...

RED

Down she came from the tall mountain spires. The tall mountain spires rose behind her, scenic and harsh as she drifted like leaves from those very mountain treelines dripping down into a small creek, drifting like the runoff of any river in the winter. When she came riding down, she was like a hawk, descending on a small Saguaro tree, or perhaps one of Joshua's, waiting for a vole, a mouse, or even a snake to make the fatal mistake of being close enough for her predatory talons to strike.

Down she came, clip-clop, riding her horse, a sonic, percussive beat hitting the dirt, the trail, like a rhythm, a repetition, like a repeat. Clip clop. Clip cop. Gentle dancing hooves beneath her, striding downwards, descending the staircase of the mountains to the meadows beyond.

Down she came through all the flame and the fire, storms singing from time to time, bending to water, finding some secret oasis, stopping now and then and now again to indulge in a long, stiff drink. Her reflection refracted against the skin of each ever, brushed away with ripples in every creek as she deftly jumped from horse to ground, cupped some water and let a breath itself inhale deep into her core.

She matched liquor with water, water with liquor. Her horse was like her: lean, narrowed, all form and function, needing enough and only enough, as she did, as she came riding through the meadows, down out of the mountains from some faraway town. Every once in a while, she stopped, took a clear look around, and counted the stoppage. She breathed in and out, exhaling in tandem with her steed, counting it– the stoppage– on her hands: one two, one two, one two. The bell rings, a wry smile.

She came to a far, high vantage point. Looked out from this mound of dirt and grass across fields of flowers that danced alive with colors once vibrant now muted like a worked over pastel painting, faded in the dimmer light of a museum.

She would rest, run her coarse hands over the rifle she’d slung on the back of her mount. She would click her tongue as easily as she ran her hands over one of her pistols. Each pistol, with coral red inlaid patterns on the grip were of the classic Pathfinder design. The pattern, made of coral and pearl, was woven like the thatches of an old picnic basket. She ran hands against the pistols often, as if practicing for the moment they would need to rise suddenly and fire.

She wore boots of black and brackish leather, though it is hard to say whether this was their original color, weathered as they were from time, distance, and all the roughest dust that rose up from the road. He trailcoat was old, mended on the daily, patches here and there, extra pockets sewed into the lining, extra ammunition hidden therein. The bullets pressed against her chest as she continued her ride.

The sun grew higher in the sky, lengthening the shadows of the day. She stopped in time to chance a glance at a rabbit that popped out of a tiny hole among pikas and sparrows. Three rabbits popped up and ran, but one stopped, a wild-eyed hare that seemed to sniff the air with nerves. This nervous one twitched its whiskers, not to smell or sense anything but deducing a core truth of the last moments of its life.

It seemed to know it was in danger and darted away into the grass of the meadow, kicking up birds so that they would cover its quick exit. They whirled around and called out singsongs of the danger of a human predator.

But she knew these tricks. She pulled her rifle quickly; the practiced action was automatic, advanced, simple hunting. Careful aim, steady, steady, steady…. calm. A quick pat on the neck of her animal, down girl, calm, steady, again steady… blam!

The rabbit fell, reflecting the sky, the birds crying and wheeling and noising around, now that they knew certainly there was a predator in the field. Cacophony of birds and thumping and running small mammals all exiting this area of death.

That wild prophet of rabbits lay dead. Its eye, a glass of its last thought, as she bent down to pick it up, broke its neck just to be sure. She murmured something under her breath, a mumble, not quite "At least we'll have food tonight."

Her horse said nothing, just gave an old accustomed snort.

She climbed back on board, wending her way through wild plains that went from meadow to mountains, meadows to dust, dirt, nothing, the whole natural scene becoming a vast and empty horizon of desert. It was nothing after nothing for mile after mile onwards. And that day, the day of the rabbit's death, the day of the descent from the mountain, turned into the night.

