Monday, July 10, 2006
Part I
Dan Hartung gripped the bottle of putrid brown booze with whatever strength was left in his disfigured right hand. The glass container slipped a bit, slick with the mud and grime covering the rest of his beaten frame. He found loving support from the paper label callously glued on, proclaiming it the best liquor found west of Kansas, though there wasn't any way for him to know...He hadn't known the affects of booze but once or twice in the past 30 years. Save for his wedding so long ago...He ended the thought there before it could be carried any further. He wasn't about to think about her if he could help it.
He took another tug on the bottle, kissing the strange elixer that seemed to have no temperature until it passed his chops, igniting itself for a slow burn down to his rotund belly. The warmth he felt inside was for fighting off the chill he felt on the outside, while he stared out the bar door watching the avalanche of rain wash away the traces of footsteps and animal prints that were part of the main town stream.
Street! Street. It was a street. Dan forced himself to blink a bit, shake his head, and fight for consciousness. Though, given enough time he thought, it could carve its own canal, and the Blackfoot tribe could row right into town whenever they pleased. Another swallow washed a warm cascade of temporary relief to him, and for that moment, he didn't feel the cold of the rain outside nipping at him, or his mud and water soaked clothes pressing on him. Just the inner coating of liquid firewater, and the warmth of his own life draining from his side, caking his canvas pants and leaving a stain beneath his chair. His life pooled beneath him, just as it had left a trail leading out of this desolate saloon. His hip screamed out with shattered ripping pain, though he wouldn't give it voice. The bullet was still lodged in there he was sure; he could almost feel it growing nasty pin like teeth and grotesque clawed legs to rend at his guts whenever he had moved. The damage done, all that was left to do was die. Another gulp of his coarse sauce washed across his palette, to rain down on his insides.
Time to a dying man is a very precious commodity, and yet he spent the luxury to remind himself how he had arrived at a table to himself, with a bottle of undetermined contents in front of him, staring out through the doorway he came through, watching the heavens empty out on the town of Stanton Arch. He watched as the trail of life he bled upon that road and the walkway leading up to the saloon were washed clean of any trace of his living. The world was in a hurry to forget him, he figured.
Three hundred strained breaths earlier, he had crawled through that same doorway. He had been crawling since his horse collapsed outside town. He had dragged his frame through the streets one handful of dirt and gravel at a time, pulling his body over every little pebble and jagged shard of God's earth between the exit of town and the Broken Down Saloon. More than enough of those bits of granite, sulphur, or volcanic glass were eager to tear into his gaping wound...sticking to the crimson honey pouring out of him, marking where the bullet plunged into his hip. The twenty or so people still left in town weren't anywhere to be seen to help him, and they weren't likely to anyway. He could still see the mud he had scraped across the worn wooden planks that made up the walkway. His bottle was half empty now...when he started it was three-quarters full. Almost like it was draining as fast as he was.
Dan Hartung gripped the bottle of putrid brown booze with whatever strength was left in his disfigured right hand. The glass container slipped a bit, slick with the mud and grime covering the rest of his beaten frame. He found loving support from the paper label callously glued on, proclaiming it the best liquor found west of Kansas, though there wasn't any way for him to know...He hadn't known the affects of booze but once or twice in the past 30 years. Save for his wedding so long ago...He ended the thought there before it could be carried any further. He wasn't about to think about her if he could help it.
He took another tug on the bottle, kissing the strange elixer that seemed to have no temperature until it passed his chops, igniting itself for a slow burn down to his rotund belly. The warmth he felt inside was for fighting off the chill he felt on the outside, while he stared out the bar door watching the avalanche of rain wash away the traces of footsteps and animal prints that were part of the main town stream.
Street! Street. It was a street. Dan forced himself to blink a bit, shake his head, and fight for consciousness. Though, given enough time he thought, it could carve its own canal, and the Blackfoot tribe could row right into town whenever they pleased. Another swallow washed a warm cascade of temporary relief to him, and for that moment, he didn't feel the cold of the rain outside nipping at him, or his mud and water soaked clothes pressing on him. Just the inner coating of liquid firewater, and the warmth of his own life draining from his side, caking his canvas pants and leaving a stain beneath his chair. His life pooled beneath him, just as it had left a trail leading out of this desolate saloon. His hip screamed out with shattered ripping pain, though he wouldn't give it voice. The bullet was still lodged in there he was sure; he could almost feel it growing nasty pin like teeth and grotesque clawed legs to rend at his guts whenever he had moved. The damage done, all that was left to do was die. Another gulp of his coarse sauce washed across his palette, to rain down on his insides.
Time to a dying man is a very precious commodity, and yet he spent the luxury to remind himself how he had arrived at a table to himself, with a bottle of undetermined contents in front of him, staring out through the doorway he came through, watching the heavens empty out on the town of Stanton Arch. He watched as the trail of life he bled upon that road and the walkway leading up to the saloon were washed clean of any trace of his living. The world was in a hurry to forget him, he figured.
Three hundred strained breaths earlier, he had crawled through that same doorway. He had been crawling since his horse collapsed outside town. He had dragged his frame through the streets one handful of dirt and gravel at a time, pulling his body over every little pebble and jagged shard of God's earth between the exit of town and the Broken Down Saloon. More than enough of those bits of granite, sulphur, or volcanic glass were eager to tear into his gaping wound...sticking to the crimson honey pouring out of him, marking where the bullet plunged into his hip. The twenty or so people still left in town weren't anywhere to be seen to help him, and they weren't likely to anyway. He could still see the mud he had scraped across the worn wooden planks that made up the walkway. His bottle was half empty now...when he started it was three-quarters full. Almost like it was draining as fast as he was.
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