Chapter 7 - Reflections of the Past

I left home at fourteen but not really through any choice of my own. My oldest brother would be the one to inherit the farm and besides I'd never enjoyed the endless toil and backbreaking labour. I knew I'd have to go at some point, but as it turned out events forced my hand.

Before heading west, we'd originally grown up in New York City, but after my father was killed in a fight over a card game, my mother hooked up with another man and he moved us lock, stock and barrel out into the wilds. I'd always craved excitement and adventure but, unfortunately, it came to find me rather than the other way round.

Our move out west brought us hardship, poverty and near starvation many times over the coming years. The house my step-father constructed was tacked somewhat haphazardly onto the end of a small cluster of dwellings that some might call a hamlet, but there was certainly no love lost between the neighbours as everyone fought to scrape a meagre living from the poor soil of the various smallholdings that huddled together in desperate poverty.

The only time there was ever any community spirit was when the whole hamlet was threatened by desperadoes, a rogue bear or the natives. Then, everyone would pile out into the street, armed and ready for action.

There was always trouble of some sort whispering along in the shadows. My brother, in particular, was always stirring things up, stealing things and beating on some of the younger kids. This came to a head one day when the father of some young lad came calling to whip some sense into him; this also began my own descent into a life on the road.

My step-father was out when the boy's father came round, and when my mother stepped in to try and stop him knocking some sense into my brother, he lost his temper and hit her. I'd always been brought up with the idea that hitting women was wrong and of course when it's your own mother you tend to react differently too.

I hit him. Hard.

And in the fight that had followed, I killed him, slipping his own knife between his ribs and up into his heart.

Thankfully I'd saved my mother from further harm, but obviously couldn't stay at home, and so with the law hot on my heels, I'd stolen the man's horse, taken my few meagre possessions, a small amount of money and left my home, excitement pumping my heart as I'd ridden west to a new life.

Apart from my mother, I'd never really cared much for my family, my step-father had been a mean spirited man who'd looked on us only as a means to provide labour rather than anything else, and my brother was very much his step-father's son despite not being his by blood. So, in many ways, it was an easy choice although it was made for me a few years earlier than perhaps I would've liked.

I rode for several days until I came to a small settlement, sleeping under the stars and living on what I'd managed to take with me. My years as a farm labourer had left me fit and strong and I quickly found work as a logger, selling my horse to a man leaving the camp just after I arrived. It was a hard life, but I enjoyed the work and the company of men and their tales of adventure around the nightly campfire. After a few weeks, the logging company headed further west and then my adventure truly began.

The far west really was untamed back then and we had to contend with wild lands, wild beasts and wild people, both in the form of the natives and the loggers themselves who were often quick to temper and violent. The law was scarce and disputes were often settled by fists or in the worst cases by knife or gun.

I killed my second man barely a few months after I left home.

A simple dispute over a spilt mug of coffee had escalated and after a brief flurry of punches I'd downed him. His head hit a rock and he was no more. The camp boss ruled that I'd been in the right and I got the man's possessions as compensation. There was no real law in many areas and often the local gang foreman or landowner was forced to act as judge, jury, and in the worst cases, executioner.

But now I owned a gun: I spent hours playing with it, taking it apart and putting it back together again; polishing, oiling and practising my draws endlessly until I was as fast as a rattlesnake. The image of the cowboy swaggered nonchalantly through my mind's eye, the gunslinger riding off into the sunset; glamour, guns and women haunting my dreams.

Ultimately, my fall from the grace of decency was gambling. I'd gotten good at Blackjack and won myself a handsome pair of pistols, a good hat and boots, and enough money to dress myself up like the gunman I wanted to be. It also brought death and an end to my life as a normal man. An argument over cards turned into a fight, the guns were drawn and I'd taken another life, spilling the red mist of hate into a pool of blood. My anger still high, I'd challenged anyone else to try and take me and the man's brother had taken the challenge. Minutes later we found ourselves standing outside the rough saloon and I'd blown him to hell too. Then I took his horse and left town.

My life as a hired gun had begun.

I drifted around for years working as a cowboy, herding the vast cattle herds of the west where a man could ride for a thousand miles and seldom see another soul. I learned to rope steer, gamble like a professional and tell tall tales by the campfire. My reputation and name gained a following, both in the west and in the tales that filtered back to the big cities of the east. Every now and again I'd join a posse helping the so called law hunt down another wanted man and made a name for myself as a fast gun. I began to change my name at times to blend in with the crowd, realising fairly early on that people wanted to challenge the 'names', and every time I moved on I'd use a different alias.

After a few years, I bumped into a piece of my past.

