Yesterday, these planks were just planks. 

Today, they are just steps. 

Not even sanded or stained. 

Not that anyone in the crowd would notice.

The handrails are, that is, both sanded and stained, but not for me. 

I walk with my hands folded behind me, perhaps in a state of repose, perhaps not.

There are people here who will receive an employment check to make sure I do not get hurt when I climb the stairs to the top. 

Ironically, there are people here who will receive an employment check to make sure I do fall, just right, when I am at the top.

All in a day’s work I suppose.

I get to hear the Mayor make his speech first. 

His brother, the Judge, gets to say his part next. 

Even the Reverend has a little something to add afterward.

The crowd pays a polite amount of respect to these town elders.

However, they all came to hear what I have to say.

Not that anyone cares what I have to say; only that I actually say what I have to say.

And who am I to disappoint them on this fine Sunday morning, just before Church services are to commence?

Just when each sits down, I am urged to stand up, but not yet to speak.

Apparently, I am in need of a formal introduction.

That honor befalls the local Sheriff who knows me best.

You might say I have had the honor of living with him for the past week.

His wife even cooked a grand meal for me last night.

“Fit for a King”, I told her.

“Wasn’t no never mind”, was all I heard her reply.

The Sheriff extolled the few virtues I did display and balanced this short list against the many failings of which the growing crowd has become all too aware of by now.

I had no interest in listening to the abridged narrative of my life.

However, the growing crowd of townsfolk seemed to have already “gotten the gist” of my biography.

Now it was my turn, for the Sheriff and I rehearsed this part late last night.

“Does the legally tried and convicted wish to make a statement?”

I nodded yes.

The hangman had the noose tied correctly and my hood at the ready.

“I wish to apologize for stealing all of those identities and life savings to finance my myriad of ill-gotten gains.”

By the look of the Reverend checking his pocket watch, it was time.

The hangman placed my hood over my head and then adjusted the noose as is his training.

But, I wasn’t yet finished with my oration.

“I offer a trade for your leniency.”

“Spare my life and I will divulge the real name identities, addresses, phone numbers, and bank account information of every similar scoundrel that has ever run off with the savings of anyone in this here territory.”

I greeted the Sheriff the next morning when he brought me biscuits and gravy for breakfast.

I seem to be wanted, for my newly advertised services, in many a town in this here territory.

And while I may not walk freely for a few years, I won’t be swinging at the end of a rope either.

Same can’t be said of the recently departed Judge or the Reverend.

Andy Betz has tutored and taught in excess of 40 years. He lives in 1974, and has been married for 29 years. His works are found everywhere a search engine operates.

Jack’s cousin, Crime, got his name when he was twenty. He had graduated from boosting candy bars at the Table Rock Market as a lad during lunch hour in Junior High, to stealing cars and stripping the motors in an overnight chop shop as after schoolwork. He dropped out of High School his junior year, to start post non-graduate work in a counterfeit ring. He was caught passing bogus $20 bills five days after his eighteenth birthday and got five years in a Federal Pen. When he came out after two and half years of higher criminal learning he was nicknamed, “Crime,” by his mother. The name stuck. Crime accepted it.

Crime was doing his usual drinking of beer at the Satin Slipper, a country western whiskey bar with a restaurant that served steak and baked potatoes and hamburgers and ham, bacon, and egg breakfasts, and broasted deep fried chicken that had an orthopedic look to it when it came to the table with deep fried potatoes.

Many, including many faithful patrons called it the ‘Sit and Slap ‘er.’ Crime had never been faithful to anything.

The past Sunday night, Crime had a one-night stand with Christy Long, the wife of Richard Long when Christy was out on the town and got a nose full of crank. Regularly, when Christy was out on the town and got a nose full of crank, she slept with someone other than Richard. Crime fit into the scene pretty much like he always did because he had sold her the crank. After he made the sale, he and Christy made a night of it because Christy wanted some more crank for free. They foolishly let Christy’s little Datsun stay in front of the one-bedroom single wide trailer home Crime lived in with twenty cars in various states of disrepair parked all around it. Christy’s Datsun had been out front parallel with Table Rock Road and the brown Japanese car stood out with a day glow ball on the antenna.

Unfortunately, for Crime, Richard Long’s crummy-ride up to his logging job had to back track and make a quick trip into the tire store at Witham’s 24-hour truck stop, and they went right by Crimes little tuna can home at 4:30 am Monday, and Richard saw the Datsun there with its day glow ball lighting up in the headlights as the crummy drove by in the dark. And that had explained her absence from their bedroom, as the kids were at his mother’s home in Shady Cove, where she could have walked had she drank there that night as she told Richard she was going to do.

Monday evening someone had told Crime that Richard knew, and Crime didn’t really shrug it off, but he had more than one man’s wife over the years and figured it would probably pass. He didn’t hang where Richard ever did, but they’d known each other for years. Crime set chokers on a couple jobs where Richard fell timber. Crime had sold Richard a couple new chainsaws that were most likely stolen, and that had been a good deal for Richard, but they hadn’t seen each other in three or four years. He sure didn’t figure to see Richard at the Satan’s Slipper as he was fond of alliterating the watering hole’s name. Richard knew Crime was generally there and drove straight to the bar after work.

When Richard walked under the big blue and red glowing neon sign of a woman’s high heel shoe that adorned the rural whiskey bar and through the door, he saw Crime at the bar about halfway down just before the bar’s corner, where the stools and the bar made an elbow turn to the right, this side of the tables and the stage. Here every weekend a country western band played at least two Merle Haggard songs and the swing dancing swept up the floor, and cowboy hats were bobbing, and the tables were full, and the liquor poured over the ice like tiny waterfalls.

Crime didn’t see him. Richard thought of blind siding him and then it would be over, he could feel his heart pumping blood though his arms. Instead, he took out his buck knife he always carried on his belt during hunting season, took it out of the sheath and palmed the handle.

Somewhere in the Valley sermons were regularly preached about how insidious adultery was because it often included the added sins of lying, and sometimes murder in the process. Neither Crime, nor Richard Long heard these sermons, or any other sermons for that matter since they were children.

Richard sat down right beside Crime and watched him turn his head toward him and then watched his face turn white, as he momentarily closed his eyes in complete embarrassment, then blinked them open to Richard’s cold stare.

Richard then somehow remembered putting a sneak on a bull elk once that was up wind of him and Richard had run around a ridge, got in front of the large animal, and waited behind a huge Douglas fir. The bull cautiously walked up hill but rounding a corner just as he saw Richard only half concealed behind the large tree, with his .300 Winchester Magnum, the Bull had the exact expression on his long ungulate face as Crime had. It was embarrassment and his eyes had half closed and his head nodded, with an expression of, “Oh no!” but before he could turn his antlered head downhill for an escape, Richard killed him. Then Richard banged the knife down on the bar four inches from Crime’s hand and then took his own hand away.

“You’re going to need this,” Richard said. The calmness with which the big man spoke was terrifying to Crime.

“Oh Richard, let me explain,” Crime said, lowering his head again and shaking it back and forth slowly and rubbing his thinning hair.

“This had better be good,” Richard had said.

“Jack’s Cousin, Crime” was originall published in “And the Fires We Talked About” by UnCollected Press.

James Ross Kelly lives in Northern California. ‘And the Fires We Talked About,” his collection of short stories was published in 2020. “Black Ice & Fire,” Mr. Kelly’s first book of poetry was published in February of 2021.

Connie saw him, sitting tall in the saddle two hundred yards from the road shoulder, hat in hand, his face weathered, his clothes dust-covered, his hair tinged red by the setting sun. He wiped his face with his sleeve. She’d stopped to check her left front tire. Had that jagged-edged hubcap torn the tread of the used tire her father told her to buy in El Paso? “It’ll get you to Las Cruces, and I’ll use the warranty for a new one,” he promised.

Why the hell did her father retire in the desert? There’s nothing to see except empty space and, occasionally, the bleached bones of cows and coyotes. Now, on the roadside, was the Marlborough Man watching her suffer from mechanical ignorance. She waved. She had a portable inflator. Maybe he had a tire gauge. Sure, for his horse.

She knelt down and inspected the damage. Well, glory be, the tire was fine. Maybe she hit an oil slick. She’d heard it can cause a car to slide like black ice does.  

She waved again and shouted, “Helll-oo!”

He waved back in slo-mo and put on his hat, but his pony didn’t move toward her.

Disgusted, she got int the drivers seat, and revved her Camaro convertible. Momentary concern gave way to chronic frustration. She’d show his cranky-ass real horsepower! She glanced to her right. He had moved closer to her. She could see him smiling. He turned his pony right, and trotted away. She caught up to him, and the pony broke into a lope. She kept pace as they headed westward. 10 mph —20 mph —a full gallop at 30 mph.

But my car can run farther and faster on a tank of gas than your horse can on a bag of oats. And your horse will tire and die someday, while I’ll be showing this baby at classic car show when I’m sixty.

The pony jumped a corral fence without a stumble. Alright, her car couldn’t jump. She heard a snap! and fishtailed again. Damn it! She’d call Triple ‘A’ and flirt. It was better than  playing the fool in a new car … in a stagnant water ditch … with a blown used tire.

The cowboy was a quarter mile ahead.  “Come back!” she yelled to him. Can’t you see, I need you?”

She shaded her face with her hand. He was riding towards her. When he got to her, he said nothing, and she … she couldn’t speak. He wasn’t a young man. His eyes squinted at her as he leaned forward, resting his hand on the pommel of the saddle. He seemed to be questioning what he was looking at. He rubbed his eyes with a dirty fist. “C’mon, Eliza,” he said, and slowly rode off into the sunset.

An old rider of the purple sage.

Somewhere in space, OnStar’s four satellites were calculating her location and sending help. But, until help arrived, she was alone, a damsel in distress armed with a can of mace, watching as darkness revealed a cloudless, star-sequined sky. Vast and silent. Like God. Limitless beyond comprehension, so we rub our eyes and marvel. Maybe this was why her father, Edward Dearborn, chose to retire in the desert. It was an astronomer’s dream come true, far away from city lights that obstructed the view, the only competition being the white globe that seemed to hover above the horizon.

Edward wasn’t an astronomer, but his heroes had always been cowboys. He loved bleached bones. Shiny arrowheads. A turquoise studded hat band. Hand-tooled boots. Dancing the two-step at a country-western bar. Her friends would always ask if Ed was home before they visited, fearing Hank Williams Jr. would be wailing about somebody’s cheatin’ heart. Or Marty Robbins warning about ghost riders in the sky. Yippy-yi-ayyyyy. Or the one about the stampeding cattle, and how lightning showed the face of Jesus. It was possible to hear the Master call your name …

“Someday this will all be yours,” her father said about his vinyl record collection. She’d roll her eyes. “They’re the songs of America’s youth,” he said to himself as held the record by the rim and slipped it into a plastic sleeve. Reverentially. “My Grandfather said the whole family would gather ‘round the radio to hear broadcasts from the Grand Ol’ Opry. Imagine that, Connie. ”

When she was ten, she prayed he wouldn’t get dementia. Imagining can lead to all kinds of problems. Delusions. Hearing voices of non-existent people. Dreaming in the daytime. They spoke less and less or … maybe, she stopped listening. The last time he called, he said little except, “I’d like to have you visit.” That was Wednesday night.

She reached into the back seat for the sweater she kept folded on the seat. The hostile heat was evaporating quickly; the shadows on white sand as stark as the shadows of the backyard walnut trees on snow. Was the cowboy safe in the bunkhouse? She imagined him pulling the saddle off Eliza and filling her feedbag and treating her to an apple, hearing the steps creak as he climbed the stairs to a drafty cabin, and keeping his gloves on as he added kindling to the fireplace grate. Only when the fire crackled strong would he takes off his yellow-leather gloves, and rub liniment on hands aching from hours of plain ol’ hard work.    

“He’s drinking coffee after washing the dust off his hands and face, Connie,” she heard her father whisper. “He’s looking at the sky, as we are. Together with our music, our memories and our mistakes. Maybe he’s thinking about the prettiest woman he ever saw in Abilene, Wichita, or Omaha  ̶  and saying no to them all because around his neck he wears a locket that holds his dead wife’s hair on one side and a little girl’s ringlet on the other. He’ll hold the heart-shaped metal in his fingers, and bring to his lips for a kiss. For the last time in his life.”

It was her father’s voice, wasn’t it? Or maybe it was just the wind flooding the air with the scent of bitter-sweet sage. Does it ever rain in the desert? “Yes,” he said, “when you least expect it. You’ll feel a drop or two on your cheeks.”

Jenean McBrearty taught sociology and political science, and recently graduated from Eastern Kentucky University with an MFA Creative Writing where she was awarded the English Department’s Award for Best Graduate Creative Non-fiction. She writes full time … unless she’s watching basketball.

“Don’t take your guns to town Bill.”

     “You too Ted. Leave your guns at home son.”

      But it was too late. Ted had already strapped his on.

     “Boss you know damn well they ain’t loaded. Ever since that drifter you

hired then fired a couple months got drunk and shot up the place you ain’t allowed

no loaded weapons on the premises.”

    “Or any liquor for that matter either,” chimed in Bill. “That’s why we’re going to town.”

    “So why do you need your guns then if you’re gonna drink?”

   “Because a man ain’t a man unless he’s packing while he’s drinking. That’s why.

Nobody messes with ya if you got a big iron on your hip Boss.”

   “A big iron on your hip Ted?”

  “Ya a big iron on your hip Boss. Besides we got bullets with us in our gun belts in case

we need ‘em.”

      “Well don’t be needing ‘em. I worry about you two getting drunk, doing something

foolish, like challenging someone to a gunfight, and getting yourselves killed. I don’t

want to lose you two. You’re good hands. You know how hard it is to get good help

nowadays in light of that saddlebum I had to fire.”

      “Boss, I’ve been practicing my drawing at night after supper.  I’m pretty quick.”

     “Well, I’ve seen ya out there practicing Ted. Going up against the other guys in those mock draws of yours and I’m not impressed. In fact, I’m under impressed. I’m an old man. I’ve seen my share of gunfights in my day and you ain’t no gunfighter Ted. You’re just a gunfighter wannabe. You’re a cowboy and that’s all you’ll ever be. So stay one.

   That remark offended Ted.  So he flipped his boss a contemptuous salute and stomped out of the bunkhouse, slamming the door so hard behind him that the whole flimsy building shook.

   Bill tilted his head, gave his boss a raised eyebrow wide eyed look that said,’oh well’, shrugged his shoulders, and gently shut the door behind him as he left.

   They went to the A Tu Salud Saloon. It was Saturday night, the joint was jumping, the drinks were flowing, the piano was tinkling, the crowd was mingling, the place was jelly jam packed. The two of them sauntered up to the bar when Bill suddenly grabbed Ted by the arm, stopped him, and said, “Watch out for that spittoon there Ted.”

    There on the floor was a spotlessly clean gold spittoon with not a drop of spit dribbling down its side. Ted almost kicked it over but he saw it in time and avoided it. But he paid no attention at all to the man standing a few feet from it. 

    “Two beers Sam,” shouted Ted above the din.

    Sam came forward and plopped down two heavy bottomed glasses of beer with a deadening ominous thud. Ted flipped Sam a gold piece.

    “Let Bill know when that’s gone Sam. He’s getting the next rounds.”

    Sam smiled as he shook his head side to side. He liked these two amiable cowboys who always behaved themselves, were polite, and always let him keep the change.

    Simultaneously Ted and Bill each took a good long drink, wiped their mouths with their sleeves, slammed their beers down, and even said, “Ah” at the same time.

    “The nerve of him saying I’m a gunfighter wannabe. You’ve seen me outdraw every man at the ranch, Bill. You know that I had my gun out and pointed at them while their hands were still on their holsters. Hell, not a one of them ever got their gun out of their holster did they?”

    “Ted, don’t be taking yourself so seriously. Those guys ain’t no gunslingers. They’re just a bunch of wet behind the ears young cowpokes like ourselves. Hell you ain’t never been up against anyone in your life and there’s no way to know how good you are unless you go up against a real gunfighter and I don’t believe it would be in your best interests to do so.”

   “You too huh, You think I’m slow too do ya? That I’m just a gunfighter wannabe.”

    Ted took a step to his right, stepping over the spitoon, hoping to insult his partner by distancing himself from him. That’s when he felt it on his hand, something wet and sticky. He looked at his hand.  Someone had spit tobacco juice on him. He looked at the man to the right of him, the obvious culprit.

    “Hey you there,” shouted Ted to the man.

    He got no response.

    “Hey you old timer.” The man’s stoop shoulders and uncut gray hair sticking out from under his cowboy hat gave his age away.  “Hey I’m talking to you old man,” bellowed Ted, tapping him on the shoulder.

    The man slowly, and with apparent effort, turned his creaky old frame around to face Ted.

     He’s an old timer alright probably in his sixties, thought Ted as he studied the man’s wrinkled up face. Why he ain’t nothing but a washed up old saddle tramp.

    “What?” demanded the man in a surprisingly rather loud bold voice.

    “You spit on me.”

     “No, I spit in the spittoon.”

     “No ya didn’t old timer. You spit on my hand. Here, take a look.”  Ted held up his hand for the man to see the indisputable evidence.

     “That’s your fault then not mine. You walked into it because I was aiming for the spittoon and I alway hit what I’m aiming at.” He turned his back to Ted.

     Ted put his hand on the man’s shoulder and spun him around. Then he wiped the spit on the front of the man’s shirt.

     Instinctively the man reached for the gun that wasn’t there. He was unarmed. Unarmed by choice. He didn’t wear a gun anymore because if someone recognized him as George Westin the gunfighter, there was always some fool wanting to challenge him to a gunfight. But under the code of the west no one ever shot an unarmed man. No one would gain a reputation as a legitimate gunfighter if he did so. He’d be branded a coward and a poltroon. The lowest life form ever there in the West.

     Sam handed Westin a towel. Westin wiped off his shirt, best he could anyway, then threw it in Ted’s face. Ted went for his gun. It was unloaded of course but only he and Bill knew that. He did it for show, bravado.

    “I’m not armed,” said Westin, raising his hands in the air, backing away.

     “Ain’t armed huh. Well I can fix that.”  said Ted as he took off his gun belt, laid it on the bar, and slid it to the man.

   “There put it on.”

   The man put it on.

    Now it was Ted’s turn to get swung around.

    “What in the hell are you doing Ted?” demanded Bill.

    “Just shut up and give me your gun belt will ya.”

    “You know damn well it ain’t loaded,”  he whispered.

     “Well neither is mine.”

     “So what are you doing then?”

     “Just funning with the old man. That’s all.”

     “You know who you’re funning with?” interrupted the eavesdropping Sam leaning over to the two of them.

     “No who?”

     “George Westin. One Shot Westin. One and he’s done. That’s who.”

     “That old fool is One Shot Westin the gunslinger?” asked an astonished Ted as his eyes lit up. He couldn’t believe his good luck. Now he’d get a chance to go up against a real gunfighter. Find out how fast he really is and not get killed in the process.

     “How many men has he killed?”

     “Depends on who you ask,” answered Sam.

     “That many huh.”

     “For god sakes leave the man alone Ted.” squawked Bill. “You don’t want to be messin’ with George Westin.”

     “Give me your gun Bill. I’m gonna outdraw the great George Westin. Give it to me now.”

     “No.”

     “Bill.”

     “Okay, okay it’s your funeral, kind of.”

     “Bill took off his gun belt and handed it to Ted. Ted buckled it on and turned around to face his opponent who now stared at him with fire and brimstone in his cold steel gray killer eyes. Ted shuttered. The two instinctively started backing away from each other like two wild male of the species animals sizing each other up. The crowd backed away too, making sure they were out of the line of fire. But they still remained of course not wishing to miss the action. Then when Ted and Westin thought they were far enough apart they stopped.

     “Your move cowboy. Whenever you’re ready, go for it. If you got the guts that is,” taunted Westin looking Ted right in his blinking twitching dull light brown eyes.

     Ted went for it but he never got his gun out of his holster. Westin had clicked off all six empty shots in a blink of an eye, leaving Ted standing there looking like the fool he was. The crowd let out a burst of laughter, christening him the laughing stock of the A Tu Salud Saloon.

      Westin holstered Ted’s gun, took off Ted’s gun belt, and tossed it back to him.

     “Lucky for you kid that you’re so dumb that you forgot to load your own gun.”

     That set off another round of guffaws from the crowd.

    “Salud. To your health cowboy,” said Westin raising his shot glass, then downing his drink in one fell gulp and loudly slamming his shot glass on the bar.

    Ted slinked out of the bar with his tail tucked between his legs. A few minutes later Bill left. He didn’t want to be seen leaving with Ted.

     Word got back to the bunkhouse that night before Bill and Ted did and for the next week the men had trouble keeping from laughing at Ted whenever they saw him.

    The next weekend after that fiasco Bill and Ted drew range duty. That meant they’d be out there on the lone prairie all by themselves riding the fence lines checking for breaks, keeping an eye out for lame, sick, or injured cattle, or anything else that might come up and need their attention. This gave Ted the time he needed to work on his draw and his aim. Bill tried to talk him out of it but all to no avail. Ted, insulted and humiliated, had to have his revenge. So he practiced drawing and shooting every chance he got when he was far enough away from the ranch for his shots not to be heard.

    But he wasn’t the only one practicing. Oh no George Washington Westin the aging and one of the last of the gunfighters, was practicing too. He’d been in the business long enough to know that if he outdrew someone and he let them walk away, like here, that person would be gunning for him and he wouldn’t quit until one of them was dead. He also knew that he was getting old and that he was that split second slower on the draw now. But he knew how to fix that. He’d make his hair trigger even hairier. Make it so that it went off even quicker. So he worked with the trigger mechanism until he got it to the point that at the slightest touch it would fire. It might not be all that much that he gained, maybe a tenth of a second, but that tenth could be the difference between life and death.

     Next Saturday night, the same place, the same cast of characters, met for the final showdown.

     Westin was at the bar talking to Sam when Bill and Ted strolled in. He spotted them first. He wanted to get this over with.

    “Loaded for bear this time are ya kid,” hollered Westin.

    “Yes I am,” answered Ted, “but it looks like you aren’t.”

    Westin was unarmed.

   “You afraid to face me since I’ve been practicing.”

   “Sam,” said Westin.

   Sam reached under the bar, took out Westin’s gun belt, the notches in his gun handle clearly visible for all to see, and handed it to Westin who strapped it on.

     “I am now. Got bullets in it too. You remember to put bullets in your gun this time cowboy. I don’t want to be shooting me no unarmed dumb kid.”

     “Yah, I got bullets in it this time, old timer.”

      With that said the patrons scattered like rats deserting a sinking ship out the door. They knew the bullets would be flying this time and no one wanted to be anywhere near them when they did. Sam went over, closed the front door, locked it shut, returned, and took his place behind the bar. Just the three of them were in the place now. Bill was gone. He didn’t want to see his partner get killed.

    Westin backed away from the bar and assumed the gunfighter position.

   “Still your turn to go first, kid.”

   Ted went for it and again he was too slow. Westin got off the first shot but because he had fine tuned his hair trigger so, he missed his mark. His gun went off before he got it aimed at Ted’s heart and the bullet hit Ted in his left shoulder, knocking him to the floor, and sending his gun flying from his hand. Ted put his right hand over his wound. It hurt like hell but he never let on. He’d be damned if he’d give Westin the satisfaction.  

     Westin held his fire, satisfied the fight was over now.

    “It’s over, kid. I don’t shoot injured unarmed men.”

     Westin holstered his gun, turned around to Sam, and signaled for him to pour him a drink.  And as Sam did so Ted stayed where he was and surveyed the situation. He saw his gun was three feet to the left of him. He thought about going for it but since Westin’s back was to him he couldn’t shoot him in the back. The man who killed One Shot Westin had to shoot him face to face.

    The crowd began beating on the door after having heard the gunshot demanding to be let in.

    I have to get him turned around to shoot him, thought Ted. I can’t be a back shooting coward now can I.

   Sam was pouring Westin a second drink when he saw Ted reach over, grab his pistol, and aim it at Westin.

    “Westin turn around and face me you coward,” shouted Ted.

    That was the last thing Ted ever said. In the blink of an eye Sam took his pistol out from under the bar and shot Ted dead center in his breast killing him before Westin ever got turned around.

     That second shot was too much for the crowd. They had to know what was going on and had to know it now, even if they exposed themselves to danger. So they beat down the door and rushed in. Bill ran over to the fallen Ted, knelt down, and propped up his buddy to his chest. He began to cry. Then he saw the two gunshot wounds on Ted’s chest and smiled.

     “Look at it this way Ted old buddy, old pal,” chuckled Bill, “it took One Shot Westin two shots to kill you. No other gunfighter can say that.”

The author is a retired attorney.

            Jabbing the posthole diggers into the ground, I pull the sandy soil from the earth. Digging post holes all day isn’t exactly my idea of fun, but I guess that’s what I get for working on the A- Ranch. It is one of the bigger ranches in the Sandhills, and everyone knows the A- brand. While I’m digging from dawn until dusk, my boss gets to ride around on his white stallion and ‘oversee’ everything. He then goes home to his lovely wife and feasts on chicken pot pie or meatloaf, and what do I get? Bologna and wonder bread. Pathetic. I work for Mark and Ellie Anderson; they hired me after high school because my pa died of cancer, and I had nowhere else to go.

            “Calvin, get back to work, you’ve been starin’ at the horizon way too long,” Mark says, slinging out his pliers to tighten the wire on a post I thought that I had finished. I allow my eyes to growl at him, and I pluck my fingers into the finely ground tobacco and pack my bottom lip with a dip. The clouds begin to roll over the hills from the east, casting shade on our sweaty bodies.

*******

            The fall wasn’t a bad one, except that President Kennedy was assassinated. Ellie cried for an entire week. Before we knew it, we had our first snowstorm, and then the next couple. I live in the Bunkhouse, and it isn’t properly insulated. I have a feeling that mold is growing in the ceiling, and I hear the mice scampering between the walls. I had spent Christmas day with my mom, and with a pickup filled to the brim of leftovers, I came back so I can be ready to feed the cows the next day.

            “How is Charlene?” Mark insists that I share a meal with him and his family every so often.

            “Mom’s getting along alright; she is still stationed at the post office.” I shift in my seat, hoping that the casual questions would end soon. Snow whirls in currents outside of the window, warning me of heavy snowfall for the night.

            After a few more minutes of talking, I slip on my muck boots to bear the cold. I begin the four-hundred-meter jaunt back to the bunkhouse. Snow layers the land, outlining the hills and the trees. I wonder what the Kennedys are doing for Christmas. How can a man feel so inclined to murder? Granted, I lose my temper, but that is only when people or cows are being stupid. My reverie dissipates as a flash of black pierces my eyes. There is something about six hundred meters away in the calving lot next to my house. Mark’s Angus cows are still in the Rosebud pasture, there is no reason why a cow should be this close to the house.

            The black smudge moves faster than the normal speed of a pregnant cow trudging through the snow. Loping a few meters forward, it jumps over the fence into the tree line. Picking up speed, I stomp faster to inspect the fence for broken barbed wire. Even though it is below freezing, sweat begins to bundle under the wild rag on my neck. Not a single wire on the fence is snapped, nor fence post crushed. Highly unusual when a cow jumps the fence. I’ll tell Mark in the morning that a cow must be loose.  

*******

Mark and I saddle up and ride around the tree line looking for the possible lost cow. He is just as puzzled as I am.

            “Are you sure you saw a cow? Maybe you have floaters in your vision.”

            “I’m 22 years old, I don’t think I have that.”

            “Well, I’ll ride through the rest of the herd just in case to see if a cow is missing.”

            As Mark lopes his horse into the western hills, I decide to go clean up the tack in the horse barn. I pour my horse Big Red some oats in the feeding trough inside the barn. I grab the saddle oil to see if I can rub the squeak out of my fender. Every time I get into a trot on Big Red, it sounds like a little mouse is yelping with every step. It nearly drives me mad.

            Glancing out of the barn window, I notice that Mark trotting up to the barn. He hops off his horse and pokes his head through the open door.

            “There’s no missing cow, thank God.”

            “Maybe I was just tired or something, or maybe-”

            “Either way, once you’re done taking care of the tack, clean all of the horse crap out of here, okay?” Mark flashes a smile under his burly mustache.After oiling my own saddle, I oil Ellie’s saddle. The dust swirls around me in the barn, configured by the light streaming through the window. The smell of must and sweaty horse lingers. Clean the horse crap. I trudge to get the shovel.

Out of the window, the rotor is standing still on the windmill- no wind today. The sun is blaring, reflecting off the snow to create an extreme level of brightness, compared to the dim barn. Then I see it again. Standing near the base of the windmill is the black smudge. Taking a few steps toward the window, I try to decipher the shape of a black object. It is the same size as a cow, but it doesn’t have short hair like our Angus cows do. It has long matted fur. And a muzzle. It’s a black wolf!

 Hidden in the belly of the barn, I know that the wolf cannot see me.I open a cabinet to see if Mark left his rifle. Nothing. I step out of the barn and sprint toward Mark’s house. My heart is pounding as fast as a rabbit- a helpless little prey. I turn my head to see if the wolf is chasing me. It is closer now, but it is sitting in the snow. Its bright orange eyes are on me, looking me over. Facing the wolf, I notice that he is baring his teeth. He opens his mouth as if he is going to howl to alert his pack of fresh meat. Instead, he lets out a laugh. Not a howl that sounds like a laugh, but a chuckle.

I stumble down onto the sandy snowy ground. The wolf keeps laughing at me. Wave after wave of his billowy cackle pierces my ears. I run back to Mark’s house. I don’t look back. My lungs burn like fire as I lumber onto the front porch.

“Good Heavens Cal!” Ellie exclaims. I hear the click of Mark’s lazyboy as he stomps into the front porch.

“You drunk kid?”

“I saw…” I take a moment to catch my breath. I can feel my hair matted to my scalp from sweat. “I saw a black wolf.”

Mark raises his eyebrows. “There aren’t any wolves in the Sandhills.”

“No, I saw it. And it was as big as a cow.” Ellie shoots a worried glance at Mark.

“Look out the window, it’s right over by the windmill!”

“I don’t see no dang wolf,” Mark takes a sharp exhale. “Tell you what Calvin, you have been working hard, and I think that you should take the rest of the day off.”

“I swear I saw it.”

“Why don’t you walk down to the bunkhouse and have an early supper and go to bed.”

“It was right there, I’m not crazy.” I feel a bead of sweat running down my face.

“I think that the stress of the job and the fumes of the saddle oil might be getting to your head.”

“I know what I saw, I heard it laugh.” At that moment I notice that my head is banging as if a migraine is coming on. “My head does kind of hurt.”

Their house smells of beef stew. Once again, I would be eating bologna. I walk back to the Bunkhouse, checking over my shoulder every so often. I go right to bed, at 5:00 p.m. with no supper. Perhaps I did inhale too many fumes.

*******

Months have passed since hallucinating the wolf. Mark and Ellie didn’t feel like mentioning it, trying to shield me from the obvious embarrassment I had been to myself. We moved the pregnant momma cows into the lot next to my house so that we can keep a close eye on them when they begin to calve. Every time I visit my mom for an occasional dinner, she always mentions how I have lost weight. She is hypersensitive to that sort of stuff because my dad lost a lot of weight when he was sick.

Snow still blankets the ground, and the chill has been biting my skin. Frost lays thick on the ponds, and I feel like the sun rarely comes out from his hiding place behind the clouds. President Johnson established the Warren Commission to investigate the death of JFK. All I know is that the guy who killed JFK was killed a couple of days later by some nightclub owner. I think that it is karma because Oswald had it coming, but Ellie always says how sometimes things just happen because we live in a fallen world. That is always her answer for all bad things. If someone dies, that is because sin entered the world, and a consequence of sin is death. Ellie and Mark always go to St. Joseph’s, but I don’t go anywhere anymore. I haven’t really been to a service since dad’s funeral.

Mark and his family are in the big city today for some doctor appointments. He made it very clear that he expects the calving barn to be well-cleaned by the time he gets back. Scrape the old frozen afterbirth off the ground, spread new straw, scoop the cow crap, and sprinkle calcium carbonate to trap the odors and germs. The calving barn I am cleaning up is big enough to hold around fifteen cows and their newborns, so the task is going to take me all morning.

A grumble in my stomach erupts about two hours into the job. I guess that is what I get for skipping breakfast because I slept in. I try to spread the new straw quicker to see if time will move faster, but the dull pain is still present within me.

“Hunger shouldn’t be ignored.” My heart jumps into my throat as I spin around to see where the voice is coming from. Sitting in the far corner pin of the calving barn is the wolf I saw months earlier. His paws are about the size of my face, and I can see steam rolling off his burly body.

“What are… how did…”

“If I were you, I would go and find some food. There is no use working on an empty stomach.”

Without even thinking I respond, “Mark expects this to be finished by the time he gets back.” The wolf closes his eyes and emits a low growl. His ears twitch slightly.

“Mark wants you to work here in the cold while he eats at a nice restaurant. That doesn’t sound fair to me.” The wolf flings his eyes open, exposing his burning orange eyes. His pupils dilate as he focuses on me.

“What are you even?” My stomach turns.

“I am what you think I am.”

Silence settles in the barn as I stare at the wolf, watching the black fur on his chest rise and soften. “Well, I’m not sure what I should think. My boss thinks that I may be losing it, or that my eyesight is bad.”

“It doesn’t matter what he thinks. What matters is what you think. You should think to eat some breakfast.” The wolf flashes a smile; his sharp teeth are as white as the snow outside. Numbly, I walk out of the barn and head to my house. I do not check to see if the wolf is following me. I enter the bunkhouse and take off my boots. What if I am actually seeing the wolf? As I make myself a sandwich and open a bag of Doritos, I deliberately decide not to tell Mark or Ellie. They wouldn’t get it. No one will be able to get it except me, because I am the only one who can see the wolf. When Mark and Ellie arrive back at the ranch later that day, I feel a sense of pride as I keep my secret from them. They would never get it, but I do.

