body, feeling first here, then there, even though he was
asleep, he felt to her the most dangerous creature on
earth.
The footsteps ceased and there was just the wind.
14
Fallon Monroe had last served in the United
States cavalry during the Plains Wars, killing
Cheyenne and Comanche everywhere he could find
them. And before that, he had been a very young
brevet lieutenant in the Civil War, earning his battle-
field commission at Petersburg.
Peace came shortly after, but unlike everyone else
he did not welcome it. For the peace proved worse
than war and he grew restless and volunteered to fight
Indians on the Plains. And almost at once he felt more
at ease with his troopers in the field than his young
wife at home.
Whiskey and squaws fed his appetite for the
killing.
And when the killing was finished, when the Indi-
ans had been all but defeated, he once more lost his
way, became an angry middle-aged man with a wife
he did not understand and children he felt no kin to.
He left her for a time in Oklahoma saying he would go
and find a suitable profession for a man of his skills.
“What skills are those?” she said.
He didn’t want to say.
“Are you leaving me and the children?”
“No,” he said. “Well, yes, for a short time. Just
until I can find something for us, then I’ll come and
get you and the girls.”
He went first to El Paso, for he heard it was a wild
open town bursting with opportunity. Plenty of trade
and money to be made both sides of the border. It
seemed as good a place as any to get a fresh start. But
after he’d spent his small poke on tequila and whores,
he came to realize the only skills he had to offer that
rough border town were those of a gunfighter. And,
too, if a man needed to slip across into Mexico ahead
of the law, well, it was right there. He scouted for
prospects.
A local businessman had run for county sheriff and
was defeated by what he bodaciously called “a no-
good son of a bitch!” But it wasn’t merely a political
rivalry that existed between the two men—there was
also a woman involved, as there almost always was.
With stealth and planning that is inborn in certain
men who are called to the profession of shootist, Fal-
lon Monroe approached the businessman and made
an offer.
“How you mean take care of?” the businessman
asked over a plate of chili that made his forehead
sweat.
“I guess I could try and scare him off, talk him
into resigning and leaving town,” Fallon said in a
half-joking manner.
“Scare! Shit, Bill Perk don’t scare. He’s too damn
ignorant to scare.”
“I never yet met a completely fearless man,” Fallon
said. “Every man is afraid of something. You just got
to find out what that something is, and it almost al-
ways is his own death.”
“He’ll put a bullet through your heart and piss in
the hole it leaves.”
“You want him gone? That’s all I’m asking.”
“How much?”
“Two hundred dollars.”
“That’s a lot of money considering I could do it
myself.”
“If you could have done it yourself, you would
have.” Fallon had that other natural trait of a good
gunfighter: awareness of how much grit a man did or
did not have. The businessman had soft hands and a
soft belly and no heart for bloody encounters. He
wore fine suits and silk cravats and his expensive
boots didn’t show any mud on them. Here sat a fellow
who wouldn’t fight even over the thing he loved most:
money.
The businessman pulled a small, neatly folded ker-
chief from his pocket and wiped his forehead and
beak—real dainty, Fallon noted.
“I could get a lot of others to do it for less than a
hundred,” he said, always the businessman.
“Maybe,” Fallon said, “but my work is guaran-
teed.”
“A hundred,” the man said.
Since it was his first professional job, Fallon acqui-
esced and took the offer—not so much because of
just the money, but to see how he’d like it—killing a
man for the money. He’d killed plenty for free, but
that was because the army and the Indians hadn’t
given him any choice in the matter.
“Point him out is all you have to do besides pay me
the hundred,” he said.
“Deal,” the man said, and pointed him out—a
lanky cautious-looking cuss who came into the saloon
an hour later. He wore big Mexican spurs and stood
under a wide-brimmed peaked hat tipped incautiously
