An Expiated Sin

It was the dawn of the morning in the New Mexico Territory when I held my steady aim at the murdering menace they called "Angry" James Donahue. While the townsfolk use to know him as the genteel rancher with an esteemed moral uprightness, he was soon discovered to be a rotten old fool. Witnesses at the local saloon talked about his short fused temper and how much he'd mistreat the local sportin' women in town.

There he was in the front porch of his hideout, ornery, smoking a pipe and airin' out his lungs. After I heard about his crimes, for mercilessly killing three women, I was more than eager to pull the trigger and set him on an early grave.

He was a monster to me, the stories the Old Man shared on his accounts made me sick to my stomach. His transformation was interesting as well to say the least, he was like two sides of a dime, one consumed by rage, and the other with a kind disposition. The bullet in my chamber couldn't be deceived however, it was bequeathed to him by the wandering souls of his victims, at least it was how I looked at it. I liked to think that karma had a real existence out in the West. That sentiment brought sanity in my life.

I took another deep breath and pulled the trigger.

The Old Man crouched besides me with a bulge on his cheek from stuffing his mouth with chewing scotch snuff tobacco. "Why you got that look on your face for?"

"What look?"

"You think that old bootlicker deserved worse?"

I turned to see the Old Man raising an eyebrow at me. "Well..."

"Well, what?" he said spitting out his dip. "Spit it out."

"If it were up to me, I'd love to have see him lassoed up, while Mr. Hoodoo Brown dragged him across the rocky riverbed." I scowled gritting my teeth.

The Old man glanced at me and began to laugh boisterously.

"Little girl, you got a whole lot to learn about not getting too attached."

I quickly headed back in town full gallop on my stallion while the Old Man took care of the rest, bringing the body to the Sheriff's Station and collecting our bounty.

He'd find me later on in town to hand me my portion of the dough.

I often wondered how Pa would feel if he knew all those years teaching me to hunt game would amount to this. Would that conman even care? Teaching me how to shoot a damn rifle was probably the only good thing he ever left me!

*****

The next day, I helped Ma out on the confectionary shop where we sold our own signature homemade sugary treats which included, peppermint sticks and lemon drops. On a good day, we could afford to stock our specialty chocolate bars, and made a small percentage of the profit, but most of the time the demand could not be met. When I brought the bank notes to Ma, at the shop, she'd be happy to receive them, but worried about where that money came from.

"Honey, where'd you get all this?" she said gripping the bank notes in her hand.

"Pa left it in a parcel the other day. I forgot to tell you."

"How'd he make it. What did he say he did to make this money?"

"Oh, just Ranching... helping out on the stagecoach."

She sighed heavy from the relief. "Oh...Ok. Good. Thank you, Phoebe. You know your Pa really wishes he could do better. He wishes he could spend more time with you here, and be a better father to you. You know how the situation is with him."

"I know, Ma."

"Won't you do me a big favor, Phoebe?"

"Sure, Ma."

"Make sure to write him a long thank you letter from the both of us." she smiled.

I had given the credit to Pa. It was the easiest explanation I could give her. If Ma found out what I had been doing to earn it, it would break her heart. In reality, he never sent a cent, only offered empty promises and prayers when he wrote us. Ma hadn't known he'd show up at times, in the middle of the night, drunk on moonshine, avoiding sight of all the lawmen he wronged throughout the years. He'd stuff his face with food and beg me for some money we made at the shop.

He was too ashamed to show his face to my mother, but not ashamed enough to be a lousy father. He'd left us debts on the house, got himself in trouble with the law and made a run for it back East. The fact that he was still alive was nothing short of a miracle.

The Old Man came by again and presented me with more wanted signs. The next culprit was a strange one, a curly red-haired foreign woman, wanted for being a "general nuisance" in the community. She was said to come from Russian nobility and frequently associated with many of the town's outlaw gangs and wealthy men in the oil industry. She was pinned for being the cause of all the chaos stirred up in town, from the bar fights to the shoot-outs, which eventually took the life of a shopkeeper caught in the crossfire. The deputies wanted her out for good and they paid for her apprehension handsomely.

The day finally came, I helped the Old Man bring her to the station alive. She had traveled so far to end up displayed publicly in front of the courthouse for the whole town to see. It was a haunting sight, and the first person I had witnessed hang. I began feeling guilty for what I was doing, and it only seemed to spiral down deeper, lingering on for days after.

The old man had given me more names, and more wanted signs. A veteran of the Confederacy States with a high reward, wanted for a conspiracy on an assassination back East. A young heathen, hard working blacksmith who spent most of his days forging tools for the miners in his village.

I looked at the Old Man puzzled and inquisitive. "What did he do?"

"Borrowed from the wrong men".

"Don't seem enough to kill the poor guy. Who were the men he wronged?"

