The Return of Santiago: A Myth of the Far Future by Mike Resnick Page A

he sneaked a look at the poem. Here was this bounty hunter who had already manhandled the notorious Scarlet Infidel himself and was preparing to extort money from the poet in the morning or (more likely) kill him, and Dante was actually writing him into the poem.
           Even worse, he gave three verses to Bennett—but of course, Bennett was the first man on the Frontier to threaten Dante's life, so Virgil reluctantly admitted that it made sense in a way.
           Bennett had threatened a lot of lives, and had taken more than his share of them. Rumor had it that he'd been a hired killer before he started doing his killing for the Democracy. They said he'd been shot up pretty badly on Halcyon V, but he certainly didn't move like a man who was supposedly half prosthetic, and he never ducked a fight.
           Somewhere along the way, he'd decided that it was easier to make money for not killing men than for killing them, and from that day forward, he always offered to let a wanted man walk free if the man paid him the reward. And he was a man of his word: more than one man paid the price, and none of them were ever bothered by Bennett again. (Well, none except Willie Harmonica, who went out and committed another murder after buying his way out of the first one. He refused to pay Bennett the reward the second time, and wound up paying with his life instead.)
           And now Dante Alighieri had less than a day to raise 50,000 credits or somehow escape from one of the deadlier bounty hunters on the Inner Frontier.
           "I can't spend all day working on the poem," he announced after giving Bennett his third verse. He put down his quill pen and got up from the desk in the corner of his room. "Let's go visit your friend."
           "I've been ready for an hour," remarked Virgil.
           "I had to write those verses," explained Dante. "Who knows if I'll be alive to write them tomorrow?"
           "Son of a bitch doesn't deserve three verses!" muttered Virgil, ordering the door to dilate.
           "Kill him tonight and maybe I'll give you four," said Dante, stepping through into the hallway.
           "Mighty few people out here can kill him," answered Virgil. "And I'm honest enough to admit I'm not one of them."
           "I saw what you did to those three guys in the bar back on New Tangier."
           "Those were two miners and a gigolo. This guy is a professional killer. There's a difference."
           "He didn't look that formidable."
           "Fine," said Virgil. " You kill him."
           "I'm no killer," replied Dante. "I'm a poet. I can out-think him, but I have a feeling that won't help much in a pitched battle."
           "Look around the galaxy and you'd be hard-pressed to prove that intelligence is a survival trait," agreed Virgil.
           They reached the street and walked out of the hotel, turned right, and headed to Rex's, which was the name Tyrannosaur Bailey had chosen for his establishment.
           "Anything else I should know?" asked Dante as they reached the door to the casino.
           "Yeah," said Virgil. "No dinosaur jokes."
           "I don't know any."
           "Good. You'll live longer that way."
           They entered, and Dante was surprised at the level of luxury that confronted him. From outside, Rex's seemed like every other nondescript Tradertown building. Inside it was a haven of taste and money. The floors gripped his feet, then released him as he took another step, and another. The gaming tables were made of the finest alien hardwood, meticulously carved by some unknown race, while the matching chairs hovered a few inches above the floor, changing their shapes to fit each player's form—and the players were not merely men, but giant Torquals, tripodal beings from Hesporite III, Canphorites and Lodinites and a couple of races that Dante had never seen before.
           Atonal but seductive