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Literature Text
4. The Gunfight
It was some time before noon that he raised the brim of his hat. There was a cloud of dust gathering on the horizon, and four dark specks could be seen within it. The drifter stood up as Miss Maudie and Sarah Jo came to the window.
He went to his horse and drew the rifle out of its scabbard on his horse’s saddle, and he loaded it and set the barrel across the seat and squinted down the sight. Miss Maudie covered Sarah Jo’s ears and backed away from the window slowly.
“What a fool,” she whispered, and she noticed that her hands were trembling. “He’ll never make a shot like that. It’s too far.”
The drifter took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. Gently, even tenderly, he squeezed the trigger.
There was a loud crack through the air, a report of thunder on a clear day, and one of the figures on horseback snapped his head back and dropped.
Miss Maudie stared in shock as the drifter spun the lever of his rifle and chambered another round.
“Impossible,” she said. “He’s a dead-eye.”
“He’s tough,” whispered Sarah Jo.
There was confusion in the gang for a moment as the riderless horse bucked and kicked away from the others. The leader reined his horse into submission as another jumped down to check their fallen comrade for signs of life. The half-dollar sized hole in his forehead told that there was none; it was scattered on the ground in a red fan-spatter.
“Damn it,” said Don Santo through gritted teeth. “God. Damn it.”
“He killed one of them,” murmured Miss Maudie. “My God.”
A nervous silence emanated from the figures in the distance. The drifter aimed his rifle again and again he pulled the trigger. A bullet whizzed into the dirt next to the dead man’s friend.
“Damn,” the drifter said to his horse. “Missed. How do you like that? I can hit ‘em when they’re moving.” His horse murmured something that sounded like sarcasm in return.
A wordless scream of rage filled the desert. Don Santo turned his horse and spurred it forward, taking a gun from his belt and cocking it. Another bullet whizzed past his head and put a hole in his hat. Blood trickled down his face.
The drifter slammed the rifle back into its scabbard and swung himself up into the saddle. Bullets flew by as Don Santo screamed. Miss Maudie ducked and covered Sarah Jo with her body. The drifter and his horse fled.
“Come back here, you bastard!” Don Santo screamed. “Come back and fight like a man! You’ll pay for what you did to Julio, bastard!”
“Come and get me,” the drifter called over his shoulder, his voice sounding no more interested in combat than it had been in saying Grace. Don Santo gnashed his teeth and set his spurs to his horse yet again.
The chase led into the maze of stone spires, and the drifter nudged his horse into a faster gallop. Don Santo motioned for his men to split up. If it was the last thing they did, they would trap the drifter in the canyon and kill him.
The men held their weapons at the ready. One circled around behind a large wall of stone. They heard gravel shift: The feet of a nervous horse, perhaps, or a man trying to climb for his life.
One of them rode forward, grinning. He laughed, and then there was a bang. He dropped his gun and looked up toward a goat path worn into the side of the canyon where the drifter sat on his horse, a handful of pebbles in one palm and a pistol in the other. Don Santo’s man felt blood begin to seep down his arm.
The drifter flung the handful of pebbles, dust and all, toward the other man when he appeared. His horse clamored up the trail like a goat and was gone.
“I’ll get that bastard,” the one who’d been shot hissed between his teeth. The other one scrabbled to wipe the dust from his eyes, growling. The first switched his pistol to the other hand and kicked his horse into a gallop.
Don Santo heard the echo of hoof-beats along the canyon walls and thought his men were coming back with the drifter’s dead body. He was half right. The hoof-beats were none other than those of the drifter’s horse! The drifter leapt at Don Santo from around a corner, guns blazing. One of the bullets struck Don Santo in the arm and the other grazed his cheek. The Mexican howled in surprise and gave chase, nearly colliding with his own men as they rounded the corner.
“Get that bastard!” Don Santo snarled.
“I keep missing,” the drifter said to his horse, and he crouched low in the saddle as bullets flew over his head. He half-turned around and returned fire.
