Welcome To The Bullpen
One Lone Rider
By Stephen Cunningham
One lone rider, sitting on the ground. Watching another stage get robbed. From high up on a hill he watches, as three bandits aim their rifles at the stage men and get the box passed down. Whatever money was in their pockets, also. Then the three thieves ride off, and the one lone man gets to his feet, over to his own horse, and slowly rides to follow them. Doesn’t want to catch up just yet. He’ll wait, being patient until darkness has settled. They will only have one man standing watch, if that. They’re all too far out in the wild lands for federales to have shown up yet, so they won’t be too worried about being found. One lone rider creeping in, as the camp fire dwindles, as the coals are seething but the light from them is minimal. Getting rid of the bandits, in whatever ways, so he can have whatever’s in the box they stole for himself.
He’ll have to give the Boss his share. He always has to. It’s just how it is. If he wants to operate around these parts, he must. But he’ll hold back, and not give a proper tally. Keeping most of it for himself. What does the Boss know? There’ll be rumors, and the stage line will release a certain figure as to how much had been stolen. But the Boss knows as well as anyone how the stage line will inflate the amount, saying it was thousands more, to get the insurance money to be higher. So he won’t take it for being up that much. A lower number’s going to suit him just fine. As long as the money rolls in, from his various hired guns, the hopefully more than two-bit thieves and what not, he’ll just sit back and let it all roll in. He’s not going to go through anybody’s pockets about it. Thinking he has a certain amount of fear placed in all of his ‘workers’, he never does suspect them of cheating him. They’d never think of it. Right?
The lone rider collects all of the guns from the dead bandits, as well. Whenever he has the chance. Always sells them back in town, make a little extra scratch. All the things like blankets, pots and pans, bags of beans… He just leaves it. ‘Let the ants carry it off, I don’t give a hoot’, he’d laugh, riding away. ‘Let the winds have them… Or some other thieves. Whoever. I’ve no need of it.’ He knew that in many ways he himself was no better than the men who’d robbed the stage. This or any of them. Bank robbers, cattle rustlers, masked bandits beside the trail… They were all the same. Taking something that wasn’t theirs and making a living from the very deed. He wouldn’t steal from women, though. But from a thief? If there was something in the bag already, some jewelry, he’d take it. It was already stolen. But stick a gun in a woman’s face, demanding she take off her necklace or whatever? Never. He’d rather ride away. He’d done a lot of bad things, he reckoned, throughout the years, but stealing directly from a woman was never one of them. Never would be. He’d rather go without.
Sometimes, when he’d been riding for a while, out in the rain all day or in the back breaking, mind numbing sun, he’d wonder where it was all leading. His life. His path. Which way would he be going, which forks in the trail would he be taking? Where would he end up? His sister was a fortune teller, but he hadn’t heard from her in years. Maybe she could tell him something, but he didn’t even know where she was or how to find her anymore. Could be she didn’t want him to ever find her. They’d parted on such bad words. She was always trying to be so good, to help so many people, and he… He was doing what he did. They were just so different. Maybe because they each had different fathers from each other. Maybe that had something to do with it. They’d been brought up in the same place, although he was almost ten years older. She’d always been just a little kid to him, really. She’d be playing with a doll, and he’d be breaking in some bronco. Come in all dusty, bleeding sometimes, and she’d be fresh as a little flower, in her dresses, helping mama set the table, learning how to sew.
Last time he had seen her, they’d had an argument about how he hadn’t been there to help get their mother in the ground. He’d been off on a job, how was he supposed to help? He didn’t even know she’d passed until he got back, and by then it had been too late. He felt awful bad about it, but he didn’t really let it show. His sister railing at him, yelling and crying. Telling him he wasn’t being a good son. Out there making money to bring home, to help them out, getting battered by the elements, day after day, night after night, and this is what he comes home to? A little sister furious at him, taking out her grief on him, and their mother already dead and buried? He didn’t even get to tell her goodbye, or that she’d been an alright mother to him. Not in person. He went off to her gravesite one night, and stood there in the midnight winds, shedding a couple tears for her. Talked with her spirit there a bit. He reckoned it was more for him than for her, but he hoped it did some good. Maybe eased them both a little, somehow. He didn’t really know about such things. His sister said that she could see the future, but she never told him much. Just that he’d turn out to be nothing, that his trail was set with traps. The last words she had said to him were, ‘You’ll get what’s coming to you’, and he’d ridden off. Never had returned yet. Figuring she was right. ‘We’ll all get that’, he reckoned.
