Main Character: From Ezra Standish's point of view
Rating: Rating: PG13, some language
Universe: Old West
Disclaimer: I do not own the character of Ezra Standish and do not seek to make money off of this story
Comments: How it was for gunfighters in the old West.
Thanks to: Lady Angel's Library of Magnificent Seven Fan Fiction for all the help and support. A special thanks to Elizabeth for her help in cleaning up my mistakes.
I looked up to see him enter the saloon in Convoy that I just happened to stop by on my way back home.
In all my days since, it is he that I remember the best. Never had I seen anyone like him. With heavy lidded eyes that did not disclose their color and short hair under a hat, he seemed to radiate loathing.
With careful carelessness, he picked out the very one he should have avoided and stood by him at the bar. He raised a brown hand and called for a drink, asking Sturdy Jack, the local tough, if he would care for one.
Sturdy Jack gave only a cold stare for his answer and the stranger seemed almost pleased.
"By God, I offered you a drink," spat out the stranger, a sly and intent expression on his lips.
"And I, by God, don't want it," replied Sturdy Jack just as intently.
Now, never before in my thirty years had I ever seen a real, stand up gunfight in a saloon. Sure, some men died in firefights in western towns full of lawlessness, but this was the first stand up I had witnessed. Even Chris Larabee had not faced a man in a saloon since I met him two years ago.
Easterners believed us to be heathens. All of us lawless and untamed. The papers back East would have you believe that a man couldn't walk straight without tripping over a dead body.
Sturdy Jack looked glaringly at the newcomer and must have seen something that I didn't, for he suddenly stepped back with wide eyes and pulled his gun.
It went off with a sudden jerk of fire and smoke and I turned my eyes on the stranger to see that he had not moved. He just stood there with blood pouring out of his chest with a calm expression.
"Thank God. Thank God," he said and then he fell to the floor dead.
Sturdy Jack dropped his gun and ran from the saloon, never to be seen in the Bird's Eye Saloon in Convoy again.
I took over the scene as I was the only thing considered a lawman in town. I searched the stranger and found only a pocket knife, a coin and an inscribed watch. The watch said, "To my beloved husband, John Killaney, on our first anniversary. Love, Catherine."
Men in the saloon began to shake at this news. Killaney was the fastest gun in Harrow's County. There wasn't a place he hadn't been that he hadn't killed some rep hunter. He'd been on the run for almost ten years, just ahead of the vultures that wanted his name carved on their guns.
I sent the body to the undertaker along with the coin and watch. He was buried the next morning as I left to continue my journey homeward.
Word must have leaked out about Sturdy Jack, because not long later I heard he was called out up North by some man named Dakota Jackson. Sturdy Jack won and it went on and on for a full year before the bullet finally caught up with ole Jack.
Some kid named Colter Mills put a bullet in Sturdy Jack's chest and the barkeep swore on a stack of bibles that the last words from Jack were, "Thank God. Thank God."
As for Kid Colter Mills, he ran and ran and ran.
The End
February 10, 2003
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