Vengeance, My Heart is a work of serialized fiction. Jump to key story links to read earlier content.

Dee turned to the stranger and nodded to the gun at her hip.

“That’s a fine bit of hardware you’re carrying around,” she said. “Old. The kind that means something. They don’t make them like that anymore.” She tilted her head and took a sip from her flask. “Lone woman on the road, carrying a piece like that around… Eventually somebody’s gonna make you an offer on it.”

She took another nod at the flask, spit into the fire and watched the whiskey flare up into a darkening twilight as it kissed the flame.

“Might as well be me.”

Vengeance, My Heart is a work of serialized fiction. Jump to key story links to read earlier content.

The man who had taken the hare from the stranger spit the carcass and seared it over the flames. The stranger noticed the woman who had poured the coffee was too close a resemblance to be anything but the man’s daughter and watched her cut up root vegetables and put them into a small kettle of boiling water. It would not amount to much, but it was luxurious fare for those used to the road and even a small tin cup of the stuff was better than hardtack and stale water sitting in a skin all day.

She was lean, but not a sinewy, spindly leanness. Her father did well enough doing whatever he did to keep her modestly fed.

A young man sat in the family’s wain, hat pulled low over his eyes, a long gun cradled in his arms. He seemed to be napping for a watch against the roaming desert nightgaunts that liked to nest near the mesas when true night decided to stop for a visit. Probably the older man’s son.