"Shootout at the Nokai Corral" by Rajnar Vajra

On Earth, the year 2066 was unfolding with dull predictability until Wednesday, November 24, when an innovative space propulsion system blew away mundane expectations like a hurricane scattering feathers.

This American-Israeli-Swedish innovation, Bubble Drive, relied on exemption theory (a new branch of physics), sub-dimensional exchange (temporarily substituting normally extraneous dimensions for familiar ones), and the intrinsic elasticity of spacetime. A moving deformation, or "bubble," in normal reality could be generated and a spaceship, placed in a temporary "exemption," could travel on the deformation’s edge, akin to a surfer riding a wave. Since time and space themselves were stretching and releasing, and the bubble-ship was traveling on spacetime rather than in it, the spaceship could change location without suffering the ills of acceleration or being limited by Einstein’s stingy rules.

Almost overnight, interstellar journeys were more than possible. They were practical.

By the tail end of the twenty-first century, after much searching, twelve reasonably inhabitable planets had been discovered. Humanity should have been intoxicated with a sense of burgeoning adventure and opening opportunity.

But something was terribly wrong. An unexplained mood of near-pathological indifference had spread throughout the human race. Like some devastating antibiotic-resistant bacteria, apathy clung to the human heart and flourished despite all attempts to wipe it out.

Dangerously at odds over what do to with the new worlds, Earth’s major governments did something no one expected: they stopped bickering.

No one knew what had caused the global depression, but the new worlds offered unprecedented possibilities for seeking a cure. . . .

* * *

Chapter 1

Framed by dark storm clouds behind him, and drizzled on by the leaden sky directly overhead, John rode his zebra slowly into town. Gusts of tepid wind battered his favorite hat and pressed his jacket tightly against his tired back.

Twelve local citizens, who happened to be outdoors near the south end of Main Street, froze in place as John approached, giving him their unblinking attention. No one in this accidental jury smiled, frowned, or said a word. The random spattering of raindrops and mud-muffled clomps of zebra hooves suddenly seemed almost offensively loud.

Uncomfortably aware of stiff faces turning in unison to track his progress, John kept moving steadily. Welcome, stranger, he thought sadly. Welcome to the fair city of Sunstone.

A dog began to whine in the distance and from even farther away, too faint for any normal human to detect, came the voices of two men arguing.

John could hear each voice distinctly.

He wasn’t enjoying any of this. Sensitivity has drawbacks. To him, the town held a brooding air; accumulated fear and anger were like rancid vapors, clogging his lungs and leaving bitterness on his tongue. And everyone kept staring. It took a huge effort to gaze around mildly, pretending to be the sort of tourist who cares more about scenery than about people.

Sunstone was no tourist lure. Lop off a few walls and take away, say, the bank, and you’d be kind to call it anything but a standard village. The tallest edifice had only five stories and most town buildings were right here, lining Main Street like spectators waiting for a parade. Each structure was weathered but tough, constructed to withstand summer dust storms, winter blizzards, Red Clay County’s infrequent but ferocious hurricanes and the occasional stray bullet.

Why is it, John mused, that tiny communities usually cram their buildings close together? Just human nature? Or is it some kind of . . . security issue, a huddling reflex? Do we, subconsciously, feel like intruders on this planet even though we’ve been here for over a century? He was suddenly tempted to stop and garner local opinions on the matter.

What a superb way to make myself more inconspicuous, he thought darkly.

Patience paid off; gradually the townspeople became more interested in the unusual zebra than in John, and he felt progressively lighter, as if human scrutiny carried physical weight. He’d been trying to appear harmless (without looking like someone trying to appear harmless) and apparently, he’d done well enough. But he doubted the crowd would have dismissed him this soon if his steed weren’t such a magnificent distraction.

As far as he was concerned, Houston was the most beautiful animal on any planet: an elegant, muscular stallion genetically augmented to be larger than a terrestrial quarter horse and a thousand times more colorful. The zebra’s coat gleamed molten silver between lightning-bolt stripes of glossy black; Houston’s unnaturally long mane was a gold so lavish the genetic recipe had received two patents. The enhanced tail was also bright gold, a shade redder. The long hairs fluttered in the breeze like silk threads.

Soon, Houston was hogging all the attention, giving John a semi-private moment to catch his breath and get his bearings after the long hard ride. More importantly, it meant that no one here had recognized him. He could no longer count on going incognito, even in backwaters like this.

The world slowly brightened and the shadow of John’s hands developed photographically on Houston’s neck. Instinctively, he gazed up at a noontime sun just now shouldering aside its seasonal gray curtain. The sight was so welcome and unexpected, he forgot all about appearing innocuous.

Fortunately for the public’s peace of mind, no one witnessed his lapse. John’s steady eyes, the clean amber of good ale, glowed with something more than reflected light. Suddenly, he looked . . . considerably less harmless. But then his expression eased. The soothing warmth on his face was an almost forgotten, pure sensual pleasure. For a few priceless seconds, he simply basked.

"Doesn’t this feel good, old friend?" he murmured, patting the striped neck affectionately before dismounting. "Maybe things will dry out a little." Cheery words, but by the time John’s boots touched the mud, his cheer had evaporated, hints of danger pouring in from all corners of his vision.

Don’t react, he reminded himself, as he led his steed toward a promising parking spot to one side of the street, covered by a suspended green awning. You had a hunch this was going to be a bad one before you even started out. All this is merely confirmation . . . not a surprise. Stay in character!

Despite this excellent advice, he couldn’t help glancing wistfully southwest toward hidden Mount McCurran, three hundred miles away and crouching behind redundant layers of fog, rain, and cloud. Another two hundred miles past that majestic peak was a sleepy town named Wyatt. He’d been in Sunstone three minutes and already he yearned for home.

What was wrong with him lately? Was twelve years of constant worry, twelve years of helping conceal the biggest secret on the planet, taking its toll? Damn right it was! He’d always had a touch of nerves before beginning a new job, but these days . . .

A particularly strong gust caught the back edge of his hat, lifting it high enough to reveal more of John’s close-cropped hair. His chinstrap foiled the wind’s attempted thievery and the hat settled back at a rakish angle. He barely noticed.

So many people seem to think of me as a pillar of strength, he admitted to himself ruefully. What am I really? A pillar of weakness from where I sit!

He shook himself internally, hauling his attention to the here and now. This was no time or place to indulge his habit of soul-dredging.

The parking place was wetter then it had looked from a distance; rain had angled its way past the awning. Still, Houston needed food and there were no ungulate-style food troughs further down the street. This spot would have to do. Typical small town economic strategy: scatter a few merchants outside with cheap but tempting wares and place all the guest parking spaces for the more popular animals at one end of town, thus forcing visitors to walk a gauntlet of salesmanship. But no merchants were out today.

John felt Houston’s chest to certify that the animal had cooled enough to make feeding safe. Satisfied, he tied the reins loosely to the green-painted hitching rail, studied a posted schedule of fees, and made sure the conveniently placed fodder and water troughs were full and that their contents were reasonably fresh. He scratched behind the zebra’s ears before meticulously inspecting its shoeless hooves. A moistened blue bandana made a barely adequate mud scraper.

The first three hooves were fine, but the last had a small pebble imbedded in the genetically improved unguis. The discovery elicited a grunt of concern and disapproval.

"How long have you been walking around with this boulder stuck in your foot, Houston? You know I love you, but I swear to God above, sometimes I think you don’t even have enough brains to limp!"

A normal person would have needed a pick and some skill to remove the pebble, but John’s bare fingers plucked the stone out with ease. Aside from a trivial indentation, the tissue was undamaged. Sighing with relief, John dropped the hoof, pulled off the saddle and saddlebags, and placed them gently inside a heavily varnished storage bin behind the food trough. He withdrew a towel, horse-brush, and currycomb from one bag before securing the bin’s tarred canvas cover. Then he spent ten quiet minutes in grooming duties.

By the time he finished, everyone around seemed to be taking his presence for granted. But he knew it wouldn’t last. Indeed, when he put his brushes away and began to stride north along the boardwalk edging the west side of Main Street, people immediately stiffened again with alarm.

Not that John was a daunting figure. He was only six feet two inches tall, a finger’s width scant of average male height for a planet whose gravity was 20 percent less than Earth’s, and there was nothing threatening about his earnest—perhaps overly-serious—but pleasant face.

Yet he couldn’t avoid moving with a liquid smoothness that was as clear a warning in its own way as the rattle of an Earthly rattlesnake. And everyone belatedly noticed that the guns in John’s open holsters had costly individualized grips of polished opal.

In a dozen whispers from a dozen suddenly dry throats, one word was repeated: "slinger."

Chapter 2

Project Passion had been conceived to find an answer to the morbid apathy infecting Earth society in the early twenty-second century. Social physicists (those who hadn’t become too apathetic to bother) hoped to do this by utilizing the twelve worlds discovered through Bubble Drive technology. Their plan was to set up twelve "theme planets"—each with a modest population and an individually-tailored artificial culture—and study their workings. These cultures were to be based loosely on historical periods when the human animal seemed especially full of vigor.

Given the project’s gargantuan investment of time and money, the Powers That Be insisted that at least one secondary experiment intended to "improve the human condition" should be conducted on every theme planet.

These experiments were mostly social, including group-marriages and circulating ownership; or social-scientific, such as one effort to see if brutally intense education at an early age would create smarter people. Naturally, island worlds such as Treasure and Britannian suggested different lines of research from continental planets such as Vinci and Golden Age.

But Paladin, due to its rule-breaking ecosystem, offered a unique, intriguing opportunity for a different kind of experiment. . . .

Younger than Earth by two billion years, Paladin was rich in undersea volcanoes. Its carbonated oceans nurtured a hardy pelagic phytoplankton that used water-trapped carbon dioxide and nitrogen, volcanic nutrients, and the raw light from Mebsuta for photosynthesis. The happy result was an atmosphere capable of sustaining most forms of terrestrial life.

Before Paladin was discovered, scientists assumed that a planet without a complex ecosystem would never develop an atmosphere breathable by people. All other theme planets had such ecosystems.

And there was indigenous life on Paladin, but it was primitive. As usual, bacteria were the most prolific and widespread organisms (although sparse compared to Earth’s bacteria). Also, three of its four major continents had areas dense with self-pollinating vegetation and their exotic symbionts: sponge-like creatures absorbing oxygen, releasing carbon dioxide and ozone, and using organically generated electricity to extract key nutrients from the more traditional vegetation.

Finally, on the two largest continents, elaborate jungles of molds and fungi grew underground in fantastic shapes within caverns too vast to exist on any planet with either a denser lithosphere or greater gravity. Some fungi were useful to humans, few were edible. The silver lining was that people and most terrestrial animals weren’t edible for local molds, bacteria, and fungi.

Due to underground decomposition, Paladin had certain renewable "fossil" fuels, without the bother of having fossils. But it had no native insect or animal life whatsoever.

Paladin was chosen for the most promising but hazardous of the secondary experiments, one that could have posed a serious threat to higher forms of local life. The idea being to allow settlers only one advanced science, biology, in order to see how far that science could be pushed. With no native insects or animals to preserve, colonists would have free reign to produce all kinds of genetic wonders, including the perilous opportunity to mold a physically superior kind of human. On most worlds, fiddling with human DNA was discouraged or forbidden—here, it was practically mandated. Earth authorities decreed that the risks to local vegetation were regrettable but acceptable.

They seemed less concerned about risks to settlers and tourists. They even planned on tourism, hoping it would help defray the costs of colonization. After all, Paladin was relatively tame (theoretically), almost disease-free, and remarkably clear of insect pests (only the lowly flea had managed to slip past inspectors). As a human habitat, its only serious disadvantage was a slightly eccentric orbit around its star, a rare cool G8 supergiant named Mebsuta by the ancient Arabs, meaning "outstretched lion’s paw." The eccentric orbit produced impressive annual climatic variations.

But the planet had an asset that would encourage visitors to hazard the exotic weather: Paladin was beautiful. Spectacular even.

In particular, the Tenderfoot Continent seemed fresh-minted with its improbably steep mountains and razor-cut canyons. Clays highly tinted with iron, copper oxides, or azurite painted the land red, green, and blue. Gem-quality blue moonstones and golden aventurines were scattered like marbles over the central foothills.

Even Paladin’s seas were magnificent. The Acidic and Alkaline Oceans, separated by the elongated geography of Tenderfoot, were two different shades of green, each brighter than any sea on Earth. The sight of Acidic’s emerald waters splashing against the ruby cliffs of Tenderfoot’s Fang Peninsula suggested two different species eager to mate, but unsure how to proceed.

As time passed, the Earth authorities were pleased. Tourism was very successful. Paladin proved to be a nice place to visit. It also proved to be an exceedingly dangerous place to live.

As John walked along, people kept emerging from stores or homes, and still no one recognized him. He tried to be content with that, but it wasn’t his day for contentment.

The sidewalk was wide enough for two people to walk abreast or pass each other without bumping. Still, almost everyone in John’s path choose to brave the street’s burgundy-colored muck and frequent clumps of soggy manure rather than get too close. He knew it was absurd to take this personally, but the barely covert animosity stung; he’d never managed to grow sensibly thick skin. Also, such excessive caution was another symptom of lethal-grade trouble.

Even more definitive: except for the hotel, every building in sight had solid bullet-shutters covering its main windows.

Closed shutters were a strange sight during rainy season. In fact, low-light-induced "rain fever" would have surely become a local epidemic but for a remarkable fact: most buildings here were equipped with at least two uncovered windows of a very rare type. John had initially assumed that these were merely plain round windows. Then, as he looked more carefully, he recognized the clear, slightly convex "viewports" once used on deep-spaceships. Viewports, made of ultra-dense wolfram-carbide plastic and hardened with boron nitride, had long been nearly unobtainable. Most towns were lucky to even have one.

Their diameters ranged from two to four feet and John presumed they’d been scavenged from the original transport vessels that had carried humans from Earth to Paladin, a modest journey of thirty-three parsecs. The bloated starships had been cleverly designed for easy disassembly so that they could be reassembled into homes, offices, and warehouses for the new colony. And they always came equipped with windows.

A view of some sort, as John understood, was a psychological necessity for lengthy space flights, but virtual windows required too much power to be practical for long journeys. The bubble-ships of the previous century took their sweet time. . . .

How had so many of these pricey artifacts wound up in this obscure little town? Some wandering retailer with astonishing luck, a supremely sturdy cart, and a team of giant oxen must have offered one hell of a discount!

The good people of Sunstone had mounted most of the viewports as high clerestory windows and left them unprotected since they were, to put it mildly, bulletproof.

Belatedly, John noticed an oddity far more unsettling than the viewport mystery. From where he was standing, he could see at least twenty people wandering about town, but only one was female and none were children. That wasn’t right. John had looked up the figures on Sunstone taken a year ago in the last Tenderfoot census. The town had more women than men and a good supply of infants who should be toddlers by now.

If the women and children were hiding somewhere, why was anybody outside, rather than shivering behind locked doors?

Dana Langhorn Rider, owner and operator of the Sunstone Saloon and Grill, didn’t believe in hiding. She was standing in front of her saloon, enjoying this unusual break in the weather. She had work to do, but she couldn’t bear to miss even a moment of sunshine, so precious in this dreary season. The street had become beautiful to her, glittering with countless tiny suns, reflections in countless beaded water-droplets. She saw the unfamiliar slinger approaching, but it went against her policy to act afraid.

