Anthologies of Awesome

The sun bleeds vermilion in the west over the burned land. The cracked sands glare their redness into the purple and gold sky, into the clouds of wildfire death storms. A frailty struggles along, leaving a streak of glossed redder sand in the wake of his dragging legs.

Three riders sat their horses in the arroyo. Their eyes and their oiled blue steel caught the dying bloodlight of the sun in the shadows of the cottonwoods. They sat silent in the dessication eyeing the overturned wagon and the dying frailty pulling himself up the opposite bank. The rider on the left, with only one eye tracking the progress and the other clouded and popping from the socket, victim of some ancient fracture, tracked the struggle up the far bank as a steel octagon barrel rose under his chin. A crack of fire and burst of thunder clap lightning reached into the frailty’s neck blasting a lode of weak warm blood into the sand. The frailty jerked and rolled down into the graveyard of September’s rain. He rolled twice and began to writhe, already dead.

“Should have saved the round.”

The words dropped cracked and dry out of the mouth of the middle rider. His eyes stayed on the frailty as the writhing became twitching and the twitching became stillness. “Already on his way out.”

One Eye was silent as the wind blowing the black cloth around his neck. The Spencer carbine returned to its scabbard in the buckskin gloves of the half-blind man. His charger shuddered in the nitrate laden air as the middle and right riders dismounted. The horses were tied off to the overturned wagon in the bottom of the arroyo as One Eye rode up the bank to find high ground on the bank to stand vigilant against interference. The men left behind squatted down to relieve their hamstrings of their water starved cramping then stood to survey their work. The wagon dumped over behind broken and bled out horses contained an open chest of various cheap jewels and blood. The seeping thickened blood from the head of a well dressed woman slimed over the side of the wagon. She had been shot in the fray by a shotgun blast. Light moaning escaped her as the riders moved her aside and pulled the collection from her treasure chest. A few rings of the rough sort of work expected by the poor and a few carved alabaster and chalcedony precious artifacts clung to the felted holding ridges of the box. They were removed and pocketed. The drawer was opened to reveal a selection of seed pearl and silver and gold chains. They were packed into pockets, the gold and silver to be melted and the seed pearl string to be the gift of a Taos whore.

The middle rider spoke: “Goddamn, why do poor people even bother coming out here?”

His companion: “Because they’re goddamn poor. And poor people is stupid, Boss.”

Boss grunted. He removed a glove and ran it along the box. His jaw clenched. His strong sinewy arms clasped around the cheap lacquer box and lifted it rolling the moaning pale woman out of the wagon and into the dry creek. He held the large box to his body and walked it over to the sandstone base of the creek bed. With some effort, he pulled the box high and slammed it onto the rock. The joints cracked and the box deformed. He bent down and kicked into the dust raising clouds of sand until a rock was released from the grip of the sediment. He grasped the rock in his heavy and worn hands and lifted it high to slam it into the disjointed side of the box. The gaps along the seams widened but did not yield. He recovered the rock and slammed again. And again. The box let go its hidden cargo and disintegrated into the sand.

“Poor people, hell, Jimmy.”

His hands pulled wrapped bundles from the wreckage. A slice with his blackened weathered knife revealed hundred dollar bills. Their were three brick sized bundles. He tossed the bundles up to Eyeball one at a time to be stowed in saddle bags. The moans of the woman turned into gasping cries. “Shoot that bitch, Jimmy.”

“What about the rounds?”

“I think we can afford more rounds.”

A shot rang out and ended in a dull wet smack. The moaning stopped. Boss took out a cigarette rolled for this occasion and lit it in his shallow crucible with a flint steel. In the spark and fire of the paper catching, he saw a muted glint in the splinters of the box. He breathed in deep of the acrid smoke raising the redded glow of the cigarette up the paper. He crouched and took out the brightly glowing cigarette and held it to the destroyed wood. The pale return of native metal greeted his eyes in the purple light of dusk. He dug into the wood and sand to find handfuls of bullion. Four handfuls were removed from the sand and placed in his pocket. Jimmy was kicking apart the luggage of the ill fated couple, looking for more loot.

“Jimmy, pack up, we’re getting the fuck outta here.”

“Boss, I found this,” he held up a sheaf of paper. “It says they’re on their way up North along the Spanish to meet up with a group starting paradise. You reckon paradise would be needin’ more folks with cash?”

“I reckon. Gold, too.”

“Gold?”

The question fell into the dry air as a chill blew into the desert. The riders mounted up and joined One Eye on the high road into Taos.

“Don’t let that letter get away from you, Jimmy.”

The riders rode North in the dark through the demon blue night of the desert. Behind them in the folds of a blanket rolled out of the wagon first a hand and then a lithe young body emerged from the cocoon. Young eyes looked at the destruction and blood now black in the night.