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The wind was whipping the dust into tiny twirling columns that appeared and disappeared seemingly at will. It was brutally hot in the late August afternoon even though the sky was darkening and storm clouds were threatening. On the hour the Lutheran church was tolling its bell, its open door beckoning to wavering souls. John walked with the gait of a young leopard, his eyes watching every corner, every window. He was headed to the “Last Chance Saloon” across the street. Except for the new church the town of Shalako was dilapidated and run-down. The older grey weatherworn wooden slat-board saloon and the new sap-stained yellow-pine timber church faced each other like adversaries, like pugilistic antagonists both hoping to lay the other flat. They were merchants that bartered with lost souls as their currency. The detritus of America wavered from one side of the dusty grey main street to the other. On the north side of the street salvation was offered from the words of an ancient book. The preacher’s hectoring pronouncements competed with a more lubricated form of salvation being offered by the amber gold in a glass at the saloon. The preacher in the new pine-board church offered redemption, forgiveness and seemingly endless chances. The owner of the saloon, a one-legged creature named “Dusty”, knew from hard life’s experience that often you only had your last chance. That was it. If you fucked up your last chance, well then you might as well be six-feet under. The population of the town needed to weigh their chances and choose their poison. The jolly-green giant “Trick” stood guard at the saloon’s door. He smiled at the newly appointed deputy U.S. Marshall with his shiny brass badge pinned to his leather vest. Trick’s shoulders and thighs were almost as wide as the swinging wood-panel saloon doors. To Trick’s left was the white painted sign that read in green painted letters, “No Guns Allowed”. Below the painted sign was a box, guarded by Trick, and piled high with gunmetal blue Colt revolvers. To the side several Winchester levered rifles were leaning against the wooden wall. John put his hand down and caressed the handle on his 12” barreled Buntline Special Colt revolver, but Trick flicked his eyes in consent. As the newly appointed deputy U.S. Marshal John was permitted to keep his weapon. The swinging doors creaked open noisily as John ambled inside. The motley crew of patrons turned and looked his way. Their eyes saw a skeleton, a corpse. He was dead to them already and their faces carried uneasy and nervous grins. No one, and I mean no one, liked being this close to a corpse, especially when it was still walking and talking. The huge Negro “Digby” who was responsible for order inside the saloon motioned John to an empty table and raised his hand in a subtle gesture to catch Dusty’s attention. Dusty spied John and the whole saloon had fallen silent; you could hear a bullet drop. The sound of Dusty’s wooden peg leg reverberated in the saloon’s looming silence. His wooden leg was dragged awkwardly and hit the rough pine timber floor as he swung it in a tortuous swinging motion to make his way over to John’s table. The rustle of movement and voices talking recommenced and heads turned away from the walking corpse as the business of the saloon resumed, John’s presence now ignored. He was practically a ghost after all. John’s eyes were averted. He was looking intently at the fine wood grain in the oak table penetrated here and there by the vicious impact of a knife’s tip. “So what will it be Marshal?” John looked up, but not far. Dusty was barely five-foot tall. Rumor had it that he had once worked in a famous circus from Kansas. He had been the guy shot out of the cannon: the “human cannonball”. Something had happened otherwise how had he ended up in this god-forsaken dustbowl of a town? Common opinion had it that being shot out of a cannon held many career advantages to running a saloon in Shalako. The town was the last stop on the railway where there was little law and even less money. People in Shalako mostly survived on the barter of un-kept promises and hope. Even the dour Lutheran preacher, so full of hell-fire and brimstone, hoped for miracles. He and his long neglected flock waited disappointed month after month. Dusty cleared his throat waiting for his new patron to answer. “Whisky.” Dusty nodded and motioned to his barmaid Patty to get John a whisky. He held up his forefinger to indicate that she should pour the good whisky, the Canadian Rye whisky and not the New Orleans rotgut that most patrons got. A man about to die deserved a decent last drink. Patty returned and her eyes flitting nervously from Dusty to John. She slid the amber drink in front of the handsome cowboy. John removed his cowboy hat, brushed it casually to remove the street’s dust and set it down on the table deliberately. He slowly lifted the drink to his lips, his eyes always assessing the room. Dusty cleared his throat again his eyes darting nervously unable to look John in the eye. “So I hear Robert Ford has made you deputy