Ralph Compton Blood Duel

That might not seem like much of a talent to some. You pointed a revolver or a rifle at someone, and you shot him. Or you stuck a knife between his ribs. Or you bashed him over the head with a rock. Or you roped him from behind so the noose settled over his neck and then you dragged him from horseback until his neck was stretched to where the head was almost off. Or you got him drunk and poured kerosene on him while he slept and set him on fire. Jeeter had done all of that and more.

The truth was, the talent did not lie in the killing. Anyone could kill. The talent showed itself in how the killing was done. Not in the shooting or the stabbing, but in never, ever giving the other hombre a fair break, in never, ever giving him a chance.

Take the Blights. The moment Jeeter heard them ride up, he drew his Lightning and ducked under the table. Not many would have thought of that. Some would have sat there stupidly waiting for the Blights to confront them. Some would have hid behind the bar, which was the first place Temple Blight looked. Some would have run out the back, but that would only postpone the inevitable.

No, Jeeter had done the one thing the Blights never expected. He had taken them completely by surprise. That was his talent. The knack for always catching the other fellow off guard. For always doing the one thing—the one thing—that meant he would live and the other person died. It was a knack most lacked, and it had kept him alive longer than most in his circumstances had a reasonable right to expect.

Some would say that alone made his talent worthwhile, and Jeeter would agree, to a point. Yes, he was still breathing. But there was dead and then there was a living death, a life of hand to mouth, of always looking over one’s shoulders, of never being able to trust, to care, to love. A life as empty as the emptiness of the grave, only, yes, he was still breathing. But that was the only thing he had to show for his talent. The only really good thing about it.

Until now.

At length the sun rested on the rim of the world, its radiance painting the sky vivid hues of red, orange, and yellow. Jeeter came to a hollow bisected by a dry wash and rimmed with brush. He drew rein and dismounted. Stripping the gruella and gathering wood and kindling a fire and putting a pot of coffee on to brew took the better part of half an hour.

At last Jeeter could settle back against his saddle and relax. He opened his saddlebags and slid out the item he had brought with him from Coffin Varnish. In the flickering glow of the crackling flames, he admired the stalwart hero with his arm around the slender waist of a beautiful young woman as painted warriors closed in from all sides. “Jeeter Frost, the Missouri Man-Killer,” he remembered the newspaperman saying. “His thrilling escapades. His narrow escapes.” He ran his finger across the cover and said quietly, “I’ll be damned.”

A slow smile spread across Jeeter’s countenance. He laughed, a genuinely heartfelt laugh such as he had not felt in a coon’s age. He flipped the pages, wishing he could read the words. So many words, and all of them about him. Or some version of him that others took to be the real him. It was silly, he mused. But it was also—and here he struggled for the right way to describe it.

The moment Jeeter had set eyes on that cover, something inside him had changed. He could not say what or how or why, but he felt it. This penny dreadful, this ridiculous fluff written by someone who had never met him and knew nothing about him but had written all about him, meant there was more to his life than he ever imagined. He was not the nobody he always believed he was. He was somebody. Not somebody important. Not somebody that mattered. But somebody people would remember.

“The Missouri Man-Killer,” Jeeter said again, and laughed. Hell, he hadn’t been to Missouri but three or four times in his whole life.

Jeeter was born in Illinois. He lived there until he was seventeen. He got too big for his britches and took to drinking and staying out to all hours. One night he was in a knife fight. Thinking he had killed the other drunk, he fled, only to learn months later that the man recovered. By then Jeeter was in Texas, where a cowboy by the name of Weeds Graff took him under his wing. Weeds taught him to rope and to shoot and Jeeter learned the shooting so well that when they signed on with the Bar T outfit, it was his six-gun and his newfound talent for killing that held the other side at bay. For a while, anyway, until they ambushed his employer and friend.