The man who was called Nathaniel pushed his horse slowly through the ever deeper snow. It fell heavy, in big airy bunches, sticking to everything, trees and hat and fur and skin. There was a chill in the night air that froze the man straight through his big heavy coat, all the way down to his bones.
A dull wind blew through the woods, pushing the snow in at an angle. With the wind came a dull scream, hollow and affecting, its beats interspersed with the cracking of the trees and the sound of clumps of snow falling occasionally from the higher branches, a baseline formed by the regular clump of the horse’s hooves.
As the animal pushed forward, the man let his gaze fall ever further towards the ground, letting the brim of his hat shield his eyes from the piercing wind. There had been a path when he started out, but whatever there once was was now long gone under a blanket of snow.
Everything was covered thick and heavy in white, branches and ground equally. The snow was so deep and the air so cold that every inch of even the evergreens were covered in the stuff, their needles socked in, held prisoner by a malignant tumor.
When the snow is coming down hard enough, it doesn’t matter how dark it is, the whole world still lights up a seedy, dirty white, almost the colour of urine, and so it was on that night, the light of stars and moon reflecting through the snow.
The horse began to stumble, its straight forward progress becoming a waving, zagging staggering line. The cold and wind and ice and snow was starting to take its toll.
The man pushed his eyes upwards into the blowing wind, squinting hard through the night air. He saw what he was looking for and set his horse's course for it- a small cabin shining dimly, the fire within reflecting in rippling waves across the snow.
As his horse drew up close to the place, the man gave it a closer inspection. Small, one room, probably a loft for sleeping, a common space for eating and talking and waiting out the winter nights. About five yards to the west was an outhouse, nothing special in and of itself. Neither building was. Near-identical to the homes of hundreds of thousands of others belonging to small hold farmers and prospectors and the like all across that part of the country. Directly to the east of the cabin was a lean to, barely bigger than the outhouse, built for one horse, maybe two, but this night it stood empty.
The man put his hand to the revolver that lay upon his hip. He distrusted the empty lean to with the fire blazing inside and the outhouse standing broodingly just a little too far from the door. When he was just a few feet away, he dismounted, knocked on the door with his left hand, let his right drop slowly to his side, a half second’s twitch away from drawing blood as necessary.
Then the door opened and the man decided he probably wouldn’t need the fire and steel. Not just yet. On the other side of the door was a man in his mid 40s, if Nathaniel had to guess, though he looked much older, tired, sad, beaten down. That was what this country did to people. The man had tired blue eyes, pale, wrinkled skin. His hair was cut unevenly, as if with a dull razor, and the stubble on his cheeks was at least a few days old. He had the nose of a hawk but those blue eyes were dull and milky as if the man behind them just wasn’t there. The very air around him tasted of cheap whiskey and cheaper beer. Such were the men of this land.
“Good evenin’ sir, I’m sahry to bother you at, well, such a late hour, on such a cold, uninvatin’ night. My name is Nathaniel James, and I’m a licensed bounty huntah’ for the territory of Colorado. I’m looking for the town of Breckenridge, and I fear in this storm I’ve gotten mahself’ wholly off track.” As was his way, the man who this night went by Nathaniel James let the slight hint of dixie he’d picked up in his youth in Missouri come out strong in the introduction, figuring the man at the door for the type to have seen through a grey lens in the not so long expired war.
“Uh, Mr. James, was it? Breckenridge is a good five miles... that way.” The man in the door indicated towards the North. Nathaniel furrowed his brow.
“Well now, Mr... I’m sahry, I don’t think I caught your name?”
“Oh, of course, I’m Joseph, sir.”
“Forget all that sir and mister business, just Nathaniel. Pleased to meet you, Joseph.” He took the man’s hand in his strong grip, shook it vigorously. He thought he saw a hint of warmth in Joseph’s dead eyes, took it as a sign to push forward..
“Now fahv miles you say... hmm. I don’t suppose I could impose on you for a sip of water for myself before I push on, if it wouldn’t be any trouble?”
