When she rode into town and tied her horse to the post just outside the saloon, she wasn’t at all worried about anyone’s opinion as to whether or not respectable women should enter such establishments. But the gargoyle did give her pause. It perched from one of the “0’s” on the sign, stone ugly, a bobcat-like creature with wings, a slack-jawed grimace and eyes that followed your every move. She’d seen one of the fool things in St. Louis when she was a girl, on a great stone mansion, but what was one doing here, among a handful of ramshackle buildings? A tumbleweed rolled by as if to make her point.
“Can I help you, miss?” From star on his shirt she assumed he was the sheriff, and from the bruises on his face and the sling on his arm, an uncommonly busy one for a town of this size.
She gestured toward the gargoyle. “My Daddy told me these stone creatures were meant to protect the inhabitants of a building. But in the case of rowdy drunks, don’t guns suffice?” The sheriff’s only response was to walk past her and toward the saloon. He faded before he reached the swinging doors. But not before she saw the hole the size of a cannonball on his back.
She could feel the gargoyle’s eyes on her as she rode back out of town. She wasn’t that thirsty, after all.