A night like so many others, away from all else, away from all history, away from thought. But the rider, the horse, the stars… you could see for miles and miles around. And by virtue of this sight, of the fact that all alone, uneasily, she held against her pistols as she sat beside her night fire. Not quite held heavily, but definitely with a purpose, seeming something like an animal herself. Caged and waiting for something to appear out of the endless nothingness that was the sea of blazing distant suns twinkling small celestial fires in the night.

Dawn in the desert desert: sage brush and cacti met with the yellow kiss of the early light. Now, not unsettled by yesterday's events, birds rose up from the stillness and whirled around, hoping that a little piece of human food might hit the ground. They hoped that they might taste, for once, the food these strange, large apes devoured so greedily and easily.

Blade of night, a coyote howled in the distance, calling out its last information across the plains before retiring to some hidden den. The woman, who woke from the ground, her eyes flipping open easily, a dark contrast to the morning, slept on a boulder far from her bedroom, across her small campsite, next to, and almost underneath, the hole for her horse. Once, twice, on the third try, she pushed herself up, with some struggle.

She spit out the dirt of the night, biting fangs against her scarred lips. She scanned the vast desert distance: wide open and safe. For now. And through her tangle of wildflower-red hair, her hand played, brushing it wilder and wilder, frizzing it up around her so that she looked in some way as if she’d been struck by lightning several times and considered it just a fact of nature, of no importance the wild and shocked tangle of her hair. A cough, a groan, another groan, and then she took down her pants, letting the trickle with small force, muddying the dust. When finished, the water of the night removed from her inside, her pants pulled up, she grabbed her coat, and, leaving her bedroom behind, she saddled up on her horse. The spurs jingled as her journey continued further.

She stopped as a family of pioneers passed by, their rickety old covered wagon creaking and moaning as it crafted a dust storm following behind it. She said nothing to the greetings of the family's father, who tipped his hat low and said, "Hello, ma'am. Hello, Miss," and double-checked that they were on the right trail.

She simply nodded in assent and pointed towards the mountains from which she came, the mountains west, the mountains towards California or Oregon and the sea. And when that rickety old wagon had passed the point below the horizon, she turned her head towards the east, towards her quarry, and continued to ride onwards, steadily and easily. Her hair flowed back, still frizzled, still tangled electric, in the western wind.

Her hand kept brushing against the hammer of her pistols, though the land was flat and far, mostly dust between tiny shrubs and small holes for small animals. She turned a corner around a small hill, and beyond that hill, a yellowish land, not unpleasant, full of large farms, wheat fields, and growth of vegetables, cattle bellowing and roaming, appeared before her.

Small houses, attached together with mud patches where needed, papering over the cracks where coldness might drift in; a barn burned down long ago; a ranch with a dedicated, ornate brand interlocked with the other: all of this appeared in front of her. All of this lay out before her, and beyond that, just now a point that she could see, the town of Ruddy Creek.

She rode towards the small town, watching it rise suddenly out of the dirt, out of the dust, out of the sparse farms and ranches around her. As she rode into town, her spurs jingling like the cowgirl escaping a murder charge in the old song, "step it up Nancy, pretty darling, step it up Nancy if you can, step it up Nancy pretty darling, show your legs to the wealthy man.”

Perhaps at that moment the school bell, the church bell, the town bell rang. In such small towns all such functions are blended into one. So it was here, at a white clapboard church lately constructed next to the small yet growing boot hill. Fresh dug graves for miners recently lost in a nearby expedition still exhibited signs of the dirty, the digging, and the interment.

She found a hitching post, tied up her horse, and looked around to find all the townspeople had scattered at her arrival. They were now going about their different business. Children were being shuttled away indoors, their eyes averted from her, beginning to recede into the darkness beyond daylight, peering out surreptitiously from the windows. A clock in town pronounced the hour, loud and clear, matching the heartbeat of the man who stood just forty feet away from her, ready at an instant's notice to draw his pistols.

They were well-kept, cleanly and recently polished Colt Navy single actions, his thumb near them, twitching, practicing firing like a fan across the town at a single moment's provocation. A star pinned on his chest shined, also neatly and newly polished, was his badge, proclaiming him the duly elected lawman of this town: Sheriff Wolf.

