Silver Spurs, Silver Bullets

It was under the heat of high noon sun when Buck rode out of town for the very first time. She had nothing but a sack of Dukes in her pocket and Pa’s .44 strapped to the hip. In the chamber were no more than five silver bullets. She lost the sixth the night before in a game of cards with Sunset Ridge’s most renowned cheat, Twigs O’Malley. It’s not that she wasn’t wise to his cheating. Buck only thought she would out-cheat him first.

Buck has plenty of bullets back home. But even with an aim as good as Buck’s, lead is practically worthless past the city line.

Silver is the only thing that counts out there. The only thing that can do a lick of harm.

Which is why losing that bullet is about the worst thing to happen to Buck since being born in this god-forsaken town to begin with.

Sunset Ridge is nothing like the postcards. Just like how people scratch an unsightly mole out of their photographs, the artist who made those postcards took some creative liberties of their own. Not that they really had a choice. Sunset Ridge is about the ugliest place there ever was. At least hell would have more people. The only visitors are dead weeds that tumble by. Heat boils the distant dunes, making them shine like lakes of clean, clear water.

There’s no law against leaving Sunset Ridge. Just like there isn’t a law against drowning yourself in the town well— if the well held enough water to drown yourself in, that is. It’s a law of common sense. If you get caught out in those wastes past sunset, then you’re as good as dead.

Buck isn’t keen on dying but she’s always been short on common sense. There ain’t a soul living in the Ridge that believes in anything waiting beyond the boiling dunes but more heat and meaner critters. Not a soul but Buck.

It was at that card-table with Twigs, as he cackled and kissed the silver of his shiny new bullet, that Buck realized the only thing worse than leaving was never leaving at all.

Just an hour, Buck tells herself. She’ll be headed back long before sunset.

As Grit trots along, Buck finds herself scared to look back. Scared, but unable to stop from turning all the same. As if a glimpse of home will snuff all her ideas of running.

It seems so different on the outside. A city like a stranger. If she strains her ears maybe she can hear Easy Pete begin his drunken declarations down the street, choosing another poor lass to swear his love to before passing out in a sloppy heap outside their door. Buck was his choice one night and one night only. That ended with a trick shot to the neck of his whiskey bottle with a promise for the next one somewhere lower. Pete never bothered her after that.

Some may say that it’s a waste of a good bullet. Buck would kindly disagree.

Buck keeps her wits about her, but the monotony dulls the edge like a skinning knife ripping through rawhide. The clop, clop of Grit’s hooves. The jingling of her spurs. Wind whistles by, like some great invisible asp dragging its belly against the dry earth. The sun inches ever closer to the ridge. As if clawing there through sheer determination.

Being out here all alone fills her head with the question of how one might make it through the desert. There’s not enough silver in all the world to keep the wild at bay past sunset. Even if she lived through the night, who could say the next dawn would bring her to the waste’s end? If there is an end.

If there is an end. The reins bite into her fingers where the leather folds in her fists. Buck twists in her saddle to stare back the way she came, but all that lies on the horizon is a haze of red dirt and blazing sky. It’s impossible, she realizes with a start, to tell just how far you’ve gone in a wasteland that never changes.

Sunset Ridge is no longer there. Buck can’t tell whether the excitement outweighs the sheer white-knuckled terror.

Under the meager shade of a long dead weed, sits a lizard, brown as dirt. It watches the girl and her horse trot along with one beady black eye. Instead of a tail there’s just a stump. When a lizard finds itself between a rock and a hard place, they can cut off a piece of themselves to survive. They scamper off to safety as their former limb dances for the critter that was fixin’ to eat them whole.

Buck wonders if the lizard misses his tail. Was it worth it?

It answers with a lick of its eyeball. There was no other choice.

When the blistering heat starts to soften, that’s when Buck knows it’s time to go home. She gives the reins a gentle tug, easing old Grit towards the sinking sun. As Buck draws a breath for one big sigh, it catches in her throat. There, twinkling like a jewel is the glint of metal on the horizon.

Buck goes still. The desert plays tricks. Yet, she’s never seen a trick like this. A black rider sits astride a black mare. The sun catches the silver of his spurs, his buckle, and the six ways of dying at his hip. It seems pure, somehow. That silver light. Its whisper drowns out the wind. Drowns out everything.

Forty days and forty nights you could ride and get no closer to the end. Not without me.

Buck looks to Sunset Ridge. Where she imagines it is, anyway. It would be a close call. If there was anyone who could manage a risk like that, it would be her. All she has to do is get close enough to figure out the trick, then yank Grit back around and race on home.

She spurs Grit towards the stranger in black. Not for the first time, Buck doesn’t think twice.

She clutches her hat with one hand and leans in as the old mare breaks into a gallop. Without the full strength of the sun, it verges on temperate. Cool, even. She draws closer, but the figure makes no attempt to meet her.

