In the American West, a legendary gunslinger delivers a mail-order bride to a madman.

***Winner of the 1995 International Horror Guild Award for Long Fiction***

"…my candidate for the best short story of the year."
—Mark Graham, Rocky Moutain News

"…crams what other writers might belabor for the length of a midlist novel into a space as tightly packed as a bootleg Fourth of July starshell… This story really ought to be remembered at awards time. It’s got the right excitement, the color, the bursting-at-the-seams juice. I guess if anyone should be reincarnated as a hipper, hyper Bret Harte, it might as well be Partridge."
—Edward Bryant, Locus