by Faith Hunter
“Glad I was in the area,” she replied. “What are friends for? But I still don’t understand how you got all the way out here. I checked the schedules. Hasn’t been a train out to Ruin Creek in six whole months.”
Via Con Diablo
Bryan C.P. Steele
“…and may God have mercy on your soul.”
Those were the last words I heard before the floor dropped out from under me, the rope snapped tight, and the world went black. It wasn’t so bad, gettin’ hung, not really anyway. Yeah, there was a bright light, and I reckon it would’ve been nice to head on toward it, but that wasn’t in the cards for me. No, there ain’t no pearly gates for Johnny Hollow. That bright light lasted for a tick, then it was gone. Everything got real dark and real cold, real fast. I felt like I was drowning in ink. The world was black and I was treadin’ darkness.
I went and got myself dead.
Sure, I lived hard. Hard as a ten penny, and I probably earned that rope. My trigger put nails in quite a few men’s coffins, I bought half a dozen horses on stolen dollars, and I left my share of broken hearts around the frontier. My name was spat by every lawman within five days’ ride from Cripple Creek, and my ugly mug was charcoaled on more than a few posters. A lot of folk might say I am…I was…a bad man.
Yeah, I wasn’t goin’ out and gettin’ fit for a bright white hat or a nickel-slick badge, but I did what I had to. What I was good at. Bit of a welch, you know? A carpenter puts up a good house, a barman pours a good glass, a whore gives a good…smile, and an outlaw slings a good pistol. And I was one hell of an outlaw. I was just doin’ what the Lord put me on this Earth to do, and it got me killed.
Anyway, back to that day…or days…or weeks. Who knows how long I was floatin’ in that darkness. I felt nothin’, saw nothin’, heard nothin’. It was like that one old Greek fella once said, or somethin’ like it, I was becomin’ part of that darkness all around me. I was lost in it.
All of a sudden, like Momma’s Good Book said, there was light. Blindin’ light. Imagine that first stab of day hittin’ your lids on a rye whiskey and loose saloon gals hangover. Now turn that feelin’ up a few dozen times and stick hot hatpins in your face at the same time—that’s how this light felt when it blazed on. All around me was hot, bright, and hurtin’. I went from nothin’ to high noon in a flash.
The light was painful, but the voice was worse.
Johnathon…
All it said was my name, but it was like a trumpet in my head. It was a hundred of my sister’s kid beatin’ on two hundred kettle drums. It sent lightning through my brain, down to my toes and fingers, and then back up again. My whole body was on a rack from the inside out.
Then it stopped. The pain. The light. All of it. The only sensation I felt was the dusty wind on my cheeks, the hard packed clay under me, and something tuggin’ at my boots.
I cracked an eye, and was greeted by the Colorado night sky. I was happy as a pig in shit to be alive. I didn’t even care that some scruff-necked herdsman was tryin’ to steal my brown beauties, so I laughed. Laughed like I heard the best joke any saloon had ever been home to. My laugh must’ve spooked my boot thief, because he jumped up like a jackrabbit.
“Dios en el cielo!” he shouted, letting go of my ankle and turnin’ white as my bare ass. He said some other Mexican chatter as he ran off into the night, but I was too busy enjoyin’ bein’ alive to care where he went off to.
Once I got my wits back, I slowly got up. Every muscle in my body ached. My skin felt too tight. My mouth was drier than a weed. When I moved, my joints cracked and popped like kindling in a campfire. Something about me just felt off. I took that pee oh tee stuff once on a dare, wrecked me from the guts on out for days, and I felt like a stranger in my own body the whole time. This was different.
All that said, I couldn’t stop grinning like an idiot—I was alive. Don’t know how, don’t know why, don’t really even know if the whole damn hangin’ was a bad dream. Yeah, had to be a bad dream. I rubbed my throat, remembering the rasp of that rope like it was still there, and found somethin’ totally new.
A necklace. When the hell did I get a goddam necklace?