Marshal. He’s gone and left town escort izmit is the rumor.” John knew the rumor. He knew everyone sitting in the pews of the Lutheran church right now were shitting their pants and praying for a miracle. He knew what everyone knew. Sherriff Ford had taken a runner and was on his way to Portland, or god knows where. He knew everyone considered him a dead man. The stonemason was probably chiseling his tombstone from cheap easily crumbled granite already. John angled his head to the side and looked Dusty in the eyes. “It’s true. He’s gone for a while.” John paused sipping his whisky, feeling it burn. “Don’t know if he’ll be back. I’m the Marshal now.” Dusty’s hands shifted nervously and his eyes moved around like they were following an imaginary hummingbird flitting before his eyes. Was he searching for a way to escape? John smiled inside but kept his face like stone. At twenty-nine he was old to be a gun fighter, but he had experience on his side. He knew how to keep still when others couldn’t help but act jumpy. He knew wanted men; desperate men, and he felt he wasn’t quite ready to die just yet. Dusty tried to make small talk, but John was not a man for small talk. The town’s folks called him the “French Cowboy”. He had ambled into town two summers ago and somehow had just never left. It was true he had French parents and his real name was “Jean d’Langham”, but he was one hundred percent born in America. To everybody he was known as simply “John”. Actually he had been born in the train station in Boston as his parents were waiting to go west. He had departed his mother’s womb a month early and totally ruined his parent’s original plan. John had a way of ruining people’s plans. John’s mother had died of TB when he was two. His father had gotten lung-rot working in a variety of mines and furnace jobs. His lungs had been clogged and John had ended up in an orphanage in St. Louis. He had not one good thing to say about the orphanage or the religious order that ran it. As such he put no stock in the prayers being offered across the street. John, however, did have a smile and a good thought for sister Maria who saved him in the end. Women John knew had a power to redeem; a power of re-birth that men simply didn’t possess. Men were destroyers, killers; they had the seed but they couldn’t nurture, not in the hard Wild West anyways. Women he knew were the key to survival. John was an incredibly handsome young orphan and at sixteen he was expected to leave the orphanage. A weedy pale young priest had snuck into his bed. John had felt the priest’s soft milky callous-free hands pulling at his bedclothes. The merchant of souls had tried to put his tiny catholic cock up John’s ass. He would never tell anyone other than sister Maria what had happened that night. Sister Maria had arranged to get John out of the orphanage the next day. He had been on his own ever since. John had killed men in his day, but always in self-defense. At the bar by the railroad yard in Chicago the two robbers had tried to jump him. A man had to do what he had to do. Dusty looked at John as he finished his drink. His brain was full of thoughts, full of worries, like everyone else in Shalako. What hope did anyone have? Ben Thompson and his gang were pure killers. Thompson had started his criminal career at the age of seventeen when he killed a man who tried to cheat him at cards. It had been a brutal knife fight. Ben still bore the rough scars on his face and arms. Thompson had a reputation for a lightning fast draw after killing two men in the same gunfight on Christmas Eve in 1876. He had tried to leave a life of crime by becoming the Marshal of the cow town Austin, Texas. He had to go on the run again when he killed Jack Harris after they got into an argument over a bargirl. No one knew exactly how many men Ben Thompson had gunned down. Somehow Thompson had found his way to the dead-end town of Shalako. With the natural affinity of criminals he’d tied-up with the Craig boys on the outskirts. Tom and Dan Craig made their way by rustling. Life was already hard enough in Shalako without people stealing your cattle. Marshal Ford had deputized John and sent him out to deal with the Craig boys. John had no money and no prospects so becoming a U.S. Marshal seemed to hold some prospects. Besides he wasn’t afraid of anyone. One thing had led to another and Tom Craig was dead. He had been a criminal, but that didn’t offer any solace to his younger brother Dan who now wanted revenge. The whole town knew now that Dan had convinced Ben to ride into town tomorrow at high noon. There would be a gunfight. Only one man would be standing in the end: the law or the rustler. The town had already voted and it looked like the law got the short straw. Dusty spoke again. “So you are wanting to spend the night?” John looked up again, lost in thought. He was thinking of the rolling green hills of southern Alberta. He’d been up to Canada once and it still tugged at him. He’d seen in the paper how they were offering free land again. Patty who could read had izmit escort told him what the paper said. In his mind he was picturing