Vin Tanner gently touched the cross shaped scar on his chest. The skin was still an angry red but would soon turn pink then fade to silver. He was no longer in pain although he felt a twinge as he shrugged into a clean shirt. Wiping the steam from the mirror that hung from a rusted nail in the bathhouse, he looked at the face staring back. His pallor was still a little gray from his long days spent recuperating at Nettie's. A melancholy hung on to him like a bad winter cold but that night he would join the others in the saloon in a concerted effort to lift his spirits.
Pushing the batwings open, the tracker entered the noisy barroom. It was thick with the haze of cigars and kerosene lamps and boisterous with the laughter and shouts of drunken revelers. Sauntering over to a large table where Ezra held court dealing cards, an old piano had come to life under the multi-talented fingers of one of the whores as she started into a rousing rendition of 'Oh Susanna'.
"Evenin' Mr. Tanner. Won't you join us in a hand or two?" the Southerner asked with a gold-toothed smile.
Studying the large pile of chips in front of the gambler and the dour look on the faces of the others, Vin shook his head and told him, "Lady Luck ain't been too keen on me of late."
"On the contrary, Vin. I think Lady Luck - and a certain lady bounty hunter - were especially keen on you,"
Buck Wilmington walked up behind Vin and, placing his arm around the tracker's shoulder, steered him to a table where Chris and JD sat. The tracker took a seat next to the taciturn gunman while Buck took the seat across the table from him smiling like the cat that ate the canary. Vin stared at the smiling ladies man in confusion.
"What's goin' on? Why's he so happy?" Vin asked Chris, who just shrugged his shoulders and continued to drink his whiskey and smoke.
"Hell boy, it ain't everyday ol' Hannity McCall turns loose a $500.00 bounty," Buck said slapping the table top.
"You're famous," JD gushed, "Vin Tanner the only man to escape the fearless Hannity McCall."
He'd hardly escaped her, Vin thought picking up the beer Buck had set on the table in front of him.
"Did you know that Buck knows her?" JD had been hanging on Buck's every word as the well traveled ladies' man shared his tales and the woman now loomed larger than any heroine in a penny dreadful in his mind.
"I first met Hannity in Deadwood, up in the Dakota territories. Just as I was leavin' town, she was heading in haulin' the putrifyin' remains of some sorry son of a bitch. I still don't know if the townsfolk gave her such a wide berth because of the stinking carcass or just because of the look of pure meanness on her face."
As Vin listened his stomach twisted into knots. He had seen that determined look on her face as they made ready to leave Prairie Junction and again when Jack Tate had bushwhacked them but, when she was alone with him on the trail, she'd been pensive, wary, heartsick and passionate but never mean.
"I do have to say this for the woman though," Buck added, "She sure cleans up real good."
As the evening wore on, Buck's recounting of his time spent in the company of the bounty hunter seemed to entertain JD as well as others. Chris sat back and never ventured a word, just watched as the tales, obviously painful for Vin, began to push the tracker toward an anger Vin didn't quite understand himself. The piano-playing whore started in on 'Amazing Grace', a somber tune more befitting his steadily souring mood while Buck, still on a roll, described, in no small detail, Hannity's drug abuse and how she'd slept with him many times over the years.
The Texan's façade began to crack precipitously and he struck out verbally at his friend.
"You may have bedded her, Wilmington, but you don't know her! You'll never really know her!"
"Now hold on a minute, partner…" Buck started, clearly flustered.
Buck had assumed they'd all been having a good time but clearly Vin thought otherwise as he continued his berating of the ladies' man.
"You don't know the why of her takin' the laudanum or the reason she started collecting bounties in the first place. To you she's just another conquest, just another whore. And to JD she's someone bigger 'en life now but she's neither. She's just a woman who's been made to suffer by a God she don't even believe in anymore."
Stunned, they all watched as, unbeknownst to the Texan, a single tear of remorse slid down his wan face.
"She 's trapped in a world of other's makin'. Left behind by the men who butchered her family then used her badly. But they didn't finish the job and she went after 'em, even though she was broken. The laudanum's so she can forget and the bounty huntin's all she's got left in this world."
The three of them stared at Vin after his passionate outburst and he finished softly, his head bowed, in an effort to make them understand, to treat her with some dignity and with the respect she deserved, "The whorin's just to ease the loneliness."
Buck tried to lighten the mood and leaned back in his chair and said with a smile, "Well, she was one mighty lonely lady when I was with her."
Vin leaped up and his chair fell back with a crash. He reached across the table and grabbed the lanky lawman by the shirtfront and pulled him across the table. Too distraught to put his thoughts into words, Vin just glared at him and, when Buck raised his hands to beg off, Vin angrily pushed him back into his chair. The tracker then picked up his hat, looked into Buck's still startled eyes and reiterated, "You. Don't. Know."
As Vin Tanner walked out of the saloon, Chris Larabee finally spoke up.
"Buck, sometimes you're a bona fide jackass."