“Oh uh...” He looked to the weapon on the bounty hunter’s hip.
“Of course if that’s any trouble at all, I can just be on mah’ way...” Nathaniel began to turn, then saw Joseph’s face change and turned back.
“No, no, no trouble... please, hitch your horse up over yonder and come in.” He gestured towards the lean to.
Once the horse was hitched, Joseph held open the door as Nathaniel entered the cabin, stooping a bit as he did so to avoid hitting his head. He was a tall man, real tall. It helped in his line of work. Not the shooting men part, not necessarily, but the rest of it. The talking, the controlling, the manipulating. And really those were all the reasons he was good at his job. Guns were a second thought. Sure he was fast, fast enough, and sure he could shoot in something resembling a straight line, but so could a lot of folks.
The inside of the cabin was about what Joseph had imagined. There was one room, open, with a fireplace on one wall, a few chairs, a table. Nothing much else, just bare log walls, dirt, poverty. Two coats hung by the door, and, next to them, a holster with an old revolver in it, a Colt 51’ Navy model, the sort of gun that was good enough in its time, but which had fallen quickly out of favor during the war. Above the fireplace there sat a mean looking double-barreled shotgun.
As expected, there was also a loft, dark and dingy. Running contrary to his expectations though, there was a second inhabitant of the cabin, standing, staring. Her very existence was a contradiction of this place. She was pretty, young, and alive. Her hair was long and blonde, striking, dirty and matted though it was. Her eyes had the colour of her father’s, but where his were dull, hers were bright and shining, but, it seemed to Nathaniel, somehow unstable and unfocused. He’d seen the same look in the eyes of men poised to perform their first great act of violence.
“Oh, uh, that there is my daughter, Judith.“ Nathaniel locked eyes with the girl, tried to read her, but failed. He sensed something behind those pretty blue eyes, something dangerous, broken, or sad. He wished he knew which, because he sensed it would make all the difference in the world in the way the evening played out.
“Judith, it’s my pleasure to make your acquaintance.” He ended his sentence with a slight bow. Then he took her hand, and kissed it. If his southern guess was right as far as Joseph was concerned, chivalry would put him in the man’s good graces.
To Nathaniel’s pleasure, Joseph smiled slightly. Judith, on the other hand looked, if anything, aggravated at the display.
“Judith, set the table for Mr. James here, he’s going to be joining us for dinner.”
“Oh, I couldn’t impose on you two... just a glass of...”
“No, please, I insist. Its not often we get young men such as yourself wandering through our neck of the woods. My daughter might like to meet you... I mean... you ain’t married are you?” An interesting development.
“No, not found the raght’ lady just yet...” He smiled slightly at Judith as he said this. He figured he could use Joseph’s personality disorder to his advantage.
“I can’t imagine why.” The girl’s remark was surprisingly snide, and Nathaniel found himself frowning slightly.
“Judith, go set the god damned table or I will have to strike you again.” Joseph then turned back to Nathaniel. “Women these days- without a little bit of force, you can’t make them do a god damned thing.”
“I know exactly what you mean.” He didn’t, but he figured it would be what Joseph would want to hear. Judith began to set the table while the two men talked.
“I think I hear a hint of Dixie in your voice... were you...?”
“Of course... I was born in Missouri, and I hope some day I’ll be allowed to die there. I fought all over the East Coast. I was wounded at Antietam though, and that more or less put me out of commission for the rest of the war. And you, I suppose you served?”
“Well, you know... I had my daughter and son to take care of, and their mother died birthing Judith, so I never really was given the opportunity, if you take my meanin’.”
“You have a son too? And where is the boy?”
“Oh, Job? He went into town tonight, he should be back soon. That boy is always getting into trouble in the bars. He has a fiery temper, that one.”
“He’ll calm down with age I’m sure, most young men have some sort of mean streak. Trouble is, in times such as these, times of peace, its hard to reckon that anger without someone gettin’ hurt.”
