Sagebrush Satisfaction

The blade made a sucking sound as it was withdrawn from the man who slid to the ground. James Righteous eyes lifted from the dead man as the light faded from his man’s eyes. He scanned his surroundings looking to see if anyone had heard the last gasp the now cooling body had made. He wiped his blade off on the shirt of the dead man.

He had been on the trail of these bandits for a little over three weeks. He had tracked them from the last town they had ridden through. In the bandits wake were three new widows and two women who would never be right. The bandits had snatched them up at the edge of town after robbing the bank. They had used them badly and then discarded them to die after they were through using them for their own perverted pleasures. His blood had run cold after seeing the shape that the women were in. He had left two of the posse, which had ridden out of town with him, to tend to the women and get them back to town the best they could. His blood had gone from ice cold to boiling hot. Nothing would stop him from bringing this pack of animals to justice, one way, or other.

One by one, the others had dropped off and headed back. None of them would look him in the eyes as the left. The last had turned back three days ago. He had found the camp of the bandits the day before and spent the day scouting the camp. It was after dark when he decided to make his move. The moon was hiding behind a wisp of clouds and that was when he made his first kill. As the moon came out from behind the cloud, he was in his next hiding place. He was waiting for the next cloud so that he could move in on the next guard. This game of cat and mouse went on for the next couple of hours until he had removed the last two remaining guards.

He now stood at the edge of the camp looking down on the last six men of the gang. He jacked a shell into his Winchester and that brought a few of the men upright out of a sound sleep. The first reached for the pistol that was draped across the saddle he had been resting his head on. Righteous let the hammer fall on the first round and jacked the next round into place. He repeated this with calm abandon until the hammer clicked on an empty rifle, the cloud of rifle smoke curled up to tickle his nose with the odor of burnt gunpowder. He dropped it into the sand at his feet and drew his right hand gun. Again, he fired until his gun was empty. He dropped it and drew his left hand gun. . Standing there the smoke formed a fuzzy halo around his head in the early morning sunlight.

He walked to the men that lay sprawled on the ground. When one moaned, he raised his pistol and fired. When all lay still in death he replaced the spent rounds in his pistol with the same cool, slow, and methodical calmness that he displayed earlier. He then walked over to where he had dropped his other weapons. He retrieved them and reloaded them. After taking a final look around, he mounted up and headed back to town. Back to what was left of the wife that these animals had discarded like so much rubbish.