Redemption's Blood

by Chris G R Webb

  Jensen scans for another pistol, from another dead body.

  He sees The Captain’s shotgun, laying by the side of a lifeless Pinkerton, the only good kind of Pinkerton, it’s been remarked.

  SLAM – Running Cloud collides with the brick work of the farmhouse. The adrenaline of battle is fading, and in its departing wake the reality of pain is settling in, his lacerations, the blows he's received; not just those he's experienced today, but those that were once a fading memory, now sing with one accord, as if they were moments old.

  Blood seeps into his eyes; he brushes it away with the back of his hand. Marujo’s scarred raven features sneer, as he prowls closer.

  Marujo feels the pain of this conflict, the physical and emotional tussle with his own history. As the end nears, he resonates with the pain that will follow. Each stride he takes is a step closer to a new beginning for him and the demise of his father.

  As his boot scrapes the barrel of the shotgun closer to him, Jensen knows that without laying down covering fire, Dunston and his men will be staggering their advance closer to him. If he can just get the shotgun, maybe he could take one or two with him. He wants to die on his own terms; making it as hellish as possible for those who mean him harm.

  It’s there, Jensen reaches his hand over and snatches the shotgun from the dirt, he clamps his hand round the solid stock of walnut wood.

  Jensen brings the shotgun up to his chained hand; he cracks the breach open, it's loaded. He glances back to The Captain, sprawled in the mud of blood and dirt. The Captain has a bag of cartridges at his feet.

  He knows he can’t reach the ammo.

  Jensen glances at his chained left hand.

  He’s solemn, an icy intensity becomes his bearing.

  His cheeks puff as he breathes deep.

  The stirring of the unpleasant rumbles in his innards, not the sharp gnawing burn that can strike him down, more from a gut wrenching choice he faces. Before the stirring can become a turbulence, Jensen guides the shotgun barrel onto his left hand; he feels its cold ringed maws gently knead his fleshy palm. He gently cups his hand around the barrel… Jensen turns away.

  The - CRACK - of shotgun blast reverberates its echo around the farm.

  Dunston instinctively ducks behind cover, then cautiously makes his way to the wagon, he gestures the others into flanking wave.

  Marujo and Running Cloud both glance to the address of the shotgun. Cloud sees his chance; he lunges for Marujo. Perhaps it is his age, his broken body or both, but this old formidable warrior is just too slow. His fading-strength and waning-will have not so much as betrayed him, they’ve just expired. They mustered up memories of old, to melt away and Running Cloud can feel it.

  Marujo glides gracefully past the laboured lunge, to navigate himself behind the passaging Running Cloud. His father’s own bearing forces the blade deep into him, yet it’s Marujo’s own doing, the snap of his hip, the snatch of the shoulder, that tears his deeply rooted blade across Cloud’s belly, letting his innards burst from their fleshy confines.

  Running Cloud collapses…

  …Marujo is there to scoop up the dying old man, before he smacks with the dirt. Gently he lowers him into his lap, and with tenderness, he rocks his father and hums to him a song that was a whisper from an echo of his childhood.

  Running Cloud reaches up a tremoring hand, Marujo snatches it as if it will stop him from falling into a precipice, the initial grasp begins to fade as if they've shared each other's pain and have learned the reasons for all the wrongs they've perceived. A tiny tear blossoms, it rambles down Marujo’s scarred face, over folds of black marked skin, to be released. It burst onto Running Cloud’s cheek; perhaps it was the last thing he felt in this life.

  He releases his father’s hand; it swings lifelessly ground ward.

  Marujo stays with him.

  Dunston has his back to the opposite side of the wagon; he knows Hills is probably waiting for a head to emerge so that he can make a hole in it. Without slip of culpability, he waves the Deputies or Bounty Hunters to patrol the blindside of the wagon. The men, jostle between themselves as who should go first.

  Dunston barks in a whisper. “Someone. Go.”

  One of the men creep around the side of the wagon; there are no gunshots, no furore… Just, waiting. Dunston gazes across the farm, to Marujo cradling a body, he’ll have a word with that native once they are through… Then to the hiding Robert, Tyler and Tyler's friend whom he can't quite recollect his name. When this is done, he'll take the mining town for himself, and profit from the railroad in need of a supply station at Dunston Town. Beau had enough of waiting. His whole life is ready to unfurl in front of him.

