Begot the Gunslinger

Awoken by a nightmare and the specter of his first victim’s face, Joseph postured himself upright in his tent, nauseous, and sheening with cold sweat. It was the dead of night, but his body must have been well above a hundred degrees, he was sick to his stomach and sick of the southwest summers. With a pointless attempt at holding back the memories, he held his eyes closed, watching the whites recede into black, and the face of Willy Marks morph into that of a boy, freckled and abandoned. As he lay on his bedroll, he reflected on the specific moments his guarded brain would allow, most of which were sad reminders.

Joseph King witnessed many things in his years riding with the Brady Boys, most of which were impermissible by law and morally questionable. He shot folk, he had seen folks shot, a man who was by no means innocent. Some of his most eventful memories, but not exactly his fondest recollections were traveling with the gang. What came to mind first was the time Joseph gunned down Willy Marks in some dingy saloon out west of their old hideout. Gun smoke twirled in the twilight, the stars glimmered and the trees danced gracefully as Joseph rode off into the forest. After anything went sour or blood was let, he would usually lay low in the woods for a while to throw off any lawman or bounty hunter that may or may not have been pursuing him. He was adept at covering up whatever trails of his he could, but any tracker with a heart of gold might follow the crumbs.

He wasn’t sure Marks deserved such a fate, but he paid little mind to that small juncture, that is until the remnants of his violent act found their way back to him in times of silence. Wherever they went, no matter the bed, he saw Marks in his dreams, with steaming holes where eyes once were, he hovers over his killer and suffers until Joseph awakes in a fit of sweat. He wasn’t sure why his brain decided to weave its trickery, to make him feel such regret, but his subconscious inner workings taunted him with the fallacy of redemption.

Their way of life didn’t leave much for permanence, every moment fleeting, every venture criminal. The prospect of love had found Joseph when he was younger, subsequently forgotten, and always short-lived, every time he settled down his path took him elsewhere. He was a wanderer at his core for most of his life, and Henry Dale was the only reason he remained in the group until that too went to shit. The kid was a lost soul, his parents died when he was young, and Jim took him under the misguided comfort of his wing. So, when the marshals strung Henry up, the sight of his thrashing body under the hangman’s stage was more than he could bear. The way his body swung like a pendulum in front of the feverish crowd, his face deep with purple veins, popping out of the skin that held them.

Joseph’s biggest regret in life was that he didn’t do more, he watched the boy swing, a distant onlooker. “I’m a coward. Could’ve done something, could’ve done anything.” He always found time to remind himself. He could’ve drawn his firearm, tried to gun down the guards, and rescued Henry. Maybe in a different life, he could have miraculously shot the rope that bound the boy’s neck and fled the scene. But he didn’t, he didn’t even try—he just watched—friend to friend. Joseph wasn’t sure the boy even laid eyes on him in his final moments, and perhaps it was better that way. It was a memory he would carry by his hip for the days to come.

The kid had met a woman named Sarah up in town, a few miles from their camp. Joseph knew it was what the kid needed, but their way of life never took kindly to those of the civilized world. Jim let his men run amuck like wild hounds, doing whatever they felt like to satisfy their wicked minds. The good ones in the gang never lasted, they either ran off, or they simply stayed too long and found themselves with a few bodies of their own. One of the members of the gang, The Ugly Carl Cutter, an envious and iniquitous devil of a man had taken to Henry’s newfound love.

When they were all at camp, drinking and enjoying what was left of the night, Carl told them that he was headed into town for a while to gamble and fool around with a few dirty wenches. Which he proceeded to do. He untied his horse from the makeshift hitching post, gave a good wink at Henry when he wasn’t looking, and rode off into the late evening. Joseph had let his obliviousness get the best of him, and he was utterly unprepared for the cruelty of Carl. He’d only been riding with the three of them a few months, but on account of him saving Jim Brady’s life, he was granted his stay with what would turn out to be impunity.

The next morning, before the rest of them had woken up, Joseph was the early worm. The fire was still smoldering from the late festivities, and glass bottles lined the edge of the tents where they slept. Joseph was a light sleeper, always had been, and he was the only one to see Carl Cutter walk through camp, down to the river bed, and wash his hands clean of blood. What didn’t come off so easily was the rest of it, which had congealed a thin layer over his entire forearms, like he’d been mining for organs in the guts of a woman.

Not a few hours later, Henry had awoken eager to see her, so he saddled up and rode into town to meet his dream damsel at her window. He told Joseph that she worked in the brothel, but it didn’t bother him that she just wanted to make enough scratch to bail somewhere she wouldn’t have to sell her body. Even if it meant she had to study under nuns who would conceivably curse her past life of debauchery; a lay school seemed a far cry from her corner of the world. Henry was quite infatuated, possibly head over heels, a feeling Joe once understood, recalling the relictual shards of young love and the rotunda’s collapse upon them.

