The Scarred Stranger

I once heard someone say that everyone is held prisoner by their past. That's something I know all too well. The only thing I've wondered though, is if there's there's a way to get free.

I study the revolver in my hand, trying to focus my aim despite the clamor and yelling all around me. The gun goes off, and the smoke clears, revealing the target.

Another miss.

I re-holster my gun as my paper target is taken down and replaced with one that isn’t littered with bullet holes. A young boy — no more than fourteen — bounces eagerly onto the platform to take my place. I give him an encouraging nod as I walk down off the platform and over to where Matt is standing, flirting with Donna Ray Simmons and not paying a bit of attention to the shooting contest. 

A loud shot goes astray, and Matt looks up wildly as a bullet whizzes past his ear. Donna Ray shrieks and throws herself onto Matt and I roll my eyes as he whispers something undoubtably charming in her ear, making her giggle. 

As I approach them, Matt springs away from Donna Ray, brushing himself off and fixing his hat brim. “Hey Kit, how’d it go?”

I nod towards the chalk scoreboard situated beside the platform where the contest is still underway. My name is written in the third highest spot, under Matt, who currently holds first place. Not surprising, but then again, it’s never a surprise when Matt wins.

Matt claps me on the back in congratulations, almost knocking me over. I laugh, slapping him back. Donna Ray pouts a few feet away, her long hazel hair swaying in the breeze, and her eyes that match her hair narrow as if she can murder me with a look. She’s never liked me, always thought of me as an annoying younger-brother type, and I don’t plan to make her think any different of me either.

I open my mouth to speak, but a surprised shriek escapes from someone else in the crowd, and my sarcastic comment dies in my throat. Matt and I both hurry into the crowd, which has rallied around the young girl who screamed, who is now laying splayed out on the ground, shocked. 

The sheriff bullies his way into the center of the fray, squatting down beside the girl, who is breathing heavily. “Miss Peters, are you alright? Can you tell me what’s wrong?” His voice is husky, and Cathy Peters shies away from him, as if afraid. 

Matt places a hand on my shoulder, and I look up at him, recognizing the expression on his face. He knows that something’s not right. His suspicion is proven when Cathy Peters leans towards the sheriff and whispers something that causes his face to pale. He grabs Cathy by her arm and hoists her up. 

“Alright everyone, move out of the way, I need to talk to Miss Peters in private.” The sheriff yells, leading Cathy, more gently now, towards his office across the street. 

The crowd disperses almost immediately, but Matt stays rooted where he is. “What do you think?” I ask, aware of the fact that he knows something important. 

Matt shrugs. “I’m not sure. I saw Cathy earlier, but she was talking to some tall blond I’d never seen before…” Matt continues talking, but my mind seems to fold in on itself, panicking. “Hey, Kit, you alright?” Matt shakes me slightly.

“Did the guy have a scar?” I ask, ignoring his question. My voice is shaking, and so is the rest of me.

“Yeah he did. It went across the right side of his head I think. Why, what’s going on Kit?” Matt’s eyes search mine, looking for answers that I can’t give him, because I thought I had shaken my past for good. 

Images flash through my mind, each one taking me deeper into the memories I vowed to forget. 

The rain. 

The dark street. 

The threats. 

The shootout.

The gunshots.

The bullets tearing through flesh. 

“Kit!” 

I blink, my eyes landing on Matt’s worried face, his hands on my shoulders. I force myself to breathe, about to tell Matt that I’m alright, when I see him. 

He’s standing in the shadows, but he’s close enough that I can pick out the important details. His tall stature. His blond hair. The scar that travels from his right temple to the back of his head. 

Suddenly the only thing I can do is run. I wrench Matt’s hands off my shoulders and spin on my heel, untying my horse and mounting him at the same time. Without looking back, I tear through town towards the ranch, my heart trying to canter out of my chest ahead of my horse. 

As soon as the ranch comes into view, I push my horse harder, dismounting without waiting for him to stop. I know Matt’ll kill me for running my horse like that, but getting away is all that seems important right now. 

I slam the door closed behind me and lock it, leaning my back against it and slowly sliding to the floor. My chest is heaving, and I bury my head in my hands, trying to force my resurfacing fears out of my mind. 

