text: Deputy U.S. Marshal Roger Kelly’s chair creaked as he tipped the glass to his lips. The dark liquor inside left a trail of fire down his throat before it took up home in his belly, spreading its now dull warmth up through his chest and arms. He lowered the glass back to the table, placing it gently without a sound. Across from him, the man who called himself Aquila banged his own upturned glass down on the scarred wood surface with a thunk. “Don’t drink bourbon, Marshal?” he asked without a smile. “Only with friends,” answered Kelly. “Well, shit, I should be honored then.” Aquila brought two fat fingers to his lips and blew a shrill whistle. The barkeep, a timid little shrew of a man with a curled mustache and balding pate, scurried over to their table. “Bring us the fucking bottle,” said Aquila, tossing the words out as if they were coins for payment. He brought a rolled cigarillo to his mouth, puffed deeply from it and exhaled a plume of thick smoke which drifted about the flat brim of his hat in a gray cloud. “Me and my new friend here are gonna have us a few drinks and chat.” The barkeep nodded urgently and rushed off. Kelly shifted in his chair. It creaked. His leg was tight. They weren’t the only ones in the saloon. Aquila -- whose real name was Francisco Antony Sangino, Kelly knew -- never traveled alone. A rabble of similarly grim figures surrounded him, dressed in leathers and cloth stained two shades darker by hard wear and long days lived off the land. A glance alone told of the violence these men were capable of, but Kelly didn’t work on mere appearances. He had seen the resultancies of their line of work firsthand. The Praetor Gang, they were called, a self-fashioned moniker undoubtedly cooked up by Aquila himself. It was a tad too bookread, in Kelly’s opinion, but he supposed in some way or another that actually made him respect the man sitting across from him a bit more. At least he knew history. History, though, had a tendency to bend towards the brutal and Aquila and his Praetor Gang meant to carry on that black tradition. They had crisscrossed the New Mexico and Utah territories, setting down on towns like a bloated, darkening cloud. They were robbers, bandits who took what they thought theirs and woe to those who stood in their path, but where other gangs were motivated by those baser human instincts of greed or even pride -- understandable, in a way, if not to be condemned all the same -- the Praetor Gang had a wholly distinct engine which powered it: Justice. Or so they called it. Those that stood before Aquila likely disagreed, Kelly would bet. For the Praetor gang, justice was meted out with a particularly heavy hand. Where other towns were left stained by gunfights or knifings or swinging pairs of boots from the local gallows when a gang passed by, the Praetor Gang’s work had its own unmistakable trademark. They were crucifiers. The barkeep returned to their table and placed a tinted bottle of brown liquor upon it with shaking hands. Aquila showed him no acknowledgement. He only took the bottle up in one of those large hands of his and poured, eyes never leaving Kelly’s face. When both glasses were filled, he set the bottle down and took one up, lifting it toward Kelly. “Salute,” said Aquila, still unsmiling. Kelly thumbed his own glass. Never a big drinker, even in his younger days, he could already feel the effects of the first shot. “You know, I’m a bit embarrassed here,” he said. “I generally speak more clearly. I suppose the badge,” Kelly shifted his coat, revealing the silver star pinned to his chest, “lent a bit of an authoritative candor to my speech, but over the years that may have dulled somewhat. My apologies. Let me be a bit less ambiguous.” Kelly leaned forward, chair creaking angrily. “I ain’t your fucking friend and I ain’t here to drink.” There was a bit of rustling from Aquila’s men, but the big man who sat across from Kelly remained nonplussed. He downed the liquor in his hand then brought the glass down hard on the table. He then reached across to grab Kelly’s glass. “Well, I suppose I know why you’re here, Marshal,” said Aquila as he threw back another shot. “And I suppose you know who I am and what that means for you.” He shifted his own coat. Kelly saw the glinting handle of a revolver there on the man’s hip. “I know who you *think* you are.” Kelly showed his own hip and the Colt resting there. A cramp ran up his thigh. He wished he was a few years younger. “Some righteous, vengeful arm of the Lord reaching out over the West. You think what you do lines up with divinity?” “I think there’s a rot that’s setting in across this land and we’re cutting it away. In a sense, Marshal, I think we’re doing your job for you. Doesn’t that fancy star of yours give you the right to bring outlaws to justice?” “Yes, sir, it does.” “Then why am I out here finding vipers under every rock I upturn?” Aquila scooped up the bottle once more, eschewing the glass this time and taking a long pull directly from its mouth. “You look like you’ve been at it for some time, Marshal. How many outlaws have you laid low? Because we’ve cleansed town after town of wickedness, both on that side of the Rockies and this one.” “And left a trail of corpses nailed to crosses behind you. I wouldn’t personally refer to that as ‘cleanly.’” One of Aquila’s men stirred. “I suppose hanging men is an act of clemency?” he blurted. He was a tall man, broad as a bull, too, with blond curls spilling out from beneath his hat. He stepped toward Kelly, full of menace, but a simple raised hand from Aquila halted him. “You’ve caught us at the end of a long stretch of riding, Marshal,” said Aquila. “And tempers can run hot when eyes grow heavy.” He took another pull from the bottle and then wiped a palm across his beard. “I have no outright quarrel with you, personally, recent rudeness aside. But, as I see it, this conversation ain’t going down any