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Sometimes, even in the depth of his near-constant mourning haze, Jackson dreams: Opens his rotgut-bleared eyes to find Charlie Prince clambering atop him once more, naked but for his flapping jacket and his death-wound like a splayed red flower in the very center of his chest, that heart no one who knew him in life ever really thought he had laid open for all the world to see. Dreams Charlie’s cold mouth on his, copper-flavored, golden beard still slick with his own blood; Charlie’s dry little pink tongue—once so mean, so sharp, so unrestrained—sliding down along Jackson’s jaw and then heading southwards, tracking the beat of his pulse like some bad joke. And: Fuck me, Jackson, he almost thinks he can hear this dim shade murmur, at goddamn last and far too goddamn late. Do it, same’s you always wanted—go on, you big ox, I dare you. Make my whole grave turn itself over. Make me scream so loud, you fuck me all the way back alive again…But what about Wade? He can’t quite keep himself from asking—still! In his own friggin’ dream! Then feels Charlie’s ghost shake its head against his throat, one supple pistoleer’s hand reaching down inside Jackson’s trousers as it does, only to meet another already coming up the other way: Jackson’s meaty paw, all scarred knuckles and faint red fur, twining fast with Charlie’s as they start to work his suddenly rigid cock together—Charlie’s lady-small palm kept smooth by those cut-down gloves of his, fingers only callused where they meet his gun (the butt, the hammer, the trigger). Whispering: Wade broke his word to me, Jackson. Broke my damn heart, when he shot me through it. Don’t want him no more; I finally know better. Finally know enough to want YOU, instead… Ah, but—Contention’s months behind him now, that damn skinny, too-dumb-to-quit rancher long-dead, coughing his life out in the dust; Ben Wade’s in Yuma, and pretty, vicious little Charlie’s in the ground. So that means Jackson’s still stranded here, alone amongst the living with what soon turns out to be both his own hands on himself, desperate enough to hurt—drunk and reckless, mired fast in last night’s dregs, without even Sutherland left to keep him company anymore. Without even Charlie’s ghost for comfort, however dubious— —seeing how it melts to nothing, yet again, as he shoots: Fast like a bullet, hot like a cut wrist. So hard it goddamn hurts. THE END