It’s been two years since I left that town. I thought I was safe here, after Matt gave me a place to stay and a partnership if I want it. I thought I could build a life here, leave my past behind and focus on the future. Now all that’s gone. 

Someone is pounding on the door, and I immediately wrap my hand around the gun in my hip holster, forcing myself to breathe evenly. The person on the other side of the door has resorted to kicking, and I duck behind the china cabinet, waiting for the intruder to enter.

Another few kicks, and the door flies open, splinters of wood peppering the floor. I brace myself for a barrage of bullets, but not a single shot is fired. The footsteps are loud, not quiet as if the intruder is trying to hide, and I heave a sigh of relief. 

“I’m over here Matt,” I call, and a few seconds later, Matt’s copper hair makes an appearance, followed by the rest of his lanky but muscular frame that yanks me out of hiding and into the center of the house.

“Are you alright?” Matt is out of breath, his chest heaving up and down as he re-holsters his gun and takes off his hat. 

“Yeah, just spooked,” I reply, fiddling with a small hole in my shirt. 

“Look Kit, up until now I haven’t asked you about where you came from or why.” Matt paces, squeezing his blue eyes shut and pressing his fist against his forehead. “But now, now I need to know because it’s putting us in danger, and as your partner, I feel like I deserve at least that much.”

He looks over at me, then nods towards the chairs by the fireplace, giving me no choice but to sit down. Matt sits down in the other chair, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees. It’s his listening pose, the same pose he assumes anytime he listens to a story from anyone, no matter what kind of story it is. 

I take a deep breath, my knee bouncing unintentionally. I’ve never told anyone this story, but now I have no choice. Not if I want to protect my friend, the man I know consider my brother. 

“It was two-and-a-half years ago. When it all started I was a few months away from being nineteen. I thought by then I would be a man, or at least old enough to get away from that rotten town. I was all alone by that point. Both my parents…” I breathe deeply, shutting my eyes and forging ahead. “They were already long gone, and I was alone. Until this…group came along. They were all at least three years older than me, but they took me in, made me feel like I belonged. So it took me a while to realize what they were, that they were outlaws. Or what the leader was planning. He was trying to take over the town, get them all on his side in order to free his brother, a murderer that was headed to our town to meet the circuit judge for his trial. The leader, Mitch Brannen, thought he could convince the town to let his brother go by using fear and money to get his way. It almost worked, but me and another guy…we weren’t willing to go along with Brannen.”

Matt is studying the emotions running rampant behind my brown eyes, trying to piece the story together in his head. “So, you tried to go against him? Just you and this other guy against an entire outlaw group?”

I nod, continuing before Matt can ask another question. If I get any more interruptions, I don’t think I’ll be able to finish. “I didn’t know they were outlaws. But once I figured out the truth, something inside me refused to let them take over the town, the only thing in my life that was still important and the only thing left that I had of my parents. So Randy, my friend, and I resorted to sneaking around at night, planting dynamite and wiping them out silently in alleyways” I laugh to myself. “We thought we were making real progress, until Brannen found out it was us. Then we had to watch our every move, we were sent threats and beaten almost every time we walked into town, but we wouldn’t stop, we couldn’t, because we were so close. Brannen’s brother was set to come in that next morning.”

Matt nods for me to continue. 

“Then it all went south. We were through with the threats, and I let my temper get the best of me. Brannen challenged us to a shootout that next day, but I got heated and told him to go ahead and get it over with, at midnight. He had just laughed, until he realized I was serious. Then he told me that I would get what was coming to me. Everyone stayed in town that night, waiting to see if their troubles were over or not. By midnight, it was raining so hard that I could barely see three feet in front of me. I was too stubborn to back down though, so I went out in the downpour with Randy beside me, both of us scared kids up against a professional gunslinger. Brannen shot first, and he hit Randy. He was dead before he hit the ground, and I was just so angry, so hurt, that I just started shooting in the dark. I heard groan and a thud, and I thought I had killed him. Until I saw him stand up and aim right for me, his head bleeding from where my bullet grazed him. So I ran, I stole a horse and ran. But he yelled after me. He told me that he would be following me, that he would find me no matter where I went, and that he would kill me for trying to stop him.”

Matt runs a hand through his hair, sighing. “So that’s why you’ve always been so easily spooked huh?” He laughs, then jerks his head up, looking out the window. 

“What is it?” I ask, jumping up. 

