The Ballad of Cactus Peat: The Rootinest Outlawn of the Wild West

The West, as you know it, is dead. No, it ain’t the Winchester repeating rifle that did her in. It ain’t the steel horse locomotive that did it either. Or the airplane, or cars, or any newfangled way of transportating from point A to point B. No, the West died doing what she loved best, watching men tear each other apart, limb from limb until the fiery, green hands of the atomic clock struck high noon. Life took a bit of a siesta to cool her strings in the nuclear winter before playing the next song in this cosmic symphony of souls we call Earth. But before she could set her fingers to plucking, a new life was rustling its way out of the dirt. The rootinest form of life that ever did stretch up towards the sun and reached for the skies. I’m talking about plant life.

Dearest fine folk of yester-years gone by, it is an absolute pleasure that I take advantage of this little tear in the ole’ space-time continuum to bring you the tale of our most beloved Lawn-man, Cactus Peat. Our story begins in the town of Redwood, Pearizona, population: three thousand, give or take a head of lettuce. Now Redwood wouldn’t have earned its dot on the map if it weren’t for the town’s founder, Delilah ‘Lily’ Redwood. Her father, Pearimiah, was a disenfranchised stalk broker fed fanciful tales of a better life out west. So, he packed up his family, bought a caravan, and set forth along the Orchid Trail. Two thousand miles into their journey Delilah grew bored and needed a place to rest her roots for a moment. She struck soil, rich, rich soil, and with the help of the other kind of black gold she grew to frightening, new heights, becoming the town’s founding mother.

Soil attracts the good and bad, and eventually the promise of profits turned the town into a lawless place. But Delilah was a feisty fern. She had the gumption to fund the town’s orphanage, the Our Lady of Sod nursery, and it’s in this nursery, many years later, where our legend takes root. As a young sprout, Cactus Peat was an unassuming little thing. Fleshy and bulbous, with a prickly, red protrusion for a nose, the poor fella wasn’t much to look at, but that didn’t stop him none. You see, our dendritic desperado had a soft spot for the latest limb of the Redwood family tree, the gourd-gous, Elmer Redwood. Their love was a forbidden one, on account of Elmer’s father, Spruce Redwood. Now don’t go flying off the handle, Spruce could abide the love between two stamen, there ain’t a lick of bigotry in this here tale, no, old man Spruce didn’t take a shine to our dear Peat for the simple fact that he was a nobody. Yup, not a crumb of soil to this poor man’s name, and now sprawling family name to set him apart from the rest of the shrubbians in town. But Peat was aiming to fix that.

To prove his love for Elmer, Peat set off to make a name for himself. Being short of coin and long in bravery, Plucky Peat enlisted under General Windfield Plott to fight in the ongoing turf wars between the Soil Barons of Shadehaven and their farmhands who turned rebel. Peat’s battalion had orders to guard the construction of a dam that was being targeted by a rebel outpost aiming to poison the river water leading to town. As the company marched over the Great Glowing Gorge disaster struck. The bridge gave way. Whether it was by the relentless march of time or a few sticks of dynamite, no one can say, ‘cept for Peat, and he doesn’t like to talk about it, much. Our sharp soul survivor managed to fall into the winding river, unconscious, barely alive and he would’ve been dead, too, had it not been for them glowing waters whisking him downstream.

With his uniform in tatters, Cactus Peat woke up in what he thought was the town of Shadehaven, having his wounds tended to by the local physician, but to his surprise, the current carried him straight to the rebel outpost on a silver planter! Any yellow daylily would have turned stem and fled, not Cactus Peat, he took this opportunity as a means to spy on the enemy. An enemy that consisted mostly of farmers, aphid ranchers, and worm wranglers, a rather puzzling assortment of terrifying rebels. Peat asked the physician, in a not-so-subtle way just how gun-ho these rebels really were. She informed our dear Peat that he had it wrong from the start.

The Soil Barons were indeed building a damn, but not to keep the dastardly rebels from poisoning the river. No, the Barons aimed to block off the water supply, strangling their settlement dry, along with the town they rallied soldiers to defend. Peat was beside himself, cursing himself a fool for believing in the good nature of the fabulously wealthy. Our prickly paragon of justice vowed to make things right, and with the glowing waters of the Great Gorge coursing through his xylem, that’s just what he did.

Cactus rode all through the night as the dawn came chasing after him towards the dam. His fellow soldiers didn’t recognize him as he had grown taller and his bark more refined. In plain daylight, he explained the plight of the would-be rebels and issued a warning: To leave the dam for the sake of the good people of Shadehaven or stay and contend with the force of nature that was Cactus Peat. The folks who saw reason rode home to their spouses and children to tell the tale. The folks who didn’t saw the needle-tipped fist of this behemoth cactus man. When the dust settled, Cactus dismantled the dam brick by brick, ensuring that the water flowed freely to the people.

Peat came back from war a changed plant, not just because of the glowing waters messing with his bark, but because the barons branded Peat an outlawn. When Peat arrived back in Redwood Pearizona he was detained by Deputy Spriggan. Knowing this was the home of his beloved, Peat didn’t resist his arrest and instead was calmly led into the town jail. Hours turned into days with no sign of any visitors for poor Peat. Until one night when the full moon was high in the sky, Cactus awoke to the sound of pebbles hitting his cell. Looking out the barred window Peat saw his lover, Elmer, in the pale moonlight, frail and covered in a shawl.

Elmer was sick and didn’t have much time to live. Root Rot is what they called it, and a deadly case of it, judging by how hard Elmer had to struggle to keep his stem from bending. He snuck out of his father’s mansion, coughing and wheezing, just to spend his last moments on Earth with Peat. A frightful noise bellowed from the jail cell, followed by a heavy thud, then another, and another, then the dust shivered over the brick wall, then a brick fell, and another, and another until Cactus Peat flew out of that blasted cell.

He swept up Elmer in his arms and commandeered the nearest pony plant and rode that poor creature into the night as if they were outrunning death itself. Elmer asked Cactus where he was taking him, but he couldn’t make a lick of sense between the wind rushing through his ears or the tears streaming down his beloved’s face.

Again, it was dawn when he reached the Great Glowing Gorge. Cactus dismounted and gingerly brought down Elmer from his saddle, leading him towards the cliff’s edge. Elmer looked down at the rushing waters of the river and back at Peat and nodded, not knowing what little life had in store for them. Peat took Elmer in his arms and plunged down into the green flowing waters.

What the waters did to Peat they did to Elmer. Peat’s love emerged from those waters with newfound strength and hardy roots. Life and love had found a way. And that is where some might say the ballad of Cactus Peat ends, but I hear tell of a couple matching their description off in New Plantshire, stealing soil from the rich and giving to the wilted. We can only hope those dastardly do-gooders are still roaming the countryside, making a name for themselves.