The woman looked from the sheriff, across the town, to the people running to hide, waiting for this altercation to end. The sheriff, for his part, looked over the town water tower, the town clock, the bank, the newly dug graves in boot hill.

The woman’s horse nosed down in the water trough, a great supplication of water pouring forth, reward at last now its long and patient ride through the territory was all over. Above the trough was a poster, pasted on the wall of the bank. The bank poster bearing her likeness was slapped with a large reward, a one followed by many zeros, all surrounding a sketch of herself. The poster read "Little Red, 47 men killed, Dead or Alive."

Sheriff Wolf gave a grin, the kind of grin that a lion gives to a gazelle before suddenly pouncing. His smile, his teeth, his fangs lying in wait. His hand resting at his hip, a right angle away from the action. He breathed in, panting, ready and waiting. He drew in his breath.

“Lil Red,” he said, calm and collected. “You will not be continuing you massacres here. Not in the town of Ruddy Creek.”

“Lillian,” said the woman.

“Nonetheless,” the Sheriff said, “you will not continue your bad actions today. This is your last stand.”

“Sheriff Wolff,” Lillian Red said, her thumbs subtly itching, her hands carefully kept at her sides, ready at a moment to match the lawman, “I do not believe you are ready for this. You are not ready for a reckoning of accounts.”

“We’ll have no more of this, the reckoning is at hand,” said the sheriff. “Preacher said so last sunday. He gave a whole deal about it, rightly too this last sunday. ‘Vengeance is mine and all that’.”

“I don’t go to church,” said Red.”And I’ve been tired of you since you came howling around me back then.”

“That explains it,” said Wolff. “A heathen.” There was no need for any further communication. The matter was as settled as the strange and cold air that blew like a howl between them. The strength of the wind pushed a tumbleweed across town, a perfectly expected punctuation rolling underneath the shared silence.

The noon bell began to ring. One. Two. Three. Four.

The sheriff twitched one thumb.

Five. Six. Seven.

Red threw back her head and let the wind fix her hair.

Eight. Nine. Ten.

The sheriff’s left eye twitched.

Eleven.

Thye each breathed inwards, just a little, not too deep. Their hands started to hasten towards their guns.

Twelve.

They each drew. They each fired. The people of the town peered out the slanted half shut blinds, the mid-day sun shining down one certain slant of light.

At first it seemed like they each missed. Wolff drew in his breath, snorted, snarled, moved forward. Red drew in her breath as well.

The last bit of sound from the clanging of the bell finally dropped away, a wave finally rippled out into the ocean of the atmosphere, rising up into nothing. There was a clatter of a pan sitting outside the blacksmith’s shop, just behind Lillian Red. The blacksmith’s adopted boy Cinder leaned out from behind the bellows and then ducked back behind them. And then… where there had been noise, two shots, three, now there was only silence, a spare silence.

Then Sheriff Wolff slumped forward. He turned churchward, tried to walk, tried to cry out. He could only cough out, “but I–” as blood frothed up from his lungs.

After the sun peaked, after the body fell, and after the tolling of the bells ended, everything lapsed into silence. A silence of shadows, dark and long. In the midst of beginning afternoon shadows, Red looked quickly away from her latest kill. She walked step by step, mostly silent jingles of her spurs, back to where her horse waited. She dug into a side saddlebag.

Slowly, carefully, she drew a wallet out of her pack. She double-checked the contents; several dollars within, and turned like a machine, like an automaton, like something out of a great speculative novel of moon men, chips, and invasions. She turned and stepped, and stepped, and stepped again onto the wooden board sidewalk. It let out a creak, the first sound to pierce the silence and then the far away howl of a coyote. She stepped past the buildings. She stepped past the very poster that called her a killer. No one heard exactly what she said then, under her breath.