“I suppose...” Joseph looked troubled, and Judith saved them from the potentially awkward moment.
“Supper is ready, father, Mr. James.”
“Thank you, Judas.” Nathaniel flashed her another smile as the three sat down to dinner.
The meal looked to be some sort of mid-winter mixture of corn, beans, and a few other assorted vegetables. For a small homestead like this, meat in February was strictly out of the question. Joseph poured himself some whiskey out of an old bottle, not before offering some to Nathaniel, which was politely declined.
“So Mr. James, what brings you to our neck of the woods?” The question should have been pedestrian, but Judith put a hint of malice behind the words that Nathaniel immediately noticed.
“Well... I’m hunting a bounty... I heard he was holed up in Breckenridge, which is where I’m headed.”
“This bounty of yours, what did he do to earn your wrath?” Judith’s father her shot her a dangerous look.
“He killed a man. An innocent man. Cut him to pieces with a Bowie knife, just for givin’ him a foul look.”
“Does your bounty have a name?”
“Yeah, but I wouldn’t want to bother you folks with a burden like that... you’re all too respectable to associate with a coward like him.” They ate in silence for a few minutes.
“I must ask you... Nathaniel... are you often forced to kill men, in your line of work?” Joseph had a hungry look in his eyes. Nathaniel had encountered men like him before, men forced to live quiet lives by circumstance, but enraptured by the hallowed lore of violence, men who put Nathaniel on an impossible pedestal of righteous, violent justice.
“Yes. When the state marks a bounty as wanted dead or alive... dead is usually the easier option.” Joseph got a nervous look on his face, one Nathaniel couldn’t quite read. There was a moment of silence.
“Could you tell us, then... about a bounty you’ve hunted?” Nathaniel stared at the man, trying to decide how best to proceed. Finally, he came to the conclusion that it would be best for everyone if he did his best to dissuade Joseph from his pathological worship of violence. A story of a time things didn’t go as they should have, then.
“A few years ago, I got word that a mark of mine was holed up in a... a... brothel in Taos, down in New Mexico. This guy was a nasty piece of work, and I knew this wasn’t going to end with anything but blood. I just didn’t reckon quite how much blood there would be. So anyway, I walk through the door, and there this guy is, sitting right in the middle of the place, playin’ poker like nothin’s wrong. So I go to the bar, and I order mahself a beer. And I drink my beer, and ah wait, and ah watch. And the guy just plays poker. Sometimes he wins, sometimes he loses. And I just sit there, for a couple hours maybe. Then finally he wins, and wins big. At this point, he does somethin’ ah don’t expect. He gets up from the game. The sort of men I tend to find mahself chasin’- they’re born losers. They start winnin,’ that’s only a sign to them to bet bigger next time, bet bigger till they strike out. And that’s when they meet me.
Anyway, this fellow? He’s smarter than that. He gets up to leave the table, looks to the... woman behind him,” he took a sideways glance at Judas. “Then he starts up the stairs with her. I pay the old man behind the bar for my drinks, and I head after the pair of them. I get to the top of the stairs, watch them go in a room. That’s when I take a few deep breaths. I always do, when there’s a chance I’ll have to kill a man. I pull my gun out of its holster, pull back the hammer, holding it low to my side so none of the people downstairs will figure at what’s about to happen, raise the alarm on me or something.
Then I kick the door in. Right about then, this is when time starts movin’ real slow, like it always does when the bullets start flying. I push into the room hard, pull up my gun to the man, got the girl spread eagled on the bed, anyway, I pull up my gun, get a bead on his head, and I pull the trigger, and then somethin’ I ain’t never seen before or since happens- this guy, his head just explodes, pops almost, like droppin’ a watermelon onto rocks. I got no idea how that happened. The moment seems to slam to a stop then there’s blood everywhere, the bed, the walls, the floor, hell some of it’s made its way to me, but most of it? Most of its coating this girl, her tits hanging out, looking brown and bruised from the abuse of too many men. She looks down at her naked body, the blood and brain matter and everythin’ just coatin’ her, and she starts screamin’. I figure on this, this is about normal. What I don’t figure on is her movin’ like a bullet for the gun belt the man had gotten draped over a chair in the corner. I pause for a second, but just one. Her hand is on the butt of this big old six shooter, then her brains are splattered all over the wall behind her.
