This here was legendary Dirty Jake, no question about it.
"Get a new glove," I said.
"Nope," he answered, "no good. Last week in Ojo Rojizo I took the glove off to scratch and right then a man braced me. He threw me in a horse-trough when I wouldn't fight. I want you to fix me up good.
"I want you to open my hand up and set the dingus just under the skin, and sew it up again. Knew a feller did that with five-dollar gold pieces cuz he didn't like banks. Worked fine till he got a counterfeit, and it killed him.
"I'll lay low in the hills till the hand heals. No problems after that."
No problems? Maybe so, but I'd been doing some thinking. Still, I kept my mouth shut and did what he wanted, and he slunk off with no thanks. Don't guess I really had any coming.
After he left I got out my tallybook and ticked off the men Dirty Jake had killed: One Eye Jack Sundstrom, Fat Charlie Ticknor, Pilander Quantrell, Lobo Stephens, Alec the Frenchman Dubois, some jackass Texas nobody even knew and the rest, all men whose brains had telegraphed a special signal to Jake's gun before it reached their own right hand. Well, there was a new pistolero in town.
A month and a half later I was craned around, trying to lance a boil of my own, when out of the corner of my eye I saw Dirty Jake go by under my window. He'd dug that hat with the ostrich plume out from under the rocks, his hand was healed, he was swinging his umbrella and he didn't so much as look up. He was headed for the Owl Hoot Palace. I decided the boil'd wait.
Less than five minutes later I heard the shots, two of them. A second later Jubal Bean, swamper at the Owl Hoot, came pounding up the boardwalk and hollered in the door:
"Doc, better come quick. Dirty Jake just took a couple slugs in the chest and he never even got to draw!"