Left hand stroked the white plastic
of the table. His three companions slumped over their grub. Damn they were
useless at cards. His milk white eyes caught the sungleam
on the white hair of the old lady to his left.
Something reminded him of his wife\u2019s grandma.
His grandma. God, how he\u2019d loved his cousin and she,
well, after his long spell abed after being sliced down to his heart
by that bullet \u2013 that vigilante bullet \u2013 well, that was when they
married. When he could stand up again.
His blue and red rimmed eyes swam toward the window. The horses were tethered, blowing
and pawing the dust outside the saloon. He might as well ride on outta
here. There was a big stagecoach due tomorrow.
He could take it alone. He\u2019d done it before.
So many times since the gang split up. It had to pass
a narrow spot by the creek. Shaded by the cottonwoods.
Should be full bloom now.
He pushed himself back from the table.
The world slid right.
He was a pile
on the floor. He reached fast
for his gun \u2013 on guard \u2013
he knew he was being stalked.
That goddam arm. That missing arm. He\u2019d get revenge yet but now
something stayed wrong.
His boots. No boots. No spurs.
Just these little leather things that slid.
And now feet came rushing at him, and hands reached for him.
Out Out. He had to get out where the law couldn\u2019t reach him.
Yeah. He only had one arm.
But it was a power house.
His reach was the size of the Nebraska prairie.
He swung.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Katherine Leonard grew up as a post-war Navy brat travelling to states as diverse as the Massachusetts of John F Kennedy at the time of his assassination and the segregation of rural Texas at the time of Martin Luther King, Jr.\u2019s assassination. She continued the pursuit of diverse outlooks with careers as a chemist, a geologist and an oncology nurse. She currently lives and writes in the Central New York area and is actively involved in the YMCA\u2019s Downtown Writers Center. Her writing has been deeply influenced by time spent in New Mexico, Texas and Colorado for space and heat and Vermont and Maine for ice and clarity, Central New York for love and by living in Washington, DC for lies and redemption.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":377,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-368","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-poetry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/underwoodpress.com\/truechili\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/richard-felix-MxFjwuFFDi4-unsplash-scaled.jpg?fit=1707%2C2560&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/truechili\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/truechili\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/truechili\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/truechili\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/truechili\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=368"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/truechili\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":376,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/truechili\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368\/revisions\/376"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/truechili\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/377"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/truechili\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/truechili\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/truechili\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}