"Do you remember your first, Mr. Bailey?" the youngster asked. "They say a man always remembers his first, no matter how many times he does it. That's the way a fellow knows he's become a man, ain't that right, Mr. Bailey?"

Bailey's companion was excited, jittery and needed to talk. Beginners sometimes do. Talking quiets their nervousness, helps them stay focused. Bailey understood that. "A man ought to make sure his first ain't just some no-account quickie if he's going to look back on it in pride, right, Mr. Bailey? He ought to take his time, letting it build up like he will want to remember it. Ain't that right?"

The two riders had left Bailey's camp with several hours of daylight left and were angling north across the range, neither was in a hurry.

The promise of the morning had developed into a pleasant spring afternoon in Kansas, the hint of a breeze playing with the long grass, a sprinkling of cattle grazing contentedly in the distance. Far ahead of them rose their destination, the Vermillion Hills, rough folds in the land which stretched for 50 miles along the northern edge of Kearney County. Few pleasures in this hard land were greater than an easy ride across open range.

The youngster's cheeks showed the fuzz of a male of the species still in the transition from boy to man. He hadn't bulked out to range heft so his flannel shirt hung loosely from his shoulders. His well-worn corduroy trousers showed that he was not new to the cattle country nor to the demands of a saddle-pounder. But "kid" still summed up the essence of the young rider.

His well-traveled companion, perhaps late 30s, sported a thick bushy beard which concealed most of the face where a man reveals his soul, but two alert brown eyes told that life had taught this man to accept the world as he found it and to employ its essence as the foundation of his own success in life's journey.

As they rode, the younger rider breathed deeply of the spring-grass-perfumed air, seeing the familiar range with all its details, storing up memories that he would revisit for a lifetime, eagerly letting his anticipation build. Beside him, Bailey was remembering.

It was a good day to be alive.

Yes, Bailey remembered his first time, not too far from here it had been and on a spring afternoon much like this one. Though he had not suspected it at the time, that afternoon had started him on a career that took him to Wyoming, to New Mexico, from Texas to Montana, a productive career, something in which he had long taken pride.

Just on the cusp of manhood, Billy O'Toole, as his mama had named him, had been eighteen years old, not yet at full growth, lanky, with a muscled body grown hard with the weekend cowhand chores on his father's ranch. He'd been performing routine Saturday rounds that day checking for cattle in trouble, when a typical Plains squall had blown in. Seeking shelter from the pelting rain, he headed for the abandoned barn on the old Franklin place. As he eased the barn door closed behind him, the nicker of a horse told him he was not alone.

Amanda Foster, she of the long blonde tresses, had been sixteen and the only girl in the schoolhouse who made him red-faced and tongue-tied. A year behind him, she was, her lushness growing at the same time as his desire. Harmless it had seemed, that afternoon in the privacy of the old barn. Without other boys around to tease him, his bashful smile had come unbidden as she nervously made room for him beside her. Few words had been spoken or needed as, it seemed, Amanda had shared his longing and shared as well the same inhibitions where others could see. Her kisses had been sweet, her hands gentle as they rubbed his shirt front, as she unbuttoned his shirt, her caresses welcoming him into her embrace. She'd offered no resistance when he breathlessly unbuckled his gun belt and slipped his trousers down over his knees.

As she welcomed him eagerly, he had discovered that their union was different from anything he had ever imagined, that giving her pleasure was more important than what he was receiving. When they finished, he had felt gloriously fulfilled as never before or since. He had known at that moment what path he wanted his life to take.

"Tomorrow, I'll go see your Pa," he had told her. "Ask him for permission to come calling on you."

If that had been the end of it, likely he never would have left Kansas.

"My name is Randy Tucker." The kid's voice came as an unwelcome interruption to Bailey's remembering and forced him to give some attention to his saddle mate.

"But you can call me Red, like everyone does," the kid continued. "Folks call me that because my hair's got an Irish color in it, just like yours. They say my Pa was Irish but I never knew him. They say he got killed in a stampede before I was born. Are you Irish too, Mr. Bailey?"

Bailey grunted to give the sense that he was listening, but his mind was still back in the glories of the afternoon in Franklin's barn, the gentle passion of Amanda, and the sudden discovery that a flash flood can strike a man without warning, its torrent sweeping him from the pleasant trail his life had been traveling and crashing him off by nightfall in a direction he never expected to go.

