Jensen, bucket in hand, braces himself against the thrusting of the river. He glances to the opposing river bank, the one of his vision. A chill strikes him, a chill that snaps harsher than the nipping water. A chill that starts from deep inside marrow and permeates out. A nearby bush rustles, Jensen glances over expectant, almost hopeful.
Could it be the boy? He thinks.
A dove bursts from cover, pure angelic white. Jensen watches her soar against a flat unblemished blue-sky, until the bird becomes a speck, to become nothing. Jensen puts his buckets on the bank and returns to the running wet, to flick some fish out onto the bank. So he and the boy can eat later.
Jensen returns to his shack, waters the animal drink, the plants and sits himself down. He looks to the sky as if God would answer his unasked questions, then remembers he wants to smoke. He slowly, purposefully, rolls a smoke, as if trying to devour time. He enjoys a good belch.
He lays down kindling for a fire and ready to cook the fish.
Jensen stares at the fire’s dance. His mind too vacant to cook, he glances over to his shack as something ensnares his thought. William Grace's coat hangs on a nail on the wall of his cabin. Jensen grabs hold of it, he grins. Thump - the Bible, the boy bought him, hits the floor. Jensen groans as he bends to pick it up. He thumbs through the Bible. On the first page, in beautiful hand writing.
Let my faith protect you. From your friend, William Grace.
“Eh, Crazy kid.”
As the days pass, Jensen stumbles about his routine, with numbing repetition, spiritless, inattentive, he feels something is missing. He eats, drinks, smokes. Jensen finds the whiskey has wormed its way back in. So that’s the way life would roll for him, meaningless meandering.
After a time, Jensen wondered if his time with William was just a hallucination, though the kid's coat spoke otherwise. He realised he didn't know where William lived.
In the third day after morning chores, Jensen enters his shack, and moments later bursts out, clothed and ready to face the town.
He snatches William’s coat and marches to his horse, determined and driven. He knows what he’s going to do next.
18
DOCTOR PATRICK PARKER has just witnessed a large, lumbering, gruff man stride across his musky, spirit dowsed surgery, and without a word, slam a coat on his desk. Right now, this man is staring at him expectantly as if something needs fixing.
The gruff figure grunts, as in a ways of welcoming. He reminds Doctor Parker of those Rebel Yankees that would live by Frontier's code, never too talkative, yet once you won their trust, then they wouldn't bat an eye in drawing for you or charging into battle by your side. The caveat being, it was a tall task to win their trust, and twice as wide.
Doctor Parker recognises the figure as Jensen Hills, the old pig farmer, who had been here since Dunston was a dirt road and trading post.
“Mister Hills?” Patrick endeavoured to engage.
Jensen grunts – yes.
“I recognise you from about two years back, you were found in the brush.”
Jensen glares. The Doctor stops short.
“How’s the shoulder?”
Jensen looks to his shoulder and shrugs. “It’s there.”
"How's your health?" Patrick offers Jensen some snuff, Jensen partakes and snorts the powder in deep.
“My health ain’t what it used to be.” Jensen unawares touches his stomach. “But hey, not much is what it used to be, eh Doc?”
Jensen eyes the Doctor’s office, covered in history. Some pictures of Dunston, when it was just a dirt road and saloon. Other pictures are of Patrick's parent’s homeland, Aberdeen, Scotland.
“Dunston has come quite away, hasn't she? Just imagine what this dust bowl was like before Colonel Dunston and the Devons started building her.” The Doctor can see Jensen isn’t interested in this small talk, Patrick adds. “Mister Hills, medicine has come a long way as well… if you be-“
“-Hell doc, I figure all the bad on my left is keepin’ in check all the bad on me right.”
“That’s not really how it works.” The Doctor advises.
Jensen strides over to the window; he looks out to the town, the municipal bank, store, the Carnival preparing their wagons to leave.
Jensen’s had enough chat.
“A few days ago a boy left his coat at mine. I thought you might know them, he’s… …A friend of mine.”
Doctor Parker opens the coat, William’s initials as stitched inside… 'W.G.'
Jensen confirms “Grace.”