He remembered times when it would be so cold, he’d had to cut holes in his mittens so his trigger finger could stick out and be of use. Times he had to play possum, fake that he was dead, to get away. The day he’d staggered into some old town, broken bones and bleeding spots all over him, having been shot, kicked, dragged… Feeling purple all over, like his whole body was bruised. Seeing some kid staring up at him when he turned a corner, coming out from between two buildings, staring up at him with wide frightened inquisitive eyes. He’d told the kid, half jokingly, ‘Shouldn’t play with guns’. Kids were always flocking around him, it seemed. Another reason to keep out of town. He’d find them buzzing around like flies, and would swat them away and shoo at them, make scatter noises at them until they’d go. Growling at them if he had to. It’s not that he had anything against kids, because he didn’t. He kind of had a soft place in his heart for them. So he didn’t want them around him. In case some action started breaking out, or someone recognized him from some old beef. He knew that he was turning out more bad than good, and didn’t want that rubbing off on any little innocents. They needed a better chance at things than that. He knew that if they started in to idolizing him, wondering about his guns too much, or copying the way he walked or something, they might end up in a life of crime when they grew up. And that’s no life for anyone, he’d realized. Then he’d go and sell off the things he’d stolen, and use the money to get drunk. Get a room, do some gambling, take a woman or two up there with him until the next morning.
More than not, the life of being an outlaw was just lonely. Too much silence, no one else around a lot of the time, having to hide out... Then you get back into town and everyone’s suspicious of you, or knowing what you’ve been up to, or thinking that they do. Telegraph wires, well armed guards, fancy spigots… He’d much prefer the life outdoors, sleeping on the ground somewhere, drinking his coffee from an old bent piece of metal. Eating whatever he could find, sometimes. Or not eating. There were times, up in the mountains when the snows would fall so fast and heavy, when there’d only be the snow itself to put into his belly. He’d make it, though, and would scrabble down the slopes and down the valleys, following some frozen stream. Back to where the townsfolk were, eventually. For food, and rest, and more supplies. A bit of warmth. Then on down to Mexico, or towards the West sometimes, or wherever the promise of work or loot may lie. Sometimes, back in town, he’d get to feeling like how a hawk must feel, being chased by smaller birds. It wasn’t the size. It was the running off. As if their eyes would follow him, and follow him, and would get him on his horse and out of there. He didn’t mind. Not too much. He’d usually be about ready to be leaving by then, anyway.
One town he had ended up in, many counties over from where he was finally intending to land, really got to him. Stuck out more than any others. Name of Joyful. Or Happy Go Lucky, or some such. He couldn’t quite recall. The whole town, though, and he would swear to this, was about as peaceful as they come. They had no guns, no crime… Everyone was feeling good, and seemed to be like that all the time. It really creeped him out. Kind of rattled him. He got out of there about as quickly as he could. Making sure to never circle back that way. It just did not seem all that real to him. That folks could live like that. He was all for peace. As much as he could stand it. But to have it going all the time, and everybody smiling? It just didn’t make any sense. He never even heard someone raise their voice around that place, or snarl, or scrunch up their eyes as if in doubt. The townsfolk there just didn’t seem to have it in them. Goodness, but it got to him. It was downright strange.
Like the time he’d come upon a group of religious nuts, stashing themselves away out in the desert. Worshipping the Sun, they said, in so many words. They’d never admit it was the actual sun up there that they were praying to, bowing down in front of. They called it ‘God’, or their version of it, anyway. They were all so tanned it looked like they’d been dipped in mud. All so thin, from the lack of crops, that they looked like they were just the skinny branches that had fallen off of some old dried out tree. Just slowly shifting around out there in the sand, sticking straight up towards their Beloved Sun. He’d stuck around there for a couple days, helping nurse his horse’s twisted leg. The folks were odd, and they always wanted to talk only of their beliefs and such, but they were friendly. Shared everything they had with him. Put him up in a patch of shade. The amazing thing of it was, one night while he was out there, it started raining. Then all these crazy from the heat folks started dancing, and laughing, and carrying on like they were being blessed. Set out all of their containers, their pots and pans, cups and bowls, anything that they could catch some rain in. Everyone was smiling, being washed, and tipping their heads back just drinking it all in. The kids all stepping in the puddles. It was as if, for those few minutes, they’d returned back to normal somehow, and were back to just being people, instead of heat-stroked ghosts with their Lord beating down upon their heads. When the rain stopped, trickling away to nothing, and for who knew how long until the next time, they went back to being agitated.
