There were stories that always went around the ranch about Jesus Mendez. He had been an outlaw. Some even said he’d murdered six men in cold blood.

But to Mal, Jesus was the father he never had. Sure, the other hands all looked out for him, but it was made clear that he was the son of the ranch owner and not their own flesh and blood. Jesus, however, treated him like his own son.

Jesus never called him by his first name. Mal’s middle name was Charles – the only thing his father had ever given him. “Carlito, that is your name,” Jesus said upon first meeting Mal. Mal noticed that every now and again, Jesus would look wistful when he called him that.

“Jesus, didya have a son by that name? Carlito, I mean.”

But Jesus would just give a sad smile. “It is just a name.”

Mal thought otherwise, though.

There was not another ranch hand would could run the cattle like Jesus. He could stop an entire stampeding herd with just a few sharp words in Spanish, at least according to some of the younger hands. Even Hank Adams, the foreman, had to admit that there really was not another cowhand quite like Jesus.

Mal once actually worked up the nerve to ask Jesus about his mysterious past.

“Is it true what they say about you, Jesus?”

“Well, Carlito, it depends on who ‘they’ are.”

“I heard from some of the cowhands that you used t’ be an outlaw. A hired gun.”

And Jesus would give him that sad smile again. “Carlito, there are only two ways that a man can die. La pistola y el corazon. The pistol and the heart. You grow up strong, you find yourself a good woman, and you die old and happy. By el corazon, eh? Much better than to die by la pistola. Now help me move these hay bales before el jefe, he has my hide.”

That was the last season Mal ever saw Jesus. He never did find out what happened, although he strongly suspected that Jesus had finally died, and not by el corazon.

Something of how Jesus had looked at him with regret, sadness, and the impossible hope that Mal really was his long-lost Carlito stuck with him.

La pistola y el corazon.

Mal reasoned he’d come too close too many times to dying by la pistola. Maybe now, with Inara, it was time to start thinking about el corazon.