a ranch, a few cattle, a woman in a flowing cotton print dress, a running child. It was no good; it was all just a dream. The image faded and even though he grasped to hold on to it, the picture dissolved like dissipating cigar smoke. John’s big brown eyes looked rock steady and Dusty wondered if he knew it was his last night. “Yes I was wondering if Miss Jessie might like to have a visitor?” Dusty grunted like he was making a bowel movement. He spit a big wad of chewing tobacco phlegm into the dented brass spittoon by John’s feet. “Well you know young Miss Hazel is a bit too skinny and gangly to get many visitors so I’m pretty darn sure she’d welcome a handsome visitor like you. She’s over with the preacher right now done getting her soul saved. She’ll be back in a while. Another drink?” John nodded affirmatively. “Don’t worry I’ve got a silver dollar. Marshal Ford gave me an advance.” Dusty shook his head and gently put his hand on John’s shoulder. “No need young man; on the house. Besides she’s sweet on you.” The floor above the saloon was comprised of six different rooms, each allotted to a different dancehall girl. If a man took a fancy, or had a need, he could pay a visit by tipping Dusty a silver dollar. Jessie Hazel was the newest girl. A scraggly, bug-eyed brown haired scrawny girl with almost no breasts Jessie was a few days from turning seventeen. Like John she was an orphan and had not the slightest clue of where she was from or who her parents might be. From the first day she could recall she had been alone in the world. She assumed she always would be, that was her plan. John had a way of ruining people’s plans. The Sisters of Salvation had raised Jessie and had made sure she was a god-fearing girl who believed in final salvation. They had placed her in a home as a domestic servant. When the husband, a wealthy bank manager, had tried to rape her she had been forced to run away. Prospects for an orphan were highly limited in the rough and tumble of newly minted America. When the skinny young waif had shown up at the door of Dusty’s “Last Chance Saloon” he knew the girl would have no appeal to his “regulars”. My god she was practically skin and bones. But the emptiness of her eyes had caused him to pause. He’d offered her room and board in return for occupying the last dancehall girl room. He’d sensed from her eyes that this was her last chance and that was Dusty’s specialty. Last chances and Dusty were like a pair of well-worn shoes. Since Jessie did not get many male visitors they eventually did a deal where she would wash dishes and clean the outhouse out back. John waited calmly and sipped his drink. Dusty moved away to attend to the card games and chat with those whose tabs were running a little high. If the Marshal were to be dead tomorrow then recovery of accounts could be a problem. John’s eyes were drawn to motion at the back. He watched as Jessie in a long cotton frock, her pink bonnet laced under her chin, her hands lifting her dress at her hips to avoid tripping, made her way delicately up the wooden stairs. Dusty motioned to her and she leaned in so he could whisper in her ear. She looked up and her eyes caught John’s across the room. He blushed. Even from this distance she must know. It made his cheeks flush red. Jessie disappeared up the steps, a new lightness in her step, her face beaming. John looked away trying to feign lack of interest. He was a man after all, a gunfighter. After a while Dusty made his way back to John. “She says give her a while to get ready. You go up and visit when I give you the signal.” John nodded and then decided to amble outside. He stood on the wooden sidewalk elevated off the mud street so that you could avoid the muck when bad storms came in. He looked up and down the stretch of road where in a few hours he would need to stand and draw his gun. His stomach had butterflies. Any man in this situation who didn’t feel butterflies would most probably end up dead. He looked for likely places to ambush and let his critical eye size up the situation. His mind drifted off to Alberta again. The rye whisky and its full-grain flavor lingered in his mouth and its warmth still touched his throat and stomach. He thought of Jessie, he thought of being alone in the world, he thought of Alberta and the lush green rolling foothills of the Rocky Mountains. He pulled out a hand-rolled cigarette and scratched a light on the post. He took a deep draw feeling the harsh cheap tobacco burn his throat. His last smoke, would it be his last smoke? He wondered. Life he knew was uncertain and precarious. To divine its course was the devil’s work. Even the preacher had no idea who would live and who would die. Of that John was certain. John moved back inside the saloon and Dusty motioned with his eyes towards the stairs. John picked up his cowboy hat. His boots made rough sounds as he ambled across the wood floor to the stairs. Patrons looked up izmit kendi evi olan escort again, but their eyes were dull. Who cared, he was as much as gone. With patient deliberate steps John made his way to his only salvation, to take his visit, to