Afterclap

“You know where you’re standing, Mister?... You’re on Hell Street and I intend sending you right down to the bottom of it.”

Confronted in the middle of the town’s thoroughfare by a mere slip of a girl dressed in men’s clothing, the inebriated cowboy wasn’t quite sure whether to fight, run, or laugh the girl home to her momma’s teet.

Wynonna Belle was as tough as librarians come in the scheme of things all western. Youngest born of three siblings – all girls – she had to be hard as old nails to survive the harsh realities of living in one of the most violent places in Arizona – the town of Canyon Diablo. Refusing to follow her married sisters eastward – back to their birthplace in Virginia, Wynonna remained in her adopted town, in the hope that someday the culture of books would calm the law of the gun… and if it didn’t, she was sure - as a gun - that she’d make it so.

Formed by railroad workers laying tracks for a new railroad through the area, the town rapidly grew after progress came to a halt at the edge of the nearby canyon – waiting for the construction of a bridge to cross it. The bridge took ten industrious years to construct, creating a town in the process that was named after its canyon. The growth of the town happened so fast that its main street was hastily named, ‘Hell Street.’ The title certainly lived up to its billing accommodating fourteen saloons, ten gambling parlours, four brothels, two dance halls, several cafes, and a grocery and dry goods store. It was the Devil’s playground with no church steeple in sight. Drinking, gambling, cavorting, and gunfights were overtly abundant in the town that never slept. For those few that sought out more serene pursuits of entertainment, the area’s first library was established in the attempt to bring some cultural distraction to the uncontrollable debauchery. The town’s civic leaders hoped it would reduce the endless temptations of the wickedness enveloping the town. The library also served as an educational outlet to the growing number of children born in and out of wedlock from the carnal familiarity that the noisy, restless, and unruly town ruffians produced. Few residents were law abiding. The rest were just drifters and no-gooders of the lowest citizenry and scallywaggery.

So much lawlessness existed in the busy town of two thousand residents, that a ‘Boot Hill’ type of cemetery quickly grew to hold thirty-five gunfighters – all violently killed. The closest U.S. Marshall was over one hundred miles away, making arrests extremely unlikely, and the prosecution of murderers and outlaws impossible to implement, as the perpetrators could just evade capture by leisurely riding away to another town. Threats of ‘The Marshal’s been sent for’ and ‘You won’t get away with it’ were ridiculed and boldly laughed at by most people good or bad, because everyone knew it would take a week before anyone showed up – if at all.

The few townspeople still left with any surviving puritanical principles were so frustrated by the endless deathly tomfoolery that they hired Canyon Diablo’s first sheriff - in the attempt to bring some law and order to the town of ruffians and outlaws. A ceremony outside the civic centre and newly formed library swore in the new lawman at three o’clock one autumn afternoon. Much revelry heralded a new era for the town as they ushered in their first protector and enthusiastically informed him of his lawful responsibilities. By eight o’clock that evening, he became the thirty-sixth resident of Boot Hill, shot dead in the performance of his policing duties, trying to break up a drunken fight. Over the next year, five more hired purveyors of justice were cut down within one month of starting their new job. It appeared that there was no end in sight to the wildness permeating the town’s society. A marshal’s office had been promised; however, with the prospect of a very hazardous short career, no takers stepped forward to fill the vacancy.

“I’ll be hog wallered… You ain’t nuthin’ but a tenderfoot in buckskin breeches.”

The drunken cowboy swayed nervously as he squinted at the young woman calling him out. She had strategically placed herself between him and the low afternoon sun, making sure the cowboy was fully lit up and easier to study – in case of any swift movements. His weathered face was dirty and unwashed from long days on the range eking out a living as a cattle herdsman; however, the four-inch scar running down his left cheek revealed a more sinister parallel life that he hoped to hide from public scrutiny. Highlighted in full sun, this surreptitious high binder of a man could only see a hazy silhouette, partially blocking the sun’s glare - as he held his left hand above his brow trying to focus on the young female upstart.

“You don’t want no fight with me… You know how many men I killed?”

Wynonna pondered over the question thinking whether he even knew the answer to his pointless, asinine question.

“…and women?”

“Say what?”

“How many women you killed?”

“You best hobble yer lip, before I lose my temper n’ give you a good whuppin’.”

“…How many women carrying guns have you killed?”

“Murderation! You come at me, you’re askin’ fer trouble… man or woman!”

Deliberately, Wynonna slowly swept both sides of her trail coat backwards and tucked them behind the pearl-handled Colt-45 Peacemakers - now revealing themselves to bystanders and all – including the squinty-eyed drunk.

“…Them’s fancy shooters you’re carrying, thar. They look kind of familiar, with that gold trim reflecting off the handles.”

“…I took them from my Daddy…”

“Now why a pretty little thing like you, do a thing like that?”

“…He didn’t need them anymore.”

“You kill him?”

“He’s dead, but it weren’t me that put him six foot under with a bullet in his back… He used to be the law in these parts.”

“Hell, thar ain’t never been no law around here. An’ if there was, they didn’t last long. Killing lawmen around here is like lickin’ butter off a knife… it’s that easy.”

