by Ron Lewis
shoot for shit! How could I have been so stupid as to believe someone called Two Tongues? All this passed through his mind as his life flowed out between his fingers. Falling face down in the dirt, legs and arms trembled and fluttered—then movement ceased. The man bled out in a short time as the town marshal ran up, a shotgun in hand.
“Fair fight, the man fired first. Mr. Meeker returned fire,” the bystanders spoke in agreement to the marshal.
They rolled the man over; the onlookers gawked down at him. Women seemed flushed with some excitement, while the men were giddy at having seen a gunfight. This attitude always perplexed Meeker—why people found death so interesting.
“Who is he, Mr. Meeker?” the marshal asked him.
“I have never laid eyes on him before in my life,” Meeker responded to the officer. No one knew the man. He was just another nameless body for the graveyard.
“We could just put ‘Stupid’ on his tombstone,” one man joked. The men chuckled in a nervous manner while the women just rolled their eyes.
“Well, he intended to do you harm. That is all I need to know. I will speak to the judge in the morning. You can attend or not, it’s up to you, justifiable I’m sure will be his finding,” the marshal told him.
Michelle cried and puked that night. She threw the puke from the basin out the window of the hotel. She slept little through the night. Michelle Tanner rolled around in her bed in a fitful, vain attempt to get comfortable. What little sleep she got was invaded by nightmares of the man’s face, filled with the fear of dying. All night Michelle Tanner heard that awful sound in her sleep. That tortured, wet sucking sound as he tried to breathe, coupled with the sick gurgling and gushing sounds as the blood squirted from his wound.
Something changed in Michelle that night. One could say she grew up; perhaps she realized how far she had to go. The death of that nameless soul hit her hard. Michelle realized the trail that might take her places she had not intended to go.
Next day, they attended the hearing. Leaving afterward, the pair mounted their horses in silence; turning their mounts, the pair moved out of town westward—toward their future. They rode past men laying the rails that soon the trains would run on, moving the railroad further west.
Meeker and Michelle were riding side by side. Meeker mounted on a pure white horse named Star, a big Morgan; Shell straddled her buckskin dun she called Mary Todd, a fine American Quarter Horse. Meeker tried to remember the man and wondered what wrong he had done him. Michelle wanted to forget what had happened.
“Daniel Anthony Hannover,” Meeker said, breaking the silence. “Not the man I killed but the one I’m going to kill. He is a limy bastard, known more commonly as Two Tongues; the Indians named him aptly. He is a liar of the first order. The Crow call him Bone Picker. His taste in food is the reason for that name. I’ll spare you the full explanation of the reason for that appellation. He raped and killed my wife and murdered my boy, then went bragging about it to friends of mine. He came over from England about fifteen years ago, a necessary move I’m told. The blackguard has been a hired assassin most of the time since he first arrived. I had me a run-in with him the year or two before I went to make war. I reckon he held a grudge, taking out his revenge on my family rather than me. Hurting me all that much more by doing so.” He spat a thick stream of tobacco juice out the side of his mouth.
“He dares me to do something about it. Thinking on it, maybe that feller that I murdered yesterday has something to do with him.” He stopped talking for a minute. Cleared his throat and continued. “Do something I will—I’ll kill him, by God I will. “There ain’t nothing you can say or do,” will change that fact. Come hell or high water … I’ll kill him dead. Not fast, not like that man yesterday. I want him to have a slow, painful death, giving him time to know.” He paused a moment and then faced Michelle. “I’m taking from him what he took from them,” again he paused and spoke the next word with slow deliberation, “ev—ery—thing!”
Tears streaked down Meeker’s face. “If you do not have the constitution for this, Miss Michelle Tanner, then you best leave my company now.”
“I’ll go with you to the end. Whatever you instruct, I will do. I’ll help you track him, I’ll even help you kill him…if you want.” Moved nearly to tears, Michelle Tanner meant the words she said. Still, Michelle would rather see him in the hands of the law.
“You just go with me. I find you a comfort to me. I wonder if Denver City has changed much. He is or was there. By God, we will know more in ten or twelve days. We will ride hard. How is that packhorse back there? Think he can take a fast trot?”
As the pair rode off, an old Indian watched them. Buffalo Head wanted to talk to them. He decided he would wait and come on them at their camp. He had a proposition to make to them, but that is another story.
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GET THE ENTIRE MICHELLE TANNER GOING WEST SERIES AT THESE RETAILERS
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1 – Ambush at Kansas City
2 – The Deserters
3 – Hangman’s Knot
4 – Thunder in Colby
5 – The Ghosts of Mountain View
6 – The Packer Sisters: Desperados
7 – Two Tongues
8 – The Bone Picker (due for release 2017)
