The girl with rabbit ears was savagely dressed with strips of frayed cloth, and her skin, caked in the dust of the road and the brown skin which was a misfortune of her birth, was crudely adorned with bestial fangs and little bones shaped into jewelry by a hand far finer than a half-animal, half-woman savage could ever hope to become.
Despite her half-nakedness, the heat in the bar was oppressive enough to draw thin rivers of sweat, which cracked into branches and tributaries across the half-breed's skin. Fine drops raced each other across taut, sleek flesh, and the eyes of the bar's other patrons tracked each moist rivulet's run across the half-breed's bare skin with relentless fascination. The garbage that passed for alcohol in the joint ran their races from chipped glasses down thirsty throats, and the heat shimmers in each man's mind took the shape of the half-breed's strong body in their pickaxe-ruined hands except for her face and the expression she makes at another man's mercy.
Despite the fantasies and the Sioux war drums beating heavily between their legs and the back of their brains, every man in that bar knew that the only kind of woman, even a half-breed, especially a half-breed, who would dare sit alone in a bar was the kind of woman protected by the kind of man who dealt iron fast and loud from his hip, instead of mining iron from the shits. A wise man knew that no woman was worth the loud, fast death that the iron from the hip gives, and only wise men survived in this kind of bar, built in the center of this kind of town.
"Heya! I'm Jaune Arc. Name's short, sweet, and rolls of the tongue."
Every man in the bar stared at the woman with fear now instead of lust. A Fool was going to die, but when fools died, they always needed a wise man to show them the way to the light. Everyone waited now to see which wise man would death volunteer for the job, for from the second floor of the bar, where quiet rooms were reserved for those who needed the silence for quiet deeds, Death's spurs came a-ringing as he walked down the stairs to the bar's first floor.
Death appeared somber and plain; that was how he snuck up on those doomed to die, which was why Jaune Arc didn't run but instead said to Death.
"Cardin Winchester. I was talking to the lady."
Cardin Winchester's eyes, steel blue, stared at Jaune from beneath the brim of a black hat.
"The half-breed knows her place," Cardin said as he pulled out Jaune's 'WANTED' poster from his grey suit jacket.
"Really, Cardin, you?" Jaune said as he placed his hand on the butt of his revolver.
"I'm the Undertaker, and the reward will pay for your coffin."
Jaune's pistol cleared the leather of his holster first, but the half-breed jumped from her seat and caught his arm before he could aim.
Cardin had the time, then, to fire first. Everyone heard one shot, but Jaune died with three red holes in his chest.
Jaune's reward was enough for three coffins. Cardin pocketed the cost and gave Jaune a six-foot hole instead. Death then left town for the gloomy horizon on a white horse; the half-breed girl, blood fresh on her bare skin and with devotion in her eyes, followed meekly after Death.