“Lord, Bonnie’s boy. She was wondering where his coat was…” Parker replies.
Jensen stares out the window; his reflection stares back at him. Light washes across Jensen’s grizzled features, his face like a cracked, leathery bluff. His jade-green eyes glint in the sun.
“Ain’t no hardship… What's the boy's family like? I mean… In general. Are they good to him?"
“Hard working good Christian family…” The Doctor’s voice tapers to a whisper, as Jensen nods satisfied, happy for his young friend.
“It’ll help, in these dark days…” Patrick finishes.
Jensen’s silhouette, broad shouldered, hands clasped behind his back, a living statue that in stone-grinding-slowness turns to face the Doctor. A new current ripples through the room and the men; a somber unease.
“Doc, I know your intention is not to nettle. But I’m failing in grasping for the meat of your meaning… ‘dark times’…”
“Did you hear about the bank raid, Tuesday, two days past?”
There it is, that sense of something isn’t right. It served Jensen Hills well in a previous life when that guttural feeling that hits the belly is followed by the quick release of explicit violence. Yet all he can do now is let it move from the gut, and burn deep into his chest, an emotional contusion that swells with every breath.
Parker can see that this man who lives on the outskirts of town and the fringes of life, hears about no comings or goings of Dunston, even something like a bank raid.
"Oh, Jesus, Mary…" The Doctor shuffles uncomfortably. “Do you… drink?” Jensen shoots an accusing look. “Sorry, of course.” The Doctor retorts.
Parker ritualistically unstacks two drinking glasses from his desk drawer, to plop on top of his desk. He then slowly, as if stalling for time, or sorting his words, reaches into his desk and pulls out a new squared bottle of Whiskey.
Walker’s Old Highland.
He uncorks the bottle, and with measured precession allows the honey-glow liquid Glu-glu-glugg into the glasses.
Jensen respects the silence and sentinel-like strides over. Patrick has to preamble before he can get to the marrow of the conversation. He holds up a glass for Jensen.
“Try it. It’s a single malt, barrel proof, bottled from the cask. The squareness of the bottle means that many don’t break in transit… I don’t drink much myself, never really see me in a saloon, unless my services are needed… … See, father was Scottish, I blame him for my particular pallet. Very fussy…”
Doctor Parker loses his track. He bounces back with gusto.
"In fact, I believe a society can be measured by the quality of its distillery. Ironically whiskey is used for medicinal purposes as well as celebra-”
-Jensen cuts the thread. “But, You’re not in a celebratory mood.”
Patrick knocks back the drink, quickly pours another, the bottle and glass chink. He pales and looks directly at Jensen.
“The Grace family were here two days ago.”
The Doctor lets the liquid hit the back of his throat, and he pours again, he seems to have aged in these last few moments.
“Bonnie was sat there.” Parker nods to the seat opposite. “I offered her the same whiskey… But they don't drink. I offered more for myself than them.”
Jensen is poised, shot-glass by his lips, his eyes steadfast on the Doctor. Jensen is looking for the secret messages that linger behind a man’s words, any tells, subtle shifts. All he can
see is truth and grief, a bitter brew.
Parker falls silent in a haunted remembrance. Jensen knocks back the liquor, that burns and satisfies. He offers his empty glass to Patrick. Patrick obliges, his hand shaking with a light chi-chi-chink, of bottle lip on shot glass.
“And the boy?” Jensen presses.
“There.” Patrick uses the bottle to point to a surgical table; a thick slab of wood.
Jensen steps by the table, it reeks of spirits. Fluids have stained the course grain. There seem to be specks of dried blood absorbed by the the timber, echoing of witnessed horrors.
"You don't want to know the rest," Parker mumbles.
Jensen sickened to the quick, makes his way back to the window. Every moment a new feeling washes over him, anticipation, fear, nausea. He looks out the window.
“Keep going, Parker.” Jensen is stern.
"…There was a robbery. Some crazed bandit types held up the bank; we ain’t seen a robbery for years. They fired off shots; grip whipped the guard."
“And the boy?” Jensen wants to get to the meat of the matter.
“William, poor kid. Those scum left the bank, some folks in the know say they left without a cent… …Anyhow’s as they charged away, mayhem and all hell broke loose.”