Dana was a willowy, athletic woman in her middle thirties in standard years, dressed today entirely in green. Her parents had made the unusual decision to alter her genes toward wavy blond hair, clear turquoise eyes, and fair skin. She’d been modeled on the heroine Grand Marshal Diana Vorhees, or at least, considering how easily artists can top geneticists at enhancement, on how Vorhees had been depicted in posthumous oil paintings. Unlike most inhabitants of the theme planet Paladin or the human race in general, Dana showed barely a trace of her Asian, South American, or African ancestries.

Nevertheless, and despite her nose being a trifle long, her cheeks a bit lean, and her mouth perhaps a touch wide, the exotic combination was attractive. While Dana looked too real and wholesome to apply the word "glamorous," her face had an extra, hard-to-pinpoint charm that was part raw vitality, but mostly innate good humor. Faint lines of heartache etched into the corners of her eyes and between her eyebrows only added depth to her expression.

Grief and pain can erode a human face, turning it sour, but Dana had always refused to let her sorrows ferment to bitterness.

When he drew near the oversized swinging saloon doors, John tipped his wide-brimmed hat politely to the tall blond woman, but didn’t allow himself to slow down.

Even the saloon had its ground-floor windows covered. As Dana stared curiously at the back of John’s head, he acted on impulse. Without deviating from his steady progression down the sidewalk, he casually pushed the nearest saloon door in passing to get a quick glimpse inside. Zigzag scorch marks defaced the rough floor, which seemed to be constructed entirely of genetically hardened wood: stone maple. John’s eyebrows tightened in puzzlement and his stomach tightened with foreboding. The place was empty, except for a wizened bartender who gazed at him morosely until the door swung shut.

Now that’s interesting, he told himself as he walked along. What in the world could’ve burned that floor, and in such a distinctive pattern? And why do I have such a bad feeling about it?

Ten yards past the saloon, he came to a narrow road intersecting Main Street. A small, four-way street sign was mounted on a tall iron pole and John stared at the sign incredulously. This muddy little pathway was named "River Boulevard" and despite everything, the incongruity was outrageous enough to spark a twinkle in John’s eyes.

In fairness, he had to concede that River Boulevard was a major thoroughfare compared to other streets that touched Main. These little tributaries were merely covered alleyways used as reserved parking spaces for the residents’ various steeds. But every one of the miniscule alleyways had its own street sign.

People here, he decided, seem to be big on keeping folks from getting lost. If only they were equally fixated on the value of drainage!

His heart sank as his eyes traveled farther down the pole. The iron wasn’t painted and healthy as he’d first thought; it was sick with rust. Very odd considering that Red Clay County was famous for its large deposits of mercury sulfide—natural cinnabar. In some places, the ground was virtually made of rustproofing.

John picked up his pace.

Twenty yards down the sidewalk past River Boulevard, Sunstone’s hardest-luck case, Coby Patterson, was sitting on a mildewed wooden bench. Like Dana, he saw John coming and refused to budge; but his immobility stemmed from sheer belligerence.

Coby was a large, buck-toothed young man whose most prominent feature was an absence: a missing arm. His attitude toward all slingers was one of bitterness and fear. Fear normally predominated.

Today, the one-armed man had encouraging company. Beside him on the bench, in a tall glass bottle that had once held decent whiskey, was a homemade brew so potent, the fumes alone were killing the tough Paladin mildew nearby. As the stranger passed the bench, Coby’s hatred of slingers flared up uncontrollably. Without thinking, he emptied the bottle in one huge gulp and hurled it at the back of the stranger’s head.

Through some inebriated coincidence, his aim was perfect. And his good arm had hypertrophied enough to make the throw surprisingly powerful.

But the missile was aimed at a top slinger. John heard the gulp and the whip of an arm through the air. He let his ears alone track the projectile. At the last possible instant, without looking, his hand snapped behind his neck and caught the bottle before it struck. He turned briefly, gave the man a cool glance with raised eyebrows, and continued on his way. Without slowing down and again without looking, he tossed the bottle backwards with a gentle underhand flip. It spun through the air once and settled beside Coby, landing perfectly on its base. It wobbled a few times and came to rest. Upright.

The one-armed man stared at the bottle as if it had become something hideous. The precision and delicacy of the toss seemed to defy the laws of nature. Coby was mortified at his own suicidal rashness and irrationally furious that the slinger hadn’t even considered him important enough to punish. The bastard had even returned the ammunition as if daring him to throw again!

Coby’s ruddy face became even redder as he glared at the stranger’s receding back, reliving this latest humiliation over and over, each time adding it to an already mountainous pile.

But this time, he promised himself for the ten thousandth time, I’m going to fucking do something about it. . . .

John hadn’t been tickled by the encounter either. It was just more proof that something was abysmally wrong here. The way the man had looked and smelled suggested long abuse. Under normal circumstances, small towns like Sunstone worked hard to keep their citizens healthy and productive; they couldn’t afford to waste their meager human resources.

Why in heaven’s name hadn’t the drunk had his arm regrown? From the uneven shoulder-development, it was evident the amputation had happened years ago. A patch of haze smothered the sun, and even the sky seemed to brood.

The sheriff’s office was near the north end of Main Street. A large gravity clock with a long pendulum was mounted on its sloped roof.

John opened the office door gently and no wider than needed. He silently eased into a medium-sized room illuminated by three viewports and two mantled kerosene lanterns. Despite soffit ventilation, mixed aromas of kerosene, gun-oil, sesame-oil, garlic, cooked sausages, and tank-grown leather thickened the air. A big desk squatting near the middle of the wooden floor supported three tall piles of papers held down by massive, clear quartz crystals. A futon mattress inhabited one corner with blankets neatly folded. Another corner was equipped with a small kitchen including stove, sink with a few dirty dishes, and refrigerator.

Electric motors were illegal on Paladin (except in the industrial city of Buildem in Double New Mexico), but gas-powered refrigeration fell into a gray area shielded by array of useful loopholes.

The man wearing a Red Clay County sheriff’s hat, Chou Larker, was two inches taller than John and far heavier. He had his broad back almost square to the entrance and was practicing quick-draw katas before a narrow full-length mirror, concentrating so fiercely that he hadn’t noticed the moment of increased light from the door opening; his own reflection hid the slinger now standing behind him. Unknown to Larker, John spent a minute observing the sheriff’s martial arts moves with a professional and preternaturally quick eye.

Each draw took about two hundredths of a second—not bad at all. On Paladin, gunplay had evolved into an art. Like a ballet performed by a gifted dancer, the sheriff’s movements were a clear expression of individual character and emotion. His basic decency, courage, and sense of duty were palpable, but his stiff posture and rigid shoulders insinuated frustration and growing despair. John also knew something about duty and despair, and found himself warming to the lawman even before getting a look at his face.

Don’t prejudge, he reminded himself harshly.

The sheriff began working on his double-draws; his left hand was just a whisker slower than his right. John nodded approvingly. Larker was remarkably quick and agile for a large man two shades overweight, who clearly hadn’t been blessed (or cursed) with high-powered artificial genetic endowments. But he wasn’t in the same league as even a low-level slinger. And even with a mirror, no slinger would dream of standing for so long with his or her back to an outer door.

A collection of mostly Japanese-style "antique" swords were mounted on one wall along with a few throwing-stars, a fine set of rosewood nunchaku, the kind of short staff called a "jo," and other and more exotic kobu-do weaponry. All were superb reproductions.

John waited until both guns were resting in their holsters before he spoke. "Hate to interrupt, Sheriff, but I understand you wanted some help?"

The soft voice made the man flinch. Yet he was wise enough to leave his revolvers where they were while turning around.

Larker was fifty-five standard years old (sixty-one Paladin years). Good genes, telomeric rejuvenation, and an instinct for avoiding direct sunlight helped him look no older than forty. On Earth, with its citizens aged by a much closer (although far smaller) sun and higher gravity, he could have passed for thirty. His blunt features and slight epicanthic folds managed to smoothly bridge China and Texas. His gaze was direct and no-nonsense. His cropped hair, all that wasn’t hidden by the hat, was jet-black with specks of gray. His small ears stuck out from his head as if there were hands cupped behind them.

For a moment, the lawman regarded his visitor with a touch of annoyance. Then his dark eyes slowly widened as his jaw dropped. He took in the stranger’s perfectly balanced stance, thick wrists, long delicate hands with oversize knuckles, the unlikely gleams of colored fire in the pistol grips, the lightweight boots, and the shiny traces of graphite lubricant on the inner rims of the holsters.

"By God," he said in awe, "you’re not wearing a badge and you look younger than I would’ve thought, but you’ve simply got to be Tornado Carter!"

It was John’s turn to be startled. "Hardly, Sheriff! I just work for the man. I’m one of Tornado’s Dust Devils; the name is Jonathon Morrow Davies."

"Davies?" The room brightened as the sun reemerged. A stray beam through a viewport invoked a bright spot within one of the big crystals on the desk. A faint, broken rainbow splashed itself against the back wall. "Silver Davies?"

"Some call me that."

Larker stared anew. He’d heard outrageous tales about Silver Davies, tales only the gullible would take seriously. Such as how he’d earned the nickname "Silver." Supposedly, someone could throw four or five dimes high into the air while Davies had his back turned. Then he’d whirl around and shoot, bending every one of them all to hell. From two hundred yards away. But now that he was face to face with the man, looking into eyes that seemed to emit light like freak amber rubies, he wasn’t so sure the stories were exaggerations. And if a living legend like this was merely one of Carter’s lieutenants, what was Carter himself like?

Chapter 3

"Real glad to meet you, mister," Larker said sincerely. "I’m Chou Larker, but I guess you figured that out already. I know you top slingers don’t like to shake paws—can’t risk the fingers, I suppose—but I don’t feel comfortable with any man without a shake. Just the way I was brought up. What do you say?"

John held out a hand without hesitation and clasped the sheriff’s with a firm but not crushing grip. All at once, he felt as tired as he was.

"Mind if I sit? I’ve been riding day and night to get here and the way my back feels—I’m trying to remember if my steed was carrying me or vise-versa."

"Of course, of course. Take any chair you like. Hell, take two: one for your feet. Don’t know why you slingers always use those flimsy saddles. Give me a deep padded seat, a cushy cantle, a lazy antelope, and I’m happy. Can I offer you anything?"

"No, thanks. I’m—"

"There’s a toilet and sink through that door and down the hall. Also, there’s a jar of healall around somewhere if you’ve got sore spots. Me, I’d be one solid blister if I tried to ride for more than four hours at a stretch."

"I’m fine."

"Suit yourself. When will the other Dust Devils be showing up?"

The slinger’s mahogany eyebrows lifted, but he let the question hang while he effortlessly set a heavy wooden chair against the best wall for observing the room and its two doorways. He settled into it, allowing himself a murmur of pleasure; the unpadded oak seat felt like opulent luxury. It wasn’t bouncing up and down and it wasn’t convex. Slinger saddles, he had to agree, really are miserable, but they’re easy on the steed and allow a rider to be creative in an emergency. The room seemed to be swaying gently, a residue of his long ride. Larker perched himself expectantly on the back edge of his desk.

John tried to appear relaxed. "Tell me, Sheriff, why did you ask for us rather than some other enforcement agency?"

"Well, Carter has his reputation. I asked around, sent Equus Express inquiries to every sheriff west of the Sierra Paladias. Everyone said you guys were the way to go."

"Um. What they probably meant was that we were the agency most likely to be available on short notice; we seldom accept long jobs. But I’m not sure you fully understand our situation. I’m Tornado’s—think of me as his booking agent. Before Tornado commits himself to help you, you’ve got to convince me that your town needs us more than a dozen other places."

Larker’s forehead bunched and veins in his neck bulged as he jumped to his feet. "Are you serious, Davies? I thought any decent law slinger would just . . . come and pitch in here if I asked nicely. Want me to get down on my knees and beg? I will if I have to!"

"No. I just—"

"Then what the hell’s wrong with you? My town is chin-deep in lion shit and the lions aren’t going away! Maybe you don’t care? Maybe you’re—are you worried about your damn fee? We’ve got the money if that’s your problem—had to hide it pretty good, I can tell you."

John recoiled internally at the man’s vehemence, but kept his own tone cool. "Money is the smallest part of this, sir. And I do care about your situation; I wouldn’t have come all this way otherwise. But you’ve got to understand something. You’re not the only one with troubles."

"What does that—"

"Hear me out for just one minute. These days, the whole planet seems to be riding straight to hell." John studied Larker’s furious, honest face and spontaneously decided to tell him far more than he’d planned to; probably more than was wise. But—damn it!—wasn’t it high time to start gathering allies outside the agencies?

"Sheriff," he said, lowering his voice. "Are there any proctors in or near Sunstone right now?"

"Proctors" were investigators from Earth who made frequent visits to Paladin, ostensibly for pure research, although everyone knew their real job was to keep the Paladin experiment on track. Most proctors claimed to be psychologists or sociologists, but they tended to have hard, suspicious eyes seldom seen on social scientists. They were rarely polite, usually intrusive, and invariably traveled with a swarm of guards who carried terrestrial armament of such recent vintage that few colonists had the faintest idea what form of death they might emit.

Larker’s eyes flickered. "No proctors. Not last I looked. They don’t usually come poking into our business during rainy season, if you know what I mean."

John nodded; he’d often suspected that Earthlings were part cat: they hated getting wet. "All right, Sheriff. Can you keep a . . . an immense secret?"

"Depends. You mean from the damn proctors?"

"From everyone. Everyone except marshals, and I do mean everyone. I’m going to take one hell of a chance on you and tell you something you won’t like."

"Something you don’t want Earth to hear about? Go right ahead!"

The slinger took a deep breath. "There aren’t nearly as many private law-agencies as there once were."

"What? You’re full of crap, Davies! The list of active agencies is as long as your—"

"They’re listed. They’re just not all . . . functioning anymore, and the situation keeps getting worse. Those of us who remain are getting spread pretty damn thin."

Larker just stared at John for a moment. "What are you saying? Exactly how many agencies are ‘functioning’?"

"Let’s put it this way: if things don’t turn around soon, before you know it the only law will be local law."

"Buddha’s balls! That would be like having no law at all!" Larker’s antagonism collapsed, making him appear to deflate. He abandoned the desk, grabbed an empty chair, turned it to face John, and lowered himself into it as if his bones had become fragile. "When the hell did everything get so rotten?"

"It’s been coming on for awhile."

"Yeah? So, just what am I supposed to do now? Sheriffs like me, even with a large fistful of deputies, which I don’t have, are no match for slinger bandits and their goddamn gangs. We need you pros."

"I know it." Against John’s will, the admission had come out as a groan. "But there’s only so much we can do. Just last month, we lost another good team. The Bullets got ambushed."

"No! Dakota Bill’s outfit?"

"Right. Apparently, only Dakota and two of his people survived. And that was one mean crew."

One of the kerosene mantles was beginning to soot up, and Larker bought some thinking time by standing up and sprinkling a pinch of salt down the lantern’s glass chimney. The soot burned off rapidly, but the sheriff hesitated, gazing worriedly into the soft light, before sitting down again and turning back to his visitor.

"I hadn’t heard about Dakota Bill. Met the man once. Seemed like a decent fellow."

"He is. I’m glad he’s still with us."

"Is that what’s happened to the agencies? Ambushes?"

"You got it. We’ve been—" John was almost whispering now "—losing one or two top outfits each year. This has been going on for more than a decade."

Larker whistled softly. "One or two a year? Paladin year?"

