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2009-04-01 - "Elegy for the Gunfighter"
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“Elegy for the Gunfighter”
The gunfighter at the end of the bar had once single-handedly defended a broken-down stagecoach from a score of banditos. Another time he rescued the daughter of the dusty town’s mayor from a band of ornery natives. Her daddy gave him a bottomless mug at the town’s one saloon. Sallie-Mae gave him the clap.
The gunfighter’s triumphant days of nobility were finished, though. His weathered hand shook each time he raised the mug of cheap whiskey to his cracked lips. The gunfighter was very nearly a piece of saloon furniture; he sat in the same stool at the end of the bar, sipping atrocious ghost town liquor and staring into space. The young men who had become regulars at the saloon, boys who had once trailed behind him and hoped for a flashy gun trick and idolized the gunfighter’s free ways, had learned not to invite him to cards.
The gunfighter, in his youth, had been hailed as the Hero of San Miguel. No one at the saloon knew what he had done to earn the sobriquet, or exactly where San Miguel was. The town where the gunfighter drank was barely more than a ghost town, just a mail drop on the lone railroad line. The majority of the town’s farms had dried up and the farmers abandoned their homesteads, leaving increasingly dilapidated buildings and hundreds of tumbleweeds. Forty-nine days out of fifty, the harsh desert sun would cause mirages, and on the fiftieth day, flash floods stole entire buildings.
The gunfighter rarely took notice of the heat or the sun or the flash floods. Occasionally, when he was sober enough, he would walk the outskirts of the town, where civilization eroded to wasteland, with his threadbare duster flapping in the hot desert gusts. He brought his guns on these jaunts, a Colt Python and a Colt Peacemaker in cracked leather holsters, and stared through the mirages towards the mountains from under the shade of his ancient hat, in which a few ragged bullet holes remained un-patched from the wild escape from that band of renegade Confederates driven mad by the heat and the thirst.
The gunfighter returned from one of these excursions to find a stranger in his place at the bar. The gunfighter stopped in the doorway, silhouetted by the blood red setting sun, and stared at the stranger. He was a man scarcely out of adolescence and had a few pimple scars marring his slightly chubby face. His black hair looked sweaty and greasy from a rich diet and an overlarge cowboy hat that was lying on the bar. He was swigging a sarsaparilla and humming to himself. The eternal card game had been placed carefully aside and the men there were silent and staring.
The gunslinger, who was too old to think of the stranger as anything but a lad, harrumphed slightly, and the lad finally noticed him. He noisily chugged the sarsaparilla and thumped the empty mug on the bar. He rose and strode over to the gunfighter.
“Ah, my good man,” the lad said. “The name’s Fish, Leland Fish, at your service.”
The gunfighter looked the lad in the eye. The lad waited expectantly for a return introduction. When the gunfighter opened his mouth to speak, the other patrons reckoned they could hear long-unused ligaments popping in his jaw as he said, “What do you want.” The statement was delivered flat, not a question.
“Why, you, my good sir,” Leland Fish said. “I came all the way out here from Philidelphia, where I am a lawyer by trade until I read of your exploits of derring-do out here among the ‘Injuns’ and ‘cowpokes.’” The way the lad sounded out these words made the gunfighter cringe. “After I read of you in the weekly adventure booklet, I couldn’t help but try my luck at locating you to verify the authenticity of the stories told about you, perhaps hear an untold one or three, perhaps even become your apprentice. I’m sure I could be of the utmost assistance to you in your grand adventures, Colonel. I see you are returning from one now. Please, do sit down, and regale you exploits to us, your no-doubt adoring audience. Ah, to finally find a real-to-life Quatermain!”
The gunfighter looked from the lad to the bartender, who shrugged his broad shoulders and shook his head. The gunfighter looked back at the Fish lad, who was smiling in expectation. “I went for a walk,” the gunfighter croaked. He brushed past the lad, who was clearly unsatisfied with the response and sat down in his usual place. He slid the gigantic cowboy hat to one side and began to drink from the mug the bartender placed before him.
“Come now, man,” the Fish lad said, sitting on the stool next to the gunfighter. “You simply must reward my travel to this armpit of a town.” The other patrons looked sullen at this flippant remark.
The gunfighter finished his mug and rose from the stool. The lad stood up as well.
The gunfighter settled his hat on his head and told the bartender, "I am going for a walk.”
“Excellent, sir. Pray, allow me to accompany you,” Fish said. “He picked up the far-too-large hat and revealed an old revolver that was more than half rusted. He cracked the barrel, spun the chamber and closed it, all clumsily. Flakes of corroded steel sloughed off as he handled the antique weapon.