It was too small, tight like a dancer’s choker, but made of lead wire all twisted together like a vine. I twisted it around to find the clasp, but there wasn’t one. This damned thing was wound around itself fifty times over, so between the wire and my achy fingers I wasn’t gettin’ it off anytime soon without tinsnips, that’s for sure. Frustration filled my pipes with heat, and I grabbed the necklace and gave it a hard yank. It did nothin’ of course, just jabbed a jagged piece of the thing through my thumb.
Strange enough…it didn’t hurt. Not like a “gettin’ hit in the jaw by a drunk dandy” doesn’t hurt, more like a “couldn’t feel it at all” doesn’t hurt. I looked down at my hand, saw the two tears in my thumb, but not even a drop of blood out of either. I even gave it a squeeze, and nothin’. I might have well been made of leather!
It was while I was lookin’ down that I saw it—someone else’s pistol tucked away in my holster. I skinned it, feeling how heavy a thing it was. Hardwood grip, dirty black metal like the kind you find in old church fencing, six-round cylinder, and a long barrel. The iron sight was sharp and the hammer thin; this was a one-shot, one-kill kind of sidearm, not for fannin’ or spray gunnin’. Might have been kind of ugly, but it was a hell of a piece.
I dropped the cylinder out, looked to give it a spin, and found not a single round inside. What good is an empty pistol on the hip of a gunslinger, eh? I plucked a slug from the case on my belt, and brought the cylinder up to my eye line. I’ve done it a thousand times without lookin’, maybe more, but this time somethin’ felt different.
Inside the chamber I was about to load, inside all the chambers actually, were tiny slips of paper. I couldn’t get my finger in to get them out, so I just dropped the bullet in, and the paper popped out the front of the cylinder. I snapped the pistol closed and holstered it, curiosity way stronger than my need to fully load it.
The paper was thick, more like the stock of a standard dollar, not newsprint. Rolled tight like a cigarette, it was only a few inches long when I unrolled it. On it was scrawled two words—Martin Jenkins.
As soon as those twelve letters hit my eyes everythin’ changed.
The ink on the paper burst into blue flames, consumed it up in a puff of smoke that curled up into my nose against the blowin’ of the plains breeze. It was like a match struck in my nostrils. Burnt sulfur, the sting of saltpeter, and a hint of seared flesh. It wasn’t the smell that got me, not by a long shot. It was the way the world changed right before my eyes.
The darkness split, swirls of crimson light popped into being. Footprints of fire in mid-air, they seemed, that wandered off into the night. Well, I’m no hardened explorer or nothin’, but I wasn’t about to let this go unexplored. I shook the sand off my back, undid what little work ole Pedro did on my boot with a stomp to make it tight again, then followed the trail.
Like some Injun scout I wandered the wilderness in the dead of night, following flamin’ red wisps floatin’ two feet above the road. I walked for hours. So long that I knew that dawn was comin’ soon. That fat, pink orb was about to give birth to a new day when the trail led me to a one-tent camp out in the middle of nowhere. No mules, no horses, no nothin’ but the tent and some cold cookin’ ashes. Herdsman, maybe? Fellow outlaw on the run? I had no idea, but the trail disappeared just a few paces in front of one of the moldy canvas one-man.
What the hell am I doin’? I thought as I approached what had to be a sleepin’ fella’s tent. What was I goin’ to do? Just walk on up and ask for this Martin? Do I knock on a flap? Walk right in? I was goin’ on instincts alone, even if it felt like those instincts weren’t even mine to follow.
I took a deep breath, walked on up to where the last wisp hung in the air, and cleared my throat—which was oddly much harder with my mouth full of road dust. I’d walked all night, hadn’t a sing
le blister under my boots, and just realized I never even took a sip from a canteen that I didn’t have anyway. Whatever was happenin’ to me, it made me forget all my troubles on such a long wander, that’s for sure.
“Mah…Marth…” I rasped. Talkin’ was harder than I reckoned it’d be, dry gulched or not, “Maahrtiin…” I managed to croak it out, and I didn’t sound a bit like myself anymore. “Martin Jenkins…”
“What the all hell?” someone said from inside the tent. I could hear ’im rustlin’ around, too. “You goddam know what time it is? Sun’s barely up, you idjit…”
“Martin.” I wanted to say my name, but all I could get out of that dusty trap of mine was this grumpin’ fella’s name. It was like my mouth was broke. I wanted to say a dozen different things while the stranger mucked about in his tent, rubbin’ sleep out of his eyes while I tried to spit out even somethin’ so simple as my damned name. “Martin…” My tongue was a stone in my mouth. No matter how hard I pushed my lips to make a sound while he grumped about gettin’ ready to come out and greet me, all I had was his name at a stutter that sounded like I was garglin’ shine all night.
