Casey Monroe's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Casey Monroe pinned the outlaw's face to the saloon post with her knife and stepped back to look at him. Same crooked nose. Same dead eyes. The reward poster said he'd be in Dustvale by week's end, and the scar above her eye still pulled tight when she frowned at it. She'd spent two years tracking the man who gave her that scar. She had a horse, a six-shooter, and forty dollars. He had six men and a reputation for killing lawmen before breakfast. She pushed through the swinging doors of the saloon and took a stool at the bar. The room smelled like spilled beer and wet sawdust. Her hands were steady. That was the problem. Steady hands wouldn't stop a bullet from a man who'd outdrawn three sheriffs. The barmaid set a glass down without being asked. Rose McCallister had poured Casey's whiskey every Friday for a month, and she'd never once asked why a woman drank alone at noon. Today she leaned in, red hair falling over the bar. "You're going after him." It wasn't a question. "Alone, you're a funeral. Talk to the cowboy at the end of the bar. He tracked that same man out of Red Fork last spring and lived." Casey turned. A man in a brown vest was cleaning his nails with a matchstick, a red bandana loose at his throat. He looked up and smiled like they'd already met. Indigo Callahan. She'd heard the name from a marshal in Abilene. The marshal had said Indigo was the only tracker in the territory who wouldn't sell you out for a drink. She carried her whiskey over. "Rose says you know him." "I know what he does to people who come at him with one gun." Indigo nudged the stool beside him with his boot. "Sit." She sat. She told him about the scar, and the two years, and the poster. She did not tell him she was scared. He listened without interrupting, which was more than most men managed. When she finished, he said, "I'll ride with you. Not for the bounty. He shot a friend of mine in the back outside Red Fork." He set the matchstick down. "But we go my way. We don't meet him in the street. We take him at the creek crossing before he reaches town, and we take him from two sides." Casey turned the glass in her hand. Every plan she'd made ended with her walking down a dusty road alone. This one didn't. "Deal," she said. Rose was already sliding a folded map across the bar. She'd drawn the creek crossing in pencil, with an X where the road narrowed. "I've been waiting for you to ask someone," Rose said. Casey pocketed the map. Outside, her horse stamped at the rail. She had two guns now, and a plan that didn't end with her dying.