Henry never came back like he said he would, just a few hours he told me, Joseph kept thinking, repeating it to himself iteratively as if it would spawn him near. The boy wasn’t simple, but he wasn’t so fast either, regardless, he knew not to linger in fear of getting recognized. Perhaps his judgment had been clouded, or perhaps he decided it was a risk worth taking for the chance at a new beginning. The others told Joseph not to fret, that it was probably nothing, but he could tell by the cheesing grin Cutter gave him that something was particularly awry.

“Somethings up, how come we don’t go help, what the fuck is the problem? Cutter comes back to camp covered in blood and you three don’t give a rat’s ass?” Joseph made his worries clear, shattering the willful obliviousness that clung to the group.

“If you wanna go play the hangman’s game, be our guest.” Cutter spoke, and McCormick seemed to agree wholeheartedly, nodding with empty eyes. “That boy’s a lost cause, he’s not our kind. And mind your own damn business.” Cutter continued to spew, still drunk from the night before.

“He’s been with us longer than Carl has, I owe it to the boy to do right by him, we would want the same for us, we’re no better than the rest of the killers out there,” Joseph admitted, trying to reconcile with his past deeds, to rectify what never will.

“Alright, alright, I’ll ride into town with you Joe, but no matter what happens, I don’t want to hear any more talk about this. The boy made his choice, he knew the risk. I won’t allow myself to lose any more good men over the likes of a whore.” Jim Brady declared, perhaps to appease the group that had dwindled from eight to four. Mutiny would surely be the end of their humble gang.

“I’m not going anywhere,” Carl insisted, his tone disgusting.

“I’m not askin’ ya too, with you three boys I’m alone, but me and Joseph are gonna go see what’s up. If they got him though, there ain’t no way in hell we’re going to get him out. God help his soul.” Jim Brady talked an awful lot about God for a man who had never read a lick of the bible in his life, he kept his own book, one that always stayed by his side, forbidding any readers of his scrawlings. What used to strike Joseph as normal, a way to pass the time with writing, had seemed more ambiguous when he would see Jim at night, praying to an unknown god, speaking in a tongue of his own.

Carl knew about the hangman, he knew everything involving Dale’s downfall. And Joseph did as well, though his pleas meant nothing, and he didn’t want to believe it then, that Cutter had pinned the murder of the hopeful whore on Henry. He sat defeated, neglected in the holding cell for weeks, thinking his friends were coming to save him any minute, that there was no way the three of them would let him hang.

They did, and riding back into camp was a bleak affair, the regret on Joseph’s face was palpable, as was his aversion to the men around him. The way Henry swung there, the moment he locked eyes with them, how they bulged red and his neck purple. It took much longer than Joseph thought, but by the time he had realized the boy was going to struggle for many excruciating minutes, he walked back into the treeline with a pair of dead eyes himself. The sounds of Henry’s convulsions didn’t fade from his head until they made it back worse off than before. They were a few miles from town and into the woods when their conversation began to ramp up, and Joseph’s uncertainties intensified.

“I had a feeling, I told you it was a waste of time, boys gone to God,” Jim said, finding a sick silver lining wherever he could.

“Waste of time? Compared to what? We spend most of our days hiding out in the woods, running from the law. This seems like a waste of time. Maybe if we’d left sooner, the boy wouldn’t have gotten in over his head. He’s dead, Jim,” he muttered the final words.

“Love will do that to a man, let it be a lesson to all of us.” The unforgiving leader proclaimed, expressionless.

“It seems I’ll never get through to you,” Joseph said, at his wit’s end as they stood on the trail out.

“Are you with us? Or without us? Simple question,” Jim spoke softly, and Joseph’s eyes lingered on the man’s holster.

“I’m not so sure anymore, I owe a lot to you, b–” Jim cut him off, never letting him speak his mind, cursed to run amuck forever.

“But what? You’re leaving?” Jim’s tone had changed, but his visage did not.

“It just ain’t the same, I may head back east, go see my mom. It ain’t too far.” Joseph said, under his breath, remembering his life before, wondering if his mother was even alive. Would she wish to see him? Would she run him off back into the woods he came from, his wanted poster flapping in her hand?

“The marshals will shoot you dead before you pass the border, don’t be a fool, son.” Jim had a point, one that Joseph cared less about the more they sat atop their horses, the air spinning currents around them.

“I’m tired, Jim, and I fear it’s only a matter of time.”

“How do we know you’re not planning something? Turn yourself in to get a deal?” Jim asked his questions, but it felt more like an interrogation, a narrative being spun against him.