"I’m afraid so."

"Lord Buddha! This can’t be true."

"I’ve been trying—actually, this was Tornado’s idea—to set up a conference where every remaining enforcement group on the Tenderfoot Continent can get together and hash this problem out before it’s too late. Maybe something will come of it, I just don’t know."

The sheriff closed his eyes for a moment and rubbed the back of his neck with a large, callused hand. "How the hell have you marshals managed to keep this under wraps for so long? Hell—I can’t believe you let me in on such a secret!"

That makes two of us, John thought.

"Ten years, you say?" Larker asked.

"Closer to twelve, actually. And the ambushes were more frequent at first."

"I don’t get it. Those assassins have to be nuts! Doesn’t the Charter mandate a minimum number of agencies? If Earth gets wind of this, they’ll—well, we’ll all be screwed, outlaws and honest folks alike. Everyone knows what happened to Treasure!"

Treasure was an oceanic theme world with a million islands and whose theme involved buccaneers, privateers, three competing merchant empires, and pirates. Then, one bad day, its merchant kings declared full autonomy. . . .

John nodded grimly. "That’s why I don’t sleep nights. We wouldn’t even get to keep an illusion of independence. We’d be crushed under Earth’s thumb, and hordes of marines with . . . alien weapons would show up to keep us from squirming. I agree with you: the ambushers are nuts. Since Earth wouldn’t want troublemakers around, the first order of business for the marines would be to track down and wipe out the gang behind the attacks."

"You believe there’s a single group involved?"

"Bet your life savings on it. The pattern is too consistent to be anything else."

Larker looked like a man who’d just fallen into an invisible chasm. "So what kind of stupid assholes would take such a risk? What could they hope to gain in the long run?"

John nodded. "Tell you what: I’ll give you my right eye for the answers. But we’ve jumped the rails here. Let’s deal with Sunstone’s problems first. A good friend of mine, Joe Li, says that the way to fix a broken bowl is to put the small pieces together just right. Maybe later we can talk more about the . . . entire bowl."

"Fine by me. Small pieces, eh? I like that."

"Look, Sheriff: I wouldn’t be here today if your letter hadn’t, um, suggested that Sunstone was where I needed to be. You write an effective message, sir. ‘Emergency in Sunstone. Outlaws. Come at once.’ But I could use a few details."

Outside, a particularly thick cloud shrouded the sun and the room filled with shadows. Larker shivered a little, trying not to gape at his visitor. The man’s amber eyes seemed, if anything, even more luminous than before. Slinger eyes. What could Davies see that he couldn’t?

John leaned closer to the sheriff purposefully. "So let’s get right down to it. Why should the Dust Devils risk our lives here rather than somewhere else?"

Larker had to clear his throat before he dared trust his voice. "Ever heard of Dirty Jake?"

John spread his hands. "Who hasn’t? Assuming we’re talking about the outlaw chief. As I recall, his gang started out by raiding folks down in Gloomy County in New Arizona."

"That’s what they say."

"But they vanished long before any marshals could get there. Same thing happened in Verboten, I think it was, and then again in Wild Springs and Mica and a dozen other places since. Odd way to operate if you ask me. Rob and run. Some folks just don’t know how to settle down long enough to milk a town dry. Don’t tell me he’s your problem?"

"He’s a problem all right. And I’ve got news for you: he’s learned to settle like a damn homesteader. He’s been nearby for over six months. Started raiding us three months back." Larker worked his mouth as if he tasted something sour. "You’re not the only one taking a chance, Davies. I waited so long to scream for help because Jake threatened reprisals if I called anyone in. Besides, I’d heard that if you grit your teeth and bear it, he’ll soon find some other town to screw. So I learned something the hard way: don’t believe everything you hear. But I’ll tell you two things I’m damn sure of. He’s not your typical gang-boss and he wasn’t always called Dirty Jake."

The slinger leaned back in his chair and looked across at Larker with an odd, wry expression. "Well, that last part is kind of a relief. What sort of person would name their kid ‘Dirty Jake’?"

As the sheriff considered his own words, his lips twitched. "True enough," he admitted. "Might even qualify as . . . bad parenting." An infectious grin suddenly spread across Larker’s wide face, wiping clean months of worry. John couldn’t help but smile back, but he noticed that as the sheriff’s grin faded, the worry was waiting.

"But Jake’s parents aren’t at fault," Larker continued, "His original name was evidently William, as in William Caine."

Suddenly, John was sitting bolt upright, his face a frozen mask. "What are you—"

"You recognize the name."

"Hell, the whole planet knows that name! Bill Caine is the man who—wait. You’re talking about some other William Caine, right?"

Larker studied John soberly. "What makes you so sure?"

"Knock it off. Grand Marshal Caine died fifteen years ago. People are always visiting his cenotaph, heaping flowers on it. Been there myself. Sometimes I—never mind. Tornado still talks about Caine’s Twelve Shooters from time to time and how good they were."

"Wasn’t Carter a Shooter himself for awhile?"

"For two years. Maybe that’s why what happened to them . . . still bothers him. And as I said, that was fifteen years ago. They were ambushed like the Bullets. Maybe I should count that as the beginning of our long troubles, but there was a three-year gap before the next ambush. The way I heard it, Caine was killed on the spot. The few remaining Shooters disbanded a few days later."

"Yep. That’s the story. But what if I tell you a story is all it was?"

A cold wind seemed to blow through the pit of John’s stomach. "Are you saying he wasn’t killed?"

"I have reason to believe that William Caine has been calling himself Dirty Jake for at least ten years now."

"That’s a damn lie!"

"I’m afraid not. And he’s put together the worst gang of murderers and thieves and rapists on the planet. They—"

"Hold everything! You’re claiming that the best of the old law-keepers turned bandit?" John’s voice was raspy from his effort not to shout. "I don’t believe you. And Lord above, you’d better be wrong. Caine was—he was supposed to be something very special. What the hell makes you think he’s this Jake?"

"One of my Indian buddies, Shining Wing Krishna, chief of the Paladin Anasazis, knew him from when they were schoolboys. That was out in Double New Mexico. Apparently, Caine is . . . deeply disguised, but Shining Wing is—well, he’s sharper than any sword on my wall."

"He’s wrong." John’s attempt to sound confident had backfired. Against his will and all reason, he was starting to believe.

Larker smiled grimly. "You or I could be mistaken, Marshal, but not Shining Wing. That man is a wonder. ‘And still they gazed, and still the wonder grew, that one small head could carry all he knew.’ "

John glared at the sheriff. "What is that crap?"

"I’ve—I’ve got this book of famous quotations from Earth." To John’s surprise, the sheriff was blushing. "Ever hear of Robert Burns?"

"Burns? I don’t think so."

"Forget it. Like I was saying, the Mudslingers—that’s Jake’s latest gang—moved near Aurado six months back. Aurado’s an easy twenty-minute ride southeast from here. I swear to you, Davies, they haven’t just been ‘milking’ us, as you put it. They’ve been bleeding us—all of Red Clay County, really—riding into our town twice a month and just taking whatever the hell they want. So far, they’ve only showed up after dark."

"Ah. That’s why your people feel safe enough to be out in the daytime?"

"Yeah. We’ve even stopped posting a day-sentry; everyone’s getting too damn tired to bother. But nobody feels any too safe. With someone like Jake, you never know."

"I also noticed there weren’t many women around."

Larker’s eyes darkened. "And we keep our boys at home. Girls and younger women, we had to send clear out to Spitting Gulch. When I said Dirty Jake had collected rapists, that wasn’t a goddamn figure of speech. Also, we’re beginning to run short on various necessities and it helps to cut the population until things improve."

"I see."

"There’s something else. My gut says that Jake is deliberately putting pressure on us, but not just to torture us. And I’ve had some evidence. Aside from the usual raids, he’s taken to showing up sometimes in the dead of night with at least twenty outlaws. They ride through town, shooting and cussing. Then they gallop away. I think he’s trying to scare us into doing something . . . specific."

"What?"

"God knows. Meanwhile we’re getting close to the bone here and it’s even worse for Shining Wing’s people, who are down to the marrow. The Anasazis have top-notch gardens, but no growth tanks. They depend on us for certain staples. And, like I said, we’re running short. But you haven’t heard the worst part yet."

"Go on," John said quietly, alarmed at the new tone in the sheriff’s voice.

"Somehow, Jake cut a deal with some asshole off-planet. Somebody managed to slip him a high-energy weapon. It’s a real antique, but no toy."

As John considered the implications, he unconsciously clasped his hands together under his chin as if in prayer. For an instant, he looked much older and, at the same time, like a scared little boy. Then he pulled himself together so fast, the sheriff could almost hear a snap.

Larker had a sudden insight and his respect for his guest skyrocketed. Here was a man, he thought, who wasn’t immune to fear; he hadn’t conquered it or trained himself to ignore it. Instead, he’d learned how to make fear work for him. He used it like a springboard, rode on it as if it were an invisible steed. Larker could only imagine what Silver Davies could be capable of.

John forced his body to unkink. All the tense muscles in the world weren’t going to solve this problem. "An energy weapon, you say. That’s . . . unfortunate, Sheriff. But maybe it explains something I noticed earlier. Shortly before I met you, I peeked into that saloon down the street. Those burn marks—"

"Weren’t made by toasting marshmallows," Larker confirmed.

"And that floor looked to be high-grade stone maple. It would take something special to char it. Is Dirty Jake suicidal? What’s going to happen to him when some proctor walks into the Saloon?"

Larker shrugged uneasily. "Don’t know for sure. But when have proctors shown interest in anything but people?"

"You have a point."

"Hell, from what I’ve seen, proctors wouldn’t know stone maple from paper pine. And even if they ask questions, who’d give ’em the time of day, let alone say something that might bring them here . . . in droves? You’ve heard the stories. They show up, take over your town, and treat everyone like slaves until they’re satisfied a problem is gone. And sometimes . . ."

John’s fists clenched. "Sometimes they’re never satisfied. Those aren’t just stories, Sheriff."

"That’s why coping with Jake beats dealing with Earth. Barely."

"But that floor still seems like a red flag to me. Wouldn’t the marks themselves imply an Earthly weapon to anyone from Earth?"

"Not necessarily. That particular weapon has been obsolete so long, most proctors probably never even heard of it. Hell, if they question Dana, she can always claim that one of her lit oil lamps broke. Someone who doesn’t know about stone maple might swallow that."

John’s eyes narrowed. "Sounds like you know precisely what we’re up against."

Larker nodded. "One of those portable plasma cannons they banned on Earth about a century ago."

"Lord! I don’t know squat about plasma cannons. Who the hell does?"

"As it happens, I do—maybe even squat and a half. Antique weapons are my hobby, Marshal," Larker waved his hand at the exotic wall-mounted arsenal.

John frowned. "Swords, I can understand, but how do you know about antique energy weapons?"

"Dumb luck. Got an Earth buddy, a starship pilot, who visits Paladin sometimes. He ferries proctors between Earth and Paladin and he—"

"A proctor pilot?" John said thoughtfully. "Not, by any chance, Captain Sir Gregory Tormuelson?"

"No. Who’s he?"

"Someone I once knew. Guess the galaxy isn’t that small. Sorry to interrupt; please continue."

"My friend’s name is Murphy Clemens. Visits me and the wife every few years and brings along magazine articles he thinks I’d find interesting. I’ve got a stack of articles this high about power weapons."

John nodded judiciously. "That’s good news! In fact, it may be crucial. I’ll definitely have questions for you later. But for now, I’ve heard enough." With a hint of formality, he pulled his marshal’s badge from a pocket and pinned it to his jacket. The badge was a seven-rayed platinum star with a gold overlay suggesting a whirlwind. "I’m officially on the job and I’ll send for my partners immediately."

"Yes! That’s what I wanted to hear."

"How many people does Jake have working for him, total?"

"Hard to say. Maybe forty." For the first time, Larker seemed slightly evasive.

God help us! John thought. "How many are top slingers?"

"Only six or seven."

"My Dust Devils only have five top slingers. Seven is more than plenty. Do you know any names?"

"Hell no! They haven’t exactly been sociable."

"Any distinctive features or unusual physical enhancements?"

"Mostly the usual. One outlaw has a neck you’ll have to see to believe."

"Extra long? Probably Harry the Neck. Damn. He used to be on the right side of the law, working for Hard Nose Rose. Any other oddballs I might recognize from their descriptions?"

"Not really. Well . . . one has kind of a beak. Another has skin like a lizard. I guess those enhancements aren’t all that rare."

"I’m afraid not. I’m just going to call in our key players for now: Lo Pan Li and his wife Lilly, Henri Jacques, and . . . the boss. My agency doesn’t have the personnel to fight forty soldiers, not if seven are top slingers. Lord, no. And trust me; you don’t want such a war happening anywhere near Sunstone. And that’s not even considering that cannon thing. So, we’ll have to win some other way . . ."

Larker couldn’t put his finger on what had just changed in John’s expression, but he was abruptly very glad the slinger was on his side. "Looking at you, Marshal," he said, "I’d bet you never learned the fine art of failing."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence. I think. At least you happen to be in luck in one way. The Dust Devils just finished up a job and my crew can be here within a week."

Larker’s eyes bulged. "Less than a week? That’s fantastic! Better than I’d dared hope for. But how the hell can you get word to them so fast? I understood you people were headquartered near Wyatt, and isn’t Wyatt—Buddha!—isn’t Wyatt over five hundred miles from here? They haven’t set up a new branch of the Teakettle when I wasn’t looking, have they?"

"Come with me, and I’ll show you how Dust Devils communicate these days. I brought something with me you may find—well, you’ll see. Why spoil the surprise?"

Outside, the town drunk was gone, but amazingly, the sun was shining again and even beginning to pull tentacles of manure-scented fog up from the sodden street. The effect was a bit spooky. But when the townspeople saw John’s badge and saw him accompanied amicably by their sheriff, they showed an entirely different face to the stranger. Everywhere he looked, people were smiling at him or waving a friendly greeting. Rekindled hope burns the brightest. As the pair walked along, only Dana Rider gazed at John in precisely the same calm, level way she had before.

"Who’s the blond lady?" John asked quietly when they were out of earshot. He wasn’t pleased with himself for managing to notice that she wasn’t wearing a wedding ring.

"Dana? There’s a woman with jingshen, eh?"

"Jingshen?"

"Pinyin Chinese word for spirit. Vivacity. And she’s not even seeing anyone right now," the sheriff added slyly. "Let me tell you, Dana’s something special. She owns the saloon—did all the cabinetry herself!—and has somehow managed to keep it going despite everything Dirty Jake has done to put her out of business."

John fought an urge to glance back over his shoulder. "What has he done?"

"For starters: stolen every damn bottle of sake, wine, rum, vodka, and tequila in her inventory for his private collection. She thought about arguing at first, but he just fired that weapon of his at the floor for a split-second and she changed her mind pronto. He allows her to keep beer and cheap whiskey around for his own men, when they get a sudden whim to ride in and drive away her paying customers. How she’s kept herself out of the clutches of those sick bastards, I’ll—"

"Don’t look now, Sheriff," John said. "But speaking of sick bastards . . ."

With a boisterous, rapid-fire panting, a bizarre steed was galloping down the street with an equally bizarre rider. The pair left a visible wake in the ground-clinging mist and a roll of distant thunder accompanied their arrival like a fanfare.

