Dust

by Chris Miller

  Death’s Head Press

  Houston, Texas

  www.DeathsHeadPress.com

  Copyright © 2020 Chris Miller

  All Rights Reserved

  First Edition

  The story included in this publication is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  Cover Art: Justin T. Coons

  The “Splatter Western” logo designed

  by K. Trap Jones

  Book Layout: Lori Michelle

  www.TheAuthorsAlley.com

  BOOK 3

  This book is for Aliana:

  You gave me the title, and with it came the story. Thank you, babe. Now, dig those heels into the stirrups and hang on. The forecast is calling for rain and scattered body parts.

  This book is also for Cerberus (Mike, Patrick, Me):

  World Domination.

  PART I:

  On The Trail

  1

  Texas, 1879

  The blood dripped and slinked down the wall behind the man with the gaping head wound. The others around the table merely sat there, slack-jawed, their cards locked in their hands, cigarettes and cigars smoldering in the corners of mouths and between fingers, thin tendrils of blue smoke snaking into the air of the saloon. On the table before them lay a pile of money, bills and coins, and there was even a rather fine pocket watch, its tick-tick-ticking becoming the only audible sound now as the ringing in their ears receded.

  The watch belonged to the dead man with the giant hole in his head. You could see through it—the man’s head, not his watch—if you didn’t mind the stringy goo which slopped viscously through the hole, or the meaty gray pulp that slid slowly down the wall among the rivers of blood like macabre slugs.

  There was movement behind them, the shuffling of feet, and a grunt. The man behind the bar was going for something. Then came the sound of a cocking hammer.

  The man with the still-smoking gun produced a second revolver in his left hand and aimed it at the man behind the bar without ever turning his gaze from the shocked men at the table with him.

  “You’re in the process of making a poor decision there, partner,” the gunman said coldly. “I recommend you put that scatter gun back where you found it before I scatter your brains like Mr. Pocket Watch here.”

  He gestured to the dead man with his first revolver and finally turned his gaze to the man behind the bar. He could see the rest of the patrons of the saloon, all of them frozen in fear, clutching their drinks and women tightly to them. To a person, the expressions of their eyes were identical.

  Saucers.

  “What do you say, Hoss?” the gunman asked politely.

  The barman, a large and hairy sort—three hundred pounds if he was one—took a few moments to glance about the room, gulping audibly before slowly nodding and returning the double-barrel shotgun to its spot beneath the bar.

  “Excellent,” the gunman said, turning back to the men at the table. “Say, you boys want another round? I could go for another myself. Been riding all day. A man gets thirsty, especially in this time of history.”

  Some of the eyes at the table narrowed slightly at this, but none said a word.

  “Any takers?” the man asked, still holding his pair of six-shooters out. “Come on, it’s on me. Hoss? Round us up some beers here for my pals and me.”

  No one moved. No one spoke. No one acknowledged they’d heard the gunman. He turned his gaze back to the barman.

  “Go on, now,” he said and gestured with his gun. “We’re thirsty.”

  The spell over the barman seemed to break then and he began to shuffle awkwardly. He fumbled with some glasses under the bar—the chimes of glass clinking together and the still tick-tick-ticking of the dead man’s watch were the only sounds—and began pouring the drinks. The room remained thusly silent until the barman finally came and placed a glass before the gunman. Foam slopped over the brim and dripped to the table where it pooled around the base of the glass. With a shuddering sigh, he then placed one in front of each of the others at the table. No beer spilled from any of these.

  “That’ll do just fine, Hoss,” the gunman said, a pleasant smile on his face. “Now, you hustle on back to that bar and keep your customers happy.”

  The man did, a dull expression of fear on his face. The gunman returned his left-handed revolver to his hip, then picked up his beer. He looked around the table at the other men, none of whom had moved since Mr. Pocket Watch had been dispatched.

  “What should we drink to, fellas?” he asked them as he raised his glass.

  No one spoke.

  “Come on now, we’re just making acquaintance here, we gotta drink to something, right? I know, how about this?”

  He leaned forward and rested his revolver on the table but did not remove his hand. He met each one’s eyes in turn before he spoke.

  “Information.”

  He raised the glass to them all and drank deeply several gulps. A satisfied ‘aahhh’ accompanied the clunk of glass on wood as he roughly sat his glass down. No one joined him.