The gully-washer struck when he and Amanda emerged from the barn. Bobby Gillespie, the scrawny offspring of a neighboring dirt farmer who Bailey hard-fisted in the schoolyard most weeks smirked down from high on horseback and far out of reach of the bigger boy's fists.

"Billy's got a girlfriend," Gillespie intoned in his mocking singsong way. "Billy's got a girlfriend." Asking Bobby to shush would have been fruitless. It would only assure he'd scamper off to town and spread his news to everyone he could find. For Billy O'Toole there would be no disgrace. Truth to tell, Gillespie was envious; all the boys would be envious that he'd spent time in the barn with Amanda.

But a girl's reputation was different. Amanda's was different. And a man had a responsibility to protect his woman. So. he'd done what he had to, shushed Gillespie's gaping mouth for good, got on his horse, and never looked back.

"You're famous all over, Mr. Bailey," the kid was saying. "I'll bet even them big-bellied nabobs back in Washington City know all about you. I must have read that book they wrote about you, "Avenger of the Prairie" it was called, must be a dozen times."

Bailey had tried to read the book himself, thrown it against the wall of hotel rooms in disgust at its lies, its exaggeration, its simplification of the complexity of lived experience, its telling the story Easterners wanted to read instead of life as it happened. He'd been only halfway through the book when he finally tossed it into a campfire.

"I'll be telling my grandkids about this someday," the kid was saying. "I used to dream about meeting you, Mr. Bailey. Never thought we'd be riding side-by-side, sure not out to the Vermillion Hills."

The Vermillion Hills had defined the boundary of Bailey's world in those early days, but today, with his thoughts about Amanda and Bobby Gillespie and what happened next, those words called to mind his sojourn in the shadow of the Laramie Hills.

By then Union Pacific had laid its rails west from Omaha to Cheyenne and on across the plains to the Rockies and beyond, transforming unowned grasslands used only by the declining herds of buffalo into forage for cattle brought up the trail from Texas to be fattened on the nourishing Wyoming grass and shipped to Eastern butchers. The growing cattle industry assured that a husky redheaded 18-year-old would have no problem signing on as a cowhand with one of the outfits new to Wyoming. Riding for the Double H had been a good first job for a teenager: demanding physical cowhanding during the day, bunkhouse shenanigans building solid friendships in the evening, and all that transforming a Kansas boy into a man.

The trouble in Wyoming hadn't started until Bailey's third year. The head count at spring Roundup tallied short by more than could be explained by wolf kills. Human predators had invaded the territory and riding the range took on a somber tone. Saturdays were for rifle practice.

After a month of fruitless range riding, the day came when Bailey, Milt Anderson and Lucius Fillmore, the two hands he was riding with that day, encountered a trail left by someone driving perhaps twenty head of cattle, not a lot, the thief probably thought, not enough to be noticed by a brand that counted 7000 head wearing the Double H scar on their flank. His mistake.

Cattle move slower than horses. It was only a matter of time before the three cowhands closed the distance on the rustler. So, as they crested a rise, they already had their rifles in their hands. The rustler heard the horses behind him. dug in his spurs and galloped for the safety of the next ridge. But even a good horse couldn't outrun Bailey's rifle.

"He was running away," Milt Anderson protested. "You shot him in the back."

"Think seeing your ugly puss would scare him off for good?" Bailey had scoffed. "He'd be back when we weren't around."

Mr. Holloway counted out three months pay and told him to go to Texas and change his name. "I know you were riding for the brand," Holloway told him. "But a killing changes a person, there's no going back."

"A killing changes a person." Bailey had been unaware that he had spoken his thoughts aloud until the kid said, "Lets everyone know he is a full-blooded man, right, Mr. Bailey? A real 'Avenger.'"

No that wasn't what Bailey meant, though he hadn't understood how he had been changed not until after he got to Lincoln County and rode out one afternoon to see Frank McNabb.

There had been plenty of jobs for young cowhands in West Texas in those days. Pat Bailey, the name he had used ever since, spent two uneventful years in the Texas Panhandle. Then early one spring his rancher assigned him to ride on a trail drive with 250 cattle being sold to a New Mexican rancher named Chisum. That's where his life opened up and he became the man people looked up to.

Chisum's South Spring Ranch was the largest outfit in the thinly-settled Lincoln County, just a sleepy corner of New Mexico Territory not yet as famous as it would be within months.