The steed had most likely started out as Crocuta crocuta, a spotted hyena, but genetic alterations had turned it into something huge and repellent. It was moose-sized and its legs had been grotesquely thickened to support so much weight. Gallons of clear drool evidently used to keep the beast cool poured off its wide tongue, adding another layer of unpleasantness to the street.

The rider was worse than his steed. Almost eight feet tall and thin as a split rail, the strange slinger looked as if he’d been dead for a week but was too mean to lie down. John was pale—a result of genetically engineered anti-UV enhancements—but this man was white. Even his hair was white: the bright, opaque blankness of a sheet of clean paper. His face wasn’t wrinkled so much as creased; deep lines were gouged into his cheeks, creases bracketed his mouth and made exclamation marks between his heavy white eyebrows. He exuded a chill you could feel from a mile away.

He wore only one pistol, custom-built with an extra-long barrel and polished bone grips. But he had a double-barreled, double-triggered shotgun on his back, held in a quick-release harness.

The ghoulish rider halted his steed with a uniquely brutal technique: smashing it near the top of its thick neck with an oversized fist. The smack was loud enough to make John wince. While the animal staggered, its owner leaped off near a red-painted hitching rail labeled "Carnivora" and tugged the beast closer to the rail by brute force. Then he tied the reins with a locking knot.

The hyena stopped panting just long enough to slurp up half the contents of the nearby water trough in seconds. Since meat spoils even on Paladin, the food bin was empty. The man twisted a red, metal flag into an upright position, thus demanding fresh fodder.

Without warning, the monster’s head shot up from the water trough, swung around with incredible speed. Droplets flew everywhere. The beast lunged toward its owner, gaping mouth revealing yellow, dagger-like fangs.

The man spun around and cuffed his steed across the lower jaw with a pallid hand longer than the sheriff’s forearm. The slap sounded like an explosion. The animal yelped piercingly, shook its head a few times, and grew docile.

Then the deadly-looking slinger stiffened, gradually turning like a magnetized human needle until he was facing John across the street.

Shark-like eyes with all the warmth and color of old, dirty ice stared into John’s amber eyes. The two slingers stood as still as lead statues.

Slowly, slowly, the newcomer nodded his head in an almost respectful gesture and turned away. Then he glanced about and began walking unhurriedly up the sidewalk, keeping to his side of the street. People practically dove out of his way. Finally, he stepped through the doorway of Sunstone’s tallest building, which was opposite the saloon. The word "Hotel" was painted over the door in chipped saffron and turquoise letters.

For a long moment, the only sound in the street was the panting of the giant hyena. Bystanders looked at each other, stunned.

"You know that man?" the sheriff finally asked, his voice distinctly shaky.

"Let’s say I’ve run into him from time to time. They call him Hangman. I can’t tell you how glad I am you don’t recognize him. I was afraid you were about to say that he’s working for Dirty Jake. Hangman would make a bad enemy."

"I believe it."

"Far as I know, he’s never been an outlaw. By the way, better keep your voice way down; as soon as that monster of his catches its breath, Hangman will be able to hear you blink."

"From inside the hotel?"

"With all those open windows? Absolutely."

"Buddha! But isn’t he rather . . . big to be a slinger? I understood that for real speed, you don’t want nerve signals to have to travel too far, not even with the extra nerve fibers that—"

"Not all slingers are built for pure speed, Sheriff. Sometimes it’s handy to have someone around who can tear down walls or uproot trees with their bare hands. My Dust Devils have two fellows like that. One of them, Joe Li, is—well, think this guy looks tough? Wait ’till you meet Joe."

"Joe Li? The one who said ‘put the pieces together just right’?"

"The same."

"He isn’t—is he the one called ‘China Joe’?"

"Not by his friends, but that’s him. Probably the only slinger on Paladin who won’t wear a gun."

"Tornado Carter sure has some interesting employees. So Hangman was designed for strength?"

"Partly. He’s something of a mélange. He’s faster than you might think and with those long arms and legs, he’s got leverage. And his skin is thick, like leather armor. He’s hard to hurt; I’ve seen people try."

"Modifications like that don’t come cheap. What’s it all for?"

"Talk quieter, Sheriff. I’m serious: Hangman can out-hear a hound. His parents were both district judges down in Sparks, Dark Nevada. They expected him to be a judge too someday and thought it would be . . . handy if he could tell when someone was lying just by listening hard. And dandy to be able to perform his own executions. He didn’t take to the idea of wearing a robe, but the other part suited him just fine.

"He’s a charmer—has a way with animals, don’t you think?" John suddenly realized that now he was the one talking too loud; he hated to see living creatures of any kind abused. He took a breath and continued far more quietly. "Once I saw him hold two large men up in the air, one per arm, and choke them both to death. Last I heard he was Dakota Bill’s official executioner. I suppose he was one of the few Bullets who escaped that ambush I mentioned."

"He’s a marshal?"

"Not technically. But he’s always worked with marshals."

"Well, lawman or not, I hope to God he’s just passing through."

"I’ll buy a pound of that hope! Better spread the word around, Sheriff: it isn’t a good idea to bother Hangman and a worse idea to touch him. Tell the shopkeepers: if he buys something from you, always put the change on the counter."

"I’ll spread the word. And thanks. Now, what was it you wanted to show me?"

Chapter 4

"This is Houston," John announced with unabashed pride. "But he isn’t the surprise I promised."

"Surprising enough, Marshal! Don’t believe I’ve seen a finer-looking zebra."

"Me neither, but some folks claim his legs are too long."

Larker shrugged amiably. "‘There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion.’ That’s according to a Mr. Francis Bacon."

John raised his eyebrows at his companion, but the sheriff was busy admiring Houston.

"I particularly like," Larker commented, "how the designer handled the stripes. I’ve been around fancy ungulates before—hell, my Pegasus is a damn fine antelope herself—but your fellow takes the grand prize. Plains zebra stock?"

John was fetching a saddlebag from the courtesy bin where he’d stored it. "Grévy’s. Equus grevyi." Houston made a sound halfway between a high wheezing bray and a whinny.

"Who did the modeling?"

"Tornado has the best gene-jockey on the planet—the best outside of Buildem anyway. Dr. Benton Winfrey. Ben also produced what I’m about to show you. Hold on to your eyeballs!"

John opened the saddlebag, reached into an inner pocket, and withdrew two leather boxes. Inside the larger box, something was wrapped in layers of soft felt. John carefully pulled the fabric away, revealing a stiff gray creature about nine inches long.

"By God!" the sheriff barked, leaning over to stare. "What is it?

"A bird."

"Really?"

"More or less. Ben named him Blithe Spirit."

"Never thought birds could survive on Paladin any more than purebred horses! Or is that just a myth?"

"No myth—more like a sad history lesson. A hundred ten years ago, the first colonists brought along frozen bird embryos—mostly chicken embryos, I understand."

"Why the hell chickens?"

"For eggs . . . and meat. Growth-vats weren’t perfected yet. They used to slaughter animals for food and leather, you know."

Larker shuddered. "Right. Read about that in school. Hard to believe."

"A hundred years from now, some of the things we’re doing might be hard to believe. But as I was about to say, neither chickens nor songbirds thrived."

"Brittle bone syndrome?"

"No. Birds and horses have completely different problems here. Turns out that certain Paladin molds make themselves at home in avian lungs."

Larker gently touched the unmoving animal with a forefinger. "Why are birds singled out?"

John shrugged. "Maybe it’s their fast respiration rate. But mold infection was always fatal. Since nobody could find a cure, for a century no one has bothered importing any member of class Aves."

"Until now."

"I was looking for a way to send messages faster than using Equus Express or the Iron Teakettle and started wondering about winged messengers. So I asked Ben Winfrey to find some way around the mold problem. As usual, he said it was impossible and went around for two days mumbling in his beard and complaining about my crazy ideas. On the third day, he sent away to Earth for genetic materials and began reorganizing his lab. You’re looking at the result of six years’ hard work. Of course, speaking technically, this little guy isn’t entirely a bird."

"What else is it? And it feels so cold. Is it alive?"

"Let’s hope so. Blithe Spirit is what the good Doctor calls a ‘Homing Swift.’ It has the nesting instincts and abilities of a homing pigeon, but—"

"What’s a pigeon?"

Animals were important on Paladin; vital for transportation, farming, and biological research. Any third-grader could recite the full Latin name for a dozen types of specialized antelopes, camels, canines, murines, felines . . .

But few Paladin natives knew the difference between a parrot and a peacock. Most people were only interested in creatures they were likely to encounter. John, in contrast, had studied dinosaurs.

"A pigeon’s a type of dove, Sheriff."

Larker nodded wisely. "Like on the world flag."

"Just so. Doves are supposed to symbolize peace, Lord knows why. Anyway, pigeons can be trained to return home from great distances."

"Can they?" said Larker dubiously.

"Blithe Spirit has the pigeon homing instinct, yet the shape, airspeed, and control of a fast-flying bird called a ‘swift.’ But some of its genes are reptilian; that’s what solved the fungus problem. Ben has a strange sense of humor: the reptile he used is a terrestrial prairie lizard, Sceloporus undulatus. Also known as a ‘swift.’ Kind of a . . . biological pun."

"Hilarious."

"Anyway, once we had a viable animal, we had to figure out how to travel with flying pets. Cages are too bulky. And little birds are delicate. So, Ben came up with this suspended animation trick."

"Ah! I see."

"So let’s awaken our little helper, shall we?"

The smaller box contained a hypodermic syringe filled with pink fluid. With the utmost care, John injected the bird and placed it tenderly on the felt padding.

"While we’re waiting, I’ll get the note ready."

John pulled a thin strip of waxy paper from a pocket and then removed his badge. The strip was marked with hundreds of tiny squares divided into columns. While Larker watched curiously, John used the badge’s pin to make holes in specific squares following a substitution cipher he’d invented.

Today was Monday, which he indicated by stabbing a specific square at one end of the paper. Now he was ready to write the text. The first letter he wanted to convey was "C." Since "Monday" has six letters, he counted six letters from "C" in the alphabet and punched the "I" square. "O" was to be next. He counted seven letters from "O" (the number of letters in "Tuesday") and marked the "V" square in the next column. He continued, using the standard weekdays in order and coming back around the circle to "A" when necessary.

Complete, the translated message read simply, "Come at once. Top four only."

John was proud of this easy-to-remember but hard-to-crack code. He found himself wishing he could explain it to the sheriff, who was obviously forcing himself not to ask questions.

Don’t be a damn fool! John told himself.

He tied the paper around one of the bird’s legs and then lifted the creature, holding it in his hands until it began to stir. He could feel its body temperature rising. Suddenly, the little gray chest began moving, slowly at first, then rapidly accelerating; the heartbeat strengthened, speeding up to over 500 times a minute. Seconds later, Blithe Spirit was standing up in his palm, looking around curiously with tiny, jerky head movements.

"Fly true," John said quietly, stroking his little ally softly on its feathered back. He lifted his arm high, giving his hand a small shake. The bird rose, circled twice over the slinger’s head and shot northeast like an arrow. The sheriff and several other townspeople who’d been watching gasped. Several crossed themselves or made the sign of the Eightfold Path. The sight of an animal defying gravity seemed supernatural.

"Where’s it off to?" Larker wondered.

John shook his head in disbelief. "Perhaps I didn’t explain clearly enough. After they’re trained, you can take homing pigeons hundreds of miles away—thousands even—and they always find their way home."

"Is that a fact?"

John watched his swift disappear in the gray distance and sighed as the sky darkened abruptly. "I’ll need a dry place to stable Houston and a place to stable myself."

Larker was overjoyed. "Fantastic! I assumed you’d be leaving us to go fetch your team. Wait!" He banged his forehead with his palm. "Guess I’m extra slow today, but I finally get it: the bird is going to do the fetching. Hell of an idea! So you’re planning on hanging around until they show?"

"That’s the plan."

"Great! Then you’re staying with me and the wife! No, don’t argue; I won’t listen. You deserve better than the Sunstone Hotel. Hell, the fleas there deserve better! Did you wonder why all those windows are kept open? It’s the smell."

"I noticed a futon in your office. . . ?"

"That’s for my chief deputy, Gerry Banks. He sleeps there most nights, in case someone has a bad dream or something. Frankly, I don’t know how he manages to relax on that thing. That mattress is about as comfy as cold granite; put it out of your mind."

"And Houston?"

"My brother, Chin, will take good care of him for you. Unhitch him and we’ll get you two squared away. I live a half-mile from here, and Chin lives right next door. And don’t you worry about paying for the parking space or the fodder. The town will cover everything. All right?"

"Very much so. I appreciate your hospitality."

"Are you kidding? You’re getting the short end of this bargain."

"When I’m settled, is there anything to drink in Sunstone, Sheriff? Besides water, I mean. I’m thirsty, but after all these weeks of rain, I don’t want to pick up a glass and find water in it."

Larker chuckled. "We’ll head over to the saloon whenever you want. I bet Dana will have something that isn’t clear, but is wet enough."

"Good. I wanted to get a closer look at those scorch marks, anyway." Or was it, he wondered uncomfortably, that he just wanted an excuse to see the pretty, blond lady again?

Chapter 5

As John stepped through the swinging doors, he glanced quickly around the saloon. He lowered his eyes toward the zigzag burns. Someone had done some exploratory scraping, but the damage evidently went deep.

Six-guns versus plasma cannon, he thought grimly. Even I wouldn’t bet a tin dime on me.

"If you like those burns," Larker said, "I can show you another set at the bakery. Our Jake gets off on scaring folks."

John didn’t reply. The marks seemed to sop up his courage like charcoal sponges, so he turned his attention back to the room. He was unhappy to see that the main windows were covered on the inside as well as the outside; someone was expecting internal and external trouble.

The saloon was spacious. A u-shaped bar stood confidently in the center, enclosing a narrow, open kitchen holding an eight-burner stove with an oven and gas salamander, a wood-fired smoker, a huge white-enameled refrigerator, and a ceiling-mounted wooden rack with pots, pans, and cooking implements hanging from it jauntily. An immense polished copper hood loomed above the stove and smoker, and a round stovepipe ascended from the hood to an overhead vent. The sink was small; dishes were obviously washed elsewhere.

John noted, belatedly, a boot-scraper near the entrance and a scrap of carpet for foot wiping, but the floor had plenty of muddy footprints that weren’t his. A puddle had collected beneath the stand where several coats and hats were hung. Aside from the floor, the place was spotlessly clean, its air fragrant with smells of beans, onions, hot peppers, curry, and garlic. Several large pots simmered temptingly on the stove, and the cook was just pulling out a tray of freshly baked bagels from the oven.

"Hungry, Marshal?"

"Famished, Sheriff. I hadn’t realized until now."

"‘Our lives are not in the lap of the gods, but in the lap of our cooks.’"

"And who said that?" John asked, smiling.

"Lin Yutang."

Business wasn’t booming, but it wasn’t dead. The sad-faced bartender was in place, along with a female cook who looked pureblooded Chinese. Two old men were seated next to each other at the bar on padded wooden stools, chatting loudly with the bartender. A few stools down from them, a harried looking woman with fading brown hair and a black medical bag was hunched over a cup of black coffee.

John kept his eyes moving as he and Larker dealt with their own coats and hats; he couldn’t spot the saloon’s owner and was irked at himself for feeling disappointed. He turned his attention to a group of four Indians huddled in quiet conversation at a corner table. Two wore white turbans and artificial feathers; the other two also had imitation feathers, but these were hanging from yarmulkes: Jewish skullcaps.