Jensen gazes at the bank, today it is quiet, people simply walk in and out, or by it, in their elegant clothes with their fine lives. The shadow of what happened that day plays in Jensen's mind; he's seen enough blood, guts, and mayhem, to know what it looks like. Guns blazing, pistol whipping, screaming, shouting.
Parker continues… “One bandit was got. A Winston Harley, he’s in gaol… The others rode on out. No one was hurt… Really… Till their horses stampeded the young lad, on the outskirts of town. They didn't stop, just kept riding. Sons of bitches.”
Jensen’s mind catches the moment when a ton of solid fleshy-mass collides with William’s lithe frame. Jensen needs to know more, all the bile, gut wrenching, and despair feeds his fury.
“Was he dead? Tell me everything.”
“Not straight away, he… God… He fought to stay alive."
Parker rubs his hands together as if stained with blood.
“Mercy, he fought right through till morning.” Parker rambles to himself. He pulls himself back in. “Fractured skull, broken leg, arm smashed to a pulp. I couldn’t have saved that. Lungs flooded with blood, internal…” Parker's struck by a memory "kept whispering the strangest thing."
As Jensen stands out on main street, Parker’s final words resound through his consciousness. He takes to one knee, as his hand trowels the faded crimson stained dirt where William was struck. Those words come back again, not in the Doctor’s tones, but he hears them as if William is with him speaking now.
The last words he spoke.
“I’m not afraid.”
Jensen stands and allows the blood drenched dirt sprinkle through his fingers, to be snatched grain by grain on the wind. He stares into his own oblivion. He pours the remaining dirt into his pocket.
The creaking of wheels slowly rolls past him; he only looks up once, they have passed. It's the Carnival leaving town. Hanging out the back of a wagon a cheeky young girl, just turned nine, she matches looks with Jensen. The kid sticks her tongue out as if challenging the old man. Jensen raises his hand and returns a melancholic smile.
19
WINSTON HARLEY thought he could smell burning; he stood bolt upright in his cell and peers through the iron bars.
“Hey, hey, I smells burning.”
A voice comes back to him "I'm just cooking bacon… And no you can't have any."
That was the smell, the one emblazoned by fear into Winston’s mind. It’s been seven years since a thirteen-year-old Winston was caught in the great Boston fire, sometimes at night, he could hear the hunger of the flame, the searing welcome it bought, the screams. Yet that smell, cooking bacon, hooked him back into the moment.
He tests the cell doors.
The fire tore through his home, claiming his mother and father and baby brother as fuel. He struggled to escape his bedroom and hasn't slept with a locked door since. That is, of course, if he's not in a cell, which he often is.
With no support Winston went to work at a cotton mill, it didn't pay too good, so Winston took to stealing, which led to him being on the run. He joined a travelling missionary who fed and clothed him and gave him regular beatings just to keep him true. When moving through Kansas, Winston hears about the silver rush up in Gilman; he was sixteen and ready to be his own man. After a dispute in Gilman, over a claim, he gunned a fellow down. His trail ended in Kansas when Marshals seized him and Winston became a chain-ganger in Robert Devon’s coal mine. That’s where he met Tyler Devon, who saw a spark in Harley, a man who’s faced death and who has only one fear, fire.
Winston checks his bandaged arm; the fresh bullet wound was still raw. He pulls out a wad of chew and jaws it, before laying down on the thin bench; that’s more of a perch than a bed. The voice of the Sheriff calls out again.
“Harley, you’ve got a visitor.”
Harley, lounging on the bench, leans on an elbow. He’s relaxed, as he watches the scrawny Sheriff Gill Tunstall followed by a clod of a mountain man come to his cell. Sheriff Gill looks Jensen up and down as Jensen in stone cold fury stares at Winston Harley.
Harley chomping on tobacco stares back. It strikes Sheriff Gill that this man isn’t with Colonel Dunston at all.
“You ain’t with the Colonel.” Both Jensen and Harley ignore the Sheriff.
“You killed a kid out there, Harley. A boy… How’d that make you feel?”
