“Stop it, stop it, stop it,” a voice said. It was shocking in the silence—not because it was sudden, and certainly not because it was angry. It was shocking because it was amused. “I simply can’t allow that. Nope. I would if I could, but I can’t. Unsanitary, you see. Who knows what disease might be spread in such fashion? The mind quails! Ab-so-lutely cuh-wails!”

Standing just inside the batwing doors was the purveyor of this idiotic and potentially fatal screed: a young man of middling height, his flat-crowned hat pushed back to reveal a tumbled comma of brown hair. Except young man didn’t really cover him, Depape realized; young man was drawing it heavy. He was only a kid. Around his neck, gods knew why, he wore a bird’s skull like an enormous comical pendant. It was hung on a chain that ran through the eyeholes. And in his hands was not a gun (where would an unwhiskered dribble like him get a gun in the first place? Depape wondered) but a goddam slingshot. Depape burst out laughing.

The kid laughed as well, nodding as if he understood how ridiculous the whole thing looked, how ridiculous the whole thing was. His laughter was infectious; Pettie, still up on her stool, tittered herself before clapping her hands over her mouth.

“This is no place for a boy such as you,” Depape said. His revolver, an old five-shooter, was still out; it lay in his fist on the bar, with Stanley Ruiz’s blood dripping off the gunsight. Depape, without raising it from the ironwood, waggled it slightly. “Boys who come to places like this learn bad habits, kid. Dying is apt to be one of them. So I give you this one chance. Get out of here.”

“Thank you, sir, I appreciate my one chance,” the boy said. He spoke with great and winning sincerity... but didn’t move. Still he stood just inside the batwing doors, with the wide elastic strap of his sling pulled back. Depape couldn’t quite make out what was in the cup, but it glittered in the gaslight. A metal ball of some sort.

“Well, then?” Depape snarled. This was getting old, and fast.

“I know I’m being a pain in the neck, sir—not to mention an ache in the ass and a milky drip from the tip of a sore dick—but if it’s all the same to you, my dear friend, I’d like to give my chance to the young fellow on his knees before you. Let him apologize, let him polish your boots with his clout until you are entirely satisfied, and let him go on living his life.”