For observational purposes, their table was the most strategic spot in the room. The person seated at the most strategic chair at the table was extraordinary. He was dark-skinned and thin, his turban sported a large blue topaz, and he seemed to dominate the scene through sheer presence.

John tried to eavesdrop on the Indians while trying not to stare at the most interesting one, but the old men at the bar were too loud and the Hindu was too vivid to ignore.

Larker assessed the direction of John’s gaze. "Hey! There’s my friend I was telling you about, the one with the blue rock stuck in his towel. That’s Shining Wing Krishna—he’s somebody you’ll want to meet."

Shining Wing had sharply chiseled features, a nose like a bracket, salt-and-pepper hair heavy on the pepper, and acute, sparkling black eyes. If William Caine had really been one of his school chums, he had to be in his middle sixties. He didn’t look it. John felt wary of the man. If the Indian were even half as intelligent as he appeared, John would have to watch what he said around him very carefully. It wouldn’t do to let the lion out of the kennel prematurely. . . .

For the moment, the Indians appeared engrossed in their discussion. With an almost physical wrench, John managed to snatch his attention away from the chief. He resumed studying the room while waiting patiently for the bartender to finish serving the old men some bowls of thick soup with warmed tortillas wrapped in a hot towel.

The Sunstone Saloon and Grill, the slinger decided, was pleasant and quite distinctive. It even had unexpected touches of elegance. A beautifully carved upright piano on a long wooden stage graced one wall and the barstools and chairs were bentwood copies of Art Nouveau designs. An ornate series of iron pipes and gears on the ceiling suggested the building had once been a mill or shop, probably with a nearby stream and waterwheel supplying direct mechanical power. Bare, less faded places appeared where pipes had been removed. The remaining ones were now used to hang oil lamps equipped with polished reflectors. Also hanging from the ceiling were some peculiar decorations.

Normally, saloons went for those traditional oversized paintings of naked ladies lying on couches in improbably seductive positions. Here, the adornments were small rectangular flags: colorful embroideries depicting various Earth-style musical instruments done on black or white cloth. Few of these instruments were available on Paladin. In John’s eyes, many had an alien look. He wondered if the attractive saloon owner he was so curious about might not be a tad eccentric.

There was one other decoration. On the opposite wall to the stage, someone skillful had painted a mural-sized map of Tenderfoot Continent detailing a vast area stretching from the Rio Poco, two hundred miles from the western coast, to the Fang Peninsula, jutting three hundred miles into the Acidic Ocean in the east. The mighty Hopalong River divided the map into nearly equal halves. Neatly centered in the western half, the town of Sunstone, in the stateless territory of Red Clay County, was marked with a bright orange dot. A few other towns and cities were similarly branded, but Buildem alone sported a red dot. There seemed to be no pattern or purpose to these markings.

Another location was indicated in a very different fashion: someone had managed to stick an ordinary table-fork tines-deep into the very end of the Fang. Since the wall was exceedingly solid maple, the violence and strength implied by the fork was appalling. John himself was unnaturally powerful, but knew that he wasn’t capable of such a feat. And why hadn’t the damn thing been pried out? He stared at the somewhat twisted utensil and found it so disconcerting, it took him a minute to remember the large town that had once occupied the punctured spot on the map: Strake.

Sixteen years ago, that town had been destroyed by a horrendous tidal wave. And no one had ever dared build so close to the Acidic sea again. . . .

Flags with musical instruments, random dots on a map, a flatware testament to power and passion, and one other mystery: John couldn’t identify an annoying sound that seemed to be coming from the rear wall. This was a continual rumble punctuated by a frequent, periodic squeak.

"Nice to see you, Sheriff," declared the bartender in a paradoxically warm and cheery voice, which was surprisingly high-pitched and held a trace of a British accent—a rarity on Paladin. "What can I get you two gents?" John suddenly remembered his appetite.

"Gil," said Larker, trying to sound nonchalant, "I’d like you to meet someone who’s come some distance to help us. Marshal, this here is Gilbert Kleib. Gil, meet . . . Private Marshal Silver Davies."

The cook, the old men, and all four Indians fell dead silent and gazed over at John as if he were an uncertain miracle. Only the doctor kept sipping her coffee as if living legends were a dime a dozen this afternoon.

The sheriff wasn’t done. "Marshal Davies works for Tornado Carter and the town has hired Carter’s Dust Devils to deal with our . . . difficulty." Then in an undertone, he continued for John’s private benefit, "That woman with the coffee and grumpy face is Dr. Barbara Gray. She’s not as mean as she looks, just tired. We’ll say hello later. Ling Shiliu is the cook—that’s Chinese style: Shiliu is her first name. The elderly gent with the dark green vest is Jimmy Gene Fong and his bald friend is Handy Ernie. Don’t be taken in by that ‘handy’! Far as I know, Ernie hasn’t been useful for at least thirty years."

Gil, the bartender, politely waited for the sheriff to stop whispering before he said brightly, "This is quite an honor, Marshal!" His expression remained as lugubrious as ever; it seemed to be his only one. But John thought he saw a faint glint of amusement in the man’s eyes.

"The honor is mine, Mr. Kleib. Anything on the menu you’d care to recommend?"

"Ah. That’s a tough one. Our Mrs. Ling has managed not to burn today’s chili too badly." The cook nodded as if agreeing, then abruptly whirled around and snapped a towel alarmingly close to Gil’s right ear. The bartender didn’t flinch.

"Chili it is," John declared. "Smells wonderful."

"Goat cheese, chopped jalapeños, or sour cream, sir?"

"The first two, please."

"And for you, Sheriff?"

"All three, plus a side of fried tortillas and don’t you skimp on the cheese like you always do. And I’ll take a beer. I’d offer you a beer too, Marshal, but I understand most top slingers don’t touch alcohol?"

"I’ve been known to make exceptions. But right now, I’ve got a craving for root beer if there is any."

The bartender certainly didn’t smile, but his lips might have twitched. "Best in the territory, Marshal."

"Where’s Dana?" Larker asked as Kleib began filling a large mug with a stout-like, non-alcoholic brew.

"In her office, Chou. Should I fetch?"

"Maybe later, if she doesn’t come out on her own."

The food was wonderfully heartening, with undertones of Chinese, Mexican, and Cajun spices. The root beer was tangy and just bitter enough. John could feel new energy spreading warmly throughout his body and realized, not for the first time, that he needed to pay more attention to physical needs. He couldn’t afford to let himself get so depleted.

With a ripping sizzle, a lightning-bolt struck close enough to make the earsplitting thunderclap virtually instantaneous. The doctor spilled the dregs of her coffee on the bar; the cook muttered "damn shan dian."

John blinked to clear his vision, and shook his head to clear his thinking. Five circles of blue brightness had appeared mysteriously on the stage for an instant like Buildem spotlights. He glanced up toward the top of the street-side wall. Sure enough, five of those salvaged spaceship windows had been installed inconspicuously below the soffits.

"They say every five seconds between flash and crash is a mile," spoke a precise and unfamiliar voice. "Therefore, that last boomer was sitting squarely atop my left ear. Namiste, Marshal. They call me Shining Wing. Care to sit with me and my friends after your meal?"

John was dismayed for several reasons. He, like many slingers, was artificially endowed with "muffs": pseudo-aratenoid muscles capable of closing off his ear-canals. These eliminated the need for external hearing protection while using firearms. But the thunder had been unexpected and in the microsecond it had taken for the muffs to clench, his eardrum must have taken a beating; he hadn’t heard the Indian approaching from behind while he’d had his head turned. Only now was he becoming aware of the thick splattering of new, heavy rain.

Here was a case where strength became weakness. He wasn’t in the same class as Hangman, but he trusted his ears—apparently too much.

Another cause for dismay was seeing Shining Wing at close range. John’s first impression that the man was uncannily perceptive was strongly reinforced. Those black eyes seemed to absorb every tiny detail.

Talking to the chief would be risky, but how could he gracefully refuse? Besides, there was a chance he might learn something relevant about Dirty Jake. "It would be an honor to sit with you," John replied.

He barely tasted the rest of his chili.

On any other world, the combination of people at the round table in the corner might have seemed unusual—two Hindu "Indians," two Jewish "Indians." Here, it was commonplace.

When the theme planet Paladin had been set up, Earth’s social physicists had installed checks and balances to keep the project controlled. If biological science attained new heights here, Earth wanted it to blossom within a context likely to minimize the risk of abuse. Social calculations led to the idea of a dual, interdependent culture: an idealized recreation of the American frontier’s Old West. The "cowboy" aspect would encourage individualism and independence; the "Indian" aspect would encourage social responsibility and respect for the environment.

Finding the right kind of people to play cowboy had been easy; Earth was uncomfortably crowded. But the "Indians" were another story. By the twenty-second century, most actual Native Americans had been absorbed into mainstream society. Those few Native Americans who maintained the old ways refused to emigrate. After so many centuries of keeping faith and honoring the Earth, they couldn’t bear to leave it.

So, the planners searched for another ethnic group with a similar cultural and philosophical valence. Finally, they resorted to a combination of two groups: Hindu yogis for their respect for life and holistic viewpoint, and Israeli Jews for their long acceptance of kibbutz living. Thus, the Hindu-Jewish tribes of Paladin were formed.

Seeing the two lawmen approach, Chief Shining Wing immediately stood. With a graceful arm-wave, he offered John his chair: the supreme tactical spot in the room. Then he moved away before the marshal could refuse and snagged two more seats from an unoccupied table, one for the sheriff. This was odd, because there was already an empty chair at his table. Some tribes, John remembered, always leave a spare seat in case the Jewish prophet Elijah shows up with an appetite.

Here, near the back wall, the background rumble and squeak was much louder.

"We all know our good friend Chou," Shining Wing announced, smiling warmly at Larker before turning to the slinger. "Marshal Davies, I’d like you to meet Straight Arrow Meyer on your right. To his right is Rabbi David Grinning Bear, and the fellow with the sweet face and the shpilkes to your left is none other than Hinanetaa Still Waters Shankar." Shankar had been drumming his fingernails on the table, but he stopped and frowned at his nervous hand as if he couldn’t imagine how the unruly thing had attached itself to his wrist.

None of the Indians seemed to be looking at each other, but the two turbaned heads and two with skullcaps abruptly bowed Hindu-style in perfect unison. "Shalom and namiste," said David Grinning Bear, a stocky fellow with a short black beard heavily streaked with gray. "We are the four male Pillars of the Paladin Anasazi Council." His relaxed manner and good-natured voice warmed the required formality of the greeting. "Our female counterparts no longer dare move openly in this county—an offensive constraint!—so we are forced to speak for the entire tribe."

John strove to match the Indians’ courtesy. "Peace. Honored to meet you all. I’m very sorry about your circumstances and hope to change things around soon."

Shining Wing held up a brown hand in an ancient Hindu blessing. "Well spoken! We just wanted to officially thank you for coming here, Marshal, and to extend our tribe’s best welcome to you anytime you care to visit the New Nokai Dome area. Follow the trail northwest from Sunstone and aim for the hills. If there’s anything we can do to assist you, anything at all, please let us know."

"Thank you. In fact, I can already use your help. Would you mind answering a few questions, Chief?"

"I adore questions."

John lowered his voice. "Sheriff Larker tells me you identified Dirty Jake as William Caine, the famous lawman."

"I only knew Bill as a youth, but that’s right."

"Are you sure?"

"I strive to never be sure of anything."

Amen to that, brother! John thought. "Fair enough. How would you rate your . . . level of surety?"

Shining Wing beamed as if the marshal had said something wonderful. "Somewhere between my conviction that the sun will rise tomorrow and my suspicion that you are carrying an extra weapon holstered at the small of your back. After all, such a subtle lump could be almost anything."

John regarded the Indian thoughtfully. There was indeed a weapon hiding beneath his jacket, a very unusual gun, but the system had been designed to be inconspicuous.

"Does Caine know that you know who he is?"

"Hard to say. But I managed not to greet him by name."

"Very sensible. I wonder if he recognized you?"

"Probably."

"Again according to the sheriff: you went to school with him?"

"Calling it a school is an act of mercy. Crockett Territorial High at the edge of the Sonora Refrain. My alma mater! An astonishing educational environment. Our school colors? Two shades of dull brown!"

The corners of John’s lips lifted involuntarily. "I know that area, um, somewhat. The Paladin Hopi live in that part of the Refrain, don’t they?"

"Your knowledge is impeccable. I was born among the Hopi."

John had seen that coming, but he found it hard to believe. This Hindu-Indian had certainly adapted to his new tribe. He didn’t talk like a Hopi or dress like one. He didn’t even sit like one. This wasn’t simply a matter of posture. The Indians of the Refrain (Paladin Hopi, Zuni, and Dineh) never faced each other while conversing; watching a person while they were speaking was considered a sign of mistrust. Shining Wing’s eyes twinkled as if he were enjoying John’s private thoughts. It was hard not to like this remarkable man.

"If you don’t mind a personal question, Chief: did you choose to leave the Hopi or was it a matter of tribal law?"

"Both. I loved my natal tribe dearly, but since I had an older male sibling, Law required that I find another tribe. But, as I expect you know, Hopi aren’t slaves to law; if my heart had insisted I stay, something could have been arranged."

Straight Arrow Meyer, who was small and a bit pudgy, sniffed disapprovingly. "Which would’ve been wrong! The chief and I argue about such things at least once a day, Marshal. In my opinion, certain tribes can be dangerously irresponsible. The law exists to insure genetic diversity."

Grinning Bear and Hinanetaa Shankar both rolled their eyes. Apparently, the subject had worn out its welcome with them. But Shining Wing’s response was to pat Meyer’s hand with great affection.

John had once worked closely with some Hopi and had learned to appreciate their tribal philosophy of moderation and balance. "I know there’s a solid reason for your law, but I’m not sure any law should be applied blindly."

Straight Arrow leaned forward eagerly, but the chief beat him to the punch. "I agree. But is tribal law any worse than your slinger code? What could be harsher than the way you are required to consent to any dueling challenge from another slinger, even if you know you will lose?"

The comparison wasn’t completely fair. A crucial part of the long and difficult training that brought slingers to their full potential was conditioning the trainees to avoid unnecessary duels. But the chief was still talking. . . .

"In my case, Marshal, I was lucky. While I hated to leave my family and friends, there were compensations. What an adventure to begin an entirely new life just as you enter adulthood!"

John wanted to learn more about Shining Wing and his tribe-mates, but there were concerns of far greater relevance.

"Let’s get back to William Caine. What was he like when you knew him?"

"Old for his years. Steadfast. Serious. Somewhat joyless. And he was the quickest, strongest person I have ever met. I understand his parents spent a fortune on his enhancements and he was something of . . . an experiment."

One of the doors at the rear of the saloon opened and Dana Rider emerged. She immediately caught the sheriff’s eye.

"Excuse me, friends," Larker said, standing up. "Looks like Dana wants a word."

"Feel free, Chou-chou," David Grinning Bear offered with a flicking motion of his fingers. And kindly bring me some dessert when you return."

Larker regarded the bearded man sadly and leaned over the table. "We’re going to have to cut you off, Rabbi, at one dessert today. These chairs can only take so much abuse."

The sheriff joined Dana and the two walked slowly together toward the bar. John would have dearly loved to catch that conversation, but he didn’t dare remove his attention from the formidable man across from him.

"Sheriff Larker," he said, "says that Dirty Jake has collected quite a crew."