  “Boy, I can’t wait to get back to when they serve this stuff cold. So much better, you just have no idea.”

  The others just stared, confused astonishment on their faces.

  “Now,” he went on, nodding toward the dead man, “Mr. Pocket Watch here, he had information I need. But he was holding out. You see, I’ve been here for quite a few years now, and I know I’m getting close. But I ain’t there yet. That’s why I need some information. And, truth be known, I think you boys know about as much as Mr. Pocket Watch here. Every one of you. So that means I really only need one of you to get what I need. Now, I don’t see any reason for any more bloodshed here in Hoss’s fine establishment. So, I’ll ask you boys like I asked Mr. Watch: I’m looking for two things. A man who goes by the name of Dreary, and a little town called Dust.”

  He let the question hang in the air as he gazed around at the men. As he did, he took another long draw on his room temperature beer—and with the heat outside, room temperature was about eighty degrees, give or take—awaiting a response.

  Finally, he got one.

  The guy to his left, a small man wearing a pair of spectacles and a bowtie with his black vest, and sporting a pencil-thin mustache, gulped loudly, his throat clicking, and opened his mouth.

  “Good sir,” he began in a polite drawl, “this town you speak of, uh, Dust was it?”

  The gunman nodded.

  “Dust, yes, well,” the man coughed. “I can tell you I’ve never heard of the place, and that’s the honest truth. But this—”

  The gunman’s revolver rose from the table and aimed at the man’s face. His hands went up instinctively and his eyes nearly crossed to look down the barrel.

  “I better not catch the whiff of a lie come outta you, mister,” the gunman said flatly. “I’ve got business with Dreary and Dust, and I mean to see to it.”

  The man nodded frantically, his throat clicking some more.

  “Y-yes, I-I understand,” he said, near panic. “I-I was just saying this Dreary fellow, I think I may know where you can find—”

  “You watch your tongue, Leroy!” another man at the table said, the one sitting on the other side of the bowtie man named Leroy.

  The gunman’s gaze shifted to the
other man. He wore a ten-gallon hat and had a thick and bushy mustache he might have called a handlebar mustache where he’d come from, but these men would know nothing of that term.

  “I suggest you let Leroy talk, mister,” the gunman said. “We’re having ourselves a conversation here and you’re interrupting. Interrupting gentlemen when they’re conversing is rude. I don’t appreciate rude behavior.”

  The man just glared at him for a long moment, then finally looked to the table, clutching his fists in frustration. The gunman returned his gaze to Leroy and nodded for him to go on. The man’s throat clicked some more, and he continued.

  “Dreary, uh, there was a man come through here a couple weeks back. He was looking for this same town you are, this Dust place. None of us heard of it before, but Roscoe here,” he nodded in the direction of the rude man, “told him where he might find what he’s looking for. An old lady by the name of—”

  Roscoe move like lightning and there was an explosion of sound as Leroy’s skull exploded out of his right temple, showering a meaty pulp of brain and bone in a viscous, hot bath of sticky blood across the gunman’s face. A gasp flushed through the room like a rehearsed play, and Leroy’s lifeless meat-husk was toppling out of the chair to the floor, eyes crossed and tongue lolling.

  The gunman spat a wad of brain from his mouth as his revolver swung to Roscoe and a thunderous boom erupted from its barrel. Roscoe’s throat tore apart, flesh and sinew and blood slinging about the men on the table, ropes of crimson arcing into the air.

  The gunman thumbed the hammer on his revolver as Roscoe’s gun went off. A woman screamed behind them as the gunman fired a second time, this one taking off the top of Roscoe’s head as though it had been packed with TNT. Slushy pulps of gray and red erupted and spattered all about the room as more screams came.

  The gunman was aware of the barman making for the scatter gun once more and, with a sigh, drew his second revolver. The barman’s face seemed to burst as the round went through his cheek and exited his temple, every feature of the man’s face coming off as though torn away by an invisible specter.

  “Goddammit, Hoss, I warned ya!” the gunman snarled, swiveling around with both guns on the other two men at the table with him.

  They both stared, terror in their eyes, and looked from the barrels to each other, then back to the gunman.

  “Now,” the gunman said with a slight growl, “I hope we’ve weeded out all the rude folks here and can have a friendly fucking conversation. What do you say, boys?”