Later on Cinder, the blacksmith’s boy swore that he heard the outlaw correct the count in that small muttering.Still heaving and adrenaline pumping from almost being shot by the sheriffs bullet, Cinder speculated that she said 48 as she walked past her original count of kills. Slowly, though it was but a minute or so long she stepped through the town. Though it was but a minute, everyone seemed to think it took a full hour of tiny steps. Steps that seemed at once tiniest, daintiest movements forward, and each one seeming still to be a big booming metal boot clashing down on every board shaking the world with each landed foot.

Red made her way into the local tavern, The Saucy Puss Saloon. It was one of the first buildings to be built in this town, originally free-standing, now tacked on to the small train station in Depot, which doubled as a stop for the stagecoach. On the other side, the Sheriff's Office and local drunk tank. The Puss was a full-service tavern with a restaurant of sorts in the front that was also the bar, the large and standard meeting room with wooden tables, an old piano brought in from Chicago, overworked and overplayed by a piano player that was at this moment, even now, setting up to go back into action and play whatever jaunty songs accompany saloon girls who also were preparing on the side of the stage to take to their show.

Once more, even in the early afternoon, life began to reanimate the people of Ruddy Creek. After all, as one remarked to another, "we got to eat somehow, no matter what happens out in the street."

The men and women of the town, those not otherwise engaged in returning to their own lives, slowly stepped back up to the bar, beginning to chat again of this and that.

"Did the crops come in?”

“ I'm going to have to plant something extra.”

“ I heard there was a greenhorn went up the mountains, and we pulled a prank on him and registered his name as owner of the vein up there– but there’s no gold!”

“ Have you heard the one about the Golden Goose?" All this they said, and much more as silence became louder and louder chatting even of what vegetables might make their way into the general store. All of this and the other gossip that is common to such small places.

Noise returned and life returned to town.

Red walked in and sat down, letting herself draw in a breath to take in the smell of old cigars and smoke. The Madam, an old woman with eyes painted more like the fabulous wagon of the outside of a traveling medicine show, something depicting miracles or mermaids, then a careful application of rouge and lipstick and mascara, first set about tending to her regulars.

She made sure a plate of food went to the old miner in the corner, sending a young waiter out to take the orders of the poker players. She whispered something in the ear of the piano player, who suddenly started up an old tune, a song like:

"I was five and 53, nothing much to me,

and when I was young in 22,

I didn't know just what to do.

I met a girl, she looked like you,

wild hair and flower eyes,

We rolled in the hay

She was my prize

And now at 52 I realize

and all the ways I realize

What a roll in the hay can do!”

Something like that song, if not that song itself, the well-known classic, which almost even murmured over the lips of Lillian Red as she waited patiently, her eyes on the grandfather clock inside. The pendulum swung, ticked and talked back and forth, back and forth, back and forth again with a vehement moving onwards, now waiting for the long shadows of the afternoon, marking perpetual motion in anticipation of the drone of 5:00, the hum, the distance between the end of work and the beginning of dinner, and then to tick-tok onwards the inevitable march to rejoicing of the descent of darkness as the wild nightlife of a town begins.

And when the tune was playing and the showgirls began to dance, kicking their legs one, two, three, one, two, three, practiced in ballet a long time ago, as they had been trained on the East Coast. It was clear they had studied dance to get away; some might have been promised the mansion, a place to stay that was all their own, the vast expanse, it was the wealth of the West, and now here– here they danced because they were here, for they could do nothing else.

When The Madam came over to finally take Red's order, Red said what she needed to, shortly and politely.

"I would like one whiskey if you have it, a beer if not, and if you have some simple fare, I will take that."

"Of course, my dear," said The Madam, "say, have you ever been here before?"

"No," said Red, "but I have been places like here, and I have met your late Sheriff before, one dark night several years ago, and before then, I met men like him on a pathway that I have since stepped off."

"It seems," said The Madam, "he knew that you were coming. Do I need to tell you?"

Red held up her hand, shook her head, and said, "I am aware; one cannot follow the inner wolf without understanding just what that animal is. This is a farmland; farmers will rise up against a wolf."

The Madam nodded gently, set down a glass, and poured Red a whiskey from a dusty bottle.

"But a wolf is just doing what a wolf is meant to do," said The Madam.

