The Swing Station was a pile of mud bricks with a thatched roof on the east side of the Mule Mountains. The windows had no glass, only torn curtains that would flutter in their mud sockets on the rare occasions that there was a breeze. But there was no breeze today, and the Bisbee-Grantham station baked in the sun. Give it another hundred years of days like, thought Miguel, and the Bisbee-Grantham station would turn into a proper brick building. The only things that separated the building from a ruin were the large corral of strong horses out back and the telegraph line running through the station and on to Grantham. Miguel’s job as Station Agent was to mind the horses, see that the place had plenty of water, and operate the telegraph. Which meant that most of the time, he sat in the heat of the station waiting for that angry piece of metal to clack to life. All day long, he would listen to it tell tales of coaches traveling up and down the line. Two hours ago it had told him that a stagecoach with four passengers had left Bisbee headed this way. He has spent those two hours staring at the fat flies chasing the smell of the morning’s fried beans. They flew in slow clockwise arcs around the room while Miguel and the mestizo kid who helped with the horses endured the heat. There was a book open next to him on the desk, but in the heat of the day, the thought of turning the pages was ridiculous. It was all he could do to sit at the desk, chin propped in his hand, and breathe through his mouth. When one of the flies dropped dead on his desk with a fat plop, Miguel nudged the mestizo boy, who was asleep next to the desk. The boy rubbed his face and looked at Miguel. Miguel said, “Sais” and the boy nodded and went outside. There were twenty-three horses in the corral. The boy cut six out and formed them up into a team, moving the huge animals, and rigging the harness and yoke with ease and skill. When he was done he took the long reins and walked behind the animals as he moved them around to the front of the station. The stage would be here soon, and if it was to keep the schedule, it would need this fresh team of horses. As the horses stood waiting, the boy walked around with a bag of oats giving each of them a handful in turn. It was a long run from here to Grantham. This was the last station on the line. Inside, Miguel closed his eyes and drifted somewhere just on this side of consciousness. Even as he dozed, he was aware that something was wrong. The stage should’ve been here by now. He struggled to open his eyes and check his timepiece, but he told himself it didn’t matter. There was nothing he could do about it anyway. If something was wrong, he should be rested for when trouble came. At the first sound of the far-off stagecoach, his cheek slipped from his palm and his face dropped onto the desk, causing the dead fly to bounce. In a minor miracle, the fly came back to life long enough to buzz off the desk and drop dead on the dirt floor. Miguel jumped bolt upright and rubbed his chin. That sound wasn’t the stage. It was coming from the wrong direction and was two horses at most. He could hear the boards of an empty wagon ringing from the jolts from the road. He walked to the doorway and fought to shove it open against the accumulated dirt. On the road from Grantham, he saw a man in a broad hat driving an empty wagon. The man waved hello as he pulled into the yard and Miguel waved back. The mestizo boy only had eyes for the horses. Miguel recognized him as the owner of the Miller general store. What was his name again, Virgil? He remembered Virgil’s pretty wife and son working with him and his even prettier daughter that argued with all the customers with the innocent mayhem of a six-year-old girl. “Mr. Miller!” said Miguel. Virgil opened his mouth to return the greeting but just then, they heard the rumble of the stage coming down the hill from Bisbee. The first blast of the horn might have b