“Alright, Jack,” he said, yankin’ the flaps back and comin’ out in the brightenin’ mornin’. He had tough guy writ all over, between the broke nose, the missin’ teeth, and the buckshooter in his mitts, he came out ready for a tussle. “Who the hell are you?”
“Maaartin Jeeeenkins…”
“Are you touched, boy?” he laughed. Not like someone said somethin’ funny, but that nervous thing a bad card player’ll do when he’s about to call on nines high. It wasn’t quite light yet, but I could see every line in his face, every wrinkle and scar, and I couldn’t figure out why he was squintin’ so hard to see…I was only ten paces away, right in front of him. Must’ve had the fever a ways back, milked up his eyes or somethin’. Then, plain as a barkeep’s smile, I knew he saw me—because his eyes went like shotglasses.
“Who…the…h-hell…are you?” he shouted. I knew that tone all too well, too. It was the scared shout of someone who thinks they’re goin’ to die. If you ever done killed a man, you know that sound. “What in G-God’s name are you?”
Yeah, sure he was shocked, but I was too. This whole “follow a mystic fire trail to the tent of a person I don’t even know” thing had me confused already, but what happened next downright made me question everythin’.
“Martin Jenkins...” I said it again, but I found my lungs fillin’ up again to add, “…may God have mercy on your soul.”
That’s when I noticed the weight in my hand again. Sometime between walkin’ half the night across the plain and sayin’ this scruffy stranger’s name a dozen times…I’d skinned my new pistol and didn’t even know it. Whenever it happened, it was tight in my grip now, and the whole world was slowin’ down. Martin there was movin’ like he was made from clay. I saw the first drop of sweat bead down off that whiskey-bulb nose. Watched his lip slowly curl as he shrugged the yella out of his spine and gave him the instinct to fight. Even with that instinct, he was just too damn slow. I could’ve brewed a pot of hot coffee and fried an egg for as long as it took him to get that shotgun up past his waist at me.
I don’t know why someone with a draw that slow would ever want to go heels with anybody, let alone a hip hangin’ gunslinger like me. That part of my brain that set me apart from a random cowpoke and made me a killer was in full control, and my muscles were doin’ everythin’ on their own it seemed. I leveled my barrel, and damn if it didn’t feel good in my palm. The weight was solid, but even. That bladelike iron sight lined up right, and pudgy ole Jenkins there was an all-too-easy target. My trigger was smooth, tucked in the crease of my finger, and I knew it wouldn’t take much to slide that back and let my bullet fly. I readied to squeeze…
Why am I killing this man? What did he do? I thought, giving a moment’s hesitation.
It was stupid, a rookie greenie mistake. Even with as slow as he was movin’, he yanked back on that single-barrel.
Dammit—that was the only thought that managed to cross my mind as his hammer slammed down into place.
The ten paces between us filled with smoke and flash. A cloud of buckshot came singin’ out of that cloud like angry bees from a hive. A hundred pea-sized chunks of lead rippin’ toward me as fast as powder’ll make ’em should have made me turn my pants dark on both sides, but I didn’t even flinch. Not a muscle. I just held board stiff and let them pass around—and through—me.
I’ve been shot before, I have, but like everything else today, this was different. Normally a bullet or a piece of shot hittin’ you is like gettin’ punched by the strongest child in town. You’d feel the pressure of it hittin’ you first as a hot coal in the meat, then the cold ache of leakin’ red creepin’ from all around the wound. The throbbin’ comes with every heartbeat, and if you don’t get it patched up much after that you’ll probably bleed out.
Bein’ as familiar with what gettin’ shot feels like, I was bamboozled when the heat didn’t happen. I’m not sayin’ that I didn’t get hit…I absolutely did. I’m sayin’ that the dozen or so places those little metal bastards ripped into me didn’t get the hot, or the cold, or even the wetness of bleedin’.