“Die, you son of a bitch!” screamed Don Santo.
The drifter heard his pistol click. No more bullets. He holstered it and drew his other, fired with it. One bullet caught one of Don Santo’s men—the same one as before—in the arm. He screamed and cussed a blue streak into the desert sky.
The pistol clicked again. The drifter threw it back into its holster at his left hip and leaned hard to guide his horse around the front of the house. Don Santo barked something and one of his men darted around in the opposite direction.
The drifter was looking behind him when he heard hoof-beats ahead, and he looked up in time to see the man coming toward him. The drifter’s horse dug in and tried to dodge as the other horse reared up with a frightened cry. Both men went crashing to the ground as the beasts collided.
The drifter groaned and rolled over as a bullet burrowed into the earth, exactly where his head had been a moment before. The Mexican cursed and pulled the trigger again, but it clicked and no bullet came out. The drifter reached behind himself and pulled out a bowie knife.
“That’s enough, gringo,” Don Santo said as he aimed a freshly-loaded pistol at the drifter’s head. “One more move and I blow your god-damned head off. Claro?”
The drifter slowly set his knife down and put his hands up. Don Santo’s other man dismounted his horse and both of them moved forward. They each grabbed one of the drifter’s arms and hauled him to his feet. He did not struggle.
“What a coward,” Don Santo crowed as he jumped down from his horse. “The bastard gringo doesn’t even fight back, eh?”
The drifter said nothing. His eyes, blue and cold as gunmetal, remained on Don Santo.
The Mexican moved forward slowly, grinning beneath his bushy black mustache. He turned his pistol around in his hand thoughtfully and then struck the drifter with it right on the cheek. The drifter’s head snapped to one side and blood flew from his mouth.
“Regret coming here yet, gringo?” Don Santo grinned, leaning in close. “Start begging and perhaps you will die quicker, eh?”
The drifter raised his head slowly and began to open his mouth, eyes half-closed. Don Santo grinned more widely and leaned in closer to hear what he was sure would be a whispered plea.
He recoiled sharply as a spray of saliva and blood spattered across his face. The drifter was watching him coldly, blood on his mouth from where he’d spat. Don Santo wiped his face with one hand and then snarled as he hit the drifter again. The drifter kept his head down.
“You’ll pay for that, you son of a bitch!” Don Santo hissed, and he signaled to his men. His men grinned. “Go to work on him! Make this gringo wish he’d never even come to Don Santo’s town. He won’t be needing his nice coat or hat,” Don Santo added as an afterthought, and his men stripped the items from their prisoner. Don Santo threw them on the ground and grinned.
“Go,” he said.
The beating began.
Don Santo sat on the porch while Miss Maudie served him tequila. He watched the drifter fall yet again, receive a vicious boot to the gut, be hauled up once more by the scruff of his neck. Don Santo grinned like a coyote.
“I told him he was a fool,” Miss Maudie said in a cold, hollow voice, watching the beating from her place on the porch. “I told him not to attack Don Santo. He didn’t listen.”
They had been at it for a while now. At the beginning she hadn’t been able to watch, but Don Santo had forced her. Now the drifter’s gasps and grunts of pain were mere background noise, just as the yellow and orange of the desert was a background painting.
Don Santo laughed and downed his tequila as one of his men hit the drifter in the jaw.
The drifter stumbled back and fell into the arms of the other, who pushed him back to his feet and then sent him straight to the ground with a fist to the gut.
“I know,” said Don Santo, as if he’d just gotten the greatest idea in the history of the human race. He bared his teeth in a grin and called to his men. “¡Oye! Franco, Luís. Come here, por favor.”
They stopped just as Franco was about to break the drifter’s nose. He considered the drifter for a moment and then hit him in the nose anyway, and both of them laughed and grinned and walked over to Don Santo. The drifter pulled himself weakly to his knees and put his nose back into joint, blood streaming from it.