When the lone rider was saddling up to take off, his horse healed up enough to go, the main preacher fellow gave him a flask of water. Said it was from the Lord Himself. The rider wasn’t sure what to say, besides a thank you, so he gave him that in return. Took the flask and rode away. Never has made it back that way since then, either. Although he’d think about those folks sometimes. Wonder if they’d made it, or even come to their senses somehow about it all. There was nothing wrong with people having faith. He kind of had some admiration for them about it. To be so dedicated, so sure of things… He kind of wished he had some of that, himself. Spirit wise. But to be out there, in the desert, in the heat, practically just beating yourself up about it, or allowing yourself to be as pummeled as they were… He didn’t go in for all of that. Never would. He had to admit, though, that that little flask of water--- ‘Holy Water’, as the preacher himself had called it--- Had ended up pulling him through a situation down the trail a ways. When he’d gotten boxed in a long stretch of canyon, dead ended it and had to turn back around and backtrack a bunch of miles, and had run out of supplies. That little bit of water came through, and helped him make it. And for that, he’d be forever grateful. To the preacher, and his folks out there, and to the clouds that had brought the rain, and to the Lord Himself, if that was who was responsible. It sure did see him through. A couple handfuls for his horse, a couple swallows for himself, and then they made it out, and back to where they found a fresh spring, and they lived through it. He had to tip his hat to all the elements of whatever helped that water end up with him.
It was not too long before that, when he’d been healing up from finally being caught by someone, that he came to see his fate. He spent all that time alone, up there in the mountains, healing up his hand. Sitting there in pain, working on it, flexing it, letting it rest. Holding it in freezing mountain waters and above the coals, trying to keep some use of it. Which he did. It’d never be the same, but he could swing a pistol with it. Sitting up there all those months, plotting his revenge. By the time he made it back, there was no one to get revenge on. No one there but phantoms. The man who’d mangled up his hand had met his own demise in that same moment, so there was no one else to know. Maybe he’d had a few folks get to missing him, or wondering about him. His final act on earth had been a jerking movement as a bullet pierced his heart, and his trigger finger pulled and shot one towards the hand he ended up injuring of the lone rider’s. Lucky shot, or fate, or any way you want to look at it. By the time the man who lived got back to town, he’d realized vengeance need not always be pursued. Had come to live with it, alongside of the wound, and just get on. Keep moving. He knew that even if you thought you were controlling your own destiny, you were, if anything, only shepherding your own self to the grave. There are different ways to get there, but that’s where we’re all going. He’d had plenty of time to see that. Flexing his hand.
The time they thought they got away with it, they did. They fooled everyone. And all of them are still believing it. It was just that one young man, who found out about it all by accident. And he was gone now. What they did, and how, just ain’t important now. The thing about it was, they did it. They got away with it. And the one who wanted to be gone was gone. Not the fellow who discovered the secret and was gunned down dead for it. The other one. The one who disappeared, without having to be shot. Webb. He’d had his good friend get it so it looked like he’d been killed, and made his farewell while everybody’s back was turned, looking for the body. His friend, the man whose hand was injured later on, the lone rider of this tale, kept telling them there wasn’t going to be a body. ‘It had been a pack of wild dogs, and down there by the river’. They weren’t going to find anything but claw marks in the mud, if that. And of course, there wasn’t even that.
The two friends had had a falling out, over a girl they both were leaning towards, and had figured out the only way to come to an agreement was if the one helped Webb get out of town. He didn’t want to follow in his father’s footsteps, but would be obligated to, for the rest of his life, if he stayed around. He didn’t get the girl, but he’d have plenty of others. There just had to be more of them out there. He got to make up a new name, a new background for where he came from and who he was, and he was happy. He spent the rest of his days feeling great about his decision, and silently thanking his old friend for helping him. If he were to see him again, he’d buy him the best drinks and food there was, and sit there talking with him until they both passed out. But he never saw him. The two old friends were never to meet up again. It was a part of the whole bargain. The friend met with the guy who stumbled on their secret, and took a bullet for it, too. The guy who’d stumbled? He kept on going, to his grave. Well, he just laid out there and the animals and the elements all came and got him, and just wore him all away. With a hand all shot to muck, there sure wasn’t going to be any digging done by that lone rider.
At one point, a good ways through his healing, he’d been bitten by something in the night. He thought it was a spider, but it could have been a tiny lizard. It poisoned him something bad. He lay and rolled and moaned, his teeth all chattering, in the middle of a field. He had no idea how he had gotten there, and half the time he didn’t even know where he was. Hallucinating something fierce. Giant animals stomping around, horrible winds, raging storms… Incessant drumming sounds, with the river turned a blood red and the moon taking a bite out of the hills. He knew that there was money hidden somewhere but he couldn’t remember where it was, and it was driving him nuts. Rolling around, getting all scratched up. There was a cactus that had sprouted wings and kept on laughing at him, kept on saying he was ‘evil’ and ‘ignorant’. He wobbled to his feet, standing there facing off with it. Reaching back, as slow as slow can be, acting like he had an itch, and then like lightning he pulled his pistol out. Swinging it forward from behind himself, he shot to win. Then he fell to the ground and shivered for who knows how much longer.