Ruffians were trying to take over, to "regulate" as they called it, Lincoln County, so Mr. Jimmy Dolan had explained. They'd shot down Sheriff Brady, ambushing him right in the street of Lincoln Plaza, killed another man when he stopped at Blazer's Mill to pick up his mail, and no honest citizen was safe. Dolan's offer of double pay meant less to Bailey than the promise of important manly work.

For the first week or two, he spent his time idling in Lincoln Plaza, waiting for something to happen, drinking at Montoya's with new friends, including an amiable Virginian, 22-year-old Buck Morton, a hard-working young man whose qualities of leadership and honesty had made him foreman of the Murphy-Dolan cow camp.

The "Regulators" claimed to be a lawful posse with a warrant issued by some pretend "Justice of the Peace" and with their animus for the established ranchers, one of the men they had their eyes on was Morton. When their "posse" ran him to the ground, Morton had surrendered with their solemn promise that they would take him to Lincoln for trial. The indirect way to town led through the isolation of Blackwater Canyon where eleven bullets, one for each member of the posse, found its way into defenseless flesh. The execution changed everything. No longer a boss's fight, the War became personal to the friends of Buck Morton and the Murphy-Dolan cowhands took the battle into their own hands. Blood flowed on both sides.

Some of the smaller ranchers thought that by staying neutral between the powerful Murphy-Dolan House and the upstart McSween-Tunstall ring they could make the competition between the two rivals work for them, but after Buck Morton was murdered, his friends thought neutral was an obscene word. One of the so-called "neutrals" was two-bit rancher Frank McNabb who Bailey had shared a bottle with a time or two and Dolan had sent Bailey out to talk some sense into him. Bailey hadn't seen how anyone could be neutral about the murderers of Buck Morton, so when he rode up and McNabb stepped to the door of his cabin and said "stand down, friend," Bailey had assured that Frank McNabb would remain neutral forever.

And that's when Bailey learned how that Wyoming killing had changed him, grown him he would say. Maybe he had tossed in his blankets a night or two after shutting Bobby Gillespie's filthy mouth, but planting two in Frank McNabb's brisket troubled him no more than slicing a bawling calf's ear at the branding fire. And so, Bailey learned that he had the inner strength to pull a trigger and not think twice.

For three months, he joined in the gunpowder games, tallying a couple of the men who had done for Buck and fighting side-by-side with his newfound friends in the culminating Five Days Battle for the control of Lincoln Plaza. He'd been one of those with his gun unlimbered for the turkey shoot when MacSween's killers made their desperate attempt to escape from McSween's burning house. When he'd seen two of them, Vicente Romero and Francisco Zamora, try to survive by hunkering down in the chicken coop, he'd blasted a full load from his pistol into the flimsy structure, reloaded and blasted again. Maybe he'd been the one who had done for Harvey Morris, but his shot went wide when the Bonney kid dashed out.

After what they called the Battle of Lincoln, all the starch went out of the "regulators." There was still cleanup work to do, of course. But it didn't take long before those they hadn't got to yet could see their future. The Coe cousins skedaddled with their puny little herds, Hendry Brown went off and got himself a sheriff's badge in Kansas, Doc Scurlock hightailed it to Texas, and pretty soon there was nothing left for a man drawing double wages to do.

"How many you done, Mr. Bailey?" the kid asked. "Reading The Avenger I counted only fourteen, but I could tell he was leaving lots out."

How many troublemakers had he put down? Bailey had never kept count. Some years only three or four. More in a good year. But profitable work was becoming hard to come by. What difference did it make? The only number that mattered was his bonus.

"Only amateurs notch their guns, Red," Bailey replied. "It tells everyone that the fellow is a greenhorn and he always goes out fast." Maybe the kid was listening. Maybe he was even learning something. Did Bailey care? He wasn't sure, but it helped pass the time as the Vermillion Hills drew closer.

But the kid was right. That book writer had scattered his shots after the Lincoln County fracas. A routine jobbing of a squatter here and there didn't titillate readers like being double-gunned in the face-off with the rustlers up on Crazy Woman Creek—at least that's what his customer told him they were. Maybe they'd stolen an unbranded calf or two, maybe not, but the book writer said rustlers sounded better to Easterners than squatters or homesteaders. And what did it matter? Dead was dead and he got paid.

