The man was sick. The man was busy.
Thin, hollow-cheeked, breathing heavy with a nasty cough, blood showing where he spat. Looked to be fifty going on seventy.
But working. Digging, determined, near exhausted but full of purpose.
The man called Edge, riding easily down from the Rattlesnake Hills in Wyoming Territory, reigned in to watch him. Knew at once was was being dug.
A grave.
Later, when he hired on with the sick man's wife, he saw the other grave. The one with the elder son, already buried. Backshot, they said, by the younger son. Whose gave was being made ready for when his pa found him and killed him.
A family that didn't so much pray together as slay together.