Rafe settled in Norfork with a good waistcoat, six bottles of ale, and a bill of sale nobody could quite read. He took to fixing gates and trading supplies, learning who paid fair, who watered their liquor, and which cellar doors needed a firmer latch. He never hurried. “Running makes folks curious,” he’d say, brushing the dust from his hat. By the time a merchant noticed something missing, Rafe was usually back at the counter, offering to help locate a replacement.

After he sold a deputy three bottles of the deputy’s own confiscated beer, the Norfork Outlaws found plenty of work for him. Rafe could get supplies through a roadblock and talk a suspicious landlord into setting another place at supper. But he had rules: leave a working family’s pantry alone, repay a kindness, and never let a friend drink by himself. When winter stores ran thin, sacks of meal sometimes appeared on porches before daylight. Rafe denied knowing anything about them—then asked whether anyone had found a burgundy handkerchief. He still keeps Old Settlers Ale close and his accounts vague. Ask what you owe him for a bottle and he’ll smile: “We’ll settle up.”