Shining Wing nodded. "Chou is a wise fellow. As he probably mentioned, Caine has dubbed his outlaws ‘Mudslingers.’ "

"He did. Do you have a clear idea of how big this gang is?" John wanted a second opinion.

"As of last count, Caine has collected six top slingers and thirty-five partially enhanced outlaws."

"Last count?"

"The Mudslingers keep gathering more mud, and they seem to be gathering it faster lately."

Damn! John thought. No wonder Larker had been so cagey with his answer; he didn’t want to scare me off.

"Are you saying Jake doesn’t have any naturals on his payroll?"

"He has a support staff. Cooks and veterinarians. Maintenance people. Most of those are just plain folks like me."

John had seldom met anyone less plain than Shining Wing. "How are you managing to get such detailed information?"

Shining Wing exchanged glances with his comrades. John suddenly remembered the rumors about tribes that had adapted certain Yogic practices for purposes that were, perhaps, not entirely spiritual. These tribes were reputed to have secretly developed ninja-like spies known as Indian Scouts, who could somehow make themselves invisible, or at least unnoticeable.

Hinanetaa Shankar tapped on the table with a fingernail, not out of nervousness this time, but to attract John’s attention. A tiny spark in his otherwise mild eyes implied that he understood the thrust of John’s thoughts. In a quiet, silken voice he said, "There might be four Indians at this table. Then again, there might be five."

John squinted involuntarily at the empty chair and felt goose bumps rising. The idea that someone could be seated right there with John unable to see . . .

All four tribesmen burst out laughing and John’s smiled sheepishly. "All right, you’ve got your methods, whatever they are. I suppose what I’d like to know more than anything, Chief, is how a man like Bill Caine could become corrupt. It seems inconceivable."

"So. You knew him yourself, then?"

This was a risky topic, and John answered candidly but incompletely. "Yes. At the time, I thought he was the finest law officer I’d ever met."

"From the young man I knew and the man you describe, I don’t think he could become corrupt, Marshal. I suspect he had his reasons for becoming Dirty Jake. That doesn’t mean that any of us would agree with those reasons."

"I should think not. Thank you, Chief. It was a real pleasure meeting you and your tribemates. I’d like to keep asking questions, but for now, I’m out of ammunition. Perhaps I’ll get a chance to go visit you."

"Anytime, Marshal. And remember, if you ever need help, I’m easy to find and I visit Sunstone often."

John bowed Hindu-style to the four Indians as he arose and they grinned and responded by waving goodbye, cowboy-style. John was somewhat alarmed to find himself chuckling as he walked off. Where was his vital detachment?

He was halfway back to his original table where Larker and Dana were now seated when two more lightning bolts lashed the sky, one after the other. The flashes were unusually intense. While thunder was still rolling heavily, something nudged the saloon doors. It wasn’t a stray gust. When the sky lit up for a third time two heartbeats later, a tall spectral figure, outlined in blue electric fury, was standing between the saloon doors, holding them wide open.

Cold fear swarmed up the marshal’s back; the specter had white blankness where a face should have been . . .

Then common sense kicked in and John realized that Hangman was standing in the doorway—no one else in town was likely to be so tall—and for some reason he was standing backwards in the doorway, facing the street. A new, more rational wave of alarm coursed through John’s body. Was something happening outside he should know about?

If so, it evidently wasn’t urgent. Hangman let both doors swing closed and spun around to face his fellow slinger.

The bartender had been in the process of sliding a beer along the counter to Handy Ernie but surprise and fright spoiled his aim. Without hurrying and without taking his eyes off Hangman, John strolled over and caught the drink before it wound up on the floor.

With a tiny head motion and a flicker of pale eyes, the tall slinger said, "We need to talk" without uttering a word. John reluctantly agreed by nodding. Then Hangman seemed to lose interest in the silent discussion. He took one look around the room, and stalked over to the table occupied by the Anasazi.

He said nothing and seemingly paid no more attention to the four men then he would have paid to four raindrops. Nevertheless, Shining Wing got the message. He and his companions stood and made a dignified exodus to the doorway. As the chief passed through, he gave John a wink and stopped for a moment to whisper something into Larker’s ear. The Indians stepped out into the storm and half the warmth in the saloon seemed to go with them.

Doctor Barbara Gray glared at Hangman and then glared at the marshal as if one slinger was bad, but two rendered a room unbearable. She grabbed her bag and hurried out into the rain after the Indians.

John was more than a little intimidated by Shining Wing, but he’d already developed tremendous respect for the man. Seeing him dismissed in such a cavalier fashion made John angry. In the ledger of his heart, he drew another red mark against the professional executioner.

Chapter 6

"What’s up?" Larker whispered when the marshal got close enough. The sheriff’s eyes were fixed on Hangman, but Dana was studying John’s face.

John did his best to look friendly and unworried. "I’m not sure yet. Would you mind terribly introducing me to your friend, or should I do it myself?"

"Oh. Once upon a time, I had manners. Dana, this is Marshal Silver Davies." John could practically feel Hangman’s ears perking up behind him. "Marshal, I’d like you to meet Dana Langhorn Rider."

"What a pleasure, Marshal! Chou was just telling me about you." Her voice was clear but warm and neither too high or too sweet.

"The pleasure’s all mine," John responded, feeling more clumsy than gallant.

"Chou claims you’re Tornado Carter’s right hand man?"

"I wouldn’t put it that way myself. Besides, he’s ambidextrous."

"But you do work with him?"

"Yes."

"I’ve heard stories about Carter, but I don’t know anyone who’s actually met him. What’s he like?"

John shrugged uncomfortably. "People are always asking me that and I never know what to say. You’ll have to judge for yourself."

A soft but low-pitched growl resonated from the back of the room and it took John a moment to realize that Hangman had cleared his throat.

"Will you two excuse me for just a minute?" said John. "I’ve been paged. But I’ll be right back—I hope."

As he approached Hangman, the death-pale giant pulled a chair out as an invitation. This chair was the one next to him, strategically superior to the one across the table. John was startled by the courtesy.

But he doubted he was going to enjoy this conversation.

Larker watched the two slingers talking and wished he had Hangman’s ears. Whatever they were discussing, Davies wasn’t looking thrilled.

Although Chou hadn’t been born with a slinger’s artificial advantages, he’d been naturally blessed with a crackerjack intuitive sense. It had saved his life more than once. He’d been the only person in the saloon unsurprised by Hangman’s dramatic entrance. In fact, he’d been half-expecting it. So Larker had spent that initial moment observing everyone else’s reaction to the intruder.

Dana’s eyes had become wide and alarmed, then her resolve kicked in and she’d abruptly looked as calm as Lake Cody on a windless day. The two elderly friends at the bar had kept very still. The cook had glowered at the newcomer and muttered something in old Pinyin. At the bar, Gil had turned almost as white as Hangman himself. That was unusual; Kleib was normally unflappable.

But the most interesting reaction had come from Silver Davies. When Gil’s hand had slipped while sliding a beer on the counter, the marshal had caught the mug before it could fall. This would have seemed like lucky timing if Larker hadn’t known better. Davies had been walking straight across the room and the bar was several steps out of the way. Yet, the lawman hadn’t rushed one little bit. His course must have deviated the instant Gil had pushed the beer. . . .

Chou found the reaction speed and precision of judgment necessary for such a subtle maneuver intimidating. Probably only he, Davies, and Hangman knew the gesture had been more than a small act of kindness. It had been, in its way, a threat.

As John returned, he tried to put on his usual poker face, but it kept slipping off. He couldn’t imagine what expression he was wearing; it had been a strange conversation. Larker was watching him intently and John could practically hear the sheriff reminding himself not to blurt out questions when Hangman was around.

The problem solved itself a moment later when Hangman went into a bathroom at the back of the room and closed the door. While the door had been open, the rumble and squeaking had increased tenfold.

Dana pointed toward Hangman’s empty chair. "Chou warned me about that slinger’s hearing. But if we don’t shout, I’d think we should be able to talk freely until he comes out."

John exhaled as if releasing too much internal pressure. "Maybe, but don’t count on it. Don’t say anything you absolutely don’t want Hangman to know. What’s causing all that ruckus?"

"The bathroom fan."

"A fan?"

"This place used to be a metal shop powered by a waterwheel on Cai Hong Creek right behind here. The wheel is still in good shape. I reconnected the main drive pipe and I’m using it to run three fans and a homemade dishwashing machine out back." Her eyes sparkled. "Been meaning to oil that old thing for weeks. Funny how often procrastination pays off!" Dana shook her head self-disparagingly. "Here I am, gabbing away about nothing and using up our time."

The sheriff had been dying for his chance. "What did that monster want, Marshal? What’s he doing in Sunstone?"

"I don’t know why he’s here—he said he wasn’t ready to talk about it yet—but he asked for my . . . endorsement. He wants to join the Dust Devils."

"What in the world did you tell him?"

"I didn’t want to flat out say no, although the proposal certainly, um, lacks appeal. I explained that my outfit has no need for an executioner since we don’t do our own executions."

"How did he take it?"

John gazed wonderingly toward the bathroom door. "He told me he doesn’t want a job as an executioner. He says he’s getting sick and tired of killing people."

"Good for him," Dana commented wryly. "And maybe for us."

"I agree, but it puts me in an awkward position." Which was putting it mildly. "I told him I’d think about it."

Larker looked pensive. "Is that the only reason he wanted to talk to you, Marshal?"

"No. He claims there’s a man in a third-story room in that hotel across the street. He says this man is sitting in the dark near a window, pointing a rifle at the saloon doors and muttering how he’s finally going to get even with the—I quote—‘fucking slingers.’ ’’

The sheriff’s face reddened, but John knew the reaction had nothing to do with insulting language.

"Hangman can tell all that just by listening?" Larker asked.

"I imagine," John stated dryly, "it wasn’t his ears that told him the room was dark. But for the rest of it, yes. Hangman can read echoes. He also said that the entire third floor over there smells like the foulest booze in the galaxy."

Larker sighed. "I was afraid of that. Only Coby Patterson could stomach that rotgut of his. But don’t you worry about Coby. Whenever a slinger is in town he always goes to his room and waits by the window with a rifle, but it’s never loaded and he never pulls the trigger. Besides, we’ve made sure his ammo is bad."

"Does this Coby happen to be missing an arm?"

"Hey! How’d you know?"

"Passed him on the street earlier. He threw a bottle at me."

The sheriff looked stunned. "No shit? He’s never dared a stunt like that before!"

"People change. Could be a good thing his ammo is bad. What does he have against slingers?"

Larker took a quick gulp of water and wiped his mouth with a sleeve. "Ten years ago, he was a stable-hand and a good one. Then a leopard-based mount bit his arm off. The slinger that owned the animal watched the whole thing happen and had a good laugh."

"Charming. Gives us all a good name. Why doesn’t Patterson have his arm grown back?"

"Ah. That’s the rough part. He can’t."

"Why not?"

"He’s allergic to the Tailor."

"Lord! That’s a new one on me." John’s eyes stayed focused on the larger man, but his mind was elsewhere, hunting implications.

GM coli, the "Little Tailor," was Paladin’s way of effecting genetic surgery without electronic aids. This deliberately mutagenic bacterium, derived from nasty old E. coli, had become the major tool for rearranging human and animal DNA. Gene designers would work out the details for whatever change was desired. Then they’d apply specific organic chemicals to mold the Little Tailor appropriately. The bacteria would finally be injected into the subject, usually a fetus.

To prevent accidents or abuse, the Tailor would, as a last act, encourage the host organism to develop antibodies against itself. In emergencies such as a lost limb or eye, immunity could be temporarily repressed with anti-antibodies. . . .

John was still puzzled. "Why can’t an allergy like that be fixed? No, hold on. I see the problem: you can’t fix it without using the Tailor—not on Paladin anyway. And if you suppress the entire immune system to block the allergy . . ."

"The regeneration trick won’t work. It’s a double catch! And a damn shame. Coby was a good kid. Not brilliant, but hard working and reliable. He had a gift for dealing with both animals and machinery. When that slinger just sat there and laughed at his pain—well, something must’ve snapped in his head. And when he realized his injury was permanent, whatever snapped just plain broke off. I’ve been trying to get him straightened out for years, but—" self-anger tightened the sheriff’s voice "—all I’ve managed to do is to make him feel worse about himself. Which makes him drink even harder. I never have enough time for him, and I’ve had none at all lately. Suffering Guanyin! You don’t want to hear this shit on top of everything else."

"Not at all. I’ve got a weak spot for lost souls. Have you tried—"

The saloon doors banged open. A heavyset man dressed in a yellow rain-slicker pinned with a deputy’s badge came stumbling into the room.

"Sheriff?" he yelled, brushing rain from his eyes. "We got a situation. The Coombs brothers are at it again. They’re going to kill each other this time for sure."

Larker groaned, "And what an afternoon for it!" He started talking fast. "Gerry, this is Marshal John Davies. He’s one of the Dust Devils I sent for. And Marshal, here’s my chief deputy, Gerry Banks. Marshal, I’ve got to go."

"Want some help?"

"No. When you’re done here, head up to the house. You know where it is. The wife should be home and if I’m not there yet, introduce yourself and tell her I’ll be along. Her name is Karen. Take care, Dana. Hey Gil, next time I’m putting in the damn cheese myself! Come on, Gerry—let’s get wet."

Alone with a woman he found himself unwillingly drawn to, John’s tongue suddenly seemed too thick. He wasn’t quite sure what to do with his hands except stare at them. That way they wouldn’t take a cue from Still Waters Shankar and begin drumming on the table.

"I was wondering, Marshal, why you came to Sunstone alone."

Her sympathetic tone drew his eyes back to her face. "My friends call me Johnny." He hadn’t meant to say that! The words had escaped like animals leaping from a cage. Hadn’t he learned by now that he couldn’t afford attachments?

"Johnny it is. And in that case," she continued matter-of-factly, "I’m Dana. But you haven’t answered my question."

He did his best to explain his "booking agent" duties without piling too many new lies atop the old ones. As they talked and his self-consciousness eased, he found himself increasingly admiring the woman. She was brim-filled with positive attitudes and unusual resources. In addition to her business skills, Dana was a musician, embroidery artist, carpenter, cabinet-maker, and something of an inventor. She’d designed her dishwashing machine herself and built it from an old water-tank and some spare pipes and fittings from her ceiling.

The more he studied her, the more he liked her face. It showed hints that she’d been through hard times, but it also conveyed a rare sense of delight. Here was a person who could savor the moment, a person with an obvious, simple gift for having fun. He found such innate joy indistinguishable from beauty.

For her part, Dana found John’s face equally fascinating. Something profound was hiding behind those golden eyes; something committed yet compassionate. Also a deep sadness. To her, his expression seemed a deliberately opaque veneer over intense passion. She sensed there were important things he wasn’t telling her, but her heart said that he was a man worthy of trust.

Unfortunately, she’d learned to doubt her heart. Once, she’d considered herself a good judge of people. But then she’d made a mistake big enough to last a lifetime. . . .

John needed to know something, but was reluctant to spoil the developing mood. Instead, he asked about the flags hanging from the ceiling.

"Do you like them? I embroidered them myself."

"Well, they’re attractive and certainly very well done, but . . ."

"I know," she laughed. "Odd in this context, right?"

"I won’t argue. What’s the name of the instrument on that one? Between the erhu and bianzhong?" He was pointing at a flag hanging over Handy Ernie’s head.

"A bassoon."

