Jebediah

It wasn’t much of a trial. Jeb figured it was just an excuse for everyone to holler at him before they strung him up. He told them he wasn’t doing nothing they all hadn’t paid him to do in the war. The judge said war or no war, you’re always going to hang if you go shooting down honest citizens like dogs in the street. That was about right. Jeb never meant for that.

He didn’t know the man Roberts had shot, but the townsfolk were sure riled up about it. He was grateful to the sheriff for letting him finish his supper before knocking his teeth out. He didn’t suppose he’d be missing them, anyways.

It would be light in an hour or so and that would be the end of him. All he could think about was the hundred wrong things he’d done in his life. Leaving his Ma by herself on the farm, the men he had killed, war or no war, riding with plain old bad men like Jack Roberts.

A rope dropped into his lap. Jeb looked at it in amazement, like the Lord had dropped it straight from heaven. He looped it around the bars in the window, tying it with the best damn knot he ever tied in his whole life. Before he knew it, the wind was in his hair, hooves were thundering underneath him and he just couldn’t stop laughing.

Grateful as he was for getting sprung, the first chance he got Jeb was going to slip out of camp, head west and just keep heading west, through Comanche territory, over the Rockies, all the way to China if he had to.

This time around, Jeb was going to do the right things.

Word count: 292 of 300
Prompts: knot, light, judge