"Troublemakers are everywhere, Red. It don't much matter where you look. I never sit around loafing for long. A man likes to keep busy."

"That's what Pa says, always finding chores for me, always telling me there's more work to do."

It was the bane of growing up on a ranch. "My Pa would have kept me out doing chores till midnight, if Ma hadn't insisted on me coming in for supper," Bailey remembered.

"Sounds like you and me are a lot alike, Mr. Bailey."

They had been riding an hour or so when Bailey absently reached for the makings in his vest pocket, something cowhands do half a dozen times a day without thinking. As his horse plodded forward, Bailey "Veed" the cigarette paper in his hand and tapped tobacco from the pouch to fill it. When he was done, he pulled out a wooden match, scratched it along his saddle horn, and lit up. Only then did he notice that his companion was watching him.

"Need the makings, Red?" Bailey asked.

"Sure would be nice, Mr. Bailey." Bailey tossed the pouch over like he would with any saddle pard. Throughout cow country, sharing the makings with another man did a lot to build friendship. Just a little thing, but it established a reciprocal obligation.

The hot acrid smoke filled Bailey's lungs and relaxed him as it always did. Sometimes it helped him work through problems, but not this time. Finally, the cigarette was down to his fingers, he squished out the stub on his saddle horn and tossed the charred remains aside. About the same time, the kid finished his smoke.

"Mr. Tyler, he's a new hand my Pa hired when the trouble started this spring, he's been giving all me a lot of tips about how things are done, like how he always uses a man's own weakness against him. He taught me how to breathe deep and let half the air out and hold it to steady my rifle. Lots of dead tin cans where he's been practicing me," the kid told Bailey.

"He's drilled me on ways to cut a quarter of a second off my draw. That's what he calls 'a killing difference.'" Bailey could see that kid was proud of what he was learning. "I've been practicing my fast draw," the kid continued. "I can beat all the kids at school. Of course, I'm not ready to match myself against a top man like you."

"Josh always cared more about holster speed than impact effect." Bailey chuckled to make it sound like a joke and knew he had succeeded when the kid laughed in reply. Getting a man to laugh with you was a way of strengthening a relationship.

And what he said about Tyler was true.

Riding with Josh Tyler had been good productive years, Bailey remembered. In the Lincoln County fracas which started then both on their careers they got to know each other, gain confidence in each other's skills and learned to build themselves into a good team. In the process, Josh had become his best friend. After they "deregulated" the regulators, and Mr. Dolan paid everyone off, Bailey had offers to ride with Jesse Evans, or to spread his bedroll with the boys on Seven Rivers, but they were outlaws. So, him and Josh rode north, killed a few men in Colfax County and looked for more good paying work for men of their talents.

As it turned out there were troublemakers everywhere. All they had to do was let folks know they were available—water thieves trying to control public streams, rustlers operating out of Brown's Park or Hole-in-the-Wall, barbed wire fanatics closing off the open range and all of them needing the talent Bailey had discovered when he stopped by the McNabb cabin that night.

So, Bailey and Josh Tyler went into the "security business" working in New Mexico, Arizona, Idaho, even as far as Montana until good paying two-man jobs became scarce and they needed to split up.

Every time he bucked his wrist on a man, he'd added to his rep and to the price he could demand the next time someone needed him to solve a problem. He'd never been a kill-hungry murderer like the Bonney kid had been. Like he told that book writer, he took pride in the way folks turned to him to solve their problem. For ten years Bailey rode across the West, wherever greedy men were trying to take what someone else was willing to pay to keep.

It was an important job, Bailey told himself. A job a man could do with pride.

But time passes. A day, a week, a month, it flows on and even a good job becomes routine—a squatting sodbuster here, a water thief there, a sheep rancher smelling up the cattle range somewhere else. Doing the same thing, pulling iron, spitting lead, turning a shirt red, the routine of the work takes away the challenge and without challenge a man wonders what there is to life.

Soon an eager young twenty-year-old is thirty-five. He thinks about the satisfaction of his job, but then he thinks about what he has missed, the soft, reassuring presence of Amanda in his arms, the ranchers he had seen and worked for who had been building their future while he was still the workman he had been in his mid-twenties. The pleasure he knew he could never fully understand but that he had witnessed—most of all the pride Lucas Foreman exuded watching his two teenage sons grow to manhood—a man knowing he was building a posterity. Far too late, Bailey had begun to see how a man truly measures his life.

