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first thing that struck me about the town of Vermilion, Texas was its smell. To say that it reeked would be kind. Not that living the Indian life made me all pure and natural. Indian camps were hardly known for their sanitary conditions. What with dozens of horses and people living, eating, and crapping side by side, things tended to get mighty ripe. However, the Indians were nomads, and when their surroundings got too fragrant, so to speak, they’d up and find themselves a new campsite. Whites, on the other hand, had a tendency to stay put in their own stink.
    In retrospect, Vermilion was a wretched little one-horse town, clinging to the edge of the Texas frontier like a tick on a dog’s ear. But as far as I was concerned, it might as well have been the mysterious Philadelphia Buffalo-Face had spoken of.
    The town consisted of a collection of ramshackle one-story clapboard buildings and adobe huts occupied by a total of forty-seven souls—give or take a couple of Mexicans. There was a combination saloon and bawdy house, a feed and seed, a general store and a blacksmith who also stood in as the local undertaker. All of these businesses lined a broad unpaved street that, thanks to the recent rainy season, was composed of equal parts mud and shit, both human and horse. This foul mixture, when churned into the proper consistency by passing traffic, was capable of sucking a boot clean off a man’s foot and swallowing it whole, never to be seen again. Because of this, wooden boardwalks fronted both sides of the street, with haphazardly placed planks connecting the two.
    The moment I rode into town, I was aware of all eyes being on me. Everyone stopped what they were doing to stare, watching me the same way a cougar does a wolf that’s wandered into its territory. What with my pony and my braids and breechclout, I must have looked like a full-blooded Comanche brave.
    I dismounted in front of the saloon and tied my pony to the hitching post. The moment I turned around, I found myself looking at a big tin star. The star was pinned on the chest of a burly, red-faced man with a drooping yellow mustache and a shock of blonde hair, atop of which rested a derby hat of fashionable make. A Colt six-shooter jutted from the holster strapped to the big man’s hip.
    â€œWhat you think you’re doin’ here, Injun?” the big man growled, letting his hand drop onto the butt of his gun.
    I smiled as Buffalo-Face had instructed me, averting my eyes and bobbing my head in ritual subservience. “My name is Billy Skillet. I have come here to be White.”
    The big man’s brows knitted together and his eyes lost their hardness. “Come again?”
    â€œI am White like you,” I hurried to explain. “I was taken by Comanches when very young, but now I have come to my people to learn to be White.”
    The man with the tin star pushed back his derby and scratched his head, looking me up and down. “Well, I’ll be dipped in shit and shot for stinkin’! You are White, ain’t you!”
    â€œPerhaps I can be of some assistance, Marshal …?”
    My mouth went dry in terror at the sight of the tall, broad-shouldered man striding towards me with two black circles, like the empty sockets of a skull.
    â€œHe has no eyes!” I cried out, pointing at the fearsome apparition bearing down on us.
    The eyeless man laughed at my show of alarm and lifted the smoked glass spectacles he wore, allowing me a glimpse of his eyes underneath. “You needn’t fear me, my son—I have two eyes, just as God intended.”
    The Marshal scowled at the eyeless man. “Oh, it’s you, Near.”
    â€œReverend Near,” the older man corrected, adjusting the lapels of his dusty frock coat.
    â€œWhat have you,” grunted the Marshal. “What do you want, Reverend?”
    â€œI couldn’t help but overhear this poor lad’s tale of woe,” exclaimed Reverend