Ralph Compton Blood Duel

“I don’t blame him,” Winifred said. “If that battle-ax ever finds out, she will take a knife to his manhood, strangle you with her bare hands, and probably shoot me for letting him dally with you.”

“I do as I want,” Chester said curtly. “And I will thank you not to refer to my wife in that manner when I am standing right next to you.”

“Men,” Sally said in mild disgust, and stepped to the batwings. “But don’t worry, Your Honor, sir. I am not about to give your secret away. You are one of the few paying customers I have left.”

“Is that all I am to you? Money?”

Sally twisted at the hips and regarded him with amusement. “What else would you be?”

“A friend, at least. It has been a couple of years now.”

“Every Wednesday evening for two years,” Sally said. “Your wife permits you one hour to drink and sling the bull with Win and you spend part of that hour giving me a poke.”

“We do more. We talk.”

Sally tiredly brushed a stray wisp of gray-brown hair from her eyes. “You talk, I listen. You pay for that privilege.” She looked at Winifred. “Explain to your friend how it is. I don’t want him getting silly notions.” She left them, her hips swinging.

“You shouldn’t have said that to her,” Win criticized. “Now she will think you care for her more than she should be cared for.”

“How can you say that? She’s your friend.”

“She is my friend and she is a whore and I have the sense not to confuse the two. You should have the sense not to make more of her parting her legs for you than there is.”

“That is harsh,” Chester said softly.

“Life is harsh,” Winifred Curry replied. “If you think it isn’t, just ask the four bodies in my saloon.”

“Adolphina could be on to something. We can benefit from their deaths.”

“No good ever comes from killing,” Winifred said. “Mark my words. We will live to regret it.”

Chapter 5

Jeeter Frost had a crick in his neck from looking over his shoulder. He did not expect anyone to be after him, but he had not lasted as long as he had by being careless. For the first hour he used his spurs more than was his wont. The gruella, as always, did not let him down.

Jeeter was extremely fond of the mouse dun, so much so that once when a Comanche tried to steal it, Jeeter spent half a day whittling on the warrior, doing things not even Comanches did to captives.

Now and then Jeeter reached back and patted his saddlebags. He could not wait for sunset. He marked the slow crawl of the sun toward the western horizon with an impatience rare for him. He did not have many good traits, not by society’s standards, at any rate, but patience had always been one. Those who knew him well, and they were few in number, sometimes commented that he was the most patient person they knew.

Jeeter had to be. He had learned early on that in order to survive on the fringe of lawlessness he must not indulge in rash decisions or rash acts. Haste led to an early grave and Jeeter hoped to live a good long while.

The thought made Jeeter grin. There was a time when he did not care whether he lived, a time when he woke up every morning certain he would not live to admire the next sunset.

He lived by the gun, and the gun was a cruel mistress.

The gun. There were days when Jeeter wished he had never set eye on a revolver, never held one, never fired one. Maybe then he would never have killed anyone. Maybe then he would not be a marked man. Maybe then no one would have heard of him. Maybe then he would not be wandering the prairie, an outcast, with no family, no home, and no prospects other than the surety that one day someone would prove to be faster or cleverer.

Funny thing. Jeeter did not live in dread of that day, as he once did. He wouldn’t run from it—he couldn’t run from it—so what was the use of fretting? He had learned a few things over the years, and one of them was that life was too short to spend it worrying about something that would happen one day whether he worried about it or not.

For a few minutes there back in Coffin Varnish, Jeeter thought that day had come. The Blights were supposed to be tough, a tight-knit clan that stood up for their own, and woe to the outsider who crossed them. Temple Blight, especially, had made worm food of more than a few. But the way he came walking into that saloon, as big and confident as you please, not bothering to draw his six-gun until he was over near the bar—he might as well have asked Jeeter to put a pistol to his head and shoot him.

Jeeter did not have many talents, but the one talent he did have, the one talent that separated him from the herd, was a talent for killing. As his grandmother would say, God rest her, he was a natural born killer.