The gunfighter simply said, “No,” and began towards the door.
“But…” the lad began, but quickly fell silent as he discovered he was staring into the dark barrels of the gunfighter’s Colts. The gunfighter resettled his hat, and walked out the door. The lad watched him leave.
***
The gunfighter ignored the lad as best he could, but after three weeks of near-constant pestering, he felt himself beginning to weaken. The gunfighter had been spending more time outside, where the lad would not dare follow him, but as a result, the sun and the heat tired the gunfighter out faster, and he would find himself retreating to the shade and fluid of the saloon, where the lad waited to pester him with questions about his past. One day, the gunfighter could no longer stand it. When the lad rose to follow him out, the gunfighter left his guns in their holsters. Emboldened, the lawyer tailed the gunfighter out to the outskirts.
The gunfighter paused, as he always did, to peer into the distance at the mountains. The lad could not guess what the gunfighter was thinking about, so he said, “Alas, from this angle, the mountains resemble not the ‘purple mountains majesty’ and this desert is nowhere near the ‘amber waves of grain.’ Why would anyone wish to live out here?” Leland Fish asked. “This whole place lacks even the remotest aspect of adventuresome civilization. Quite frankly, it’s boring. If not for gentlemen such as you, why, I’m certain these sorts of towns would have been burned to ash long ago.”
The gunfighter walked more slowly these days than in the fire of his youth. Painful arthritis had grown from his hip into his hands. It was midday when the gunfighter and the young lawyer reached the farthest point of town, where the gunfighter always turned back towards the saloon. Today, though, the gunfighter stopped. He peered through the mirages, looking for something.
“Ah, the mountains again?” Fish asked. “Dreadful things, though it looks today like they bring rain. Are those not clouds of rain before us?”
The gunfighter spoke. “Those ain’t clouds of rain, they’re clouds of dust. Looks like a raiding party, small one.” He turned back to the town, but it was too far away for him to go back and warn the folk to arms. He turned to the lad and croaked, “You need to go back and warn the people. Get to the church and ring the bell until someone comes hollering at you. Tell whoever it is to start preparing a defense.”
“But sir, what will you do? I mustn’t leave you here alone, defenseless. If half the things I’ve heard about these natives are true, they’ll murder you, or worse.”
The gunfighter shook his head. “Two men with handguns can’t repel a full raiding party, natives or otherwise. I can’t make it back to the town fast enough with my leg, but I can try to hold them off.” The dust cloud was growing closer as they spoke’ Leland could now see black dots on the horizon which had to be the raiders.
The gunfighter had pulled the Colt Python from its holster. “If my horse were still alive, I’d be able to go back and warn ‘em myself, but it’s up to you, lad. I’m through arguing, now get going!”
The lad shook his head, but began jogging back to town. He had just made it there, when he heard many shots in the distance. Leland looked back, but couldn’t make out who was shooting at whom. He made it to the church and burst inside, looking for the belfry. He rang it nearly two dozen times before the priest came to see what was what.
“What in God’s name are you doing, sir,” the priest asked.
“Sir, I beg of you. The Colonel bade me return to town and warn of impending native attack! Quickly, Father, you must raise a posse and return with me to the outskirts and fight back the savages.” The lad was racing around, trying to load his old revolver. One of the chambers was blocked up with rust.
“Lord help us,” the priest prayed, and the two men went to the saloon to pick up the ablest armed men. They commandeered a number of horses and nearly killed the poor beasts in trying to reach the gunfighter’s position.
“My Lord, man, were you able to scare them off all by yourself?” The lad gaped openly at the gunfighter, who was standing still, holding his mighty revolvers at his sides, the ground around him littered with spent casings and speed-loaders. Nearly a score of bandits lay dead or dying around him.
The gunfighter was watching the mountains again. He loved the mountains, as much as he’d ever loved any woman. The gunfighter barely noticed the young lad, Leland Fish patting him on the back, then looking in horror at the bloodstains on his hand.
The gunfighter saw Sable galloping toward him. The mighty horse stopped before the gunfighter, and he reared up, kicking his hooves in the dusty air.
The gunfighter leapt to his horse’s saddle, feet landing securely in leather stirrups. The powerful young horse reared fiercely, and the gunfighter let out a mighty yell, and urged Sable to a gallop. As he rode off into the sunset his old friends came up behind him, joining him for one last adventure.
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Artist Comment
I'm bored with Khatru. Who cares about college kids who can't die, manifest fire, perform ancient magic or create mad science? I've decided to change the whole format of my cultural output. The visual medium is dead to me. The Call of the West draws me like a siren.