Her name was Vera Mae, and she had been around these dusty tank towns too long—working the two-bit rodeos and cozying up to suckers, like this fat tourist in the bar.

Oh God, she thought, I can con him and ditch him by nine-thirty, but what then? Sit in a hotel room. Get drunk and pass out. I''ll be an old bag before I''m thirty.

That was Vera Mae: fed up and ripe for trouble, when a lean ex-bronc rider named Lonnie drifted in from the desert...