The shadows were short when Saratoga Jane heard a commotion rise up from the main street of Amber Creek. It was interposed by shouts sharp enough to punctuate the thick stench of hot piss that permeated Jane’s tannery on the outskirts of town. A commotion wasn’t uncommon around this time of day, but she’d worked all morning and nothing made her happier than to witness someone receive an ass whoopin’. Wiping the fat and residual animal hair from her hands, she left the shade of her workshop and turned towards Amber Creek.
A crowd stood outside the Red Lady Saloon. Rising entangled from the din was a man and woman’s voice This wasn’t uncommon either, as men were oft on edge when their peckers were stiff, as were women when men’s stiff peckers were unwantedly close to them. Still, she placed her fingertips on the Sharps rifle she kept tucked next to the threshold, spat a wad of dip into the dust, and waited to see what would arise.
No sooner had the noise dwindled when there was the crack of batwing doors bursting open. Folks scattered like grouse from a meadow. The cloud from their exodus swirled like a dust devil, and as it thinned the figure of a man in a pale leather jacket and black hat remained standing in the middle of the road. To his right, another figure knelt in the dirt. In his left arm was a parcel.
Jane stepped into her tannery and donned a vest she’d made for herself last winter after the shootout with the Poudre Valley Bandits. She’d stitched four thick layers of buffalo hide to the front and back, a design that had not proved itself to be bulletproof but had seemed to allow less penetration when she’d strapped it to a cottonwood and unloaded her Peacemaker into it. She pressed a bullet into the rifle’s breech and made her way towards town.
The silence was the kind before the drop of a man at the gallows, a collective holding of breath drawn in even by the structures lining the streets. Jane had made herself familiar with this silence over the years as Amber Creek’s unofficial sheriff, as it was the same one that gathered in between the counts of paces in a duel. She marked her breathing, minded her surroundings, and relaxed her muscles. To be stiff was to preemptively lay in one’s grave.
Thirty paces from the man, she stopped, and called out
“Contrary to what your Papa might have taught you, Tom Mackey, most women don’t like being dragged about.”
The man turned, and Jane could see, even from a distance, that he was in his cups. Capillaries spread from under the shadow of his hat brim like roots from a clod of dirt. He swayed, drawing the woman kneeling next to him closer.
It was Danni Winters.
“I’d call you a law man, but we both know ye ain’t got a gun in yer sheath,” the drunk cawed.
“And I’d ask you to act like a gentleman, but I’m confident I can come to the same conclusion. Let her go.”
Tom Mackey hocked a loogie into the prostitute’s hair. The bundle in his arms squirmed. Jane’s eyes flickered between it, the girl, and the drunk.
“That her kid Mackey?”
“Ain’t got no right to keep ‘im from me. ‘E’s mine too.”
“There ain’t no way for you to know that. God knows she’s had other-”
Jane was known as a quick draw, but the sight of the child made her hesitate. In one fluid movement, Tom Mackey released Danni, and drew his pistol. The first shot found Jane in her shoulder. She dropped. Hitting the dirt, she found a thundering ache in her left arm when she tried to prop herself up. In the same movement, Tom swung the pistol level to Danni. He pulled the trigger twice. Crimson erupted from the prostitute’s bodice.
The tang of gunpowder and the wail of a child was overpowering. Using the rifle as a crutch, Jane struggled to her feet. By the time she’d regained her composure, the coward had taken off, his left arm clutching the child, the pistol in his right scanning the empty boardwalk. Jane brought a hand to where the bullet took her, and found not blood on her fingertips but flakes of sand-colored leather. By the time she’d raised her rifle, Tom had mounted Jim Barnam’s horse, and was gone.
Staggering forward, Jane felt the town around her come to life. When she reached Danni, the prostitute’s powder blue petticoat had been stained to a deep maroon. Jane knelt and took Danni in her arms, stroking strands of hair off her sweat soaked face.
“At least it’s finally cold here,” Danni Winters gurgled. A hand reached and found Jane’s. It was soft and clammy. “Bring ‘im…”
The girl’s voice was seized by a hitch, and when her final breath floated from her throat it brought with it a trail of blood. Jane had been Death’s accomplice from the moment she’d split her mother open. A life soaked in blood and brined by mountain air had left her thick skinned and tough to chew. It was enough to tan anyone’s hide.
But the child…
A muffled thump of boots in the sand approached. Jane looked up into the shadow of a boy. Manicured fingernails swept over an upper lip with four thin hairs. A shiny government star glared on his chest. Sheriff Giles cleared his throat.
“Shame to see what a girl’s lifestyle will bring upon her.”
Jane lay the girl’s head down, rose, and started off west.
“Carry her body to the cold shed and tell Doc to prepare it for viewing. I’ll be back before sundown.”
Spurs clacked as the boy scampered after her.
“As appointed sheriff-”
“Week’s been hot. A body’ll smell soon. Tell ‘im we’ll bury her at dusk.”