Surely, he sees her, don’t he? There isn’t anything else to look at for miles and miles but a mangy mare and a mangier girl riding full speed towards him. Buck hopes he knows more about the wastes than she does. A flame bursts to life next to that dark silhouette. The stranger has set up camp.

Buck looks over her shoulder to find the sky ablaze in color. Sunset Ridge didn’t get its name for nothing, after all. All those oranges, pinks, and reds bleed together in a beautiful warning seen too late. She thought the worst thing you could lose in a bet was a silver bullet. Wrong again, Buck.

There’s an awful lot of night between her and home. When Buck reaches the firelight, the sky is one giant spectacle of black. A mess of twinkling stars. So open and clear that it sends her head spinning. Just like staring down the throat of a snake. The night wants to swallow her up. A sickly yellow moon hangs above, bathing that dark stranger in a glow next to godliness.

“G’evening.” The man tips his black hat.

Buck hesitates, then greets him with a nod. There’s never sense in being rude. “Evening.”

She opens her mouth to ask all the things that have been turning over in her head, but they jumble together on the way out. It leaves her quiet.

“You wouldn’t happen to have a smoke, would you now?”

Buck swallows. The stranger stares back at her through the haze of the campfire. Sometimes the flames lick high enough to make the shadows of his face shift. Deepening, growing light, then dark once again. The corners of his mouth ghost a smile. Buck pulls two cigars from her pocket, offering one to the man.

“Thank you kindly, Buck.”

Buck halts as she reaches for her lighter. The man snaps and fire dances from his fingertips as he lights the bottom of their quirleys. Buck can’t find the words to refuse.

“How’d you know my name?” Buck tries to sound indignant; tough, but her voice wavers. She sounds like a child who has wandered too far.

“I know lots of things about you, Buck.” He exhales and the smoke slithers upwards like a serpent with cinders for eyes. “Fastest gun in Sunset Ridge. Maybe fastest in the wastes. Not that there’s much competition, m’afraid.”

The stranger’s boots make heavy footfalls on the packed dirt, but his spurs make a prettier sound. Like bells. A tinkling chime. He moseys around the fire and makes another lazy round about Buck. It raises the hairs on her neck. The stranger doesn’t look like anybody she’s ever seen before. An outlaw. His black clothes are embroidered with a beautiful silver thread. It catches moonlight. His pale skin does the same. He’s pretty, like a wolf that eats well.

“You’re lucky to have found me, y’know. The wastes are an awfully dangerous place to be at night.”

Grit tosses her head with an uneasy whinny, shuffling on her feet as the stranger gets closer. Buck pats the pony’s neck. Maybe to comfort herself more than anything. Maybe she ought to saddle back up and run. Beasts be damned.

“I’ll manage.” Buck follows the stranger with a narrow eye as he circles her. It reminds her of a vulture. The way they hover above a sickly calf that can’t stay on its feet.

Far beyond the reach of the firelight, a wolf howls a lonesome note.

“I can help.”

“I’ll manage,” Buck squints, “Who are you?”

His teeth flash. A smile. Though it reminds her more of the coyote she shot in the corner of her chicken coop, fat with red teeth.

“You don’t know?” The smile lingers, then he faces her square and hooks a thumb in his belt, “Tell you what, Buck. I’m in a fair mood. I’ll cut you a deal.”

His hand drops to his side. The pearl-handled pistol is a beauty. Though Buck doesn’t miss the notches outnumbering her ability to count.

“I reckon you wanna see what’s on the other side of this desert, don’cha?”

Buck’s hand rests on her gun. “Yes. I do.”

“And you’re a pretty quick hand, ain’t you?”

“Yes, I am.”

“If you draw faster than me, then I’ll get you to the other side.” The man flicks the brim of his hat, meeting her cold stare head-on. Those eyes ought to belong to a snake the way they have Buck frozen stiff. “If I draw quicker than you, then I get your soul.”

There’s no great shock when he says it. Buck just stares back. This time, she resists the impulse to find Sunset Ridge. Even if she could see it, the town could do nothing for her now. Not that it ever did. She and Grit could race back home, but then where would she be? The same town. The same dirt and dust and drunken Pete. Except she would remember this night and the devil out in the wastes, offering her a slice of something else.

All she’s got to do is the only thing she knows how.

“Alright then. Seems mighty unfair,” Buck takes a deep draw from her cigar, and puffs a cloud of gray smoke, “considering I’m the fastest gun there is.”

Those snake eyes seem to flash before The Devil sets his terms, “You win, you get out of the wastes, and if I win, I get your soul.”

“Not just out of the wastes—” Buck cuts in, “Somewhere pretty.”

He nods and offers his hand. “Somewhere pretty.”