"Yes, if one gets into the chicken coop, the man gets into the girls; something's done”

The Madam countered: “As you cannot blame a snake for biting or a hawk for diving or a vulture for waiting out the death of a parched man, blame the wolf."

Red inhaled, almost a snarl coming out of her nose as she did so, caught herself, and put her hand up in front of her face. "Excuse me," she said, and then she drank deeply from the whiskey before her. She did not drink it, but she did not allow the contact between the glass and her lips to break until she had had all of the proffered substance. She snorted in again, made a yipping sound like a bark. She murmured one word then, and that was “strong.”

The song the piano player was performing came to its less than showy conclusion as the girls finished their dance. They promised they would be back soon for another show later on, giving winks to all of the men around.

That boy from the blacksmith shop came in; he looked along and lay after the show girls. He told them hands off until you're older; you still have a ways to go. "They're almost here," he said, nodding up and down at Red.

"US Marshals," The Madam clarified. They were sent for before –”

Red held up her hand, gesturing that she would hear no more of this talk. "I've never been cornered in my life," she said. "That is not what is happening now." She laid down $3 on the counter, tipped her hat to Cinder, and said, "Ma'am," then strolled back to the swinging doors of the saloon. Cinder blushed and looked after her, then back at the showgirls as they picked up their petticoats and hurried off stage back to their dressing rooms, some giving hand signals for this or that man or woman to follow them back.

Outside, puffing along– wheezing really– coming down the tracks bit by bit, slower than expected, was the Iron Horse itself. A train came down the track, clearly marked “Property of the United States Marshals”.

Red strode into the street, let her hands fall down to the old accustomed position, and she let her boots, leopard and weathered and dirty boots, kick the body of the former Sheriff away from the center of the town where he lay. She kicked the body with some force off into the gutter. The people of the town, who had recently emerged on hearing the lone harsh whistle of the train, now began to run in earnest as far away as possible.

“The Marshall’s will solve this,” some said.

“Shut up,” said others.

Most just ran.

Just as the train came to a billowing stop, smoke floating into the air like so many signals from so many campfires, Red glanced back towards the clapboard walls of the community church. In the doorway, she saw the dark and shadowing figure of a preacher, Bible in hand, who seemed to be mouthing the word "vengeance."

After that billowing cloud of smoke and dust rolled away into the sky, and the train itself quieted down, with the wheels and coupling rod coming at last to rest, the squall of the whistle indicating the machine's final squeaking clattering stop, the doors began to ratchet open. They slammed open, bang! Bang! Bang! One after other as each train car revealed the men inside. From inside that mechanical beast of a machine poured out 1ten, twenty, thirty, forty… fifty or more men, an entire detachment, a whole segment of marshals, deputies, and lawmen from the surrounding area. Many were equipped with their proper attire, furnished courtesy of the US Government bearing their rank. Some, however, were worried farmers from nearby towns, who had volunteered themselves for the safety of their friends and family. Others clearly pressed into the posse. They were all equipped with rifles, guns, and pistols, some with harmonious swords at the ready, all marching towards the town, all marching towards Lillian Red.

She whistled, and her horse reared up, dropping its saddlebags into the street. The horse itself ran far off into the desert distance, galloping like the fiery steed of Phoebus across the sky. It receded into the distance, as did all other horses, swiftly shooed away, their ties cut by the army detachment in hopes to spare a massacre of horse flesh.

Lillian stood in the center of the street, waiting, her thumbs still twitching, the precision of her pathfinders anticipating the coming conflagration, a sparkle in the afternoon sun.

Cinder poked his head out of the barroom and was firmly pulled back by The Madam, who firmly and tightly shut the door.

“Girl,” she said to Cinder, a touch of care in her warning voice.

From all around the city streets, the sudden sound of all the windows being reshuttered, people shushing each other, diving down, staying as far away as they could from the certain death of the outlaw woman who had lately ridden into town.

The preacher, snapping his Bible closed, made a quick move not back into the retreat of his church but into the cemetery, as if anticipating that his need would soon be there. That soon he would be helping to enter into the ground the outlaw Little Red.

