The sack smelled faintly of flour and mice.

Charles Boles held it open between his hands and considered, for perhaps the hundredth time, the foolishness of the whole business.

A grown man in a good wool coat, standing behind an oak tree with a flour sack over his head.

A man of fifty-four, his beard trimmed, his boots polished that morning, hiding in the California woods like a child preparing to frighten his sister.

He turned the sack around. Two eyeholes, cut with a pocketknife. One sat a little higher than the other.

“Dignity,” he said quietly, “is a temporary condition.”

The woods offered no opinion.

Below him, the road twisted between pines and dry brush. The morning was cold enough that his fingers ached. He flexed them, then placed the sack on a flat rock while he checked his coat pockets.

Twine. Pocketknife. Handkerchief. A few coins.

The handkerchief was white linen, recently washed and pressed. He had picked it up from the laundry in San Francisco along with three shirts and a pair of collars. The laundryman had tied everything in brown paper and written the bill in a neat hand.

Charles had paid without complaint.

He believed in paying honest men.

He also believed that Wells Fargo had more money than it knew what to do with.

That distinction had served him well for several years.

Far down the road came the faint clatter of harness.

He straightened.

There it was.

The stage.

He listened to the wheels grind over stone. The sound grew, disappeared behind a rise, then returned. He pictured the driver on the box, shoulders bent against the cold, reins loose in gloved hands. A guard might be beside him. There might be passengers inside.

There was always the chance of trouble.

Charles disliked trouble. Trouble was noisy, untidy, and inclined to leave stains.

He picked up the flour sack.

His knees complained when he crouched behind the tree. He had slept badly the night before, waking twice with a pain beneath his ribs. In San Francisco, he could pass for a respectable businessman. He ate in quiet restaurants, read newspapers in hotel lobbies, and discussed the weather with clerks who never remembered him afterward.

Out here, he was Black Bart.

The name had begun as a joke. It belonged to dime novels and cheap tobacco stories, to men with black horses and red sashes who shouted oaths before shooting sheriffs.

Charles owned no horse.

He had never fired a weapon during a robbery.

He preferred walking.

Walking left a man time to think, though lately his thoughts had become less agreeable company.

The stage appeared around the bend.

Charles pulled the sack over his head.

The world narrowed to two crooked holes.

His breath warmed the cloth around his mouth. He stepped into the road and raised the shotgun.

The weapon was unloaded.

It had always been unloaded.

The driver hauled on the reins.

The horses stopped hard, leather creaking, hooves striking dirt. One tossed its head and blew steam through its nostrils.

Charles stood in the road with the gun resting against his shoulder.

His back hurt.

“Good morning,” he said.

The driver stared at him.

Charles cleared his throat.

“I am afraid I must trouble you for the express box.”

No answer.

Through the eyeholes, Charles saw the man’s mouth open slightly.

The fellow was young. Younger than Charles had expected. Barely thirty, perhaps. He had a red scarf around his neck and a patch on one sleeve.

Charles felt suddenly embarrassed for both of them.

“Kindly throw it down,” he said. “There is no need for anyone to be injured.”

The driver looked toward the trees.

Charles turned his head and called, “If he makes a move, give him a volley, boys.”

There were no boys.

There had never been any boys.

Only squirrels, birds, and whatever private amusement the Lord took from watching Charles Boles conduct business.

The driver swallowed. He climbed down, dragged the strongbox from beneath the seat, and pushed it over the side.

It struck the road with a heavy crack.

“Much obliged,” Charles said.

He waited until the stage had rolled past the bend before lowering the shotgun.

The silence returned slowly.

He pulled off the sack.

His face was wet with sweat despite the cold.

“Well,” he said, looking at the strongbox, “that was unpleasant.”

Opening it proved worse.

He carried the box into the trees and attacked the lock with his tools. The metal resisted. He knelt on damp earth, working until his hands cramped. Twice he stopped to listen. Once he thought he heard a rider, but it was only a branch scraping another branch in the wind.

Age had changed the work.

Years ago, he could walk twenty miles after a robbery and arrive with enough strength to eat supper. Now his breath shortened on steep ground. His joints stiffened when he knelt. His hands, once steady, sometimes trembled in the morning.

He had told himself this would be the last time.

He had told himself that before.

The lock finally gave.

Inside lay mail packets, papers, and a quantity of gold coin.

Charles counted quickly.

Not enough.

Never enough.

He took the money and left the rest. The sack went into his coat. The shotgun he carried under one arm.

Then he heard shouting from the road.

The driver had returned with help.

Charles rose too fast. Pain caught him in the side. He stumbled, recovered, and ran uphill through the brush.

A shot struck a tree behind him.

So much for courtesy.

Branches tore at his sleeves. Stones rolled beneath his boots. He pushed upward, lungs burning, the gold dragging at his coat.

Another shot.

He reached higher ground and dropped behind a fallen pine. For several minutes he lay there, cheek pressed to cold bark, waiting for men to come through the trees.

No one came.

Charles began moving again.

He kept off the road and followed the ridge west. By noon, the voices were gone. By afternoon, he had put several miles behind him.

Only then did he stop beside a narrow creek.

He washed his face and drank from his cupped hands. His reflection broke apart in the moving water. Gray beard. Hollow cheeks. A tired man wearing a torn coat.

Black Bart, indeed.

He reached into his pocket for the handkerchief.

The pocket was empty.

Charles searched the other one.

Nothing.

He stood beside the creek, very still.

He remembered kneeling near the box. Wiping his mouth. Placing the handkerchief on his knee while he worked at the lock.

White linen on dark earth.

There was a mark in one corner. A laundry mark, small and neat, put there so the shirts and collars of respectable men did not become confused.

Charles closed his eyes.

For years he had fooled drivers, guards, detectives, and bankers. He had crossed mountains on foot and vanished into cities. He had hidden behind politeness, behind distance, behind a name taken from a storybook.

And now a laundryman knew who he was.

Charles looked back toward the hills.

The road was hidden from sight, but he could picture the handkerchief lying beside the broken strongbox, clean white cloth against the dirt.

He began walking.

There was nothing else to do.