*******

As soon as the first calf dropped onto the ground, the intense season of calving began. The investigation of JFK’s death still treks on, and I wonder how Jackie and her family have been handling his absence. So far, we have fifty calves, with only three deaths. Not too shabby. We still have hundreds of cows left to calve. Mark and I both have been losing sleep. We check the cows through the night and still get up early in the morning to feed the cows. I usually take the midnight and 2 a.m. shift, and Mark usually checks them at 10 pm and 4 a.m. The wolf never hurts our livestock. He’s not like other wolves. When I check the cows, sometimes the wolf joins me. We talk about what it is like to live alone. He is a lone wolf, and I am by myself most of the day. Unlike my mom or Mark, he listens to me as I talk. He understands me, and he says that he will only appear to me because I deserve it more than others. He says that the nights are bitingly cold and that he wishes he had a place to rest.

As I slip on my overalls and muck boots, I think about the conversation I had with the wolf the night prior. He told me that I should be in charge of the A- ranch because I do more work than Mark. I somewhat agree, even though I know that this ranch has been in Mark’s family for generations. Mark used to run it with his two brothers after his dad died, and he grew up in the same house he lives in now. The wolf insists. I am starting to trust the wolf more and more.

During the dark hours of the night, the wolf has been there to be my companion. I always look forward to talking with him, even though guilt bubbles up in my consciousness about keeping secrets from Mark and Ellie. I open my front door and stomp through the snow to the preheating feed pickup. I loaded it up with cake yesterday, so now I just need to feed the brown pellets to the cows. There are no clouds in the crystalized blue sky, and the warm sun gives me a smidge of hope for the coming spring. I drive past Mark on his horse, and he waves me down to talk to him.

“Two calves, Calvin. Two calves died last night. Didn’t you check them?” Mark isn’t shouting, but I can hear the disappointment in his tone.

“I swear I checked them!”

“Well if you would have checked them, you would have realized that there were wet newborn calves on the frozen ground. You would have had the right mind to put them in the calving barn with their mommas to warm up.”

“Didn’t you hear me! I said I checked them. If anything, it’s probably your mistake.” I surprise myself by yelling at Mark.

“Listen, Calvin, just try to do better. I know things have been a little rough for you lately, especially because this time four years ago, you know…” Mark is no longer frowning, instead, his blue eyes have a shade of worry to them.

“You don’t know anything.” Without saying goodbye, I drive away. I see Mark in my review window, fiddling with his reins. What does he know, that my dad died four years ago? That doesn’t mean that he understands anything. I drive the feeding pickup over to our first group of cows and feed them. I watch their udders swing back and forth as they jog towards the feeding pickup, knowing that there will be a promise of cake to nourish their bodies. I switch a toggle shift, allowing the cake to funnel out of the feeder, onto the ground. Cows swarm around the cake as maggots do on a piece of rotting flesh. I guess everything must be fed somehow.

After feeding that bunch of cows, I move on to the next bunch. As I drive to the next pasture, I feel a tug on the steering wheel, as the pickup slides off the road into the muddy ditch. I press the gas pedal to the floor, but the pickup does not budge.I press on the gas pedal again, and I hear the tires dig themselves deeper into the slush. The once beautiful sunlight seems blinding as I hop out of the pickup to inspect how badly I am stuck.

“Damnit!” I yell at the pickup, but mostly at myself for messing up, once again.

“I see that you have found yourself in a rough spot.” Feeling hot breath on my neck, I spin around and find myself face to face with the wolf.

“Will you help me get out? Surely you are strong enough to push me out, please.”

“You ask a grandiose thing of me. What do I ever ask of you?” The wolf questions in a low whisper. I gaze into his bright orange eyes, hoping to find a hint of sympathy, but they are placid. The orangeness of them reminds me of a hunter in the woods. I reflect on the feeling I had once in the wolf’s presence. One of a rabbit.

“You ask nothing of me. But I could really use your help right now. Mark is already pissed at me.” My mouth has become dry, and my tongue feels like sandpaper.

“If I do this for you, I will have to ask one thing of you.” The wolf wears a smile.

“I’ll do anything you ask. Please just help me out!” I reach out my hand to touch his thick fur, but I stop myself, for I realize I have never touched the wolf’s coat before. I don’t want to anger him in this moment of helplessness.

“I will help you out. All I ask is that you leave your front door open during the night. Do not close it, do not lock it, just leave it cracked open so I can slip in.”

“It’s going to be below freezing tonight, the cold will get in.”

“The cold doesn’t matter. How do you think I feel sleeping out in the cold, night after night? Have you ever broadened your mind to think about how I must feel?”

“I didn’t realize. I guess I could just bundle up. Fine. I will do it, just please help me now.” The wolf motions for me to get back into the pickup. I stick my head out of the window. He lifts himself up, so he is standing on his two back paws. He is about twelve feet tall standing upright. Bigger than any horse I had ever ridden. If I hadn’t had a personal relationship with him, I would probably find myself a little frightened. He places his paws on the back of my pickup, and he yells at me to press on the gas. The growl of the motor is weak compared to the amplitude of the growl coming from the wolf. I realize that the pickup is inching out of the ditch. Looking back at him, I notice that his large eyes are shut as he strains to push the pickup out of the muck. Inch by inch, the pickup works its way back onto the road. That’s a relief, now Mark won’t have another reason to yell at me. I hop out of the pickup onto the frozen ground.

“Thank you, wolf.”

“Don’t forget your promise, I know I won’t. I will see you tonight.” The wolf nods his head and bounds off, back to the tree line. He disappears from my sight, but I know that he won’t be far.

I feed the next few bunches of cows with ease. I wonder how long the wolf will stay during the night. Should I lay a blanket out for him in case he wants to sleep; I don’t even know if he would want a blanket. I don’t want to make a fool of myself. Should I tidy up my house? What about the mold in my ceiling? My brain continues to run with ideas of how to make the wolf feel welcome in my home while I pull up to the horse barn. As I pour a bucket of cake into the horses’ feeding trough outside, I don’t realize Mark and Ellie walk up behind me.

“Hey Calvin, how’s it going?” Ellie says. I know that she is smiling because she is trying to appear caring.

“Good.” I smooth out the cake into an even layer in the feeding trough. I notice Big Red and the other horses slowly approaching.

“Mark told me that you seemed a little stressed out this morning, are you sure you are okay?” Ellie asks. The sun flashes off her dangling Crucifix necklaces into my eyes. I know that Ellie is going to give me her usual lecture on how I should have hope in the Lord and that everything will get better. She will offer to drive me to town to see my mom. By saying those words though, she never makes me feel better, in fact, they just make me kind of mad.

“I’m fine. Didn’t you hear me the first time, woman?”

“Don’t you talk to her that way. All she is trying to do is help you.” Mark says. The blood veins in his forehead are popping out in the same way they do when he gets fired up while working cattle.

“You guys can help me by leaving me alone.” I flash a smile at them, but not because I am happy. Because I am right. Mark wraps his arm around Ellie as he shoots me a glare. They walk away, leaving me to do my chores. There is no doubt that Ellie is going to go phone my mother, but I didn’t care. A new kind of fire is pummeling through my veins. Before I knew the wolf, I would have never been able to stand up to my boss. Now I can do it with ease.

*******

As the sun goes down, I remember the promise I made with the wolf. Actually, I haven’t been able to get the thought out of my mind all day. I pick up some dirty laundry off my floor, and I wash all of the dirty dishes. I put on multiple layers and even my coat. Setting a stone in front of the screen door, I prop it open, just as the wolf instructed me to do. Sitting down on the living room couch, I await the arrival of the wolf. It is about nine, and I know that I will have to check the cows at midnight. Perhaps the wolf would like to come with me. The cold pricks my skin, but I clench my teeth and bear it.

*******

I wake up still on the couch. I didn’t mean to fall asleep; I glance at the clock. 11:30. A low growl startles me as I jolt upright. Combing the room, I notice that the huge black mass of the wolf is settled in the corner of the room.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to fall asleep. You see I left the door open?” I point towards the front door, hoping to receive praise. The wolf just stares at me; his eyes seem to no longer be a bright orange, but rather, as red as an open wound.

“Did you want me to set a blanket out or anything? You can even sleep in my room if you want, I can stay sleeping on the couch.” I stammer, looking for the right words. “I have some cuts of meat in the freezer if you want any. I have pork and beef.”

“Indeed. There is something I want.” The wolf answers in a grating voice. His presence looms over me, making my insides squirm. “I want you. And I already have you. I found you alone. You trusted me and followed me as a moth does to fluorescent light.”

“What? I don’t quite understand.” My heart drops to my ankles. The wolf rises to all fours and takes a step toward me. “But you helped me, and you listened to me. And I left the door open to my house.”

“You are all alone. Mark and Ellie tried to help you, all in vain. Your mother would be disappointed in you. You cannot escape.” I fall to my knees. A few tears spill from my eyes onto the dirty shag carpet. The wolf carefully moves closer to me.

“What are you?”

“I am what you think I am. And you thought wrong. Few people ever find out.”

“I don’t… What do you want from me?”

“I want you.”

“Please just stop. Stop! Leave me alone.” Tears keep rolling from my eyes, and my heart is pounding once again, like a rabbit.

“But you see, hunger is not a thing that should be ignored. It should be tended to.” With the stench of death fuming from his mouth, the wolf exhibits his sharp teeth. The wolf pounces, landing atop me.

*******

At four a.m. Mark wakes up to check the cows. A couple of cows look like they are ready to calve. Walking past Calvin’s house, he realizes that the front door is propped open. Mark decides to investigate the house. Stepping into the house, Mark first realizes the metal smell lingering in the air. The house is as cold as it is outside, and as Mark walks into the living room he finds Calvin. A mass pile of blood has frozen to the shag carpet, and Calvin has huge gaping holes in his neck.

“My dear Jesus, how could this happen?” Mark squats down to feel Calvin’s skin, and it is as cold as snow. Mark sprints back to his house and calls 911, but how can he exactly explain what he saw? There is no knife or gun around Calvin’s body. The holes looked like were bite marks from that of a predator. Mark recalls months ago when Calvin came into his house disheveled, exclaiming that he had seen a wolf. Mark holds Ellie close to him as he cries into her hair. Ellie wraps her arms around him, holding him in an embrace.

Grace Vinton grew up on a cattle ranch in the Sandhills of Nebraska. She is currently pursuing her Secondary English Education and Creative Writing minor at the University of Nebraska in Kearney. She loves writing, riding horses, and the Sandhills.

It was three years ago, last time I saw Bullfrog Mullins play live. I had to drive an hour and a half to Atlantic City. Tonight, he’s here in my town, playing at my local spot. The taproom at Lucky Lanes has a long bar with a string of lights shaped like jalapenos over it. Near the pool tables there’s a little plywood platform that passes for a stage. Nights when they bring in some crummy cover band, I usually find somewhere else to drink.

The first legitimate artist they booked in years turned out to be one of my top five of all time. My father has roots near Tallahassee, so he put Bullfrog up there with Willie and Waylon. When we moved to Jersey from Pittsburgh, he let the cassette flip five times and turned it up when I complained. I listened to Bullfrog a lot when I lived in LA, where everyone pretended not to know who he was.

I get a little lit in the bar waiting for him to show. There’s a couple next to me, halfway facing each other where the bar makes a right. The guy has a Hawaiian shirt on, and he keeps looking at his watch. He doesn’t want to keep the sitter waiting. They’re arguing, as if I’m not sitting right here. I’m used to it. Most people’s eyes just slide off a girl like me. Most of the time I like it that way.

At eleven o’clock they turn the lights off at the concession stand. He comes in through a door with a red exit sign over it and walks to the stage leaning right to offset the amp in his left hand. His leather vest shines in worn out patches and a band of sweat circles his felt cattleman. He bought his jeans stiff and dark blue and faded them himself. If he ever walked into a supermarket, he would look exactly the same. Bullfrog is five foot eight inches held together by tobacco resin.

            The industrial smell of his cologne, like some kind of machine oil, hits me as he walks to the bar. There are heavy rings, steel, maybe pewter, on the two fingers he holds up like a peace sign. He walks away with two beer bottles and sets them up under a tall black pub stool on the stage. When he grabs a bottle between songs he knows where it is without looking.

The voice that earned him his name wasn’t built to last, but his fingers move alright on an old Gibson. He wears a brass slide on his pinky and opens with a Carl Perkins tune. In the short set Bullfrog plays, he manages to repeat a verse in “Barn Owl” and forget the words to “Guess I Got Lucky That Day.” I can’t tell if anyone else notices.

Most of the crowd waits to hear him play “Florida,” which he does after he makes a half-assed show of leaving the stage. When he hits the first chords people in rented shoes wander in from the lanes. “I love this song. This is him? He’s the Florida guy?”

I never cared for “Florida.” I know, every fan hates the hits because the hits don’t belong to them. “Florida” doesn’t even belong to Bullfrog anymore. It’s a beer commercial, a spring break anthem that sold tourism and orange juice. It charted in the late eighties and became a radio staple on rock and country stations. The song fell in the sweet spot between cowboy boots and boat shoes with enough electric guitar and Southern fuck you to last. It’s the reason Bullfrog Mullins can still make a living as a musician and the reason I get to see him play at the bowling alley thirty years later.

When Bullfrog carries his gear out the way he came in, I shuffle out the front door with the crowd. I stand away from the smokers that gather around the doorway and listen to a voicemail from the pharmacy telling me my prescription is ready. A pickup pulls out of the parking lot with the radio playing. I put my phone away and inhale, catching the smell of weed mixed with tobacco smoke.

A cab pulls to the curb and four people squeeze into the back. I bum a cigarette from a young guy talking to his girlfriend and puff on it a few feet away from them. I can’t think of anything to say to them and when they walk away I flick it into the street. I don’t know what I expect from these nights. Whatever it is never happens. Almost everyone’s gone when I walk back inside to my seat. The bartender hasn’t cleared my empties.

I’m surprised when Bullfrog comes back into the bar and throws a leg over the stool next to me like he’s mounting a horse. Ten years ago, Bullfrog signed my CD at a record store. I met him again before a show in Philly. Even still, I feel a tingle in my pits. I count the bottles on the bar, lined up with wet, wrinkled labels while a fresh one sweats in my hand. Not that I think Bullfrog will disapprove.

“My daddy is from Leon County.” Just like that, it comes out of my mouth. He makes a slow turn on the barstool to face me. For a second I think he might stare until I slink away and leave him alone.

“Where’bouts?” he says.

“Near Lake Jackson. He took me to see you when you opened for Merle.”

“Huh,” he says. He looks at his beer like he wants its opinion. When he turns back to me, he’s back on stage, performing. “Thing about Merle is, he’s full of shit. Every night of that tour we hit a bong the size of a grain silo before he went out to bash the hippies for getting high. What year was that? ’98?”

“’92.”

“How ‘bout that. What’s your name, sister?”

I never get to answer. We both turn when a woman comes into the bar and shouts, “Oh my gosh, you’re still here!” For a second I think she knows him. There are two of them, mid-forties and pretty. The one who spoke has blond curls. The other is shorter and has a stud through her nose.

“I just wanted to say that you were amazing,” she goes on, stretching out the second a. “If it’s not too much trouble, I would just love to get a picture with you.” Bullfrog gives me a shrug and slings an arm around the blonde. The other woman holds up a phone and frowns.

“Not here,” she says. “It won’t come out.” She motions them to a table in the corner. Bullfrog hops down and follows. She snaps a few pictures, and then they switch places. Then they squeeze Bullfrog’s face between theirs and take a selfie. Then they order a round of shooters.

I almost have to admire them. They hunt in a pack, like hyenas. After awhile the short one peels off. Alone in the bar with Bullfrog and the blonde, I start to squirm on the stool. It isn’t jealousy. I didn’t come to screw Bullfrog Mullins. Neither did she, but it looks like she’s thinking about it now. I pull the wallet out of my back pocket by the chain on my belt. It’s time to go.

I hear them as I’m counting out a tip. They sing it together.

“We drink it in the sunshine, made it by the light of the moon

Shootin’ bottles, singin’ loud, sleepin’ in the afternoon”

She mumbles through the rest of the verse and comes back big for the chorus.

“If I’m down and out in Florida, at least it ain’t New York or D.C.

Play my guitar all day long underneath the Cypress tree

If I’m doin’ time in Florida, Florida’s where I gotta be

Long as I can see the Florida sun, it’s good enough for me”

When I hit the air again I know I have no business driving. I drop my keys in the parking lot swinging them around on my finger. It’s almost empty now and it’s not hard to guess that Bullfrog got here in the brown and tan conversion van with Florida plates. I remember reading that he lives in Vegas now.

I get into my car and the CD starts where it left off when I turn the key in the ignition. The song is “Ghost Man.” It was playing when the truck overheated and my father popped the hood, and I could barely see him through the steam. He wouldn’t let me help and he swore at me when I got too close, and then he said he was sorry and he didn’t want me to get hurt.

The trash in the glove box rattles when I open it. I have a flashlight in there, and my registration, and an insurance card I got before I let the insurance lapse. I have lip balm and tampons and napkins from drive-thrus. I have a short, green-handled Phillips head screwdriver. It rolls over my palm and I wrap my fingers around it.

I leave the door open and the engine running when I get out of the car. Even with half the lights out in the parking lot I can see the rust around the wheel wells of Bullfrog’s van. If anyone sees me with my hand on the side of the van to hold me up, they probably think I’m puking. The thought has crossed my mind.

I reach down and stab the sidewall with the screwdriver. When it doesn’t work, I dig it in, twisting as I put my weight on it until I hear the air hissing out.  I do the next one on my knees. That one goes quicker and I jump up when the van rocks toward me. I take a few backwards steps before I turn and walk back to my car.

On the way I home I think about the van. It’s a big box on wheels and the curtains in the windows make me wonder how often Bullfrog sleeps in it. I can still hear the music over the wind from the open window that keeps me awake and focused on the road. I pop out the CD.

With my left ring finger wedged through the hole I hold it out the window, angling it up and down against the current of air. I consider letting it go but I pull the CD back in and toss it on the passenger seat. I wonder what will happen when Bullfrog finds out what I did. Maybe he’ll miss a show in Wilmington or Baltimore. Maybe the blonde will feel bad and take him home with her. Maybe he’ll write a song about it. I wonder if he’ll know it was me.

James Hertler lives in Red Bank, New Jersey with his wife and two children and works at the lumberyard. He studied creative writing at the University of Rochester and writes fiction, short and long.

We had no intention of including “the cowgirl” in our schedule to critique each other’s work. That was back in the early 60s when we were students at the Chicago Institute of Art. 

            Our delusion was pierced by a voice that said, “I’d like to be on the list.” We were stuck with Leona.  At least she was at the bottom.

            We moved like we were walking through mud when Leona’s Sunday came around.  We sat on the floor of her sculpture studio, dressed in capri pants and crisp blouses, mouths slammed shut, hoping to get this over with as soon as possible.

            “Just what does your content of horses and cows communicate?” someone finally asked. 

            Leona jumped up, planted her legs in a V, pushed her fists into her hips.  “I’m tired of you hee-hawing about my Western art and cowboy clothes.  I don’t stick out like a cowlick in Idaho when I wear Levis and checkered shirts.  The boots and hat, they’re all part of who I am. You’re lookin’ at country – thank you, Loretta Lynn.”  She shifted her head slightly,lost in a sunset over the Caribou Range, before bringing her focus back on us.

            “We romanticize The Cowboy,” she said, sounding like she was speaking in capital letters.  “We don’t romanticize his life.  We know why we drive a shiny new Land Rover and he settles for a beat up Ford pickup that he tinkers with on Sunday afternoons, hoping he can spend the next Saturday night in town.  We know why we live in the ‘big house’ and ranch hands live in the bunkhouse.

            “I’ve been on roundups with the boys, caked with dirt and sweat, days feeling as long as the Snake River, clothes crusted to our shivering bodies at night.

             “Let me tell you something else:  I know a Russel from a Remington.  My daddy owns a Remington – the real thing, not a reproduction.      

            “I know what gives me privilege to make ‘cowboy’ art.  I’ll never be as good as Russel or Remington, but I intend to spend my life paying homage to the sinew of horse and rider.  Like Remington, I want you to ‘take away something to think about – to imagine’.”

            Silence hung over us like dust stirred up by a herd of rampaging cattle.

            “Are you done, Leona?” someone asked.

            “For now.”

Fay L. Loomis was a nemophilist (haunter of the woods) until her hikes in upstate New York were abruptly ended by a stroke three years ago. With an additional nudge from the pandemic, she now lives a particularly quiet life. Fay is a member of the Stone Ridge Library Writers.

Often, we collectively encouraged him when he was in an inebriated state, because we were all generally in an inebriated state, to ride his horse around the pool table in the bar where everyone knew everyone else’s face even if we could rarely remember each other’s names. Some of us generally had forgotten our father’s name in the state we were in. That seemed to happen once a week, for about a year until the owners spent several grand on a new hardwood floor—and Jean Autry and her horseshoes were no longer welcome.

Pappy was good at drinking Diamond Red wine, poaching deer, and breaking horses. He was generally bad at gold mining, smoking pot, and women. Pappy lived out of his saddle and sometimes under bridges and lots of times on the edge of deep timber with his horse and a campfire, at times with anyone who would put up with him. He was a Korean War Veteran and claimed to have been shot up, stomped on, broke legged shit-on throughout most of his life and had the scars to prove it.

There was a six-month spread when Pappy had a seventeen-year-old girlfriend who ran away from an affluent but oppressively violent home 200 miles away, and somehow hooked up with Pappy, bought herself a Welsh mare, and rode everywhere Pappy did. With a floppy hat and a Rubenesque figure, she put Pappy through his paces and had him riding with the wind boiling through his horse’s mane. She had been the slightly chubby rich girl from grade school whose father bought her and her sisters fine Arabian geldings. She knew during this pleasant upbringing, nothing of what she learned underneath the starry, starry skies with her very own cowboy horse- trainer Blackfoot Indian who fed her stories on the 17th parallel and showed her the finer points of horse sense. She’d take the six months with Pappy with her all her life, but six months was probably enough. Her mare’s name was Pinkie.

Pappy taught her everything he knew about horses, which was considerable. Pappy never got on a green unbroken horse, but through a myriad of rope tricks would take the wildest mustangs and with the knowledge of their pressure points have them behaving like tame well-trained dogs in a matter of a just a few days sometimes. They’d walk around the corral with their ear at Pappy’s shoulder.

“Stop!” he’d holler. And the horse would stop.

“Back!” he’d holler. And the horse would begin to back up. Then around the corral they’d go again. Then sometime after that was standard, Pappy would put a saddle on the horse. After the same drill with the saddle, Pappy would get on the horse and ride. This generally took about a week or less.

Jean Autry and Pappy and his girlfriend and Pinkie had come off the Dead Indian highway after a trip up to Lake of the Woods in the early fall camping, eating poached deer and living in the crisp night air by a campfire bundled up in a zip-together sleeping bag bedroll.

Sadly, a log truck spooked Pinkie and she threw her young equestrian into the ditch, but Pinkie got clipped hard by the back tires of the truck that swayed out onto the shoulder of the road. Pappy had to shoot Pinkie, and had a friend come get the dead horse and haul it to his ranch, where Pappy butchered up Pinkie and passed some of the steaks around. This didn’t sit well with his seventeen- year-old girlfriend and after that she dumped him and went home to her parents. Pappy went on the skids for a short while after that.

On one of those bad nights after his heaven-sent young woman rode away into the sunset, several of us watched him stagger out of the bar, too drunk to climb on his horse, and we were too drunk to help him without being kicked. After several attempts to swing an uncooperative leg over the saddle, Jean Autry finally got her head down between Pappy’s legs and lifted him front ways over her neck and got Pappy into the saddle, facing backwards, but nonetheless mounted on his steed; Pappy eventually got turned around and then Jean Autry walked through the streets and back to their camp under the bridge while Pappy slept in his saddle.

Pappy convinced anyone he met that he couldn’t read. Yet the fact was that he had consumed all of Steinbeck, Hemingway, Zane Gray and of course Louie Lamour, but he’d not dream of letting anyone know he was literate.

“It’s detrimental to your health to let anyone know you know anything.” he said.

He was charming for about ten minutes and could get any woman’s attention for at least that long, but the long bouts with Diamond Red and sleeping under bridges made that about the limit of duration for all but the most curious.

“Katy bar the gate! There’s a Recess in Heaven! For an angel, has entered our midst!” he’d say perched at the front bar stool as a woman would enter the bar. And he was perennially on the first stool by the entrance. He seemed always to be ready for arcane adventure toward easy money of some kind and would stop at nothing this side of armed robbery. There were hundreds of failed, but at the time surefire gold schemes, all ending up with him as broke as he began and pockets as empty as the bottles of Diamond Red strewn around his camp.

Pappy had a problem with a bad tooth on a cold winter’s evening and tried to get some clinic or welfare agency to help him out of his agony. After three days of no luck he took a twenty-pound rock and put it through the glass door of the police station. When a beehive of cops appeared and he was arrested, he made them take care of his bad tooth. He did seventy-two hours in the can and was out with his dental problems behind him.

He disappeared for several years into the Siskiyou mountains, the border between Southern Oregon and Northern California, with a string of horses and a giant woman and a gleam in his eye, and with stories about sure gold strikes.

Some years later was the last time I saw Pappy. I had first run into him in the same bar ten winters before I sat there talking to him for the last time. He’d just been released from a California penitentiary after he’d had his third heart attack there. He had gone to the pen because he’d given up his gold, for growing pot in the remote roadless areas he’d not been able to strike it rich on. He’d apparently had some serious success with this enterprise and paid cash for a five-acre parcel close to a National Forest and a shack and a barn and good corral for horses and he was with the same woman he left town with. He’d begun however, to have heart problems and only jail had stopped him from drinking and smoking.

When some redneck thought the skinny cowboy with heart problems could be taken advantage of and reneged on paying for a couple pounds of hand-grown pot, Pappy beat a man twice his size almost to death with a two-by-six.

He was wide eyed, albeit a little pale looking, and drinking draft beer with the same giant woman I’d seen him disappear with years ago.

“I’ve had six heart attacks!” he said, greeting me with a wild- eyed grin.

“The last three was in the state pen.” He was pulling on his beer like a man who’d just walked across the Mojave Desert. His old perilous grin and a different appearance somehow, perhaps serenity, perhaps enlightenment, perhaps he was just damn glad for being out of jail. But after the brief greeting and small talk he turned to me like an evangelist.

“Now don’t you ever be afraid of dyin’. The last heart attack I just plum crossed over to the other side and saw me a rainbow bigger than this whole damn valley! I saw great streams of colorful lights, the likes you’ve never seen, I seen green like you never seen; ah there’s horses there too! And there was peace like I’ve never felt, all so beautiful makes me want to bawl like a baby just thinking it. I saw my little brother there, the one that had died back on the Res. A feeling I had that is the happiest feeling this sorry son-of-a-bitch has ever felt. No worry, no guilt, no pain, no wanting anything. Then I woke up with this pencil-necked intern pulling a big horse needle out of my chest.”

“You son-of-a-bitch!” I said. ‘Why the hell did you do that? I don’t need back in this forsaken hell-hole of a place, goddamn you, goddamn you!” I said.

“The skinny little bastard looked like; he’d seen a ghost, he did!” Pappy laughed and was drinking out of a large pitcher by now. “That was three weeks ago. They told me I couldn’t drink, or

smoke again,” he said, lighting a tailor-made Pall Mall off the one

he’d just had in his mouth.

“They let me out of jail because they said I’d die before I’d serve out the next three years of my sentence,” Pappy said.

As he began surveying around the bar as if someone was listening that should not get this information, he was wide-eyed and almost contrite. I’d not really seen him this way ever. He got out of jail and his woman just drove him north across the Oregon-California border because she now lived back in Oregon, having sold their place and horses and everything with Pappy being in jail..

“Don’t ever be afraid of dyin’ ever!” he coughed, wide-eyed and as seriously adamant as I’d ever seen him.

“If a son-of-a-bitch like me has got that to look forward to, you’re all going to be just fine!” he said motioning a benediction up and down the bar. The smoke was wafting up toward the ceiling fans; Universalism, and the rumble of beer glasses, music, and a mumble of the rest of the barflies prevailed. I’m pretty sure I was the only one who heard this story that night.

James Ross Kelly lives in Northern California next to the Sacramento River. Mr. Kelly was a long-time resident of Southern Oregon where he grew up. “We All Called Him Pappy” first appeared in Mr. Kelly’s collection of short stories entitled “And the Fires We Talked About” published by UnCollected Press.

Billy Cutter left the Bull Riders reception early and sober. Without shooters, the jokes weren’t as funny or the women as intoxicating as at the parties before his injury. At 6 a.m. the next morning, Billy made his way to the mini-mall McDonalds down from the Exhibit Hall. He ordered coffee, a Big Breakfast with Hot Cakes, and an Egg McMuffin. Given the hours he spent daily in rehab, he didn’t worry about calories.

Until Billy reinjured his left shoulder and withdrew at Calgary, the old timers had predicted William C. “Billy” Cutter to win the Bull Riding event at the Wrangler National Finals Rodeo (NFR). Fighting through the pain, refusing to succumb to the temptation of opiates, he found a doctor willing to pass him on the physical and started competing again. Only the top 15 in each event qualify for the NFR in Las Vegas. Billy finished 16^th. His 135,000 Twitter fans claimed he’d been robbed by his bull assignments. Maybe….

When he finished the pancakes, Billy noticed a weekend cowboy sitting with a working woman. The man had on a wrinkled western cut suit, wilted pearl-button shirt, Tony Lamas, and a spotless Black BronKo. Black BronKo (with a capital K) were the first cowboy hats made in China. Billy guessed the guy sold them.

The woman wore a cocktail dress with black sparkles, stiletto heels, and an exhausted impatient expression. A ladies Black BronKo rested crown down on the table beside her. There were bruises on her upper arms. Twenty years younger, she could be a runner-up for Miss Rodeo Queen.

After failing to qualify for the NFR, Billy had been invited to Australia to re-coop. He had friends on the Australian rodeo circuit and knew an aboriginal woman in Darwin. Tarni ran a oceanfront restaurant, but she had been raised on a ranch. She knew cattle.

Billy’s agent Kent Barnes had bigger plans. “You’re a lock for the Courage Award. No cash prize, but great publicity for your book.” So, Billy Cutter, world class rider and newly published author (All the Bull in the World), found himself at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas early on a Wednesday morning, the second week in December.

The Hat methodically worked his way through three Bacon, Egg, and Cheese biscuits and two cartons of milk. He stole occasional glances at the woman as she ate her Fruit ’N Yogurt Parfait and sipped coffee.

Finally, Rodeo Queen tossed the white plastic spoon down and set the empty yogurt container on the tray. “All right. You’ve fed me,” she told The Hat. “Get my clothes and called me an Uber.” She lowered her voice. “I’m fine now.”

“What about my offer…?”

 “I want to go home.” She stood up.

“Please….” The Hat reached for her. Billy stood to intervene.

“It’s okay.” Rodeo Queen waved him off. “Doug’s not the bad guy.”

“You don’t need help?”

“Need?  Not exactly need– I can handle men like Douglas. But since you’re offering, and since you’re Billy Cutter–”

“Let me grab my coffee.”

Billy dumped his trash and put his tray on the rack before joining them. They were quietly arguing when he sat down. “I’m all ears.” He removed his Stetson.

“My name is Doug Zelinka,” The Hat told him. “Sharon and I attended a party in the Black BronKo suite last night. She had too much to drink, so my boss asked me to make sure she got breakfast and a ride home.” Billy pointed to the bruises on her arm. “I didn’t do those.”

Billy turned to Sharon. “It’s complicated,” she told him. “Doug’s Chinese employer was upset that I lied about my age. Of course, once he saw me in this dress, everything was fine, until the buyer for a big outdoor equipment chain latched on to me. The mope drugged my drink.”

“Allegedly drugged your drink,” Doug interjected.

Sharon faced Billy. “One sip and I knew he’d given me a roofie. When I poured the drink on the son-of-a-bitch, he grabbed me.” She pursed her lips, “That’s where I got the bruises.”

“Security took the buyer aside to explain the rules,” Doug explained.

“No. He took him to find him a different hooker– A man in a suit arrived with an envelope of cash and a nondisclosure agreement. He said someone would stay with me until the drug wore off and would make sure I got home.”

Doug scanned the food court nervously. “Her street clothes are in a locker. She needs to change.”

“I have to return the dress. It’s a rental.”

Billy felt his anger rising. “Did your boss help drug her?”

Doug shook his head. “He paid good money for whores, booze, and strippers. Why would anyone need a roofie to get laid?”  He turned to Sharon. “No offense.”

“None taken.”

“Why don’t you get her clothes while I speak with Sharon? You might catch a couple hours sleep before you have to be back in the exhibition hall. I’ll make sure she gets home.”

She handed Doug the locker key. “The number is on it.” When he was out of earshot Sharon said softly, “Thank you.”

“I didn’t do much.”

“You did enough.” She picked up her coffee cup.

“Do you have a boyfriend?”

“Well, this is rather sudden…,” she joked, tossing her shockingly blonde hair.

“Humor me.”

“I’ve got an ex-husband who works steady in the construction industry, but he stays one step ahead of the courts who want to garnish his wages for past-due child support. I have two teenage sons who think I shouldn’t have three part-time jobs and work odd hours just so they can go to college. They’re worried that I don’t get out enough.”

“You didn’t answer the question.”

“No, I don’t have a boyfriend.” Sharon put her empty coffee cup down.

“I’m meeting my agent this eight this morning. I have a new sponsor, and he wants to meet my girlfriend–”

“But you don’t have one?”

“I had hoped to secure a suitable candidate at a party last night, but I didn’t find anyone wholesome enough.”

She laughed. “And you think I’m a good candidate?  Because I’m wholesome?”  Sharon leaned across the table, her breasts spilling out of the red dress, her makeup caked and fading, the bruises livid on her arms.

“Without makeup and in street clothes, you could pass for wholesome.”

“And why is that important?” She touched his arm.

Billy’s face flushed. “Kent thinks I spend too much time with whores.”

Sharon laughed again. “Do you?”

“Used to. Don’t anymore. Haven’t for some time. Not since I got sober and climbed back on the bulls.”

“So, you are not seeking my company in a professional capacity?”

“No. I need a girlfriend.”

“And you think I’m her?”

“I suspect you’ve been spun around and knocked down a lot, but you keep getting back up. That’s something I respect.”

 Doug arrived with a worn USMC duffle bag that he set on the floor beside Sharon. She snatched it up. “Time to get wholesome.”

