Summary
A feral Eden of ponderosa and pine becomes the stage for a macabre parlor game: two men wager mortality on the flip of a pasteboard, their revolvers cooling like cast-iron saints while the town holds its whiskey breath. Lark, the ivory-haired barkeep who keeps bullet casings in the same jar as love letters, forfeits the draw and is granted seventy-two borrowed hours; Pemberton, velvet-gloved shark with a smile like cracked varnish, pockets the extra sunrise and rides off with another man’s wife slung across his saddle like stolen silk. Jess—part fire, part frayed gingham—follows the gambler to a cedar-smoke hideout where loyalties are counted in nuggets and betrayal smells of cheap tallow. Her cuckolded husband, Scipio, a quiet axle of a man greased with pride, trudges up scree only to be battered back by Pemberton’s wolfish cohort, the hills echoing with jeers sharp as quartz. Enter Lark again, stepping between doom and desire, spiriting Jess down ravines of moonlit shale, bullets kissing bark around them like impatient cupids. A stagecoach thundering through manzanita becomes Lark’s iron confessional: he emerges torn and blood-slick, still pledged to keep his fatal rendezvous. At the clearing where shadows are measured for graves, fate cheats the cheater—Scipio’s waiting rifle coughs first; Pemberton topples, eyes wide as cancelled coins. Lark, reprieved, limps toward sunrise and into the forgiving arms of Little Casino, the roulette-spinning songbird whose heart has always bet on him. The frontier exhales, unaware it has witnessed a triptych of grace, greed, and the strange mercies that arrive wearing gun-smoke.
Synopsis
When saloon owner Bill Lark detects that gambler Jim Pemberton is cheating, both men draw their guns. In order to prevent a double killing, it is agreed that the first shot should be decided by a draw from a deck of cards. Bill loses and Pemberton gives him three days to live. Meanwhile, Pemberton has persuaded Jess Jones to leave her husband and ride with him to his cabin in the hills where he is chief of a gang of bandits. Upon discovering his wife's absence, Scipio Jones follows Jess but is driven away by Pemberton's gang. After Jones fails, Bill retrieves Jess and brings her home. The next day, Bill is severely wounded when he drives a stagecoach through an attack by Pemberton's gang, but escapes to keep his date with the outlaw. Arriving to accept his fate of the last draw, Bill discovers that the outlaw has been killed by Scipio Jones. Provided with a new lease on life, the honest saloon keeper marries his sweetheart Little Casino.