“Sí, Don Santo?”
“I think Señora Maudie looks very pretty today, don’t you?”
Miss Maudie paled.
“Oh, sí, Don Santo,” Luís said. He grinned more widely and licked his lips like a coyote.
“Don’t you dare, you bastards,” Miss Maudie hissed between bared teeth. She backed toward her door, holding the bottle of tequila like it was a club.
“But Señora,” said Don Santo, grinning like a lech, “you have no choice.”
A gunshot rang out into the clear desert air. Luís looked down slowly to the hole in his chest as it began weeping blood. He coughed and tasted iron in his mouth, and slowly he went to his knees and sat heavily slumped against a pillar of the porch.
Don Santo looked over as Franco turned around. Miss Maudie darted inside and slammed the door.
The drifter had managed to get to his feet, but he was only just standing, teeth gritted in agony. He leveled his Colt again and fired, and a bullet tore through Franco’s shoulder to the sound of thunder.
“Hey, bastards,” the drifter hissed through a split lip and gritted teeth, glaring up at them from beneath a bloodied brow. He looked like the Devil himself. “I wasn’t done with you yet.”
“Get the gringo,” Don Santo snarled.
The drifter spat blood at them and leapt onto his horse. It sped away as soon as he touched upon his back, quick as the desert breeze.
Don Santo growled and grabbed for his rifle as Franco went for his horse. The outlaw leader set the sight to his eye and aimed, and he pulled the trigger with the wrath of a thousand demons.
Blood spattered onto the neck of the drifter’s horse. The drifter himself jerked as if stung by a gadfly and, slowly, he fell from the saddle into a crumpled heap on the ground. His horse bucked once and then came back to stand guard over his fallen master.
Inside the house, Miss Maudie gasped and Sarah Jo stared.
“God damned gringo bastard,” Don Santo snorted, and he threw the rifle to the ground.
“Franco! Come with me.”
Franco followed him, clutching his shoulder all the while. He brought the horses.
The body was still when they reached it, and in the late afternoon sun it looked almost alive. Don Santo kicked it once and watched the corpse take the blow without so much as a grunt. He grinned in satisfaction and squatted down to slap the corpse’s face.
“Look at you, you bastard,” he laughed at the corpse. He grabbed the corpse’s stubble-ridden chin and turned its head. “Brave bastard, eh? Good shot? Fast horse? Well, gringo, now you’re a brave dead bastard and you can’t do shit about it!”
The corpse was still.
“Put him on his horse,” Don Santo said to Franco. He stood up and wiped his hands on his trousers, leaving bloody stains. “We will bring him into town in the morning and display his body. Let the people of Broken Trail watch it rot! It will stand as testament to Don Santo’s rule.”
He laughed like a hyena and clapped Franco on the back, then turned and mounted his horse and rode back for Miss Maudie’s homestead.
Franco grunted and set to work moving the corpse.
He found that the drifter was well-built for his height, and that his thinness was not from lack of strength. Franco grunted as he set the corpse against his good shoulder and tried to lift it. The drifter’s horse stood and watched, ears pinned back and teeth bared.
“Stupid beast,” grunted Franco, straining to haul the body up. “Standing there while I do all the work. Bet you don’t even know your master is dead, dumb animal!”
The horse watched him drag the corpse over, bow-legged with strain, and begin pushing it into the saddle. The horse waited until he’d engrossed himself in the task before leaning down and sinking its teeth into Franco’s rear. Franco screamed and danced away, cursing in his mother tongue.
“Son of the devil!” he yelled at the horse, but when he turned the horse was lying down.
Franco rubbed his wound and spat. “That’s it, beast. Stupid horse, you’ll rot in hell with your master after this.”
He crept over and, when the horse made no move to cause him any more grievous bodily wounds, he shoved the corpse into the saddle and bound its hands around the horse’s neck with rope. He kicked the horse and it stood up. The corpse remained atop it.