Doug raised his eyebrows. “Don’t ask,” Billy told him. “It’s hard to explain.”

When Sharon returned, Billy was talking with an older gentleman in a pale gray suit. She handed Doug the garment bag with the rental dress, costume jewelry, and shoes. “Take the hat, too,” she told him, pointing to the BronKo Rodeo Queen on the table.

From her duffle bag, Sharon took a sun-beaten Charlie 1 Horse hat with a turquoise beaded raffia. She’d scrubbed her face clean and pulled her hair back into a ponytail. She wore ancient Levi jeans, Justin boots, and a faded long-sleeved checkered shirt with white pearl snaps. “Wholesome enough for you, cowboy?” 

“Can you cook?”  The man in the suit asked.

“Sharon,” Billy said, motioning to the man, “this is my agent, Kent Barnes.” He turned to Kent. “This is my girlfriend.”

“I’m Sharon Loffler.” She stuck out her hand to shake. “Pleased to meet you.” Kent seemed amused. “I cook for Billy all the time. Is there something you’re hungry for?”

“The new sponsor has this ad concept–” He paused and reappraised her. “You’re Billy’s girlfriend?”  Sharon smiled. “What’s the last meal you fixed him?”

“I bought  a bucket of fried chicken at the Ready Stop and microwaved mac and cheese.”

The agent nodded. “They want Billy–looking all rugged cowboy–to face the camera and say, ‘Rodeo means pain.’ They flash a clip of his injury, shots from rehab, then Billy back on a bull. ‘Billy Cutter, rodeo champion, the favored rider, brought down, fighting back, resolved to compete again.’ The camera holds on him accepting the Courage award, then it cuts to him, standing before a table of food, with his arm wrapped around a shapely woman’s waist.  Billy says, ‘Comfort means home cooking and Wild Buffalo Jeans.’”

“Fried food, comfortable clothes, and pussy,” Sharon suggested, “the Male American Dream.”

“You bet your sweet ass it is.” Kent hesitated. “You might be a little older than the sponsor envisioned.”

She sat back in her chair and carefully opened the lid of her coffee. “Wild Buffalo Jeans says that when life knocks you down, you need the guts to get back up, because that’s what’s Billy’s done. Do you think some scrawny-assed twenty-something porcelain doll can help him with that?” 

Kent considered her question. “I guess not.”

“Think about the women who will see the ad,” Sharon added, “the ones who buy jeans for their husbands and boyfriends, the ones with a poster in their kitchen of Billy riding a bull. They know he’s not with me for my mac and cheese.”

“I like that angle. I’ll pitch it to the Wild Buffalo folks.” Kent had another thought. “Have you modeled before?”

 “Not the kind of photo shoots a girl would put on her resume, but I know my way around men with cameras,” she demurred. “When can Billy and I meet these folks?”

“Lunch is at 1:30, but leave the Levi’s at home.”

“We can buy new jeans on the strip,” Billy suggested.

“I’ll need to text my sons, too. Let them know what’s up.” She told Kent, “They’re 13 and 15.”

“Do they like rodeo?”

“They think they’re cowboys.” Sharon picked up her old Marine Corps duffle bag. “But they’re too smart to ride bulls.” She handed the bag to Billy to carry.

“I’ll take luck over brains any day,” Billy said, “but it doesn’t hurt to have both.”

Paul Lewellan retired after forty-nine years of teaching in secondary schools and private colleges. Now he lives and gardens in Davenport, Iowa, with his wife Pamela, his Shi Tzu Mannie, and her ginger tabby Sunny. He keeps a safe social distance from everyone else.

     “You’re not going to eat me Mr. Wolf,” shouted the wounded man into the darkness of the cold desert night while grimacing in pain and clutching his side. “Not as long as I’ve got this here gun pointed at you.” The man held his gun before him and waved it from side to side he was shaking so.

     The man had previously passed out and had fallen off his horse from the loss of blood. His horse had run off. His partner in crime, unable to catch it after a feeble attempt to do so, had come over to him, stopped the bleeding, made him as comfortable as he possibly could, setting him upright against a boulder, and covered him with a blanket to ward off the night chill.

    “I’m going off to find your horse or steal one somewhere for you,” he told his wounded partner. “You hold tight, I’ll be back soon.”

    “Okay,” said the wounded man and his partner left.

    That’s when the wolf picked up the blood scent and followed his nose to the wounded man.

    The wounded man saw the wolf glaring at him from the darkness, his devilish eyes glowing  like two red hot burning embers.

    “Don’t even think about it Mr. Wolf. My partner will be back any minute now with a horse for me. He won’t desert me. I got the loot remember, my insurance policy.”

    The wounded man had the loot alright. He had  made sure of that. After his partner had patched him up he grabbed it and clutched it to his chest threatening to shoot his partner if he didn’t go get him his horse. Told him that when he got back with one he’d do the right thing, split the money with him, and then they’d go their separate ways. But now he was not sure that he could go his separate way at all. He was too weak, had lost too much blood, was in excruciating  pain, had passed out momentarily a couple of times, and was becoming delusional. 

       “You’re wrong,” came a voice out of the darkness. “You don’t have the loot any more. I got it. I took it when you passed out a while ago. Your partner’s gonna kill you when he gets back and you can’t come up with the money. He’ll think you’ve hid it on him. That you’ve double crossed him. Then what you going to do? Answer me that will ya?”

   The wounded man stretched out and reached over to where he had put the two money bags. They weren’t there. Then he heard the wolf growl again. Then he heard his partner.

   “Who’s that you’re talking to Charlie?” asked his partner as he rode up with a horse in tow. A horse that wasn’t Charlie’s.

    “I’m talking to that wolf out there Ed.”

    “Well tell him goodbye then,” replied Ed, taken back some by that answer. “I got ya a horse. Some poor cowboy out there looking for strays is on foot now. So get the money. I’ll help you up and we’ll get out of here.”

     “It’s gone Ed.”

     “Gone? What do you mean it’s gone?”

     “I mean like it’s not here. It’s disappeared. It’s gone.”

     “Oh I suppose the wolf took it huh? Don’t you dare double cross me Charlie. Where’d you stash the loot?”

     “Right here next to me,” said Charlie pointing to the spot.

     Ed went over to Charlie to see for himself. The money bags weren’t there. Then he noticed that Charlie was wincing in pain and had begun bleeding again having opened his wounds when he reached over for the two money bags.

     Suddenly one of the stolen money bags was thrown at them from somewhere out in the darkness and plopped at Ed’s feet.

     “Shoot him Ed. Shoot Charlie and I’ll throw you the other one,” a voice growled, “and then you leave. That’s the deal.”

      Ed grabbed the bag and dove for cover dragging Charlie with him. Charlie screaming the whole time in pain.

    “That your talking wolf Charlie? I don’t think so.”

    Charlie didn’t answer. He had passed out.

     “Who are you?  Ed hollered back.

     “I’m the wolf your partner was talking about. You want the rest of the money or not?”

     “I told you Ed. I told you there was a wolf out there,” said Charlie coming to.

     “Jesus Christ Charlie you’re crazy. You ain’t thinking right. Ya lost too much blood. You’re light headed, delusional, imagining things. That ain’t no wolf out there I tell ya. It’s a man.”

    “There is too a wolf out there. I saw him.”

    “Well ya want to make a deal or not?” shouted the unknown voice.

     “Let me get this straight,” said Ed, “You want me to shoot my partner here and then you’ll throw me the other money bag and I leave so that way you can eat my partner. That it Mr. Wolf? I don’t think so. You want me to shoot my partner. Then you shoot me and get all the money. That’s it, isn’t it?”

     “No I’m a wolf and I haven’t eaten in days,”  the voice growled. “You killing your partner means I don’t have to take the risk of getting shot when I attack him.

     “Hear that Ed?” shrieked Charlie. “I tell ya there’s some kind of talking demonic wolf creature out there somewhere. Out there looking for a meal, me. You gotta get me out of here now.”

    Jesus Christ thought Ed. Now I got me a demented as well as wounded partner to take care of. This ain’t working out. Maybe I should shoot him, take my chances, grab the loot, and run.

    “Well deal or no deal,” growled the voice again only louder this time. “My patience and stomach is starting to wear thin.”

    “No can do,” replied Ed. Charlie still had his gun in his hand and he deemed it in his best interests to say no deal or Charlie would shoot him before he could draw his gun and shoot Charlie.

      “If you shoot him,” replied the wolf voice, “then you got two horses. You’ll have no trouble at all making it to the border then.”

      “Charlie, who in the hell is that guy out there and why in the hell didn’t he just shoot you, take the money and run before I got here? Or for that matter why in the hell didn’t he shoot me when I got here. What’s going on here Charlie? You got you a new partner out there and the two of you are up to something aren’t you.” Ed’s suspicious mind raced trying to figure out just what in the hell was going on and then he suddenly realized he shouldn’t have said that because Charlie had his gun pointed at him now. Then his hand dropped to the ground. Charlie was too weak to keep it raised for even a few seconds.

      “I told you it’s a wolf. A wolf wanting to eat me. A wolf Ed. A demented wolf I tell ya,” he mumbled.

     “Cut the crap Charlie. You ain’t fooling me with that crazy man act. What plan have you and your partner out there cooked up?”

    “I ain’t got no plan. I ain’t got no partner other than you Ed. Help me up on the horse please and let’s get out of here.”

     Ed noticed that Charlie, try as he may, couldn’t stop the bleeding now, and probably would bleed out and die shortly. Just as well for then he could fire off a shot, tell whoever it was out there that he shot him, get the money, and run. Or he could leave Charlie now here alive next time he passed out and take off with one sack, his share, after all he was an honest thief. Or he could do the right thing and put Charlie on the horse, let him take his one sack, and each go their separate ways. But if he shot Charlie, per this wolfman’s request, he’d have all the money and two horses. If he could trust him that is. But then again why shouldn’t he trust him. After all, he had already thrown him the one sack when he could have run off with both.  And furthermore he had passed up the chance to plug him when he arrived. None of this made sense except unless of course it was a wolf looking for a meal but a talking talking wolf didn’t make no sense at all.

     Ed had never shot anyone before in his life. In fact in all his robberies of banks, trains, stagecoaches, etc. he had never even fired his pistol and he got to thinking. He hardly knew Charlie. He had only known him a couple of months before they pulled this heist and he’d never pulled a job with him anywhere before. Ed was sure now that the guy out there had to be Charlie’s partner and they planned to do him in and he had to come up with a plan of his own now.

    “Well what’s it gonna be?” came the voice from the darkness again. “You want all the money or not?”

    “You throw me the other sack and I leave unharmed. Is that the deal?” repeated Ed.

    “You got it. That’s the deal.”

    There is no honor among thieves. Charlie mustered up enough strength somehow and shot Ed in the back the second Ed turned his back on him. Unlike Ed, Charlie had shot men before and that’s how he got himself wounded here by the return fire of the bank teller he killed during the robbery. But before he died Ed too mustered up enough strength, spun around, and shot Charlie dead.  

    After a few minutes of eternal silence on the part of Ed and Charlie, a figure emerged out from under the darkness of an overhanging rock. No it wasn’t a wolf who had picked up the blood scent of Charlie. It was that cowboy out there somewhere without a horse who had seen Charlie’s campfire. He had stopped some distance from it at first to check it out. To find out if it was friend or foe and when he saw the wounded Charlie and the two money bags at his side, he had his answer, bank robber. But he didn’t see any horses anywhere. So he reasoned that the person who had held him up and stolen his horse and his gun too had to be this man’s partner. That’s why took his horse. Took it for his wounded partner here and when he came in with his horse, his theory was confirmed. That’s when he came up with a plan. And he did.

    His plan was crass and simple. Get the one partner to think the other partner was crazy with his talking to a wolf bit so he’d kill him rather than deal with him. Then he’d take his chances, sneak up and clobber the remaining partner from behind with a rock, get his horse and gun back, and get the hell out of there. A simple but brilliant, in a tooth sucking sort of way plan, for he was but a simple tooth sucking sort of cowboy.

     He didn’t light out for the border with the money.  No, instead he loaded the two bodies on one horse, himself and the money bags on the other, rode to town, and collected the reward. It was a good deal for him, the wolfman.

     And as to the wolf, that in fact was out there, it was a good deal for him too. He ate well that night.

Bryan Grafton is a retired attorney who started writing for something to do in his rusting years.

Bob’s out there among those big boulders over there Howie. I saw him get shot, run over there, and go down with the gold. Hear that? That’s him moaning.”

      “I don’t hear anything but these goddamn bullets ricocheting all around us and those God damn bandidos yelling at each other in Spanish. They got us pinned down here pretty good Fred. We gotta get out of here before they get us completely surrounded. Let’s mount up and make a break for it. Forget the gold. It’s over there with Bob and we’re never going to be able to get it anyway.”

     “Howie, I can’t just leave Bob out there suffering like that. That ain’t right. I got to find out how bad he’s hurt. Got to see if there’s anything that I can do for him. Listen, hear that.”

     From the pile of boulders that Fred had pointed out came unearthly eerie moaning, indescribable sounds of pain and agony.

     “I heard ‘em but there’s nothing we can do. We best make a break for it when we get a chance. And for God sake keep your head down. Stop popping up to look over there every few seconds. One of those Mexicans sure as hell will blow it off and then where in the hell would I be, dead that’s where. Christ sakes Fred , let’s take our chances and run for it.”

     “Howie I got to know if I can do anything to stop his suffering.”

     “What, like putting him out of his misery?”

     “Yah if I have to.”

     “Well worry instead about putting those god damn Mexicans out of our misery. You take the ones on the right. I’ll take the ones on the left. Besides, if the Mexicans get to him first they’ll shoot him anyway.”

     “I can’t let that happen, Howie. Listen, you hear those weird sounds he’s making? They’re ghastly. I owe it to him. We’ve been through alot together these last five years. If he could speak now, he’d want me to be the one to do it, not some god damn Mexican.”

     Howie ignored him and said nothing as he continued returning fire.

     “Look,” Fred continued. “I don’t care what you say. One of us has got to run over there and bring back our hard earned gold. We’ve spent months scratching and digging for that gold. Then to have it stolen from us last night while we slept, and all the trouble we went through to get it back this morning, and now this. We’re not leaving without it.”

     “Stolen by your no good cousins I might add, who you insisted that we let camp with us last night. For God’s sake Fred I told you those two were no good. I should have never let you talk me into letting them stay with us. We were darn lucky in being able to track down those two pieces of horse dung and get our gold back this morning. Let the Mexicans have it as long as we can get out of here with our lives.”

     “So I made a mistake letting them stay with us but they’re basically good boys and I ain’t going to let us get robbed a second time Howie, no way. I am sure as hell not giving up now after all we’ve been through. I’m going for the gold and you can’t stop me.”

     “Okay. okay. Enough already Fred! We’ll get the gold then get out of here fast because sure as hell those no good cousins of yours probably told the sheriff that we robbed them and they’ll have him get a posse up to come and arrest us. We should have never let them get away. We should have finished them off when we had the chance even if they are your kin.”

     Howie then hesitated as the wheels turned in his head. “On second thought let’s just forget it Fred. The odds aren’t in our favor. We’re greatly numbered. Maybe we should  just holler at these guys that the gold’s over there with Bob and let them take it. They’ll be so busy fighting among themselves over it that we could make our escape then, escape from them and from the sheriff.”

    “What about Bob?” pleaded Fred again. “I ain’t gonna just leave him there like that.”

     “For Christ sake’s Fred. For the umpteeth time forget about Bob. Look, they’ve been getting closer while we been a palavering.” Shots whizzed by their heads as the Mexicans’ fire intensified. “It’s decision time mi amigo.”

     “I’m going out there, get our packs of gold and put Bob out of his misery and run back,  you’re going to cover me and then we’ll make our escape.”

     “That’s crazy. There’s at least six of them, it’s too far, there’s not enough big rocks out there for you to hide behind, and sure as hell they’ll shoot you a dozen times before you ever get there.”

     “Well I’m going on the count of three and that’s final. It would be in your best interest Howie to cover me and have the horses ready when I get back. One, two,” Fred took off.

     “What happened to three,” hollered Howie as he laid down a barrage of fire forcing the Mexicans to keep their heads down as Fred made it to the first grouping of boulders.

    The Mexicans popped up and fired a dozen rounds at both men. But Howie returned their fire and they dropped back behind cover. Fred bolted forward again. As the Mexican heads reappeared Howie set forth another burst of gunfire and Fred jumped over the final boulders to Bob and the gold. His luck had held.

    “Jesus Bob old pal looks like you been shot up but good,” were the first words that came out of his mouth when he saw Bob lying there all crumpled up in a pool of blood. “Looks like you’ve been gut shot my friend. You’re a goner Bob and I ain’t a going to let you suffer one second more, no sir. I know if you could speak that you’d want me to do this, not some goddamn Mexican,” said Fred as he fired a bullet into Bob’s brain.

     “Coming back now. Cover me,” hollered Fred as he picked up the two heavy bags loaded with nuggets and started to jump over the rocks. A bullet crashed into his leg causing him to fall back down into the boulders. Fred felt the pain and knew in an instant that he couldn’t walk, his leg bone was shattered. “You might as well make a run for it, Howie. I’m shot in the leg. I can’t stand let alone run back to you. I’ll cover you. Make a break for it.”

     “I’m coming to you Fred. A man just doesn’t abandon his partner to a bunch of thieving murdering Mexicans now does he. Cover me.”

     Howie leapt forward and began running towards Fred but to his surprise the Mexicans’ guns were silent. They never fired a shot. Howie looked in their direction and saw that they were too busy mounting up and riding off to be concerned about him. Then he saw why. There up on the ridge was the reason for their hurried departure. A dozen men were thundering down upon them, the posse that had come to arrest him and Fred just as he had predicted. 

     Howie ran over to Fred and helped him to his feet while the sheriff dismounted and came up unbeknownst behind them. He stood there in silence, his gun drawn and pointed at their backs.

     “I knew you’d do it. I knew you’d shoot Bob. Would you have put me out of my misery if it had been me, Fred?”

    “Nah Howie I’d have let you suffer.”

    “What?” he responded incredulously. “Why?”

    “Because you’re a bigger jackass than Bob. That’s why.”

    “Well if that don’t beat all. You’d shoot your mule, an animal, but me, your partner, a human being, you’d let suffer. What kind of a man would do that?”

     But before Fred could come back with a snappy answer, the sheriff cut him off. “Well it looks like I just caught me a pair of live jackasses and one dead one. Hands up boys. Or should I say hooves up,” chuckled the sheriff. “Oh you ain’t under arrest put them down. Those cousins of yours Fred ran into those Mexican bandidos when fleeing from you two this morning and knew that you would be needing some help. Kind of their way of redeeming themselves.”

     Fred got in Howie’s face.

     “See didn’t I tell you that they were good boys. And you said they were no good. That just proves that you ARE the bigger jackass Howie.” 

Bryan Grafton is a retired attorney. His latest book is Willard Wigleaf: West Texas Attorney.

He was a woodsy sort of fellow. Tall, strong, and quiet. Everyone in town saw him as rough around the edges, rugged at best. They joked that he was more into shooting things than thinking. He would wake up every morning with the sun. Make the blackest coffee this side of the mountain. He would drink it on the porch, rain or shine. He would drink it slowly, deliberately. Letting the bitterness settle on the back of his throat as the caffeine crept through his veins.

            He didn’t trust many people, wasn’t quick to open up, because there were some things people wouldn’t understand. Even the woman who had known him since they were both knee high hadn’t known everything. She had been there for him when his mother took the car for groceries and never came back. She held his hand when his father died of heartbreak. She was with him when the car washed up on the bank of the river. She defended him when the townspeople whispered about his mother, words like crazy, strange, and suicide. Despite their house being full up, two sisters in each of the small bedrooms and parents in the large one, her family took him in. They moved him into the attic, and gave him a permanent seat at the dinner table, a seat he filled every Sunday.

            Her parents were kind to him, treated him like kin. They were an honest couple, hellbent on raising honest kids. Her daddy joked that he was happy to finally have another man in the house. Her momma said he wasn’t a man yet, he was still a child, but promised they would take care of him until he was grown. Her sisters were standoffish at first, didn’t like the idea of a boy in the house. Not her, she was happy to have him around. He taught her to shoot small game, using the exact words his father had used whenever they ventured into the woods together, telling her to keep her finger off the trigger until she was ready to shoot. He taught her which berries were safe to eat, even when she insisted that she’d never go into the woods without him because she was scared of bears. They would work on his father’s old truck until the early morning hours, he used the tools while she held the flashlight. They would’ve stayed out there all night if her daddy hadn’t reminded them that they had to go to school the next morning, no matter how tired they were. She taught him how to sew and how to knit. He liked working with a needle and thread, felt it was soothing. He never did finish anything, but on his fifteenth birthday she presented him with a hunting cap made from the scraps he had created. She was everything he wasn’t, witty, charming, intelligent. She was his balance, his other half, and he loved her.

            There was never anything more than friendship between them though, unless you count that moment at the lake the summer after they graduated high school. Her momma and daddy took them shopping two towns over, told them as a graduation present they could each pick out one thing from the bargain bin. His hands glided through the soft fabrics. He could hear her argue with her parents about whether or not the bathing suit she picked was one item or two. His fingers trailed over silk and satin. It was all women’s clothing, nothing acceptable for a young man. His choice had been clear when he saw the disappointed look on her face. She had lost the argument and settled for only the bikini top so he picked the bottom half of the swimsuit as his one item. Her parents were so proud of him in that moment. Through teary eyes they both wished his father and momma could’ve been there to see the young man he had become.

            When he saw her in that bathing suit, he couldn’t take his eyes off of her. They were swimming in the lake, splashing about without a care in the world. He thought she looked beautiful. He wondered what the bathing suit must feel like against her skin. She caught him staring at her. She thought in that moment he was handsome. He was unpolished, but handsome enough, so she closed the distance between them and planted a kiss on his lips. Startled by the contact, he recoiled. Her eyes widened, and she apologized. Warm air swirled between them. He looked into the water, his mouth opened like he wanted to say something, but there were no words. She said he shouldn’t think about it too much because he’d always been and would always be like a brother to her.

            He’d never had any long-term relationships. There had been sex, but not much of that either. There was a girl in high school, a cheerleader, who would get drunk and put the moves on him in his truck. He shivered when he remembered their first time. He was at a barn party with his classmates. The girl had been fighting with her boyfriend and needed a ride home. He offered her one. He promised that he hadn’t had a drop of alcohol, which was true. He wasn’t a liar. She looked up at him, her eyes grew dark, her lips parted slightly, and she accepted his offer with a nod of her head. Her intentions were obvious to everyone but him. Sometimes he would close his eyes and let the memory of that night dance across his eyelids. The girl’s pleated skirt riding up as she crawled over the center console of his truck. The sound of the horn honking as her ass hit the steering wheel, over and over, the rhythm creating a naughty refrain for the wilderness. He tried to put an end to their encounters, said he felt like he was taking advantage, and each time she’d giggle and slide onto his lap. This went on for months, until she grew bored and moved on.

            According to the town gossip, he would’ve made a fine husband. Growing up surrounded by women had made him patient and respectful. He learned to listen and to be kind. They had taught him how to cook and how to get grass stains out of denim. They had taught him the difference between a house and a home. At 19 he moved back into his childhood cabin deep in the woods. He felt comfortable there, in the stillness, isolated in nature. He kept the cabin beautifully decorated and spotlessly clean. Anyone who walked through the door would have been enveloped by the warmth and scent of Loblolly Pine, which he always burned in the fireplace. They would’ve heard the sounds of Pachelbel’s ‘Canon in D Major’ oozing from a record player set atop a bookshelf he had made himself. They would’ve seen hundreds of books about history, chemistry, animals. They would have never seen dishes in the sink or stray items of clothing on the floor. But he was the only one who enjoyed the home he lived in. This was how he preferred it.

            There was a reason he didn’t let anyone get close, and though he missed his parents every day they weren’t the reason he secluded himself. He wasn’t afraid of creating then losing a family, like the townspeople prattled on about. It was something else, something he never quite knew how to tell anyone. That day by the lake when she kissed him, he almost told her, though at that point it was barely a seed planted in his head. If he couldn’t tell her, his best friend, how could he tell anyone else? When would he bring it up? The first date? The third date? Before they’d fallen in love? Almost positively ruining any chance of love blossoming. After they’d fallen in love? When it would feel more like a betrayal. How would he bring it up? Casually, over appetizers? Nervously, over drinks? It took him a long time to be comfortable enough with it himself, he didn’t have the energy, or the words, to explain it, or defend it, to anyone else. He knew some people would be offended, and most people wouldn’t understand, not in this backwoods town, not now, not ever. He didn’t want to hurt anyone, so he kept his private life to himself.

            His days were simple. During the week, he’d go to work wherever help was needed. He was a freelance tradesman. He often worked for the sawmill, helped a few local farmers, and assisted with animals at the veterinarian’s office one town over. You have a way with animals, the vet would say, they just love you. Like his morning routine, his evenings were all the same. He would come home from work at 6:30. He would remove his shoes in the foyer. He would be covered in dirt, or sawdust, or remnants of whatever job he had completed that day. He would turn on the shower, cold water first, then hot. He would stand under the water, completely still, and take five deep breaths. He would wash his hands, then hair, then face and body. He would use a pumice stone on his feet, which kept them soft and smooth. He would step out of the shower and dry himself off. Then he’d get dressed for dinner.

              Every Tuesday evening the phone would ring as he put a chicken or rabbit or quail in the oven. She would already be talking when the phone hit his ear. Warm air swirled around him as he listened to her voice. She’d chatter on about the sordid comings and goings of the locals. The townies, the rubes, she’d call them. He’d laugh and say that she was too sophisticated for him now that she was a college graduate. She’d jokingly agree and continue her story. He could picture her dangling her legs into the lake, one hand holding the phone to her ear, one hand gesturing wildly.                               

            She was the one who knew him the best. But what she never knew was that Tuesday was the day he wore the blue dress, the tan wedges, and the pearl necklace that had belonged to his grandmother. His momma’s momma, whom he’d never met. She had died three days before he was born. His momma used to say that he had her spirit. All grit and gumption. He held the phone to his ear with his right hand and his left hand absentmindedly played wth the pearls. His cheeks tugged his mouth upward into a contented smile.

            Before the weekly conversation ended, she would always invite him to come have a beer at the tavern, and he would always decline, preferring to lounge around in the soft fabric of the dress over venturing into town bothered by the rigidity of unrelenting denim.  Occasionally he would invite her over, knowing she would say no. She hated the woods, was still scared of bears, her fear larger now after all that time in the big city. He would joke with her about how bears hate nagging, so she’d be safe. She would tell him it wasn’t funny. He rarely saw bears, but he never mentioned that. Let her have her fears, her fears kept his fears at bay.

            Every Sunday morning, while the entire town was crammed into its only church, he would wake early. He would grab his 20-gauge shotgun, step onto his front porch, take in the silence for a moment, then tromp deeper into the woods. He hunted for food, never for sport. He would always kill something, and whatever it was, he would take it to family dinner. She’d answer the door and invite him in. He would hand the small game over to her momma, while one of her sisters would ask how he could play with those dogs during the week, then shoot innocent animals on the weekends. He would joke that he wanted to eat them before they ate him. The sister would grimace while the rest of the family offered him subtle smiles. Sunday dinner was a weekly reminder that he was never alone, a reminder that he was loved. He missed his parents, but was grateful to be a part of this family. He was at peace, until he stood up to clear the dishes and the lace of his panties grazed his behind. At that moment, every week, his happiness was tempered with guilt.

*****

             The sun shooting through his curtains woke him up later than usual that Sunday. A chill settled on him as he swung his legs over the edge of his bed. Head down, hands on his knees. He blinked hard a few times, attempting to clear the fog from his mind. He took a deep breath and stood up. Something shiny caught his eye. He turned slowly toward the dresser. He saw the nearly empty glass. He picked it up and studied it. A splash of bourbon shifted at the bottom. Bourbon had been his momma’s drink. She’d sit in her rocking chair every evening, sipping her old-fashioned, eyes closed, breaths shallow, lips leaving a deep red stain on the rim of the glass. He preferred his bourbon straight, but shared his momma’s affinity for the deep red lip color. He used his thumb to wipe the stain from the glass as he carried it to the kitchen sink. He looked out the kitchen window. It was late. He had to get out there, into the woods, catch dinner. He didn’t want to disappoint his family.

            Back in the bedroom, he pulled on his jeans and flannel shirt, he moved gingerly to keep the ache behind his eyes from spreading. He put on his boots and hunting cap, grabbed his gun, and headed for the door. He paused. One hand on the gun, the other on the door knob. He glanced around his cabin, looking for evidence of his solo dance party from the night before. Satisfied that he’d hidden himself away, he opened the door and stepped out onto the front porch. With his eyes closed he breathed in deep, the scent of the woods filling his nose, fresh air filling his lungs. He left the porch and walked north.

            The crunch of earth under his boots was the only sound he heard. He stepped on a rock awkwardly and realized how much his feet ached. He shook his head, mad at himself for putting on those strappy silver heels. They didn’t fit, were two sizes too small. They had belonged to his momma, and he only wore them on nights he was overwhelmed with missing her. He remembered the last time she wore them. It was about six months before she drove into the river. It was her birthday. She had seemed so happy. Letting his father twirl her as they danced in the living room. They had loved to dance, and so did he. If that’s what you could call it, the three of them, holding hands and bouncing around the cabin. He shook off the memory.

            He turned east. The ache behind his eyes, magnified by the sun through the trees, had spread and grown into a pounding headache. He wished he had brought a bottle of aspirin with him. He thought about the aspirin in its place in the bathroom medicine cabinet, on a shelf below his bottles of nail polish and tubes of lipstick. Last night he had chosen the deep red lipstick and a matching nail polish. He looked down at his hands. His nails were clean. He hadn’t polished his nails, but he got the bottle out, didn’t he? Did he put it away? He heard a rustling. He turned toward the sound. Had he put the dress away? He had taken it off after his fourth drink. He remembered dancing in just the bra and panties. The dress was strapless and had to be hung up using clothespins. Had he gotten the clothespins? Had he put the dress away? He heard the rustling again. He stopped. He stood completely still. He could hear something, something familiar. His heartbeat sped up, his head pounded.

            He closed his eyes to pinpoint the direction the sound was coming from. He moved toward it slowly. To be as quiet as possible, he walked on his toes, like he did when he wore the burgundy stilettos. He had purchased them in a department store just across the state line. He remembered the look on the cashier’s face as he put the women’s size 12 shoes on the counter. I got a tall sister, he told the girl. Relief washed over him when she smiled, believing his story. He got closer to the sound, and as he approached the source it became clear, the sound of an animal cooing. He stopped. He was completely still. He heard a crunch, it reverberated off the trees around him and into his head. He closed his eyes and slowly turned. He opened his eyes. His gaze moved upward until he was looking into the face of the bear cub’s mother. He stood there in between mother and child, and he hoped everyone would try to understand. The bear lunged.

            The mother bear’s giant right paw slashed across his face with such force that he hit the ground face down. He rolled over just as she attacked. He went for the bear’s eyes, but couldn’t reach them, his fingers landing inside her snout instead. The bear didn’t slow down, she ripped and clawed, tearing through clothing, then skin. Blood oozed from his mouth as the bear ripped open the flesh of his chest. His skin burned. The bear lifted her head and roared. His muscles screamed. He tried to roll away, but his legs were crushed under the weight of her body. Pain radiated through him. His breath came in short ragged wheezes. He closed his eyes and stilled himself, he thought of her and the family that had saved him. Each of their faces drifted through his mind. He hoped they knew how grateful he was. He hoped he had put the dress away. The bear sniffed him. He should’ve told her, one of those Tuesday’s on the phone. He could’ve explained it. Maybe he had underestimated her. The mother bear nudged his face, she knew he was done fighting. He had nothing left. Tears gathered and rolled down his cheeks. He thought about his grandmother’s pearls and his mother’s silver heels. He wondered who would find them. What would they think? What would they think about the size 12 stilettos and lipstick? He hoped they would understand. He felt the mother bear’s breath on his face. He opened his eyes and she looked back at him, almost apologetically, as if saying I hope you understand, I had to protect my family. He hoped they would know that he had been protecting them. He hoped until the forest absorbed his last breath.

Samantha Crane is a Chicago based writer currently riding out this pandemic in a small Florida beach town. Her work can be read online at Dream Pop Press, Coffin Bell, and HASH Journal. Follow her on Twitter @dangercrane. 

I jumped from the pickup and the snow squeaked like Styrofoam being crushed under the soles of my boots.  From somewhere on the other side of the fence a heifer bawled.  I made the mistake of raising my face into the push of the Montana wind and felt my lashes knit together. It took a moment of intense blinking to get them working properly again.  A dozen hurried steps brought me to the steel gate where tiny ice crystals made the grey bars glitter in the headlights. The big brass padlock that lashed the chain around gate and post was ornamented in similar fashion. I grabbed it and banged it hard against the post and even through my thick glove was able to feel how cold it was.

            Shoving my right forearm under the left armpit of my coat I wedged the glove and quickly tugged my hand out of the warm covering. The cold seized it the moment the skin was exposed. It felt like the grasp of something paranormal. With my body turned so that the headlights shone upon the four numbered dials on the lock I rapidly began working on the combination. I got the 8 easily—thankfully the dial was not frozen—but the second dial resisted. I rubbed at it hard with my thumb, pushing at the metal. I could feel the little ridges that separated each number for the first few seconds, and then that sensation left my skin. When it finally yielded, I rolled the dial to the 2. The wind hissed at me like it was angry, sending a dusting of ice from the gate bars across my face and the exposed back of my hand. I felt each tiny crystal like a needle on my face, but only for a second and then numbness erased everything. My hand felt nothing.

            When I started pushing my thumb against the third dial I was no longer able to tell whether it moved or not. The coldness of the metal had simply become a block against which I rubbed a numb digit. I peered closely at the lock and by sight worked my thumbnail into position against a little ridge of metal and tried to roll the dial. I had no way of telling if it moved with my thumb so I checked the number showing. It was a 3, but now I couldn’t remember what number it had displayed prior to my attempt, only that I needed it to get to the 7. I poked at it with my index finger, jabbing it like it had offended me. It rolled a number and I kept poking. By the time the 7 showed on the dial it felt like I was poking it with a stick that had been strapped to the end of my wrist.