When he finally came out of it, weak, feeling blasted but alive, he found that he was laying wrapped up in his bedroll, beside a fire, with a dark skinned man nearby. A man he’d never seen before. The dark skinned man said, ‘Oh you’re awake’, and brought a cup of broth over for him to sip on. At first it didn’t take, but he drank some solid mouthfuls and eventually sat up. Then he tipped over, passing out for a few seconds, and gradually awoke again. This time staying awake. For awhile. Long enough to hear of how this other man had heard him, groaning and thrashing around out there. Seeing a pony not too far off, having wandered for a graze. The dark skinned man, whose name was James, said he couldn’t just leave an injured man be like that, so he’d helped to get him situated with a fire and all, get his horse tethered. At least make sure the fellow was going to make it. ‘Looks like you have’, said James, ‘But it’s too dark to go now ‘til the morning. Thinking I’m gonna wait ‘til then’. Thinking he got a nod, he continued talking.
“I checked you over. Nothing busted. It wasn’t buckshot. Looks like a critter got you. Bit you on the back of your leg, and spit some poison in you. Seems like you got through, now, though.” He looked the man over. “Might need you some more rest, though.”
James went on to tell him about how he’d been a slave, then a runaway slave, then how he’d lived with Indians for a spell before having a vision one day. That he was supposed to just go wander, see where life would take him if he wasn’t tied down to just one spot of land. It had seemed as if his whole life he’d been stuck somewhere, either working for the master, hiding from the vigilantes, sitting in some teepee… ‘It was almost’, he said, as the man who was recovering was drifting off to sleep, ‘as if God Himself said to me, “If you want to be free, then, there you go, be free”. It was almost that direct. The folks that I’d been staying with, they knew all about and understood when someone said they’d had a vision, a visitation from a spirit. They seemed happy about it. They even packed my bags. Not that they wanted to be rid of me… The squaw I was with, she’s gonna have my baby. Already had it, if I’ve been counting right…”
Sleeping off the last effects of being poisoned, and in the morning, the dark skinned man named James was gone. Had left some coffee, in a can, and a chunk of jerky. With a few small rocks in the crude shape of an arrow, pointing off to who knew where. The nearest town, perhaps. Or away from there. He was only just waking up, and still feeling beat down some. Needed to let his eyes open, and his mind charge up. Like getting yourself ready to go do something big, something you had never done before. Something that really needed doing. And this was just to stand up, and walk again, and change the clothes he’d soiled. Maybe wash up some, if possible. Get over to the can of coffee, for a start. Get himself a nibble of that jerky.
As he slowly began to try to stand, he thought back to a guy he’d met one time, down south working on some ranch. A real young fella. Said he didn’t ever eat any meat. Didn’t eat no animals. Never. The other men working that ranch, they’d get to poking at him about it, like it was a mystery they wanted to squash down more than find an answer to. They’d call him ‘The Vegetable Kid’. ‘Lettuce’. ‘All Civilized and horseshit’. One old timer, he kept saying, ‘No Meat Teeth’.
“No meat, huh?”, he’d ask, staring at the younger man with the one squinty eye he still had going. “Whatcha’ eat, then boy? Birds?”
The kid who didn’t eat any meat said, “No. No meat of any sort.”
“Just turnips and leaves, now, crabapples and hay, or…?”
“Well…”
“What for?”
“I just don’t eat animals, is all.”
“What for? Ain’t you got no meat teeth left in yuh?”
All the ranch hands would laugh at that, and continue on with their chores. No one ever meant any harm towards the kid. In fact, as much as they did not understand what his reasons really were, more than a few did have to admire that he stuck to it. It took a lot of guts, in those parts, in that period of time, to stand up for yourself, no matter what. Some wild belief that his spirit might be lighter on this earth if he left the other beings alone as far as eating them? That was his own business. Between him and his Creator. Who were any of them to step in between something like that, or to judge? They’d rib him, sure. They’d have ribbed him anyways. It’s how it goes. He was far from the only one taking any shit around that place. There were some who got much worse. Besides, it left that much more for the rest of them to gnaw on. He could eat a hickory stump for all they cared.
The lone rider rode out of there one day, as well as out of many other places. He lead a lonely, wandering life. He never seemed to settle anywhere. When his final day would come, he’d just end up where he was. He didn’t have anything stuck away in a box somewhere, no money in a bank vault. No debts. No loved ones, even, anymore. He just rode, and worked. Thought, and wandered. Finally going wherever it was he went.
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