By this point, I got blood all over me and the room looks like a butcher just got done with a prize hog. More importantly, my ears are ringin’ from the noise, which means half the bar is about to come down on me with all the violence and fury they can muster. I hear boots poundin’ up the stairs, and then I move for the window, pull it open, check below me. It ain’t far, ten, fifteen feet. I hang by my hands, then drop down, rollin’ with the impact. I get up, and look to the window above me. Someone had really hauled ass, cause there was already a man lookin’ out the window with a Winchester repeatin’ rifle, so I draw a bead on him and I pull the trigger and blood starts shootin’ out his neck, goin’ so far as to splash on the wall of the buildin’ across the alley. Before I can see what happens next, I’m movin’ down the alley, un-hitchin’ my horse, and gettin’ mahself the fuck out of Dodge. And that’s what its like to hunt men for a livin’.”
Joseph looks a little green, and Nathaniel decides he figured the man right. He’d encountered his sort before, the type who dodged the Civil War, the sort who’d never really had to use the guns they so proudly display on their hip or their mantle, the kind for whom the only cure for their own, human frailty, was the enactment of violent fantasies against those few who could stand to be around them, or, more typically, those forced besides them in the general course of life. Nathaniel hadn’t been sure before, but those dark splotches across Judith’s face weren’t natural, and he reckoned Joseph might have had something to do with them.
Then Nathaniel found himself looking a little closer at Judith, past the pretty eyes and long blonde hair, at the woman underneath, and he didn’t much like what he saw. He saw a fox studying a hare, and he didn’t much like the implications of that.
“So, James, what’s it like then? What’s it like killing a man? Does it keep you up at night?” Nathaniel was taken so off guard by the question from the pretty face that he answered without first examining his options, something far out of character for him.
“No. No it does not. The killing? The shootin’, the stabbin’, hell, even the punchin’ and beatin’ and stranglin’, even when it gets personal, it's always easy enough, a simple act of physical exertion. No different than riding a horse, or shooting down a buck with a rifle. Where it gets messy is in the dyin’. Sometimes, once in a great while, the dyin’ is easy, like it was for the man back in Taos. One shot, fall down, blood and brains everywhere, and you don’t get up again. Usually though, it ain’t like that. Usually its a messy, awful, painfully slow business.
First thing a man does, usually, when he gets shot, is he just stares at the wound, in pure disbelief. That’s the easy stage. Then it gets hard. He starts to call out. First he calls for your mercy, then he calls on his god, then, then, if he’s still breathin’ he calls out for whatever it is he still loves, and, let me tell you, men, no matter how nasty or violent they are, they tend to love a whole lot. Usually they start with their comrades, the men who’re supposed to be watchin’ their backs as a matter of course. When that don’t work, it starts gettin’ personal. Wives, fathers, brothers, sometimes even sisters.” He shot a pointed look at Judith. “Then, right before it ends, always, always, without fail, they call out for their mothers. Sometimes its ‘Mother’ sometimes ‘Ma’ sometimes its even ‘Mommy.’ But the meaning is always the same. Total and complete desperation. And that’s what makes the way I make my livin’ hard. All those young men calling out for the womb in their last moments. Don’t matter how hard they thought they were, soon as they figure they’re gonna’ die, they call out for their mothers.”
“Then why do you do it? Why kill people for a livin’ when there’s so much else to do to put money in your pocket?” Joseph seems to have been pushed aside at this point, a mere afterthought. Nathaniel decides he seriously underestimated the girl sitting across from him. She’s dangerous like her father can only hope to be.