Franco snorted and climbed atop his own horse. The sun was beginning to sink. He turned and grabbed the reins of the drifter’s horse, then led them back to the homestead.
Don Santo was drinking again by the time he got there, and Miss Maudie was at the window, hands over her mouth. She ducked out of sight to cradle her child as Don Santo grunted.
“Ignore her,” he said, and Franco nodded. He dismounted his horse and pulled the body down. It fell to the ground with a heavy, dead thud.
“Set him against the wall,” Don Santo growled. “No sense in bothering with the woman. We sleep in the barn tonight.”
Franco grunted and set the corpse upright. There was a movement, he thought, and in a knee-jerk reaction he grabbed the corpse’s hair and hauled the head upwards, but the blue eyes were unfocused and lifeless. He dropped it and the head lolled against the drifter’s chest. Franco snorted and led his horse to the cowshed, then slipped inside to begin the long process of digging the bullet out of his shoulder.
It was a long time before there was movement. The moonlight made sharp contrast over the landscape, pale illumination and deep shadow creating a stark wasteland that seemed something more out of a ghost tale than a western memory. A small shadow darted to the cowshed in silence and peered inside.
Don Santo was snoring, a bottle of tequila open and still balanced in his hand. Franco had bandaged himself and was now unconscious, drunk into a stupor in an effort to keep the pain of his wounds from driving him mad.
The shadow turned and walked for the house. It stopped and picked up a gun, one of the drifter’s Colt revolvers, and then went to stand and look at the corpse.
“You said you’d win,” whispered Sarah Jo.
The corpse did not answer.
“You said you’d take care of the bandits and protect us. You said you wouldn’t die.”
The corpse was silent.
Sarah Jo inhaled to steady herself. A deep well of emotion had opened inside of her, and if she could not staunch the flow and contain it then she feared the emotion would take hold of her and she would be unable to retain and sort of dignity that remained. Tears came to her eyes anyway, and she sniffed to hold them at bay as her fists clenched and then began to tremble.
“You said you wouldn’t die, Wallace!” the girl whispered, voice breaking like a thousand crystal glasses. Tears began to trickle down her cheeks, and Sarah Jo bit back an angry sob with a keening growl not unlike a dog who’s been kicked. “You promised to protect us, and you didn’t! You promised, Wallace!”
The girl screwed her eyes shut and tried to hold back the sobs, but her shoulders were shaking and the tears were coming down like a waterfall. The sobs broke through like floodwaters through a dam.
There was a quiet breath in front of her, rasping in the moonlit blackness. “I never said I wouldn’t die,” a low, growly voice told her. It was tired and spoke of dust and blood and .45 caliber bullets.
Sarah Jo looked up. She met the drifter’s pale blue eyes and stared. He looked dead, but he was alive.
“I never promised you anything, except that I’d try,” he said again, voice dry and quiet like the desert wind through the canyons.
Sarah Jo came forward like a flood and threw herself upon him, arms finding a hold around his neck as she began crying in earnest. The drifter hesitated for a moment before he put his arms around her. He held her and stroked her hair.
Eventually, she stopped crying. He touched the back of her head and glanced toward the barn.
“I’m not dead yet,” he said into her ear, “so that means I have to keep trying. But I need you to help me first.”
Sarah Jo nodded.
“Good girl,” said the drifter, and he whispered into her ear and she nodded and set off to do as he’d asked.
The drifter sighed and sat back and stared at the endless sky.
It was some time before noon that he raised the brim of his hat. There was a cloud of dust gathering on the horizon, and four dark specks could be seen within it. The drifter stood up as Miss Maudie and Sarah Jo came to the window.
He went to his horse and drew the rifle out of its scabbard on his horse’s saddle, and he loaded it and set the barrel across the seat and squinted down the sight. Miss Maudie covered Sarah Jo’s ears and backed away from the window slowly.