"They were clergymen. He'll pay with his soul for the choice he made, we'll see to it"

I thought a sure way to make good with the man upstairs was to continue on. I regrettably shot him dead while he pounded his hammer for the last time onto the soldering iron.

Then came a medicine man, intelligent as he was heartless and cruel. His death was a loss to the scientific community, but the Old Man said he found pleasure in poisoning dozens of weary folks to test his remedies, promising the people vitality.

We found him traveling on his wagon one day, where the Old Man had pinpointed him.

"We won't get paid with a lick and a promise. Pull the trigger and we'll raid the wagon. Deputies didn't say anything about his possessions."

The next day, I became more weary of the killings. I hung around the shop, me and Ma finally could keep up with the demands from the inventory we had purchased. The house payments had also been coming in steady. I hadn't seen the Old Man in a couple of weeks.

Then one day, as I was reading the dime-novels of adventurous tales, a knock startled me on the counter top at work. It was the Old Man again who came by and slammed a poster on my table.

"This one's it. The big one, kid. Y'ready?"

"No sir, I don't think I am interested anymore in all of that." I said hesitantly.

"What do you mean?"

"I don't think I'm in need of it anymore."

"Just read this before you decide." he jabbed his finger down on the poser. "Never mind living paycheck to paycheck, you can do a lot of good with this money." He advised.

The poster had the reward money on a big bold font lettering. "$10,000 DEAD OR ALIVE". It was for an Apache man they called Hawk. The poster had a well-detailed sketch of him and read the following, "This picture is a good likeness of Hawk who is about 40 years of age, dark complexion, 5 foot 7 inches, long neck, a little stoop shouldered. He has a defined scar across his left eye, his hair is long and black and tinged with gray, no whiskers. All information to be at once addressed to W. Reilly, Chief of Police."

"It'll be a long ways, but it's an easy job, you could finally get a sense of adventure." He noticed my face battled on each possiblity. "No more ever worrying about your Pa coming around. You could pay him off with this money and live good with your Ma."

I gave him a reassuring nod and gave into his lure.

"How'd you even find these people so quick?"

"I have ears allover these territories, my dear. Meet me at dawn, tomorrow by the rail road stop."

When I met up with the Old Man again, we rode pass the wilderness road, several miles or yonder from the Mitten Buttes to an Indian Reservation.

I learned the man we hunted had such a high price on his head for killing a respected lawman by the Arizona Territory.

The Old Man and I had found a good position on a hill where we spotted him. He was with his young son playing around on the grassy field.

The Old Man noticed I lingered a bit when I aimed my rifle at him.

"What's takin' you so long? Take the shot."

"Can't we do the deed somewhere else? He's with his son..."

The Old Man grew impatient now. "No." he said firmly as he explained the Apache man had been known for his ungodly proficient marksmanship with his arrows, worse yet if he was hiding a shootin' iron. "Pull the doggone trigger, girl." he whispered angrily. "Won't tell you again."

It was a difficult one to go forth with, I convinced myself the man made his choice when he killed the Sheriff, now he'd deal with the repercussions. As I pulled back the trigger, it had missed, maybe my nerves got the best of me. "Son of a--"

The Apache man, had quickly noticed us far on the hills. He hid behind a tree and tried to grab his son, but he had ran off as we fired our bullets. He stayed behind a tree and pulled back the arrow of his bow and arrow to aim at us. His arrow had soared up and hit the Old Man in the right shoulder.

"Stop it right now, or we shoot the brat!" He shouted, underactive to the arrow.

The Apache man said something we couldn't understand.

The Old Man gave another warning shot, shooting close to the Apache man's son.

I whispered, my voice shaking. "Don't do it!"

"Shut up, kid!" Then the Old Man shouted back to the Apache man. "Get out from the tree. NOW or the boy is done for!"

The Apache man stared at his son clearly shaken. As soon as he came out for cover, the Old Man shot him dead. The arrow hadn't fully penetrated his arm as we rode back to town.

Next morning I came home to Ma and worked another shift at the confectionery shop. Many came by to try the new famous Whitman's chocolate bars we now had in stock. Though, my mind was back at the reservation. I later found out that Apache man's wife had been killed by the Sheriff he murdered.

In the end of all this, it was hard to tell who the real monsters were. I had paid off Ma's mortgage on the house, and returned to running the candy shop that had grown more successful in the years that came. I stopped receiving letters from Pa, seemed he may have found a better life in the East or had gotten himself killed perhaps.

As for The Old Man, he was now retired a legend amongst the Sheriff's who desperately sought after him for one more case.

To me, he may have been the dickens reincarnate, but I was just as worse for being his accomplice.

He had vanished from the town, and nobody knew I was his gun for hire, but I kept it that way.