“Cause’ I don’t just kill men. I kill bad men. And someone’s gotta do that, and it sure ain’t gonna be men like Joseph here.” Joseph looks offended, and seems as though he’s going to open his mouth but Judith ignores him.
“What makes a bad man? A killer? Isn’t that, oh what do they call it now, hypocritical?”
“Sure. That makes me a hypocrite sometimes. But most of the time, the sort of men with a wanted dead on their head, they done something the kind of nasty you can’t begin to reckon. Rapin’ women n’ children... torture, unspeakable violence against the innocent. Sure, sometimes the work’s hypocritical, killing bad men for killin’ other bad men, but most of the time its killing bad men to protect the weak and innocent.”
“That’s you. A regular avengin’ dime novel angel of death. Big fucking hero.”
“Would you rather those men walk free?”
“No, I’m just wonderin’ what makes you the divine judge of all great and terrible.”
“Like I said, someone’s gotta do it. What? You want the job?”
“Wouldn’t mind it.”
Joseph pushes back his chair and stands, in a gesture that Nathaniel figures is supposed to be threatening. “Enough out of you or I will strike you, I swear I will.”
“You haven’t struck me since I almost bit your cock off.”
The silence cuts thin slices of flesh straight out of the air and all three of them stand stock still Nathaniel with a hand on his gun looking between the father and daughter Joseph eyeing the gun in the holster by the door and Judith already edging towards the shotgun above the mantle.
Nathaniel knew he was walking into blood, and blood is always messy, but he wasn’t reckoning on it being this messy. Plus, a fundamental piece of the puzzle was still missing. The whole situation was on the verge of hurtling completely out of control. Then it did.
The door to the cabin. The boy who entered had intelligent blue eyes and shoulder-length blonde hair. His clothes were too nice by half for his family income, but that was easily accounted for. More importantly to the present situation, he was unarmed, and looked desperately confused, between the clearly explosive confrontation between his father and sister, and the well armed stranger who was just then slowly rising to his feet. One hand still on the butt of his revolver, Nathaniel removed the wanted poster from his left pocket, unfolded it, and looked at the boy.
Then in one quick motion, the revolver was free and the hammer was back and the trigger was squeezed and the muzzle jumped and there was fire and a roar and then the boy who had once been called Job sat back on his ass like he had been pushed hard and then he looked down at where his guts oozed red and sticky out of his stomach and he pushed his hand against the wound and then let go immediately and what looked like a bit of intestine fell out of the hole and then he looked up and said with only the slightest of a quiver in his voice “Judith... oh Jesus Christ... oh god... oh god... mama help...” and then he was dead like that and then all went straight to hell.
Joseph moved as fast as he could for the old six-shooter hanging by the door but Nathaniel had all the speed of god and luck of the devil and Joseph’s leg was hanging by fibers from the knee and there was blood and bone sprayed out all over the floor, to match the stains that Job just left all over the wall. Then Judith somehow had the old double barreled from the hearth in her hands. Nathaniel looked to her with fear in his eyes because he saw in that grab for the gun a speed and grit like he’d seen in no man he’d ever killed.
Before he could turn his own barrel to face her, she’d pulled the hulking shotgun to her father and squeezed one of the triggers and if there wasn’t blood and bone and guts and gore everywhere before there was then. Nathaniel watched the man’s head pulverized into a pulpy mess. He saw the eyeballs vaporize from the heat of the shot and the nose ripped apart as if hit hard with a hammer.
And then for the first and last time in his career shooting people for coin, the man once named Nathaniel stopped in shock and that would be the death of him. Then the shotgun was pointed at his gut and he tried to move but he didn’t move fast enough and enough of the shot entered his belly to cause him to fall back against a wall and let his gun roll out of his hand. Then his gun was in Judith’s right hand, then Josephs in her left, the shotgun cast aside somewhere.