It didn’t even hurt.
All I felt was the impacts all over me; a few in the arms and legs, a couple in the gut, a handful under my collarbone, and one even stuck just under my right eye. I should’ve been dead. Should’ve been cryin’ out to the good Lord above, but I was focused on just two things—the sound of the shot hitting me and that it didn’t even make me budge. They sounded like pebbles being thrown hard into wet mud. That wet smack-plop that doesn’t echo or carry at all, just hits your ears with about as much grace as the action deserves.
Even after gettin’ peppered like that, my arm stayed up. Stayed ready. Stayed aimed. That iron sight hadn’t moved an inch off Jenkins’ middle.
“Devil’s balls!” the lug shouted, fumblin’ with his shotgun to get the spent shell out and shove a new one in. “No, no, no!”
Whether that pepper hurt or not, I wasn’t about to give Marty here a chance to get another shot off. My finger squeezed back like it had so many times before, the hammer came down, and my new fancy pistol bucked like an unbroken mule in my hand. My one round, the one I loaded the night before, exploded out that thing with a flare as red as a Colorado sunset and smoke that smelled more like a pipe match than a gunshot’s plume. It fit so perfect in that barrel that it sang, made that little chimey ringin’ sound they sometimes do, when it came burstin’ out.
The shot hit ’im straight in the guts. Less than a handspan above the belt buckle and left of where his momma tied him off at birth. Lookin’ back, I should’ve aimed for a cleaner kill. Where I stood like a statue, that one shot folded him in half like a Mexican dinner roll and knocked him back through his campsite, down rollin’ into his tent.
A belly hit is one of the worst, but Jenkins there was sure sellin’ it. Rollin’ around in the campsite, moanin’ and groanin’ like he was. It was kind of pathetic. He could last for hours, even days, bleedin’ from a gut wound like that one. I reckoned I ought to put him out of his misery though. I’ve been a bad man, but I ain’t that bad.
I walked over to where he was gettin’ all caught up in his tent leathers and bedroll, stood over the ugly scene. He was bleedin’ bad from his guts, which he kept wipin’ all over everythin’. When he looked up and saw me standin’ there, he started whimperin’—like dead men always do.
“N-no…you don’ have to…no…please…”
I popped open my cylinder and plucked another bullet from my belt, but all his beggin’ and squirmin’ about must’ve got him all too worked up—’cause he sighed out his last sigh and gave a few jackrabbit twitches, but that was all.
Well, that’s what I thought…until Jenkins’ eyes snapped open. Columns of light the same color as a full moon on the prairie, one from each dead-but-opened eye, shot up into the clouds. I looked up, f
ollowed to where they went, and that little church-goin’ boy inside me whispered about ‘Heaven’ in my head. The lights flared for a moment before fading, leavin’ me in the mornin’ breeze once again. I just stood there, gun in one hand, bullet in the other, and tried to comprehend.
Am I still dreamin’?
Dream or not, I needed to move on. I went to load up again, and when I pushed that bullet into the next chamber, another little slip of paper fell out and dropped in the dust at my feet. I felt my dry skin crease with a wide smile.
Before I knew it, I scooped it up and was unrollin’ it between my fingertips. This time it had three words on it.
Yep, you guessed it…another name.
“David. Michael. Bennett.”
The slip of paper burned to ash, and my flamin’ trail lit the way toward the big city. I was about to snap the gun closed, but I paused and looked into the rest of the empty chambers.
Four more rolls of paper.
Here we go again, I thought as I holstered my reckoning and felt my legs takin’ the first steps down the fire and brimstone path.
A path that I had a feelin’ I would take four more times before this dream would be over.
If it ever ends at all…
Rattler
R.S. Belcher
The Pinkerton man in the lock car decided to earn his pay. He shot down the Captain and put two lead pills into Gurney before the Chaplain killed him. Now, the thieves were riding south with saddle bags stuffed full of stolen greenbacks, and Gurney dying slow from a gut wound.
The Arizona sun was a harsher punishment than any a judge could impose on them, and the desolate wastes they fled across felt like what waited for them on the other side of the hangman’s noose.