All the soup was gone from The Starman’s bowl. Fenimore still had half of his left. “Listen to this here offer I’m giving,” the Starman said. “I know a man won’t sell no heirloom built by his father, now dead, God rest his, cocksucker, soul—pardon me—but if I would pay with bread, board and company just for some time to investigate the heirloom, without ownership passing…”

Fenimore angled his brows. He felt the need for a cigar he could chomp down on. “You’re going to let me stay here and eat your food if I let you fiddle with my timepiece?”

“Yes.”

“And what am I going to do here?”

“Rest?” The Starman suggested with a salesman’s smile.

“Tell me about that gun.”

“A trade?”

“Tell me its story.”

The Starman wiped his mouth and rubbed his hands together, before setting the palms flat on the table. He had bulbous knuckles.

“Well, see, that gun she’s a little spring filled contraception of my own making, if I do say so myself. And I do say so.” He almost hooted. “Goddamn, if she ain’t a funny one too. Most of my contraceptions don’t quite function the way I design them, but this here gun, you see, once upon a time, when I still had me a wife before that bastard Iron Rhodes notarised them yellow belly papers—”

“Give me the short story.”

“Apologies. It’s just I ain’t had a soul to talk with for a long time.”

“Real short.”

“Real short says she’s yer rifle, yer shotgun, and yer dynamite all in one pretty little metal package, controlled by springs of course. Flip her switch to change her from long distance to short distance to real short, real cocksucker-go-boom distance. If you wanna lock her up, for safekeepin’ say, you hoot: three times.” He hoo hoo hoo’d very quietly. “Another three such same hoots wakes her up. Or, if she be in cocksucker-go-boom range, you hoot and she gets gone along with whatever mishappens to be within her boom range.”

“What range is that?”

“I guess a circumcision of a fair sized twenty five foot, or a radius of half of that in metres, dependin’ on your brand of mathematics. Metres is what they use in France.”

A man could go far with a gun like that, Fenimore mused. “And this town you mentioned, Hope Spring.”

“Springs.”

“Yeah.”

“Yep.”

“Is it far from here?”

“Thirty minutes ridin’, maybe more if you go by ass.”

Now Fenimore’s bowl was empty, too. Despite himself he reached for another helping. The moonshine in the soup was getting to him, mixing with the tiredness that still hadn’t gone. Sometimes a man is nothing but a slave to his own rumbling stomach. “Could a man find work in this town?”

The Starman stared at him.

“Work—for money,” Fenimore repeated.

The Starman made fists of his hands, which were still resting on the tabletop. “Only thing a man will find in Hope Springs these days is a feud. She used to be a fine little town in the Rodriguez days, but she ain’t one no more. I suggest if it’s honest work a man is after, he turn his self east and ride on to Gulliver’s Participle.”

Nobody had asked about honest work, and Fenimore knew from experience that feuds could be lucrative. They provided business opportunities of a particular kind for men of a particular disposition who possessed the right, very particular, set of skills.

“How far is Gulliver’s Participle?”

“Five days ridin’.”

“And what kind of work is a man likely to find there?”

“Ditch diggin’,” said The Starman. “In Gulliver’s Participle they like their ditches. Goddamn, they like ‘em cocksucker long and gravely deep.” The soup was starting to get to him, too. “You ever dug a long, gravely ditch?”

“If I ride out to Gulliver’s Participle to dig ditches I’ll take my timepiece with me.”

“I reckon.”

Fenimore glanced at the fire and the The Starman got up and poured them each a second cup of coffee.

After he sat back down, he took a sip and said, “I find yer timepiece interesting and there’s value to me in takin’ it apart and fiddlin’ with its springs, yet still I recommend a man take his horse—or ass, as the beast may be—and go ridin’ on his way to Gulliver’s Participle to earn his money diggin’ ditches. A man might consider that what you call advice.”

“I like to see a place before I pass judgment.”

“Sounds mightily fair coming out the face of a man who, goddamn, killed another and took his horse, his gun and his clothes.”

“I like to see a man before passing judgment on him, too. But then I pass it.”

“Why’d you pass judgment on the man in the blue poncho?”

“I liked what he was wearing.”

Fenimore had no intention of talking about the past and The Starman understood and didn’t press. It was the quiet understanding of a man whose own past was too painful to talk about, even with a brain drenched by moonshine soup. They finished their coffee in silence.

“How long until the sun comes up?” Fenimore asked.

“Four hours will see you the morning light.”

Fenimore stood up from the table, nodded in recognition of the meal and the company, and took steps toward the bedroom. Balance was trickier to keep than he’d remembered. His legs wobbled.

“Wake me up in four hours,” he said.

“And then?”

“And then I take your gun, your horse and I ride to pass judgment on Hope Springs.”

The Starman shook his head. “It ain’t a good idea, I tell ya. It’s a damn bad idea. Bastard bad, goddamit…”

“And you keep fiddling with my timepiece until I come back.”

“…ain’t such a bad idea. Not at all. I heard worse. “And,” he said, making big saucer eyes, “if you don’t come back none at all?”

“You keep the timepiece.”

“Full ownership property passes and them trader’s marks too?”

“That’s right.”

The Starman wasn’t satisfied. “One more condition.”

Fenimore growled.

“If you do come back, and I ain’t sayin’ I believe in it, but if such does come to pass, I also want the story of the timepiece.”

“It’s already been told.”

“You told the end of the story, not the beginning nor the central parts, and an ending ain’t a whole story, otherwise we’d all just be telling each other endings.” He squinted into the fire. “You ever hear of a child lay eyes on an ending book?”

“Who are you, Starman?”

The only answer was the crackle of the fire.