"Bassoon? What an odd name!" He was disquieted to remember feeling a touch superior to the sheriff when the subject of birds had come up. Obviously, John had his own educational limitations.

"I have an old dream, Johnny. When I was little, my father gave me piano lessons. I fell in love with music. Then, when I was eighteen, he took me to Earth. He wanted me to see how much more there was to music and to life than Paladin."

John managed to swallow a rising tide of envy. "I wish I could visit Earth," he admitted frankly.

Dana grimaced at her own insensitivity. "What was I thinking? I’m so sorry. I forgot that part of the code."

"That’s alright. But you have a common misconception, Dana: the ban on space travel isn’t part of the slinger code. It’s something forced on us by the Space and Colonization Administration. The SCA is afraid of people like me—particularly afraid to let us visit the home world."

"That isn’t fair!"

"True. But you can see their point: slingers are dangerous. You were telling me about your dream?"

She nodded. "Have you ever heard the Buildem Symphony perform?"

"Maybe a hundred times. With Slinger School so close to Buildem, it was easy to catch concerts during my training."

"How lucky! And it means you’ve got the background to understand. I didn’t like Earth. It’s unbelievably crowded and there are insects you never imagined. Flies everywhere. Everyone looks half dead and completely bored and—"

The presence of exotic insects such as flies sounded to John like enough justification alone to make the long trip. Of course, he was even more interested in terrestrial animals; but then, not everyone shared his tastes.

"—the cities are terrifying. They’re so huge and busy. And everything you see is grimy."

"What about those ‘scientific marvels’ the home world is supposed to have?"

"I’ll give them that. Earth technology is impressive—they use gravity in strange ways—but that part was just like visiting Buildem, only more so. What really hits you about the home world is all the little things. Things you might never think of, like how the zodiac is based on constellations you only see in Earth’s sky. But I learned something more important to me than where so many symbols came from. I learned what an orchestra is supposed to sound like."

"Better than our symphony?"

"You wouldn’t believe the difference. Besides, we don’t have half the instruments we should. For the first time in my life, I heard genuine pianists play. I’d thought I was getting pretty good, but when I got home, I started practicing."

"I’d love to hear you perform sometime." What do you think you’re doing? he asked himself.

"Try and stop me! But I’ll never reach the level of Earth artists. The best ones haven’t done much in their lives except practice. Rather like you top slingers, only with music instead of weapons."

"And your dream is to bring, um, better music to Paladin?"

"Why not?" Her eyes were radiant, yet a paradoxical small tear glistened in each corner. "Is there anything in the Charter against it?"

"Not that I know of," he replied tentatively, feeling somewhat out of his depth. "Why do I get the feeling that you’re doing more than just dreaming?"

"Because I am. I’m giving piano lessons whenever I can squeeze out some time, so that more kids will grow up with music. And it’s taken me years, but I’ve convinced the Aurado Pipeworks to start making trumpets and cornets. Trumpets on Paladin! I’ve got a prototype cornet in the back room and it’s absolutely . . . terrible! Leaky valves and the worst sound you ever heard!"

"That bad?" John chuckled.

"Horrifying! Turns out there’s an art to bending small pipes. I’ve experimented with the thing and it makes these squeals—they would scare you out of your skin! I finally had to quit practicing because it was frightening the local steeds." Her laugh sounded like good music to him. "But the pipeworks is finally getting it right."

"I hope so."

"I’m also this close to getting other instruments built. Pianos are available, of course. And violins, cellos, and guitars are no problem; Sunstone has its own luthier. But reed instruments need reeds, which come from a bamboo that doesn’t grow here or are made of plastic we don’t make here. Not yet, anyway. Still, reeds are small and light; they could be imported cheaply enough. The main difficulty—I’m sorry. This is my pet project and I could go on about it forever."

"I don’t mind. I like it when people have something they believe in. But why is this so important to you?"

Both pride and sorrow enriched the summer turquoise of Dana’s eyes. "I told you it was an old dream. Originally, it belonged to my father. He died the year after we got home from Earth."

"What a shame. If you don’t mind my asking, how did he die?"

"A stupid, stupid accident. He was on top of a big rock at our family ranch, the Nokai Corral, and he slipped."

Her love for her father rang clearly beneath the surface of her words. But mention of accidental death reminded John painfully of what had happened to his little brother, Stevie. It also reminded him of the Strake disaster and the topic he’d been avoiding.

"Rotten luck. But you’ve found a wonderful way to honor him."

"Thank you for understanding."

"I noticed the map on your wall."

"I was wondering when you were going to get around to that. You want to know about the fork?"

"I don’t want to, but I expect I need to. But let’s procrastinate a bit longer—I hear it pays off. What do those colored dots signify?"

Dana’s eyes twinkled impishly. "You haven’t figured that out by now? I marked every town that has a concert hall or a place like my saloon, where music is performed."

"So few?"

"That will change."

"I believe you. All right—tell me about the fork."

Joy drained from Dana’s face. "Dirty Jake did that."

John sighed. "Why haven’t you pried it out?"

"He told me not to. He hasn’t been in my saloon since he did this, but at least once a week some of his slingers show up."

"I see. Any idea why he did it? Does he have something special against Strake?"

"I didn’t ask. You should have seen his face, Johnny! When he saw my map, he didn’t say anything at all, but his eyes were like . . . volcanoes. In my business, you meet all kinds. You never know who’s going to walk in your door. I’ve met plenty of slingers; some decent, some horrible. But Dirty Jake is the only person I’ve ever met that made me wonder . . ."

"Wonder what?"

"Is this a human-being or something . . . else? I’m not touching that fork while he’s still in Red Clay County."

Chapter 7

The rain eased and finally stopped just in time for the setting sun to splash lurid tints across the heavens. All five high windows in the saloon revealed a different color, as if each was showing a sky from a different planet.

Hangman finished his meal, slapped money on the table, and strolled to the exit without another word. He opened the doors a crack to study the exterior scene before he departed.

With Hangman gone, John lost his private excuse to keep talking with Dana. After apologizing for ending the conversation abruptly, he reluctantly dragged himself from the table. To his pleased surprise, Dana accompanied him outside and they stood awhile in companionable silence, admiring the sunset together. The colors were as clean and vivid as new love, but John was careful to keep an eye on the third floor of the hotel.

The air had turned chilly and Dana wasn’t dressed for it. "I’d better get back to work," she said, shivering a little, "but I . . . enjoyed talking with you."

"Likewise. May I offer you my coat?"

"No, thanks. I really need to get some things done. But let’s get together again soon. Sometime tomorrow?"

"I’d like that very much."

John headed off to the sheriff’s house in a mood both excited and deeply troubled.

Karen Mueller, Sheriff Larker’s wife, was surprised to see John, but accepted his explanation with impressive grace. Karen was a college-level schoolteacher who traveled several hours each school day on the steam-powered Iron Teakettle (Western Tenderfoot’s only railroad) to reach her classroom. She was small and pleasantly plump. Her light brown eyes had an exotic cast, suggesting those of a contented cat. She wore a constant slightly bemused smile, as if life had surpassed her expectations. But her forehead showed lines carved by long and unremitting stress.

Dana Rider, he thought, glows with humor, but Karen seems more at peace with herself, despite the strain she’s obviously under. Of the two, Karen is the one with the happy gene. Maybe I could borrow it sometime.

The Mueller-Larker house, which he’d seen earlier when he’d dropped off his traveling gear, had seemed inviting before, with its overstuffed furniture and brightly-painted swing-set outside. But with "the wife" at home, bustling about, it seemed like a haven—the sort of place even a marshal might take a nap on the couch.

John had followed Karen into the kitchen—she seemed completely at ease with him—when he noticed a small, wall-mounted bookshelf. It held only four volumes, and he could read the titles from where he stood. One book was Sixty-eight Thousand Quotes For All Occasions; he smiled and asked if he might take it down.

"Please do. It’s my husband’s favorite," she said seriously. "Whenever he has a big problem, he closes his eyes, opens to a random page, and puts a finger down on the paper before he opens his eyes."

"And that helps?"

She laughed quietly. "He thinks so. He says that whatever quote he lands on, it’s always the perfect one."

John opened Larker’s source of inspiration and realized, from the superior paper-quality, that it must have been printed off-planet. This was unusual because paper books were normally considered too bulky to be worth transporting on starships. Pages were typically stored on stabilized microfilm (which was less susceptible to radiation damage than magnetic or optically encoded media) and then eventually reprinted on the destination planet. On Paladin, all such transcriptions were done in Buildem, because microfilm-reading machines required electricity.

Magazines, on the other hand, were often printed on thin plastic—so thin, the entire magazine could be rolled into tiny tubes. Such magazines were "filmies," but everyone called them "flimsies."

John was about to ask Karen about the book’s history when a quotation distracted him:

The brain is a wonderful organ. It starts working when you get up in the morning and doesn’t stop until you get to the office. Someone with the improbable name "Robert Frost" had penned this gem.

"Maybe they aren’t always perfect," he muttered under his breath. Or just maybe, he speculated, the Universe is warning me to get my brain fired up. . . .

He flipped a few pages and a brief assertion jumped out at him.

The unexamined life is not worth living. Socrates said that and here John felt on solid ground. He’d even heard of Socrates.

"Find a good one?" Karen asked, pulling home-canned goods from a pantry.

"I’m not sure. Apparently Mr. Socrates once said, ‘The unexamined life is not worth living.’ Sounds pretty, but I’m not sure I completely agree. Seems to me that—that it’s really the unappreciated life that isn’t worth living."

"Oh, my! Do me a favor: repeat what you just said for my husband; he’ll want to write it down."

John felt embarrassed. "I’ll try to remember. Aha! Here’s one that makes sense to me. ‘Worry doesn’t empty tomorrow of its sorrow, it empties today of its strength.’ Credit goes to someone named Corrie Ten Boom. Ten Boom. Sounds like the dynamite went off nine counts early. Know anything about her? Or is Corrie a man’s name somewhere?"

"When I get to school tomorrow, I’ll try to find out if you like."

"It’s not all that important." He was trying to keep his voice light, but he’d just stumbled on a saying that had electrified him:

We make a living by what we get, we make a life by what we give. Winston Churchill. This simple statement summed up John’s philosophy; he suddenly wanted these words, no others, to be his epitaph. And he wondered who Winston Churchill had been; if he’d been, perhaps, a terrestrial lawman. But he didn’t want to ask; the little aphorism was simply too . . . personal to talk about right away. He returned the book to its shelf tenderly, as if he were handling delicate glass.

John declined Karen’s offer of dinner with thanks—he was still full from lunch—but he helped in the kitchen by cutting carrots and protein-enhanced potatoes for an evening stew. The sheriff still hadn’t gotten home yet, but Karen’s two young boys, Bai and Brice, returned from playing with a neighbor and from then on were constantly underfoot. They were fascinated by John’s double-handed dexterity with knives and kept urging him to peel faster and faster although his hands were already a blur. They clapped when the knife began to whistle as it moved through the air.

"They’re not going to try to copy me, are they?" John asked Karen sotto voce.

"Heavens no!" she responded just as quietly. "My boys regard cutting veggies as work."

The entire scene was warmly homey and made John yearn for a family of his own. If only he could afford such things. These days, no marshal with a thimbleful of compassion could afford . . . dependents.

Chou Larker finally appeared about the time the stew was ready and rolled his eyes when his wife asked him how the day had gone.

"Coombs brothers again?" Karen said sympathetically.

"Who else? If they don’t kill each other soon, I may save them the bother. But for some reason," he sent the marshal a conspiratorial look, "I feel better tonight than I have in months."

John sat with the family through dinner, nibbled on Karen’s homemade bread, and took the opportunity to ask a few questions about Sunstone, its locale, and Chief Shining Wing’s people.

"I’ve never heard of the Anasazi Indians," he admitted. "Where do they live on Earth?"

"You’re the history expert, sweetheart," Larker mumbled through a full mouth.

Karen’s dimples deepened. "I’m afraid there aren’t any left, Marshal. Once they dwelled in the Four Corners Plateau area of the United States: the intersection of Colorado, Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico. Mostly Utah. But that was over two thousand standard years ago. They didn’t call themselves Anasazi. That’s only what the old Dineh, the so-called Navajo, named them. It means ‘Ancient Enemies’ or ‘Ancient Ancestors’ or even ‘Ancient Ones’ depending on which sources you believe. The Anasazi were great basket-makers and potters and pueblo-builders."

"Why did Shining Wing’s people choose that particular identity for themselves?"

"Because the locale where our Indians live—about twenty miles northwest of here—is like a scaled-down version of a great, carefully preserved wilderness in Utah: Nokai Dome. The original Anasazi inhabited the Dome for centuries. One of the first settlers here, Gregory Rider, was born in Utah. He noticed the resemblance and dubbed the area ‘New Nokai Dome.’"

"Gregory," Larker interjected, "was Dana’s great-grandfather."

"What happened to the original Earth Anasazi?"

"They vanished suddenly. Or they may have vanished. No one knows for sure. One of those mysteries. Some scholars think they wandered south to become the Aztecs; other experts believe that the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico and Arizona, like the true Hopi and Zuni, are their descendants."

After dinner, John wandered south himself, but only next door to Chin Larker’s stable to look in on Houston. Chin, the sheriff’s youngest brother, was indeed taking excellent care of the zebra, but John took out his currycomb and brush anyway and worked briskly until the animal’s coat positively shimmered in the gaslight.

Ben Winfrey, who’d come up with the recipe for Houston, had a saying about herd animals: You can take the zebra out of the herd, but you can’t take the herd out of the zebra. He meant that such steeds need companionship to be happy and healthy. John didn’t mind. He was often hungry for companionship himself and usually used such opportunities to talk out his troubles.

"I like this town," he acknowledged quietly. "I like the people. They don’t deserve Dirty Jake, but what am I supposed to do about it? He’s got the numbers, and he’s got a serious weapon. And if he’s really Bill Caine—and it’s hard to disbelieve that Shining Wing character—I’m in over my head. Any ideas?"

The zebra’s only idea seemed to involve an evening snack.

"There’s more. I met this great woman—her name is Dana. You’ll like her, but she makes me feel things I have no business feeling. But if I close my eyes, it’s like her face is pasted on the inside of my eyelids. And what do you think will happen when she finds out just how honest I’ve been with her? She may never forgive me. Houston, old friend, I’m afraid we’ve got problems. . . ."

John patted his steed one final time before returning to the sheriff’s house. He knew he wasn’t going to like the answers, but he needed to ask some hard questions about energy weapons. He walked slowly, dragged down by an increasing weight in his heart, an inchoate sense of something terrible on the horizon.

No one appreciates a good bed more than someone who often sleeps on the ground. To John, the guestroom bed in Larker’s house felt like a cloud covered in silk. He was clean for the first time in days; the hot shower had been liquid bliss. He even forgave water for being rain so much of the time lately.

But lying on this barely solidified cloud, he could only toss and turn. He was too tired to sleep—so tired it hurt. His mind wouldn’t stop racing. Sunstone was filled with interesting little items that raised interesting strategic possibilities. He needed to figure out how to use these things intelligently, but was too exhausted to be clever.

Finally he drifted off, but felt as if he were still awake. Dreams came and went. Hangman played a disturbing part in several, and John caught ominous glimpses of some shadowy, vague form holding a fork as if it were some kind of alien gun. As usual, he had the bad dream about his dead brother. Then Dana showed up and the dreams improved. . . .

He was vaguely aware of some fuss in the distance, a pounding at the door, shouts, but it didn’t seem to have anything to do with him.

