Firsts

He made his first dollar at the ripe old age of four.

And what he recalls about it was that - for probably the last time in thirty years - it was honestly earned, doing a few small, long-forgotten chores for a man he barely recalls, who called him son and ruffled his hair with a weak and shaking hand.

It was also the first and only time he heard his mother cry, though to this day he doesn't quite know why.

~777~

He won his first poker game when he was seven, pushed forward by his mother as a 'prodigy' in a begrimed, crowded saloon somewhere a long way from what used to be home.

The men he won against laughed at first, then grumbled, became accusing... and violent.

That was also the first time his shoulder was injured, leaving it weakened, but he'd contrived to scramble into hiding when the burly and cretinous-looking local law came looking for "some brat who needs whippin'." Maude explained later that she had only left him alone to find the lawman and con him into arresting the "darlin' but wicked little cheat"... just long enough for him to escape, and for her to conceal their winnings.

It had hurt, it had all hurt, but he had learned not to cry by then, so Maude kissed it 'better' and they both pretended... even then, he'd learned that lesson from her.

He's also learned his first lesson in trust... not to grant it, not even to her.

~777~

He ran his first con when he was ten, and it wasn't for money, but rather to wriggle out of a beating by an 'uncle'... it worked rather too well, and he learned another lesson, this one about greed, human frailty and raising expectations, that he never forgot. Or failed to exploit every chance he could.

He'd also learned that a silver tongue could win out over fists and whips, if you talked fast enough with enough imposing words. Silas Simpson probably still belived in the ruined Gallowglass Hotel and buried money to this day...

~777~

His first jailbreak, his first gun, and his first love, they came close together, when he was fifteen. His first and last broken heart so soon after. He sometimes dreams about them. And he misses... well, the gun, at least.

~777~

He wore his first dress at seventeen... pretending to be his own 'Cousin Lucie' Lovelace. His very newly broken voice - and slight, light moustache - actually made the resemblance more striking, and the corset was blessedly looser than later ones, but the thousand he'd managed to make on the scheme did not make kissed by a drunken, maudlin Uncle Ebenezer at all worthwhile...

He does wonder how the tracker he now works with guessed that there have been one or two, three... quite a few gowns in his past. And he hopes to God (the one with the sense of humor) that they never find out about some of the even more outrageous costumes he knows how to wear so well... like that winding sheet.

~777~

He was run out of his first town on his twenty-first birthday. He is mildly proud of the fact that he managed to get out with his skin intact, and with the money.

The way he saw it, 'Aunt Tillie' owed him the cash anyway...

~777~

His first bullet wound... was a surprise, he'd talked or fought his way out of so many, he'd begun to assume he was blessed that way. Luckily, the villain was too drunk at first, and too dead later.

He bought his first derringer and harness three days later. He wouldn't be caught out when called out again.

~777~

He first saw Frisco when he was twenty-three, the Mississippi riverboats at twenty-five, Santa Fe the next year. He'd learned to keep moving, keep disappearing, keep traveling light... keep apart. He'd been good at that, almost as good as his mother, or the other gamblers and grifters that made up his associates and acquaintances for those long years... but never quite good enough. He knows that now.

~777~

He first saw that dirty, decayed little town when he was thirty... just passin' through. And a broken-down saloon on the main street where he drank the worst whisky of his life, won a few crumpled and diseased dollars from the kind of folk he had cheated his whole life, slept in a rickety hotel bed with one eye open and his gun in his hand. He wondered, as he rode out, why anyone bothered to stay in this dust-hole, and vowed never to come back to Four Corners.

~777~

The first time he did, though... he met the eyes of the first honest man he'd met since he was four. And his second life began.

-the end-