With effort I curled my fingers and cupped my rapidly freezing right hand in the palm of my gloved left and blew on it. The coil of my fingers created a little grotto and the warm air from my lungs swirled about the frozen digits until I could move them again. I attacked the fourth dial quickly, hoping to utilize what little dexterity was left in my hand before it vanished in the frigid air. For a moment I had the impression that it moved, but upon looking I could see that it had not. I tried again but in vain, the fingers no longer doing anything for me but adorning the end of my arm. I pushed my hand back into the glove, not bothering to put the fingers into their individual sleeves, only my thumb. There was just enough motility and strength left in that thumb to let me grasp the lock against my palm and hold it awkwardly in my right hand.

I caught my left glove between my thighs and jerked the hand free. In spite of the glove it had already begun growing cold. I had to turn my body now that I was using the other hand so the truck lights kept the lock visible in the January night and doing so brought me round so that the wind was directly in my face. The tip of my nose stiffened and the muscles of my cheeks became sluggish. With growing urgency I used my left thumb against the last dial pushing it in both directions, scraping my nail across it. Jabbing at it. It refused to move away from the 1. All I needed was to get it to read 8270, and the nearness of my goal mocked me. I jerked the lock against the chain hard, sending a shower of ice dust across my face and bare hand. I felt the latter become immobile as I tried with futile effort to roll the last dial a final time. I cursed and my chin was stiff clay.

            I let the lock drop back against the gate and the metal on metal rang with a frosty note. Heeding that call to retreat I rushed back to the passenger door of the pickup and somehow managed to get it open and climb into the warmth of the cab.

            “I got all but the last number,” I said to my brother. My words came out slurred and slow. “Your turn.”

            He pulled his hat down firmly over his head, bent the brim a bit over his brow, and exited the truck into the Montana winter.

A. Keith Kelly grew up on the Crow Indian Reservation in Montana and worked for years as a fly-fishing and bird hunting guide before entering academia. He is now a professor of English literature and writing living on a tiny farm outside of Atlanta, Georgia.

The dust choked Pan. He wasn’t used to grabbing around the saddle with his legs even though he’d told the trail boss he’d been riding since he was two. Short, with a wispy goatee, he whistled hoping to get the horse on his side.

Herm, the boss man, saw the way Hera steadied when Pan stroked her ears. He noticed the boy’s feet reaching deep in the stirrups, as if trying to find a comfortable spot. He also noticed the longing in Pan’s eyes. Herm had a gut feeling that this kid had potential. Handing Pan a paper and pen, he said, “We head out day after tomorrow. See if you can learn to ride, son.”

That word, “son,” cleaned the dirt from Pan’s lungs, eased the ache in his thighs, and gave him a reason to prove himself.

The first night around the campfire, Herm sat next to Pan. They rode the ranch the next day, Herm praising Pan when he sat tall in the saddle. “Like a centaur,” Herm said. He had a penchant for myth.

That’s how Zeus got his name. A feisty old steer, Zeus had an attitude that made him a head taller than any of the other cattle. He picked fights and mostly won. The ranch hands kept a distance from him, their horses skittering back and curling their lips in an equine sneer that said, “Stay away.”

Pan either didn’t notice or didn’t care. He was confident that the sound of the harmonica he carried everywhere would seduce most any creature. That included Zeus. Too sure of protection, too inexperienced to read the posturing of the beast, Pan rode too close to Zeus. He cut him off from the herd, making Zeus look like an ordinary cow.

Herm laid a long, low whistle in Pan’s direction. All the cowboys looked, but none of them approached. None of them made a move to avert the disaster they saw coming. Pan’s horse pranced sideways. Hera was a steady mare and if it hadn’t been for her, things would have gone way worse.

Zeus turned in a cloud of fury. The dust swirled around his hooves, the sun behind him raising the rusty color of vengeance from his sleek coat. The steel in his eyes suggested the strength of an angry god. He showed no sign of backing down.

Pan had a stubborn streak himself. Glued to the saddle as if he and Hera were one body, he held the harmonica to his mouth. Hera trotted ahead. Pan blew a riff that started slow and matched the timing set by the steady pawing of the steer against the ground. In no time, it was Zeus who followed Pan’s rhythm, his hooves kicking up the earth in befuddled motion. Hera led Zeus around the herd like he had a ring in his nose. The whole thing was short. Within minutes, everything but the dust settled.

Herm whistled again, this time with appreciation for the way Pan got himself out of trouble. Closing the distance between them to pat Pan on the back he said, “Not bad for a greenhorn.”

Pan’s face burst into a smile. The adrenalin subsided and he realized that he had been scared. That’s how it was for him. Never an ounce of fear until he was out of danger, he got into these situations but he also always pulled them off. Something he was born with, like music, like his knack with animals. The sun shone behind him, lighting the blond shimmer of his hair and the oiled saddle horn that he held lightly in one hand. At long last, he was going to be a centaur.

Monica McHenney writes in Palo Alto, California which she shares with her husband, her son and two foster dogs. She taught parents about raising toddlers for twenty-five years. Now she writes. The secret to toddlers is getting enough sleep. Monica hasn’t found the secret to writing, yet, but hopes to.

A FIRST BOOK
Shepherdstown, West Virginia, 18…

1

On they went in, the intention was to kill, no mercy, and the bullets piercing fleshes, breaking bones, young and elders, whenever they saw them running projectiles followed them, and the horror of whimpering and mixing of lascivious laughers conveyed the impression being carried their death from these fragile young girls hidden behind the curtains, underneath the chairs and beds. There was no place to camouflage.

            She could not be sought by the way they had been acting since they had come, talked with rage with Mr. Ruffalo, who pressed his strong hand covered with soil and blood over his wife’s chest, to save her life; then grasped an old shotgun, listening no more to the intruders, to send them to hell. One of them. Gerald Goldsmith, a young man about nineteen, still a baby, but the expression of a cold killer, held him before him, with demure giggle, putting five bullets into his sixty-five-year body. Two joined him in that game of fastest draws, talking with his lovely wife, expecting them to leave her alive. They didn’t, but she looked up at them accusingly. “You’ll burn in hell,” she said valiantly. A concerto of slugs reached her. “There’re more,” one of the triggers, Albert Leyna, said. “An Indian girl, perhaps.” ”No. He has six daughters. The younger one.” “Where?” “That’s missin’.”

            At the last moments they found her, trembling and she was embraced herself with the Indian young girl, and there’s no use making a fuss, because they aimed their pistols to them. “What’re we gonna to do with her?” “I could do plenty things on her.” “Oh, see. That’s time out.” “Burn it!” A voice echoed down to the hallway, even when the bodies of Olivia, the Indian girl named Enola, Marianne, and Sheila were still alive, having two of them howling in pain. “Let’s burn her.” “Her life has no value.” “May her body rest in peace before I take from it my pleasure.” “Well, it’ll be for a second.” They tossed coins in the air. Chito Lapid, Ollie McLemore, William Raths, Eddie Laughin, Milton Labertson. Chito Lapid won. “Ya’ll be always a cheater.” Chito grasped her and tossed her over to the right side, making a lot of fighting, screaming and begging, which, Enola, already wounded, working herself bravely to protect her as her brawny skin from her pierced long white robe broken lose, and there was a temptation in front of these unhealthful men. “No!” That girl was a tiger, fingernails came to Chito’s face and pulled out, and this beast roared, her action making him to rise. “Fire! Let’s go!” The first layers of fire, taking the second column of the dried wall, holding mordaciously the room where Enola and Olivia were, one by one, irretrievably, the fire eating that part of the parlor. “Let’s carry it out. This may cost some silver in Loyan Hill Crackers.” Howard Todd, with his two hands in full, gestured ahead, jogged across the house, not fear about the fire. He turned his head, watching Larry Gandara, a mix blood, and Samuel French and Robert Freehill, almost holding his pants below the knees, skulked along the corridor, then a fearful scream, a girl stumbled with a Bible, wretched with a pistol. Now upset and helpless, cursing to each one of them. He did not wait. A pellet pushed her backward, and the body fell under the ground. The tongue of fire licked that side of the third room and to the spacy kitchen-room area, while a last call was heard from outside of the house, and the voice was belonged to Roderick Fletcher.

            Rudell Brinckman, Timothy Arcway, Lane of the Fu, Mel Louram, Lon Lopez, and Dwight Mitran climbed on their pure blood mares.

            Roderick Fletcher, pulling away his magnificent horse, peeped at the house in fire as though looking through it and into the rooms of his mother, father, his sisters and brothers, now dead in ages and buried in his family church below Organ Moon, making in the hazy past which occasionally flashed unclear Joseph Gilberg Ruffalo had to do with those deaths, if Father Phillip Perkins had been the generator between Stephen Matterson Wetzer and him.

            He pressed his lips with a brutal grip gazed down at his men and then away.

            “We’re goin’ to collect our money and everyone will be free. And there’s no bless any longer.”

            He kicked the sides of the horse, and the animal galloped ahead. At a leisurely pace, they followed him, down the slopes from the south cut to the open south road, to a long road covered with dead crickets and birds, to Hudson City, passed the new construction of the Railroad Station, to the luxurious mansion of Stephen Matterson Wetzer. They found him surrounded by his two sons, David and Karry. Below the spacious porch a solid line of entourage. Holding the pistols and rifles, elegantly across the chests, they stared at every move.

            Stephen Matterson Wetzer, a self-player of the new Hudson City, a man of many fingers, had been expecting him sooner or dead, as he had planned it. He did not speak. He raised his hand. One of his elites, Tung Lonsberg, stepped back from the corner. He brought three bags filled with golds. He tossed them several feet from where Roderick Fletcher’s horse was. He could see by the nervous blinks of his eyes he did not like such attitude of Tug’s manner, making now a mocked expression across his face.  Snappily, Roderick’s right moved. Two bullets hit Tung Lonsberg’s holster and naked away from his pistols, he was at mercy to Roderick. A single bullet directly to his forehead and sent him to death.

            There was a fretful moment among them, but Roderick and Stephen were cool, watching each one their weakness.  Stephen smirked.

            “That will be the last time I’m going to see you, Mr. Fletcher.”

            Having a moment of contemplation over the new train station and the church, the new construction of the new building of City Hall and others, Roderick said mysteriously, “One day we will be linked somehow.”

             As important as he was, he called Mel. “Take the money.” Then, the glimpsed at Dwight. He nodded. Dwight moved his horse to the porch and from the back of the animal he removed five heads inside a bag and tossed them before Stephen. Roderick looked fixedly at him. “You never play fair.”

            He pushed the stallion backward, now arrogantly, fearless, he tipped the horse below, and he strolled out of the Stephen Matterson Wetzel’s territory.

            “Fool!”

            Father Phillip Perkins made his appearance. He turned to look at the distance where Roderick and his pose had disappeared.

            “Has he any idea what I did?”

            “He will never go to figure it out.” He stepped further. Only God will.”

2

Gradually melting by fire, the house could have created the impression that the entire foundation would come down with the last stones.

            On the netter side of the second layer as if a wild dog cub had done, Enola forced herself up from the afire wood of the floor and flipped her body around the ashes. One could she was in the downstream. She moved to safety. Her back scorched, her hair was gone, which she dismissed the possibility her adoptive family, her father, mother, and her siblings were alive, and thinking she might have missed one, her face twitched.

            Enola got to her feet and stepped forward. The igneous smoke bear down her body, but she did not give up. A body faced the steamy ground of the basement. She made an effort and turned that body. “Olivia?” The girl did not respond. She saw across the chest this an old black Bible, intact, except with a hole into it.

3

They spent the whole day at Rhonda Chile’s barrack, a Negro gathering neighborhood to the pony white delivery, where she was cooking and carrying goods to the mine workers several kilometers to Luna Post. Protected but isolated by the superstition of Rhonda Chile, a New Orleans resident of the North, and the Jamaican woman by the name of Latrice Paynes, with pig’s fat and horse urine, began to cure the girls and to alleviate their massive burning, but they seemed to divide their faith that the two girls would die eventually. Contrary to law and custom to see otherwise, Fong Fei-Tseng, a lonely healer, living in Boyle Waters, and yet miles apart from Hudson City and Shepherdstown, took them with her. It was the eve of China Dragon. The next day, when the girls were supposed to die, in accordance what the Negro neighbor Tomasa Smither had told them, Fong made herself the promise not return to the Negro place.

            She put one of the girls on the grassy bed, yielding any superstition of the underworld, and cured her body with garlic roots and poisonous mushrooms and with the warm body frogs. To Olivia, she had the same remedy, carefully applied to her face, her body, and her pierced back. The cure was long, and she did not mind, remembering if she were there, a fraction of seconds earlier, when her daughter was still alive, she would able to see her next to her. Not unclear her intention at this particular moment in front of the girls, she understood good creeds would come with good results.

            It grew very cold that evening, but Fong was prepared. She had warm garments for Olivia and Enola and good nutritive roots and vegetables for their healing process, and for herself, what she needed was a heavy wrap, which she found from buffalo’s skin, and that would be all.

            During the night, she did not go sleep, watching them, silencing their pain and their fear, thinking about her daughter, and thinking again that good creeds would come with good results.

4

On the day of the 20^th of May, 18…, a little before nine o’clock, she had not yet recollected the eggs of Kusl, at the flame of the door of the house, Olivia, almost naked, watched over her walking to the well.

            “I’m hungry.”

            She halted walking across the terrain. She turned and her eyes glittered with inner light grinning. “Oh, yes, yes.” She came over to her as if she was her young daughter, she brought her chest. “Come, come. You’ll have your food. Come.”

            She brought her inside the house, making already plans, as Enola, a little shaking, stood across the corridor.

            “You two come to the table and sit. Don’t be shy, come, come,” Enola gazed at Olivia and ran next to her. “I’m going to find some clothes. I’m sure Sun Chin’s will be perfect about your age, twelve –”

            With high color, flushed reappearance, carrying Sun Chin’s clothing, she could not hold tears coming out from her eyes, and she did not want to cry before them, not at this particular moment when the girls had survived so tragically on which there would be a story to tell. The girls, feeling that hidden pain, not let anyone to tell them what this woman felt, without even talk, ambled to her, and they embraced themselves around her, and they, too, cried.

            A little relaxed, Fong touched her chest, and she said, “I Fong Fei-Tseng.”

            With inherence words, and with the same gesture, the girls said their names.

            “I’m Olivia.”

            “I’m Enola.”

            “Good, good. Now, I’ll make breakfast, and later I’m going to cure you again.”

5

 There was much to worry a good woman in 18…. Even though she did not have gold, but having two stunning young women living with her in this remote plot of land, she had to be careful. Fong’s mind was setup with the true reminded her that she had to speak with the girls and she did that evening after super.  She told her to the girls. Fong’s story was terrified. Those terrifically details were chills. The details were not to make the girls shaking, rather to have a picture about the truth world where they lived. The girls felt every word of Fong about her daughter Sun Chin. They raped her, cutting in pieces, and they made her to watch until end of that sick action of theirs, and while her husband, in pain, was losing the ground from his open the veins, they killed him and left her to live. Ending that horrific experience, she was strong enough not to cry this time, not sharing weakness in front of Olivia and Enola.  Feeling what happened to them, they did not lose a beat before Fong who had saved them and gave them a second chance to live.

            Olivia stretched the hand towards Fong and grasped her hand. “God already has given me life to ride on them, Mama Fong.”

            Without saying a word, she got to her feet. She walked to a wall and opened it by pulling one of the layered lumbers. She pulled out a medium coffer and backed up. She deposited the coffer on the surface of the table and opened it. She brought up a pair of Colt Paterson revolvers.

            “They’re yours.”

6

Town of Crossing Verdes. Its main street, a long, powdery road. It crowded with horses, wagons, and running cattle. On its steady course of day, it would be until midnight, expending at Berth’s Tavern the last silver coins and having pleasure with the girls of Madame English in the final hours. Fong’s wagon pulled by two mules, headed to Browne & Sons store in the middle of Rocky Rodeo. The passengers, Olivia and Enola, in their fourteen and sixteen respectively, relaxed next to her. They stretched their necks feeling the movement of the town, scanning of those unknown faces they still had in the mind. After Fong pulled the wagon before Browne & Son store, she gestured to the girls to get off. A dust wind sent them to cover, then moved to the store.

            The store was almost empty. A few of cowboys and drifters dealt with the high prices on boots and hats. Mr. Browne was apart, skinner and large, about sixties, watching curiously the Chinese woman entering with her two young companions.

            “How do ya to do, Miss?”

            “It’s mum you should address, Mister,” Olivia said, giving such privilege of attention to Mama Fong.

            “I apologize. I figure it was, but –”

            “But what?”

            “Never mid.”

            “You carry bullets?”

            “Oh, yes. How many?”

            “Seventy boxes.”

            “I reckon, I have,” said he, calling one of the boys, “Bruce.”

            “Yeah, Pop?”

            “Bring 70 boxes of cartridges.”

            “Yeah, Pop.”

            Abandoning all attention about the girls, who, carefully wrapped with scarfs around the faces, making hard for him or somebody else to see.

            “I do have the latest Henry rifles and the six-round .36 caliber and colt .45.” He moved to a protected vault. “Boy, help me here.”

            The younger of the Browne family, Gregg, who had discovered the scorching of Olivia’s face, feeling for them not as a benevolent admirer, could not see whose beauty would have disappeared from them; but it was disgusting from his point of taken.

            “Boy, and you with me?”

            “C’min’, Pop.”

            They brought out a selection of weapons, the latest of colt revolvers, Winchester models, and double-barreled shotguns.  While his father was on business with Fong, trying her as a solid customer, Gregg asked the girls what happened to their face.  Olivia and Enola ignored him, especially Olivia, who had been paying attention about Browne’s explanation about the latest guns, especially the six-round .36 caliber revolver and the colt 45.

            “You heard me both of you, and I reckon, I want to know.”

            The remark deserved no reply and got none. Already, his second brother brought the boxes of ammunitions. Fong gazed down at the latest weapons, and selected the six-round .36 caliber revolver and colt 45. Pistol, two each one. Happy for a good today selling, Mr. Browne added a couple of cartridges and a box of candy for the girls.

            “Ah, I must forget.”

            “What it is?”

            “Would you for any change have a self-shooting book?”

            “No, but I have the 1800 Gentlemen’s Handbook of Etiquette and Manual. Among other things, it explains in details how to hold a sword, a knife, and of course the English and French pistols for war and how to shoot.”

            “Can I see it, please?”

            “Sure.” He moved to a library and brought this huge 1760-1720 Handbook. He put the book before her and fingered to the technique pages how to hold a pistol, illustrated and explanatory footnotes.

            “I take it.”

            “Oh, yes.”

            “How much all of these?”

            Considering the new weapons, Mr. Browne made his calculation, and it came up for a total of three hundred thirty-three dollars and sixty-three cents.

            “I’ll pay for gold.”

            Fong opened a well-small purse made with rabbit’s skin underneath her long dress. With expert’s touch, she slid onto the surface of the counter five pieces of gold. The honest man quickly took a piece and put it under a telescope, then smiled broadly.

            “You seem to know the value.”

            “It should be good then.”

            “Yes, yes.”

            “Girls, let us take these to the wagon.”

            “My boys can give you a hand.”

            “We can manage, Mr. Browne.”

            Outside of the store, she took the opportunity to buy clothing for the girls, underwear, shoes and hats that the girls appreciated it very much.

            The road got easier as they headed back home. The wind was sweeter and the passage was clear down Wood Path. At home the girls jumped to the ground, and the excitement of the top of trees with birds and hunters, they could not wait to try the new clothing. They undressed before them and helped for the clothing. They saw the clothing fixed as well as the underwear. There was always a darkly expression across their face when they saw their burned body or the marks of fire across their face. Calming themselves with touch and words, and whispers of what they felt, they began creating a seal concatenation among them.

            “I will not stop until I saw them bleeding, Enola. Each one of them, and I will have any mercy.”

            “I’ll be always next you.”

            “You should. You and I for life.”

            The following morning, after a good breakfast, the first technique of shooting, of holding the heavy gun, and squeezing the trigger was hard. Though the very patient was a moment of learning, which Fong Fei-Tseng, whom both girls had created a unique bond with her and quite so, opening to each their heart, their pain, listened to that what she had been saying.

            She knew to teach shooting and killing was a different concept. There was no argument about the best sign of this concept, which offered no dilemma whether for Fong or whether for the girls.

            For days and days and for weeks and weeks Olivia had reached the amidst movements of the guns, first one and then the second, which Fong and Enola recognized, she had begun to master, and the only break in her days was when they changed bullets for the next section. That was, Olivia did sometimes ten times in the day, reaching now hundred times in the week, and three thousand times in the months.  Faster and harder, and it closed to the heart in which the heart was hidden among the leaves and woods. She started doing with difficult shoot, in night, a light only driving three meters – four, three, two, one until she reached, with precise movements of her hand, to one minute, the target. But Fong made it hardest, in a second of moving light or in motion, such during cold, hot, or when she was sleeping, or speaking with Enola about trivial, or from the woods, running over a horse, giving her no time of choosing, for she was galloping three hundred yards or more. She would hit it, as she would say, shot, and a most time she had taken her out of balance, Olivia was ready, so Mama Fong would do everything to catch her off balance.

            She could not.

            Enola was her turn. In knife she proved she was able to hit any target. She was indeed good with knives with so much of it as Olivia was on her guns. Both girls grew as one, whose beauties for which their scars of burning faces, seemed to disappear slowly, except the ones over their body, that were still scorched.

            One night as they lay in their bed, Enola said to Olivia. “Don’t you think one day would we find peace, love, or to find someone to tell him our story?”

            Olivia rolled over her right side, and she said about dreaming.

            “One day, Enola. Mama Fong says we aren’t cursed by bad spirits rather by good ones.”

            “I hope so.”

            “One day we will give peace to our mom and pop and sisters.”

            “We will.”

            “Good night.”

            “Good night.

            That day, when everyone was sleeping in the house, Olivia stepped out of the bed. She took the Bible with a hole on it, and she came into the porch. She moved a little far from the house when she was capable to see the moon, and looked up. She tried to find someone up there among the stars or in the moon. After a long time of waiting, she said quietly, “God, take care of mom, dad, and my sisters,” and she added, “Take care Enola, Mama Fong, and me, too, okay?”

            In the morning as it was a habit of her, she cocked the breakfast for Olivia and Enola, giving instructions to them to feed the animals and be careful about the drifters and unknown faces before she headed to work  in the mine in the far valley and went down into the working room, to where she had to punch  a card in front of Jett “
Fat Joe” Holt and to get the mine tools to work below.

            She held this small bag and was soon had been caught when she was hidden it under the second layers of the dress. One, Theodore McDowell, had caught her second movement. One by one he told to Jonathan Marty, Glen Hurtado and Ngo “The Mute” Ong what he saw. As the call of working echoed into the earlier morning, they watched Fong closer. Unluckily enough, they moved her to the rollers, so there was an end of the watching until the call of ending shift would take several hours later.

            Ending the call, after she had collected her ten pieces of gold at Jacaste’s table, the accountant of the Matterson Wetzer, thinking to buy a pair of knives for Enola, she headed to town. There was a chance she would be back on the time to see the girls. So, there she was galloping down the road. A bullet hit her horse, and not dead yet, and it was the first of its kind, as Theodore and Jonathan came out behind the bush. Glen stood up on the top of the hill and Ngoc ambled along the edge of the road.

            Fong was able to move her body, but she could not go anywhere. She saw them coming and she recognized them.

            “We saw what you hidden some small rabbit under your skirt.”

            “You’ll find better virgins than me in town. I am just an old woman.”

            Jonathan could not hold back. He triggered his long .45 colt. Fong’s right arm was gone and sent her into a paramount pain. “Glen, find it.”

            Glen retrieved his mountainous knife and bladed upon Fong’s dress.  He found the small bag and with the knife made another cut. He tossed it to him.

            “You’ve a good reputation on keep it some places, as I’ve said before. Don’t you have more?”

            Snarled of agony spreads over Fong’s face, “No, I don’t have more.”

            “You should have,” he said. “Mute, changes horse. You pull her in the wagon and let us have a ride to her hatched house.”

7

Olivia and Enola weren’t worry about Fong’s absence at this moment. The sun was still hot over the hills and the day was marvelous. They had washed all clothes either from Mama Fong and theirs, and they were in preparation to make easier for Mama Fong what they were going to eat for dinner. Maybe both agreed to eat rabbit and dried snakes that Mama Fong had on the stable, or maybe they would agree to kill  a chicken, and having a good dinner for a chance; yet, to this, Fong sometimes found this special dinner for special occasion, and both young wondered what they would do.

            “She’s here, Olivia,” Enola said, distinguishing first the wagon of Mama Fong. “But she isn’t alone.”

            Olivia jogged to the window.

            “I got that feeling she is hurt.”

            Without waiting, Enola withdrew from the window, went to the kitchen, took a bag made up with fibers, and quickly as she could, she brought from the room the pistols. She put them into the bag.

            “They are in there.”

            Fearless, Olivia reached the door and opened it. She stepped out of the house and edged herself along the porch. First, she recognized the pulled horse was not belonging to Fong’s wagon, and those faces were unknown to them. It made Olivia to realize, evil had touched once more her life and the others whom was around her.

            “Who may you be, sirs?”

            “Your pops from town!” Theodore said, laughing.

            Olivia’s eyes spotted from the wagon that blood and Ngoc the Mute Ong pointing a rife someone on the bed of the wagon.

            “Mama Fong, is you in there?”

            “Oh, is she your mam? I can’t see any feature of you look like hers. What a shame! She looks to me an Indian girl and you a white girl. What do we have here, a foster bordering school? Where are the others?” As Glen Hurtado was about to get off the horse, he halted. He saw the kitchen bag for eggs had fallen in the porch and appeared those pistols. “Oh, damn. Do you know how to shoot with these, Miss?”

            By the time the last words had been formed inside Glen Hurtado’s mouth, a bullet pierced his right ear, a second broken his jaw, while her left-hand pistol had targeted Theodore’s forehead. A single bullet jerked off from the horse. Ngoc the Mute Ong would choice to kill Fong but a kitchen knife reached miraculously his fingers holding the rifer, and when he tried to change gear, a kitchen folk disappeared through his neck.

            “Enola, Check Mama Fong.”

            “No!”

            Jonathan Marty hopped up from the wagon, missing Enola, shooting, and Olivia’s right arm twisted, elegantly, she pressed the trigger. Jonathan crushed ungraciously in the terrain, not yet to figure out he had been caught in the air. Cold like a stone, Olivia got up from the ground, peeped over the man by the name of Glen Hurtado, who was still moving, putting a bullet in his head, and halted next to the wagon. Mama Fong smiled at her. In hurry, Olivia brought her to the house with the help of Enola.

            “I don’t want to die yet, my girls, understand?”

            “You would not.”

            “How can we fix her?”

            “I still have life inside me. Go to the kitchen, Enola, and put water to boil. From these vases on the right, getting from each one a spoon and pour all of them into the water. Can you do that?”
            “Yes, Mama Fong.”

            “Go, Enola. Go. Now, Olivia.  You’re going to remove some powder from these cartridges and spread over this arm, and you will fire it.”

            “Could be another away?”

            “I haven’t time for a second option. I’m afraid you have many but this is going for me.”

            Each girl began to work what she had told. Enola was doing well and what Mama Fong had told her, teaching some Chinese words here and there, she was following precise her instructions. Olivia, on the other hand, had a dozen of cartridges removed from the pistols and spread the powder over the bloody joints. She fired them and powder began to cook flesh. Mama Fong’s face turned red and white. A moment later she had passed out.

            Week days, Mama Fong received her adopted daughters in the room. She was healthy and happy, making them to sit. For a moment the face of Fong had a double dimension of being alive and grateful in finding them.

            “I made it possible, didn’t I?”

            “Yes, Mama Fong,” Olivia said.

            She took from the other side of the bed, a well-documented portfolio and handed it to Olivia.” They are the people who killed my daughter and my husband.”

            Olivia took the portfolio and read the names. There were seven individuals and each one of them had portraited by skillful sketcher.

            “We’ll find them.”

            “It will be unfair what I did but I accomplished my love to each one of you. There are more.” Underneath the blanket, she produced more documents. “My husband was a calculated man and with eye on the future. I’ve been working in that mine if one day I found them. It never happened except you two. Take it. Soon, I will leave to San Francisco.”

            “How? When? Why?”

            “This isn’t your concern now, Olivia. By the time you done with this, both of you are going to live well.”

            She opened the document, not familiar about transfer and heirs, Olivia understood there was a kind of settlement.

            “Are you a rich woman, Mama Fong?”

            “My husband was, so half of this is for both of you. You need money to move around, and be able to find those killers and those who make you to wait so long. You are free and independent.”

            “How can we find them?”

            “There is an address on that documents and there would be a way of sending money when you need them.”

            Olivia and Enola stood.  They came over to her and kissed her.

            “It looks us as we’re blessed.”

            “You are.”

            “When will you leave?”

            “No, I don’t want any one of you see me leaving. Let’s make a transaction of living.”

8

            Palm Vista, WI, May 1, 18…

Gregory McLoud was a cattle and horse thief, a murder back to Oregon, and a wanted rapist from West Virginia and Kansas. Recently, he had killed three innocent men and a bartender at Solar’s Bar. Bernard Colclough, a former Civil War soldier and Indian killer, was there, laughing and stealing what was belonging to them, and Oscar Morena, a Mexican revolutionist of Tejano’s holders, made up the group of Gregory. There was also Nancy Glad, who, besides Gregory, holding visibly, a single shot revolver, could be added to Gregory’s world. The first two had to do with Sun Chin’s death, except Oscar Morena. They were still active along these parcels of Wisconsin.

            Each one of them joined a hot meal at Batt’s Bar and with plenty coins, they seemed life was good as it could be.  It took five weeks to find them which Enola had become very sharp in finding people. The telegraph from the White Store’s Communicator, anticipated and confirmed, come three days when Olivia and Enola reached the City of Berg. It addressed to Mr. McLoud, Augustin, a lative of McLoud & Family and told them to tell to the server do not sent any correspondences. Here, Mr. McLoud said pathetically simply, but Gregory cursed it for the hatred of his father. A week later, they tracked them first in the City of Abyss Coal and a second time in Arpa, and then here in Palma Vista, population of five hundred, mostly cowboy families, farmers, and runners.

                 Lodging at Dropp Hotel, a few houses from Batt’s Bar, Enola helped Olivia dressing. “Will you carry the pistols?”

            “I’ll use them when we arrive. You leave them in the purse. It’ll make a drastic effect. None men will expect that.”

            “Then this French purse will be perfect.”

            “You bought it for your knives.”

            “I feel sexier closer to my skin.”

            Both women smiled.

            Enola picked up a hat from its case. She gave it to Olivia. She put it on and modeled. “It’s perfect.”

            “That gentlemen from Kansas chose it for you.”

            “Yes, he did. It’s so bad I didn’t catch his name.”

            Culson… Martin Culson.”

            “Oh, yes.”

            Without looking at Enola, she moved out of the room. Enola followed her. She closed the door behind her. She joined her in the lobby. Keeping to themselves, Olivia and Enola came from the lobby into the narrowed but long porch. Carefully, they reached the corner of the hotel, and they stepped into the dust street. They crossed the street and headed to Batt’s Bar.  Daddies and young men admired at the austere expression of Olivia, walking besides this Indian woman.

            They entered.

            At the left, they were Gregory and his entourage. Olivia held several feet from the table. Nancy Glad stopped eating, and she had made her world by touched choices and that solemnly face did not fool her, she said, “Get lost. He’s taken.”

            Gregory McLoud felt rewarded, a good-looking man in his own world. He made a gracious smirk; but Bernard Colclough wasn’t so sure. He got that strange feeling.

            “Miss Sun Chin sends me from heaven.”

            “Who?” Gregory asked manically.

            Olivia nodded to Enola. She brought the colt revolvers from the French purse, but Bernard could not wait what this young woman could do, his revolver’s trigger sound. Knowing some possibility could not be perfect, Olivia’s long fingers found the revolver’s trigger guard, when she perceived the man would not wait. Without having yet a firm grip, she rested it on the flat palm of the hand and triggered. In a total surprise, Bernard Colclough jerked back. Oscar Morena saw the opportunity but Olivia had already the grasp of the pistol. She got him, then, while Gregory had hesitated a moment, glancing down at the young woman who was still shaking by such ability, a bullet sent him to the wall. Holding the two revolvers now around her waist, she shook her head to Nancy, then moved back her revolvers to the holsters. Nancy hadn’t understood the message – a single pellet pushed her back.

9

With the course of fourteen days Olivia and Enola lodged at the Ferry Blue Hotel in Ferry Blue City in South Dakota. The fur trade was part of Ferry Blue’s business, to where young and old White folks, Negros, Indians and Quakers would pass one or another. It was the toughest environment Olivia and Enola had endured. Life in Ferry Blue was most resilient, mightiest and slowest, where there was no sense of innocence or purity.  A living in this borough was brutal and there was no word for women, who were making a living among these excruciating men, selling their bodies or working sides by sides with them. Many times, Enola had drawn her knife, to cut one or two. There was a man like Gary de las Lollas or Claun Sweetie Dibble, both trappers and buffalo hunters could not have no for an answer, so Enola had to send both of them to see a doctor several miles from Ferry Blue’s Office Fur, but unfortunately both of them died before they reached the doc’s cottage.

            Most of time Olivia would stay indoor laughing on behalf Enola’s experience, receiving news from Enola, or watching the rain falling from the sky. Where, for a little while, she looked up Enola as a big sister, laying next to her, on account of having being so lonely and sad to the life they had chosen involuntarily. The sadness prevailed in few moments would heal for the time being and their life they had been chosen would subside along the way, and nothing would remain to indicate that the current events a mission must be followed to the end, excepting a noticeable moment finally had come that Rezon Hyman had emerged after all. Escorting by Glenn Kloom, and two Negroes, Rodney Chairs and San Onglis, they received new he was in the area.

            The rain kept falling.

            Enola, after she had narrated the stories and her experience what happened today, came over to Olivia.

            “Do you want me to read something?”

            As she was about to reply, she halted. Someone had slipped a note under the table. They knew the mysterious sender, and Enola hurried to pick it up.

