He remembered his confidence and ability with an empty, desolate chuckle. Everything he had done, everything he had accomplished, all the lives he had touched for good and for ill, and it all came to this, a lonely death in the middle of nowhere. The end of a line of betrayals any mooncalf idjit should have seen coming a mile away. He tried to think of the last time he had made a move on his own instead of reacting to others. Of working on his own initiative instead of racing to beat Billy to the next big caper, or taking Carpathian’s advice on a job or score, or rushing off to prove himself to Frank, or Cole, or anyone else.
Jesse shook his lowered head. Carpathian was a foreign rat and a chiseler, but he had gotten one thing right: Jesse had spent too long dancing to someone else’s tune. Without his arms, there was nothing he could do about it. He would die out here, and everyone in the wider world would know he had been a fraud all along. Worst of all, he was helpless to change that now.
He sat in the cold darkness, the wary vulture waddling back and forth nearby. Jesse was at first unaware of the twitching that sent the bird flapping back with a quick squawk. He looked dully puzzled down at the trailing fingers of his foreign hands only to see the metal digits twitch spasmodically. Each finger flexed much faster than a flesh and bone finger could have ever moved. Then the digits closed into two iron-hard fists.
When a violent pulse of pain ran up the metal arms and into his shoulders he gasped again, falling backwards. He reached back out of a lifetime of reflex. To his surprise, the arms flashed back to catch him. A torment of rippling sensations roared up and down the limbs, but they responded when he pushed himself back onto his knees, and then steadied himself. Slowly he rose to his feet. The prickling feeling quickly faded, leaving Jesse standing tall on the sands, his arms crooked slightly at his sides, hands hovering over his gunbelt. He turned his head slightly to glare at the vulture who had retreated further away as he stood.
“Looks like it’s not my day to die, croaker.” He gave the bird a twisted, bitter grin that faded quickly as it laughed a very human laugh, its eyes flashing with a crimson gleam. The ugly bird heaved itself heavily upward, wide wings pounding at the cold air. It sailed over his head and off into the dark sky, trailing the eerie laugh into the distance.
Jesse watched the bird fade into the darkness. A nearly overwhelming urge to draw and blast the filthy creature out of the sky set him to shaking, but somehow he knew it would not have done any good. He was half-sure it only existed in his mind.
Jesse looked back north to where clusters of wreckage still smoldered in the dry scrub grass, scattered over a mile behind him in the wake of Carpathian’s giant wagon. Back that way he would find Billy’s camp, he knew. Thinking of the camp reminded him that the doctor had heaved a canteen out into the sand with him, and a quick search nearby turned it up. Jesse dove for it and had to use all of his power of will not to guzzle the cool liquid, letting it wash down his chest. He took a quick sip, sloshed around his dry and scratchy mouth, and the spit it out to the side. Next he took a small sip and eased it down his tortured throat, wincing slightly as the water slid over the damaged flesh. He shook his head at the sweet pain and then tossed a little more back. Shaking the container, he knew he would just have enough to make it back to Billy’s encampment.
The massive wagon’s grinding wheels had left wide tracks across the desert and Jesse knew he could follow those as well. He looked down at one hand and tightened it into a metal fist. He could not face Carpathian now, knowing the old man could rob him of his arms at a whim. He looked back up at the stars overhead and sneered. Somewhere, he would find a way to deny Carpathian that ability. When that day came, he would come back for the old man and there would be a reckoning. No one would be playing a tune for Jesse James again.
But for now, he was still alone. Jesse’s face sagged into a hopeless mask once more. Frank was gone. Without Carpathian’s artifact, how could he persuade the Rebellion to stir itself from the swampy camps that had protected them for over a decade?
Jesse sank back to the sand, the canteen grasped in his mechanical arms, and stared down at his treasonous metal hands. The emptiness within rose up to devour him. It was more than Frank’s absence, more than Billy’s betrayal, beyond even whatever had happened with Misty. He was alone. Even the furious anger that had ridden beside him since he was a small boy had betrayed him. That rage, fixated upon the tyrannous north, had eaten away at his spirit and left a gaping hole behind. A hole that mocked the losses he had suffered since.
Lucy was right. Without a purpose, his life was a pointless dance of violence and petty revenge, not enough to justify an existence that threatened to go on forever.
He looked back at the wagon’s trail, stretching down out of the north and into the distant south. The emptiness within called to him, and he rose once again to his feet, grinning as he decided at last to embrace it. He would carve his name across the flesh of the western territories in his quest for vengeance. He would exact the blood price from every opponent that had wronged him.
His mechanical hands flexed angrily, metal components sliding smoothly against each other, leather feedback pads creaking with the pressure.
He grabbed the straps of the canteen that had dropped at his feet. With a single look to the south he turned around and began the long trek down his back trail. Somewhere over the rolling, dusty hills ahead, William Bonney and his hired hands were waiting. His face twisted into a death’s head grin at the thought.
About the Author
Craig Gallant spends his hours teaching, gaming, podasting, being a family man and father. In his spare time he writes outlandish fiction to entertain and amaze people.
In addition to his position as co-host of the internationally not too shabby podcast – The D6 Generation, he has written for several gaming companies including Fantasy Flight, Spartan Games and of course Outlaw Minatures.
You can follow Craig’s writing experience and other fun things at:
www.Mcnerdiganspub.com
Zmok Books – Action, Adventure and Imagination
Zmok Books offers science fiction and fantasy books in the classic tradition as well as the new and different takes on the genre.
Winged Hussar Publishing, LLC is the parent company of Zmok Publishing, focused on military history from ancient times to the modern day.
Follow all the latest news on Winged Hussar and Zmok Books at
www.wingedhussarpublishing.com
Look for the other books in this series
November 2013
December 2013
The Jessie James Archives Page 36