He was growing into middle age and was living then in a bungalow on Woodland Avenue. He installed himself in a rocking chair and smoked a cigar down in the evenings as his wife wiped her pink hands on an apron and reported happily on their two children. His children knew his legs the sting of his mustache against their cheeks they didn't know how their father made his living or why they so often moved, they didn't even know their father's name he was listed in the city directory as Thomas Howard and he went everywhere unrecognized and lunched with Kansas City shopkeepers and merchants calling himself a cattleman or commodities investor someone rich and leisured who had the common touch. he had two incompletely healed bullet holes in his chest and another in his thigh he was missing the nub of his left middle finger and was cautious least that mutilation be seen he also had a condition that was referred to as granulated eyelids and it caused him to blink more than usual as if he found creation slightly more than he could accept rooms seemed hotter when he was in them rains fell straighter clocks slowed sounds were amplified he considered himself a southern loyalist and guerilla in a civilian war that never ended he regretted neither his robberies nor the 17 murders that he laid claim to. He had seen another summer under in Kansas City Missouri and on September 5th in the year In 1881 he was 34 years old

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