            “There has been another road assault at River Cannal. Seven carriers have been killed.”

            “Don’t you think are they behind that?”

            “There’ve been so far four times at different sites, but closest to the Maiming Shell. They seem so desperate.”

            “Let’s wait a week or so. We’ll post ourselves at the corner of Hill’s Ear, to where the first robbery took place and those Indians were killed.”

            On September 12, the rain stopped, and there was a beauteous day, but the ground was very impossible to adventure to the open land. For an account of what followed Olivia and Enola were indebted to hearsay to Sender Sha, they learned a cargo of fur from the other side of trail, north, that was part of the Ferry Blue’s trade, would reach this afternoon. Very earlier, not yet the light of the morning peeked upon the horizon, they moved to the corner of River Cannal, a place converted into dangerous realms, now, with the rain and snow, water was everywhere. As they gazed down to the watery passage, Enola indicated the sides of the abyss would be perfect.

            She was alright.

            They encamped there. Wrapped up with heavy clothes, keeping themselves warm, they witnessed the pulchritude of nature at first hand, and believe it or not, it was the first time they had seen such fascination. Toward the Ferry Blue’s passing, a dozen of horsemen and wagons galloped and waged along the road. Of course, Rezon Hyman and his men took it as an ambush, which Olivia and Enola watching the effective of his men, taking with them all the cured fur and more than $20,000 dollars from the USA post.

            They did not move, excepting when the picture of Rezon Hyman and Glenn Kloom detailed what the document of Fong Fei-Tseng had been written. The other five included Rodney Chairs and San Onglis Olivia had dismissed them.

            For a little while, he and his bunch took the road, then the trail of the river. As they went up, Olivia and Enola caught a momentary glimpse of Rezon leering through the fog from his back of the horse ahead like a ghost. They knew Rezon and his assemblage had a long way to reach the end of Blue’s Passage Olivia and Enola were half of it, and they would catch them first in the earlier light of the morning. They even took their time to eat some dried rabbit, bread and bean. Then they cut off the rocky ground, that was a junk of space below. They passed Maiming Shell, and safely, they had a good view of the land below.  Hours later, they saw Rezon Hyman and his throng struggling to get this part of the parcel. There was an order. They abandoned the wagons.  The cured fur transferred over the backs of horses and for a few hours there was a relief. That was enough what they had in front of them.

            Rezon could not give up. A member of the herd complained, and a bullet reached him.

            Hours passed.

            Olivia and Enola relaxed. They watched them from the top of Hill’s Ear.

            Tired and hungry, he called to rest. As soon as they ascertained the instance of the group, of course would not do any craziness, he joined with his second commander Merle Eryhs and Kan Rogers.

            The initiative ceremony of food, then guards, who would be the first took place on Rezon’s side, Merle Eyhas, where he had all the goods and the money. Before being let to the trust of the men, among them Kan Rogers — such as the latter indication – give them a hope that tomorrow he was going to distribute the goods and the fur at Matterson’s Trench.

            At this instance, one observant could have a picture of him. He would recognize that he was unrecognizable. Mama Fong or her daughter would have problems to recognize him, except the broken nose and that mole of the right side of the face. He was part of her Sun Chin’s death. That was he was responsible to the cuts, appeared to have before Rezon Hyman’s an act of power. During that time, he intended to be resolute by the act of mercy, which, in spite of him, seemed to come from the boss himself: Brian Hoos, whom he wanted him to elevate to the second rank. Unlikely to Rezon, Glenn Kloom was the hoarse chuckler, who had enjoyed the last drops of Sun Chin’s body.

            Paranoiac and dreaded he did not feel so sure about that now, being the leader, he could be killed by anyone of them. The rest of the men had full asleep. And when they were awakened, they found no horses, just two women standing in front of them.

            “Who are you?”

            Olivia peeped at Glenn Kloom and then she peeped back at Rezon Hyman. A prolonged silence followed his preliminary examination, and she was wondering he and the others would remember the name of Sun Chin. A matter of fact, they did.  Rezon was proud what he had done and he appeared to have a link to his past history, a way of power, domination. He and Glenn had told the story. They had recognized that brave Chinese girl, the small man with funny eyes and that woman who would give herself to them to let the daughter go. Each one understood such as Rezon Hyman, Glenn Kloom, Rodney Chairs and San Onglis, and the others thinking about it, no good would come from it.

            Olivia separated the five people were not on Mama Fong’s list, not yet sure what she was going to do with men.

            The unknown female voice then directed them to take steps forward and stop at the edge of the river – if they wanted to run – there would be one way to go.

            Olivia took three steps forward and halted, watching Rezon Hyman, who did not know that woman was.

            Each of them still had their pistols and there was once choice to make, an opportunity she was sure as herself several years earlier, Sun Chin would never have.

            “I’m going to kill each one of you because Sun Chin.”

            Death reached to their ears like an unwashed kiss. Yet, there was no nonsense from them.  They knew whoever was before them could or could not deliver that. They acted accordingly to the ability to hit first, and they were fast, and ready to kill – but when Olivia and Enola turned back to the others, each one of Sun Chin’s responsible of her horrified death were killed.

            “You aren’t innocent before God, and you have a choice to make.”

            They peeked over at Rezon Hyman and the others, killing by single bullets and the drawing knives, hitting their forehead or their throat, difficulty targets. But human perception sometimes was hard to comprehend, except Kan Rogers, having no intention to draw before these unknown women, with except of Octavio Zelenki, Merle Eryhas, Rick Iskin, and Dellone Parr. Their cocky pride was too much, and they exchanged looks among them. They went for it.

            Standing alone, Kan Rogers did not move. Olivia and Enola stared at him. First, Enola, who closed her cloak over her chest, and she followed by Olivia, retrieving her pistols to its holsters.  Slowly, she backed up, and she joined Enola who was holding the horse for her. She hopped over the mare’s back.

            “Tell me, where is Brian Garcia?”

            Kan Rogers had problem to register that name, and when he corrected it as Bryant Hoos and then as Mario Zapata alias Brian Garcia, Olivia nodded.

10

In 18… were still the predicament of Indian lands, the disputed points of Tejanos, the native Mexicans, and the sixty-four thousand dollar question of Negroes and Whites had been still boiling. Upon that there were these Civil War former unionist and southern soldiers doing any kind of killing downwards San Jose, the land of Pan was large, and a dangerous place for a woman as it had been in Ferry Blue. The names of the young women, Olivia and Enola, had caught up finally the eye of Stephen Matterson Wetzer accidently, of course, not because of the description of them, who at various periods have occupied nothing than a remote sense of fear to the man. It had come from Kan Rogers, one of Rezon’s pack members, who delivered the news of the cured fur and the money and the lost, was struck, of course, only by the way these runners were killed down at Ferry Blue.  He supposed to be happy, not worried, because his name and his past affairs had been tightened up for a good reason and he was now a businessman and admired. Curiosity and creed would kill him.

            Stephen Matterson Wetzer made two fatal mistakes and that would cost him everything. Former Captain Harold Percy, head of his internal security, brought to the presence Kan Rogers, now as he emerged to know as an important man of influence in Virginia, the name of Sun Chin could not yet sounded inside his head,  but Hua Chenyu-Tseng, the Chineman from the east and his clear vision of the water and the railroad station using his own people to make it happens and the land behind Joseph Ruffalo’s territory, two events quite different would fall over him from a different perspective, to Hudson City. 

            Imperceptibly, the two remote families came to his mind.

            A diabolical plan of acknowledgment had begun cooking inside to the former unionist soldier Wetzer. He knew a little of history about the Joseph Gilberg Ruffalo family. His father, Carl Gilberg Ruffalo, was a darkly character against the powerful northeast Iroquois confederacy, where all Enola’s family was murdered, more than seven thousand. Not so proud in front of the 17… massacre of the East Canyon, but Carl Gilberg hadn’t much thought about that, rather after the India war ended, Joseph’s father had inherited a lot amount of lands several kilometers from the tribe territory. They described it as the golden mine. When Carl Gilberg Ruffalo died, the young character of Joseph Gilberg Ruffalo was established, but there was always a dispute in front of Roderick Fletcher and Joseph Gilberg Ruffalo families.

            Evil could be very persuaded, Phillip Perkins, spirit father of Stephen, told him, when God began to play fool with people’s head.

            It was then Stephen Matterson Wetzer struck with precision as a Devil Lord, killing every people in Roderick Fletcher’s family during a rainy day. A week exact, Young Roderick was not either a good boy, but attached to the old man’s dream. As evil knew how human mind works over damaged individuals, he held a private meeting in one of the chapel’s rooms in the back country. Stephen told him about his family killer and the reason. This irritated the young Roderick Fletcher could not see the whole picture. Thirsty of blood and persuaded by Father Phillip Perkins, which, for a God’s witness, insisted he saw all that happened in that rainy day.

            Not yet ended up the drastic plan, he brought to it a dead Carl Gilberg Ruffalo, whom they had beaten him to death.

11

 Now at the office, Stephen Matterson Wetzer’s past appeared to catch with him, but he was still safe, having a certain dignity and sanctify of a man of proper, and again, secured in his own world of money and privilege, which even the present event would distinguish him from Olivia’s knowledge that he had to do part or whole, her family death.

            Yet, he had made a grave error to go after that two unknown women, and inquiring in the most courteous terms in the private security matter if they had discovered his past.         That mistake notable building the fall of Stephen Matterson Wetzer and his entire family.

            Unaware of this new development, Olivia and Enola left the train of Sola Station and at Travel’s Inn they bought the best horses of Burton the Horse Gaber and they headed to Arizona, then to the territory of Texas, to a place called El Matajo, the Pan land, where Bryant Hoos, Brian Garcia, or Mario Zapata had been living well for the past years.

            For several weeks the shattered terrain El Matajo terrain remained deserted. So, it was the Town of Calinto, to where a fight between the white folks and Indians had been going on for months, with bloody causalities at both sides. A few kilometers from El Matajo, Olivia and Enola encountered another fighting, they almost fell into it. It was the Tejanos and Mexicans, then the Negroes and bounty hunters. At least there was a peace, but the tension was high. Olivia and Enola, dressing as prominent ladies from Baja California Sur, reached Tacas Tavern. The innkeeper, Señora Tulia Tacas, told them she did not have room for months, but Mrs. Dame Arrington would not mind to share her mansion with them.

            Mrs. Dame Arrington did not have a mansion, but a brothel at the Mexican territory, El Creek, and she was not a dame, rather a madame. So, at El Creek, with a hundred of slaves and prostitutes, the old woman accepted the ladies, except Enola, who told Olivia that Indian woman must sleep in the room outside of the house.

            “You have to realize I’ll not allow you to do that. Not you or any one like you, Madame Arrington.”

            “This is my house and I abide my own rule, Miss…”

            “This rule has changed at this particular moment, Madame Arrington – and please, don’t let me to do it in a different way.”

            “Are you threating me, young lady?”

            “I am telling you.”

            Judging for a certain portrait on wooden still in the gallery, the woman was indeed a Kansas madame, a prostitute from her early days.

            “I can throw you and your lover Indian out.”

            Olivia’s hand crossed Mrs. Dame Arrington’s face and called one of her assistants to lock her in the gallery, telling her a new madame from Fresno arrived, and telling her also, those Negroes or young women wanted to leave, they could do so. When this settled, with her quick eyes, and cold expression, Olivia learned Mrs. Dame Arrington was a bad person, and Olivia was glad to make those changes.

            Five days passed.

            The rancho of Mario Zapata finally had been discovered, so also the presence of Olivia and Enola.

            It was afternoon when Bryant Hoos alias Mario Zapata or Brian Garcia had been described. He was now a ranchero, a married man, doing well, whether with the Indians, Negroes, Tejanos or Mexicans, but his past had not changed before Olivia or Enola. There was no song of redemption.

            Receiving them with a smile face after the credentials of Olivia as a widow was established, needing help to transport two thousand cattle from Arizona to Texas, he was happy to be chosen. A day later, he invited them to drink horchata and sweet breads in the rancho. Seating at table, Olivia womanly gazed at her pretty woman who had given him two girls, then, deliberately, into Bryant Hoos’ eyes. She spoke in Spanish, another ability of Olivia’s talent.

            “¿Conoce usted Sun Chin, una señorita de Loyan Hills Crackers?”

            “No. I’m afraid I don’t know. Is Mrs. Alvarado your real name?”

            “Gregory NcLoud knew her, such as Bernard Colclough, Rezon Hyman…”

            “Wait! Who are you?”

            “Now it comes to you, isn’t it? She was the daughter of Fong Fei-Tseng and Hua Chanyu-Tseng…”

            His wife, Maria, asked him what was going on, but Bryant made her to shut up. A past, independently of what he was now and then, reached him. His violent past was gone. He did not wear pistols and had a family now.

            “You can do that – not in front of my wife and kids… not like this.”

            “You seem to understand, Mr. Hoos, judging from your reaction, you know quite so what I am talking. That’s the truth. That past will be catching you one or another.”

            Enola produced a knife, then a pistol. She put them on the surface of the table. Elegantly, she pushed them directly to him.

            “Maria, entra a la casa.”

            “¿Qué pasa, mi amor? ¿Qué quieren estas mujeres?”

            “Your husband, “Olivia said in Spanish,” isn’t Mario Zapata. His real name is Bryant Hoos, and he is just a killer…a rapist…”

            “No, he doesn’t.  You’ve taken the wrong man. He’s Mario Zapata…”

            Bryant pushed the table towards Olivia and Enola, not care much about his wife who had jerked back hard in the floor. In motion, Olivia and Enola hopped themselves aside. Bryant moved quickly to Enola and missed to grasp the pistol. Olivia rolled over the floor as she paid attention to Enola.  She saw she was on her feet, then forwarded herself to Bryant, who, not seeing yet any knife or weapon on her, fastened himself to her. Enola passed by.  Bryant’s right hand reached his throat and his eyes over her, not yet seen any blade in her hands, balancing to right, left, trying to say a world, but blood could not let him to do so.

            Enola’s hand closed and brought a small blade to place.

            They gazed over at Maria, then walked to the pole horse holder. They rubbed the horse over the neck and jumped on their back. By now a curious group of workers and servants began showing up.

            Olivia and Enola changed horses at Colling Mouth Post. Twenty-three kilometers from Abigail Holder, having in mind to rest at Lodger Inn, a sleeping house along the road to Missouri, a rain of bullets welcome them. They did not expect such surprise, but they took it as a message that something had gone wrong. “Don’t you know where these bullets come from?” “No, Olivia, but we ought to drive the animals away from the stream.” “Yes.” “Look, a fort.” A strong fort of rock was ahead. They did not know if they would make it. Not know from where the bullets were coming, because of the dimly weather, a bullet hit Olivia’s horse. “Oh.” Her fall was painful, while Enola’s horse reached half of the road. A few yards from the fort of rock her horse had the same fate. Several feet away from each other, surveying at various points along the odd grounds and bushlands, Harold Percy and his thirty horsemen, the former captain of Mexican War halted the horse. He waved them to move towards an earthwork. He had taken a good sight of the land but he did not dare to move to the fort. Later, he sent ten cowboys to investigate, to where the ladies had fallen. They were the inner security of Stephen Matterson Wetzer and selected by Former Captain Percy. Knowing the game of the wild savanah warfare, they moved with their horses, then at foot. They strolled between rocks and bushes. Louis Carmal, Red Wright, Vincent Psom, and Ted Polls had been killed simultaneously with single bullets to their head. Behind the strong fort of rocks, Olivia anchored there. Holding a double-barreled, Olivia slipped to left a little, as she was unable to see her body for wounds. Below, Enola, now, holding a Henry rifle, feeling the pain of her sides, trying to move up, not knowing where Olivia was.

            The cowboys. They tried to fire off their long rifle at the rocky fort, and could not, when Enola had that eye upon them. Five shots heard, and they were dead.

            When Olivia heard the shots from where she was, carefully, not making too much pressure to the right foot, she crawled to the crust of the fort, and whispered.             “Enola? Enola?”

             “I am here below you and please, do no move.”

             “Where are they?”

            “Your right.”

            They saw that tall figure of Harold Percy, unknown either from Olivia or Enola. For a moment Olivia and Enola thought they were deputies from Oklahoma or Texas, to what they did to the mean Mrs. Dame Arrington to let all slaves and most of her young harlots go free. There were no badges or a way to confirm they were the law-enforcers.

            “Let’s take these bulls out of our away.”

            “They’re twenty of them.”

            “Well, it is our lucky day, sister.”

            “Guess.”

            A second ballad of bullets immediately echoed through the passage. Harold Percy gaited to right, which had probably seen another opportunity in taking these women out; but when his people around him had begun falling, and three more galloping besides him snagged from their horses, it was clear for him those girls knew how to shot. Narrowed his thought, he pulled back. A bullet pierced his left arm. One of his commanders came to assist him, but he found his own death. Harold fell into the lowest ground where Enola was a few minutes ago, and still, bullets kept coming over him. Knowing his technique did not work, he anxiously made an attempt to find a way to get them. Two of his gang members had been shot down a foot away from him. All around him was death. Hopelessness of attempting to catch them, he observed Christopher Jacobs, Tommy Jeffers, Nick Jim, and Ja Gilbon, one by one, his bunch members kept falling.

            At the time he came to the rocky fort, the two of Stephen Matterson Wetzer’s sons and a dozen of men came over to him.

            “What?”

            “They’re impossible to catch’em.”

            “Are we talkin’ about those women from Texas?”

            “Yes. The information from the Mrs. Arrington and Bryant’s woman have useful to this part. Not to mention from the horse depot, this is the way.”

            David and Kerry, elder sons of the Wetzer family, shook their head.

            “You’re jokin’.”

            “No, sir. I’m not.”

            “A captain like yourself. You’re gettin’ old and you’ve been not one but two times, Mr. Percy.”

            “A former one, and I have been shot before.”

            “Whatever,” Juan and his men, sweepin’ out that part, and Ernie, and a couple of you guys, come with us. Brother, can you believe this?”

            “What do I believe it does not make any sense to chase these two women. Who are they? He didn’t tell us as many secrets he rather would take them with the grave.  I can see our pop has become too old and too fragile.”

12

            By the time they were talking, Olivia had made a tourniquet to Enola’s right foot and she did one for hers, as well. Now, alleviated from pains, having a good view what was happening below, she contemplated Juan and three more, and Ernie, who had left Jeff and the others crossing the difficulty trail, adventured alone between the layers of rocks. Towards a distance of hundred feet, Enola’s knife hit him. She made another kill, and become acquainted with the presence of David and Kerry, not pleased crossing this site.

            Olivia directed her rifle to Ernie, but Enola touched her. She turned and held. She indicated where David, Kerry, and the seven men were, trying to find a way to get to the top of the hill. The two women tossed themselves onto the flat dry terrain. Enola took Ernie and others with the touch of the blades. Having this side for themselves, there was no change for the Wetzer’s men and David and Kerry, or Harold or anyone would stop them.

            “Where is Ernie? Ernie? Juan?” David asked to his brother a little left, struggling with his horse.

            Olivia targeted him. A shot was heard. David fell. His brother saw the danger. Pressing himself against the horse, he turned the animal to run.  Kerry could not. Seeing a woman, with dirty bandages, and a cold determination across his face, he made an effort to get her.  He faced her. Olivia inquired, “Why?”  And Kerry at this instance recognized, in the way she had been asking him, she was unaware what was the story his father had told him and his brother. Shocking, knowing the woman who was before him were indeed one of Joseph Gilberg Ruffalo’s daughters, Olivia Gilberg Ruffalo and unable to put it altogether, drew on Kerry.

            “You cannot be.”

            For a moment, Olivia was very angry and there was a reason. Her family could be alive, and she could be married or she could be traveling with her sisters as she had been dreaming with Marianne, Sheila, Patti,  and Enola – all together, like a big family; then she went forward, but her pistol was already vomiting fire directly to Kerry’s body, and six bullets reached him until the empty sounds of the gun made her to comprehend it was out of bullets. Then she fell on her knees, and Enola was there, hugging her, crying with her.

13

West Virginia, Feb 19, 18…

 The news of the telegram had passed, because there was none. The gleaming snow fields had gone from the long oak private pathway to the luxurious house of the Matterson Wetzer family. The church, in its darkly glory, which it had been built on the rich land, with several acres to the left wing of the house stood, appeared indifferent of what was underneath its shadows or in the cotton fields a hundred of feet from Matterson Railroad Station as two women got out of the train and jumped on their stallion. Converted to garden and fancy fence, Olivia and Enola separated – except, of course, what they had in mind.

            In the church, Pastor Phillip Perkins saying goodbye to his late sinners, and smiled at the Indian young woman walking toward him.

            “You must go the other door, my child. Sister Theresa will have some leftover for your family.”

            Enola did not stop. She kept walking towards him.”

            “Didn’t you hear me what I was saying?”

            “For my family…”

            Enola’s left raised and crossed directly to Phillip Perkins’ throat.
            Then, she turned and walked out of the church, while Phillip Perkins was choking by his own blood, looking at a wooden figure frozen in pain.

            Meanwhile, when this was happing, there was not a day of those arranging meetings, Stephen Matterson Wetzer did not have anyone in the office. This time, he was alone. And when the black servant, Thomas Wetter, let Olivia in, he did not have time to figure the daughter of Joseph Gilberg Ruffalo.

            “Yes, Miss?”

            “You’re a bad boy, Mr. Wetzer.”

            “Excuse me?”

            She did not go on details. She opened her French purse and trigged the colt.

14

Sam Hong, San Francisco, CA

Apr 26, 18…

A servant allowed Chinese Agent Ming Ching-lee into the spacious parlor in the second of the building. He greeted to the woman who was standing nearby the window of Sun Chin Palace, making her to turn.

            He bowed to Fong Fei-Tseng. “I’ve the latest telegraph, Mama Tseng.”

            She stretched her hand and took it. With trembling fingers, she opened the telegraph.

            Dear Mama Fong – me and Enola hope this telegraph finds you well. This is to inform your Sun Chin will be happy, as if God permits, as well as her father, in his most solemnly life. For us, we are moving now through our path, and we are going to success because God is beside us, as he continues teaching us the chain of living. And please, Mama Fong, you take care of yourself.

                        Your daughters

                                    –Olivia & Enola

            Silently, she kissed the sheet, and silently she ambled to huge cabinet and opened one of the drawers. Neatly, she put the telegraph over the others. Thinking for a moment, she said, “Would be a way to see them again?”

            “I lost them in West Virginia, Mama Tseng.”

            “Thank you.”

            Slowly, with that elegancy, she turned and stood where she was previously. A tear ran motherly from her eyes, but she did not dry it off…

A SECOND BOOK

15

Silver Land, Wyoming,

            Jun 1, 18…

From the gate of Fingger House, Olivia could see Enola in the doorway turned to Canola, a prostitute. She approached her and paid her. She walked to the other side and Olivia joined her half on the way.

            “He has changed his name and he is companied by three or five men and a woman.”

            “Come on in,” she said. “I got a surprise for you. I bought those sweet pastels our mother would have baked for us.”

            Inside the room they shared since Tuesday, Olivia indicated the table. As she stopped at the hallway, Enola saw her expression and held her hand.

            “We’re reaching a level that there’s nobody will able to take us back.”

            “I’m alright, my dear sister. Please, sit and eat.”

            “Let’s sit and eat together.”

            Instead, they threw themselves into their chest and began crying. When they withdrew to each other, they dried and smiled at each other.

            “We felt good now.”

            “I guess we needed it.”

16

Tenders Hall. The place was packed. Tables covered with cards, monies, bottles of whisky, and players, losers and winners, were having a hell of games. A pair of Parisian comedic duos were doing their routine at the dais. Good and bad and unwanted people, couples, or singles individuals were drinking at the tables and listening to the comedians. They laughed. Servers strolled across the room and hookers targeted clients.

            Mr. Goldsmith!

            The name echoed against the wall.

            On the opposite side there was the Table 15.

            Gerald Goldsmith reached out over the table filled up with cards, monies and coins the shotgun and took down with quickly fingers it. He worked quicker than ever his hand around the trigger, pointed the double-barreled directly to the young woman dressed in cowboy and squeezed in double repetition with his palm of the left hand, proclaiming victorious, but something cold held him, not making any sense whatever no one in Lower Hand could be in his quickness.

            “From which hell you have come from, boy?”

            Deliberately, detached what Gerald had been saying, Olivia walked herself five feet from the table, removing the long sombrero from the head.  The hair cascaded over her shoulders, and from the purse, across the chest, she brought a black Bible with a hole on it in which the book, in many ways, more important than the life itself on which her life had dependent of it, she tossed it before him, and for any reason, Gerald Goldsmith could not figure that act of devotion had to do what was going on, and a last pledge of understanding as he asked her to tell him where she was coming from. She did not reply; instead, she put two bullets more directly to his heart.

17

The news of Gerald “Bobby Marris” Goldsmith and his death spread likes powder down the dirty street of Silver Land and reached Callen Theydon, the sheriff of the town, a nebulous character and a wanted man from the Villa de Lunar in the territory of San Antonio, escorting by these cruddy law-enforcement entourage in that day summer afternoon of 18… for, like so many self-called deputies of the west, after the last bloody Civil War, they playing lower, making money here and there. No matter how it would be Callen Theydon and his ignoble elites had a bad reputation in Silver Land, and the people of Silver Land feared them, as they strolled briskly down the street to Lazaro Tavern & Bath. Ready to leave the town, Callen Theydon watched that tall young woman, dressed like a boy, came out of Lazaro Tavern & Bath and that Indian woman holding a horse. He rubbed his hand hard over the shining .45 pistol; then called.

            “Who you may be? You must’ve a name.”

            “I should have no name for you, marshal. You ought to let me be.”

            He cocked his head, recognizing the beauty of that face. The woman stepped besides a stallion was holding by this Indian woman, a kind of assistant or something, he could not realize people had begun gathering at both sides of the street.

            “You should be. You hold on.”

            The call was ignored by Olivia, who, no wearing the pistols, was unhurried to look at him or his gang.

            Elegantly, Enola pulled the horse to left, and still, making easy to Olivia to avoid for any unexpecting move.

            “I don’t have any quarrel with you, sir, and not with the ones who are with you.”

            The lowborn enforcers laughed noisily…

            “…I reached this place for a purposed only, and I got it, so I’m on my way with my sister. If you, or the others like yourself, will make it hard for me and for my sister, we’ll kill all of you.”

            “Is there a fact?”

            “I reckon it is, sir.”

            “A woman, and this half Indian sister, in this part of the road, only a place will be fine for men.”

            “By God’s Grace I am… we both are. So, let me and my sister be in peace.”

            “You cannot. You pay of what you have done with Bobby Morris with gold or your life. He was one of deputies.”

            Enola dismounted from the mare, and it was the first time she gazed over them. Her mind set and she was ready. Olivia did not move or explain to Callen who Bobby or Gerald was the same and what he did in West Virginia, but the people at Tenders Hall who witnessed what she had done hurried to sides. A gentle sound from her tongue sounded to air. Olivia nonchalantly peeped at Enola, who, coming over to her, handed her the purse with the pistols in it. Not yet facing Callen and his meek, spreading now around the street, with cold attitude, for Olivia did not care about them at this particular moment, she said icily, “Very well—”

            The first three single bullets heard, and three men had struck back with a hole in their forehead, and two with single blades to their throat. She retrieved the pistols back into the holsters. “It’s your call, sir.”

            Callen Theydon narrowed his eyes, but two bullets thrust him backward.

            “You!”

            Her hazel eyes were sharp. She scanned at the mass standing along the street, but the people of Silver Land had taken the latest act of something more terrified from this young woman and her sister, who, by the eyes of them, they could not see where she had taken the knife. At the same time, they were released.  Meantime, Olivia held her hands out, unfasted her holsters with the guns. She put the holster with the guns back into the purse. She gave it to Enola, expecting no more trouble, no challenge in front of them. Olivia brought the animal to her sides and hopped over his back.

            An hour later, they bathed and dressed at Polter’s House. They paid well to the black woman and headed to Black Wood, to where they would take the south train to Nebraska.

18

 A week later, in Providence, Mr. Curson Brand, an honest local doctor, who hadn’t a client for years, told Olivia that the train did not reach Forest Rockville; instead several miles to north, to where Point Station was located.

            “Where the ladies heading if I may ask?”

            “A place called the City of the Fler, Iowa.”

            “Well, I suggest you wait until morning and ride with the stagecoach to Breeze Passage where you can catch the train and have plenty of time to the horses.”

            “It may be. Where can we find a place to eat and rest?”

            “My wife will give both of you food and a place to rest for five dollars. She would love so. We’re two of us, and a good conversation would do.”

            “We will take it.”

             Lodged at Mrs. Brand’s house. She was happy as Mr. Brand had said.  She was very talkative. Olivia and Enola learned she had lost her three sons in Civil War and a daughter who was somewhere in New York or Philadelphia. She had been asking a lot of questions and none had been answered as who they were, except that father of both was waiting for them in Iowa.

            The food was good and tasting, and there was a sense of family that Olivia and Enola had not felt since they left Mama Fong.  In the evening they played cards, and Mrs. Brand was beating everyone, including her husband, who, impossible to win, had enough. Later, all seated at the porch. They watched the vast land of Nebraska, the stars, and listening to the earthly creatures and hunted animals. When the man of the house got to his feet, he said good evening to Olivia and Enola, remaining only Mrs. Brand, who, by God’s eyes, she had fallen sleep in the chair.

             In the following morning, Mrs. Brand already had a bath for them. She was radiant as a divined mother, waiting for Olivia and Enola getting out of bed, but Olivia told her they could manage.

            “Then, breakfast will be ready.”

            Alone, in the shadowy room, Olivia got out of bed. She stripped from the sleeping dress, and she stood there, naked, wondering for a moment.

            “How is my skin?”

            Enola supported herself over the elbows. “You should not have to worry about it, Olivia. That will never go away.” She moved out of bed. “Come. I will bath you, and you would do that for me.”

            Olivia did not move. She gazed down at herself, already covered and with a new healthful skin, she still could see the marks of burning. “I can see it.”

            “Satisfied?”

            “I’m sorry.”

            “You shouldn’t. Come, let me bath you.”

            She peeked at Enola, now, completely naked before her.

            “It may change. Perhaps, our dreaming lovers will dismiss it.”

            “Perhaps.”

            The bath made them to think something else. Focusing their mind of what they had ahead of them. Seated at the diner table room a few minutes later, they started to eat the first morning meal. It was copious such as wild potatoes, biscuits, eggs, beans, and cattle meat. When they finished eating, and by the sunlight, they moved out.

            Paying Mrs. Brand’s hospitality with seven pieces of gold, she held Olivia.

            “It’s too much, Miss Flowers.”

            “You’ve remembered us our mother, Mrs. Brand.”

            “Oh, that’s nine of both you. I hope you will fine her and your father well in Iowa.”

            She gave them a hug and kissed them at both on their chins.

            “Bye.”

            Mr. Bland helped them getting in the family wagon. Olivia nodded their horses had been tightened behind the wagon and fed and energized. The norming day of outdoor life in air which combined the unexpecting and the danger had come back to Olivia and Enola. They paid attention the surrounding and ready to face any abnormalities.

            At Belt’s Grit. So far, Mr. Brand had been living up by his words as a gentleman.

            “You get the ticket at Carry’s window.”

            “Thank you for your kindness, Mr. Brand.”

            “We’re still Christians, Miss Flowers and you will have a place here with your sister if you decide to come one day to visit us. We hope one day our daughter decides to return to us. That is the only thing that makes her to keep on. During those hours she was happy around you. I am appreciated it very much,”

            “Well. Thank you.” She paused. She retrieved from the purse a pencil and notebook. She wrote something and gave it to him. “I used them to track our father. It’s located in San Francisco and she may help you to find your daughter. You send that telegraph to her. She is Mama Fong.”

            “Does she know you? It may be expensive.”

            “I wrote it down. You just need to send telegraph.”

            “I’ll do that, Miss Flowers.”

            The stagecoach was on time. 6:30 A.M. A half hour for watery horses and exchanging correspondences between Providence and Forest Rockville from which Olivia and Enola could see there were two drivers and the watcher. A moment later, they called up exactly at 7:30 A.M. to the second passengers. There was a group of nine. An old man dressed in fantasy garment. A mother and her daughter.  A single young man who carried a single revolver and dressed well, but seemed too self-conscious what happened around himself.  There was another man. He was in his later forties or sixties, which, apparently, he did not carry a pistol and he was a businessman holding around his waist this medium bag. And this woman, covering her face with black veil.  Next to her the single young mother woman with two kids, one who was still sleeping on her arms and the other small fellow leaned over his mother’s right.

            Each one introduced themselves, but Olivia and Enola kept their identity sealed. They had learned Roderick Fletcher’s men, such as Robin Burgess, Rudell Brinckman, Lane of the Fu, Mel Lougram, Ollie McLemore, William Raths and Howard Todd had crossed the Oceti Sakowin territory from South Dakota, remained here for  a couple of days, and they were heading to the territory of Iowa, and yet, by the latest information, Olivia or Enola, who had gotten this for the stable horseman, was not sure.

            Each one in the stagecoach could be one of them.

            Hours later, nothing had happened.

            The young man had been sleeping during all these hours. By the rest call, the women took a hidden spot to urine and the stagecoach rolled on again. At the Olas, a place consisting only a lodging guest room for travelers, serving food, liquors, and horses for rent. The stagecoach made a stop. The businessman did not adventure to get out. Olivia nodded to Enola. Olivia moved out while Enola remained in the stagecoach. He watched discreetly out of the window. When the rest of the passengers got in, Olivia or Enola had noted any suspicion from the young man or others. Six hours later, the Post of Flash, USA, was announced. They had food, washed their faces and for a moment or two the young man had disappeared from the last call when the stagecoach was ready to departure. This time the businessman was no longer with them which included the single woman. Stagecoach Driver Mitch Goldon inquired and none had come from that, except that the mother and daughter were in constantly fear but they were still quieting.

            After two hours of late, the stagecoach moved on.

            There was a little concern among them, but Olivia and Enola kept to themselves, making their case between the mother and the daughter.

            Outside of the stagecoach, the horses galloped at speed. Mitch Goldon and his assistant, Ouden Vangor, and the watcher, Sherman Minoff, in the second level of stagecoach, aware about any suspicion, could not see would come over to him. Far away, almost two hundred yards, to where the road had this dangerous curve, a bullet had reached Ouden Vangor, and immediately a horde of horsemen came right off in front of the wagon.

