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The Dusty Dead’s Revenge
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This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.
Copyright © 2013 by Brian S. Wheeler
The Dusty Dead’s Revenge
Contents
Chapter 1 – Curses and Spit
Chapter 2 – Orbiting the Dead
Chapter 3 – A Dusty Pearl
Chapter 4 – Shapes in the Dust
Chapter 5 – Another Casualty to the Craft
Chapter 6 – A Sky Darkened by Swarm
Chapter 7 – A Master of Shadow
Chapter 8 – No Brother Left Behind
Chapter 9 – Engulfed by the Dark
Chapter 10 – The Family Chain
Chapter 11 – A Game Played by Ghosts
Chapter 12 – A Pearl Abomination
Help Spread the Story
About the Writer
Other Stories
1874 – Dakota Territory – Settlement of Dry Acre
Chapter 1 – Curses and Spit...
Gabe Henderson rubbed away the spit that trailed below his right eye, doing his best to ignore the itchy finger upon which his gunfighter's life relied.
“I'm in no habit of forgiving those who spit in my face, child.”
Gabe Henderson glared at the deformed girl crouched on the ground. She was an ugly thing, with a humped back, a twisted spine, one arm that seemed too long and another that looked too short. She seemed a scavenged thing, pieces recycled from various piles and sewn together by a hand less divine than the good Lord's.
Gabe did not suspect he would lose much sleep for putting a bullet through the girl's forehead. Only, Randoplh Harlington forbade him from harming that ugly girl for reasons he did not need to know. Harlington hired him to do many things other men might not, but Harlington demanded that Gabe spare the wretched girl who spit upon him. Harlington paid in gold, and that kind of coin could aim Gabe Henderson's guns.
“No girl,” Gabe growled. “I'm not in the habit of forgetting. Still, I suppose I can grant mercy to a thing as ugly as you.”
The girl hissed. “Mercy ain't much coming from a coward!”
Maggie Turner did not flinch from Gabe Henderson's stare. Her pink eyes did not wink. Already, the sun blistered her white skin. Already, the dust settled in the thin locks of her white hair. Her joints ached. Her bones stiffened. Her crooked body seldom afforded her much relief from some sort of pain. Yet Maggie refused to flinch during any of the discomfort. She would not admit suffering to any soul in the settlement of Dry Acre. She would take no gunfighter's mercy. Let others take from her ugliness whatever thoughts they might, but Maggie Turner would not flinch for anyone's pleasure.
Gabe Henderson twisted his snarl into a wicked smile. “Well, I suppose I shouldn't take much stock in being called a coward by a girl as ugly as you. I shouldn't take much stock in what an abomination might call me.”
The crowd gathered along the sides of Dry Acre's single street whispered. Few new the meaning of abomination, but they had all come to associate Maggie Turner with the term.
“You didn't have to kill him!” Maggie's lips writhed with fury.
Gabe Henderson's smile vanished. “He carried his gun into town. He made his own decision to bring a gun against me.”
“He had no idea how to use it!” Maggie snarled. “I doubt you felt much fear when you saw him dragging that rusting shotgun behind him.”
The gunfighter shook his head. “I can't afford to guess what skills a man might hold with guns. Your brothers are plenty ignorant, girl, but I'm dead the second I underestimate a man's ability with a gun.”
Maggie Turner cradled her dead brother Samuel's face. She did not flinch at the sight of what remained of her brother's forehead after Gabe Henderson's bullet placed Samuel in the dust. Samuel's face looked as broken in death as it did in life. The Turners were not a handsome family. Seven Turner brothers had arrived at Dry Acre with Maggie and her father. Only three remained.