“You know, no matter who my brother killed to bring your divine wrath down on him, he was a good man. I want you to know that. When my father was at his worst, my brother was the only one who gave a damn about me. But, thing is, that don’t really matter now. First thing is, I want you out that door.” Nathaniel stared up at her. In his head he was praying to every god he didn’t believe in. “Move by Christ, or I will shoot you again! Crawl if you have to!” Nathaniel began to drag himself out the door. He felt the already perforated skin of his gut stretch and tear on the rough log floor. The pain was like nothing he’d ever felt and he knew it was the only thing he’d ever feel again.
He pulled himself out the door, still open from when Job had come in less than a minute previous. He began to move towards his horse, now set next to a decrepit grey poney that he supposed had belonged to Job. Before he could make it five feet out the door, He watched blood spray out of the head of his horse, coating the perfect white in a macabre impression of dew on the morning grass. The beast’s legs seemed to collapse inwards, and the thing fell to the ground in a bloody heap. Once again, Nathaniel could only stare.
Judith knelt down, took the wanted poster from Nathaniel’s pocket, stood back up, mounted her brother’s pony, and rode off, without another word.
Nathaniel watched the girl ride off down a barely visible path in what was, he assumed, the direction of town. Her long blonde hair hung low, tied tight into a ponytail, sitting beneath a wide brimmed brown leather hat. It looked like it had belonged to her brother.
From behind him, Nathaniel began to feel an intense heat, then he smelt smoke and when he turned he saw the meager cabin begin to burn. A different sort of man might have reflected on the fate Judith bestowed on him as a sort of karmic vengeance, but Nathaniel wasn’t that sort of man.
Instead, he pulled himself to his feet, holding his oozing, festering stomach, trying to keep his guts from falling out like he’d made happen to so many men before.
He began to stumble down the path. Snow drifted in gently around him, big, heavy flakes, the air cold enough that they stuck fast to everything they touched, flesh included. Behind him, the flames began to consume the cabin. Nathaniel thought about trying to use the flaming mass Judith had left him with to stay warm through the night, but after glancing down at his gut, he realized that that was not a realistic proposition. Blood was seeping beneath his fingers now, rolling down the sleeve of his shirt, his coat lost in the blaze. Drops pooled together, falling to the snow, breaking up the snow with widening crimson splotches.
He began to stumble down the path after Judith. The snow was deep, going up above the tops of his boots.
Each step took more effort than the last as the cold and the blood loss began to go to his head, to the very core of his muscles.
The tree branches cracked and the wind wined around him and with each step he took there was the squeak of leather crunching into the snow.
There was more and more blood, where once was just spots and patches there was now a steady stream stretching out behind him.
Eventually he stopped moving but the snow didn’t stop falling and the blood didn’t stop flowing and he laid down heavily in the snow. He could barely feel the cold now, his fingers and toes completely numb and much of the rest of his body to follow. His own blood was frozen solid across his right hand, while the fingers of the left were turning the tell-tale white of frost bite.
And then his mind began to shut down, he found himself drifting away from the scene, losing touch. He saw himself back on the banks of the Mississippi with his childhood home behind him and he walked into the water and felt it warm and comforting around him and he kept on walking until it was up to his waist and he heard the buzz of insects and the low rumble of the great river and he felt the sun on his face and the water was up to his armpits now and he was starting to lose his footing on the bottom of the river and then he heard a woman call out and he turned his head and for the first time in fifteen-odd years he saw his mother there, calling out to him, begging him to come back and he tried to turn and he tried to walk back to the shore and then he felt his feet slip out from under him and the river begin to carry him away and pull him towards its center and he tried to fight back against its pull but he knew he was getting weaker and he couldn’t keep his head above the water anymore and then he couldn’t really breathe properly and he yelled and yelled for his mother but everytime he opened his lips he felt himself slip a little closer to the edge but he still called out for her even though he knew she couldn’t do anything for him, not anymore.
And then the man called Nathaniel lay down deep in the snow, his scream now little more than a whisper, the blood pooled out around him, the brown leather of his boots and coat and hat splayed out on a background of crimson against a canvas of white as the snow began to cover the man and after a while the brown and red were gone and eventually all that remained was white.
