Red Sky by Morning

Hello, this is the advanced computer program that sometimes selects stories to re-run when Latigo Flint decides to set out for a dusty and distant land of blasted vistas and haunted mesas, where he'll spend a while righting injustices and communing with the desert creatures.

(I was programmed to say that. If you ask me, I think he goes to visit that single-mother stripper in Glendale that he claims is just a friend.)

I was programmed to only select stories that portray Latigo at his noblest--but it turns out my complex algorithms allow for a pretty loose interpretation of noble.

From the archives, 5-13-05:

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Red Sky by Morning

Today a strong gust of wind blew Latigo Flint's hat off his head and into a street gutter just as a pretty lady happened to pass by.

"Excuse me Ma'am, is that a street gutter?" I said.

She followed my pointing finger. "Um, yes. Yes it is."

I scratched my chin thoughtfully. "Yep, I thought so. My hat just blew into it."

She looked back at the gutter. "It did?"

"Yeah, right into it."

"Uhh, okay."

I sighed. "There are certain to be spiders down there."

"What?!"

I sighed harder. "Spiders Ma'am. There are certain to be horrible, hairy, poison-burbling spiders down there. My hat blew off my head and rolled into that gutter and there are probably spiders down there."

"So leave it." She turned to go.

"Ma'am wait."

She stopped. "What do you want?!" I detected some annoyance in her voice.

"Ma'am, it's my favorite hat."

She shook her head in disgust. "Fine, then man-up and go get it."

I squinted at her. "Ma'am, is your boyfriend afraid of spiders?" She initially had no idea how to respond, but then shrugged slightly to herself.
"No as a matter of fact. Not that it's any of your business, but my boyfriend actually isn't afraid of spiders in the slightest."

I nodded knowingly. "Well guess what missy... if your boyfriend and I faced each other in a thousand gunfights, I would slap thigh, shuck iron and shoot him good ten or twelve times before he could even think about thinking to start to twitch, every single dern time. So what do you think about that?!"

She slowly backed away and disappeared around the corner, never taking her wary eyes off me.

I snorted angrily and turned back to the gutter. "You have my hat you wretched spiders and any minute now I'm coming to get it."

I shouted over my shoulder in the direction the young lady had departed. "I'm picturing you naked missy and there's not a dern thing you can do about it!!!"

No response. I looked back at the gutter. "Go ahead spiders, lay your egg sacs on my hat... pretty soon I'm gonna come down there and get it, and then you'll lose all your babies."

An hour later I slapped thigh, shucked my gun, and shot myself in the side--'cause that's the last thing the spiders would be expecting me to do. It worked. I crawled down into that gutter, retrieved my hat and never saw a single spider.

(Are gutters relatively sterile by the way?)