“What a fool,” she whispered, and she noticed that her hands were trembling. “He’ll never make a shot like that. It’s too far.”
The drifter took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. Gently, even tenderly, he squeezed the trigger.
There was a loud crack through the air, a report of thunder on a clear day, and one of the figures on horseback snapped his head back and dropped.
Miss Maudie stared in shock as the drifter spun the lever of his rifle and chambered another round.
“Impossible,” she said. “He’s a dead-eye.”
“He’s tough,” whispered Sarah Jo.
There was confusion in the gang for a moment as the riderless horse bucked and kicked away from the others. The leader reined his horse into submission as another jumped down to check their fallen comrade for signs of life. The half-dollar sized hole in his forehead told that there was none; it was scattered on the ground in a red fan-spatter.
“Damn it,” said Don Santo through gritted teeth. “God. Damn it.”
“He killed one of them,” murmured Miss Maudie. “My God.”
A nervous silence emanated from the figures in the distance. The drifter aimed his rifle again and again he pulled the trigger. A bullet whizzed into the dirt next to the dead man’s friend.
“Damn,” the drifter said to his horse. “Missed. How do you like that? I can hit ‘em when they’re moving.” His horse murmured something that sounded like sarcasm in return.
A wordless scream of rage filled the desert. Don Santo turned his horse and spurred it forward, taking a gun from his belt and cocking it. Another bullet whizzed past his head and put a hole in his hat. Blood trickled down his face.
The drifter slammed the rifle back into its scabbard and swung himself up into the saddle. Bullets flew by as Don Santo screamed. Miss Maudie ducked and covered Sarah Jo with her body. The drifter and his horse fled.
“Come back here, you bastard!” Don Santo screamed. “Come back and fight like a man! You’ll pay for what you did to Julio, bastard!”
“Come and get me,” the drifter called over his shoulder, his voice sounding no more interested in combat than it had been in saying Grace. Don Santo gnashed his teeth and set his spurs to his horse yet again.
The chase led into the maze of stone spires, and the drifter nudged his horse into a faster gallop. Don Santo motioned for his men to split up. If it was the last thing they did, they would trap the drifter in the canyon and kill him.
The men held their weapons at the ready. One circled around behind a large wall of stone. They heard gravel shift: The feet of a nervous horse, perhaps, or a man trying to climb for his life.
One of them rode forward, grinning. He laughed, and then there was a bang. He dropped his gun and looked up toward a goat path worn into the side of the canyon where the drifter sat on his horse, a handful of pebbles in one palm and a pistol in the other. Don Santo’s man felt blood begin to seep down his arm.
The drifter flung the handful of pebbles, dust and all, toward the other man when he appeared. His horse clamored up the trail like a goat and was gone.
“I’ll get that bastard,” the one who’d been shot hissed between his teeth. The other one scrabbled to wipe the dust from his eyes, growling. The first switched his pistol to the other hand and kicked his horse into a gallop.
Don Santo heard the echo of hoof-beats along the canyon walls and thought his men were coming back with the drifter’s dead body. He was half right. The hoof-beats were none other than those of the drifter’s horse! The drifter leapt at Don Santo from around a corner, guns blazing. One of the bullets struck Don Santo in the arm and the other grazed his cheek. The Mexican howled in surprise and gave chase, nearly colliding with his own men as they rounded the corner.
“Get that bastard!” Don Santo snarled.
“I keep missing,” the drifter said to his horse, and he crouched low in the saddle as bullets flew over his head. He half-turned around and returned fire.
“Die, you son of a bitch!” screamed Don Santo.
The drifter heard his pistol click. No more bullets. He holstered it and drew his other, fired with it. One bullet caught one of Don Santo’s men—the same one as before—in the arm. He screamed and cussed a blue streak into the desert sky.
The pistol clicked again. The drifter threw it back into its holster at his left hip and leaned hard to guide his horse around the front of the house. Don Santo barked something and one of his men darted around in the opposite direction.
