As blastdown time approached, he read the characteristics of Wister IV and found his greatest inconvenience would be the intense sunlight from the double suns, not bright enough to burn but brilliant enough to dazzle. He searched the ship for sunglasses, but all he could find were snow goggles—a visor of black plastic with twin slits to look through. He put them on, resolving never to steal an improperly equipped spaceship again....
"Howdy, pardner." The humanoid at the spaceport was bald and green. He wore a wide-brimmed hat, chaps, and a large gun. Nothing else at all. "Forgive my informal dress. Forgot my kerchief, boots and spurs this morning. Who might you be?"
Baker gave the title of his position at the bank, explaining it would be his job to help arrange for loans to the local ranchers.
"You'll find this a friendly place. Tumbleweed is an adult Western town—we know the banker ain't always the head of the gang of rustlers."
As the weeks passed, Baker learned to live with the aliens' strange obsession with the things and persons of the Old West. They were even more fanatic than terrestrial Frenchmen over the American Frontier. It was not exaggerating to say that they regarded the men in the old films they got from Earth as gods.
They had appropriated appropriate Western given and surnames, but while there were plenty of Wills and Davys, and Rogerses and Crocketts, it was always Will Crockett and Davy Rogers. Anything other than that would be sacrilege.
Baker's biggest problem was getting a good mixed martini. Everybody on Wister VI drank their rotgut straight. But by becoming friendly with the bartender, Gene Gibson, at the Golden Slipper, he managed to get his mixed drinks.
"Which do you think was faster on the draw, Matt Dillon or William S. Hart?" Tom asked Baker early one evening.
"I don't give a hoot, Gibson," Baker snarled, reaching for his martini.