  “Well?”

  “Sir you better come here.”

  Dunston, pistol ready, steps around to the blindside of the wagon, the hired help keeps talking. "I'm not sure which one the Butcher is…"

  The blindside reveals five dead bodies and not one of them is Jensen Hills.

  Dunston sees the loose chain and spatter of drizzled crimson, around a splintered hole in the wagon. The bile in Dunston’s guts kicks up its welcome. Dunston understands.

  “Jesus wept, he blew off his own hand.”

  45

  HE KNEW the severed nerve endings that once led to his hand would shortly sing in a searing chorus of the limb’s absence. Jensen cradles his bloody stump, wrapped in Benito's leather waistcoat.

  He stumbles into the tool shed.

  He sinks to his knees, curling his sweating forehead to the cool, moist dirt floor.

  He knows that pain’s presence will break onto the shore of his consciousness, with no chance of ebbing. Pain and death had carved a kinship with Jensen. He can no longer remember a moment when they didn’t accompany a thought, a feeling, a moment of solitude.

  Even the boy… Memories of him are tainted with that moment his young hopeful existence was trampled into oblivion. Jensen glances to the ceiling as if to see if William is looking down at him… He raises his ever paining stump as if to show-off to his dead friend.

  Lotus comes to mind, her softness, her beauty is a counter point, a stark contrast to this moment.

  The Jade necklace…

  …Jensen fumbles for the Jade necklace Lotus gave him. He’s still doubled over; his thumb runs across it, the Jade pendant opens up, inside is the sweet smelling black tar of opium. Jensen flips it into his soiled hand, and places the little parcel of release under his tongue; he tastes its bitter residue permeate his skin.

  Jensen’s momentary lapse of resolve dissolves.

  He sits on his haunches; mud is caked on his face. He reaches across to the lantern; it sloshes in his grip. He pours kerosene over his wound. It burns white hot; he can feel himself flexing his ghost of a hand to dissuade the heat. The brew of pain and opium sharpens his reality… Jensen snatches the bale hook and strips of leather.

  He tourniquets his wound.

  Jensen places a leather strap down, then the bale hook on it, with his stump on top of that. He begins to wrap the leather around, tightening the bale hook to his left arm. He grits his teeth as the painful snap washes over him.

  Jensen stands, he has pistols taken from the dead, the shotgun that dismembered him, and a bale hook for a left hand. He looks ready for war.

  Jensen takes the lantern and sprinkles some kerosene around the tool shed. Its volatile nature is matched by its spirited odour, Jensen breathes it in deep, his eyes involuntarily well.

  Jensen looks across the critter traps, axe, and a gap in the slats of the wall, which frames a chicken beadily staring in at Jensen.

  Jensen stares back; he cannot help but sneer a grin.

  46

  “Christ, he’s a goddamn one-man army, an’ all this time, a bloody drunk, opium addicted, sow rearer." Dunston is talking to himself as much as anyone else.

  He, the Devons, Bedford, the two Bounty hunters and three Deputies stand by the overturned wagon and its feast of death. They’re contempla
ting what comes next, as no one has experienced this before.

  Robert Devon is less contemplative; to him the answer is obvious.

  “Well, this is our chance Dunston, he’s wounded, let’s find him and-“

  “You just don't get, do you, Devon?" Dunston wants everyone to know what he's thinking. “He’s been cut, shot with Buffalo round; he survived Marujo… The Savage Lands... He’s blown his own fucking hand clean off, and now, now you want to go right after him!?” Dunston straightens out his jacket; he stands in front of Robert Devon. "I say, we track him, let him bleed out… weaken. Prey is at its most dangerous when it has fuck all else to live for."

  “No Dunston, no.” Robert is growing a pair. “No… I say-”

  - BLAM-

  It’s not so much the ringing out of pistol fire that brings a cessation to the heated parley, or the sound of flying metal audibly cracking bone. It's Bedford's inhuman involuntary squeal; as his mandible shatters, he collapses onto the wagon trying to cradle the pulped mass that was his jaw.

  The others dive for cover, amongst the dead on the blindside of the wagon.