The drifter was looking behind him when he heard hoof-beats ahead, and he looked up in time to see the man coming toward him. The drifter’s horse dug in and tried to dodge as the other horse reared up with a frightened cry. Both men went crashing to the ground as the beasts collided.
The drifter groaned and rolled over as a bullet burrowed into the earth, exactly where his head had been a moment before. The Mexican cursed and pulled the trigger again, but it clicked and no bullet came out. The drifter reached behind himself and pulled out a bowie knife.
“That’s enough, gringo,” Don Santo said as he aimed a freshly-loaded pistol at the drifter’s head. “One more move and I blow your god-damned head off. Claro?”
The drifter slowly set his knife down and put his hands up. Don Santo’s other man dismounted his horse and both of them moved forward. They each grabbed one of the drifter’s arms and hauled him to his feet. He did not struggle.
“What a coward,” Don Santo crowed as he jumped down from his horse. “The bastard gringo doesn’t even fight back, eh?”
The drifter said nothing. His eyes, blue and cold as gunmetal, remained on Don Santo.
The Mexican moved forward slowly, grinning beneath his bushy black mustache. He turned his pistol around in his hand thoughtfully and then struck the drifter with it right on the cheek. The drifter’s head snapped to one side and blood flew from his mouth.
“Regret coming here yet, gringo?” Don Santo grinned, leaning in close. “Start begging and perhaps you will die quicker, eh?”
The drifter raised his head slowly and began to open his mouth, eyes half-closed. Don Santo grinned more widely and leaned in closer to hear what he was sure would be a whispered plea.
He recoiled sharply as a spray of saliva and blood spattered across his face. The drifter was watching him coldly, blood on his mouth from where he’d spat. Don Santo wiped his face with one hand and then snarled as he hit the drifter again. The drifter kept his head down.
“You’ll pay for that, you son of a bitch!” Don Santo hissed, and he signaled to his men. His men grinned. “Go to work on him! Make this gringo wish he’d never even come to Don Santo’s town. He won’t be needing his nice coat or hat,” Don Santo added as an afterthought, and his men stripped the items from their prisoner. Don Santo threw them on the ground and grinned.
“Go,” he said.
The beating began.
Don Santo sat on the porch while Miss Maudie served him tequila. He watched the drifter fall yet again, receive a vicious boot to the gut, be hauled up once more by the scruff of his neck. Don Santo grinned like a coyote.
“I told him he was a fool,” Miss Maudie said in a cold, hollow voice, watching the beating from her place on the porch. “I told him not to attack Don Santo. He didn’t listen.”
They had been at it for a while now. At the beginning she hadn’t been able to watch, but Don Santo had forced her. Now the drifter’s gasps and grunts of pain were mere background noise, just as the yellow and orange of the desert was a background painting.
Don Santo laughed and downed his tequila as one of his men hit the drifter in the jaw.
The drifter stumbled back and fell into the arms of the other, who pushed him back to his feet and then sent him straight to the ground with a fist to the gut.
“I know,” said Don Santo, as if he’d just gotten the greatest idea in the history of the human race. He bared his teeth in a grin and called to his men. “¡Oye! Franco, Luís. Come here, por favor.”
They stopped just as Franco was about to break the drifter’s nose. He considered the drifter for a moment and then hit him in the nose anyway, and both of them laughed and grinned and walked over to Don Santo. The drifter pulled himself weakly to his knees and put his nose back into joint, blood streaming from it.
“Sí, Don Santo?”
“I think Señora Maudie looks very pretty today, don’t you?”
Miss Maudie paled.
“Oh, sí, Don Santo,” Luís said. He grinned more widely and licked his lips like a coyote.
“Don’t you dare, you bastards,” Miss Maudie hissed between bared teeth. She backed toward her door, holding the bottle of tequila like it was a club.
“But Señora,” said Don Santo, grinning like a lech, “you have no choice.”
