Jesse opened the basement door and went back downstairs.
She unlocked the door beneath the staircase and bent down to raise the lid on the box. She picked up one of the snake guns by the handle and stood up, then closed the door and locked it again. Jesse Sinclair tucked the snake gun inside the waistband of her skirt and hid it with her shirt and went back upstairs to go to bed.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I dedicated this one to my old man. I initially wrote more in the dedication to explain why, and then I deleted it. I guess why is nobody’s business but mine and his.
I’m also guessing most of you have got a father out there somewhere, or maybe you only once did, and now that you’ve finished the book you understand why I dedicated it to him. Maybe if he ever reads it he will too. I hope so.
Let’s see.
To Larry McMurtry. I heard he’s a mean old bastard in real life, but this book is about mean old bastards, so what the hell? It took me a long time to finish Lonesome Dove. Probably a few years of repeated attempts when I could never seem to get past the size and scope of it. When I finally cracked it, it somehow seemed too short.
To Ron Hansen for The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. Ron has this thing where he describes a man who’s been shot as writhing around on the floor with his fingers flexing and twisting into bizarre configurations. He did it in Assassination and he did it in Desperadoes and I’ve been trying to come up with a description as memorable as that ever since.
To Cormac McCarthy, a granddaddy to all of us, who I will call the beginning and end of modern literature, and you will not argue it with me.
To Annie Proulx, whose work I read before I read any of the writers I mentioned above. Close Range: Wyoming Stories was the first book I ever listened to on tape. I studied the language of her work when I was first learning how to write and I still carry pieces of her with me everywhere I go.
As always, my deepest thanks to my agent, Sharon Pelletier. She made this opportunity happen and none of us would be here reading it without her.
To my friend and teacher Michaela Hamilton, who showed me how to write long after I thought I already knew how.
To Tracy Bernstein, Claire Zion, and all the good folks at Berkley who gave me the opportunity to put my mark on Ralph Compton’s legacy.
To my children and the rest of my family.
Finally, to the members of the Bernard Schaffer Book Review Crew. Thank you for your support. It means the world to me.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Ralph Compton stood six foot eight without his boots. He worked as a musician, a radio announcer, a songwriter, and a newspaper columnist. His first novel, The Goodnight Trail, was a finalist for the Western Writers of America Medicine Pipe Bearer Award for best debut novel. He was the USA Today bestselling author of the Trail of the Gunfighter series, the Border Empire series, the Sundown Riders series, and the Trail Drive series, among others.
Bernard Schaffer is an author and full-time police detective. A twenty-year law enforcement veteran, he is a decorated criminal investigator, narcotics expert, and child forensic interviewer. He is the author of numerous independently published books and The Thief of All Light from Kensington Publishing.
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Ralph Compton Face of a Snake Page 24