My brother had fallen out with my step-father and he too had decided to travel west to try and make his fortune. Always quick to temper, he'd quickly gotten into fights and perhaps blessed or cursed with the same reactions as myself had established himself as a fair gunman. Unfortunately, he'd decided to use my name in order to disguise himself. Unfortunately too, he'd committed many nefarious crimes in my name, adding to my own reputation, but in all too many bad ways.

The main difference between us was that he enjoyed it.

I longed for a way out and, after falling out with John Evans whilst working with my brother at John Chisum's ranch, I decided it was time for a change.

We were a strange bunch back then: a bunch of kids in many ways, pretending to be the wild men of the west. We were, in the main, well educated and in John Evans' case almost urbane: the man was a born poet. It was he who coined the phrase "I will leave nothing but blood in the sand", and we all took delight in trotting out that little line when we'd swaggered away from another dead body. And swagger we did. The bravado was immense. Fortunately for my sanity, I tired of it quickly and decided to get away before a posse came looking for my head. I'd made a name for myself as a fast gun and I knew that all it would bring was the law and the end of the rope or some other fool like myself looking to bring down a 'name'. I had no inclination to find myself swinging at the end of a hangman's noose or staring blankly at the sky at the circling vultures, so myself and another of Chisum's men decided to head to Canada and make our fortunes in the fur trade.

I left my brother with his reputation for viciousness growing by the day and headed north.

It worked.

For a while.

My friend and I did well for six months, and then the onset of winter stumped us. We spent a miserable winter, barely surviving and half frozen most of the time before deciding to head south, hoping things had calmed down a little in the time we'd been away.

We made our way back down the west coast and traded in the last of our furs, making a healthy amount of money. After splitting the proceeds and enjoying a final night out in celebration went our separate ways.

I never saw him again.

I headed south for a time, gold heavy in my pack and enjoying the sight and scents of the sea. Then for some stupid reason, I decided I'd visit my old stomping ground before heading south into Mexico. There, I could use the last of my money, maybe set myself up in business and settle down to a life that didn't leave me scared and reaching for my guns with every creaking floorboard.

As I rode into Eureka, I began to pick up news of some of my old partners in crime. John Chisum's ranch had been the site of a several fierce gun battles, with many a posse of lawmen riding in to clean up the area. Lynch mobs seemed to be common, the people deciding to take direct action against those who had persecuted them for so long. Billy the Kid was reported to have fled to Mexico, and John Evans and a few others I'd known were said to be in hiding.

I changed my plans then. I had no wish to be hunted down, so I decided to follow the coast down to San Francisco before cutting inland to Phoenix and then over a little further before trying to find a way over into Mexico, probably heading to Juarez and Chihuahua.

My downfall, as always, was the gambling.

Once in Phoenix I started to feel safer for and decided to let my hair down a little. A few short days later I had nothing left but the clothes I stood up in, my horse, and my pistols, Lady Luck having deserted me utterly. Thus it was that I found myself wandering aimlessly until I'd come across Tennant's ranch near Mimbres.

Desperate for food and money, I'd joined his group of ranch hands and, after proving I could rope a steer, he'd hired me and given me a bed in one of the stables with some of the other cowhands. It was there that my everlasting ego and sense of fun had led me to show off a little, prompting Tennant's proposition and my dream of an instant way to make enough money to buy my Mexican dream.

My initial idea to carry out a quick foray into the saloon and work out the lie of the land had instantly turned bad, and I'd been recognised as I walked in through the doors. Bad luck perhaps, and the saloon had emptied as he and I had drawn on each other.

It was John Evans.

He was one of the last links to my past and someone I'd never wanted to come across in a gunfight. It was he who confirmed my need to move south, and thankfully no-one ever heard what he had to say as seconds later he died with my secret sealed for ever behind his blood frothed lips.

We'd crossed paths before and he was the epitome of eastern bad man headed west; one of the many town men who had loved the idea of being a gunman in the lawless west.

He lost.

Immediately after the fight, Blatt had sought me out and had offered to pay me an additional fee for getting rid of another gunman who had been terrorising the town, not knowing he had been Tennant's brother. He explained that he had been one of the parties along with Tennant who had come up with the idea of a reward to get rid of John Evans and, still on a high from Evans' demise, I engineered the downfall of my second victim.

Murder sanctioned by greed and ego.

That particular showdown had brought me to where I was now, sat on a boulder high in the hills.

New face.

New aches.

Old skills.

I was no longer a boy pretending in a man's world. Other men had made me into a man through the bitter pain of defeat, but one man had saved me. I sat there in comfortable silence for hours until the noise of something approaching woke me from my daydreams.

As the small pebble rattled past me, disturbed by a movement from behind, I whirled, lifting my rifle from where I'd laid it on the boulder next to me. Verifying the target by instinct, I aimed and fired and before the deer knew what had hit it, its blood was pooling on the ground, the bullet taking it straight through the heart.

Movement and reaction without thought.

The mark of a Gunslinger...