Epitaph by Mary Doria Russell

Waters about his fancy shirt. Waters got mad, and then he got drunk, and then he swore he’d beat the hell out of the next sonofabitch who said anything about his damn shirt. Which he did. The matter seemed settled until the fella he beat up came back with a gun and shot Waters four times. Killed him stone-cold dead. Spoiled the shirt for further use, as well.
    In a world like that, why worry? That’s how Frank saw it. You could never think up all the ways a bullet might find you. No point trying.
    He finished the lower serif and let the mule go. “Anyways, we’re no worse than anybody else in this valley.”
    â€œNo better either,” Tom muttered before he trudged off to the house.
    FOLKS HAD A HARD TIME telling the McLaury brothers apart, but they had their differences if you paid attention. They were both good-looking, blue-eyed brunets, but Frank had six years on Tommy, who’d just turned twenty-seven. When Frank took his hat off, you could see that his hair was beginning to go. And Tom McLaury wasn’t just good-looking. Tommy was so pretty, he attracted more attention than he liked, from women and men. It embarrassed him and always had, ever since he was a little kid.
    Both brothers were slender and short, but Frank held his head high to put every inch on display. Tommy did what he could to avoid notice, keeping his eyes on the ground and sort of hunching over as he hurried along, especially when they went into town. Of the two, Frankhad more ambition. He wanted to build up to a big cattle spread and get rich and hire men to do the work. Tommy liked farming. Plowing and planting and harvesting suited him fine. He didn’t see the need of a place bigger than they could manage on their own.
    Frank enjoyed having a little excitement to spark up the workday now and then. Tom wasn’t timid exactly, but he didn’t like trouble. “Where’s your sense of adventure?” Frank would ask him, but Tommy was a worrier.
    The funny thing was, moving down here was Tom’s idea in the first place because Arizona acreage was a lot cheaper than farmland back in Iowa. They’d invested everything they had in this spread before they found out what kept Arizona property values low: Geronimo’s Apaches were still up in the Chiricahua Mountains, a few miles away, and the Indians were none too happy about seeing their hunting grounds plowed up. Tommy was already concerned about the potential for mutilation and murder when Old Man Clanton came by on his first visit. Frank himself was not inclined to give his little brother’s fear a great deal of consideration. It only encouraged Tommy to fret. Besides, everybody in Sulphur Springs Valley was pasturing Old Man Clanton’s stolen Mexican stock.
    â€œGreasers let their cattle roam free instead of husbanding them,” Mr. Clanton explained. “Damn beaners don’t deserve to keep stock they don’t care for, so there’s no harm in a quick trip to Mexico for a few strays. That’s how Americans see it.”
    And it seemed like pure patriotism to agree.
    The problem was, Mexican beeves were long-legged and the meat was stringy. “Used to be, you could only sell ’em to Indian reservations,” Mr. Clanton said, “but now we got a couple thousand miners who like meat, and plenty of it. There’s a big market right there in Tombstone, not to mention all the mill towns and lumber camps. You can get army contracts for beef at Camp Rucker and Fort Huachuca, too, but civilian stockyards give you the best price, and they want the cattle fattened some.”
    So Mr. Clanton had the rustling trade all organized. His operation wasn’t just amateurs sneaking across the border for a couple of strays. No, sir! Clanton’s Cow Boys would dash into Sonora, round up a few hundred head, and run them over the border. “That’s where most rancheros give up the chase, lazy bastards, but if they come