roads pleasanter than the one it’s on now. So, that being the make of this situation, I suppose there’s only a few options afforded us. “One, you use your authority to officially deputize us as members of the U.S. Marshal Service and allow us to carry on our work with the full weight of our benevolent federal government behind us.” Aquila’s men laughed heartily, squaring their shoulders and preening about as they pinched at invisible stars on their chest, doffing a hat to one another with smug, mocking faces. Aquila raised his hand again and they quickly fell silent. “Two, you apologize and extend a formal note of gratitude as a federal Deputy U.S. Marshal and lawman to myself and my men for doing so much of your work for you.” Now Kelly laughed. “Three,” Aquila continued, ignoring him, “you lay that star of yours down, walk right out of here and avoid even the smell of me coming down the road for the rest of your life.” Kelly dropped his smile. His leg ached intensely. Aquila brought both his arms onto the table between them. They looked like cords of wood, thick and heavy. He lowered his voice to a whisper. The saloon was quiet enough to hear a mouse’s sneeze. Aquila’s rasping voice filled the dusty air. “Or, of course, there’s the obvious. I shoot you dead and take that pretty star of yours for myself.” Their faces were close. Kelly’s wrinkled and tired, whiskers white as snow; Aquila’s streaked with grime under a beard of jet coal. The men looked on, unmoving, as the two squared off. Behind the bar, the little mousy man with the curved mustache trembled. “Can’t say I’m eager to oblige you on any of those proposals,” said Kelly. He did not whisper. “Though I must say I’m a bit surprised you didn’t offer to nail me to a cross. That being your wont and all.” For the first time since he sat down, Kelly saw Aquila blink. “You may be a salty son of a bitch, but you ain’t done nothing worthy of crucifixion,” said Aquila. “No, a bullet will do just fine.” He skirted his coat farther back behind his waist. The revolver lay bare in its holster. Kelly followed suit. His leg had begun to shake. He tried not to let the tension show in his jaw. The two men sat, inches apart, eyes trained on one another’s. All else was quiet. Kelly spoke. “I have a proposal of my own.” Aquila’s brow wrinkled a fraction of an inch. Kelly took that as openness. “Loathe as I am to admit this, I’m not quite the draw I used to be.” “Your days of tracking down outlaws should have ended awhile back then, Marshal." “Maybe, but I ain’t finished.” Kelly moved his hand up, slower than slow, from his side. Aquila watched him with eyes like chips of flint. “I may not be as quick as I once was, but I’m quick enough still when I need to be. You’re a younger man than me, though, and your draw is likely mighty quick.” Aquila nodded as his men chuckled behind him. “Right, then I propose the following on the grounds of equity: We place a single pistol here between us. Each of us place our hands, palms down, atop the table. My hands are still quick enough for that, I think. What do you say?” What could have been a smile danced under the dark forest that was Aquila’s beard. “I say you’re a crafty old bastard.” The men laughed again. “But I also say yes.” Quick as lightning, Aquila unholstered his revolver. The smile was undeniable now as he saw Kelly’s eyes grow wide at the speed of his motion. He placed his revolver down between them and then spread his hands wide across the tabletop. Kelly brought up his own hands and did the same. His leg was trembling something awful, convulsing and jittering. A knot like a tree stump had burrowed itself into his thigh, but he paid it no mind. He saw only Aquila’s hardened face before him. The air left the room. A graveyard’s stillness descended. Neither man moved. A finger twitched. A flash of movement across the table. Kelly kicked out his cramped leg, shifting all of his weight to the side. The chair screamed beneath him, splintering like he knew it would, spilling him to the floor. A gunshot cracked, shattering the stillness. Smoke filled the empty space. Kelly hit the ground, hard, but his hand was still quick enough, indeed. It found the familiar curves of his Colt, freed it, fired. A spray of blood exploded into the air. Before Aquila toppled from his chair, Kelly had gotten off two more shots. One buried itself in the chest of the blond man, the other passing through the neck of another of Aquila’s cronies. Kelly rolled onto his back in time to see another man reaching for his belt. His Colt blared again, erasing the man’s face in a red mist. The rest of the men stood shockstill. “Make a move and I will put you down,” Kelly called out. His leg was numb from holding up his weight, but he got it beneath him all the same. “Now,” he said, standing, “I know you know at least a bit of history to be riding with a man who names himself and his posse after Roman legions, but I’m gonna test you now on biology. What happens to a snake when its head’s chopped off?” The assorted men looked at him queerly, unsure. The metallic smell of blood hung on the air. “I’ll tell you what happens,” Kelly answered for them. “The body twitches and moves for a while, as if it’s still alive.” He hardened his voice. “But it ain’t. It’s dead.” Kelly swept his arm out over the floor of the saloon, which was strewn with the bodies of Aquila and a trio of his men, leaking their lifeblood into the floorboards. “The Praetor Gang ain’t got no head, so as far as the U.S. Marshal Service is now concerned on the matter, it’s dead. If it sprouts a new head, well,” he clicked the hammer on his Colt. “I’ll chop that one off, too. We understand each other, gentlemen?” Heads nodded. “Alright,” said Kelly as he fell bodily back onto the chair that Francisco Antony “Aquila” Sangino had sat, numb leg now regaining a bit of its old sensation. “I suppose I will take another drink then, after all.