            “Just because I’m thinkin’ it won’t come. There it is.”

            “Keep through it.”

            Sherman Minoff turned. A bullet thrust him out of the wagon.

            There he was. Robin Burgess Row. Now a new leader of gang, which old faces of Roderick Fletcher’s bunch, such as William Rsths, Rudell Brinckam, Lane of the Fu, Mel Louram,  and Howard Todd continued shaking the dark sides of the west. He had Mitch Goldon with his arms up and watched him very closely.

            “This ain’t for ya fellow,” he said, kicking the horse forward, and when the young man opened the wagon’s door, he greeted him.

            “Ya done good.”

            “Good enough, pop. I believed these two women have it. The other didn’t.”

            “C’mon out each one of you,” he said, waving the pistol. “And that include the women with the kids.” He greeted each woman and the old man with a lovely smiled across the face. He made them to lined up. “I’m terribly sorry I’ve to cut off from your journal, but there is somethin’ I should have. You may know what happen if one of you try to fool me. My son has done already with the previous gentleman and that hooker and he did not find over them anything. So, it among you.”

            Olivia and Enola glanced at the young man. After all, he was part of his gang and most important, he was his son.

            Robin focused to the single woman with the kids, which, he believed she might be the wife. “Where is the luggage of yours, Miss?”

            “They are in the back.”

            “William…”

            “Show me.”

            “These two, sir.”

            William and Rudell searched them, throwing the clothing to the dirty terrain, either those belonged to the kids or hers, and then found nothing.

            “Clothes off.”

            “But sir!”

            “Take your clothes off, lady.”

            The young single mother of two refused. Howard Todd hit her and forced her to remove the clothing included the young fellow. Robin watched the mother with her teen daughter.  This time Olivia pressed her left hand tightly to the purse. She was sure they would not stop whatever they were after.

            Paying attention directly to the mother and her teen daughter, a perfect match for this businessman and his family to hidden the treasure, there was a resistance from the mother, trembling her head as she answered the question Olivia’s eyes. Ollie McLemore and Mel Louram and that young man, who had emerged as Robin’s boy, had caught that glimpse.

            “Pop.”

            Robin turned as he watched his son, not expecting really that the solemnly young woman with her servant Indian woman would change the outcome in a fraction of seconds. “Find their luggage, and you two remove the clothing.”

            “You may know Roderick Fletcher…”

            The name of Roderick Fletcher hit him like a hammer, as well as they were, and Albert Lagua, Rudell Brinckram, Lane of the Fu, Mel Louram, Ollie McLemore, Howard Todd and Junior Burgess paid attention to Olivia.

            “What did you say, miss?”

            There was no reply. With her hand inside the purse Olivia did not mean that she was holding it, but she was opening the purse, and under the hot sunrays shone two colts. Olivia was thinking faster – to put them in use, as Olivia did, and not letting herself behind, Enola was off behind her. Olivia’s colts were singing death, and there was that possibility she had hit one or two times the same target, as Enola also had done.

            Then the boy moved, and he was moving to kill, but he had stared at Enola, falling his keens on the ground, holding a knife across his chest.

            And silence.

            The mother with the teen daughter glanced at Olivia and Enola but Olivia and Enola were on that stage as they moved together along the edge of the room, watching the distance, and they recognized it was the end.

            A little relaxed, Olivia saw the old man and the mother and her daughter together, talking and comforting among themselves. They came over to Olivia and Enola.

            “I’m Berry Causable. This is my real name and these are my wife Janet and my daughter Nilda. We should thank you. How can I repay your bravura, Miss?”

            Olivia peeked over his shoulder when the single mother with kids still struggling about the previous experience.

            “What do you have in mind?”

            “I was the one they were looking for.”

            “You may reward her, Mr. Causable, and I want you to help her and to pay for what I ask you. You can do that, can’t you?”

            “What about one thousand dollars, sir?”

            He exchanged looks between his wife and daughter. The woman nodded. Turning her back to them, she produced several bills and gave them to her husband.

            “Here.”

            “No, sir. To her.”

            With an apologetic smile he walked to the single mother. After a brief conversation, he handled the money, and the single mother accepted it.

            Olivia looked at Mitch Goldon. “Are you hurt?”

            “No, miss. I ain’t.” He gazed over his partners. “You and your sister save all of us.”

            “We’re lucky ones, sir.”

            He smiled mysteriously. “In rare way, I reckon, we are.”

            “Could you able be to take our final destination?”

            “Yes.”

            “My sister and I would dig holes for your assistants.”

            “I accept that, lady, but all of us are going to do their part.”

            “And those people?”

            “You are welcome to fee these vultures, Mr. Causable.

19

The wagon dinner room was cherry with jingling sounds of folks, spoons and glasses when Olivia and Enola entered a few minutes later. They occupied a table angled at the window and with visibility to the narrow corridor. A uniformed Negro approached the table and introduced himself as Galleon Lefy.

            “How are you doing, Mr. Lefy?”

            “Quite well, misses.”

            Olivia took between her gloves a ten-bill and slid it upper-right corner that would be easier to pick up without having noticed from the eaters.

            “You must know a lot of fellows.”

            “By faces, lady. Yeah, I do.”

             “We want to get to Wolf Village.”

            “I may know those faces.” Olivia put a piece of gold on top of it. A gracious move of his long fingers, he took both and wrapped them with the table cloth at the same time.  “Could be another face I should know?”

            Enola displayed from her Parisian purse, so neat, the faces of Roderick Fletcher, Lon Lopez, Dwight Mitean,  Rex RiaEddie Laughim, Milton Lmbertson, Chito Lapid, Larry Gandaro, Samuel French, and Robert Freehill. He paid attention to them.  After a long time, he took Larry Gandaro and Samuel French.

            “Why?”

            He pointed out to the second server who, Tang-ming, a Chinese man, served Table 6, nodded toward Galleon. “He knocked him with his colt.”

            “What was the reason?”

            He looked at Enola. “He didn’t answer his questions about out breakfast menus. One Negro wasn’t lucky one. He put a bullet in his chest when he tried to help him to get him up. That was why I know him.”

            Satisfied by such recollection, Olivia smiled at him, and said quietly, “Give us the best of your wagon special.”

            He did not withdraw. He had more to say. He told her she had to get off Mack as the last call.

            “Don’t expect much about a town. Here, you’ll inquiry about Lato, and will ask about Munllon. He’s an Indian, an old man of the Cheyenne people. She may speak the language.”

            “We will do.”

            “Be careful, missses.”

            When later the train made its last stop on Mack Town Station, there was no railroad to move further, Galleon Lfty gave to Olivia some wraps.

            “You’re going to find nothing from around 100 kilometers.”

            “Thank you.”

            Ten people who came with them began to load boxes, horses, cattle, and other goods. Mack was not the real name of the place, but Mackon, a stable of horses and cattle, and it did not have saloon or an eating place. Only one – Lato’s Tavern and belonged to him. Olivia and Enola found him actively for the new passengers and transactions that he would expect four months from now. Medium, long hair, which they did not know if he was an Indian or a Negro or a White man. He treated them nicely, trying to speak like a gentleman, and he failed.  By the name of Munllon held himself in this huge room that was playing the role for any issues.

            “Munllon? Ladies! It’s more than two days to reach him. No, sir. He’s a real Indian.”

            “Which way?”

            “Sure?”

            “Yes.”

            He made to wait a customer talking about her wagon, and he raised his arm to the distance.

            “No one dares to go back there.”   

            “It’s an adventure, good man.”    

            “I still have beds and bathes for the ladies.”

            “We’ll take them when we will return.”

            The limits of Mackon’s lands were indeed belonging to Dick Mackon. He was a drunkard man, and when Roderick Fletcher made his last stay here from West Virginia, dying mysteriously during his sleep, Roderick Fletcher had helped him to sell the lands and to write his will. Dick Mackon did not know all fortunes had been transferred to Roderick Fletcher. Playing the co-signers, Eddie Laughim and Milton Lambertson had also a share of ten percent from the profit. In this dark transaction, there was a history here. He had left two persons – Lato Pastal or Pascual Mackon, halt-brother, unaware since this day that Dick Mackon was his brother and these lands belonged to him by rights – and Munllon, the Cheyenne Indian, was indeed her mother of both them. This could be another mystery lying on this grungy terrain.

            Olivia as well as Enola noticed she had a missy leg, and her companion, a German Dutch, whose name was Gagger or Gaher, were part of this brutal past of Roderick Fletcher. They knew each one of them, such as Eddie Laughim and Milton Lambertson, but most important, Larry Gandara, who had molested her more than once when Dick Mackon was in this state of alcohol and the responsible of her missy leg.

            “I found her tossed below in that canyon. I thought she was dead, but she was alive and angry about me.”

            “Why?”

            He shrugged his shoulders. “I didn’t come sooner or who knows.”

            Munllon smiled at Enola. “He was the man I’d like to marry when I saw him at Gamat’s, but he ignored me.”

            “It’s first time I heard it.”

            Insignificantly, she said nothing.

            “How it will be?”

            “It has been a year, but they love this passage – isolated, lawless, and a kind of scared like them. They rumble here and there.”

            “Is there any way?”

            “You ladies do not have any strength to face them.”

            “Let’s to worry about it, Mr. Gaher.”

            “I try, and look at me, and her.”

            “Please.”

            “You follow that trail of Mackon out its limit, not confused with Malkom, and keep on until you face with the wide river. Across, there is Paradise.”

20

Paradise. Olivia and Enola arrived last night. The road was impossible to gallop, German Dutch Gaher was right. It was better this trail, to where it appeared a green panoramic view of Iowa lands. It was not bad. Just like clouds ought to be. They were crowded the hills. Below, the ranch of Larry Gandara and he was not alone.  With him were Lon Lopez, Dwight Mitran, Samuel French and Robert Freehill. That, for Enola or Olivia, they did not know if they were the real individuals they were looking for.

            So far, they were.

            They sat on the ground.

            “Let’s wait.”

            That waiting took mor than five day, but the presence of others, like Roderick Fletcher, had never showed during these five days.

            They learned there were five men in the ranch. Three of them, Robert Freehill, Lon Lopez and then Samuel French, occasionally, would carry water or got food by hunting. They kept one eye on them, and occasionally, there was Larry Gandara and Dwight Mitran. They noticed he had a bandage across his chest.

            “It’s only five.”

            Enola saw Olivia’s lips trembled. “I am able to do that, Olivia.”

            “He was one who did it to me, Enola.”

            “No emotion then.”

            “No, my dear sister. No emotion.”

            A day passed. A next day had begun. There was no presence of Roderick Fletcher and others.

            “Be prepared.”

            “I’m since I kicked this hard ground, sister.”

            She smiled. “Alright, big sister.”

            As they drove their horse carefully to the ranch, Robert, Lon and Samuel came out of the ranch.  They looked curious, and a little back.  They recognized the visitants were women but distant from those young women they used to take advantage of them.

            Olivia and Enola halted their horses several feet from the porch. They did not know who they were, and even they smiled at them.

            “God’s sent us a present.”

            “Two, I may say.”

            A flash of time reached Olivia’s head, and she saw Robert Freehill and Lon Lopez and Samuel French. By that flashing, she said quieting, sending the black Bible to the feet of Robert, “Remember?”

            It took a fraction of a second to have that message decoded inside his head, but a bullet reached below him, grasping his groin, and terribly in pain, he screamed. Enola did not take time to send Samuel and Lon to death.

            Olivia dismounted from the horse. Both women heard the sound of galloping. It was Larry Gandara and Dwight Mitrana, almost naked, galloped down along the river.

            “Rifle.”

            Enola backed up and took a rifle from horse’s seat. She tossed it to Olivia. She shook it, aimed, and fired. A few seconds, Larry Gandara’s blew in pieces, and he was following by Dwight Mitran with a knife on the back of the head.

21

Jefferson City, Missouri, Aug 18…

Soon the junction was made at Renalto with what was new in the City of Jefferson, so the train could go all the way to Arkansas, Olivia and Enola got off the train. Carrying their slightly luggage, they strolled out of the station, which then stood on the northeast corner of Center Square, and quickly they found a hotel, the one across Leigh Canada.

            The presence of Olivia and Enola shadowed a broad smile of welcome on the hairy face of Mr. Arnold Timplin, paying all attention to these attractive faces of the young women.

            “Do you have room for a week or so?”

            “I certainly have. Would you prefer single or twin beds?”

            “Single, please, and we want another single room for our mother.”

            “Are you relatives?”

            “Yes, sisters. We believe she’ll be here two or three days from now. She’s coming from Kansas.”

            “I’ll be very happy to accommodate her as well.” Would you ladies sign the hotel log?”

            “Sure.”

            Mrs. Vaugh (Enola).

            Miss Littlefield, sister (Olivia).

            Mrs. Littlefield, mother (A fake One).

            He turned the hotel log and read. “Splendid, Miss Littlefield. My name of Arnold Timplin and this is my place. Eventually, you will know my wife later this evening if you are available for visits. So, I can accommodate free meals and special services such as transportation within limits of ten miles out the city.”

            “We’ll take this service in case our mother needs it to see the countryside.”

            Pleased by such customers, he took personally all the needs of the ladies, recommending decent places, laughable cafés, and virtuous clothing woman stores.

            “Is there a change to know who is the mayor of the city?”

            “It’s Mr. Clarke. Do you have any acquaintance for him?”

            “Not particular,” Olivia said, carefully. “Mum has in mind to do business in Missouri.”

            “Would you like me to introduce you to him? He wouldn’t mind before these dazzling women. He loves beauties.”

            With a playful grin, she asked, “Would you?”

            “Yes. A fact, I’ll take my time to take you two in his favorite restaurant – La Salas.”

            “How it may be?”

            “He uses take his super about six.”

            “We’ll be ready by then.”

            “Allow me to help you with luggage.”

            Largest of the three streets in the city, all of which were bisected by a new commercial air, was Diamond, where La Salas Restaurant faced the crowded square. A Western saloon had been replaced into this modernized family eating gathering, where the owner, Isabel de la Salas welcomed the eaters at the entrance. By the presence of Mr. Timplin and the name of Mayor Marvin Clarke, she indicated them where he was. He was a single daddy of sixty-five, with a couple of secrets here and there. He was in a total surprise to see Arnold Timplin accompanied by these fine-looking young women, and they were interested speaking business with him.

            Getting to his feet, making all he could to act like a British gentleman, almost he got it, he kissed Olivia’s and Enola’s hand, recognizing each woman was stunning.

            After their introduction, Arnold excused himself.
            “I have to report myself as a good husband.”

            He took time to sit, and full of bright expectation, he gazed at Olivia.

            “We’ve learned that your city has a man by the name of Chito Lapid or maybe by another name. My sister has a sketch he may look he was in his twenties and thirties.”

            “Is this regarding to you?”

            “No, Mr. Clarke. It’s for our client. He is a well-established landholder in Pennsylvania and he will able to pay any coins for any discreet information.”

            Mayor Marvin Clarke felt good. Two beauteous young women, a petition, that he needed to write nothing, and that could be money, and above it, the discretion.

            “Can I see it please?”

            Enola with such flattering gestures of her fingers so innocent and well done brought to him the portrait and the sketch of Chito Lapid.

            “I’ll take a couple of days to speak with Mr. Palms, all of which will fall into our agreement.”

            Olivia left next to his glass a seal sheet. “I hope this must be very secret.”

            “It will be.”

            During two days Olivia followed her plan in details. The next day she told Arnold Timplin that her mother would come today and she would like to have the keys of the room, where for little while, she spoke about this with Enola upon any changes if something goes wrong. Olivia finally decided to visit Chito.

            “No, that could not be, Olivia. It will be impossible.”

            “One of us has to do so.”
            “He’s going to recognize you.”

            “I’ll change into a cowboy. We’ve done it before.”

            “Not in a prison.”

            “What, Enola?”

            “A guard. Let us find out what uniform they wear, and I’ll use Timplin’s Service.”

            “It’s more danger what I thought.”

            “Less what you have in mind, except you will be inside and I will be out waiting as a brother.”

            “All right.”

            The decision was made.

            During the hours of afternoon, a rapturous old-young Marvin Clarke made his appearance to the hotel, and had a conversation with Olivia and Enola, confirming that Chito Lapid was that fellow their client was looking for. Olivia and Enola also understood that Chito did not change his name, catching him when he killed that family down Diary Raba’s ranch. Playing the woman’s enchanting, Olivia and Enola invited him to have lunch with them, which, Mrs. Timplin, wife of Mr. Timplin, was present. Mrs. Timplin found Olivia and Enola very charming. She was very a directed 

Person about the relationship of Olivia’s sister, Enola, the job they had chosen, the object of which she never fathomed, though she was an active member of the Body House of City Council, probably pistols and murders during the remainder of her residence at Missouri, and at one time held the onerous position of Watcher – she could not have any stomach to see anyone shoot to death.

            “I am against those atrocities.”

            Each of the woman modeled their own point of seeing things differently before Gail Timplin, but Marvin Clarke did not matter. He just joined the free meal and those bewitched faces of Olivia and Enola.

            When the afternoon meal ended, Olivia focused to the man at charge of the Missouri State Penitentiary.

            Ted Palms, a former Civil War veteran.

22

There was a certain slim, mild apology in the face of Ted Palms, when the name of Chita Lapid was brought to his attention.

            “I still believe in justice, Miss Littlefield. I could not allow them to lynch him, but all the residents of Conway hate me ‘cause that. They wanted to hang him on that tree. I was lone, but I won’t allow it. Have your client got the same fate?”

            “His wife.”

            “I allow you to have a glimpse upon him, and confirm he is.”

            “I’ll appreciate it very much.”

            “Then, it’s true you’re going to do business here.”

            “I think to open a bounty hunter.”

            “You have such an effort, Miss.”

            “It’s about my father. He was one like you… a Civil War soldier.  A court sentenced him, broke jail, and a bullet killed him in his sixtieth birthday.”

            Above the level of the second floor, Chito Lapid, escorted by a single guard, stood, where Olivia and Enola were watching the man who had raped them. As their tremble, that was not so clear before Mr. Palms, the young woman was unable to control. He could not see more through them.  Nevertheless, the attitude to Chito Lapid was about their client’s business, whose manner, they had adopted well in front of the ward, where not misunderstood by anyone but Mr. Palms himself.

            At the office, frames of ten children, a wife, Civil War medals, carrying on his shoulders, as a stern of reformer, he asked about Olivia about the truth.

            “You are allowing to telegram my client, sir.”

            “I will not find a say from him, I’m afraid, Miss. I lost two daughters after the war. These two. One under the grasps of a group of savages and the other by opening our heart to him. It took me a time to distinguish between a Negro  and an Indian before our kin until I found out he was a white man,” Casting a solemnly glance across the table where all family members were on frames, he added: “Both lied to me, that was a Negro or an Indian, trying to fool me, if I was a damned being. Yes, yes. I killed them with my own hands. I did like a soldier not as a father.”

            Olivia and Enola had not changed their story and the reasons they were. Their fondness or coolness were perceived, and the serene looks now of their face, had made him to doubt.

            “We’ll leave tomorrow, sir.”

            “Have a safety journal if I would unable to see, Miss Littlefield and Mrs. Vaugh.”

23

The morning breakfast of Missouri State Penitentiary in 18… was serving at this long room and right after that, the inmates would hurry back to their rooms, who managed in some inscrutable way to pick a quarrel here and there with the other inmates, and on bright nights kept up dreaming about the day they wanted to get out of this. In these morning hours, Chito Lapid had not been thinking about this, who finally they forced him to enter into the jail.

            With him, that guard, a new one he presumed, and in spite of many rivals, he was capable to face him. Olivia, dressing with a guard uniform, stepped forward, and to which she lowered her arm – was a blade, and it traveling below, unseen and it touched deeply directly to Chito’s groin. He did not expect a guard was suitable to do so. It was not exempt for certain ungraceful weakness, inseparable, perhaps, for a voice from the grave.

            “For me and for my sister.”

            The blade moved in and out many times, but Chito Lapid’s eyes glued to that face, keeping up until there was no life inside those eyes. Sluggishly, Olivia breathed. She came of the cell, some guards greeted at her as another guard. Her strong determination and commitment kept her going. The will of her heart made her unchangeable.

            Outside of the facility, Olivia gaited to the carriage holding out by Enola. She got in. Seating straight up in the seat, she could hold any long tears running from her eyes.

24

Town of Brooklyn, New York

On June 16^th, Olivia and Enola reached finally the state of New York. The New York City, especially, the Town of Brooklyn, had become a new rumbling of people, horses, carriages, and wagons, did not excite them as a new territory, and when they lodged at Helena Inn, a style Western saloon, with everything to ask for, they slept all day until the next day.

             In the following morning, they asked for room service. A short but pretty server arrived, and Olivia asked for the morning meal, consisting egg, pork, wheat bread and coffee and hot chocolate to Enola.

            “Would you bring me all newspapers in the city?” Olivia gave her twenty dollars in bill. “The rest it for you.”

            All morning, Olivia and Enola were reading newspapers and at the same time they had been searching for the faces of Eddie Laughim and Milton Lambertson and Roderick Fletcher.  By afternoon, they stretched their legs around the park. An hour later, in the inn, they called room service and asked for lunch and the afternoon newspapers. The food was good, rabbit rillettes, braised lamb, cranberry beans, rye, sweet water and coffee.

            While they were eating, they watched the faces of the covers of the newspapers. As they calculate the latest information, they had gathered in Mackon, and the inheritance of Dick Mackon, there was a little disappointment not to find in New York Roderick Fletcher.  They did find Eddie Laughim and Milton Lambetson. The first as Peter Compton and the second as Jacob Callington. They were on newspaper columns, in business travels and exports as legit men and with connection.

            Speaking about the new plan for Roderick Fletcher, Olivia had been suggesting to Enola to seek a hand in finding Roderick Fletcher from Mama Fong.

            “She will point out where we can find Roderick Fletcher.”

            “I agree, my dear sister, but our intention could be questioning.”

            “Perhaps. A little, I guess.”

            “How it may be?”

            “After this call. What?”

            Olivia stared at her sister Enola. She lay in the bed, and she had fallen quiet.

            “Nothing.”

            “Is it about Mama Fong?”

            “No.”

            “What it is then?” Olivia jumped besides her. “No secret, uh?”

            “It’s the first time I saw something red coming from me.”

            Olivia paid attention to her. “Mom has told us it would happen when a girl reaches the 13, Enola.”

            “Well, it has come now. I believe I am closed to 29. Am I?”

            She embraced her. “I’ve that every month.”

            “Why didn’t you tell me, Olivia?”

            “I though you have been experiencing the same, Enola.”

            “No. Not really. I’ve been thinking I was an abnormal woman.”

            “It’s nature, okay?”

            “But there was something wrong, isn’t it?”

            “No. Perhaps, you were having your monthly sickness, but it seems that you’ve seen it from a different perspective.”

            “It is so.”

            “Do you know how to take care of yourself?”

            She nodded quietly. “I did as soon as it was moving down of me.”

            “Well, you stay here. I will bring some candies.”

            “No, you stay here. I don’t want to be alone.”

            The two sisters hugged themselves, and they remained there, looking at each other.

25

Personally, Eddie Laughim did not care about his past and the life of being in the west. He told Olivia and Enola that wasn’t part of his experience, his personal growth, an individual who had made without any help entirely in the city, and not those places Olivia or Enola had been telling him.

            Yet he could not bring Olivia’s face, and not either Enola to the present time, sitting comfortably in his chair here in the Town of Brooklyn’s office, not knowing where Roderick Fletcher was or Milton Lambertson, or care less what these two women have been talking since they came into his office about Mackon or Dick Mackon. He appeared to have a choice of telling these mixing women what he knew. “I’m not the man you are looking for, ladies. I am a New Brooklyn resident now, and a born of the City of Texas. You can check it and more at City Hall’s Records.”

            He emerged like a convinced man, not watching the black Bible that was now on the desk, with flashes before his eyes a dark abyss he wanted to hide. He looked up, and saw at Olivia, so astonished set on the time he let her in to his office on 123^rd Fur East, opening that purse, and then brought out a pair of colts.

            “You’re going to kill an innocent man, and there is a law of it in this city. I tell you.”

            Olivia nodded to Enola, who, quietly, having said not much, brought to him a holster – holding into it a .45 caliber revolver.

            “You have one like this that day,” Olivia remembered. “You were enjoying me and after you have finished, you didn’t have such a man’s heart to leave me be.”

            “Lady, you have the wrong man.”

            A bullet torn his arm away.

            “Damn you! I am an innocent man! Never be on those places you kept repeating. A fact, I never use a gun. I am a businessman.”

            “Say it.”

            Eddie saw now he had been running out of option, and brave as he was before, the whole spectrum come to pity, “Please…”

            “Say it, Mr. Laughim!”

            “I was just a babe…”

            A knife interrupted him, not to make anything out of it, he stared at her, but he knew it was not a bullet, rather a knife. Olivia stood there in front of him, and then removed the holsters and held them but quickly, with strong desire, she pressed the trigger.

26

The Callington Rancho      

            The outdoor party of the Callington rancho, a family gathering, where Milton Lambertson, a rich man, who had become a God’s man, hosting a selective acquaints. He made it – having a ravishing wife, two adorable children, and people loved him His past? Sealed. A fact, he had cut Eddie a long time ago when the final transaction had ended and shared with Roderick Fletcher’s last score.

            Lawful, a little wiser, with that common sense that life was good, Milton Lambertson shook hands with those who had the same common-sense ground that life was good indeed.

            Above, as if it was an eagle, the sun. The wind was cool. A perfect day for an outdoor gathering. Here, Olivia, holding a rifle, waited.

            Down to the edge of the land of Lambertson, a horse approached the entrance of the rancho. Dressed like a delivery city boy, Enola dismounted from the animal. A prompt servant came over to her.

            “Yes? May I help you?”

            “I got a telegram for Mr. Callington.”

            “I can take it.”

            “It’s personal, sir. Besides, he needs to sign it.”

            “Certainly. Please, you come with me.”

            They moved into the fountain terrain of woods, to where Milton had a conversation with handler men. Servant, Mr. Olag, interrupted him. “Sir, you have important message.”

            “What it may be?”

            “I am, sir.”

            “Please.”

            Enola handed him the telegram. He opened it.

            The message was simple…

                        …Good bye, Mr. Milton Lambertson.

            There was a bullet striking him directly to his head.

27

The next day a message arrived from San Francisco to Helena Inn. A few minutes before breakfast, Room Service Miss Victoria Gatee came to the floor where Olivia’s and Enola’s room was. She knocked on the door.

            As Enola appeared, she greeted her. “Hello.”

            “Good morning.”

            “Morning.”

            “This arrived a moment ago.”

            “Oh, thank you. Give me a second.”

            When Enola returned, she tipped her.

            “Thank you, madame. I must say the breakfast will be serving soon.”

            “We will be ready.”

            From the sofa, Olivia held out the telegram. “It’s Mama Fong. Someone is gong to meet us at Sun Room.”

            “He’ll be there at five.”

            After breakfast, and having a long discuss for her next adventure, they decided to have a stroll around the city. They also had taken the time to see themselves women and having a future to fulfill their dream.

            Returning to Helena Inn, they bathed, changed into an afternoon outfit, they met Ming Ching-lee as the first time they had seen him. Reserved of what he was doing, he identified himself as Mama Fong’s messenger.

            “Is she all right?”

            “She is, Miss Flowers.”

            “She’s still calling us by that name.”

            “For the safety of yours.” He opened a suitcase, and brought two items. The first, the letter. “It’s for you.”

            Olivia opened the letter. Enola came over to her, and both of them read to Mama Fong’s message. Finishing the letter, Olivia said, “Is there anything else?”

            “This is for you as well, “he selected from these sheets, two single ones. “These are the finally documents of Mama Fong’s promises.”

            They read them. “Are these properties?”

            “Yes. They are the properties your father has in Shepherdstown which included those from Stephen Matterson Wetzer. Both of you are the only benefactors with the exception from the Indian lands that she took the liberty to give back to the original owners. She also wanted to tell you that Mr.  and Mrs. Bland’s daughter was found in Kansas, in a bordello, and I personally returned her to them.”

            “Has she done all of this?”

            “Yes, Miss Flowers.”

            “What about the Mackon?”

            “That’s why I am here. Now that Eddie and Milton are no longer with us. I am able to make the case.”

            “Thank you.”

            He picked up a second sheet, and gave the originals to Olivia and Enola. While he was making his own note, Olivia began to write a letter.

            By the time he finished Olivia’s stretched her arm to him.

            “Please, give this letter to Mama Fong.”

            “I will do. Ah, this is the information of Rodrick Fletcher. He’s in Lancaster, a Californian city, several miles from Pueblo de Los Angeles. He goes by the name of Raymond Rust.”

28

Lancaster Town, California, Sept 17, 18…

The depot of Lancaster Station was crowded. People gathered at this particular side of the depot as they stared at the distance with anxiety waiting for the news of Los Angeles Co. In the opposite side of the train station there were important people who would be the first to meet and to welcome the new faces. Dressed in starched suits, hats, sombreros, and their pistols in the polished holsters, the men puffed up with self-importance. The women, married and singles, wore long linen cotton dresses and scarfs, as they were cooling their faces with wide colorful Chinese fans, watched everything with excitement. The younger girls and boys, in full ample skirts and double-packets jeans, as they held themselves as lover, appeared to hissing like bees around the most active girls and boys. The kids, glinting with pleasure, but noising and extroverts as ever before, were eager to meet their peers.

            The ticket seller, a short and bold man, came from his inner room of the train station, announcing to the people that the train was coming.

            “Finally, the train is here.”

            When the Southern train stopped at the station there was more than ten people

getting off the train. All of them were well known already by the crowd and there was nothing to add to the news. A few minutes later, Olivia descended from the train.  She wore all in blacks. A little behind her there was Enola. Dressed in simple elegance, she carried a single valise. Both stood there in the platform. Everyone stared at them.

            “Who is Dr. Raymond Rust?”

            The question echoed among them.

            “That will be the counselor of our church, Miss,” one among the crowd replied.

            “I like to speak with him.”

            “What for?” a voice echoed among them. “He’s my father.”

            “I’ve brought a message for my father,” Olivia said solemnity.

            The people made way to the man, and Raymond Rust stopped a few feet from Olivia.

            “I’m here, Miss,” Raymond Rust said. “Who are you? Who is your father’s name, I must ask?”

            The Lancaster people turned toward her.

            Olivia raised her gloved hand. Enola stepped forward. She opened the valise as she retrieved a pair of Colts. There was the exclamation of the crowd.

            “My father was Mr. Joseph Gilberg Ruffalo… There was a West Virginia day…a rainy night… all was so peaceful…”

            Roderick Fletcher stepped back. His sons Karl and Erick did not understand the whole picture. They looked at their father and they wanted an explanation. Olivia began to talk more. Her voice was remarkably low. There was a dead silence. All of them were listening carefully to this beauteous woman. They were listening to the history of Raymond Rust aka Roderick Fletcher… his connection with Stephen Matterson Wetzer… Gerald Goldsmith… Dick Mackon … his killings …

            “That is a damned liar!” Karl yelled. He stepped aside. He pieced his carried pistols. As did his brother, Erick. “You!”

            “I’ve been waiting for this moment to kill you,” Olivia said, removing her long veil, until her long black silky hair fell on her shoulders, while Enola handled her the Colts. She took them and brought them to her waist and adjusted them.

            “You can’t do it, Miss. I was so young and stupid.” Roderick Fletcher started to talk. “It was a past. I have changed and I recognized now the importance of a family and God’s words and the truth of love. The truth meaning of God. I am a God man.”

            “Don’t explain it to her, Dad,” Erick yelled, stepping aside besides his brother.

            There was a scream.

            “No, son!”

            Erick’s arms moved fast.

            He did not make it to his holster. A bullet reached his forehead. His head jerked

back and a second bullet pushed him backward.

            “No! no!” Karl ran forward and at the same time he squeezed his pistol. One bullet broke his arm and a second bullet passed through his heart.

            Olivia was immobile. They knew that she was talking business. Paying attention now to Roderick Fletcher, her expression changed into than was even stormier. “You killed my sisters…you killed my nanny… you killed our father… our mother… and then you let your filthy animals raped both us. I was only eleven years old… we were so young … fully with life and dream… I just wanted to give you a chance. If you don’t fail, I will do it as you did with my family.”

            The crowd began to separate themselves from him. They commented about Roderick’s past. His action, his crime. Roderick glanced back at his sons. He taught them and now they were dead, but he knew the drill and the old tricks. Many men he had killed and he knew how. He moved to Erick and pulled off his belts with the Colts. He felt the guns. It had been so long. How that girl had survived?

            He turned. “How?”

            Olivia stretched her right hand. Enola brought up a Bible with a hole in it. She took the Bible, looked at it, and then she tossed it in front of him. “It saved me, Mr. Fletcher.”

            Roderick’s hands moved fast– and he did it without raising the Colts. It was just a matter of wrist movement. It was very cool.

            Olivia’s left hand moved faster. A bullet hit Roderick’s right arm. It was close to his shoulder. Roderick moved his other hand. Olivia put a bullet in his left shoulder, too. Roderick moved his broken arms; he was vulnerable in front of her. She didn’t mind. She rose her right arm and put three bullets in his Roderick Fletcher’s body.

            Ceremoniously, she removed her pair of Colts and gave them back to Enola. She turned and moved directly to the train platform. The conductor yelled. “Last call for Sacramento.”

            “Miss.”

            Olivia turned and glanced at Don Papa Suarez.

            “Yes?”

            “Is true you are a teacher?”

            “No, sir. I am not.”

            “I thought so.”

            Olivia and Enola reached the train platform. The conductor bowed to them. They stepped into the wagon and went to sit where the vast but florid passage of California began to grow. Olivia felt Enola’s hand hers.

            “Our nightmare has ended here, dear sister.”

            She glanced at her. “If I ask you to stay, are you going to refuse it, aren’t you?”

            “No! you’re the only sister I got,” she said. “Where can I find another one like you?”

            Olivia embraced her.

            From the platform the last call of the conductor yelled. “All aboard.”

            Olivia turned her eyes to the passage again and closed her eyes, while Enola leaned over her shoulder and closed her eyes, too.

