The Pecos Trail

 

The old courthouse stood at the centre of town right next to the jail with the     hanging yard at the back. It was late afternoon and the desert air hung thick with heat. It was a time for siesta and most of the inhabitants were in different states of lassitude, some from too much liqueur, others from sheer habit.
 
The Sheriff lay back in his chair with both feet on the beat up wooden desk, at his side was a double barrel shot gun fully loaded, and perhaps wisely, cocked for action. His gun belt lay on the desk with the army colt half out it holster as if waiting to be picked up.

 

The coffee jug on the stove had steamed away and the smell of burnt coffee had woken up  the prisoner, who pushed his black hat up from his eyes and stared through the bars of the cell at the back of the Sheriff. There seemed no way out of this, the trial was due to start at six, and he knew that Pecos justice was short and merciless; the Judge said guilty and execution was immediate! The prisoner stroked his neck as if in anticipation of the ropes final caress. His raven eyes burned in pitiless resolve that they would not take his life without a fight!

*

The desert trail into Pecos was a hot and dusty one that Gunsmoke Smith rode with his usual indifference. He’d chowe’d up at early dawn, and made his move along the trail well before the sun’s burning heat made it unbearable. It was now midday and his eyes searched out the trail ahead for a spot to hunker down from the sun’s glare.

Ahead lay Crazy Horse staging post, a broken down shack that was now only a bar run by a one eyed Indian, a left over from the range wars that had cut through Texan cattle ranches in the 1800’s. It existed only because of the water hole, which had miraculously appeared when One Eye turned up out of the desert plains.

 

 One Eye was a little crazy, and he had been known to kill without too much provocation, so he was treated with great respect by those who knew him , those who didn’t soon learned to. One Eye had a daughter who always kept in the back shadow of the bar, she smelt like a hog, and kept a long bowie knife in her belt for protection. Most critters who stopped by to relieve their thirst smelt her first and so the bowie knife stayed silent; until today.

 

Gunsmoke lay in the shadow of a cactus tree when the three drifters passed him by. He’d watched them approach from some distance, as they got nearer he eased his Colt 45 from its holster ready for some swift action but they passed with nothing more than a nod. He followed them with his eye as they rode along the trail towards Pecos, ‘I’ll be seeing more of them,’ he thought to himself. Little did he know how soon. Just as a precaution he moved higher up the trail side to give him a better  advantage and settled down for a siesta.

And so the day wore on to its grisly conclusion. 

 

Insects buzzed and crickets sawed away with that incessant sound that could drive a man crazy.  Gunsmoke rose stiffly, saddled his bronco, swallowed the last of his coffee, checked the chamber of his Winchester, and mounted up and rode on to Crazy Horse. He wondered about those drifters, and as he approached the broken down shack he spurred his bronco higher up above the trail so he could see down to avoid any surprises.

 

 All looked calm enough, smoke drifted up from the chimney, turning lazily against the afternoon sun.  The drifters horses were hitched up to rail,  they had that dejected air of horses that had been badly  treated and were just waiting for more to come. They stirred uneasily as a scream rent the air!

Gunsmoke spurred his bronco down to the shack, pulling up short as one of the drifters stumbled out of the swinging doors. Blood poured down his face, and one arm hung limply down his side, his hand grasping a smoking six gun.  Gunsmoke recognised the work of  One Eye, the crazy Indian.

 

 In one movement he swung down from his bronco, pulling his Winchester from its stock, ramming a shell into its chamber he stepped up onto the shacks sidewalk and hunkered against the swing door frame. From inside he could hear a low moan, as he turned to move through the swing doors, fast action gunfire made him turn back and the other two drifters flung themselves through the doorway onto the sandy track, six guns in hand. They scrambled up onto their horses and fled down the trail to Pecos.

 

Gunsmoke stepped through the doors into the murky interior, and was brought up short by  the sight that met his steely gaze.  Old One Eye was weaving unsteadily at the end of the makeshift bar with a sawn off shot gun in his hands.  Blood was already seeping from the front of his shirt, and when he saw Gunsmoke he turned in a spiralling  motion trying to loose off a shot.
 