“I’m not a messenger boy, I’m the Law!”
“Town had Law before Uncle Sam slapped a star on a baby and sent him to play cowboy.”
“Now just-”
Jane spun and took a fistfull of his collar. The boy cowered, repressing a gag as he inhaled her stench. The life of a tanner was a lonely one. Jane preferred it.
“Go home and grease your gun, kid. Your help is unwanted.”
She sauntered off to the stable where her horse was kept. Already saddled, she swung herself upon Folstam and, with a slap on his backside, sent them galloping towards the looming wilderness.
***
Two hours later, Jane knew she’d regained some ground in her pursuit. What few horse tracks she found in the mud had grown shorter and more abundant. Tom Mackey had slowed, at least along the creek. The tracks made their way into the water. Either he was trying to throw her off and was on the other side, or he was traversing up the creek. The ride through the mountains had been hard. Folstam was foaming at the mouth. She dismounted and led him to one of the smaller offshoots of the main water. As he drank, she crept to the other bank and, finding no tracks, decided that Mackey had continued his trek up through the stream. They trudged on, keeping to the bank where the shadows were the most prevalent and where the sound of their footfalls would be masked by the gurgling stream.
Amber Creek was five meters wide and, at this time of the year, had reduced to a gentle crawl. Cottonwoods sparsely lined the sides of it, their gnarled bark burned white. Low water rolled over rocks, turning them into balls of glass. Jane continued until she heard a sound in front of her: a low, haunting wail. Wrapping Folstam’s lead to a tree, she crept forward alone.
Tom Mackey waded in the shimmering creek. Head low, horse lead in hand, he struggled knee-deep upstream. He still held the baby across his chest. Jane placed a pellet in the primer.
The child complicated things. If she took Mackey in the back, there was no guarantee that the bullet wouldn’t pass through and hit the child. If she shot him in the head or leg, there wasn’t a guarantee that he wouldn’t fall on the baby or drop it in the river. Either she would have to reposition in front of him so she could see the child, or she would have to draw him to her by calling out.
A third option presented itself. A loud crash tore the air. Jane turned, and found that Sheriff Giles had led his horse at a gallop into the waters twenty paces in front of her. Pistol drawn in an act of excess machismo, and the young man fired a shot into the sky.
“Scoundrel! Surrender yourself to the Law!”
Tom Mackey was drunk, not stupid. Releasing the reins, he twisted and unsheathed his pistol. There was a wet, thud, like a hammer hitting soft clay. Giles’ horse’s head jerked and, taken by Death, sent them both tumbling into the water. A shot cracked from the sheriff’s revolver, and snapped off into the foliage. Giles leapt from the falling beast and crashed into the mountain stream.
Tom Mackey faced his adversary. Babe clutched to chest, he fired again. The water in front of the flailing sheriff spouted. Slipping to find footing, Giles sent another two shots the drunkard’s way, oblivious to the kid. Jane noted he had one shot left before he needed to reload. Mackey had three, assuming he reloaded after shooting Danni. The boy scrambled across the stream to use the animal’s corpse as a barricade. Jane lay her rifle in the crook of a tree and reassessed.
While the boy shouted ordinances, Jane worked through her shot. If she took Mackey in the head, there was a chance his neck would snap backward, but he would fall forward. If he did, he would either crush the child on the river rocks or drown it underneath him. The right shot was the neck or upper chest. If the bullet found him there, it would carry his body backwards, the child landing upon him, hopefully giving her time to retrieve it.
Another gunshot. The boy had rechambered and was shooting wildly at Mackey. Jane nearly screamed at him to cease, but couldn’t’ afford to draw any attention. A bullet took Mackey in the leg and he collapsed to a knee. The boy rose and fired once more. A fountain erupted to Mackey’s left. The child squirmed. Mackey leveled his iron.
The bullet took the expendable Sheriff Giles in the head. He staggered a pace to his right before dropping. Letting out a yell, Mackey straightened his right leg, and started to rise. The babe thrashed in his arms, and he lowered his pistol to regain his grip on it. The child’s head bobbed up to the level of Mackey’s throat.
Jane exhaled and fired.
A mist of blood exploded from Tom Mackey and he, like the husk of a burnt cabin, collapsed backwards.
The child stopped screaming.
Jane was up before Mackey’s body hit the water, and was thrashing towards him through the river as, on his back, he floated towards her. When the body was a stride away she plunged upon it and took the babe into her arms. It was covered in thick, warm blood and was still. A lump in her throat, she turned the baby to look at it.
Danni’s child stared up at her with open eyes, reaching toward her leathered face with its soft, delicate hand. Collapsing to the rocks of the river, aware of the dull pain that shot up her knees when she did, Jane held the child and wept while her rifle smoked on the bank and two corpses floated past her, down river, towards the town that was its namesake.
Genre: Action/Adventure
Event: Superfluous
Character: A Tanner
The Word and The Song 