Maggie found the body of her brother Harry at the bottom of a well upon the border the Turners shared with the Harlington ranch. She did not think Harry's fall an accident. Like the rest of her brothers, Harry was so terrified of heights that he trembled to peek down a well. She found brother Bart's body mangled beneath a herd of Harlington cattle. She did not trust the Harlington claim that Bart had drunkenly stumbled into the cattle's corral. She knew how gravely ill liquor made any of the Turners. Maggie found brother Thomas hanging from a Harlington tree. The Harlingtons had convinced the marshal that Thomas was a dangerous and able thief of horses. Maggie knew better. She knew how horses turned mad whenever a Turner neared the animals.
Now, she cradled Samuel's broken face. The gunfighter claimed he took Samuel's life in a fair fight. Old man Harlington stood behind Gabe Henderson as witness. Maggie again knew better. Samuel was no gunfighter when he dragged father's rusting, double-barrel shotgun filled with bird-shot through the street's dust. Samuel knew nothing of guns when he dragged that shotgun into town looking for old man Harlington and answers for the death of his brothers. He met Gabe Henderson instead, a professional gunman. Instead, Samuel met the fury of a gunfighter's pistols. Maggie knew that Samuel met nothing like a fair fight.
“How much does he pay you to bury my brothers?” Maggie rocked Samuel while she hissed at the gunfighter.
“I don't know what you're talking about,” Gabe chuckled. It was not often a town would trust a gunfighter's words. Dry Acre did. “Nobody pays me to protect myself.”
Maggie pointed over her shoulder. The crowd gathered in Dry Acre flinched. “How much gold does he pay the rest of you? What does that devil give you to keep quiet while he kills my brothers?”
Randolph Harlington removed the thin cigar that eternally burned at the edge of his lips long enough to consider Maggie Turner's deformity. Rand
olph Harlington owned more cattle, and thus more guns, than anyone for many miles surrounding Dry Acre, and such holdings gave Randolph Harlington the powers of life and death in a settlement as dusty, barren and isolated as Dry Acre.
“Get yourself home, Maggie.” Randolph Harlington's voice seldom raised above a whisper. “You're emotional. You've lost a brother. But I saw your brother drag that shotgun through town right up to me and Gabe. Now, Gabe Henderson asked him kindly to put that shotgun down. Samuel did not. Samuel raised it against my man. No one in Dry Acre is going to fault a man for protecting himself. You'll understand better with a little time. Get yourself home, Maggie Turner. Tell your father my offer still stands.”
Hate burned in Maggie's eyes. “I wish I still had enough spit in my throat for your white suit.”
Randolph Harlington ignored Maggie and turned his attention back upon the thin cigar he again placed into his mouth.
Maggie's pink eyes returned to Gabe Henderson. “Curse the coin you take from that man. Curse the gold you claim at my brothers' cost.”
The crowd shared furtive glances. None laughed when Maggie, the pale abomination of the Turner clan, made curses.
The gunfighter's finger itched. Gabe Henderson knew of gunpowder and spark. He knew of a gun's trigger and hammer.
However, Gabe Henderson knew nothing of curses, and many a whispered rumor in Dry Acre described the dark magics Maggie Turner and her reclusive father were said to know well. A gunfighter might easily ignore such superstition when twirling his pistols to a crowd's applause, but Gabe Henderson discovered such confidence lacking when he looked upon the hate that contorted Maggie Turner's twisted face.
Thus Gabe Henderson's trigger finger suffered a terrible itch.
Maggie saw the unease she inspired, and she cast her own smile.
“You all turn as quiet as the dead,” Maggie laughed. “Funny you all go so silent when us Turners know nothing of guns.”
She dropped Samuel's lifeless face onto the dusty street, and grabbing his feet, began dragging her dead brother out of town. She did not slow to consider how the proprietor of the settlement's livery store cringed at the sight of her. Maggie did not stop to watch the minister's wife cover her mouth with a scarf as she passed. She did not turn around to notice how intently Mr. Harlington stared upon her. She did not tremble as Gabe Henderson's trigger finger itched as she turned her back upon Dry Acre and pulled her brother Samuel's body home.
Maggie knew her power protected her, and she vowed that power would grant her revenge.
* * * * *