Outlaws Recognize Each Other

I worked crisis in Sagebrush City, a desert city in the Southwest. The people the respectable world had written off could pick each other out of a crowd in seconds.

The names have been changed, and so have a lot of the details, to protect everyone, including me.

Tallulah, one of our clients, didn't hand out approval easily. She once decided a caseworker was "too beige to carry news."

Then Nicky came into the office. Nicky was small, and he moved like a man whose body had lost a few negotiations with force. Tallulah looked him up and down.

"You look like you been through something industrial."

Nicky grinned. "Explosive."

Tallulah laughed, and they were friends from that moment on.

Wallace T. Fink walked a horse down the sidewalk to our office, past the nail salon and the tax preparer. He tied the horse to the railing out front and came inside.

"I only need you to hold Bishop for a little while."

Then Wallace walked across the parking lot and left.

When Wallace finally came back, he told us why he'd picked our office. "I still knew you were the safest place." Then he sat down with an ordinary problem, probably housing or benefits, and we went to work on Wallace's ordinary problem.

For years afterward, whenever a client asked us to hold something for a little while, we asked one question first: "Does it eat?"

Outlaws recognize each other. Recognition means: I know what kind of world made you careful.

Outlaws Recognize Each Other is one of ten Sagebrush City books. Read them in any order.

Ebook (epub), delivered right after purchase.

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