By Lincoln Reed
“You go’n kill me?”
Slade Cartwright, Texas Ranger, ignored the question and continued cleaning his Colt revolver. In the campfire light, firewood popped and sparks dissipated. The scent of beans wafted from the kettle above the flames.
Ten feet away, Darren Dedrich sat with his hands bound behind his back, clad in a muddied shirt and torn pants, face sooty. A sour frown rested on the man’s grizzled features below a purple ring decorating his right eye. Cartwright rubbed his sore knuckles and shined the gun.
“Well?” Dedrich pressed, voice stuffy. “You got the sand to do it?”
Cartwright, dressed for travel with brown Stetson and trail clothes, spit on his rag and scrubbed the Colt’s handle. “The writ wants you alive.”
“So, I run right now… you won’t shoot?”
The frontier lawman glanced toward the darkness beyond the campfire, a sheet of black underneath a desert sky, clouds shielding the moon. “Better off with me.”
Dedrich bobbed his head, weighing his options. “I stay with you, I hang.”
Cartwright dipped a ladle into the cauldron above the fire, stirred, lifted the spoon, lowered his tongue, and tasted the scalding beans. He grimaced and dried his lips, mulling the man’s words.
“Not a soul for miles.” The ranger withdrew a bowl from his pack. “You’d never make it.”
A wolf’s howl broke the stillness. Cartwright’s horses fidgeted and whinnied. Another wolf cried in the sea of darkness beyond the campfire’s orange glow.
Dedrich scratched his ear on his shoulder. “Deserve a trial, don’t I? I ain’t no killer. Let me prove it.”
Cartwright dug into his coat pocket, pulled out tobacco leaf, rolled it with paper, and lit a cigarette. He took a long drag, smoke wafting from his nostrils as he nodded thoughtfully, playing along. “Then what are you?”
Dedrich’s eyes widened. “Innocent.”
The cigarette bobbed from Cartwright’s lips. “Beans?”
He poured a serving into a tin bowl and set it at the captive’s feet. He then cut the man’s hands loose. “Don’t try anything.”
“What makes you so righteous?” Dedrich rubbed his wrists. “Bet you killed men in the war, didn’t you?”
The ranger eased against a nearby boulder. “Yankees.”
“Well, killing is murder, ain’t it?” The prisoner straightened. He grabbed the vessel, sipped, and winced. “Don’t you see? You was fight’n… and them Yankees was fight’n, too. Both thought you was in the right. Who’s to say? Truth ain’t so simple.”
Cartwright sucked on the cigarette again and glanced toward the murky sky. Millions of stars should have decorated the night like candles in a church, but not tonight. Still, somewhere above, a full moon waited for its reveal.
The wolves wailed again, closer now. Dedrich chuckled. “You ever seen the dark side of the moon?”
The ranger shrugged, jammed the cigarette between his lips, and emptied the Colt of its six slugs. They clinked against the boulder and piled on the hard earth. He fished into his coat pocket, removed a silver bullet, slipped it into the chamber, and spun the cylinder. “I reckon you’ve seen that side more than most.”
The prisoner scraped his neck with uncut fingernails. “And how’s that?”
Colt in hand, Cartwright withdrew the warrant from his coat and read from the paper. “Wanted for murder. Mining family of four. Kids, too. Up near the border.”
“Don’t make me guilty.”
“You’re a miner.”
“Circumstantial.” Dedrich licked the bowl clean and wiped his mouth. “Wrong place, wrong time. Wasn’t me.”
Cartwright returned the writ to his pocket. “I saw the bodies. No man could’ve done that.”
Dedrich raised his palms. “As I been say’n. Innocent, I am.”
The lawman lifted his Colt and cocked the hammer with his thumb. “One in six.”
Desert clouds crawled and separated across the sheet of black night, allowing a full moon to illuminate the countryside. “Six families lived in that village. All torn to shreds.” Cartwright’s trigger finger tensed. “We’ll play until you confess.”
The prisoner recoiled. “You said you wasn’t go’n kill me. My life ain’t a game. I deserve a trial of my peers. You can’t deny me that. Like I told you, I didn’t do noth’n.”
Cartwright rose to full height as moonlight flooded over the campsite. The Colt remained in his right palm, heavy as a brick. Maybe you didn’t, but something did.
Doused in blue luminance, the prisoner stood, waving at the revolver. “What you try’n to prove? Put that aw—”
Like a twig snapping, Dedrich twitched. Limbs bent and back hunched. He gasped and spat. Wheezing, his black eyes glazed and rolled into the back of his head.
Cartwright held the revolver steady, palms sticky and heart thundering. The cigarette dropped from his lips. He had suspected the truth about Dedrich, but he hadn’t wanted to believe.
The prisoner’s face contorted into a snarl. Teeth sharpened. Ears pointed and bristled. Claws ruptured through fingernails. Brown fur tore through clothes and rippled across his skin like an unfurled rug. His muscles went taut, and his feet burst through his boots, now paws with hind legs.
Cartwright’s jaw tightened. Regretting he only had one silver bullet, he aimed and pulled the trigger.
Click.
The beast’s guttural growl shook the ranger’s bones. Cartwright cocked the hammer again, envisioning the bodies of Dedrich’s victims—dismembered, half-eaten.
Click.
Wind whistled. The wolfman’s front claw slashed outward. Cartwright ducked and stumbled. He tripped and collapsed, revolver extended. The hammer pulled. The cylinder rotated again. Click.
The beast leapt and snatched Cartwright’s leg. Its grip squeezed and hauled him off the ground. The ranger dangled. Fumbled with the Colt. Cocked the hammer.
Click.
Cartwright cursed, targeting upward at the beast’s head. Click.
The demon’s jaws opened, saliva dripping.
The ranger pulled the trigger twice more.
A gunshot clacked. Reverberating across the barren terrain, its boom decayed into the hollows and caverns of the endless desert where, behind the campfire’s glow, a wolfpack of yellow eyes crept forward, a jury ready to deliver its verdict.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Cool! :D
That last line was a clincher!
Thanks for reading, Rose!
Amazing story!!!
Thanks for reading! Glad you enjoyed the story :)
It’s always the last one, isn’t it? Great tension, great story!
Thanks for reading, Arlan!
Yikes! A great twist on the old west.
Thanks for reading!