Then he was in the middle of the single most erotic dream of his life, until someone started shaking his arm. He was so disoriented that at first he thought the shaking was part of the dream. He was shocked and embarrassed to open his eyes and find Sheriff Larker standing next to the bed rather than the blond woman who’d been playing a starring role in his phantasm.

"What is it?" John muttered groggily. The next instant he was wide-awake. Slinger night-vision allowed him to see Larker’s injuries in shocking detail. John tried not to look as horrified as he felt.

The left side of the sheriff’s face was bloody and extravagantly swollen, giving the eyebrow a sardonic lift. The left eye was beet-red, its lid severely engorged. His nose was obviously broken. But Larker’s right eye was focused on John, as if the bleeding, pain, and possible concussion were irrelevant.

"Get up." The lawman’s voice was slurred. "Dana’s in trouble."

"What kind of trouble?" John asked as he threw back the blankets and began rapidly pulling on clothes. He was abruptly unconcerned about trivialities such as erections and didn’t bother with underwear, socks, or his hat.

Larker’s breathing was noisy. "A couple of Jake’s punks showed up at the saloon. They don’t understand the word ‘no.’ Tried my best, but the assholes have got goddamn speed enhancements."

"What happened?" John demanded while strapping his .25-caliber flat-cannon to the small of his back, hooking the firing cable to his belt-buckle, and hiding it by donning his jacket.

The sheriff took no notice of the unusual firearm. "They took my guns away like I was a damn toddler. One slapped me in the face."

"Go to the doctor. I’ll deal with the punks."

"No. I’m coming too."

"You can’t keep up." John tightened his gun belt. "Go see the doctor!"

"Later. I’m heading back. Even if I have to crawl."

John’s heart twisted in empathy and admiration, but he merely said, "At least smear some healall on yourself, damn it." Healall, a jellied form of genetically altered aloe, could help the human body recover from anything from burns to bullet wounds.

John took the twelve stairs to the living room in one jump and was out the front door before Larker could leave the bedroom. The sheriff wasn’t sure if Davies had really been moving as fast as it had looked, or if his head injury was producing hallucinations.

Karen and the kids were still asleep; Larker was always amazed at the way his family could sleep through just about anything. He envied them.

Although it was drizzling steadily outside, the night sky had a silvery glow; the larger of Paladin’s two moons, Dalton, was up and nearly full.

John didn’t even consider fetching Houston—he was faster than his zebra for short distances. Houston had been enhanced primarily for endurance, not speed. But the muddy road was a bad track.

As he ran, urgency pouring extra strength into his legs, John worked to clear his head of fear for Dana and anger over what had been done to the sheriff. Despite his intentions, John was already thinking of Larker as a friend. But anger generates tension, and tension makes a slinger slow on the draw.

There were clues that Sunstone was under periodic siege. It was nearly midnight according to the big clock over the sheriff’s office, but the Main Street gaslights, mounted on tall poles, were still burning. A sentry was on duty, some deputy John hadn’t met: a big man with narrow shoulders standing beneath the Sunstone Bakery awning. A large warning bell was resting between his feet. The deputy blinked in astonishment at John’s running speed, while waving the slinger ahead frantically.

The rain had eased to drizzle. Dense but narrow pleats of fog drifted slowly along, blanking out random sections of the town.

A hundred yards from his goal, John removed his boots. He held one in each hand so that he could run along the sidewalk silently. Looking ahead, he saw two animals, a large antelope and a moose, hitched to a private rail near the saloon.

Dana had mentioned a back door, but by the time John reached the swinging doors, he’d decided that his best bet was a frontal, deceptive approach. He swiftly pulled his boots on, then detached one of his holsters from its belt. He put the holster, gun still inside, on the sidewalk near the doors. A dab of street mud gave his remaining gun a neglected look. He also smeared a little mud across his face and removed his badge.

Then he stepped inside the saloon, stumbling like a drunk.

Two Mudslingers at the bar turned to appraise him. They were both male, both were wearing long black jackets, and both were bigger than John. One had a crisscross scar over his nose, a permanent sneer on his mouth, and an economy-grade hearing-enhancement: tall, upright ears that twitched around independently. The other had a feminine, pretty face with high cheekbones and long, flowing, jet-black hair. John was pleased that he didn’t recognize either.

Rabbit-ears was holding Dana by her upper arm, forcing her to bend towards him, and the grip must have been painful. But Dana’s expression was serene. Only a glint of fire in her eyes revealed any distress. There was no one else in the saloon. The sheriff’s guns were thrown down on the counter like an insult.

John fought to match Dana’s control and stared incuriously at the pair. Using a dull voice, he said, "Hey. You guys still open?"

The Mudslingers took in his sloppy appearance and single, dirty pistol and turned their backs on him. John’s eyes narrowed. Larker had been right: these two were speed-enhanced, but their enhancements were limited. With care, they could be managed. Of course, he could simply shoot them. . . .

The idea was tempting, but John didn’t kill people when there was an alternative. Besides, in this case, he had a better—if chancier—idea. The loss of these two would hardly dent Dirty Jake’s gang, but if he could invoke a little terror, it might spread.

"Get lost, asshole," the pretty one said as if to no one in particular. "Go screw yourself, but somewhere else. We’re closed for the night."

John used the final word of this charming little speech to cover the rush of his footsteps. . . .

Dana wasn’t quite sure what had just happened. There’d been a blur of activity followed by a brief whining sound. She had an impression that John had somehow pulled her assailants outside, but details were sketchy. Her saloon was empty now, that much was clear. And two wide trails of black threads, four long scratches, and four black scuff-marks had joined the months-old burns in decorating her floor.

She rubbed her arm, already flowering with bruises, and considered whether she dared risk finding out what was happening outside. Angry voices penetrated the door, but the thick wood smudged the words.

Then what sounded like a single shot rang out and she couldn’t help herself. She grabbed one of the sheriff’s guns on the counter and ran to the saloon exit, her heart beating wildly. At the last second, she reclaimed enough presence of mind to merely push one of the swinging doors open a crack, but that was enough to see that John was still standing. She was shocked at how much relief she felt.

Then another outlaw rode up unexpectedly—a fussy, deadly little man who’d visited her bar far too often over the last several months. This new slinger and John talked quietly for a moment. They spoke politely enough, but Dana felt a tension in the air like an over-tightened guitar string about to snap.

Then, without warning, a rifle from across the street discharged, and John was suddenly running toward the hotel, idiotically turning his back on the three outlaws. Dana’s normal good sense was overwhelmed, and she stepped out onto the sidewalk.

This was a horrendously bad idea. A normal, sane person never touches a gun in the presence of a hostile slinger, let alone holds one. Fortunately, all three gangsters had their eyes glued to the marshal.

Sheriff Larker hurried the last few yards to the saloon, his ears ringing from a new series of rifle shots. He acted quickly, taking advantage of everyone else’s distraction to quietly pull the pistol from Dana’s hand and return it to his holster. Only then did he turn his attention to what the marshal was doing. His jaw dropped.

John was high up on the hotel wall, running up an uncompromisingly vertical surface. He stopped directly above the third story window and its rifleman. At that moment, perhaps coincidentally, the rifle barrel was suddenly snatched back into the room.

Then, for one outrageous moment, long enough for even non-enhanced onlookers to doubt their eyes, John was facing downwards, standing straight out from the hotel wall like a human flagpole.

For John, events had proceeded at a far more deliberate pace. . . .

As he approached the gangsters in the saloon, he keyed himself up for maximum quickness. Speed, surprise, and momentum were his best friends here. John clutched both men by their jacket collars, shoving them forward while retaining his grip. Rabbit-ears instinctively pushed Dana away to counter the shove. Both gangsters fought for balance and reached for their guns.

John abruptly reversed directions and tugged hard. The Mudslingers went flying backwards off the barstools. The pair found themselves on their backs, half-stunned by hitting the floor, watching the ceiling shoot by. Rabbit-ears tried to draw, but friction between pistol grips and floor kept his weapons securely in their holsters.

John, almost squatting as he pulled, was having his own problem: controlling his temper. He’d gotten a glimpse of the bruises on Dana’s arm.

He pulled the men through the doors and onto the sidewalk. He gave them a final hard tug and then jumped upwards and forward. The outlaws kept going; they flashed by under his boots. Momentum dragged them several yards into the street. John spun around in midair and landed facing his enemies.

Rabbit-ears and Pretty-face should have appreciated their new location. Just as their backs began to notice how much heat and abrasion their passive journey had engendered, nice cool mud quenched the fires. But neither Mudslinger seemed grateful. In fact, after a brief duet of howls, the gangsters jumped to their feet, their faces murderous. Dual plumes of whiskey breath steamed in the chilly air.

By this time, John had reattached his abandoned gun and holster. He measured the scene carefully by eye. He’d set up this confrontation so that he could do some intimidating shooting, but he hadn’t counted on the mud in front of the saloon being so soft. The outlaws were standing nearly ankle-deep. The small change in angles opened an extravagant opportunity. He had a slim chance to perform something close to a miracle . . . if he had the nerve to try.

John moved a short step leftwards before assuming the traditional slinger dueling posture: knees slightly bent, arms crooked and out from the sides, hands open. His intent was as risky as it was fancy. But if he missed, perhaps enough mud had forced itself into his opponents’ holsters to buy him a few extra milliseconds. . . .

"Think you can handle two of us, asshole?" Pretty-face spat, his short-term memory evidently defective.

"Shut up, Bob," muttered Rabbit-ears, thereby seeming brighter or more sober than his partner. The illusion was spoiled when the Mudslinger continued. "Let’s not start a debate here: let’s just shoot the fucker."

Both gangsters went for their guns. But before their blurred hands covered half the distance, John had drawn a Colt and fired four times. Such firing speed required "double fanning": using a free hand to smash the hammer both back and forth.

An ordinary person wouldn’t have seen John draw or return the revolver to its holster, or heard more than a single shot. These Mudslingers weren’t ordinary. They managed to follow some of the action, although neither got the full picture. For them, time seized up like a bad bearing as they waited for pain to start and death to follow. Meanwhile, their hands kept moving, but when they closed, they closed on emptiness.

Numbly, both gangsters looked down at their gun-belts. Each holster had been cut cleanly on the outside; all four guns were settling into the mud slightly behind them. The extremely recent sounds of metal striking metal finally registered, along with a vague sense that something had just tugged at their holsters. John had angled each shot to not only slice through leather, but to graze the swinging cylinder of each weapon with enough impact to send it flying.

The demonstrated magnitude of John’s abilities cut through the dimness of Mudslinger minds the way his slugs had slashed through their holsters. Neither dreamed of moving.

John reloaded slowly, keeping his face from showing any hint of triumph. He tried to act as if he did such stunts daily, sometimes blindfolded. "Boys," he said in a bored voice, "I’ll make this simple. Don’t let me see either of you in Sunstone again. Questions? No? In that case, don’t let me keep—"

Several noises interrupted John’s final admonition. From behind him, the saloon doors opened a crack; from the north, ragged footsteps announced that Sheriff Larker was getting close. But primarily, the sounds of a rider galloping in from the south made the marshal shut up and listen.

John had thought he could identify the species of any Paladin steed by the character of its gait. This time, he had no idea what was coming. And when rider and mount burst from the fog, John got a double shock. He’d never encountered an animal of this type before—like a cross between a giant skunk and a badger—yet its rider was all too familiar: a top slinger named Malachite Preston, infamous in nine states and six counties as the Greenstone Kid.

Malachite was a tiny man with a triangular face, an enormous handlebar moustache, a sharp horizontal ridge of hard bone on his forehead for infighting, and mouse-like eyes. His clothes always looked freshly pressed and he’d named his gold-plated guns (reproductions of the Colt 1851 Navy revolver) "Mother" and "Father." Despite this bizarre affectation, no one mistook him for a family man. He looked as pleased to see John as John was to see him.

Bracketed by moustache fringes, Preston’s adam’s apple bobbed up and down as if warming up for a high-jump.

"Evenin’ there, Marshal. Hadn’t a clue you were in town."

It should have stayed that way, John thought, tilting his head back to meet Preston’s gaze; the outlaw’s peculiar mount stood with its head and tail down, but its back arched high. "Evening, Malachite. Interesting beast you’re sitting on."

"Sure is."

"Badger?"

"No, but you’re sniffing up the right family tree."

"Mustelidae?"

"You got that right. This here is a modified Gulo gulo."

John stepped back a pace. "A wolverine?" A giant wolverine would be extraordinarily powerful and highly aggressive. "I thought they were extinct."

"Not quite."

John’s gunshots had awakened Sunstone. People were beginning to stir, peering furtively from behind barely opened doors or through tiny gaps in window-curtains.

Suddenly, the marshal lost his usual appetite for unusual animals—and for small talk. "Don’t tell me you’re working for Dirty Jake now?"

"So are these two morons, unfortunately."

"What you waiting for, Greeny?" Pretty-face hissed. "Hurry up and shoot the bastard."

"I should shoot you, Hal! Did Jake say you could come to town tonight? I don’t think so. You two assholes have balls where most people keep brains. Shit, dog-balls are smarter than the two of you combined. Don’t you know who this is?"

John knew Dana was listening from the saloon and Larker, still bleeding, had gotten close enough to overhear. But before the outlaw could continue, something small and very fast slammed into the mud near Pretty-face’s left boot, raising a small geyser of muck. The forceful crack of the rifle that had just fired pulled John’s gaze toward the third floor of the hotel.

Didn’t Larker, he wondered, say bad ammo?

Preston had whipped a gun out, but his startled animal ruined his aim by wheeling around.

"Hold off!" John ordered, already running. "I’ll handle this!" he shouted over his shoulder.

The prudent tactic here was to quickly erase the incompetent assassin with a well-placed bullet. But when Larker had told Coby Patterson’s story earlier, John had been uncomfortably reminded of his own long battle with loss and self-hatred.

If John was going to be practical for once, he should eliminate Preston too. If the Greenstone Kid got a chance to whisper a certain word in Dirty Jake’s ear, John might need that epitaph sooner than expected.

While the marshal was willing to kill in an emergency, this was no emergency. He was already halfway across the street, deliberately drawing fire, watching the rifle barrel try and fail to track his swift progress. Aside from that first shot, Patterson was no threat—one-armed drunks seldom win marksmanship contests.

John used a hotel window’s reflection to keep an eye on the gangsters behind him, in case anyone decided that a marshal’s back made a good target. John wasn’t overly concerned about this threat either; the Greenstone Kid had survived this long by carefully measuring risks.

Yet, he absolutely could not let Preston get away. So he had to keep the little slinger from realizing he needed to get away. Several options were open and to keep his audience distracted, John chose the most colorful.

It is possible for a normal athletic person, even on Earth, to run some distance straight up a vertical wall. Timing and confidence are key. You run at full speed toward the wall. At the last instant, you jump, lean back, and if you’ve moving quickly enough and the wall holds, momentum can provide enough traction to allow you two or three quick steps upward.

John was faster than any non-enhanced athlete. Also, he weighed 20 percent less than he would have on Earth, which didn’t decrease his mass, the soul of inertia.

The hotel seemed to be rushing towards him. A short stretch of awning over the entryway was located inconveniently, but the required detour would only make this trick more entertaining.

The challenge was gaining enough speed in the muddy street; he’d have to use the far sidewalk for a final burst. One other minor problem: he hadn’t practiced this maneuver for twenty years.

To be continued in our March issue!