text: With a hoarse grunt, Tom strained against the digging bar. At last, the trunk rolled over. Underneath, the torn limbs of the tree had punctured a pattern in the soil, two holes and a deep slash that leered like a grinning skull. A taste of bile touched the back of his tongue, and he looked away. Clouds as grey and heavy as tombstones stole over the sky, covering the sun. Tom prayed they held a little rain, instead of just thunder. Again and again, he rammed his digging bar under the gnarled trunk of the tree that had busted his fence and let his cows out. Matilda and the kids were out on the range, trying to gather up the herd, while Josie, his eldest, had gone to town for the regular supply run. When the tree refused to budge, Tom threw down the bar in disgust. All around were the paltry spread of his corn fields, reedy green stalks broken only by the long ribbon of dirt that was the path to his homestead. For years he’d been hacking and shifting this hateful spit of land, squeezing out whatever it could yield, which was only enough to break even in the good years, and a money hole in the bad ones. He had to go back to his stash again and again, his heart pounding every time he did. The loot was getting thin. Fourteen years on, and it still made him burn with shame every time he had to touch one of those bills. Maybe when they were all spent he could finally forget the accusing eyes of the body he’d left in the scrub. A skirt of dust rose from the road. It was Josie, running pell-mell. Matilda didn’t like sending the girl into town alone, but she was half tomboy, and she’d inherited Tom’s looks as well as his attitude. So if she wanted to go into town, long as she went with some iron on her hip, he was fine with it. Road agents wouldn’t bother with a single poor farmer, as there was no money in it. Josie ran up like a rabbit being chased by a fox, her pigtails flapping loose from her straw hat. She took such care in keeping them hidden most days. “Pa!” she gasped. “Man in town. Looking for you.” She tried to say more but was too winded for any of it to make sense. He led her over to the trough for a drink. Under her arm was a package, damp with sweat. Wordlessly she thrust it at him. The plain brown paper was sloppily tied with a stained bit of whang leather. Inside was a filthy hat. He thumped it once to dust it, but the dirt clung in the seams. A smell of rot and loam wafted up. Grave dust. A memory sprung to life, hissing and rattling like a snake. He recoiled from the hat, threw it to the ground. The wind blew fiercely, scattering the hat and the package, and the parched stalks of corn shivered. His eyes darted to and fro. The hand at his hip found air instead of leather. It’d been years since he wore his Model 3 daily, but the body never forgets its reaction to danger. He looked at his house, but couldn’t see the familiar beams and windows he himself had set. Instead he saw the empty eyes of a dead man, bled out at the foot of a tree. Those accusing eyes. “What is it, pa?” Josie asked. “Postman said there was a man in town lookin’ for you. Old looking cowboy, done up in Ute leathers.” “Ute?” he gasped. It had been Ute territory, hadn’t it. Right at the edge of Colorado. Sweat poured down his face, cold as the grave. He wiped it off and took his eyes off the horizon long enough to give his daughter a hard stare. “Get the side-by-side.” Josie’s eyes went wide as saucer cups, but she ran to the house to get the big gun. Tom, the wind whispered. There, at the edge of his land. A dark figure. He could imagine a trio of gunshot wounds on its breast. Tom ran inside and slammed the door behind him. The kitchen table was set for dinner - Mathilda must’ve gotten it ready before the fence fiasco. Where the breadbasket should be was the ancient double-barreled shotgun, Josie fumbling shells into the barrels. It was an ornate museum-piece, bought off a German settler headed West who let it go for cheap. Probably forged fifty years ago, to shoot Indians or buffalo. Still shot true, as a coyote discovered last year. Tears left wet trails in the grime on her face. “Pa? What’s going on?” she asked, barely holding down the quaiver in her voice. Tom got his revolver from the tool rack, checked the cylinder. “It’s a bad man I once knew,” Tom said. “But you’re a farmer. You don’t know any bad men,” she said. He wanted to kiss her on the forehead, tell her it was all right. But they’d called him by another name back in his road agent days, that crew of hard-eyed men preying on stagecoaches and passerbys. He’d done things that haunted his thoughts even now, things that filled him with shame. But he’d done it, by god, and taken the whiskey, women and money that had come with a fast life. Their last score had been the stuff of legends: ten-thousand silver dollars off a Wells Fargo wagon, bound for some frontier bank. After Willie Banks and the Dentist had caught their ends, though, it was left to just two men to split the earnings. Just him, and... “Roy Flint,” Tom whispered. The meanest son of a bitch in ten counties. A rattlesnake heart filled with black anger all welled up like crude oil, bursting forth at the slightest tap. Carried a big knife, a machete meant for bushwhacking, and used it to take the limbs off people. Lawmen, whores, bartenders whose tone he didn’t like. Roy had used the knife like some people used conversation. But for whatever reason, Roy’d had a soft spot for Tom. After the Wells Fargo job, when they’d stopped their horses and pulled out the saddle bag full of loot, their gazes had met. Take it all, Tom had thought. Get out. Tom had expected to see the same thought in Roy’s pitiless eyes, but instead there was a hint of surprise. Maybe even the meanest son of a bitch in the world had to feel some shock at betrayal. Those eyes stared after Tom, even after the life left ‘em. Tom