spend his last hours, his last minutes perhaps, with Miss Hazel. Outside the clouds gathered, the sky blackened and the storm threatened. John could not read nor write. He’d never learned. If he could he would have written Jessie a note. Some would call it a love letter perhaps. He would explain to her that if and when he was gone, she should leave town and go to Alberta. Yes that is what he would have written, in a sealed note. He would have told her. “If I die tomorrow open this letter.” But he could not write. He was lost and his mind confused as he made his way closer and closer to her room. John had been with so many women. Sex was like eating and sleeping, like a drink of whisky, like a game of cards. It was just something a man did. It was nothing special. But Jessie was different. She was like him. She had been completely alone; she was an orphan and there was an inexplicable connection. He knew that at every turn her heart would tell her to avoid the hurt, to avoid the pain. Orphans did not fall in love; there was just no percentage in such business. But in her eyes he knew they belonged together. How he knew it he had no idea. This concept of having a woman, of having another human being to care for had never entered his head before. It was not part of his plan. John could even ruin his own plans. John made his way down the dark dank hallway to Jessie’s door at the very end. As he passed buxom Shania’s door, the second on the left, he heard the grunting sounds of animal sex and heard her cry out in orgasm. Shania was the favorite among the men, the ranchers especially, with her large breasts and wide hips. The rumors said her mouth felt more glorious than any pussy on earth. Perhaps? More than one bar fight had taken place over the right to visit with her. John moved on lightening his step. His palms began to sweat the closer he got to her door. He had visited before, but they had only held hands and talked. They had never done anything carnal such as a man might want to do. They had broken no commandments. It’s not that she was unwilling. They had just both been satisfied being in each other’s presence. The touch of her hand was the most powerful thing John had ever felt in his life. More powerful than the feeling of his Colt in his hand and blue smoke whispering from its barrel. John reached the door and became uncertain. What would he say? What could he say? He was no wordsmith and poetry did not fall off his tongue. Perhaps if he had been trained as a journalist and could write flourishing verse things would be different. He would need to rely on his eyes, on his heart. He had picked up a book once. All the characters had just drifted in a jumbled mass of meaningless black and white mumbo-jumbo. He’d put it down frustrated and ashamed. His heart began to race. Why would a god-fearing girl, a girl who could read and write, a girl who was raised good by sisters; why would she ever pick a man like him? There was no good reason he could think of that’s for sure. John tapped lightly on the wooden door. His tap was so timid that inside Jessie thought her ears might be mistaken. “John is that you?” Her voice was mellifluous and feminine and floated in the air like early morning light. The sound of her voice brought an involuntary smile to his face. He tapped a little louder. “Yes Mam it’s me Miss Hazel.” The door opened slowly. Jessie peered out of the crack to check that it was only John. All he could see was her brown hair, her cute nose and the color pink. With a loud creak Jessie pulled the door wider and motioned for John to come in. He held his hat in his hand and entered slowly and with great uncertainty. Jessie motioned to the chair. It was easier than John had ever imagined. What did they talk about? If you asked John to recall that visit it is unlikely a single thing would come to his brain. That’s just how easy it was. The exact pink color of her nightdress? The shirt he was wearing? Neither one of them probably took notice. So mesmerized was he by her flawless beauty, a beauty born of her spirit and not her flesh; and so mesmerized was she by his certainty, his sureness of heart. Each was in thrall of the other; imperfections had ceased to exist. John’s nerves were telling him to leave, to turn around, to get out. He had no way to tell her and he was afraid. But his steady heart told him absolutely not to go. His hand was shaking and she noticed. She reached out and held it lightly, calming him. It was getting dark and thunder cracked outside. She lit a candle and the amber glow lit up her face a golden hue like she was an angel come to earth. The sound of rain, a veritable deluge could be heard outside the window. Was this a new flood? Would god punish them all a second time? Jessie’s small side table had a white linen tablecloth with a lace edge. It was dirtied with dark smudges, but to John it looked pure white. His heart was pounding, as he looked at his angel, his brown eyes finally steadying and his heart calming. She smiled. She hadn’t known if he would return. The last time, like the time before he had done nothing except hold her hand.