George Keyes lives in the Mojave Desert, east of Bakersfield, California, with his family. He has always enjoyed writing and photography. His work has appeared in Taft College, Underwood Press Literary Yard, and Indiana Voice Journal among others. He has been an awarded author from the International Latino Book Award two times respectively. He is currently working on a thriller book entitled THE 45TH PARALLEL.

The Gravelly Range soared above the Madison Valley in southwestern Montana like a sentry. It was possible to hide in these mountains from all but the grizzly bears. Or packs of wolves. Beasts that could sniff out the lost wanderer from thirty miles. It was a pit stop for Ludek, as he passed through Ennis on his way to Spokane.

Ludek’s black Lincoln, squarely in the sights of half the repo kings of North Jersey, stood out like a hot flare among the diesel pickups and all-terrain vehicles that peppered the town of Ennis. Locals were ranchers or fishing guides or the few loved ones who kept them from joining the bones of the dead.

Ludek parked the Lincoln in front of the Village Pharmacy, an Old West style storefront on the main drag. An ancient sage at the lone gas station had told him that this was the only place one should get breakfast in Ennis. A pharmacy with an attached grill. He was starting to warm to the West.

As Ludek got out of his car he shoved his fingers through his hair, slick and shiny black. A round scar the circumference of a beer bottle circled his left eye. He rubbed two days-worth of salt and pepper whiskers.

A mule deer doe paused in the middle of the road. It was still crisp enough in the mornings that steam rose from the doe’s nostrils. She snorted and pawed the road with her hoof, trying to get Ludek to make a move.

Ludek’s mind stilled at the sight of the deer. He felt no impulse to frighten the animal, quite apart the stare downs he usually found himself in. He felt a rare calm, like when his grandpa walked with him through the low breakers at the Jersey Shore as a kid.

Before he stepped through the pharmacy door, Ludek patted his .380 to make sure it was still fully concealed. A few shadowed faces turned his way then went right back to their eggs and bison gravy biscuits. The sterile rubbing alcohol scent of a pharmacy was absent. Instead, frying bacon draped the room like a warm serape.

Ludek claimed the smallest corner table beneath a mounted pronghorn head with a cigar stuck in its teeth. He was the only customer not wearing a cap or cowboy hat of some sort. Eyes were cast upon his ox-blood imported leather and sockless loafers. Behind the counter stood the owner and grill cook, Jakesy, sizing up Ludek.

Jakesy’s wife, Helena, was the smarts of the operation. Jakesy had been kicked in the head by a bull twice too often. Helena clung to flickers of her Butte rodeo queen days. Soft features and edges. Just a few strands of gray.

“I’ll have two eggs poached and goat milk,” Ludek informed Helena, tortoise shell reading glasses perched upon his nose. “What type of oatmeal do you have?”

“You’ll have to find your own goat to milk,” Helena said. “Eggs are fried or scrambled. Or sucked down raw, if you like. Our oats are Quaker and horse varietals.”

“Toast, dry. Coffee,” Ludek clipped. “Black.”

“Your breakfast going to be for cash?” Helena asked.

“Got some trust issues around here do we?”

Ludek by then considered Helena in full. Her rawness, the authenticity. Her attitude. With a toothy smile he gazed straight into her clear blue eyes.

“It true that the mountains out here are purple?” Ludek asked. “In all their majesty?”

“In a certain light, yes, they are.”

“A light like the one across your face right now?”

Helena did not smile. Her eyes bore into Ludek’s.

“Did you shoot that pronghorn on the wall?” he asked.

“No one shot it. My husband Jakesy killed it. Bare hands.”

“I’m sorry what?”

“During the rut. Crashed right through the plate window. Started ripping this place apart. Would’ve killed somebody had Jakesy not wrestled him down. Strangled him.”

Ludek pondered that scenario. “Had to be quite a scene.”

“When a wild thing winds up where it don’t belong, things will happen.”

Helena then let slip a smile that twitched the corner of her mouth.

Steam rose from the road outside the window. The early sun burned away the frost and haze.

Ludek broke eye contact. He scanned the pharmacy for security cameras and exit routes. An easy hit for prescription drugs if not for the handgun armed diners that sat about all day. The sooner he got on his way to Spokane the better.

Wally, Ludek’s second cousin, was from Perth Amboy. He had the ball already rolling in Spokane. A solid and discreet base of operation. With a degree from Rutgers in production and inventory management, Wally was the ying to Ludek’s yang.

Ludek downed the toast and coffee with his customary smacking and open-mouthed grinding. He avoided eye contact with the locals. As he was getting up to hit the latrine,he spottedJakesy tossing his apron on the counter.

Ludek sat back down.

Helena watched side-eyed from the small office. A small window cast a warm hue across her face. The window also framed a perfect view of the Gravelly Range peaks, the lands beyond which Helena would at times ponder. She would allow herself to imagine what they may hold for someone like her. Someone at her stage of things. She tapped her near inkless order pen on a pad of paper atop the cash box.

“Enjoy your breakfast?” Jakesy asked. He loomed over Ludek.

For years Jakesy had ridden piss angry bulls in the rodeo circuits that coursed the West like jack rabbit trails. When a few of his aging ribs were rearranged, Helena drew the line. Jakesy procured the pharmacy grill operation with his last winnings. He set about perfecting his bison gravy, revered throughout the land.

In quiet moments, Helena would let her mind run. Consider the steady domesticity that her edict, the taming and breaking of Jakesy, ushered in. There now was a droning predictability of endless days. Days that went on and on.

“Breakfast was wonderful,” Ludek said, avoiding eye contact. “Yes indeed.”

“You ain’t from anywhere around here.”

“That is a fact.”

There was a pause as Jakesy gathered his thoughts through an oft concussed brain.

“Come here to fish the Madison?”

“Not much of a fisherman. Killed some sharks now and then on the East Coast.”

“Slippery bastards, those sharks.”

“You bet they are. Bad as the ones in the ocean.” Ludek winked.

Jakesy didn’t smile, no longer quick enough to keep up with the witticisms of fast talkers.

“Got business in Ennis?”

“Only passing through,” Ludek said. “To Spokane.”

Jakesy was poker faced.

“I’m from back East,” Ludek said. “Jersey and what not.”

Jakesy scratched his cheek, eyes narrowing on Ludek.

“We’re a tight old bunch here,” Jakesy said. “Simple ways.”

“Anything shady ever go down here?” Ludek asked. “You even have a county sheriff?”

Jakesy’s eyes narrowed yet further.

“We have a sheriff,” Jakesy said, leaning into Ludek’s face. “A veteran marksman.”

“That so?” Ludek croaked.

“Could shoot a hair out of your nose from across the road.”

Ludek wiped his napkin across his nostrils.

Helena’s gaze had not yet left Ludek.

“Justice is always served ‘round here,” Jakesy said. “Always. One way or another.”

“Yes sir,” Ludek said, standing back up to go to the latrine. “Law and order. Hell yes.”

Jakesy eyes locked on Ludek’s.

“If you’ll excuse me, I need to hit the head,” Ludek said.

Jakesy stepped aside. Ludek disappeared into the dank restroom. Helena approached the table and topped off Ludek’s coffee cup. She watched the heat rise from his cup. The steam seemed to dance, like a cobra charmed from its vase.

Ludek drained himself into the urinal then went to the lone bathroom window. It was painted shut many times over. The earlier layers were old lead-based paints enough to kill a bison herd. He scanned the window frame for alarms or cameras.

Ludek opened the Case jackknife from his pocket and went to work on the paint along the edges that sealed the window. The chips and fragments flaked to the tile below. After more than a few minutes the window was freed. He unlocked the latch and wiggled the frame open just a sliver, careful not to open it wide enough for sunlight to shine through the crack. With his shoe he spread the paint dust around until it blended in with the straw, mud and cow shit cocktail covering the floor.

Back in the dining room Jakesy was waiting for Ludek like a high school hall monitor.

“Thought maybe you flushed yourself down the commode.”

“All’s good. Bit backed up. From the long drive and all.” Ludek laughed.

“There’s a pharmacy aisle that’ll hep’ you out with that.”

Ludek smiled. He tossed a twenty on the table. He looked at Jakesy with flat dead eyes.

“Be seeing you,” Ludek said.

“Paths can be unpredictable critters.”

Helena’s eyes rolled from the twenty on the table to the door as it shut behind Ludek. She had the cash in her apron before Jakesy made it back to the kitchen. She lingered. She studied the remains of the table left behind. She ran her fingers through her hair, her wedding ring getting tangled in the curls.

Helena walked to the window. She watched Ludek slip into his Lincoln and drive away.

                                                                        ***

The night fell cold. A cutting wind out of Idaho blew. Jakesy was in a deep slumber on the sofa. His worn and creviced face at peace. Helena had stood looking at him for some time. She then shuffled to the bedroom, tapping tears on her robe as she went.

Chilly as it was, Helena awoke sweating and restless. The nightstand clock, next to her latest steamy pulp novel, read 11:45PM. She sat up and gazed at the wall, tinted blue by the moon through the blinds. The longer she stared, the more the wall became a passage, a portal, to another place. Somewhere past the Gravelly Range, where beginnings and hopes thrived like winter wheat.

The mattress creaked. The pine floor was icy to her feet.

                                                                        ***

Ludek hunkered high up in the Gravelly Range in his car until it was dark as a West Virginia coal train. He marveled at the pitch of a midnight in the West. None of the false light. No cast of fast food and strip club neon. And the quiet, like a morgue.

Soon, the lamps in the modest houses in the valley below began to go out, one by one.  

It was time.

Ludek slithered his way down the forest service road by the light of stars and the moon, just sufficient to leave his headlights off. Once in Ennis the security lamps above the hay barns and sheds lit the way.

As he had hoped, there was a dirt alley behind the pharmacy. Barely wide enough for his Lincoln.

After he jimmied open the john window, he bagged the modest supply of opiates from the behind the pharmacy. He tossed in prescription strength Benadryl and some antibiotics. He hoped they might knock out something he picked up in Atlantic City.

Ludek snatched the cigar from the mounted pronghorn’s teeth. Just as he bit down on it, she stood before him.

He froze.

The exit sign above the pharmacy door outlined her shape in an opaque shadow.

“I’m surprised,” Ludek said. “Pleasantly.”

                                                                        ***                             

Near Norris Springs Ludek caught just enough of a cellphone bar to reach Wally in Spokane.

“Wal, I managed to come into some bonus goods in Ennis of all forsaken places.”

“Sure those aren’t horse fertility pills?”

“Maybe so. I’ll see you in Spokane by daylight.”

“Let the good times roll, Ludes.”

Ludek cracked his window and fired up the antelope’s cigar. He despised being called ‘Ludes’. Needed to set Wally straight about that. Made it seem like he was small time, flipping his mom’s Quaaludes to teen delinquents under the Wildwood boardwalk.

Ludek turned to face his silent passenger. “Never call me Ludes, by the way.”

She smiled. Her eyes, now clear, drifted to the car door mirror. She wondered, as the reflection of Ennis faded into distant darkness, if Jakesy yet knew.

“Justice always served here in Ennis,” Ludek laughed, aping Jakesy’s boast. “Yessiree. Don’t try to pull any funny shit on us good folks, you East Coast slick.”

Their eyes met in an electric complicity. The pharmacy cash box sat in her lap.

The moon drifted behind a peak. Ludek realized his headlights were still off. They were far enough out of Dodge to pop them on high-beam and enjoy the drive.

Just in time too.

The headlights illuminated the eminent terror at its most inspiring, at its most magnificent angle. A sight worthy of raw spellbound awe if only it had afforded an instant to appreciate it.

Less impressive to them, at least at first, was the hulking mass of the beast into which they were about to collide, fender to fur. It was that regal rack of antlers. Antlers that resembled an oak tree sans its leaves. Dozens of tines so it seemed, honed to sharpness attainable only in nature’s harshest creation. Antlers pointed with such rigidity as to shatter the windshield as if by atomic blast. A single tine pierced Ludek’s left eye then travelled right on through his skull, like a spear launched from a whale gun.

The antler through the brain, as it turned out, was not necessary. Not in the least. The sheer bulk of the bull elk’s frame alone was sufficient to compress the Lincoln and its contents like a junk yard auto crusher. A collision that sent forth into the night a reverberation calling to mind two freight locomotives on the same track, one of which was headed the wrong way.

All of this made the aftermath that much more untidy. An abstract composition. Flesh and metal and smoke. A vicious stew of fuel, blood and steam. Now deep in slumber, come morning the lone sheriff of the county would at long last encounter a scene worthy of his training.

                                                                        ***

At dawn the sun unfurled the divine majesty of the valley. Jakesy stirred the stout bison gravy amidst a shroud of steam in the pharmacy’s kitchen. Despite making the gravy thousands of times he still went down the index card recipe with his finger. Helena’s absence at home had gone unnoticed to him. Separate bedrooms were only sensible. Jakesy’s last head injury had bequeathed him with a chronic grinding snore. Like a chainsaw.

He knew that the sirens, not often heard around Ennis, had to have awakened Helena back at the house. He glanced out the pharmacy window expecting her to arrive at any moment, to brew up a pot of her famous cowboy coffee that could jolt a dead steer to attention. Hay would be baled and trout would be caught.

Jakesy marveled at the endless string of very fine days in this valley. On and on they rolled.

William Burtch has lived in the West and returns often to chase trout. A recent widower, writing keeps him alive. He tweets at @WilliamBurtch2. More at: williamburtch.com

Lifting his face from a puddle of dark red blood and black mud, the old man rose to his feet, his back drenched through his shirt as rainwater spilled over him. Shielding his eyes from the downpour, he looked to the sky. He used his sleeve to wipe away the blood trickling from his nose, leaving a trail of dirt in its place, and he turned to face the younger man who was waiting to hit him again.

            Inside the saloon, a crowd of at least 50 men and women gathered around a shaky table. Under their cheering and shouting, Richard Taylor could barely hear the rattling of the snake’s tail. He stood outside the circle, peering over the shoulders of men who were waving dollar bills in the air. On the table, the rattlesnake was coiled tight in its cage. A thin man in a black coat took notes in a small ledger, looking up every few seconds to see whose wager he was writing down.

            In the alley, the young man swung his right fist forward, but the older man dodged. He raised his knee into the younger man’s chest, then jabbed at the back of his head with his elbow. The young man stumbled but managed to regain his balance. The older man ran at him, driving them both down, mud splashing as they landed.

            Richard watched the snake in its cage. A man in a tall hat stood over the table, his arms outstretched, a small red bird cupped in his hands. Another man lifted the top of the cage and the bird was slipped in. The man with the ledger counted the seconds to himself on his wristwatch. The snake eyed the bird as it fluttered above, trying to escape.

            The older man hit the young man in the face several times. He then slammed his head into the wet ground. The younger man pushed him off and he reeled back, leaning against a wall. The older man coughed blood.

            The bird slipped to the bottom of the cage and the snake lunged at it, barely missing as it hopped out of the way. The crowd was cheering louder and applauding now. Richard watched the people more than the cage, disgusted that they would waste their money on a meaningless game.

            The younger man pulled a knife from his pocket and the older man shuffled backwards. When the young man attempted to slash him, he arched back, the tip of the knife inches from his chest. He reached out and grabbed the young man’s wrist. He twisted it and the knife dropped into a puddle between them.

            The snake missed again. The bird scurried away as the snake whipped across the cage after it. Richard shook his head, thinking half of these people probably didn’t even know how much they bet or how long they bet it would take the snake to catch the bird.

            The older man pushed the young man into the wall. He hit him repeatedly in the chest and took a hard swing across his chin. He stepped back, reaching down to grip the wet, muddy knife. He rushed forward, stabbing the younger man in his gut. The young man slid down slowly, blood spilling out as he reached the ground. The older man kicked his head hard against the wall. He looked over his own clothes, his white shirt stained crimson. He stood in the rain a moment, then walked back into the saloon.

            The snake finally got the bird into its mouth and most of the crowd stopped cheering and returned to their tables. The rest either won or thought they did. Richard figured they wouldn’t know for sure until someone handed them money or took it away.

            Richard sat on a stool at the bar and sipped his beer from a green bottle with a thick neck and a fading star on the label, looking up at the top shelf filled with liquor he couldn’t afford. He noticed the old man entering from the back of the saloon, soaked and bloody. Richard recognized him. He didn’t know his name and had never spoken to him but he saw him there every night.

            The man was a cold, black spirit haunting the room. Silent, his eyes hidden in the shadow of his hat, he had at least two guns that Richard could see. The rifle leaning against his chair and the Colt on the table always primed and loaded only inches from his small, weathered hands. In a packed bar at midnight, full of commotion, music and thick clouds of cigar smoke, he would sit there like he didn’t notice the world moving around him. A girl would come by every half hour or so to bring a fresh glass of whiskey and take away an empty one. He always sat with his back to the wall at the corner table under the stairs, the farthest from the creaking doors to the outside.

            That night, Richard watched him return to his table, dripping water onto the wood floor, pick up the vest that was hanging over his chair and put it on over his bloody shirt. He took his seat and dispassionately put his hat on, finishing off the near-full whiskey glass he had left behind when he stepped out. As a barmaid picked up another drink to take to the table, Richard turned to the bartender, a large man with a scar across his neck.

            “Who is that?” Richard asked, jerking his thumb toward the man in the corner.

            “You don’t want to know.” the bartender said, wiping a dirty glass with a stained towel. He was silent for a moment. Then he looked around and signaled Richard to lean closer to him. He whispered, “The man claims he’s Billy the Kid.”

            “Is that so?” Richard stood.

            “I don’t know if it is or not.” The bartender poured bourbon in the glass and slid it down the bar to a waiting customer. “But, way I see it, he’s either crazy or he’s telling the truth, and either way he’s liable to kill you if you cross him, so I don’t ask questions.”

            Richard tossed some coins onto the bar to pay his bill for the night, then walked over to the man’s table. When he got there, before he could think of something to say, the man asked, “You looking to get shot?”

            “Not in particular,” Richard said, talking a small step back.

            “Might want to keep walking then.” He looked up at Richard now. There was an anger burning in his eyes and his face appeared to have been chiseled in granite long ago. His left hand gripped the handle of his gun. Richard stood over him for a moment, his attention darting back and forth between the gun and the man’s eyes.

            “You have a good night now,” Richard said. He turned and left the table. The man watched as he walked out of the saloon and into the darkness. Sitting alone, he smiled.

*****

            Richard sat in his tent on the hill and looked out over the town of Beaumont. Starlit outlines of rooftops, the faint glow of candles in windows, billows of smoke wafting to the sky in the distance. Behind him, oil pumps rumbled in motion. The night shift at work in the fields. Money churning up from the ground beneath. A constant echo keeping him awake until dawn, reminding him of the mistakes he made.

            Eighteen months ago, in early 1902, when word of oil and wealth gushing in Texas reached New York, Richard and his wife Anne made a decision. Neither of them was happy where they were, him scrubbing ash and soot in chimneys, always relying on her rich parents to help them stay above water.  They heard stories of regular people getting flush on their own in Beaumont, making thousands of dollars just selling the land they lived on to people who wanted to dig holes in it. They talked about it on and off for a couple of weeks, and they ultimately decided there was a real opportunity here, a chance to make their own fortune. It was going to be an adventure, a foray into independence that Richard savored. Her parents disapproved, of course, calling the idea reckless and irresponsible, but Richard didn’t think they ever liked him anyway or thought anything he could do was good enough for their girl to begin with.

            Despite that, they packed up everything they had, including their 6-year-old daughter Elizabeth, and began the long journey south. Once they got to Texas, Richard learned how difficult it was just to get a job, let alone his own plot of land, even with the money his wife’s father had quietly slipped to her before they left. He would manage to work a few days at a time in the bigger oil fields when the companies needed an extra hand. Most of the time, though, they sat in their tent on the hill surrounded by thousands of strangers and thieves, breathing in dark air tainted by black fumes from the nearby wells. He wasn’t surprised when Anne left with Elizabeth five months later—and he appreciated that she left most of their money behind—but he was still angry.

            Now, over a year after they disappeared in the night, Richard sat in his tent and watched the seconds tick past on his pocket watch. It had been a wedding gift from Anne’s parents, gold with Richard and Anne’s names and the date of the ceremony engraved on the casing. Tonight, like most nights, he would just lie down and stare at the face of it, hypnotized by the movement of its hands, until he drifted off to sleep.

*****

            A few nights later, Richard sat at the bar, again watching the man. Occasionally, he would look up and Richard would turn away the instant they made eye contact.

            A woman walked into Richard’s line of sight and he could have sworn she looked just like Anne. His eyes followed her across the room and up onto the stage. He heard a piano begin to play but he couldn’t see it through the crowd. The music was fast-paced, complicated and irrelevant. Three other dancers joined the woman on stage but Richard’s focus remained on her as their performance started. He didn’t notice any of their carefully choreographed movements. He just studied her features. Her eyes, her smile, the sensitive spot on the back of her neck, that part of her lower leg she’d giggle when he touched. She looked perfect. For a brief moment, he smiled. Then he reminded himself that she wasn’t his wife, just a stranger. He turned back to the bar to drink whatever was left in his bottle.

When he did, he was shocked to see the man standing right next to him.

“Why you keep staring at me like that?” the man asked.

“Staring at you like how?” Richard said.

“Like you’re fixing to fuck my sister.” The bartender placed a full glass of whiskey on the bar in front of him, then backed off, never saying a word.

“I don’t know what that means,” Richard responded. He watched the bartender walk away, wondering if he was getting another drink for him too.

“It means you’re going to start looking elsewhere if you value your eyes being attached to your head, son,” the man said. He sipped from his glass and reached into his vest pocket. Richard tensed up, fearing he was going for a knife or a gun. Instead, he pulled out a cigar and rested it between his lips while he searched his other pockets for a match. The bartender reappeared, slipping a matchbook in front of him. The man lit a match and, through clenched teeth, said to Richard, “You’re here every night.”

“As are you,” Richard replied.

“Here every morning and afternoon, too,” the man said. He turned and looked out across the room. “What I’m asking is, what the hell are you doing here?”

“Mostly wishing I wasn’t.” Richard gazed absently into the mirror behind the bar.

“You ain’t alone in that, kid. Lot of folks around here trying to find a way out.”

“You one of them?” Richard watched the reflection of smoke rise up over the man’s head and dissipate in the air.

“I’m just trying to get through the day without killing anyone.” The man looked down at his wrist, though he wasn’t wearing a watch. “It’s early yet.”

“You find yourself having to kill people a lot, huh?” Richard asked, nervous but polite–and more intrigued than he wanted to be.

“Only as often as they try to kill me,” the man said. He reached behind himself for his whiskey, swallowed it all in one gulp, slammed the glass down on the bar and began to walk back toward his table. He added, “So yes, a lot.”

“You ever wonder why it is so many people are out to get you?”

“No, sir,” the man said, not looking back. “I know exactly why.”

*****

            It was late fall, but it was still hot in the sun.            

Richard had found a job for the rest of the week. One of the men, not a friend—Richard didn’t have friends here—but an acquaintance working for the Gulf Oil Corporation had to head back east for a few days for his mother’s funeral and somebody needed to fill in. He recommended Richard. The work consisted mostly of moving heavy pieces of equipment from one part of Gulf’s oil field to another up on Spindletop. It was exhausting, but it paid a decent wage, which was more than he could say for a lot of the other short-term jobs he’d taken lately.

            Sweat dripped from his shirt to the soil. He stood with his cart full of steel bars, catching his breath while basking in the shadow of one of the derricks, a skeleton that spired up from the land. He felt the ground shake and heard pieces of metal screeching against each other somewhere. He still didn’t understand how all this equipment worked, but he knew what it sounded like when it broke. The earth cracked and oil suddenly gushed up, a steady vertical stream flowing through the top of the derrick. Before he had time to move, Richard found himself in the midst of a black storm pouring from the sky. He closed his eyes as oil ran down his face, gagging when a few drops slipped between his lips. He stumbled away, eventually getting clear and rolling into the dry dirt.

            He looked himself over, painted black, and grudgingly accepted there was no way to avoid waiting in the long line to pay for a brief soak in a rusty tub in town later.

*****

Hooves dug into the mud. Lightning streaked across the sky miles away.

Richard stood outside, protected from the rain by the balcony hanging over the entrance to the saloon. He watched as the two horses pulled, straining against harnesses that were tied tight to the front side of a dirt-covered automobile. The vehicle’s wheels spun furiously, slipping deeper into the puddles around them, spraying muck and water across the front windows of the town bank. Two men in fancy suits shouted at the horses, their voices drowned out by the thunder and the revving engine.

            “In 25 years,” a voice came from behind him, “everything’s going to be done by these infernal machines.”

            The old man stepped out from inside the bar and joined Richard.

            “Machines,” he continued, “these giant metal monstrosities lurching through the streets. They’ll have to build smaller machines to operate the big ones cause people won’t know how. Railroad tracks’ll run through the middle of every town. Machines everywhere. A world like you ain’t imagined in all your born days. They’ll cover the landscape, trees in a big clanking forest, waves in a metal sea. They’ll spread like syphilis in a whorehouse. It’s already started. Ain’t nothing a man like me can do to stop it now.”

            The horses continued to pull. The men out in the rain were behind the vehicle, pushing against it with their backs, trying to maintain their steadiness as their boots constantly slipped on the wet road. The mud kicked up by the wheels splashed their clothes. Every time they raised a hand to protect their faces from the spatter, they would lose their grip with the other hand and nearly fall over.

            “Should we be helping them?” Richard asked as they watched. The man said nothing. He just watched the two of them and their automobile, smiling and occasionally chuckling. Richard shook his head and looked down at the rainwater creeping toward them, beginning to gather around their feet.

“I have to—I’ve been wondering—”Richard paused, as if debating whether to continue his question. “What I’m trying to—I can’t figure why a man’d go around playing at being Billy the Kid.”

“Go ask a man who’s playing at it then,” the man said.

There was a moment of awkward silence between them before one of the men they were watching lost his footing and fell.

The man laughed. “Like watching a pack of dogs barking at a knot,” he said.

“People round here think you’re crazy,” Richard said.

“I reckon that’s cause I want them to think I am.” The man turned to him and grinned. “Also, because I am.”

The wheels had stopped turning and a third man got out of the vehicle. The one who had slipped was standing now, trying to wipe himself clean but only managing to rub the dirt deeper into the fabric of his shirt. The horses weren’t pulling anymore.

Richard looked over at the automobile, grime dotted across its sides, showered by falling rain. Despite all the effort, its back wheels had only sunken further.

“This fella was telling me a story,” Richard said. The man turned to listen. “I was out in the oil fields the other day talking to this guy come from up around Buffalo. He was saying, he was at the exposition where the president was killed, or so he says. Could have been lying. Don’t matter. He was telling me–You ever hear why McKinley died?”

“Because he got shot twice, I’d think,” the man said.

“That’s not the—What he was telling me, when the docs tried to operate on him, cut him open and get the bullets out, there wasn’t enough light to see. This big old exposition to celebrate our country’s industrial progress and they ain’t got enough electricity to light the table where the president was bleeding to death.”

“Progress, huh?” the man said as he turned back toward the door. Richard looked out and saw that the engine had started again and the horses were pulling, the vehicle still failing to break loose from the growing muck that ensnared it.

“Machines,” Richard heard the man say, the saloon doors swinging closed behind him. “As far as the eye can see.”

*****

            Richard sat at the bar, a half-empty beer bottle in front of him. In the mirror, he saw the reflection of the man walking calmly into the bar. The man stopped in front of him, facing forward, looking past Richard to the rifle sitting at his table in the back. Richard noticed the man’s left hand move toward the Colt in his holster. The man was almost frozen, with an intense look on his face that Richard first mistook for fear.

            “Take out your watch and show it to me,” he said. Richard stared at him. “Pretend like I’m asking you the time. Just do it.”

            Richard pulled his watch from his pocket and held it out to him.

“Nice watch,” the man said. “You can put it away now.”

“It was a wedding gift from my wife’s—” Richard realized he wasn’t listening.

            “Act natural,” the man said. “Like there ain’t two guys here aiming to kill me.”

            “What are you going on about?” Richard asked.

            “By the door.” He tried to nod subtly in that direction. “Bulldozer with the mustache on the right, short fella with a bit of a limp on the left. Both got their hands at their sides, close to their guns. So damn hell-fired not to be noticed that you can’t help noticing them? Looking at me without looking, same way I’m looking at them. You see?”

            Richard whipped his head unsubtly to the entrance and saw the doors wavering behind two men who had just walked in. One was taller and had a mustache. The shorter one wasn’t moving so Richard couldn’t be sure about the limp. They wore long coats, but he could see two pistols around both their waists underneath.

            “I said, act natural,” the man repeated. “I reckon this mess is about to get bloody. You best get out of here. Go someplace there’s not so much dying going on.”

            Richard thought of his cold, empty tent up on the hill and didn’t move.

            The taller man by the door took a few steps forward. That’s when the old man quietly said “Fuck it,” grabbed his gun, spun around and started firing. One shot hit the shorter man directly in the middle of his forehead and he dropped to the ground. Bullets missed the tall man and lodged in the wall behind him as he pulled out his two guns and dove to the left, rolling behind the far end of the bar. Customers ran in all directions screaming. The old man pushed Richard aside and sprinted to the nearest table, kicking it over on its side to shield him just as the tall man rose and fired. Wood splinters blew off the table with every impact. He stood up and fired back, grazing the tall man’s neck and hitting him in the stomach. The tall man fell to the ground and dropped both of his guns. Richard peeked out from behind the side of the bar just in time to see the old man walk across the room, stand over the tall man’s bleeding, barely-conscious body and shoot him in the head. Then he walked past the bar and reached for Richard’s beer. He drank what was left in one long sip as he walked back to his table, then tossed the empty bottle over his shoulder, sitting as glass scattered in shards on the floor.

            Richard looked at the bodies and then over at the old man. He looked around the room, reconstructing what happened as other customers returned to their seats.

            “You really are him, huh?” Richard said. “You’re Billy the Kid.”

            “Don’t look so surprised,” he said, his gun still in his hand on the table.

*****

            The next night, Richard approached the table and stood over it until the old man noticed him. After about a minute, the man lifted his head.

            “Just so as we’re clear,” he said, sitting up, “you wouldn’t be the first mail-order cowboy I cashed in for no better reason than he was pissing me off.”

            “I always wanted to know what the old west was like,” Richard said, either ignoring the threat or not entirely understanding it.

            “Like this,” the man said, “but older.”

            Richard remained standing for a moment, then grabbed a chair from a nearby table, slid it over and sat down. The old man stared at him in silence.

            “I don’t know why you’re yammering at me here, son,” the man said.

“You’re Billy the Kid,” Richard said. “You’re a legend.”

“I’m a fucking horse thief,” the man said. “The legend is just something Garrett created to sell books. Half of what he says about me ain’t even close to true.”

“Then what is true? How’d you end up here?”

“I died 22 years ago,” the man said, a barmaid placing a glass of whiskey in front of him. “That complicates life a bit. All the shit I done to get by. Living on the dodge, always ready to pull foot without warning. Making sure all the right folk know who I am and the wrong folk never do. Trying to stop the world leaving me behind. It used to be, stealing horses was all I needed to know. Now, you take a look outside. I tell you, it is a bad time to be a horse thief in America and I reckon I’m too old to learn to steal anything else. How about you? What’s your sad story?”

Richard didn’t speak at first. He hesitated, considering how much he should say.

            Then he reached into the pocket of his pants and pulled out a small, 3-inch square photograph. An attractive young woman holding a little girl, the angle slightly tilted.

            “My wife Anne, my daughter Elizabeth,” Richard said. “Took that picture myself almost two years ago with one of those one dollar Brownie cameras. Hell of a thing to try to hold steady, that box. But that’s them and I don’t know where they are. They came down here with me—we were going to get rich and I was going to get to be a cowboy. It’s dumb. We were going to—I don’t even know how we expected to do it. But it was what people were doing and we wanted to do it too. Then I wake up one morning and they ain’t there. We been through the mill together, me and her, and after all that, she just leaves me drifting at sea. Been here most nights since, drinking away what little money I been able to make on my own.”

            “I take it you’re not liking our town much, then?” the man asked, raising his glass to his lips. Richard was surprised to see he was still listening.

            “I reckon it’s what hell’d look like if hell was in Texas. And it might be.”

            “This isn’t nothing like hell,” the man said. He signaled to the bartender to pour him another drink. “Hell’s likely much nicer than this. Probably nicer than heaven, even. You think about it, that’s the only way it makes sense. Devil wants you to do something bad, why would he want to punish you for it eternally after? Where’s the incentive? Just be bad business on his part. No, seems to me, hell’s a candy land. Suppose we’ll all find out eventually, right?”

            Richard considered the idea for a moment. He opened his mouth to respond, but the man raised his finger to him to be quiet.

            “This music,” the man said. Richard could hear some ragtime tune coming from the piano up by the stage. The man listened for a minute or so, humming along softly. “I love this music. That’s why I keep coming here. Best piano in town. Nothing else in these parts holds a candle to it. Last couple of months, I got my own melody in my head, you know. I been wanting to write it down but I’m all balled up. Don’t have a damn clue how. This right here, though, there’s a magic to it.”

            They listened to the rest of the song. Thinking about Beaumont, Richard added, “I miss baseball. Had a pretty good team up in Brooklyn. You all got nothing down here.”

            “Never did understand that game,” the man said. He put down his drink. “Look, you don’t like it here? Leave. Your woman’s gone? Find another. Ain’t no one any less annoying than the rest. So you got the muddy end of the stick. So what? Quit pining for what used to be and do something about what ought to. Get your sorry ass a train ticket and go. Right here, right now. Time to fish or cut bait, boy.”

            “I got no place else to go,” Richard said.

            “There’s always someplace else to go. You just ain’t looking hard enough.”

            “If that’s a fact, why are you always sitting here?”

            “Nobody given me no reason to leave,” the man said, leaning back in his chair. “And I’ll stay here, at this table in this corner against this wall, until somebody gives me cause to do otherwise. From here, I’ll be able to see ‘em coming. And ain’t nobody ever going to shoot me in the back when I ain’t looking.”

*****

            The first thing Richard noticed walking to the saloon the following night was that the man was gone and so was his rifle. Richard looked around the room, scanned the crowd for any sign of him. When he sat down at the bar, the bartender walked over.