As the mass of men marched into town, Red did not wait for them to form. After the horses were safely away and the citizens secured inside, she pulled her pistol. She pulled back the trigger. Its repeating action did most of the work. One man, two, three, all fell. They were perhaps not killed but definitely down in that first moment. Shot after shot went off. But Red did not give up the ground in the middle of the town, nor did she even deign to move as bullets began to speed around her.

Probability suggested that one of these bullets, even a stray shot, should have hit her, given that there were fifty or more different guns and all the ammunition that the federal government could spare bore down on her now. Yet not a single one of this full, frenzied volley even dared to touch her. Each bullet seemed scared to even dare touch her skin. A survivor later said that one bullet seemed to come right up to her very skull, a deadshot sighted property and the bullet trembled before it before pathetically falling to the ground. A whimpering coward of a bullet.

Now, the town was riddled with spent cases and thousands of bullet holes, even through the church. Several bullets in their misaimed application clanged against the tower of the church, clanged against the town clock, clanged against all of the metal of the blacksmith shop. The entire noise of a thunderstorm multiplied by metal and the hatred of the intention to kill. Despite all this, Red stood calm, firm, and untouched in the middle of the street, letting her hands do the work.

She emptied her pistols and calmly reloaded them and her cracked rifle. Then she turned around. By this point, nine men out of fifty were littering the streets of Ruddy Creek, and more seemed to be pouring out of the train every half-second. She calmly turned to find one such man approaching her, Bowie knife in hand. Steadily, unreacting, she brought her Pathfinder up to his head and released his death from its barrel.

As a reflex, the preacher, hiding now behind the gravestone of one of the recently buried miners, peered up. A bullet passed through his skull, embedding just behind him in the long, low, imported Louisiana willow tree that shaded the rest of the deceased.

He added a quick prayer, saying, "Oh Lord, give success today to those who would uphold justice, to those who would follow what is beholden to Caesar and Caesar's, and what is God's is God's. That there is not peace but a sword, that is terrible and swift. Do not allow this test to pass into tragedy. Please preserve the brave men who only want to remove a dangerous outlaw like Little Red from perpetrating her terrors upon the world. Bless especially my boyfriend, Raymond, a Marshal among the throng today."

The bullets began to punctuate the air even more fiercely, period by period, exclamation point be exclamation point. At times a short pause of silence, a semi-colon waiting for the next clause of violence.

The only thing you could see was the kicked-up dust of so many people in the street, violently propelling their projectiles forward. The black and white smoke came from the rifles, and you could not hear over the din and thunder of so many explosions all at once.

From this smoke and fog, towards the preacher, Red came striding, her pistols empty yet again, throwing them down to the street. She opened the door to the church and took refuge inside, bringing her rifle around from her back into position and ready to fire.

As Red marched through the church, up to the altar, she kicked over the pews, crafting small barricades against those who would enter the church. Marshall Raymond LeRoux, with his small group of Sharp’s wheeled around the back of the churchyard. He winked at the preacher.

“Father,” he said.

“Raymond,” said the preacher, biting his lip and clutching his bible all the tighter.

“I’m sorry to do this, but we’ll rebuild.” And with that Raymond gave the command and his men began to open fire at the church, the stained glass windows cracking and shattering outwards, shards of crystals that sparkled broken in the sunlight. Gone now was lightning striking Saul on the road to Damascus, him on his knees, realization of blinding Light above. Instead just the hard shards of glass breaking back down into sand and three more lawmen dead, caught by Red’s bullets, slumped down against the willow tree already poised and weeping.

The preacher, thrown back by the force of each fall, crawled up through the mud. Inch by inch he creepy over freshly dug graves, his hand grasping at headstones from the original settlers of this town, the Ruddy family, twenty years long dead and left behind only the name of the town and their cracking stone name plates. Another succinct sentence of bullets reigned down all around the preacher.

