El Paso, 1895On the morning it happened, John Wesley lay on his bed, still brooding over the recent argument he and his latest girlfriend, a firebrand widow by the name of M'ose McRose, had had the night before. They were both very drunk and the words they spat out were full of venom and designed to hurt. At some point, Hardin drifted off to sleep, fully-clothed. He woke up to find her gone. He swung his legs over the bed and stood up, rolling his tongue around the inside of his mouth. The taste he found there hovered somewhere between stale tobacco juice and horse sweat. Reaching for a nearby bottle, he cleansed his palette with a healthy slug of bourbon.
He checked her wardrobe in the small, cluttered hotel room they shared, and gained considerable relief from finding all her clothes st