 The buckshot drilled the floor against Gunsmoke’s feet but One Eye's strength had gone and the recoil slung him against the front of the bar, where he slid down with a surprised look on his face.  Gunsmoke made a step towards him when he again that low moan.  This time it sent a shiver down his spine as he turned in anticipation of what he might see. 

 

 There  against  an old wagon wheel was One Eye’s daughter; her hands were tied with leather thongs and her Indian dress slit from top to bottoms revealing her heavy slung breasts, sagging stomach, and fat thighs that were now twitching uncontrollably. Between her thighs was her Bowie knife thrust into the hub of the wagon wheel so that as she slid down it cut in between her legs!  Gunsmoke gagged at the sight, and as he lifted her down from the wheel he saw the cigarette burns on her breasts. As he laid her on the floor he looked down into those black unblinking eyes that showed no sign of pain, but in their depths he foresaw the horror that was about to be unveiled that day.

 

Gunsmoke laid old One Eye to rest at the back of the shack. He closed his ears to the screams coming from the shack as the Indian daughter wreaked he revenge on the drifter who had not made it.  He stood up from his task and stared high up to the bluffs winding up from the shack as he thought he heard the cry of a raven , and suddenly there was the flutter of black wings as it swung down from on high and settled on the crude cross.

 

It seemed to embody the spirit of the departed Indian as it shuffled from one foot to the other and cocked his head at Gunsmoke as if to say thanks, I will be back!  Gunsmoke  removed his Stetson to wipe his brow, and his black hair and beady eye matched that of the raven, and as if they were one he knew the message  and where the trail would lead.

 

He went back to the shack and saw a sight that hoped never to witness. The Indian daughter had  trussed up the drifter into the crouching position and castrated him, the sharp Bowie knife making an incision a surgeon would be proud of!  She was now moving round, swaying to an old and nearly forgotten tribal dance, drawing on an incantation from the ancient gods whose creed was revenge for wrong. 

 

Gunsmoke hoped that the ravens spirit had not called the long dead because this would lead to a ritual roasting with the drifter as the cooked meat. If he was lucky he’d pass away, choking on his own testicles before being cooked alive. Gunsmoke crossed himself and turned away, mounting up his bronco rode off down the trail without looking back. He hoped God was in his heaven tonight!

 

*

 

The Sheriff looked at his watch, ‘O.K. boys its time we got this show on the road.’ The chairs of the deputies creaked as they lifted themselves from the afternoon’s torpor, they picked up their gun belts from the table and fastened them on with a deliberation born of long waits and short battles.  The spin of gun chambers and the click of double barrelled shotguns being closed warned the prisoner that the time for action was nigh.

 

The clock in the Sheriffs ticked away the time, and yet it seemed to be standing still.  The church clock rung out six strokes as the two drifters rode into town. They had ridden hard and their horses sweat had turned to foam and was sprayed up on their chaps.  The stubble on their cheeks, burned brown by the desert suns, gave them a forbidding air, and their wild eyes made them seem like horsemen of the Apocalypse. 

 

They had committed sin, not against man but against the spirits of the Indian tribes through the violation of the Indian girl who unbeknown to them was the daughter of a great chief who had gone to his spiritual hunting grounds.  And yet their deal was with the prisoner in the old courthouse, their promise had not been salvation, but gold! They knew not that he was the Preacherman!  Forces unknown to them were on a collision course in the old Mexican border town of Pecos!

 

High on the church spire a black raven alighted and settled down as if to watch the show.

 

‘Wake the Judge up, and pour some black coffee down his throat!  I want a quick result here,’ the Sheriff instructed one of his deputies who went over to the hotel bar to separate the judge from his cronies.