The cowboy’s mocking laughter at his own declaration incensed Wynonna to the point of anger.

“Because of men like you…”

“I ain’t killed your Daddy… You a bounty hunter? Is my face printed on a wanted poster, anywhere? No siree, it ain’t! Cause, I ain’t done nuthin wrong…”

Pulling a book from her coat’s large side pocket, Wynonna thumbed through the pages until she found what she was looking for.

“Says in this here book about famous gunfights of the West, that my Daddy was killed by William Bonny, aka Wiley Willy, otherwise known as Back Shot Billy.”

“Bonny, huh! How’d they spell my last name in that book you got thar?”

“B.O.N.N.Y.”

“Huh!... Go figure… Well, my last name is Bonet. It’s French… spelled B.O.N.E.T… and I ain’t never shot anyone in the back.”

Wynnona accusingly pointed the book at the repudiating cowboy.

“That’s not what it says in here!”

Still squinting, the cowboy thought for a moment about the apparent mix-up, then as if a flash of memory suddenly illuminated the unlit cells in his brain, he shifted his posture to an inquisitive portrayal of confusion.

“Where’d your little book of mistruths say this all happened?”

“…Dodge City. It says you fled to Canyon Diablo where you killed another man in a bar – using a shotgun.”

“…Dodge, huh? Naw… Shotgun? Yeah… I reckon that little book yer holding in those dainty hands of yours, has got its facts mixed up… That barber’s cat of a man I killed in that bar was also named William. Come to think of it, he had bragged about shooting some lawman in the back to clear a debt he owed to a saloon owner… I recall there was this writer feller - in town researching, he said, for a book on the so called ‘Wild West.’ As you must assuredly know, it’s just ‘Out West’ to us here, but some folks back east like to sensationalise our way of life and call it ‘Wild.’ Shucks, it ain’t nuthin but hard livin’ out here – nuthin more than that, except for the freebooters taking advantage of the ignorant greenhorns… Hell, the wildness is just hard-workin’ folks blowin’ off steam… We ain’t the only lively town in the west.”

Demonstrating her frustration, Wynonna placed her right hand on its respective side’s Colt pistol. Sensing her waning patience, the cowboy sped up his story.

 “Hold on, little lady. Let me finish… You see, this William Bonny feller had been stretchin’ the blanket to this writer all night, real loud like so everyone could hear. He tripped on so many of his made-up lies, he ended up calling himself – proud as hell, ‘Back Shot Billy - Gun for hire.’ I was sitting at the next table listening in because I thought it coincidentally odd how similar our names was… He was milking the writer fer drink after drink, and when the writer realised the ballyhoo being exhaled from Bonny’s lying lips, he stood to leave, laughed at Bonny’s ridiculous self-imposed alias saying it was not interesting enough and he was done plying him with free drinks. Well, Bonny’s face immediately turned sour as a lemon in sherbet. Standing up, he drew his gun to shoot the writer in the back – looking to prove his point. My shotgun was laying across my table as I was fixin’ to leave to go have some fun upstairs with one of the ladies of the line. But… seein’ this loudmouth weaver of paid-for lies about to kill an innocent man that just bought him a night’s worth of whiskey, I let Bonny have it with both barrels of buckshot to the gut, killing him instantly. I tell you, that writer was so grateful to me, he promised to put me in his book as a living testament to something he had personally witnessed. He called me ‘Buck Shot Billy’ in resemblance to the man I just killed. About a year later, he sent me a letter saying I was in a compendium of his published stories, so when I heard the book had arrived at the town library, I got me a library card and went in to borrow that thar book, but it weren’t available. I now see why.”

With a sweeping gesture of almost divine deliberation, Wynonna held the book aloft, like a preacher holding up the gospel of truth.

“The pen is mightier than the sword, mister. You can’t deny what’s been written and published for all to see.”

“What you have thar, little lady is what they call a typo – a misnomer… It’s a misrepresentation of proper spelling, that’s what it is.  Atween you and me, I reckon that writer of that thar book of wild west stories, saw too many things to remember everything and got his facts and names all tangled and mixed up. Hell, that ain’t nuthin more than a bunch of made-up words anyway, written to stimulate the dormant imaginations of bored anglomaniacs back East, hungry for adventure tales from cowboy country.”

Wynonna hesitated as she absorbed the cowboy’s compelling explanation, now sowing small seeds of doubt on her soil of assumptive guilt. Inevitably, it seemed plausible to her that she had mistaken this man for a ghost of the past – a man no longer alive nor accountable for his grave and mortal actions. Logic eventually won the argument, releasing the tension Wynonna had felt throughout the terse conversation with the cowboy.

“I’ll say this for you, mister. You could talk a donkey’s hind leg off… and you certainly don’t sound like a killer… Most I met weren’t ones destined for the written word.”