Winston slowly stands, never breaking eyes with Jensen, he strides across his cage to Jensen.
"Let me out, old-timer, I'll show you, personally like."
Harley is cocky; he's not scared. Why should he be? Even if Gill took his guns, the old-man doesn’t have a holster, just dirty britches, and leather coat.
Jensen notices scars around Winston’s wrists, flesh worn away by a metal band. Jensen sneers.
“You got chain-gang markings. That metal rubs a man raw to the bone. Ain’t nothing to the squealing you’ll do on the gallows, boy.”
“Ha… hanging? Tell him, Tunstall, I want to watch his face." Harley's know-it-all, kick-shitter grin puts Jensen at unease.
"There ain't gonna be no hanging, see. Winston has got himself some fancy-dan lawyer from out East. It's ‘cause, some benefactor has come forward." Tunstall is slightly confusing himself. “It’s compleecated."
Jensen breathes in lungs of animosity. He feels the pressure build behind his eyes, his hands flex. Jensen, much to his annoyance has run out of bluff. Winston Harley decides a proper goading will keep him entertained.
“So, ol-man, in ‘bout a week, ya’ll get ye’r chance with me out on the street.” Winston lies back down and points his finger at Jensen like a pistol.
“Lill’e advice… get a gun.” The young thug shoots his finger gun at Jensen.
Gill Tunstall never wanted to be Sheriff; he was a part time deputy, part time store hand. He enjoyed the pseudo authority the badge gave. A lick of power, with no weight of responsibility. Sheriff McCoy was his boss, Jay, the town called him. Jay could talk a man out of a gunfight, regale a man into the cells. Jay McCoy was a Sheriff that never needed to draw his pistol, always ready with a story, a tale. Then he got himself gunned down by one of the thugs from Robert Devon's Keystone Mine. Then Colonel Dunston contracted some Pinkertons to patrol Dunston and made Gill the Sheriff. You never said ‘no’ to the Colonel.
Right now Sheriff Tunstall remembers why he missed Jay McCoy. He wished he could use words and rhetoric as a means to execute his law upholding duties. Right now this oaf of a man, over spilling with a rage is storming around his office, stomping on the floor, he lashes out at a chair.
"Easy, easy." Tunstall is nervous; he makes sure his hands are far away from his pistol.
“Why… why?” Jensen demands.
�
��No money was stolen. So the bank rescinded any bounties, legals would cost, so no charge or bounty. Ain’t no Marshal going to do nothing for free.”
Jensen snatches at Gills waist coat, pulling him closer, Gill sticks his hands in the air further. He’s ensuring this doesn’t escalate.
“Look, look, it’s not my choice. Things ain't what they used to be. Shit, there's a Nigger who's a senator down in Mississippi. ‘Em Indjuns are getting liberties above their station." Jensen lets the Sheriff go like he’s a bad smell and storms out the office.
The Sheriff slumps on the edge of his desk, how he missed Jay McCoy.
20
RAWLING’S LAWYERS, where the only Lawyers in town. On the wall was a portrait of Colonel Beau Dunston in full military regalia, clean, pressed, as if straight off the peg. Dunston was partners with Hawker Rawlings Jr; he supplied the means while Hawker supplied the know-how. Next to the portrait on the wall was a map of Dunston, with markings for the railroad and the land they needed to acquire for it.
Hawker pulled his waist coat over his rounded figure, as he stands by his young assistant, Penny Leigh-Spence. Penny was just into her teens, the daughter of his friend. Hawker who was not yet married, yet just tipping past his third decade, had designs on Penny. She would make an excellent addition to his firm, as an assistant, as a future wife and mother to his children.
Penny's delicate hands were hanging over a Hansen writing ball, a contraption that had only been in around for the last ten years and the very first seen in Dunston. Hawker watched as Penny slowly drifted over the porcupine of letters and numbers, to stamp out a correspondence. Hawker was using this time as an excuse to occupy Penny’s space, telling her how well she’s doing, while gently moving her hands over the keys. Hawker was leaning against Penny, guiding her, he could feel a deeply rooted stirring as his mind was netted in her fragrance, and juiced his intentions into very present fantasies.
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