voice called from the roof of the butcher shop. "Aw, Miss Tennie," Lucas said.

"Don't you 'aw Miss Tennie' me," she yelled. "You get on down here and put these fires out."

Like a gassy mule after a whiskey and ginger treatment, the tension in the crowd released.

"It's just those gol-durn Granger boys again," a man grumbled.

The woman who had been about to confess her sins jumped to her feet.

"What's this here about a traveling salesman?" her husband demanded.

"That weren't me hollering," she said, looking innocent. "That were the widow over yonder. Everybody knows why she keeps her door hinges so oiled."

Tennie gave a sigh of relief when the husband pulled on his wife's arm. They would take the fight home, and she wouldn't have to worry about blood being spilled on the street.

People continued to cough and wipe their eyes. Pigs squealed, grunting and running in confusion at the commotion. The dogs and cats had fled and were hiding under buildings on the far side of town. The horses in the stalls and corrals next door began to make a racket as the smoke curled its way to the livery. The dark figure of the newcomer had long since headed in that direction. He either didn't have a conscience or had nothing to confess.

"Do what Miss Tennie says," one of the merchants hollered at the boys. He stopped to hack smoke from his throat before adding, "You fork-tailed little infidels."

Tennie looked at the glaring eyes surrounding her, watching in dismay as the undertaker's wife approached, her lips in a thin, tight frown. Instead of her usual somber black dress, she clutched an expensive paisley silk robe to her stout frame. The colorful robe surprised Tennie, as did a head covered in a dozen or more rag rolls. At the moment, the rolls were shaking in fury, and that wasn't surprising.

"Mrs. Granger," the undertaker's wife said. "I don't know why the men of this town swore you in as marshal and have kept you in that position despite your obvious incompetence, but I can tell you one thing. You can forget about those disreputable stepsons of yours getting back into school."

Wincing as the woman flounced away, Tennie guessed it wouldn't do much good to remind the undertaker's wife that every male marshal preceding her had been killed or left town in a hurry to keep it from happening to them. She turned away, seeing the dark outline of a large muscular man just before he dived into the alley to escape notice. She didn't know why he had the look of someone guilty. It was her stepsons who had terrorized the town.

Looking up, she saw the boys scampering from the rooftops. Lucas looked as happy and proud as a roadrunner carrying a three-foot rattlesnake in its beak. Tennie wanted to cry.

Two days later, with the townspeople quieted down and the smell of sulfur dissipated, Tennie could once more appear in public. She swept the wooden sidewalk in front of the redbrick jail, stopping to push a strand of curly, light brown hair away from her face. Looking along the main street running through the town of Ring Bit, she saw drunks lurching from saloons, and a new wave of transient cowboys with their gun belts held low swaggering along the sidewalks.

Pausing the broom, she watched as one of the latest men to arrive exited a saloon, recognizing him as the tall newcomer who had observed the boys' smoke and thunder performance without comment and had left, she supposed, to check on his horse. He stood with ease, leaning one shoulder against a post and wearing a well-cut dark suit with a gray silk vest. A raven-haired man with a thick black mustache, his hat was also black and shaded his eyes. Nevertheless, the noonday...