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slipped Cochise’s bridle bit through the horse’s teeth and then grabbed his rifle from where it leaned against the wooden loading ramp slanting down from the stable car. “Last job. I done been retired.”
    â€œYou don’t say!”
    â€œI said it.”
    Spurr slid his rifle into his beaded elk-hide scabbard and then tossed his saddlebags over Cochise’s back, tucking them under his bedroll around which his heavy buckskin mackinaw was tied, to hold the bags in place. He’d soon be climbing into high, cold, rough country.
    â€œYou don’t look too happy about it, Spurr,” said Sebastian Polly, scowling, flicking ashes from his cigarette onto the cinder bed and rubbing the sparks out with his boot so as not to start any wild prairie fires.
    â€œWho could be happy about retirement, Sebastian?”
    â€œWell, shit, I will be . . . when my time comes. I reckon I got another year to go, and then I’ll have me a stake big enough to go live down in Denver and watch all them pretty girls walk by.”
    â€œWatch ’em all walk by, huh?” Holding Cochise’s reins in one gloved hand, Spurr turned to the old man. “Is that good enough for you? Just sittin’ out on some rooming house porch and watchin’ ’em all walk by?”
    Polly tipped his head to one side, his dark eyes curious. “Spurr, how old are you?”
    â€œI’m sixty-three, give or take a year. Record keeping wasn’t valued much over where they hatched me out.”
    â€œWell, shit, that’s five years older’n me. You ask me, you done pretty well. You should be stompin’ with your tail up in celebration of all them good years you put in, huntin’ bad men. Lawd knows there’s damn few lawmen been workin’ as long as you have without they ended up, long time ago, in a boot hill somewhere, worms in their mouth, pushin’ up crocuses every spring!”
    The station agent laughed at that.
    â€œWell, you’re just an optimistic man, aren’t you, Sebastian?”
    â€œYes, sir, I am! Spurr, you got no cause to go ’round lookin’ like some dog headin’ back to the farm after getting’ hisself sprayed by a damn skunk! Time for you to move out of that old shack of yours and move into a nice roomin’ house in Denver.”
    Spurr turned a stirrup out and grunted as he poked his left foot through it. He heaved himself up onto Cochise’s back, the leather squawking beneath him. He said with a snort, “And sit out on the porch and just watch them purty girls stroll by, eh, Sebastian!”
    â€œSho ’nuff, Mister Spurr. You try to whip them girls with your trouser snake, your old ticker’d plum go out on you!”
    â€œThat’s what you think. Whippin’ girls with my trouser snake is what’s been keepin’ me so young.”
    â€œThen how come you’re so old?”
    Spurr leaned out from his horse and said as though conferring a deep secret, “Looks can be deceiving, Sebastian.”
    He grinned and straightened in his saddle, ignoring the tightness in his chest he was still feeling occasionally after the seizure on Arapaho Street in Denver that awful day.
    â€œI’ll be seein’ you once more, Sebastian. On my way back through. That’ll be the last you see of me. I’ll be headin’ on down to Mexico to whip the senoritas with my ole trouser snake while I dig for gold!”
    He neck-reined Cochise around and ground his heels into the big roan’s flanks, loping off along the old army trail to the west.
    â€œSpurr, somethin’ tells me you think you’re gonna live forever,” Sebastian said behind him, blowing smoke out his long, mahogany nostrils. “You ain’t got the word, have you?
We all gonna dahhh!
”
    Spurr scowled over his shoulder at the old gent who was way too pleased with himself. Sebastian poked a gnarled finger at him,