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when a Comanche tried to steal it, Jeeter spent half a day whittling on the warrior, doing things not even Comanches did to captives.
    Now and then Jeeter reached back and patted his saddlebags. He could not wait for sunset. He marked the slow crawl of the sun toward the western horizon with an impatience rare for him. He did not have many good traits, not by society’s standards, at any rate, but patience had always been one. Those who knew him well, and they were few in number, sometimes commented that he was the most patient person they knew.
    Jeeter had to be. He had learned early on that in order to survive on the fringe of lawlessness he must not indulge in rash decisions or rash acts. Haste ledto an early grave and Jeeter hoped to live a good long while.
    The thought made Jeeter grin. There was a time when he did not care whether he lived, a time when he woke up every morning certain he would not live to admire the next sunset.
    He lived by the gun, and the gun was a cruel mistress.
    The gun
. There were days when Jeeter wished he had never set eye on a revolver, never held one, never fired one. Maybe then he would never have killed anyone. Maybe then he would not be a marked man. Maybe then no one would have heard of him. Maybe then he would not be wandering the prairie, an outcast, with no family, no home, and no prospects other than the surety that one day someone would prove to be faster or cleverer.
    Funny thing. Jeeter did not live in dread of that day, as he once did. He wouldn’t run from it—he couldn’t run from it—so what was the use of fretting? He had learned a few things over the years, and one of them was that life was too short to spend it worrying about something that would happen one day whether he worried about it or not.
    For a few minutes there back in Coffin Varnish, Jeeter thought that day had come. The Blights were supposed to be tough, a tight-knit clan that stood up for their own, and woe to the outsider who crossed them. Temple Blight, especially, had made worm food of more than a few. But the way he came walking into that saloon, as big and confident as you please, not bothering to draw his six-gun until he was over near the bar—he might as well have asked Jeeter to put a pistol to his head and shoot him.
    Jeeter did not have many talents, but the one talent he did have, the one talent that separated him from the herd, was a talent for killing. As his grandmother would say, God rest her, he was a natural born killer.
    That might not seem like much of a talent to some. You pointed a revolver or a rifle at someone, and you shot him. Or you stuck a knife between his ribs. Or you bashed him over the head with a rock. Or you roped him from behind so the noose settled over his neck and then you dragged him from horseback until his neck was stretched to where the head was almost off. Or you got him drunk and poured kerosene on him while he slept and set him on fire. Jeeter had done all of that and more.
    The truth was, the talent did not lie in the killing. Anyone could kill. The talent showed itself in
how
the killing was done. Not in the shooting or the stabbing, but in never, ever giving the other hombre a fair break, in never, ever giving him a chance.
    Take the Blights. The moment Jeeter heard them ride up, he drew his Lightning and ducked under the table. Not many would have thought of that. Some would have sat there stupidly waiting for the Blights to confront them. Some would have hid behind the bar, which was the first place Temple Blight looked. Some would have run out the back, but that would only postpone the inevitable.
    No, Jeeter had done the one thing the Blights never expected. He had taken them completely by surprise.
That
was his talent. The knack for always catching the other fellow off guard. For always doing the one thing—
the one thing
—that meant he would live and the other person died. It was a knack most lacked,and it had kept him alive longer than most in his