In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, or so I’ve been told. Well, He must’ve had His knickers in a knot when He conjured up this corner of Arizona Territory because it’s nothing but dust and cactus and snakes—and some of the rattiest men you’ll meet this side of Kingdom Come.
Let’s just say you grow scales, like a lizard, to survive here. I should know, or my name’s not Ruby Fortune.
Jericho’s not unlike any other jack-rough mining town cantilevered on the side of a mountain like a tilting house of cards. Cowboys, land agents, and ladies face up on a mattress. Lawmen and outlaws. Con men and swindlers by the wagon load. Not a day goes by without a gunfight or a knifing, all washed down with rotten beer. The hanging tree? Used far too many times for my liking, sometimes without so much as a goddamn trial. No question about it—no one comes to these parts on holiday. For land or freedom or gold, yes. Or to escape something or someone you’d rather soon forget back in Tennessee or Arkansas, or wherever you come from, your pants or your wit or your dick too short.
It’s a rough life here, too. I’ve been beaten on more occasions than you’d probably care to know. Broken bones, split lips, blackened eyes. And welts so unmistakable you can see the outline of a man’s hand long afterward. I’ve got scars you can see, sure enough, and a heap more you can’t. And that’s not the half of it. Been swindled and cheated and deceived, time and again. Sometimes I curse that I’m a woman—although most times not.
I’ve done my share of wrongs and I’m not proud of it. Killed a man, for one. But did I have a choice? Do I have regrets about it? No. That I had to purge this world of my boys’ pa so we could get on with the living of it, that takes it out of a body. We’re all wounded because of it, me and my boys, Clayton, Fletcher, Virgil, and Sam. Most of all Sam. That I live with every day, a pain so deep in my soul I’d need a cleaver to cut it out.
Will I ever be forgiven? That’s up for debate, although I’d do it again. God and the devil both lay claim to me, and they’ve each got their reasons. One minute, The Lord God Almighty Himself is perched on my shoulder and I whistle through my teeth. But then, quick as I can jerk a trigger, the devil’s got his claws into me, hissing in my ear, and I just can’t shake him.
Way I see it, I’m either on the chuck-holed road to Heaven or the slick road to Hell.
Hear me out. Then you pick.