couldn’t bear the look, so he covered Roy’s face with his hat, and quit that place, some lonely stand of scrub out on the prairie. A few weeks later he found Matilda, and they found a patch of ex-Indian land open from the Hunter Act, and the rest was a history of toil and frustration. “Roy who?” Josie asked. Snapped back to the present, Tom hushed her and took the side-by-side. Good girl, she’d loaded buckshot in both barrels. He let the shotgun take the lead out the door, his finger shivering on the trigger. At the edge of the packed dirt around the house, right at the footsteps, stood the figure. The wind tore at his rotten clothes, flashes of grey flesh and exposed bone visible. On the face was a rictus smile, straight out of nightmares. Tom yanked the trigger. Two barrels of buckshot cut into the figure, and it slumped over. Tom let out a sharp breath. He lowered the gun as the tension left him, muscle memory popping open the gun and reloading the shells. Then Roy got back up. Reason and pride fled, and Tom ran with them. Slammed the door shut behind him. For a wild moment he considered just bolting out the back. Walsenburg wasn’t far. Josie was there though, hiccuping with terror. She looked at him, sure he could somehow save her, and it felt worse than the flash of cowardice. He remembered Matilda could be back any moment with Anna, Henry and the rest of the little ones in tow. They’d be sheep walking into a wolf’s jaws. “Y-you stay behind me, Josie,” Tom said. He grabbed his buck knife and slipped the Model 3 out of his pocket. “Shoot him if he comes through the back.” There was no sound at the front door, except the howling of the wind and the hiss of parched corn. Tom thought of his family, and mustered up his limp courage. He tore open the front door and threw himself outside, rolling to avoid a shot from the side. The barrels of the shotgun flashed left, right, forward. No Roy. Heart hammering, Tom stood up. A shot rang out from behind. He wheeled. Gray flesh rested over his daughter’s mouth, a rigid hand with black nails digging into her cheek. The Model 3, taken from her, now hung loosely at the intruder’s side. Josie squirmed but that gnarled root of an arm didn’t budge. “Nice place you got here, Tom,” Roy said. Roy’s voice was the sound of rats scrambling against dirt, of wind blowing over a gravestone. “No words for your old pardner?” A dead laugh. “No how’dya do?” Tom forced the words through his clenched throat. “Roy...let her go.” That laugh again. “First tell me something, Tom. Where’s the loot?” Tom took a step forward. Roy squeezed, and Josie shook like a fish on a hook, eyes wide with pain. “No, none of that,” Roy hissed. “Where’s my share, Tom?” “Gone,” he said. “Spent it all.” “Figures. You were shit for brains, Tom Geitz. Never had a head for numbers.” A spider scuttled from the cave of his mouth, disappeared into his empty eye socket. “But I think I’ll take your investment here, Tom.” “No!” he shouted. “Let’s settle it fair. Like the old days.” “With knives? Think you can carve me?” Roy laughed again, and waved Tom outside with the Model 3. “Drop it there.” Tom dropped the shotgun on the porch. The boards creaked as he stepped down into the dirt. Roy put the revolver to Josie’s thigh and fired. Tom moved to rush Roy, but the dead man leveled the pistol at his heart. “Just making sure she doesn’t jackrabbit off while we settle this,” Roy said, over Josie’s cries of pain. His spurs jangled as he descended from the porch. The lamplight of the house was visible through the hole in Roy’s chest. Tom pulled his knife, wondering what in the hell he could do with it. Roy slowly pulled out his machete and tapped his chest. “I’ll let you have the first hit.” An ear-splitting whoop let loose from Tom’s mouth, his heart whipped by fear and anger. He dove at Tom, burying the knife into his skull up to the hilt. Roy laughed and gripped his arm. With a casual swing he sheared through Tom’s left hand, taking it off in a ragged stump. Tom screamed and tried to pull away. The grip of the rotten hand was like iron, biting down so hard blood didn’t flow from the stump. “That’s good. Struggle.” Roy leaned in and put his lips to Tom’s wound. Pain shot up like lightning as rotted teeth chewed on his wounded flesh. “By the devil, you’ll pay me in pain!” Tom wriggled loose and fell to the ground. He tried to crawl away, dirt in his mouth. “I thought we was like brothers, Tom Geitz. Tom Two-Guns. The Terror of Durango.” A bony hand caught his leg. “Feel terrifying now, Tom?” Whack. Tom screamed again. His leg ended at the knee. He pushed feebly against the dirt, trying to gain some futile distance. All he did was churn the bloody mud. Fat drops of rain cut loose from overhead, followed by the peal of thunder. “I hope you enjoyed that ten-thousand dollars. You and me, we’re kin at heart, Tom. I saw it, even if you didn’t. You spit on our friendship for what, for money?” Roy cackled. “Well, it was a lot of money, I’ll grant you. I’m gonna have to take the repayment from your family!” He raised the knife high. The crack of thunder split the air. Roy’s head disappeared in a mist of blood. His body toppled to the earth like a rotted tree, thudded into the dirt next to Tom. Josie sat up from the porch, the barrels of the shotgun still smoking. As the rain poured down, it seeped into Roy’s body. The neck ended in a mess of torn flesh, those accusing eyes finally gone. The grey flesh and tattered clothes dissolved into the mud right before Tom’s eyes. Jodie limped over, her overalls soaked in her own blood. “Pa, I’m sorry pa,” she sobbed. “Good girl,” he said, closing his eyes. “Good girl.” On top of all the bad decisions of his life, he’d made at least one one good one in her. As his vision dimmed, the last thing he saw was her eyes, full of pride and sadness. Written for . Prompt taken from .