And even some ranchers in the cattle business began yielding to barbed wire. Take the job that had brought him back to Kearny County. For years, he worked for ranchers angry because some interloper wanted to build fences, keeping another brand's cattle off "his" grass, even though it was on government land. But after months of waiting for a good job offer, Bailey found himself listening to a rancher who showed him some leases that said it was his own land he was fencing. Putting down fence cutters was a new experience, but Bailey told himself a professional takes the work on offer.

Bailey had been back in Kearny County only a week, and already he had sent one cowhand scampering back to the bunkhouse with a hole in his shirt. Just a shoulder hit, a fair professional warning. Next time they would come in teams, two or three at a time, which would be good for Bailey's money belt.

Saturday wasn't a good day to hunt fence-cutters, so Bailey headed to town to stock up on supplies and shells, no risk that anyone would recognize the hard-faced heavy-bearded late 30s rider as the youngster who had silenced Bobby Gillespie's dirty mouth all those years back. When he stopped into The Brewers Saloon, it was cluttered with cowhands from several of the nearby ranches, each cowhand indistinguishable from one another except for the lanky fellow with his arm in a sling. The four hands sitting with him, laughing with him, youngsters who maybe thought a golden handlebar mustache or a neatly trimmed beard made them different, but all Bailey saw was fence-cutting troublemakers worth five double Eagles a piece, bounties on the hoof waiting to be collected.

What Bailey hadn't expected was the solitary man in a rear table wearing his customary white Stetson hat over a freshly purchased green plaid flannel shirt, a man whose hard face softened to what might be called a smile of recognition when he spotted Bailey, Josh Tyler.

They shared a bottle, reminiscing about the good days in Lincoln County, the time they cut Chavez y Chavez off from the herd and perforated his shirt eleven times, one for every bullet in Buck Morton's body, and about their work in Wyoming and the one time they went to Montana. That night Bailey turned into his blankets with the aura of friendship lulling him to sleep. Sunday was a day of rest, not because Bailey put any of those Thou Shalt Nots above business but because cow hands were protective of their off time.

Monday was a regular workday, so Bailey was up at first light and had his horse well-watered and fed, and himself Arbuckled and baconed with plenty of time to be where he could watch movement at the Rafter T corral when the hands caught and saddled and rode out on their morning assignments. Only the last rider out of the ranch yard, a chunky man in a green plaid shirt and white Stetson rode toward the fence line. Bailey followed along for an hour until he found a good spot and settled down to wait.

The sun was high overhead when a spot of white appeared in the distance. From his prone position, Bailey eased the rifle stock into his shoulder and tracked his target patiently as the white dot resolved itself into a Stetson, as the green plaid shirt filled up his sight picture, but still he waited, 400 yards, 300 yards, when the rider paused and pulled the makings out of his shirt pocket, rolled a smoke and then kneed his horse back on its journey. 200 yards, 150 yards and Bailey squinted down the barrel of his Winchester until at 100 yards the yellow Bull Durham tag hanging from the target's breast pocket filled the gunsight. Bailey squeezed one off and scrambled to his feet.

While the target slumped to one side and hit the ground hard, Bailey stirruped up, dropped down to the flat, and finished the task with two quick head shots from his .45. A professional is always thorough.

With the day's work completed, Bailey rode easy in the saddle musing on whether he could claim a double bonus for the day's work. But that thought passed quickly. It was a gentle spring day in Kansas, with the fresh smell of the grass and the hint of a breeze.

It was a good day to be alive.

Back at his camp, Bailey found a surprise waiting for him, some red-headed kid squatting on the ground. The kid jumped to his feet respectfully when Bailey walked his horse toward the camp.

"I'm drifting across Kansas riding the grub line and looking for a job, mister," the kid said. "When I saw your camp, I would have halloed the fire, but you wasn't here. So, I come in to wait."

Bailey could see a pleasant evening over the campfire, sharing tales, and relaxing. "Make yourself to home," he invited, as he swung down. He was loosening the cinches on his bay horse when he felt the iron dig into his ribs.

"It's a real honor, Mr. Bailey, for you to be my first kill."

Riding across the range without the comforting weight of his revolver pressing against his thigh for the first time in nearly twenty years was unsettling. More unsettling was his carelessness in taking the young kid for granted. Turning his back, even momentarily, on the youngster had given the kid all the time he needed to draw, cock, and order "shuck your gun, Mr. Bailey."