A gunshot rang out into the clear desert air. Luís looked down slowly to the hole in his chest as it began weeping blood. He coughed and tasted iron in his mouth, and slowly he went to his knees and sat heavily slumped against a pillar of the porch.
Don Santo looked over as Franco turned around. Miss Maudie darted inside and slammed the door.
The drifter had managed to get to his feet, but he was only just standing, teeth gritted in agony. He leveled his Colt again and fired, and a bullet tore through Franco’s shoulder to the sound of thunder.
“Hey, bastards,” the drifter hissed through a split lip and gritted teeth, glaring up at them from beneath a bloodied brow. He looked like the Devil himself. “I wasn’t done with you yet.”
“Get the gringo,” Don Santo snarled.
The drifter spat blood at them and leapt onto his horse. It sped away as soon as he touched upon his back, quick as the desert breeze.
Don Santo growled and grabbed for his rifle as Franco went for his horse. The outlaw leader set the sight to his eye and aimed, and he pulled the trigger with the wrath of a thousand demons.
Blood spattered onto the neck of the drifter’s horse. The drifter himself jerked as if stung by a gadfly and, slowly, he fell from the saddle into a crumpled heap on the ground. His horse bucked once and then came back to stand guard over his fallen master.
Inside the house, Miss Maudie gasped and Sarah Jo stared.
“God damned gringo bastard,” Don Santo snorted, and he threw the rifle to the ground.
“Franco! Come with me.”
Franco followed him, clutching his shoulder all the while. He brought the horses.
The body was still when they reached it, and in the late afternoon sun it looked almost alive. Don Santo kicked it once and watched the corpse take the blow without so much as a grunt. He grinned in satisfaction and squatted down to slap the corpse’s face.
“Look at you, you bastard,” he laughed at the corpse. He grabbed the corpse’s stubble-ridden chin and turned its head. “Brave bastard, eh? Good shot? Fast horse? Well, gringo, now you’re a brave dead bastard and you can’t do shit about it!”
The corpse was still.
“Put him on his horse,” Don Santo said to Franco. He stood up and wiped his hands on his trousers, leaving bloody stains. “We will bring him into town in the morning and display his body. Let the people of Broken Trail watch it rot! It will stand as testament to Don Santo’s rule.”
He laughed like a hyena and clapped Franco on the back, then turned and mounted his horse and rode back for Miss Maudie’s homestead.
Franco grunted and set to work moving the corpse.
He found that the drifter was well-built for his height, and that his thinness was not from lack of strength. Franco grunted as he set the corpse against his good shoulder and tried to lift it. The drifter’s horse stood and watched, ears pinned back and teeth bared.
“Stupid beast,” grunted Franco, straining to haul the body up. “Standing there while I do all the work. Bet you don’t even know your master is dead, dumb animal!”
The horse watched him drag the corpse over, bow-legged with strain, and begin pushing it into the saddle. The horse waited until he’d engrossed himself in the task before leaning down and sinking its teeth into Franco’s rear. Franco screamed and danced away, cursing in his mother tongue.
“Son of the devil!” he yelled at the horse, but when he turned the horse was lying down.
Franco rubbed his wound and spat. “That’s it, beast. Stupid horse, you’ll rot in hell with your master after this.”
He crept over and, when the horse made no move to cause him any more grievous bodily wounds, he shoved the corpse into the saddle and bound its hands around the horse’s neck with rope. He kicked the horse and it stood up. The corpse remained atop it.
Franco snorted and climbed atop his own horse. The sun was beginning to sink. He turned and grabbed the reins of the drifter’s horse, then led them back to the homestead.
Don Santo was drinking again by the time he got there, and Miss Maudie was at the window, hands over her mouth. She ducked out of sight to cradle her child as Don Santo grunted.
“Ignore her,” he said, and Franco nodded. He dismounted his horse and pulled the body down. It fell to the ground with a heavy, dead thud.
“Set him against the wall,” Don Santo growled. “No sense in bothering with the woman. We sleep in the barn tonight.”
