Toby woke with a headache that pounded so fiercely it made him feel sick to his stomach. Every muscle in his body ached mightily, every inch of skin felt as though it had been scraped raw. Lying facedown in the dirt, it took him several moments before he could sit up.

The Southern Star lay strewn around him at the base of a deep gully, fractured nearly beyond recognition. Sharp pieces of splintered wood stuck up like the skeletal remains of a huge beast amid battered valises and trunks. Mailbags had split open wide during the accident and hundreds of vellum envelopes had settled like large chunky snowflakes across the wreckage. The wind, nature’s gravedigger, was already beginning to cover the rubble with dust and dirt.

Scattered about amid the debris of the stagecoach were the bodies of the eight men with whom Toby had been traveling. The driver and his messenger lay motionless several feet away. Three of the mules had perished, the last standing with its head hanging low, its sides heaving, still in its harness.

Oh God, no, Toby murmured, his eyes flicking from one body to the next. He dragged himself to the closest man, feeling at his wrist for a pulse. There was none. No! he cried again, panic rising, squeezing his chest like a vise.

Rising to his feet, Toby scrambled from one man to the next, frantically checking for signs of life. It was of no use. His traveling companions lay like broken dolls on the sunburned grass, their eyes cast with the bluish pall of death. The smell of blood and bowels hung heavily in the air, mixing with the stench released from broken cologne and whiskey bottles.

Standing in the middle of the debris, his arms hanging limply at his sides, Toby gaze...