  Jensen calls out, over the groaning and wailing of Bedford.

  “Was that Tyler?”

  “Where is that cocksucker?” Robert demands.

  Beau Dunston peers through the miniature portholes in the wagon, the leavings of bullets passaging through wood. Dunston sees a smoking pistol sticking out of the tool shed.

  “He’s in the shed, over there,” he gestures the direction with his pistol. “I say we shoot the shit out of it.” The men nod in response to the invitation.

  In unspoken unison the men rest on top of, or to the side of the wagon, their rifles and pistols target the shed. There's an ensemble of barrel calls; each pistol articulates its statement. Each shot stimulates the air about them in a sudden clap of expansion, that can be felt over flesh and reverberates through the marrow. Indigo plumes of barrel-breath balloon out, until thick smoke, fill their vision. Rounds punch their velocity through the decaying wooden slats of the shed.

  Wood shatters, splinters, shreds.

  As the violent chorus proceeds its mayhem, Tyler reaches over to Bedford; he's sprawled on his back staring vacuously skyward. His breathing is intermittent.

  Tyler nudges Bedford, he seems to flicker, yet he’s dormant, unresponsive. Bedford is in the throes of shock. Tyler feels the leaden weight of guilt smacking him in his lower gut. It was he who started this murderous cascade that led to the death of his friends.

  He leans in to whisper into his companion’s ear, though there was a solitary sliver of hope Bedford would hear him.

  “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” Tyler lays back, parallel to his dying friend, staring skyward… The gunfire becomes drowned out, he imagines his own death, at least there would be peace in that moment. He hoped.

  Then there is silence, the quiet undiluted calm after the storm. The silence punctuates the broken internals of the shed falling, yet its structure still stands.

  Robert Devon stirs with confidence; poised as if leading a charge into an oncoming brigade.

  “Tyler stay here, boy.” He beckons to the Bounty Hunters with his pistol “Bounty Killers, with me.” He turns to Dunston, a sense of smug triumph. “At his most dangerous aye?”

  Robert sprints towards the shed, followed by the Bounty Hunters and Deputies. Dunston stays with Tyler.

  Without breaking his stride, Robert raises his boot to the shed's hole ridden door; it cracks open to angle off its hinge. His five gun men are behind him. A Deputy walks in slowly, gun raised. They see the shed is empty; he calls out to his partners.

  "He's gone."

  Robert peers through an ample gap in the back of the shed.

  “He went out the back.”

  A Bounty Hunter snorts the air; he comments… “I smell….”

  In the approaching prevailing moments, Robert Devon experiences an expanded awareness, it seems as causality were merely an illusion, as all events both the catalyst and response were one and the same. He acquires an understanding that his mind accepts and his body can't respond to.

  Robert sees a man step into view, framed by the hole in the back of the shed. A man he's never met before, yet in an instant, he knows who he is. Robert runs his mining town, using folk who were of shady reputation, criminals, yet after a while, each and every one of them acquiesce to docility. What Robert regards is a man, battered, bruised, laden with pistols, his left arm a bloody stump, with what looks like a rusty bale hook for a hand. This man is in his fifties and looks his weathered age and more, ample of girth; his once fine clothes are now ungroomed, unwashed… Yet his eyes. The look he gives is of something intensely wild, untamed, of a creature that will not relinquish his freedom. Robert in that moment awoke to fear; true fear is a perception of danger or possible harm tinged with awe.

  The man known as 'The Butcher,' winks at Robert, there’s a whirlwind in his innards as the man presents a lit lantern. Robert, bathed in the ether of the combustible that suffuses his senses, panics.

  Jensen throws the lantern into the shed.

  The Bounty hunter finishes his observation.

  “…Kerosene.”

  Robert fumbles for his pistol, the jitters of hysteria course through him… Jensen has no such problem, he smoothly snaps his pistol from its holster, and as the lantern reaches the shed, Jensen shoots – BLAM.

  Time and space make an unwelcome return; things happen too fast for Robert to respond. The lantern breaches the shed's walls…

  Accompanied by Jensen’s muzzle flash…

  The lamp explodes – BOSSSCCCCHH… To release… The celestial glory of The Sun.

  Devouring orange sheets of flame cascade in a burning expanse.

