when he'd awoken from his nap, but he'd been unimpressed. Still, she didn't like that a man in a tweed suit could tell her things about vampires she'd never heard.
"Maybe so," Ben said, "but I'll be damned if that feller on the train could even stand in a vampire's shadow without pissing himself."
Cora chuckled at the image of James Townsend soiling his drawers. "Maybe not, but that ain't the point. Point is, we're coming up against things we ain't never heard of before. Used to be we could lick them right quick anyway, but I'm feeling slowed up lately. One of these days, I may not come back from a hunt at all."
"You ain't giving me much credit."
"Of course you'd be there to lend a hand," she said, giving him a playful shove. "But suppose we meet something else new in a week or a month, and nothing we shoot at it slows it down a whit? I mean, I reckon I was always aware of the risks, but I ain't never given them serious thought. Just kind of rode along and let come what may."
"Can't see a better way of doing what we do," Ben said.
"Ain't like I've thought of one, either," Cora said. "I'm just wondering what happens to us when we meet up with something we're too old or too dumb to whip."
"I expect we'll get our own whipping and head on to glory everlasting."
"You're awful casual about it."
"Ain't much I can do about it," Ben said, shrugging. "Either we whip it or it whips us, like any other time."
"But don't you think we should have a care to stay alive? If not for us, then for all the folks counting on us to keep them safe."
"Well, sure. Ain't no point in riding around looking for your death. You're bound to find it quick if you do that."
"Seems to me that the older we get, the closer we are to doing just that." Cora flexed her fingers. "Give it a few more years, and I won't be able to draw my gun without dropping it on my boots. A fine place to be when there's a wendigo or one of them new vampires fixing to make a meal of me."
"You sure they'd want to eat you? I don't reckon old woman tastes all that nice."
She shoved him again. "Some help you are."
Ben closed his book and set it on the bed. "I wouldn't waste much thought on fretting about it. We're still spry enough to handle whatever the Devil sends, and when we can't draw our guns no more, why, we'll find ourselves some other means to make our way. This old world is stuffed full of things a pair of bodies can busy themselves with."
"Is that so?" Cora asked, raising an eyebrow. "Can't think of a single one myself."
"We could go back into my family business," Ben said. "Ain't too much work to print a newspaper. My pa could have kept that old shop running for twenty years or more if them bluecoats hadn't burned him out."
"A printer?" Cora's shoulders slumped. "I'd go plumb stir-crazy if I was trapped in a dark, smelly little room all day. My eyes would probably shrivel up and fall out from not seeing the sun."
"It ain't half as bad as all that," Ben said. "Why, once you're used to it, you barely even notice the dark."
"Any other ideas?" Cora asked.
"Maybe we can get a job with the railroad. Can't take much to sit in them engines all day."
"I suppose that's better than print work, but it still ain't my idea of living." Cora sighed and folded her arms. "I reckon I'll have to get used to it, though now the idea of getting killed by a monster is looking a sight better."
Ben put his arm around her shoulders. "Getting old ain't that bad."
"How do you know? You ain't aged a whit since we left Virginia."
"Ain't seen the need yet is all." He ran a hand along the shock of white running through her dark hair. "Besides, unlike you, aging won't make me any prettier."
Cora felt herself blush. "Oh, hush up, you big sweettalker. You're just trying to make me all soft so I forget about all this and stop badgering you."
"I ain't, either," Ben said.
"Right, and I'm General Lee," she replied, kissing his cheek. "You keep on dripping molasses if you like, but I got me an itching for a game of cards. Age brings knowhow, at least, and I