Cross purposes

by Dan

Mcloud looked at the faint markings on the dusty trail. Cheyenne perhaps or plains Sioux. Anyway mostly harmless. Mostly worthless. Killed a dozen of em in his time.

Not a bad place to camp up before crossing the Big Buckle and making it to Fort Cleever by sundown tomorrow.

A coyote howled.

He set up his camp, watered the horses and lit a small fire . His companion , known only as Carpenter, was a queer fellow, a man of few words. Surly demeanour, voice of an angel. Mcloud didn’t mind the quiet fellow chawing silently at his pork n beans, he had enough talk in him for 6 men.

“Fort Cleever. Damn full of dirty whores ” said Mcloud sipping a tot of whiskey and the spitting venomously. “Ain’t worth the breathing of gods good air so they ain’t!”

Carpenter said nothing

“If any o them whores cheeks you or answers back jes cut em down I say. I done dealt with a hundred or more that way. Ain’t no one who cares about em anywise. now, why don’t you get out that goldarn metal fiddle you are so good with and sing me a sweet sweet lullaby to send me to sleep. Never heard someone play that thing with such feeling! Never knew a saw could have two such different purposes, one beautiful and one so sharp and cold!”

Carpenter took the musical saw and bow from a saddle bag and started to draw the weird and wonderful almost otherworldly musical notes from it. The effect on Mcloud was immediate, he became drowsy and guileless.

“Sing damn you, send me to sleep good and proper”

Carpenter began to sing, a strange hypnotic melodic voice filling the whole range with a restfulness that caused wolves to lie down with buffalo and Cheyenne and Sioux to momentarily cease their timeless rivalry.

Do you still remember her? my lovely Wilted Rose

Why she had to die that day the devil only knows.

She was like a prairie fire

That burns inside me still

She fills all my dreams at night I guess she always will.

She was just so beautiful the mountains would despair

We had plans to move back east and live together there.

She would never hurt a fly but someone cut her down.

Now I’m like a tumbleweed that drifts from town to town

Carpenter looked across at Mcloud whose eyes were already closed.

She’s the purpose of my life, my darkness and my light

That is why I sing her name into the eerie night.

Recently I met someone who’d say the name out loud

Of the knave who cut her down

Carpenter stopped playing and looked once more at the snoring figure nearby.

The voice dropped to the softest whisper you’ll ever hear, spoken, almost inaudible,

“That name it was Mcloud!”

Then singing again

Do you still remember her my lovely Wilted Rose

Why she had to die that day the devil only knows

She was like a prairie fire that burns inside me still

And now I wander day and night her murderer ......to kill!

The next day the coyotes and jackals and the Cheyenne and Plains Sioux were amused to discover a human head near the white man’s fire, it had been sawn at the neck and was being held in the hands of its own body which sat bolt upright by the charcoal embers.

In fort Cleever Carpenter packed her trunk to head back East to take up her job offer as a village school mistress. She looked at her dead lover’s faded photograph.

“At last I have avenged you Wilted Rose.” She said softly with a tear in her eye knowing that the revenge would never fill the void.

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