#ayelet-catbutt

Stranger Smith wasn’t always Stranger Smith. Once she was Sunny Smith- once she was Jackal Jill- once she was a scrawny thing, all gristle and bones and well-deserved spite, the daughter of slaves in the wake of the American Civil War. She went West, learned how to become a coyote at will, and formed a gang of outlaws, and then she was Jackal Jill.

Jackal Jill and her posse terrified the West, gunfire and teeth and claws and laughing in the face of the world that wanted them dead, taking everything they could grab, setting fire to everything that would burn. When Jackal Jill marked someone for death, they never got away, not for long. She could track anything, catch anyone, and she always exacted her vengeance. But even outlaws get older, and even outlaws fall in love. Jackal Jill’s right-hand woman, Shianne Smith, was smart and sharp and always at her side, and by the time they realized they were in love, there was nothing they could do about it. Shianne took with child by another member of the posse, and Jackal Jill left her name and posse behind to settle down with her outside a little town called Deliverance. She took her wife’s last name and the pet name Shianne had always given her, and then she was Sunny Smith.

Sunny Smith had a wife and a child and a little home on a little patch of dust and a lot of sins to pay for. (Oh jeez this next part is rough.) She left town to where the train came in, to buy salt and cloth, and when she came back she found her house burned to the ground, her wife and child dead.

But no one got away from her, not for long. She found out who’d done it (an old enemy from her old life) and she tracked them into the desert. She chased them on horseback until the horse died; she chased them on two feet until she couldn’t stand as a human; and then she changed and chased them on four legs. Forty days and forty nights she chased them, right to the black river at the border of Hell in the middle of the big red desert- and then she chased them right over. 

When she woke up on the other side of the river, there was a man in a cream linen suit who wanted to speak to her. He told her she wasn’t bound for where her wife and child were, but he could pull a few strings for her if she did a little work for him…