From then, the order to mount and move out followed. No conversation, no yakking, no chance for him to distract the kid. Would the kid fire if he refused his orders? Beginners were unpredictable. Bailey had not dared to risk it. But the kid had already made two greenhorn mistakes that would kill him.

"Kill first, then talk," the basic rule of professionals of the gun everywhere.

And second, if you have to take your target captive, give him a thorough search. The single shot Remington derringer Bailey always carried in his boot top was within reach. Just a toy nuisance most saw in the little gun, but in the practiced hands of a professional like Bailey, a single .41 caliber shot settled any dispute.

Following either rule could have saved the kid's life, but now the kid was dead man riding.

"Mr. Tyler, he said when you hired on with a fence-builder, you turned yourself into an honest kill," the kid told Bailey. "Of course, you being friends and all, it wouldn't have been honorable for him do it," the kid continued. Tyler's typical failing, Bailey remembered, losing focus on business. "He knew I had the itch and drilled me on how to use your weakness for kids to make my first kill. He said it ain't near as hard as folks make out to turn a fellow sitting strong in the saddle into a stinking pile of range rubbish."

The brutal dehumanizing words came from Tyler, Bailey knew, but the kid's revolver would speak the same ruthless language unless he could parlay the kid's mistakes into a one-shot derringer take-down. "Talk first, kill later," was the kid's choice. Get to know your object as a man instead of just money in your jeans, find out he's like you in some way, laugh at his jokes, swap the makings, maybe get to like him. That's when a man starts making mistakes. All the kid had needed to do was draw, cock, and kill, no thought required. But trying to put down someone he had got to know, an amateur loses focus, becomes vulnerable.

The Vermillion Hills would be the kind of kill-site Josh would choose if he wanted to lose the body. They were perhaps ten miles ahead, so Bailey had an hour to develop his kill-plan. Plenty of time, Bailey told himself even if the best he had come up with so far depended upon the kid making more mistakes. Long odds. If Tyler had trained him right, within an hour Bailey would be nothing more than nourishment for buzzards. He gave a short chuckle. The Avenger of the Plains had come back to where he started, only to get taken out because of some gun-idolizing youngster.

"Talking about Josh take me back to the time him and me was hunting rustlers in Idaho," Bailey began. "Thought we found an inside man in the C W bunkhouse." Bailey took his time telling the story, no need to rush through it, about waiting until one day the cowhand slipped off by himself. When they tracked him, they saw he was heading toward a small copse of trees where another horse waited. "We prided ourselves that we was earning a double bonus that day."

"What happened?"

"The other rider got up from the ground and stepped to meet our cowhand. Josh and me was waiting until the targets made a tight shot group and we was just about to do our work when the new cowhand took off the big Stetson and let long blonde tresses flow." Bailey laughed. "She was the schoolmarm and we was close to making ourselves murderers."

"You ever make a mistake, Mr. Bailey?"

"Never." The answer was firm and unyielding. "It don't matter what someone else may tell him, whenever a man crooks his finger, he takes on a pile of responsibility. It's up to him to make sure he's doing a needful killing. Putting a man down don't allow for no do-overs, Red."

Whether the kid realized Bailey was working to addle his brain or just passing on a professional ethic Bailey couldn't tell, but the kid was thoughtfully silent for some minutes.

They were entering the Vermillion Hills now. The hills were not well-traveled. Outlaws sometimes made their camps there. Lawmen had entered, and never been seen again. Few trails penetrated the wilderness, and the narrow path Red had guided them to was little more than a narrow game trail between two hills.

"Not many folks come to the Vermillion Hills, Mr. Bailey," Bailey was used to the kid jabbering by now, in fact he made it work. The more the kid jabbered, the more he relaxed, the more vagrant thoughts could divert him the less focused he would be. Bailey could feel the derringer—his lifeline—digging against his calf. In a few minutes the kid's shirt would have a .41 caliber hole right where it counted.

"Do you think they'll ever write a book about me, Mr. Bailey?" the kid asked. Bailey didn't answer, but the kid was in the mood to talk anyway. "If they do, 1'll tell them you was a man four-square, just like the Avenger book said. There wasn't no quivering or begging and you and me just rode off together all relaxed and friendly like two old pards riding fence. I'll always tell folks you rode tall in the saddle right to the end, never caterwauling or nothing like that Sanderson fellow out in Arizona did when you tumbled him from his saddle."