Matt shushes me and walks slowly toward the window in a crouch, pulling his gun out of its holster at the same time. Then I hear it. Footsteps that are coming from the front porch, the person’s boots stomping down on the halfway rotted planks. 

“Kit Young! I know you’re in there,” Brannen’s voice is just as deep and sinister as I remember. 

When I don’t move, a few bullets whizz into the house from the open doorway. “That was your warning kid. Either get out here and face me, or I’ll come in there to get you myself, and your friend too,”

Another bullet hits the wall.

“Alright, I’m coming out,” I yell, ignoring Matt’s glare and silent scoldings as I walk past him and into the front yard. 

Brannen holds a smoking pistol in his hands, grinning wickedly. “So, you seem to have learned your lesson from last time I see. You’re not willing to let someone else die for you again?” He laughs, his eyes yellow in the dying sunlight. 

I take a deep breath. “Brannen, it’s just you and me this time,” I say, daring to look him in the eye.

“Well, you better tell your friend that,” he warns, turning to shoot at the front porch, where Matt is now standing. 

The bullet hits him in the hand, and he drops his gun, cursing and tearing the bandanna from his neck in order to stop the bleeding.

“Matt!” I yell, frozen to my spot in the yard. 

“I’m alright Kit, it went clean through,“ he assures me, but his face gives away how much pain he’s in. 

The same anger from two years ago grips me again. “Brannen!” I yell, turning to face him. “This ends now,”

He laughs, but re-holsters his gun, stepping away from me until he’s about standing in the middle of the front yard. “Whatever you say kid,” he replies with a grin.

My fingers are barely brushing the end of my gun, waiting for Brannen to make the first move. In the span of a second, he whips his gun out and starts firing, one of his bullets catching me in the shoulder as I aim and fire, straight at his head. 

We both fall, and a deafening silence stretches across the yard. 

“Kit!” Matt leaps from the porch and runs over, trying to asses the damage the bullet did to my shoulder. “How stupid are you? He could’ve killed you,” Matt mutters, using my neckerchief to apply pressure to my bleeding shoulder. 

“But he didn’t,” I say, letting Matt help me to my feet. He rolls his eyes, talking to himself as I walk over to where Brannen lies, unmoving across the yard. 

Brannen’s eyes are glassy and empty, and a blood stain on the middle of his shirt reveals where the killing bullet struck. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Matt holster his gun. 

“Hey Matt?” I call over my shoulder. 

“Yeah Kit?” He jogs over to stand beside me, his had wrapped in a blood soaked bandanna.

“You shouldn’t have done it Matt,” I whisper. 

“What are you talking about?” He asks, but his tone lets it slip that he’s playing dumb.

“I aimed for his head, Matt. He was shot in the torso. You’ve always been a better shot than me, like earlier today at the contest,”

Matt sighs, placing a hand on my shoulder. “I couldn’t just stand there and watch him kill you Kit, you’re not just a business partner, you’re my brother,”

I push his hand off of me. “Well, you should’ve just let me die, because now they’ll be after you too,”

“Who are you talking about?”

I shake my head. “The rest of the gang. Once Brannen doesn’t show back up, they’ll know that he died and they’ll come after me, and now you too,”

Matt thinks for a moment. Then he speaks. “Kit, I don’t know why you have this bull-headed notion that you’re all alone, but I’m here to tell you that you’re wrong. I’m gonna stand with you, whether you like it or not, and we’ll take them all out.”

He says it with an air of confidence, so much so that it scares me, but also gives me strength I didn’t know I had. 

“Alright then,” I say, smiling, “but next time, at least let me get one shot in,”

Matt grins, “not on your life,”

The pounding of horse hooves from the other side of the hill can be heard, and Matt looks at me, knowing what it is without me having to tell him. He rolls his shoulders, straightening up and looking around the yard for anything that might be of use. 

“Well Kit, I guess you’ll get your shot sooner than you think,” Matt jokes, nudging my shoulder. “Come on, I think we’ll need more ammo in order to give our guests a proper welcome,”

I laugh, following him in the house, maybe for the last time. "You know, they may be more accustomed to dynamite,"

Matt grins, "Either way, they'll never know what hit 'em,"

The hoofbeats get louder as we ready ourselves, and suddenly, despite being this close to death, I've never felt more alive, or more free.