“Have you known Mr. Cole for long, Mr. Hitch?”

“Call me Everett, and I’m pretty sure you should call Mr. Cole Virgil.”

She smiled and looked down. The gesture looked practiced. Probably was.

“Have you known Virgil long, Everett?” she said.

“Yes.”

“And have you and he always been marshals here?”

“No. We just arrived couple weeks ago,” I said.

“Where were you before?”

“We been all over out here,” I said. “Virgil gets hired to settle things down in towns that need settling, and I go with him, and after the town gets settled, then we move on and find another town that needs settling.”

“Are you what they call ‘town tamers’?” she said.

“If you read those dime novels.”

“What do you call yourselves?” she said.

“Don’t know as we ever have,” I said.

“Do you kill people?”

“Now and then,” I said.

“Many?”

Her eyes were up now and on me. It was always about the killing. I’d met a lot of women who were fascinated with the killing. They were horrified, too, but it was more than that.

“A few,” I said.

“And Virgil?”

“More than a few,” I said.

“What’s it like?”

“It’s like driving a nail,” I said.

“Like what?”

“Driving a nail, splitting firewood. It’s work. It’s quick.”

“No more than that?”

“Not after you’ve done it a couple times.”

“Do you like it?”

“Well, it’s kind of clean and complete,” I said. “You got him, he didn’t get you.”

“But, if you feel that way,” she was frowning, thinking about it, interested, “what’s to prevent you from just killing anyone you feel like?”

“The law,” I said. “Virgil always says, people obey the law, you don’t have a reason to kill them.”

“Any law?”