Franco grunted and set the corpse upright. There was a movement, he thought, and in a knee-jerk reaction he grabbed the corpse’s hair and hauled the head upwards, but the blue eyes were unfocused and lifeless. He dropped it and the head lolled against the drifter’s chest. Franco snorted and led his horse to the cowshed, then slipped inside to begin the long process of digging the bullet out of his shoulder.
It was a long time before there was movement. The moonlight made sharp contrast over the landscape, pale illumination and deep shadow creating a stark wasteland that seemed something more out of a ghost tale than a western memory. A small shadow darted to the cowshed in silence and peered inside.
Don Santo was snoring, a bottle of tequila open and still balanced in his hand. Franco had bandaged himself and was now unconscious, drunk into a stupor in an effort to keep the pain of his wounds from driving him mad.
The shadow turned and walked for the house. It stopped and picked up a gun, one of the drifter’s Colt revolvers, and then went to stand and look at the corpse.
“You said you’d win,” whispered Sarah Jo.
The corpse did not answer.
“You said you’d take care of the bandits and protect us. You said you wouldn’t die.”
The corpse was silent.
Sarah Jo inhaled to steady herself. A deep well of emotion had opened inside of her, and if she could not staunch the flow and contain it then she feared the emotion would take hold of her and she would be unable to retain and sort of dignity that remained. Tears came to her eyes anyway, and she sniffed to hold them at bay as her fists clenched and then began to tremble.
“You said you wouldn’t die, Wallace!” the girl whispered, voice breaking like a thousand crystal glasses. Tears began to trickle down her cheeks, and Sarah Jo bit back an angry sob with a keening growl not unlike a dog who’s been kicked. “You promised to protect us, and you didn’t! You promised, Wallace!”
The girl screwed her eyes shut and tried to hold back the sobs, but her shoulders were shaking and the tears were coming down like a waterfall. The sobs broke through like floodwaters through a dam.
There was a quiet breath in front of her, rasping in the moonlit blackness. “I never said I wouldn’t die,” a low, growly voice told her. It was tired and spoke of dust and blood and .45 caliber bullets.
Sarah Jo looked up. She met the drifter’s pale blue eyes and stared. He looked dead, but he was alive.
“I never promised you anything, except that I’d try,” he said again, voice dry and quiet like the desert wind through the canyons.
Sarah Jo came forward like a flood and threw herself upon him, arms finding a hold around his neck as she began crying in earnest. The drifter hesitated for a moment before he put his arms around her. He held her and stroked her hair.
Eventually, she stopped crying. He touched the back of her head and glanced toward the barn.
“I’m not dead yet,” he said into her ear, “so that means I have to keep trying. But I need you to help me first.”
Sarah Jo nodded.
“Good girl,” said the drifter, and he whispered into her ear and she nodded and set off to do as he’d asked.
The drifter sighed and sat back and stared at the endless sky.
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In which Wallace the drifter and the outlaw Don Santo's gang shoot it out under the desert sun.
You know that scene in A Fistful of Dollars where Joe's getting the crap beat out of him by the Rojos? Yeah. That level of a beatin'.
Wallace's rifle is a Winchester Model 1866. His pistols are two 1869 Colt Armies with Thuer conversions (cap-and-ball --> bullets). Because cap-and-ball pistols are a pain in the butt to reload.
Characters all belong to me.
Part One: The Drifter
Part Five: The Gravedigger
You know that scene in A Fistful of Dollars where Joe's getting the crap beat out of him by the Rojos? Yeah. That level of a beatin'.
Wallace's rifle is a Winchester Model 1866. His pistols are two 1869 Colt Armies with Thuer conversions (cap-and-ball --> bullets). Because cap-and-ball pistols are a pain in the butt to reload.
Characters all belong to me.
Part One: The Drifter
Part Five: The Gravedigger
© 2015 - 2024 MeadowMaiden
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