The Gunslinger and the Preacher’s Daughter

1939 – The Inquiry

The fire is dying low in the hearth, the last embers flickering beneath the blackened logs. Outside, the Montana wind howls through the pines, rattling against the windowpanes, whispering through the cracks in the old wood.

I sit in my rocker, my hands moving slow over the quilt stretched across my lap, stitching in neat, precise rows. It’s the kind of work that doesn’t require thinking, only doing. My fingers know the rhythm. They remember, even when I try to forget.

Across from me, Mary, sixteen and restless, sprawls on the settee, her book abandoned beside her. She’s been watching me for the last few minutes, waiting for the right moment to speak. I feel it before she says a word.

“Dillinger got shot in Chicago,” she finally announces, testing me. “They say he was the fastest gun there ever was.”

I don’t look up. “The fastest gun always ends up dead.”

She makes a face. “You never like the good stories.”

“That ain’t a good story, child. That’s just a fool who never learned when to quit.”