"There was a bad wind off the Badlands, and as it whipped through the dilapidated town, slamming doors and beating against window sashes, it carried with it the aroma of bad things, of men who had died in ambushes in blind valleys not of their own choosing, of mixed breed women who vainly tried to clean the reek of the previous man off their bodies, of the dirty smoke of rustler fires, of all the smells of the cattle drive passing along the high ridge, of the badnest of all badnesses, of despair, of the next-to-the-last roundup. "Snake" sniffed it, his pug nose held high, his eyes squinting in the sunlight like two thin dimes, and he loosened his gun in its holster. It was time. There was a reckoning coming, a hard reckoning, payment was due, and his accountant was waiting."