Chapter Selection: 1 2 3

1.

Dusty Willis couldn't remember the last time he had ever felt so utterly and completely miserable. The heavy snow was blinding and the wind was slicing through his worn buffalo coat like a scythe. He could not see more than two or three feet in front of him and his weary mount was fairing little better. Every few hundred yards he had to stop and dismount to dig out the solid balls of ice that formed within the horses hooves. It was a task that only added to his morbid mien as he pulled off his mittens and fumbled in his deep pockets for his folding pocketknife.

He cursed the weather in general and the freezing cold in particular and he cursed the fact that it was Christmas Eve and here he was in the middle of a frozen nowhere with no idea where he was going or what he was going to do once he got there.
Muttering, he pulled himself back up into the wet saddle and set off again in to the howling wind and biting cold.

As he rode he began to think about the events of the past few days that had led up to this moment. He thought about Miss Ellie and her fiery, red hair and equally hot temper. He thought about how she had made eyes at him in the saloon as she danced for the rude pleasure of the crude, lewd cowboys. The smell of sweat, tobacco and cheap whiskey filled his cold brain as he recalled how she had looked at him and only him as she sang an old song to the tuneless accompaniment of the toothless pianist. Other cowboys had lusted after the high kicking temptress but it was he that she sided up against by the bar once the song was over and the piano player had closed the lid on the woodworm riddled piano. She asked him to buy her a drink and he had fallen for it and he had fallen in love - or was it lust at the same moment. He paid for many drinks and, later that night, he paid for her company.
Oh, how foolish he felt now as he plodded through the snow and the wind and the cold and the stark blackness of the seemingly endless night. He had given her money but she had wanted more. He had no more to give and she had called him all kinds of crude names some of which even he had never heard before.
Then she had called for Harry. Harry was her 'protector' and together they had tried to rob Dusty of the money he didn't have. In the ensuing scrap, a knife had been drawn by Harry to cut the hapless cowboy. But Dusty managed to better the brute and had succeeded on turning the knife on the massive bear of a man. He felt the six inch blade slice easily in to the fat mans chest and he recalled the bubbling, wheezing sound that his chest made as the fat man grew instantly weak and feeble. The heavy man fell to the floor of the temptress' bedroom and moved no more.

For a long moment neither Dusty nor Miss Ellie moved. Then, suddenly, she let go with an ear piercing scream and Dusty panicked. He made his escape by the fire exit and found his horse patiently waiting for him by the hitch rail where he had left it some hours before. He jumped in to the saddle and with a whoop and a holler; he made good his escape from the nameless saloon with the sounds of rifle shots ringing in his ears.

And now here he was out on the snow-covered plains running away from a two-bit whore and a mob of angry friends of Harry's.