No, Bailey knew, they'd never write about 150 pounds of rotting flesh being nibbled on by the Vermillion Hills coyotes. Maybe Bailey hadn't worked out the details of his kill-plan yet, but for a master gun professional like him to be put down by a pissant like Red Tucker was too humiliating to contemplate.

"Depends on how good that fast-gun training Josh gave you is and how many rounds of the wheel you last," Bailey replied. When Red didn't seem to understand, Bailey continued. "It's an old game. When some fellow builds his rep by taking down someone famous, he becomes the new prize. After Bob Ford killed Jesse James, men lined up to be the man who killed the man who killed Jesse James. Ford gave it a good ride, but finally the wheel double-zeroed him and someone else got to play. In a few more spins of the wheel, the winner was 'the man who killed the man who killed the man who killed . . . ' Before long, folks lost track of who was up next and not many could remember those who went down along the way." Bailey let the fake history lesson sink in for a minute and gave the Kid some advice: "keep practicing your holster speed like Josh told you, but remember in the kill game, first to fire don't score near as high as first to hit."

Let the Kid puzzle that out, Bailey told himself. Keep him thinking about anything other than why they were taking this ride and watch for his next mistake.

"I like you, Red," Bailey said. "Hope you last at least till Christmas."

They were deep into the Vermillion Hills now; Bailey knew they could reach the killing ground any minute. And he had yet to work out the defect in his kill-plan. His derringer was inaccessible from the saddle. Meanwhile, the hourglass of his life was draining fast with only a few minutes of sand left. As long he could keep the kid talking, he would not die, but when they stopped talking, if Tyler had trained him right, the kid would draw, cock and kill.

"There was this fellow up in Montana, young fellow he was, Lonnie Fairchild he went by," Bailey remembered. "Josh and me had us a job working for Granville Stuart and his Montana Stranglers at the time and knew in our bones that Fairchild was a rustler, but just knowing something ain't enough to bonus a man out."

"What did you do?" Red asked. Draw the story out as much as you can, Bailey told himself. Keep the kid listening.

"After two weeks of losing trails, finally we tracked him to his campsite in the hills where he had two heifers tied up and waiting for his running iron. One afternoon, just at suppertime, we made our move, "halloed the fire" and rode in. He didn't know us from old Jeff Davis, told us to stand down, and we tossed our share into the cook pot. Pleasant evening it was, sitting around the dying embers, passing his flask back and forth, him being a friendly fellow. Finally, we all rolled into our blankets."

"You kill him in his sleep?" The kid asked astonished.

Bailey rejected the notion with an abrupt shake of his head. "Not professional. When me and Josh worked a man, we never stole his dignity," Bailey told the kid. "Come morning, we woke Fairchild up with the rope already tight around his neck, and I explained to him how we made our money."

The kid's eyes were saucer-wide as he listened to a story more exciting than anything in that "Avengers" book. "You swing him? How long did he kick?"

Bailey tried to sound patient. "Like I said, over supper we'd come to know him as a friendly fellow, a man you could trust to keep his word. As long as he skedaddled, Josh and me didn't see no reason to stretch his neck. We gave him 48 hours to leave Montana, or we'd see that he went out hard." When Red seemed confused, Bailey drove the point home.

"Lots of times we kept our six shooters in their holsters, Red," and maybe the kid was learning something. "Killing's not the only way to solve a problem."

The story was a lie of course, there was no bonus for a rustler riding to Wyoming. They had strung him up before supper. "Kill first, then eat," then rolled out their sleeping bags and let the rope twisting gently in the night breeze lullaby them to sleep.

After the Montana story ended, they followed the trail for several minutes as Bailey tried to find some other topic of conversation that might keep him alive for another half hour. He was about to make up a story about the Colfax County War when the kid broke the silence.

"It was really good riding with you like two old saddle pards, Mr. Bailey," Red said, "and all this time you knowing I'm fixing on . . . " The kid trailed off. "I mean . . . " The kid was having a hard time saying it. Bailey had spent two hours attempting to addle the kid's brain enough to get the kid distracted from his purpose. Had it worked?

"It makes me think about what you did with Lonnie Fairchild," the kid continued hesitantly. "I wonder, maybe if you agreed to skedaddle and never ever come back to Kearney County, maybe we wouldn't have to . . . " The kid trailed off again.