“What are you accusing me of?” It was personal to Joseph now.

“I’m accusing you of having no conviction, boy.”

“Don’t talk to me about faith, we’ve done killed people,” Joseph spoke, his words true, with more meaning than they’d ever had. He struggled with his regret, he always did, but it was something he could run from no longer.

“And I had conviction, every time,” Jim proclaimed, but his voice grew in anger, projecting all of his bottled hatred; a despicable sight when the pressure inside him couldn’t contain the scorn.

“Take a look at yourself, Jim. This ain’t the Brady Boys anymore, not since the others died, not since you opened your arms to child killers.”

“I’m sorry, Joe.”

The bullet was swift, and before he could even draw on Jim, Cutter shot him from a distance with his rifle propped up on a rock. It hit him right in the gut, and sliding gently off his horse, his body thumped against the grass and along the hillside. The sun was sweltering, and the wound had caused a hot flash of feverish proportions. It would take him an hour or so to bleed out, McCormick and Cutter smoked cigarettes and watched the life drift from his eyes while Jim Brady read from his good book, reciting words that weren’t written, praying that Joseph may find passage in his afterlife. There would be no afterlife, and as the night began to settle, the three of them left his corpse, riding away to take their vile tendencies to another unlucky territory. He saw nothing as he slipped away into a deep black, but drifting further from his body, he could see now a faint light in the distance; in the plane between death. It was not a beacon leading him towards heaven, but a flame that beckoned him. And there would be only salvation by fire. As he touched the burning orb of heat, he could see the silhouette of a man hovering above him.

“Wake up.” A soft but stern voice spoke.

“Am I dead..? I died…” His eyes opened as he returned to the living, or rather a form of it.

“And now you are awake, I brought you back.”

“Say… say again?” Joseph managed to mutter, his wits slowly coming back to him as he tried to shake off the memory of dying. He had accepted his fate, but something dragged him back, a reprieve from an eternity of nothing.

“Seems you were shot, I brought you back to life. We have things to do, get up,” the voice spoke again.

As Joseph stood up and brushed the dirt and leaves off himself, he was shaken by the sight of his tattered clothes covered in blood, but even more dumbfounded by the bullet wound that had sealed itself up crudely, leaving a bulbous scar across his gut. Rubbing his belly where he’d been hit, he just kept rubbing, feeling himself up, trying to decide if he was going insane or not. He’d heard the voice when he awoke, but his moments of rebirth were still fresh, and it didn’t occur to him yet that the voice of the man wasn’t his internal monologue.

Looking to his right, he saw the muddy hooves of a nasty black stallion, then gazing upward, he recognized it as the biggest horse he had ever seen. However, what caught his eye most were the scalped heads that dangled from the sides of the saddle. All of them had their hair, some balding, some with full manes, and a few even had blood still congealing along their former hairlines. It was a sight to behold, as was the Native man sitting on the horse, the same one who’d brought his soul back to Earth, mid-transit to hell. He wore a black duster coat, one that had seen better years, and under it, he wore a bulky breastplate. It was larger than the usual ones made from small animal bones, and his armor looked to be crafted from the jagged remains of humans, some from the rib cage, and a few tibias too. Joseph wasn’t sure if the material that fastened it all together was sinew or buckskin, all he knew was that it sheened, and atop his head sat a long, wide-brimmed Stetson stained with blood. Tipping his hat towards Joseph, he acknowledged his presence and return to our world.

“Are your senses back?” The Native asked him, his intentions mysterious, his methods unknown.

“I see you have a knack for scalping,” Joe said, hoping he wasn’t next on the man’s list.

“When I have to. You’re fine, for now. We don’t have long though, bodies deteriorate.” The strange, towering man said, and he must have been fifteen feet tall sitting on the horse, scanning him like prey.

“You mean. I’m going to fucking die again?” Joseph had so many questions, ones that wisped in and out of his mind as he stood there. It was hard to think clearly in the shadow of such a sight looming over him, his supposed savior.

“It seems I’ve bought you enough time for revenge, I’ll help you, then you return the favor. Not like you got anything better to do sitting there with no weapons.” He pointed to his lack of firearms, his empty holster, and his horse that was now missing.

“Why the hell do I need your help? What the hell is this?” He kept asking, and it was hard to believe that he’d been brought back from certain decay, only to die again, conscious in the moments.

“Just cause you’re not alive doesn’t mean they can’t blow your head off.” The man’s tone hadn’t changed, and he was particular in his choice of words.

“How long do I have?” Joseph loathed the answer, weighing his choices.

“A month, maybe more, depending on how fast you decay.” The man sounded slightly sure.

“And what is it you need my help with?”

“Revenge, same as you.”