He splattered back down further into the mud as the men to the left and the right of him fell. An officer caller for them to fall back. The smoke and ash and smell of sulfur hung in the air, a great fog drifting through the city. Still the preacher, keeping low, pressed onwards, closer and closer to the mound of bodies by the willow. Recognizing a clear blue uniform, a sharp star recently polished, the preacher first viewed his own ashen reflection then turned over the body to see swelling and bruising of a left eye, little sharp fragments of bones like tall and craggy hoodoos in Goblin Valley. Behind the hoodoos of broken bone a red flood of blood welled up and dropped to the ground, a steady trickle of blood..

The preacher began to cry.

“Raymond,” he said, half-choking out his words. And then, “vengeance, saith the Lord… is mine.” He sank, caressing the body of the deceased Marshall, into the blood-watered ground of the cemetery. For a long time the only sounds in town were the groans of the dying and the sound of the preacher sobbing, caressing Raymond between his hands, brushing his bloodied fingers over Raymond’s death wound.

Sobbing, wheezing, and sobbing again. There was a cracking sound and Red pushed over the pulpit, the wooden podium falling to the ground. She swept away out of the church, as the Marshalls that were left fell back to the Doctor Sam’s, or fell back to their train cars. Doctor Sam Thompson, for his own part, went hurriedly about, like a mouse scurrying away from a predator into its home and hidey hole, checking in on each of the downed men, his stethoscope swinging to and fro. He could barely tear it out of his ear, lay down a few bandages, before he needed to triage another man, and then another, and then another.

In midst of this aftermath, Red strode over to her previously discarded pistols and pulled them out of the dirt. She knocked the dust off of them and carefully placed them, one by one, back into their proper holsters.

Then, with a whistle, Red summoned her horse. It came clipping into town fast, kicking up more dust as it did so, dust that mingled and mixed with the smoke from the still hot firearms that lay in the streets. Cinder peered out from behind the door of the Saucy Puss.

“I think it’s done,” he said.

“Ain’t never done,” the Madam remarked. “Now get out of here, you’re underage until next year, Cinder.”

Outside, Red mounted her horse. The sun was beginning to drip like a red wax candle, melting orange into a velvety blue before fading to black. Slowly, still with a carefully intention of step, the horses trotted out of town.

Red stopped next to the blacksmith. She tipped her hat, calling in, “Treat that adopted girl right.” While she waited for his answer, she patted her horse’s neck, two fingers making a specific circle around a specific spot in it’s hair coat.

“Adopted?” the blacksmith asked. “That’s Cinder, he’s my wife’s kid. He’s a boy.”

“Sure, don’t listen,” Red said. “I’ll be back someday.”

The blacksmith looked down at his tools and back at Red. Her thumbs were looped through her belt as she spoke to him, carefully positioned away from her guns. But her thumbs were twitching, as if about to fire once again.

Her horse began to urinate, a waterfall of white noise underneath the conversation.

“He’s a boy.”

“As you wish, all the same,” Red said. “Just think on it.”

She paused for a full minute, as her horse finished urinating.

With that, she tipped her hat again, brought her hands back to her reins, and kicked heels against her horse. It began to canter, then took off into a gallop and as the smoke began to clear from the sight of the battle, the people of the town began to come out of their hiding places. They began to work, two by two, moving the bodies of the downed lawmen to the train, where those who had retreated before facing their demise counted each and began to wrap up the bodies quickly in cloth.

“If they thought they’d win,” Cinder wondered, as he helped the Preacher lay Raymond’s body beneath the willow tree, “why did they have all these burial implements at hand?”
The preacher said nothing, but placed a coin over Raymond’s eyes. Then he went from body to body, from person to person, either sparing them a word, or delivering the empty body a prayer.

Cinder stood in the middle of the street. He stood just where Red had stood when first facing down Sheriff Wolff. He looked out to the west, the distance that Red had receded into. The night around town became silent and the stars began to sparkle up above. Somewhere in the distance a bull lowed, and a coyote made some esoteric intentions known across the wilderness.

“Seventy nine,” Cinder pondered. He looked at the sketch of Little Red, wanted across all the territories. “But she does have some sense of fashion.”