ONE MORE CHAT WITH THE AUTHOR

Kate sat at her desk staring at the blank screen before her. A well disciplined writer of questionable talent, but endless enthusiasm, Kate found herself, for the first time, stumped and at a loss for words.

Feeling more perplexed than worried, she waited patiently for Heyes and Curry to edge their way into the forefront of her thinking and was certain that the two former outlaws were just waiting for the right moment to to submerge her in some dangerous or heartfelt adventure.

"Kate?" Curry's voice was whispered and had a nervous hint to it.

"Kid! I'm so glad you're here. I knew I could depend on the two of you. Where's Heyes?" Kate asked.

"He's... He...I don't know, Kate. You ain't wrote nothing about him yet."

"So, what's wrong, Kid? Why are you here, lurking about in the dark recesses of my imagination?"

"Kate... We need to talk about something."

Kid sounded worried and this sounded very important.

"What is it, Kid? You know you can tell me anything."

"Well, we've been through an awful lot over these past hundred plus stories..."

"That's true, Kid. You and me and Heyes, why sometimes I think we're inseparable."

"Uh-uh."

"Why are you whispering?" Kate asked.

"Kate... I think I'm having...feelings...for you."

Kate smiled but spoke carefully, not quite sure how to explain this to the most handsome fictitious cowboy ever to sit a saddle.

"That's...that's not possible, Kid... You see, you and Heyes...you're both figments of...thousands of people's imaginations. I'm just one of those thousands of people...But, as fictitious cowboys, you feel...whatever any of us imagine you to feel... what ever emotions any of us project into each of you."

Kid's brow furled into an accordion of wrinkles. "What's fictitious mean?" Kid asked.

Kate's heart was heavy as she contemplated how to tell Kid that...that he wasn't real.

"Fictitious is like...make believe. Kid."

"You're saying Heyes and me are make believe? We ain't real?"

Kate's hazel eyes locked with the bluest eyes any fan had ever imagined. "I'm sorry, Kid," Kate said, her own heart breaking with a pain she would never be effectively able to describe.

"But I'm feeling something I ain't never felt before...And you're responsible for that," Kid replied.

Kate broke the gaze and turned her eyes to the blank computer screen. She sighed heavily. "Kid, you've been through a hundred stories with me, you've run the full gamete of emotions, love, hate, fear, joy, and maybe a dozen others. But they have always been emotions that I have written in to you."

"So, if you and all them other writers were to stop writing...Me and Heyes would just...fade away?"

"I'm sorry, Kid," her own voice barely above a whisper.

"Kate...Can you bring Heyes here?"

Kate looked up with a glimmer of hope in her eyes. "You want Heyes, Kid? I can do that for you," she said as her fingers began flying across the keyboard.

"What in tar-nation are you doing, Kate?' Heyes shouted at her angrily. "I was enjoying a bit of total, uninterrupted, blissful solitude."

"But Kid needs you, Heyes," Kate explained

"Did you hurt him again?" Heyes asked scornfully.

"I didn't mean to," Kate said, fumbling with a series of misspelled words. "It's just that, he seems to have figured this whole fantasy thing out, or at least he's trying to and...and..."

"It's alright, Kate. I understand," Heyes said and, as written, Heyes turned and looked at his partner with the very confused expression on his face."

"I should have explained this to you outright, Kid," Heyes said, repeating word for word everything Kate frantically typed into the computer. "It's not as bad as you think, Kid."

"It's not?" Kid asked.

"Naw...Think of all the times Kate, not to mention all the other writers in this world, have pelted you with bullets or arrows, or sent you careening down a mountain, or gotten you attacked by some wild animal. Think of all the times you've been sent to prison and barely survived. Think of all the times you've been sick or hurt and ain't survived... But here you are," Heyes said with a smile that stretched all the way across his face.

"I don't understand," Kid said, growing very apprehensive and nervous.

"Kate, did you use the word fictitious?"

"Several times, Heyes."

"Did you explain it means make-believe?"

"I did, Heyes. I swear."

"Well there you have it, Kid. It don't matter what these writers put us through, we always survive to get muddled through another story. You and me, Kid, we're what legends are made of. And long after all these writers are dead and gone, you and me will still be here, floating around somewhere is some high technology...cloud, I think Kate called it."

"But all the things we've been through, Heyes... It's all just been somebody's imagination?"

"Uh-uh."

"None of it's true?"

"Not one word of it, Kid."

Kid's outlook was beginning to lighten a bit.

"So...Our folks didn't really get killed?"

"Nope."

"We never really became outlaws?"

"That's right."

"We don't need no damn amnesty?"

"Now you're getting the idea, Kid!"

Kid began to smile. "We ain't really poor?"

Heyes shrugged. "We ain't rich, either."

"And no matter how bad we get hurt or wounded, or even killed...We're still here?"

"Always and forever, Kid."

Kid began to laugh. "Heyes, we're immortal!"

"Pretty much."

"And somewhere out there, in someone's imagination, I got me an endless line of whores," Kid said with great excitement in his voice.

Heyes looked a little concerned. "Is that all you really want to get out of immortality, Kid?"

The smile evaporated from Kid's face. "Of course not, Heyes. I know exactly what the best thing about immortality is."

"What's that?"

A new, warm, endearing smile spread across Kid's face.

"It's you, Heyes. That's the best part of immortality, spending all that time with you."