The district attorney of Coronado County, Texas stomped down the hall wearing nothing but his cowboy boots and a gleam in his good eye. It was three o'clock Wednesday morning, and the soft, insistent knocking on his front door meant just one thing.

Samuel Macgregor rubbed his hands together and chuckled in the delighted anticipation of a mean little kid. He could recall in infinite detail, and often did, the last time he had been aroused at this hour.

Ripping open the front door, Macgregor was nearly deflated by the full force of a howling blue norther, the first big one of the season. Bowling Macgregor over was not all that easy either, given his low center of gravitas. In his cowboy boots he topped out at five feet three inches, but he tipped in at more than two hundred and fifty pounds. The cold front, which had been inconvenienced on its way from the Arctic to the West Texas South Plains by a few bob y-er fincis, blew his long, flowing, rebellious red hair up and out and raised his huge, drooping, disapproving handlebar moustache in greeting.

Oh yeah. It was Tica Ramirez. Huge, doe-brown bedroom eyes, pure milk chocolate satin skin, long shimmering ebony silk hair and a perfectly sculpted voluptuous hour-glass figure. The second best-looking woman in the county.