“I got me an education back a-ways, but it failed to put food on the table… Look, I hold my hands up to the lord above and say that I’d be the first to acknowledge the corn and confess to a killing I done. I ain’t never been one to beat the devil around the stump. Folks are always misreading me on account of this here six-shooter and the many fine notches carved into my gun belt, but a man is supposedly innocent until proven guilty in our sometimes unfair society. You gotta prove malice of aforethought to convict someone of shootin’ a poor feller to death, and I see no evidence holding me answerable to your Daddy’s killin.”

The cowboy’s way with words were most captivating to the young librarian. Perhaps she had been too quick to point her finger, she quickly deliberated. Relaxing her tight grip on the book that had for so long drove her desire to enact extreme and prejudicial revenge, Wynonna carefully replaced it into her coat pocket, then slowly returned the right side of her coat to cover her pistol.

“Alright, mister… I have no quarrel with you… The book will be available at the library tomorrow... Come see me at the front desk.”

“…Hold on a doggone minute… You’re the…”

“Uh huh… I’m the Librarian.”

“Well, don’t that beat all!”

“My apologies, mister… I guess I got a bee in my bonnet that wouldn’t go away. It were wrong of me to mistake you for someone else and scarin’ yuh…”

“I ain’t afeared of nuthin’. I got used to being accused of things I ain’t dun… All the way from Dodge to this here Devil’s Canyon, the prairie is littered with the echo of false accusations, and with the chuckleheads that dared to utter ‘em, Little Miss Librarian.”

Turning to head back in the direction of the setting sun, Wynonna had taken no more than three steps when the wind carried teeth-clenched, muttered words lowly spoken, and malicious in intent – drifting unintentionally into her ears. ‘So, you’re the eldest daughter. He said you was the smartest one… Well, I ain’t waiting for you to wise up…’

Through the noise of duelling pianolas, the cacophony of drunken revellers, and the obnoxiously loud moans and grunts flailing from open-windowed whorehouses, the distinct sound of a pistol cocking, clicked in Wynonna’s right ear. In the blink-of-an-eye timespan it took for the hairs on the back of her neck to stand up, two rapid gunshots rang out, instantly quietening the street’s hullabaloo of irritating clamour. A bullet-sized hole in Wynonna’s coat tails allowed one single ray of sunlight to shine through the settling dust kicked up from the fight, like a futuristic laser beam from a science yet to come. More concerning to the present-day onlookers at the scene, was the other equally-sized, .45-caliber hole protruding from Wynonna’s left side of her coat – about midriff high. Undetected by the numerous eyewitnesses, were the small fibers of the oilskin coat, projecting away from Wynonna’s back. Clearly - to a trained eye – the hole had been created not by a bullet entering but from a bullet exiting, directed away from her. A side-glance over her shoulder revealed the cowboy sat at a perpendicular angle to the dusty ground, propped up by his shooting hand to prevent the complete collapse of his body into the dirt – his other hand trying to stem an expanding crimson flow of blood staining his dirty-white linen shirt. The bullet from Wynonna’s cloaked gunshot had taken him by surprise, embedding itself slap-bang in the middle of his chest - knocking him onto his drunken ass. It was either an extraordinary feat of shooting skill or just a lucky shot. Whatever the explanation, it was enough to fell and mortally wound the vastly experienced gunslinger.

“Well, don’t that beat all… son of a gun,” the cowboy muttered. “Killed by a…”

With no more breath in his body to end his sentence, the cowboy’s supporting hand slowly slid from under him as he staked his claim to plot number thirty-seven on Boot Hill.

Inspecting her coat, Wynonna spun around and faced the man whose life she had just ended. Her left-hand-side pistol was still in its swivelled position pointing backwards. Primarily a right-handed shooter, she made sure she prepared herself for the unexpected, so had previously hired a belt maker to customise her left holster to spin on its attachment, helping her to quickly shoot behind her – when needed. ‘Foresight shall never become hindsight,’ was a saying she liked to repeat.

Approaching Back Shot Billy – now evidently identified and obviously killed, she rummaged through his open waistcoat pockets and retrieved what looked like a bloodstained library card, before placing it into her own coat pocket.

“Back Shot Billy,” she declared. “With the power invested in me by the good folks of Canyon Diablo, I hereby revoke your library privileges…”

Inquisitive onlookers late to the scene, curiously sought clarity from those who had witnessed the gunfight. “Afterclap,” was the murmur from the front row, “We thought their argument was all over until the cowboy unexpectedly tried to shoot the librarian in the back.”

Turning to head towards the setting sun, Wynonna set her internal compass pointing in the direction of the library at the bottom of Hell Street – just below Boot Hill, as bystanders – unaffected by the recent kerfuffle - slowly resumed their momentarily interrupted routines. A distant shout of “Someone send for the Marshall” was vociferously and quippingly countered by a drunk aimlessly urinating in a nearby alleyway shouting, “I’m just pissing on ma boots… That ain’t against the law!”

As music, hollering cowboys, and irritating endless noise returned to fill the recent silent break, Wynonna Belle pulled at the rim of her hat, straightened her coat, checked her holstered guns, then opening her book of wild west stories, she enthusiastically submerged herself into the tales of the West as she blindly walked down Hell Street – oblivious to the disorder, and a world away from the world within her book…