Buck takes it. Regret surfaces only then. It feels like sticking your hand into a dark, dusty hole just before you hear the low hiss of the snake who lives there. His fingers coil around her sweaty palm, tight and cold.

She blinks and suddenly stands with her back to the stranger. The air is choked with the smell of brimstone and brandy. The Devil smells like a saloon sat on the outskirts of tarnation.

“Ten paces. One.”

The presence at her back disappears as The Devil steps forward. Buck’s heels click just a moment behind.

“Two.”

Another step. Buck’s heart has used her spine as a ladder to hunker down in her throat and pound away. It doesn’t seem likely to come down anytime soon.

“Three.”

She’s a good shot. Buck tells herself. She can shoot the bottle from a man’s hands at seventy steps away. She’s shot the tail off a field mouse and splattered spiders that she ought to have just hit with a boot.

Everyone in Sunset Ridge knows better than to draw against Buck.

“Four.”

But she’s no devil.

“Five.”

She reckons they don’t play fair.

“Six.”

Buck’s hand hovers over her gun, trembling.

“Seven.”

If she was a devil, she wouldn’t play fair either. She would turn early.

If Buck was a devil then she would shoot that man right in the back.

“Eight.”

Buck draws in a deep, long breath. The world slows down. Gone is the howl of the distant wolf and skitter of scorpions on the cold sand. The creatures all stop to wait for the devil to speak.

“Nine.” He says.

She says, “Ten.”

Like a bolt of lightning, Buck whips around. There’s not a thought in her head. Just the memory of her muscle. Click. The hammer drops. At the end of the barrel, stands the dark stranger with his white gun staring back at her. The sound of gunfire deafens the desert. Her ears ring. The only sound in her small world. Black smoke fogs the eighteen paces between the two duelists with no way of knowing if her aim hit true.

She doesn’t dare breathe. Her eyes sting like hell but she doesn’t blink. Not until the smoke clears and there The Devil stands like an imitation of a man.

The missing bullet.

Just when Buck thought her heart would never stop beating in her throat, it drops to her feet. It starts as a dull pain, a shock more than anything. The uncomfortable realization from your body that it’s got an unwanted visitor. Buck presses a hand to her chest. Her palm comes back wet. The moonlight makes the blood look blacker than ink.

Many things go wrong all at once. The strength bleeds right out of her body and the legs are the first thing to go. Buck drops to sit on the ground, clutching the wound as she falls to her back.

It hardly seems fair. Buck looks up at those stars. So close it makes her dizzy. Though maybe that’s just the dying. She cheated and she still lost. It would have made more sense for her to have cheated and won. Narratively speaking.

The ringing in her ears ebbs away to the clink of silver spurs. The Devil’s handsome face blocks the moon, still smiling like the coyote that killed the hen.

“You’re a quick draw, Buck.” He crouches down beside her, “But you’ve got to give the devil his due.”

Buck doesn’t know how exactly to handle the exchange of your soul with dignity. She starts gathering spit in her mouth, figuring actions speak louder than words when her eyes catch a fault. Over the left breast pocket of his button-up shirt, the silver stitching is torn. A tiny, minuscule imperfection. In Sunset Ridge, it’s rarer to have a stitch in place than not, but on a man like him, that one tiny flaw has her smiling.

“You need a tailor,” Buck says.

The smile couldn’t have fallen off The Devil’s face quicker if she had spit on him.

He doesn’t need to look at the hole in his shirt to know that he’s been caught. His eyes are darker than night from where they glower down at the quickest draw in the wastes.

“You cheated.”

“So did you.”

The Devil grits his teeth. “So I did.”

Buck lets her eyes drift shut. The breath she draws in rattles terribly. Like the tin roof of her Ma’s dusty house. Like the tip of the viper’s tail. She won’t manage many more breaths like that. Yet, she keeps grinning.

The world changes so quickly, Buck thinks for a moment she slipped off to heaven before collecting her prize. The ground beneath her head becomes a grassy pillow, lush and green, with soft dirt that smells like life. She could bury her nose in mud like that. Though, Buck reckons she looks like enough of a mess already, with all the bleeding and such.

A brook babbles on beside her, like a vein of silver. The sunlight is softer here. Golden and warm. She’s never seen sunlight dance before, but dance it does through the verdant lacework of the canopy above. In a branch far beyond, two squirrels chitter about the strangest intruder who seems to have just appeared out of thin air. A fat bee bumbles by Buck’s head, legs laden with pollen. Somewhere out of sight, a songbird starts the choir.

Buck lifts the trembling hand from her chest, fingertips grazing the cool stream. So clear she can see the moss clinging to the river stones, and watch as a pale fish follows the current far from the plink of her fingers breaking surface. The water pulls the blood from her skin in streams of soft pink until her fingertips are washed clean. She’s seen that color many times before. In a sunset.

There are worse things than dying far from home, Buck reckons, like never leaving home at all.