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Kel Borren hadn't meant to die here.

Then again, he supposed no one ever really meant to wind up on Boot Hill, barely six feet deep and with no one to cry over their grave.

It was just about right for him, his life, though. A bounty hunter, that's what he'd been. Feared by some, reviled by others. He had never, not once, shot someone in the back. But that hadn't keep him from dying that way.

He hadn't seen his death coming. Hadn't even been able to clear leather, his Colt tucked in its holster while he fell face-down in the dirt.

Now he was stuck here, invisible and untouched even as the world wheeled on, changing around him.

Unfinished business. That's what one of those people said. Those people who led packs of chubby children and elderly folk around, pointing at the old buildings. They said he was stuck here because of unfinished business.

Kel figured that had been true, once. He'd spent months and blood hunting that horse-thieving, back-shooting Carl Maxin from Golden to Bodie.

Bodie, where Maxin had friends in high places and Kel had been labeled a badman. And maybe he was quick on the draw, maybe he hadn't been too friendly, but that didn't mean he should have died with a bullet in his back and forgotten.

By now, though, Kel figured Maxin was as dead as he was. That business was finished.

What kept him hanging around was the fact that the world had rediscovered Bodie, and Kel had found he wasn't completely consigned to the pages of history. People came around Bodie and they remembered—if not Kel specifically—Kel's world.

He drifted closer to the glass-less window, unable to feel the breeze that rippled the grass or smell the desert sage he remembered from his ride into the town on the eastern slopes of the Sierra Nevadas.

It was early morning. The sky was breathless blue and never-ending, the sun throwing spears of golden light as it peeked over the horizon, nestled in a bed of orange-stained clouds.

Too early for the living.

Yet, a young woman walked purposefully between the dead buildings.

She didn't carry a gun. Not many people did nowadays. She wore pants so short Kel would have blushed if he'd still had blood pumping through him. Her blonde hair was tied back in a purposeful braid, and she carried a paint can in one hand.

Scorn radiated off of her as she stopped in front of the two-story building Kel most liked to haunt. It used to be a hotel. He'd slept here the night before he'd died.

He watched as she set the paint can in the dust and looked down the street, then pulled a thin piece of metal with a bright yellow handle from her pocket.

He recognized this woman, Kel realized. He'd seen her before. Had felt that same scorn with the sixth sense death had granted him. He recognized her feelings more so than her appearance. She didn't carry that sense of awe and nostalgia most visitors had.

She did not like this place. More than that, she hated this place.

Which was funny considering she wasn't the one stuck here.

Curiosity sparked for the first time in a century and Kel slipped through the dark, cold space that was stitched throughout the world and appeared behind her. She crouched down, ignorant of his presence, and set to prying the lid off the can.

His chest moved with a memory of what it was to breathe, and he focused first on the place his heart used to be. It had taken him a long time to learn how to do this—longer to realize it didn't really matter that he could.

His forehead itched with the memory of trickling sweat as he forced himself to become visible.

"Miss?" he said, his voice still the rough drawl it had always been.

The woman let out a small scream and whirled around, that small tool waved wildly in front of her to ward him off. Kel stepped back like he was afraid of being stabbed.

He held up his hands and cracked a smile. "Sorry, Miss. Didn't mean to give you a fright."

Still holding the yellow-handled tool like a knife, her brown eyes scanned him, her chest heaving. She blinked rapidly, taking in his faded blue jeans, scuffed boots, sweat-stained maroon shirt and black, flat-brimmed hat. His faded grey wild-rag didn't flap in the wind that scoured the desert town.

The woman stepped back and a little to the side and he mirrored her, careful of her seeing his back and the blood that still stained his shirt. She glanced down the street, then said, "Do you...work here?"

Kel blinked, perplexed. Work doing what? The town was as dead as he was. Had been since the gold ran out.

She swallowed nervously as she peered around again. "Isn't it a little early for a-actors or whatever you are?"

Kel snorted with understanding. She thought he was one of those greenhorns who came to the town, dressed in clean clothes with shiny buckles on their belts and horse tack to play out some of Bodie's more infamous stories.

Small mercies that they didn't bother to replay his death.

The woman frowned at his reaction. "You work here. Right?"

"I did once," he said, taking his hat from his head as he spoke to her.

If she noticed his hair didn't move in the wind either, she didn't say anything. Her eyes kept darting down to the paint can at her feet.

Kel took that as permission to ask, "What's a lady like you doing out here so early?" The rest of the words got caught on his tongue. The warning that this was a rough town, no place for a woman alone. That wasn't true anymore.

"Um..." She nudged the paint can with her foot, trying to shuffle it behind her. Instead, she managed to knock it over.