Bailey found it was easy to agree. "You earned the right to tell me what to do, Red." The trail was descending through the brush now. Bailey could see a clearing up ahead. A good kill zone. Had he cut it that close? In five more minutes, he'd have been face down fertilizing the grass.

But now everything was different. The kid would move up alongside, reach out his hand, they'd clasp right hands in a strong man-to-man shake to seal the agreement, he'd yank the kid forward, snake out the kid's revolver from its holster, and kill.

"But then I remembered," the kid continued reluctantly, "I promised Mr. Tyler I'd . . . " His voice trailed off uncertainly. He swallowed hard before continuing. "My Pa always said a man's got to keep his word or he ain't much of a man. That's what my Pa says."

As the trail leveled off Bailey found himself in a small glen, centered around a clearing not more than fifty feet across. The perfect kill zone. He'd run out of time.

"I always like coming here," the kid said. "Quiet and peaceful." Their horses ambled forward slowly. If Tyler had drilled the kid on a professional takedown, Bailey knew he'd be getting two hot ones in the back any second.

"Me and my Pa took an elk here last fall," Red was talking, maybe still trying to put it off. "And Andy," Red added. "She came with us for the first time. Of course, Andy ain't her real name. She carries our Ma's name, so we call her Andy for short."

The grass was green and deep, it was a peaceful scene. "I always liked this spot, Mr. Bailey. Mr. Tyler said it was a respectful place to do it." A good place to lose the body, he meant. Bailey no longer put his hopes in the kid's hesitation. He had heard the resolve coming back to his voice. "I guess, that is,  . . . I mean, if this place is okay with you, Mr. Bailey?"

Bailey wasn't listening. The name Andy ricocheted around his skull. A name that was short for Amanda. He looked over his shoulder at the redheaded kid, perhaps truly seeing him for the first time. He had to ask. "How old are you, Red?"

"Going on eighteen."

Seventeen years then and a few months more. Add nine months and count back and where did it take you? Where it took Bailey was to a glorious rainy afternoon in the old Franklin barn and to a question he'd never thought to ask: what duty does a father owe to a son he's never met? The derringer pressed hard against his calf reminding him of the other urgent question. What duty does a man owe to himself?

"I've been learning a lot of things from you, Mr. Bailey," Red said. "Wish we could squat and pass the makings back-and-forth for another hour. But Ma'll skin me if I ain't back for supper." Suddenly the kid was nervous as he faced up to what he had come to do. "So, I guess we need to . . . You know, do it now." He looked at Bailey almost as if he were asking permission "if that's okay with you . . . ."

"As good time as any," but the kid had finally given him a way to get his derringer into action. "My mare is a good horse, Red. Let me swing down and leave her out of it."

Swinging his leg over his horse's rump it was easy to slip his hand inside his boot. As he landed, he spun quickly, swinging the derringer up, squeezing it's one shot off as he had so many times—but unaccountably not a center shot, but just a sleeve hit, not even the kid's gun arm. All Bailey's practiced professional accuracy had done was galvanize Red into action.

Unsurprisingly, the kid reacted with an amateur's haste and triggered off his first shot while his revolver was still in the upswing, punching into the flesh of Bailey's thigh, staggering him around as he regained his balance. Four panicky shots punched holes on the air as they whizzed by. Only the last trigger pull before Red's gun clicked empty did any damage as it carved into Bailey's shoulder, thrusting him forward, sprawling him motionless on the grass.

The burning pain disabled Bailey momentarily. After a moment, he found he could control the pain and breathe shallowly. Behind him he heard Red dry-heaving from the saddle. Red could always tell himself he had shot in self-defense, but now he would never be a cold killer. Bailey had done what he could for his son. He had fulfilled his duty to Amanda, as well, though she would never know it.

Finally, Bailey heard the kid's horse riding off and he could fulfill his duty to himself. That last wild shot had carved through flesh and gristle only. The bullet had come out high on his shoulder making his shirt soggy, but no real damage had been done. He'd be riding away and giving Josh Tyler the horselaugh.

All he had to do with stuff his kerchief into the wound to staunch the bleeding  . . .  all he had to do was stuff  . . .  all he had to  . . .  But suddenly he was tired  . . .  very  . . .  very . . .  his eyelids sagged  . . .  closed  . . .  and the darkness claimed him.