It's alright, she's only dying

This is a story written by Tyrone. Thank you for reading it if you read it.

The Dead in the Desert

“Blood dries up pretty fast in the sand.”

“You suppose I shouldn’t have shot ‘em.”

“Not in the gut. Now he’s just gonna die.”

Arthur Powell stared down at the man that his friend, Richard Turner, just shot in the gut. The man was bleeding out and there just wasn’t going to be a thing he could do to stop it. He was going to kill the man anyway, but he wanted to talk to him first. Wanted to kill the man himself. But after the man told him where his daughter was or where she might be. If he even knew. Way it was now, the man just kept on groaning and crying and begging for someone to save him. Arthur tried to talk to the man, but just got more hollering. And he wasn’t so much in the mood for hollering.

“Couldn’t have just shot him in the arm or something?” Arthur asked his friend.

Richard shrugged and tossed up his arms, “He’s a skinny fucker. It’s like trying to hit a newspaper, but like, when you turn it to the side. Hell, I’m surprised I hit him at all.”

“Well, he ain’t much use to us going on like that.”

Richard looked back behind him, then back at the dying man, then back at Arthur, “That’s damn near over 50 yards I hit him at. You think that’s at least 50 yards?”

Arthur turned to his friend, looking back to wear they rode in from. Looked at Richard and shook his head.

“If I hadn’t of shot him he’d be gone by now.”

“How you figure? He was riding towards us.”

“He could’ve turned once he saw us.”

“Christ. I don’t suppose it matters now. Hand that pistol over.”

Arthur took the .45 and put it up against the man’s head. He offered him one more chance to speak, but only got a garble of cries. Fuck it, he thought, and pulled the trigger.

Arthur and Richard mounted their horses and rode west. Towards the next town.

Richard grabbed the reins of the dead man’s horse. “Want we should take ‘em with us.”

“Be a shame not to,” Arthur said, looking at the dead man lying in the desert sand. “He was a skinny fella, wasn’t he.”

The Third Town Visited

The town proved little luck at first and Arthur was no closer to finding his missing girl today than he was the day before or even the day before that. Each day his worrying got more and more and each day he thought it’d gotten as bad as it could be, but still it worsened.

Awake at three in the morning he knew someone in the town had to do something. He just had to think about who. Wasn’t no reason for Barker to send one of his men out in the desert if they hadn’t been this way or if they wasn’t looking for Powell. Somebody knew. The dead skinny fella had to be reporting back to somebody in town.

He woke Richard and the two men got the telegraph operator out of bed and didn’t even have to say more than a few words to the man before he broke and told him Barker had been paying him to send him reports from the skinny fellow the last two days. Said the messages went just a few towns over, into Abercorn, no more than a day, day and a half ride from here.

Arthur thanked the man the pulled the hammer back on his .45.

“Sure you want to have another life on your conscience?” Richard asked.

“I said everybody. Everybody that was involved one way or the other. “

“Just checking was all, might want to use a pillow. You know. Or a knife.”

And with that there was one less telegraph operator in the world and two more men riding out on horses than there had been just a moment ago.

Five Days Earlier

He just finished closing up the barn, securing the horses and was making his way back to the house. It was getting dark, not really dark, but dark enough, then all of a sudden it was black and he couldn’t hear anything at all.

Arthur woke up and he was sitting on his horse. He felt a tightness around his neck. He went to grab at it, but his hands were stuck behind him, tied behind his back and that tightness around his neck, he realized, was a noose. He looked up and saw that the noose was attached to the tree. This ain’t a thing to feel good about, he thought.

He looked over at the house. He could hear his daughter scream. Newton Barker threw the girl off the front porch, tied her, then gagged her. He motioned to one of his men and they tossed her on the back of a horse. Arthur tried talking, but he was gagged too. He tried moving, but found that only made the noose tighter. He dug his heels into the horse to keep it from moving. All the noise, all the movement, the horse wanted to go and Arthur could feel it on his neck.

Barker walked up to Arthur. Arthur Powell. A man he hated. A man he detested. He motioned for another one of his men to come forward. The man brought Arthur’s wife, Nora Powell, up next to Barker. Nora’s hands were tied behind her back and she was gagged. Arthur could tell she was beaten. He didn’t even want to imagine what else. Barker grabbed her by the back on the head, looked at Powell, tilted his head sideways a bit, then straightened it back out.

Just as Arthur went and did every damn thing he could to get loose from that rope and off that horse, Barker pulled out his pistol and blew a kiss from that gun into Nora’s head. The horse bucked, Nora dropped, Arthur swung and Barker smiled.

Barker walked away, mounted his horse and rode off, Arthur and Nora’s daughter tied to the back of his horse.

How He Survived This Time

There wasn’t much time. He could feel his chest tighten. His neck burn. The pressure in his head build. He wasn’t going to die though. It never even occurred to him. He swung his hands from behind his back and under his feet. He grabbed the rope and pulled up. The rope slacked, but there was no reprieve from the noose. He gripped hard on that rope and he bounced. And he yanked. And by miracle of God the branch cracked. Then it cracked again. Arthur went down. The branch landing on top of him. He dug his hands into his neck, but couldn’t loosen the noose. He ran into the house and grabbed a knife. He sawed and twisted and his head felt like it was going to pop right off. His chest was bursting. Then the rope broke. He breathed in all the air he could. And then he passed out onto the kitchen floor.

Then He Awoke

She didn’t have much time. Arthur knew that. He buried his wife, said a prayer and he rode out to Richard Turner’s place. The two men took off, following the trail of Barker and his men.