Kel frowned as garish red paint spilled across the ground, quickly soaked up by the parched dust to create a stain that looked entirely too much like the one he'd left not a hundred feet from here.

The woman swore filthily, the outburst making Kel stare at her, startled.

He looked at the paint, then the woman. "Just what were you thinkin' on doin' here?"

Her eyes blazed with sudden, righteous anger, the effect immediately dampened when she stamped her foot like a child. "Oh, fine," she snapped, then gestured at the building they were standing by. "I was gonna paint it red."

Kel looked down at the paint, eyebrows scrunching, then looked back at her. "Well...why?"

She let out a dramatic sigh, waving a hand to encompass the whole town. "To show people the truth. To make them remember what they're enshrining here. The horrible history they're celebrating by preserving this place."

Kel wasn't quite sure what to say to that, so instead just put his hat back on his head. He tipped the brim back, frowning at the woman.

He had no particular love in him for Bodie, but that didn't diminish the fact that the town being remembered made him feel remembered. Like he hadn't just been killed and swept away by time. People got excited when they caught a glimpse of him. People knew he was here.

What right did she have to desecrate this place?

Anger stirred in him and a dust-devil whirled at his feet.

"What's so horrible about the history to your reckoning?" he asked, keeping his voice low, the tone edged with danger. The wind grew wilder.

The woman took a step back, wincing against the stinging grains of sand being kicked up. Then, she stiffened her spine and glared at him. "The romanticizing of gun violence? Toxic male dominance? The oppression of the Native Americans?"

Kel was shocked by the self-certainty oozing from her tone. How could she know what his world was like when she'd never lived it. Or died in it for that matter?

The wind was screaming now.

This woman, so sure of what she knew, knew nothing at all.

Guns were tools, just as good or bad as the man who held them. They were the great levelers that made sure the mighty couldn't hurt the weak without fear of repayment.

Kel knew the natives had gotten a raw shake, and he'd never had a beef with the Indians, save for a bad run-in he'd had with some renegade Comanche down New Mexico way. But they'd fought hard and well, which was more than he could say for a number of whites he'd known.

As for male dominance... Kel had never met a man who wasn't cowed by the right woman.

The woman had her arms up to shield her face from the wind now. Kel took a measured step forward and she leapt back, face white with terror as she took in the pistol on his hip.

"Y-You stay away from me!" she screamed.

Kel's temper spiked and the wind died, leaving the world dead still. The woman took a step back. When he didn't follow, she threw the tool at him. Not waiting to watch it pass harmlessly through his chest, she turned and bolted away.

Toward the old general store.

Kel followed, boots silent in the sand, not sending up so much as a puff of dust. The sound of a slamming door shivered through him and Kel took off running, one hand on his revolver.

Fury pulsed like a heart in his chest.

He ran harder, rounding the general store's corner to find the door swinging open. Kel slipped his gun from its holster, more from muscle memory than necessity.

He doubted he could die twice.

Still, mortality and its trappings of fear haunted him, and Kel raised his gun before edging into the dim building.

A sharp gasp drew his attention behind the counter.

Sunlight glinted off dull brass, bullets spraying from the box she had tried to open.

People had left so much behind, trying to get out of the dying town. Even the general store owner had left some merchandise.

In her lap was a Smith and Wesson.

Her hands trembled uncertainly on the gun as she picked it up and aimed it at him, despite the fact that he could see it wasn't loaded. Kel met her eyes, never blinking as he dropped his Colt back into its holster.

His anger was suddenly replaced by a deep sadness. All the woman's certainty and loathing had been turned to fear and desperation.

He took a step around the short counter, just one step, and the girl pulled the trigger, her eyes squeezed shut. The click of the hammer on an empty chamber was jarring in the small space. Kel tilted his head.

With every silent step he took, she pulled the trigger, the cylinder spinning.

He crouched down in front of her and waited until she cracked open an eye. A helpless squeak came from her as she dropped the useless gun, cowering from him. Her eyes darted back and forth between his shoulders and his guns, measuring the threat he posed to her.

Kel let his fingers hover over the discarded weapon, then turned a grave gaze on her. Quietly, he said, "If you forget the past, you forget yourself. You'll become what you fear."

He stood when she started to cry.

Not unkindly he said, gesturing to the gun, "You're just as savage as me. You just convinced yourself that you weren't, and because of that, couldn't guard against it." He gestured around them. "Remember and acknowledge what you don't want to be, don't try to cover it or change it."

The woman let out a shuddering sob and hauled herself to her feet before running through him. A wave of heat went over him and he gasped in surprise at the first warmth he'd felt in over a hundred years.

She half-turned, her eyes wide, jaw dropping. Her breath puffed out in a cloud of steam.

Then she was gone, running from the town just like everyone else had.

Everyone but him.