            “Where’s your crazy friend tonight?” he asked.

            “Nothing crazy about him,” Richard said. “And I don’t got a clue where he is.”

            “Billy the Kid or not,” the bartender said, placing a beer bottle in front of Richard, “the man needs his head examined.”

            “That may be so,” Richard said, beer in hand.

            Seconds later, the man entered. He approached Richard and called to the bartender to give him a full bottle of whiskey.

            “I’ll handle my own refills tonight.” Then he turned to Richard. “Come with me.”

            The man grabbed the bottle with one hand and Richard’s arm with the other.

            “The hell’s going on, Billy?” Richard asked, following him out the back door.

            When they stepped out into the alley, the man popped the top off the whiskey bottle and drank straight from it. He offered it to Richard, who took a small sip. It was only now that Richard noticed he had a rather large bag slung over his shoulder.

            “You going somewhere?” Richard asked, nodding toward the bag.

“I’ve gotten sloppy here,” the man said. “Too many people know who I really am. That reason to leave I spoke of yesterday, I got one now. A bounty hunter out of Appalachia. Big and tough. People too scared to even tell me his name. And he’s getting close. I don’t want to be here when he catches up.”

“You could stay and fight,” Richard said. “You got your guns. Won’t be the first time somebody come to town with a mind to clean your plow.”

“I got nothing to fight for here,” the man said. “Anyways, I doubt there’s much left for me in Beaumont. Fact is, there never was. Just, well, any port in a storm and all.”

“So what do you do now?” Richard leaned against the wall.

“Run three ways from Sunday.” He put the bag on the ground. “Run like the dickens and hope I can run faster than he can.”

“Where will you go?”

“West,” the man said. He looked to the train station down the street. “As far west as the money in my pocket’ll take me. I hear it’s cold in Denver. Might not be so bad.”

“You taking the train in the morning then?”

“That’s the plan,” the man said. Richard saw his hand reach for his holster.

The man raised his gun and fired before Richard had time to move. He shot Richard twice in the head and then several times in the chest as he slumped over.

He walked over to the body and rummaged through the pockets. He took out the picture of Richard’s family. My name is Richard Taylor, he thought. My wife is Anne. My daughter is Elizabeth. We’re from New York City.  He repeated the names to himself a few times. He looked at the engraved side of Richard’s watch, noted the wedding date and then put it in the pocket of his own pants. He counted Richard’s money and took that too. The plan wasn’t perfect, but time was running short and Taylor was an easy target. He’d have to change some details of the backstory when he told it in Denver, account for the obvious age difference from the new wife and daughter he missed so dearly. But he knew how to improvise and he could be very convincing. After all, he sold half of Beaumont on the tale that he was Billy the Kid.

            My name is Richard Taylor. He dragged the body through the alley to the side of the building. He noticed the trail of blood in the darkness, but it didn’t concern him. He looked around for any witnesses, then poured the remaining whiskey over the body. He took a matchbook out of his pocket, lit a match and dropped it. He stepped back and watched the body burn.

            Anne. Elizabeth. After a few minutes, he walked back through the alley, careful not to step in the dead man’s blood. He looked up at the wide river of tents spread across the hill and the men above them in distance, scurrying around in a maze of oil derricks. He looked at the schedule posted out in front of the train station. He took out Richard’s watch and checked the time. In just a few hours, the first train of the morning would arrive, heading west.

            My name is Richard Taylor. He sat on a bench outside the station and closed his eyes, waiting for the ticket office to open.

Steve Loiaconi is a journalist in Washington, DC, a father, and a graduate of George Mason University’s MFA program.

Dust motes danced in the light that slanted in from the auction barn windows. The place smelled, predictably, of straw and of cattle. Two men sat midway up the bleachers within easy sight of the auctioneer platform. The older one wore a straw cowboy hat and a lined denim coat. He fussed with a small notebook and the listings.  The other sipped coffee and watched the drovers open gates to let a handful of leggy Angus calves in. Two of the calves raced in, bucked a little. Each calf wore a sticker on its left hip with large numbers stenciled on it.

“You buying?” straw hat asked.

“Maybe. Got a marker for a few heifers. One good bull calf. You?”

“Half dozen replacements and the usual order for Southwest Meats.”

“Say, you seen Bob Pallas around?”

“Can’t say I have.”

The auctioneer began a spiel and the two men kept their hands down. The calves were walked clockwise around the pen with the drovers walking with them. There were a few laughs when one calf followed a drover close enough to send a tongue at the man’s back. Buying of the bull calves was quick, most within twenty dollars of one another. Then the calves were shooed out a gate and back to the holding barns.

A few more men climbed into the bleachers and sat. The straw hated man nodded to a few. There was a pair of women in heavy coats dressed like enough to be sisters. He watched them too but they never looked his way. Big women. Looking again, he figured one was the daughter.

The three drovers each led a young cow into the barn. Holsteins, so they were easy to handle and came along.

“Look there at number 3228. See the one with the wide blaze on her face?” coffee asked straw hat.

“Yeah, I see her. Tall. Nice stance.”

“That’s one of Ty Enslow’s herd. That fella over in Spring Valley.”

“I heard of him. Pretty good grade cattle. Holsteins, nothing registered. Lives out on County R.  That him?”

“That’s him. Got fifty-six head. One of those old-fashioned guys, uses a bull instead of artificial. I been buying his heifers for twenty years now.”

“Why’s that?” Straw hat was intrigued.

“He got a good herd, no, a really good herd for unregistered. Anyway, long time back I bought one of his heifers on how she looked. Got her for my son-in-law when he and Bonnie first got to dairying. Anyway, it was his best cow.  I tell you, my son-in-law got done right by me.”

“He still milking?”

“Who?”

“Son-in-law.”

“Naw, he took the buy-out. Drives a forklift at a pallet factory.” He raised his hand over his head.

“How much was that?”

“Five.”

“You ain’t gonna get her for that.”

“I know, but now I’m in this game.”

Raise, counter. Wait. Counter. The auctioneer spoke faster.

“You still on her?”

“Yup.” He raised his hand again.

“Geez, who you buying her for?”

“Maybe Irving. I dunno, maybe me.”

“You’re kidding. You think that much of this Enslow fella?”

“I do. “ Raised his hand.

“You ever meet him?”

“Enslow? Once. I saw him at a county fair. Somebody pointed him out to me. Nice fella. Looked a lot like Dan Petroskey. Remember him?”

“I do. Great auctioneer. Real gentleman.” He raises his hand, holds up three fingers.

“Hey, you got her.”

“I did.”  He drained his coffee cup and put the cup on the bleacher seat. “I remember Dan Petroskey for a story I hear about him. Maybe you heard this story, stop me if you did.

“Seems he was doing a farm auction a ways back. One of those killer auctions where they sell everything—livestock, implements, hay, kitchen stuff and kids’ clothes. Everything. Anyway, Dan was standing at a table of stuff—junk, really, old canning jars and boxes of bolts and string. Up to this far the auction had been slow. Not much action, lots of lookie-looks. A real sour day. So Dan is standing at this table and he knows the farmer and his wife are watching him. Dan wants to sell this stuff but he knows he just can’t. So he stands there a minute and looks at the stuff. Junk. He’s drinking coffee from a paper cup and it’s empty.

“’Folks, he says into the mike, the next part of the sale we’ll do bingo style. Anybody who’s had coffee from the ladies at the concession—and you know it’s good coffee—has a cup with numbers on the bottom. You all see that? Well only people who have a coffee cup can take part in this next sale. We’ll take a break here for ten, fifteen minutes so if you don’t have a coffee cup yet, go and see Dorie.’

“’Get a sandwich while you’re there. I recommend anything but the ham-and-cheese ‘cause that’s my favorite.”

“By now Artie, his assistant, is wondering what’s going on. He looks over at Dan who just shakes his head. Dan stays at the table and moves things around to make six separate piles. Then after fifteen minutes he takes the mike and says, Okay then, the first lot up for sale can only be bid on by folks who got coffee cups that have a three or six in the numbers on the bottom. Who’s got em?

“A buncha people raise their cups and some people start looking in the trash cans. Dan starts the bidding. Wouldn’t you know, the stuff went through the roof. He knew that if only a few people are allowed to bid, they will. Makes them feel special. No time flat, he sold all that junk. That’s Dan.”

The other man nodded. “What ever happened to him?”

“Car wreck. Got head-on with a pickup full of kids out racing. Killed outright.”

“Oh, man.”

“Yeah. That’s about it.”

Next up, bull calves. Dust whirled, lazily found places to set.

Travis Stephens was raised as a cowboy–the milking kind. Our cows were Holsteins and not a brand or horn among them. Still wondering, when I drive around California, is that a ranch or a farm?

A DOZEN OR MORE three-hundred-year-old black oaks spread over the top of the south side hill of our farm with a two-acre pasture on top and our house sat on the edge and overlooked a small twenty-acre valley bottom with Reese Creek and across it at the far side and then there was a similar hill of Ponderosa pine and Douglas fir to complete the farms north edge as a cross section of a small valley running from our house south to north.

One afternoon after school when I was 15, I walked out through the oaks to find my Grandfather, a man in his mid-eighties, sitting on a bucket turned upside down, underneath an oak and about a hundred yards from the barn. It was his son’s farm, my Uncle, who owned a business in town and twenty miles away.  My grandfather had used his own money, to build a lambing shed, then chicken coops, then a substantial barn, and then again, a half-acre garden down by Reese Creek, that was irrigated by a pump and sprinkler. With sheep and chickens and a couple steers, and the garden we had a complete working subsistence farm. Before he came it was just living in the country. He came there at 79 years old and had it began producing in one year. The tractor was the most important tool.  My Uncle kept the tractor in top mechanical shape as he was a mechanic. My grandfather and the Ford 9N tractor had turned the place into a producing farm selling wool, hay, lambs, eggs chickens, and vegetables. I was a part of all of this.

Every day in his sweat stained straw cowboy hat he was on his son’s Ford tractor to the garden, the sheep shed, the garden by the creek, and when I went looking for him my radar was always set for the Ford tractor.

The tractor was like the 20 mule teams he used to own when he was a successful farmer on the Great Plains. He had started as a cowboy breaking horses for a living. He was at the door of change from horse drawn everything to tractors, and power from oil that began to feed the world, shortly before, banks and the great depression ended all that for him.

For our little subsistence farm, the tractor plowed, the tractor fertilized, the tractor planted, the tractor cut hay, the tractor raked hay, and the tractor bailed hay, the tractor hauled hay, the tractor mixed cement, the tractor toted injured animals.

I found him sitting on a five gallon bucket his hat on his knee and embarrassment on his face. A look I’d never seen before from the most affable man I’d ever known.

“Oh Jimmy,” he sighed, “You have to do something for me.”

He allowed that he had left the tractor out of gear and did not set the brake while he got off to do some chore, and the 9N had inadvertently rolled down the hill—and it was not a gentle hill, but instead it was about a 70 percent slope. With an almost straight drop the tractor got going at such a high rate of speed that when it hit the bottom it actually bounced over a fence just like a bounding deer at the bottom of the hill; and while airborne, it hit the pasture and  bounded over another small hill by the apple trees, and rolled out into the fresh green pasture upright with all four wheels on the ground; beside the still slough where bull frogs were letting go in their slow and late afternoon jug-a-rums as they form spring to fall.

By his narrative, I was now looking down wide eyed over the hill and out to where, yes in the green pasture—there the tractor was sitting motionless in the sun.

“I’d like you to go down there,” he said, pointing at the tractor but looking away, “and if there is nothing wrong with it, drive that tractor back up here, and never, never-tell-my-son-that-this-ever-happened.”

I went over the top of this steep hill side, amazed and laughing and imagining again the trajectory and the perfect angle of descent that kept the 9N from turning over, and fully expected something vital to the machine being broken as his narrative told of a very loud noise when it hit the bottom of the hill, before it leapt the fence.

Hell yes, I was wishing I’d seen it happen, but when I got to it, I could not see anything broken. I touched the button starter next to the gear shift that was still in neutral of course, it fired up like it was new, and I drove it back up the 100-year-old road bed that was at one time the road from Medford to Prospect, that now let us take a long gentle slope slowly up and down to our house and farm. He was of course relieved, and I never told my uncle of the driverless Ford Tractor’s wild ride until about 10 years after the old man had died.

Another afternoon when I was 17, I found him on the concrete floor of the barn having fallen and broken his hip while tending an animal, I gently got him in the carry-all I attached to the back of the tractor and very slowly got him to the house, before dark where I called our Doctor at the time who drove a fast 16 miles out to examine him. He thought his hip was broken, and then we waited for an ambulance to come twenty miles from town. They operated on him the next day and pinned his hip and told him he’d likely never walk again.

Before he left the hospital, he told me that this was bullshit and he’d be walking on a plane to fly back to Kansas. He was determined not to die in Oregon as he thought his son might bury him here and not beside his wife in Kansas. The notion of family and death and after life being was lost on his son. So being buried in a place, an actual piece of earth with a direct address that he last saw at his wife’s funeral was all in the old man’s heart and he was unbending against a wind of utility and my Uncle’s notion of frugalness. The Kansas prairie was a part of all his stories and memories, which was part of everyday banter, and the Oregon farm for almost ten years had been like an extended vacation, he wanted to rest in the midst of a landscape in the Flint Hills not far from the location of the sod house he was born in. His farm on Grouse Creek that was taken away in the depression, his father’s farm that his sister lived on until her eighties, the two small towns he’d done commerce in, the wagon roads that were now paved, as boy seeing it unfettered with no fences, seeing Indians, and living among his Norwegian relatives, and taking to the cowboy life as a young man and the memory of horse drawn everything giving way to automobiles, the laughter the children, his wife, his Beechnut tobacco chew, the good dogs in his life, the tragedy of all the deaths before him; his father and mother and father-in-law and several still born children and a one year old child, all in the same cemetery—all would come to an end and he’d be there and he was very comfortable with this notion. He mended, in a hospital bed in our living room for a time, started out on a walker, then crutches and to two canes and then to one.

That next fall I and a neighbor killed three nice blacktail bucks across the creek beyond the garden where I knew they could be waylaid, and I drove them back draped over the tractor up the old Prospect road past our house where my grandfather was standing on the back patio watching us return and he raised one of his canes and brandished it in the air approvingly, as we drove past.

The next spring, I accompanied him to the airport and saw him walk with one cane up onto a Boeing 727, and as he got to the door, he turned around and waved his Stetson hat down at me on the tarmac, and then he slowly turned around in his cowboy boots and entered the jet to be caught up in the air, and I never saw him again.

James Ross Kelly lives in Northern California next to the Sacramento River. He has been a journalist for Gannet, a travel book editor, and had a score of labor jobs—the in-between, jobs you get from being an English major. He started writing poetry and short stories in college on the GI Bill, after college he continued and gave occasional readings in the Pacific Northwest during the 1980s. Mr. Kelly worked as an environmental writer for the Forest Service in Oregon and Southeast Alaska where he retired in 2012. Born in Kansas, Mr. Kelly was a long-time resident of Southern Oregon where he grew up. In the past four years Silver Birch Press (Los Angeles, California), Cargo Literary, (Prince Edward Island, Canada), Fiction Attic, Rock and Sling (Spokane, Washington), Edify (Helena, Alabama), Flash Fiction (San Francisco), Rue Scribe (New Mexico), True Chili (New Mexico), The RawArt Review (Endicott City, Maryland) and The Purpled Nail (New Mexico), have all featured one or more of his stories or poems. Most recently, And the Fire We Talked About, a collection of short stories, will be published by Uncollected Press/RawArt Review in 2020 and is Mr. Kelly’s first book of fiction.

“I do believe if a man could go back in time, he’d fight to stay there.” Grandpa Jones rarely opined on anything except the weather, so when he finished watching yet another John Wayne movie ⸺one of the fifty old timey movie collections that Walmart sold in tin cans ⸺we all exchanged surprised, self-congratulatory grins. Happiness for less than twenty bucks.

“Why do you say that?” Harrison asked before we could make a hasty exit. He was the youngest of us at seventeen. Jackson was twenty, and me, Monroe, I was twenty-one. Grandpa was old enough to remember dial phones and forty-five records.

“It’s hard to believe that Kentucky was once considered the ‘west’ but it’s true. People didn’t know they’d have to hack their way through five hundred miles of thick forest to get to the real west, and another two hundred miles across the prairie to the desert. Imagine seeing that open space! Not parks or endangered animal preserves, but real open, empty space. To see America like the Garden of Eden. It sure didn’t take long for it to fill up with folks intent on making it a breadbasket. Then Eisenhower decided we should have highways like he’d seen in Germany, and we got car culture. People could move so quickly. Away from family, friends, and communities. All in the name of opportunity.”

We regretted “Mr. Polite” Harrison’s question. Grandpa was going to give us one of his long, long, long answers if we didn’t cut him short, so when Harrison gave me his ‘rescue me’ signal, I interrupted. “Sure must have been something alright. Hey, what say we take advantage of the break in the snowfall, Harry, and go to Mickey Dee’s?”

“I’m game!” Harrison scrambled to his feet, pulling on his hoodie as he headed for the door. “C’mon, Jack, don’t you want to go?”

I had my keys in hand, and was reaching for the wool coat Mom got me for Christmas. Jack didn’t stir. “Naw, you guys go on.” He looked to me like he was content to stay on the floor, leaning against the sofa in front of the T.V. Harry went to the car, but I had to find my wallet, so I was within ear shot when Jackson said, “I sort of went back in time, Grandpa. I think you might be right.”

I hadn’t noticed it, but Jackson’s voice had deepened since he finished boot camp at Great Lakes. We were all so anxious to open presents last night, nobody said much of anything but wow! and thanks! I wanted him to come to Mickey Dee’s partly to catch up since he’d decided to join the Navy instead of following me to UK. I felt a little betrayed that he’d gone his own way and here he was doing it again.

I heard Harry honk the horn. “You bring back enough for everybody,” I told him as I handed him two twenties.

“What’re you gonna do?”

“Jack’s fixin’ to tell one of his salty sea ditties.”

“I want to hear…”

“I’ll tell you later.”

I went to the back door and busied myself in the kitchen so I could listen in. “I got two weeks leave after graduation, but northern Illinois looks so much like Kentucky, I decided I’d take my time getting to corpsman training school in San Diego,” I heard Jackson say.

“Oh, your pilot must have flown low…”

“No, I took the train. Caught the Southwest Chief to Los Angeles and then the Starlight down to San Diego. Just like you did, Grandpa. Man, what trip!”

I’d forgotten Grandpa was in the Navy, too. And the day Jack and I found that old duffle bag in the garage that had all of Grandpa’s crap in it. Bell bottoms, a pea-coat, snake guards ⸺as if there were snakes aboard ship ⸺for his boots, and his sailor’s hat. Dixie cup, he called it. Everything smelled of moth balls, but Jack didn’t care. He put on the hat and coat, and said it must have been quite an adventure to go to sea. What did I expect from a guy who actually read Moby Dick? I called him Ishmael until he punched me in the arm so hard I almost cried.

“I’ve got another Christmas present for you, Grandpa” Jackson said. He came towards the kitchen and I yanked open Mom’s china cabinet and took out four of her everyday white plates. “Back so soon?”

“No, I sent Harry on an errand. You know how he wanted to drive my Bel Aire. This way I don’t have to cringe…”

He reached up to the top of the cabinet and brought down a box wrapped in silver paper and a red ribbon. “Got this special for Gramps.”

“What is it?” I whispered.   

“A model.”

He took the box to the living room, and I heard Grandpa say, “You didn’t have to do that, Jack, but I’m glad you did. Lookie here, Monroe. It’s a replica of the Southwest Chief.”

There was no sense pretending I wasn’t there, so I came out and admired the tin engine. “Yeah, that’s cool.” Grandpa shoved it into my hand. For my money, it had ‘MADE IN CHINA’ look, but the tag read Souvenir of New Mexico, twenty-five dollars. I handed the trinket back to Jack and resisted the temptation to tell hi he got ripped off. What do I know about trains?    

“Rode the Chief in 1965.Could have spent my whole life going back and forth across the country in it. Then my baby-girl marries a Bluegrass fella and twenty-five years and six hours later here I am.”

Ingrate, I thought. Because of him, I had to give up my room and move in with Harry, which meant I had to get an apartment that screwed my college budget to hell. Jack didn’t take it that way, though. He gave Grandpa a pat on the shoulder.

In any case, he and Jack were sharing something I wasn’t a part of. It was silly, but I was jealous. No, I felt cramped inside a small Kentucky box. I got to see great basketball games, and once I went to the Kentucky Derby, but it was as though my whole life could be summed up in one phrase: Go Big Blue! Their big blue was the Pacific Ocean. And the fifty-one years between them was crossed in a choo-choo train.

“You know,” Jack said, “I think that must be what heaven is like. Like riding through endless emptiness, but safe because you’re not alone. Like that Mohave night sky when it’s just you and God looking at the stars.”  

Grandpa put on one of those faces I’d seen on my English Lit teacher when she read poetry.  “My father said much the same thing about his trip west. He and my Uncle Leland left on top of a train, not in one, though. Times was so hard in the Depression, lots of folks had to leave big families. They sure did hate leavin’ home. It’s a hard thing, leavin’ home. Some can do it, and some can’t and still be happy. Green trees and pastures sure ain’t my favorite color. I’m partial to red and rust, yellow and sand. God, how I wish I could have seen the buffalo roam. What a sight that must have been!” I knew I wasn’t a part of the conversation then. I half expected them to burst into a chorus of Home of the Range, and decided to wait for Harry in the kitchen.

I didn’t wait long. The three of us piled into Jack’s Toyota, and met Mom and Dad at the hospital. It was too late for good-byes by the time we got there. Harry must have thought he didn’t need a seat-belt in that big boat of a car. A rear-end collision sent his head through the windshield. Jack told me it was merciful they’d bandaged his face too. He’s a medic, so he’d know, I guessed.

 We all went to the chapel and cried, except Grandpa. He just sat there with his arm around Mom’s shoulder, staring at the altar. And beyond it into space.  Strange that the whoops! baby was the first to go. A joyful accidental birth had ended in a tragic accidental death. We’d never have another merry Christmas, I remember thinking. I suppose I was crying for the future, too.

Then again, people think about all kinds of weird stuff in a crisis. I believe it protects them from reality. Like the reality of seeing dried blood on white leather upholstery. Like the reality of hearing an insurance adjustor saying I was lucky I carried comprehensive on a vintage Chevy. I almost slugged the guy but my arms weighed a thousand pounds. “You were smart to itemize every customization,” he said. Yeah. Smart. The twenty-four-grand from the General Insurance Company paid for Harry’s funeral and a used Ford pick-up to get me to school.

I gave up my apartment and moved back home. It was closer to my job at Hitachi, and my paying rent helped my parents with the hospital bill. “I’ll be next,” Grandpa announced on Valentine’s Day, and told us Jack had invited him to San Diego. Jack worked at the Naval Hospital and there was adult center on base. “Jack says I can work on the vet’s registry with the other guys. They’re trying to reconnect people who served on the decommissioned ships, especially us ‘Nam guys,” Grandpa explained. It sounded to me more like senior day-care, but there was excitement in his newscast.

I thought my parents would object, but they seemed relieved when Jack mailed his air-fare. I thought about Grandpa’s Dad and his Uncle Leland leaving home during the Depression. Grandpa was one less wound to care for while they tended their own.

As for me, as the days wore on, I felt less and less like a UK Wildcat and more and more like a caged cat. I stopped going to keggers on the week-ends and worked overtime instead. Jack was Jack, but Harry had been my biggest fan. Come to think of it, I’d been Harry’s biggest fan. I’d promised we’d rent a two-bedroom as soon as he turned eighteen. What could be better than to have a roommate I’d known all his life?

What would have been his high-school senior year passed quickly. As usual, my parents fed the needy at St. James’ Church on Christmas Day, but by May they couldn’t bear the graduation hoopla at the high school. They maxed out their credit cards and booked a cruise to Aruba ⸺to salvage their sanity, they said.  “Will you be okay by yourself for a week?”

“Sure, I’ve saved enough to get my truck painted. And my friend, Chewy? His brother owns a body shop in Lexington. We’re going to put a primer on it, and Chewy’s brother gonna paint it amber orange. I got big plans.”

And a lot of memories. I’d already started a box to put them in. Like the March Madness ticket stubs Harry and I kept, and the Algebra for Dummies book we ignored. I was supposed to tutor him. Then there was Grandpa’s tin train engine he forgot. Jack reminded me to send it at least a dozen times, but I never got around to it. Too busy with summer school so I could graduate mid-term. Too this. Too that. The paint job could wait. Maybe Grandpa couldn’t. I don’t know why, but by the time I dropped the parents off at the airport, getting that little tin toy to him became the only thing that mattered. It was time to saddle up, Pilgrim.

I loaded the box in my truck, along with my clothes, and put the engine on the dash, drove Hwy 65 South, and turned right onto Hwy 40. “You don’t even need a map,” Jack had told me about his driving the Toyota back to San Diego. “You just keep on going West until you run out of road.” Yep, now it was just me and ol’ Duke Wayne lookin’ for God in a place called Nostalgia where never is heard a discouraging word.

Jenean McBrearty is a graduate of San Diego State University, and taught Sociology and Political Science for over twenty-five years. Favorite song? My Heroes Have Always Been Mathmeticians, thus her dream studying engineering. She lives in Kentucky and writes full time. Her works are available at Lulu.com and Amazon.

Cindy Swenson, who fed the crew, was afraid of the black widows in the basement of the bunkhouse on the high mountain range. “Scorpions I can live with,” she told Simon. “Big enough they’re hard to miss. Spiders hide in the spaces between things, and sneak up on you.”

Three years older than the student cowboys, Simon didn’t exactly fear the little bastards, but understood they had enough poison to make a man sick for days or even weeks. If for no other purpose than impressing Cindy, he might have gone after them.

He did nothing at first, though, because the younger four were mesmerized. Students at the vo-tech high school down in the valley, they were up there because their instructor, Mr. Keppelbaum, had persuaded the ranch manager to take them on as “interns.”

They were managing 300 cattle, mostly brown-and-white Herefords, spread out over the Circle T’s government-leased summer range. The Inyo-Whites were built of the same massive granite blocks as the Sierra Nevada across the Owens Valley, but were bulky rather than jagged, having been spared glacial etching.

The terrain was sparse grazing, more sagebrush and dwarf juniper than grass; keeping track of the cattle’s browsing peregrinations demanded attention. Almost all the cows had nursing calves in tow. The bulls, their season’s work accomplished, wandered even more widely, sometimes a half day’s ride apart.

Merrick, the wrangler who supervised the student cowboys – Keppelbaum came up only one day a week – won the kids’ attention the first day with advice on scorpions. “Turn each boot upside down before you put it on, and thwack it hard against the bench,” he told them as they gathered in the basement locker room. “They like to curl up overnight someplace cozy like down in the toe.” And sure enough, someone dislodged a scorpion that very morning, to be quickly dispatched with the heel of the same boot.

Merrick was a rangy, clean-shaven veteran with short-cropped grizzled hair. His roan mare knew the mountain so well that he could focus on the cattle. He quickly saw that Simon knew what he was doing, and so dispatched him after breakfast most mornings on his own: “Ride down Crooked Creek to where it joins Wyman, and eyeball the cattle down there. Be sure nobody’s limping or looking logy. Count ‘em; should be 22. And watch for catamount sign.”

A mountain lion had taken a two-year-old heifer a week earlier over on the Lazy J allotment just to the north, and might be on the hunt again any day. Merrick carried a .30-30 rifle in a scabbard slung over his saddle horn.

The kids under his tutelage rode well enough, but were teen-agers. Once they became aware of the basement’s arachnid decoration, every one of them contrived a smartphone selfie alongside a female spider on its web, the telltale red hourglass prominent on its belly. They emailed the photos to girlfriends, who presumably shivered with delight at such bravery.

Simon might have done that himself, but his first two years at State U had been a grind that left him little time for amorous pursuits; he had no girlfriend to impress. Having grown up on a ranch back in the Dakotas, he was fully qualified for this summer job, and keeping track of meandering cattle on a range with cold clean air and magnificent vistas was welcome work.

Merrick evidently understood the kids’ fascination with the spiders, and was indulgent when one of them decided to mark each website with crimson spray paint, a blotch the size of a silver dollar. The basement soon looked as though there’d been an epidemic of giant measles.

Which got Cindy’s attention. Her job involved daily trips to the basement pantry and longer forays once or twice a week to do laundry. The morning after the painting party, the red spots made her aware of two webs between the open ceiling rafters of the pantry, and another above the laundry tubs. Her ultimatum: Either the spiders went or she did.

As blonde and buxom as you’d expect of a Swede, she drove up daily to look after the vo-tech cowboy kids, which meant Simon and Merrick ate a lot better than the cowboy grub they would have made themselves. Her daytime presence was for Simon compensation for spending his evenings with a distinctly juvenile crew of bunkmates.

“Spiders? Burn ‘em,” Merrick advised. “Tell Cindy to bring one of those hand-held propane torches from a hardware store.”

“Got it,” Cindy whispered to Simon next morning. “Hang around after breakfast.”

Having a conspiratorial secret with a handsome young woman was a new experience. They waited until the kids had saddled up and headed out with Merrick, and went downstairs together. Simon screwed the torch assembly onto the tank, and Cindy brought it to life with a match.

The paint blotches made the job easy. They started in the pantry, went on to the laundry tubs and then the rest of the way around the basement. All it took was a quick blast of flame. After each spider had been turned into an ashball, Simon incinerated the web, and let the flame play briefly on the space between the wall or rafter to which the webs had been appended. “Just in case there are babies back there,” he told her.

“My hero!” she said, and gave him a kiss on the cheek that might have been a promise of something more. “I’ll hide the tank in a cardboard box in the pantry in case any more turn up.”

The cowboy kids seemed unaware that their black widow pets had disappeared. The red paint blotches were still there, and they all had photographic evidence, so no one bothered inspecting for new webs or captured prey.

Two days later, though, soon after the kids had gone off with Merrick, another showed up. In the half-enclosed bathroom, an old-fashioned cast-iron sink was bolted to the wall, a porcelain-coated white shell with deep hollows underneath. The spider must have been dozing in those depths – “maybe digesting its latest kill,” Merrick said later – when the paint-balling and torching went on.

Simon had done a few chores nearby, and came back to use the toilet. There was a new gossamer web, two handspans wide, stretching the whole space from under the sink to the concrete floor. He buckled his jeans, flushed and closed the toilet and sat down again to admire the widow’s handiwork. It was elaborately, geometrically patterned, and must have been entirely woven in the hour since everyone had set out to work.

As he sat there, a scorpion appeared, scuttling along on the floor, obviously unaware of the danger ahead. It had just barged into the web when he heard footsteps on the stair.

“Cindy!” he whispered. “Come look at this! Don’t be scared!”

The urgency in his voice made her cautious, but she edged over. “Is it safe?”

“We’re okay. The scorpion’s not. Here, have a seat, and stay quiet. Let’s see what happens next.” He gave her the toilet seat and squatted down on his haunches.

The scorpion thrashed around, trying to free itself but succeeding only in becoming hopelessly enmeshed.

Then suddenly the spider appeared, racing down her web. Simon had only a moment to wonder why spiderwebs were sticky to the prey but not to the predator when she paused a few inches above the scorpion, dancing a little jig.

The scorpion thrashed again. “He’s trying to aim his tail at her,” Simon whispered. “That’s where his stinger is.”

Cindy was obviously fascinated, past fear. “He’s out of luck,” she whispered back.

Sure enough, in another moment the scorpion was immobilized in silk. The spider danced a bit more, then pounced onto the head with what was obviously a decisive poisoned bite. Then just as quickly as she had come down, she raced back up her web and disappeared into the hollow underside of the sink, leaving the scorpion in death throes.

“Got your smartphone, Cindy?”

“Right. Wait here.”

Cindy had hardly gotten back when the spider reappeared. This time, instead of dancing down the web, she lowered herself down on a new single strand that she was apparently spinning as she came.

Click!

“Great shot, Cindy!”

The black widow landed on the scorpion’s head, and deployed two forelegs in long, sweeping arcs, cutting the dead creature free from the web that had been its undoing.

Click! Click!

In what seemed only moments, the widow had the body free of her snare. She then planted her legs firmly on the scorpion’s corpse, and began ascending the single strand she had come down on, hauling her prize back up. Simon was reminded of an ancient comic strip he’d seen whose top-hatted character Jiggs sat with steelworkers on I-beams being hoisted aloft.

Click! “Do you suppose she reels that thread back into her belly?” Cindy asked.

“Beats me. But it’s the strongest stuff in the world, I’ve read.”

“You read up and tell me later. However it works, that’s a handsome little freight elevator.” Click!

In another moment, both spider and scorpion disappeared into the hollows under the sink.

“Okay, I’ve got to get to work, Cindy. We’ll leave her enjoy the meal.”

“No way! I’ll go get the burner.”

“Wait! How about a little scientific inquiry? Don’t you want to know how long that meal lasts?”

“Not particularly.”

“Days, at least. Maybe weeks. We could keep an eye on it.”

“I’d just as soon torch it now.”

Simon persisted. He wanted to know if a male would show up, having somehow evaded the flames that wiped out the others. He wanted to learn how to identify spider egg sacs and see if the feasting widow laid any. He wanted to be on watch when she emerged to weave a new web to catch another scorpion.

“All that?” she asked.

“Learning about arachnid life. You could help.”

“Sounds too sophisticated for this country girl. Will watching help your college study?”

“Yes,” he lied.“

“And then you’ll torch it?”

“Okay.”

“Promise?”

He hesitated. “There’s a rhythm to these critters’ lives. I want to learn it. Then yes.”

“Okay,” she relented. “And thank you for calling me. I wouldn’t have missed it.” She leaned over, apparently to offer another kiss on the cheek.

Seeing it coming, Simon turned to catch it on his lips.

She let the kiss linger a moment, gossamer-light, then pulled back. “How’s about we catch a movie in town one of these nights?”

Amazing what webs spiders spin, he thought. “You’re on.”

Retired after four decades’ prizewinning print and broadcast journalism in Hartford CT, I received my MFA in Creative Writing from Fairfield University in 2013. I have since published more than four dozen short stories and non-fiction pieces, but have two novellas and a novel still looking for publishers.