The Daughter

Name: Chelsea Mae Powell, daughter to Arthur and Nora Powell.
Age: 13
Height: Pretty short, but not really short
Education: Mostly what her mother taught her. Her father too.

She tried not to think what she had coming or what she had gotten. She tried not to look at that man, Barker. She just repeated The Lord’s Prayer over and over until Barker told her to shut up and smacked her across the mouth. Still though, she repeated it. She kept it in her mind and it kept the tears away. It was the one place she could keep him from getting to if she stayed strong long enough. Lord, don’t let him break me, she prayed.

Richard Turner

All told, at this moment, as Richard Turner and his longtime friend, Arthur Powell, ride into the town where Barker and his gang have Powell’s daughter, Turner is a relatively minor player. Turner would die if it meant saving the life of any member of the Powell family out of courtesy alone. That’s about all you’ll ever have to know about him.

The Last Town

“Two houses on the edge of town down that way. Barker’s set up camp in there.”

Arthur nodded, looking up at his friend. He sat on a stump behind the inn. He didn’t need to question if Turner was sure or not. “Suppose they know we’re coming. Suppose that’s what he’s been waiting for this whole time.”

“Suppose that he is, Art. How you wanna play this one?”

“Probably best not to overthink it. Wait until it gets a bit darker, scout things out. We get her out just before dawn. That's the first thing I do. Then I send every one of the bastards to Hell. I promise the Lord that much.”

That Very Dawn, Just After All the Shooting

The bodies on the ground weren’t those of saints, but they mattered, at least when they were alive they mattered. Some of them still mattered now, even in their death. Included among the dead were Newton Barker and Arthur Powell. You couldn’t even tell who killed them, only that they were dead.

There were other dead too, but they don’t concern this story none too much. It is the living that we concern ourselves with now. Chelsea Mae Powell and Richard Turner were alive. And to all the known world that would have to be enough.

The Part Near the End

Arthur was buried next to his wife. Chelsea moved in with Richard and he took to raising her. It was too hard for her to live in that home, seeing and knowing the things that happened there.

Chelsea went to school in town and Richard did the best he could to make a peaceful life for Chelsea. She was sweet as could be for him, but inside he could tell she was always hurting, that part of her was dying. He wanted to say something, wanted to help, but he never knew how, never had the right order of words to say.

She got older, met a man and got married. Richard gave her away at the wedding. After the wedding, she gave Richard a big hug and kiss and she cried. He choked back his tears. She thanked him for everything he did and then she thanked him some more. And then she thanked him one last time for making the life she was now living possible.

She was happy enough, he could see that, but maybe because he knew her since she was born he noticed something was off. Something that had become more and more prevalent over the past couple years. He could tell she was dying inside. That the past was catching her and breaking her soul. Sometimes he’d hear her screaming at night. It’d wake them both up. The terror from those days. He never asked her about it though and she never talked about it. Now, she turned once more and smiled at him just as she got into the carriage with her new husband. And there was where he saw it most. In that lovely smile of hers, once sweet and warm, it now had the unmistakable hint of death to it and it broke his damn heart.

He knew what her life would become over the years. That warm heart would grow cold. Her emotions would die inside. She was still young and strong now, but given enough time the past would finally catch up to her and break her, kill whatever sweet little girl was left inside. And he never did anything to stop it and it was too late now to do anything about it. God, how he wished he was wrong, but he knew that he wasn’t.

The Thing That Happened About Twenty Years Ago

He wasn’t hired to kill the man. Just to catch him and teach him a lesson. Make him an example to anybody that would steal from his employer. He found the man in an abandoned shack deep in the canyons. He waited until they were sleeping, snuck in and bound them both.

He looked down at the couple. They’d be a cute couple, he thought, if they weren’t all tied up like that.

“I’m going to tell you what happens now. First, I’m going to tie that bride of yours to that fence post. Not that one over there, but the one about 100 yards down the way. Then I’m asking you some questions. Every time you give me an answer I don’t like, I take a shot at your pretty little bride with this Winchester here. It’s a tough shot to make. So you have that going for you. And you can just be honest. For her sake. Now don’t you go anywhere.”

Arthur Powell tied the woman to the post and walked back to the shack. He pulled the gag out of his mouth. The man told him where the jewelry was and swore he hadn’t taken any money. Said there wasn’t any money.

Arthur didn’t really care and wasn’t really listening. He found the jewelry two days ago, and he knew there wasn’t any money on that stage coach. He quietly loaded a single bullet into his rifle, walked over and took aim at the bride. He sighted in on her. No way he could make this shot, he thought. He aimed off to the bride’s right, just to put a scare in them both. Somehow, that first shot hit her, tied up to the fence post with one more bullet in her chest than had ever been there her whole life. Arthur couldn’t help but laugh and shake his head at his stupid luck.

The man cried out. Arthur kicked him across his face, dragging his spur across the man’s cheek with a flick of his heel. “Damn thing is,” Arthur said, “I wasn’t trying to hit here. Just wanted to give you both a scare. Kind of fucks up my plan to be honest.”

Arthur took out a knife. A minute of two later the screams of Newton Barker could be heard for miles, bouncing first off the walls of the shack, then off the canyon. Arthur stopped short of killing the man. He was disciplined and steely, doing only as he was instructed and as he was paid to do.

Barker looked up at Powell, “You go and kill me now, cuz I’ll bring Hell to you one day if you don’t. I’ll promise the Devil that much.”

“Son, I don’t doubt you’ll try. But you’ll never find me. Even if you did, you could bring the Devil himself along with you and it wouldn’t do you no good. I scare even the Devil’s own.”
And with that, like so many before, he went to work with that knife on Newton Barker, making sure there’d be no way he would ever forgot about this day.