 

 ‘Just another hand and I’ll be right over.’
‘The Sheriff asked for you now, you’d wouldn’t want to see him upset.’
 The deputie's hard figure loomed over the judge who reluctantly decked his cards, pulled himself out of his seat and made his way across to the courthouse, the deputy laconically bringing up the rear .
‘O K  bring him out, and you two watch the front.’

 

 The Sheriff was a cautious man, big, bluff, with an old testament attitude to law and order. He was the law, and, by god, he would see that there was order, in this particular case he wanted a real varmint out of the way for good, and so he’d chosen Pecos, a quiet town where he could get his way without interference.  But even so you never knew, so he had brought deputies over from the next county just in case! He now signalled two of them to cover the front of the jail and the courthouse as he gathered up the keys and went over to the prison cell. 
‘Up,’ he ordered.

 

The lean figure, known as the Preacherman eased himself off the iron bedstead and with a sly smile asked,
‘Time for smoke before the hanging?’
‘Cuff him,’ came the laconic reply, ‘Lets move.’

 

The hot desert wind that swirls about aimlessly out on the plains suddenly swept down from the high sierra and as the sheriff opened the jailhouse door it blew in, lifting papers off the desks, bringing sand with it that  stung the eyes of the law enforcers. The Preacherman  grinned his lopsided grin as he seemed to stand in the middle of a swirling cloud of sand without it touching him!

‘Hell, lets get on with this,’ muttered the sheriff as he pushed out onto the sidewalk.

 

The rays of the setting desert sun slanted down through the shanty buildings of Pecos, illuminating, in the coming dusk, the front of the courthouse. The sheriff put his hand to his eyes to protect them from the glare and hence did not see the reflection from the rifles that the two drifters had trained on him and his little party from the upper floor of the Blue Diamond saloon opposite!  And he certainly didn’t see , or hear, the hot lead that cut him down. 

 

He twisted as he fell, drawing his army Colt, as if in a reflex action, and loosed off three shots across the street before he fell back dead! The deputies threw themselves to the wooden planking of the sidewalk firing their shotguns as they fell, frantically searching for cover.

 

The Preacherman stood tall on the sidewalk, his black figure seemingly impervious to the flying bullets.  He held his cuffed hands up high, and as if by some devilish trick a stray bullet seemed to cut them in two and they fell from his wrist, and is as if time itself halted, as they floated to the ground.

 

Amongst the roar of the gunfire the figure of the Preacherman seemed to grow, immune to the flying bullets, he seemed poised to escape his fate when the last rays of the setting sun cast the shadow of a loan figure along the windswept street.  It was  Gunsmoke Smith!

 

No one could swear to what happened next. It was as if a hand swept aside the town, as if wiping it from a canvas, and there, alone stood the old adversaries;  Gunsmoke and the Preacherman. 

 

The Preacherman stood with arms folded and feet astride, his long dark  hair swept back by a wind that swept around him. ‘And so we meet again.’
‘Reckon so.’

 

A pale light illuminated Gunsmoke as he stood with his Winchester poised for action.

‘Though shall not kill, nor take pleasure in retribution, sayeth the Lord,’ taunted the Preacherman.
‘Heck no,’ Gunsmoke thought to himself , bringing his Winchester to bear, ’Maybe I’m the angel of the Lord,’ but before he could fire a figure stood before him.
‘This is not your fight, I will avenge.’

 

 As clearing of a mist, the town reappeared and a gnarled Indian in war feathers stood between them. The Preacherman seeing the Indian, and knowing him for what he was drew a silver long barrelled Peacemaker and fired in quick succession at him, but even as he squeezed the trigger an arrow struck him full in the throat, and those who saw it claimed the blood that spurted out was black. 

 

Even as he fell it was not the end, he reared up and in a snarl that those who saw it cared not to remember cursed the  spirits of the departed before falling back and seeming to shrink within himself.

 

The black raven launched itself from the clock spire, and with a cry that sounded like rage, flew away to the high Sierra. Many thought it was the spirit of the Preachernan, but Gunsmoke knew different, and felt the same anger and despair that his quest was not over!