  The very air itself comes to life as blazing flames ignite the shed.

  The men burn.

  Epidermal layers melt, voices scream.

  Jensen takes a moment; he glances back to the cornfield, and sprints for cover.

  47

  TYLER IS CURLED UP behind the wagon; his father had just charged off to the shed. Tyler looks to Beau Dunston; he oozes confidence, self-assurance.

  Tyler hated Dunston, yet he’s happy he was here right now.

  "Don't fret son; you'll be fine," Dunston reassured him. "We may not have seen eye to eye. But we are tied on one thing." Dunston turns Tyler. "Ensuring that you live."

  Tyler knew if Tyler lived that his father would sign over the controlling share of Keystone to the Colonel. Tyler turns to Dunston.

  "You agreed to a lot more, than just keeping me out of prison… why?"

  Dunston ponders, it’s true, the bargain was simply meant to be not pressing charges against Tyler, or his friends. It has now escalated to tracking down that murderous assassin. Then it strikes Dunston.

  "I suppose if I allow myself to be sentimental, despite all that has occurred between your father and myself. I suppose… were once frie-"

  KABOOM – The shed rages in flames.

  Tyler stands out from the blind side of the wagon, he sees two Bounty Hunters and two Deputies, scrambling before the inferno, like worshippers of an ancient god, singed and submitting before the heat. The flaming building births a stumbling fiery figure, he collapses the Bounty Hunters try to beat the flames to extinction, it’s impossible to tell who he is. Tyler’s eyes scan the farm. A sickening realisation opens to him.

  “Papa?” he stands in shock. “Oh God, Papa.”

  The Colonel snatches at Tyler’s shoulder.

  “Pull yourself together, now’s not the time for mourning.”

  Tyler snatches away from the Colonel. Dunston almost barks, he’s found it useful to shout at men who got the fear in battle.

  “Pull yourself together. If you can't, I'll take you to this ‘Butcher,' myself. Understood!?" Tyler complicity nods. “Good lad. Now tell me, are you a Director of Keystone Mining?”

  Tyler slowly nods, yes.

  Beau Dunston ever the opportunis
t thrusts out his hand.

  “Then Mister Devon, we are partners.” The Colonel’s hand hangs out in front of Tyler, expecting a union with his own. Tyler feels sickened, not just because his father’s fallen foul, in direct acquaintance to his own misdeeds. Not just because his childhood friend, Bedford, is now just lifeless matter with dead eyes staring skyward, no. It's because the only hope he has of meeting the morning is being offered by the man who has hounded his family to ruin. Tyler grasps Dunston's hand.

  Dunston springs into action.

  He points to the two remaining Bounty Hunters and Deputies.

  "I saw him depart to the cornfield; he's bleeding out." The Hunters are reticent to chase down this particular bounty. "I'll personally pay the man who brings me his head a thousand dollars on top of the five that is already on his head."

  The two Bounty Hunters glance to each other. They nod, with weapons drawn, they march to the cornfield.

  Dunston nods to the Deputies, “You too Jack and….?”

  “Hank Warden sir, I’ve been wid ya since Dunston.” Says the second Deputy.

  “Well Jack, Hank, go an’ get him.”

  The two Deputies run off to the cornfield.

  "He's going to kill them too," Tyler complains.

  “Maybe, boy, Maybe.” Dunston is scanning the farm for a vantage point. “There.” Dunston points to a small rocky out-jut overlooking the farm. "A marksman's greatest weapon is patience." Dunston grabs the cuffs of Tyler's jacket and forces him to march with him.

  48

  IN 1873 the supreme court ruled that Bounty Hunters were part of the U.S Law enforcement system, this is when David Johns, a former soldier, bounty jumper and brothel owner, knew it would be a lucrative trade for him to put his talents.

  It seemed like flourishing luck that David Johns was in Johnston City when the Colonel came riding into town. He was there for some drinking and whoring, burning through the last of his dollars. Then he heard about The Johnston City Butcher and a substantial compensation for his capture. His luck seems less blossoming now, in fact, he feels it has taken a turn. As David Johns, with pistol poised close to his chest, slowly walks through the cornfield, he shudders. He can still feel the blazing heat of the flames the smell of the Long pig, his jacket catching a blaze.