  They nodded emphatically and told the gunman everything he wanted to know. His frustration gave way to a satisfied grin as they told him what they knew. When they were done, he stood, holstering his guns, and he nodded to the two men.

  “Much obliged, gentlemen, much obliged. Could have been that easy from the start. Shame things had to go the way they did.”

  He leaned over and shoved the pile of money toward them, plucking the pocket watch from the pile and slipping it into his pocket.

  “Something to remember you boys by,” the gunman said with a smile. “Y’all feel free to split that amongst yourselves. I suppose I’ll be on my way now. I got gods to kill.”

  The remaining two men and the rest of the saloon stared at him incredulously, utter confusion upon their faces.

  “Just who in the hell are you, mister?” one of the men at the table said as the gunman’s silhouette filled the entrance, the swinging saloon doors opened to either side of him like a pair of wings.

  He turned to them with a smile they could barely see with sun at the man’s back. He tipped his hat to them with a nod.

  “Name’s Mr. James Dee,” he said. “And I ain’t from around here. But you’ll be damn glad I came before long.”

  Their confusion remained as he turned and stalked into the onset of dusk, his spurs chiming as he vanished from sight.

  2

  James Dee rode nearly a week in a southeasterly direction before coming to the place the men at the saloon had told him about. The place where the woman resided. The trail was hard, but he’d seen worse. He’d been through far worse terrains in places a universe away. At least here the terrain was recognizable. He knew it, understood it. Perhaps it wasn’t exactly the way he remembered it—and God-willing he would be able to see it that way again—but it felt closer to home than he’d been in a very long time.

  He was a large man, solidly built and taller than most. His broad shoulders nestled into his long coat as the sweat moistened and cooled his back. Beneath him, his steed made a sound as it blew through its lips, and he eased back the reins, slowing them to an easy walk. No need to run or gallop anymore. They were here. The place Dreary had been heading and the place where he would find the old woman who had the answers he needed.

  The gunman and his steed eased out of the piney woods to the dirt road leading into town. The trees thinned as they neared, and a sign made of planks of old wood stood before them as they crossed into the township.

  Winnsborough.

  A faint grin spread across his face as he read the sign and the dusty clops of his steed’s hooves carried them steadily into town. It wasn’t long before he found the tavern—the only one in this dirt-speck of a town—and he looped the reins about the post outside and headed in through the batwing doors.

  The place was largely deserted, being that it was midday and most folks would be working their fields and shops about town. Still, there were a few patrons. A man whose hair shined with oil played a happy tune on the piano at the far end of the establishment and a pair of old-timers sat at the bar, their considerable bellies holding it up as they nursed piss-yellow ales. The bartender, a thin man in a bowtie and a clean-shaven face who couldn’t have been more than twenty-five years old, wiped the inside of a glass with a towel. A woman in a fluffy dress that revealed the majority of her gargantuan bosom—and did little to hide the rest of her bulbous figure—leaned next to the old timers, presumably doing her best to peddle her pussy.

  All but the piano player looked up at him as he entered.

  He stood there in the frame of the entry, a hand on either swinging door, holding them open. He took them all in, gazing into their eyes in turn until each looked away. The piano continued its jingle, the player seemingly lost in his ditty.

  James stepped into the establishment and let the doors swing loosely behind him, flapping like the wings of a bat until they lazily settled into a crooked recollection of closed. He made his way to the bar, deliberately staying down near the end away from the old-timers and the whore. They all looked up at him again warily as his boots clonked on the planks, his spurs jingling quietly. He tipped his hat to them and nodded. They did not return the gesture. The old-timers turned back to their ales, the lady back to her prospects.

  The barkeep continued wiping down glasses, occasionally glancing up at James for a half-second at a time before turning back to the task at hand. The glasses nearly sparkled, and James knew the young man was simply avoiding his gaze.

  Finally, James rapped twice on the bar and said, “Barkeep.”

  The young man froze in his efforts, the towel deep in another glass, but he did not meet his gaze.

  James frowned and rapped once more.

  “Barkeep, a word if you will.”

  A moment passed before the young man finally tossed the towel down and placed the glass with the others. He then wiped his hands on his apron and shuffled slowly down to the end of the bar toward James. As he neared, he put his hands on the bar as though to steady himself, and finally looked him in the eye.

  “What can I get you, mister?” he asked, an annoyed but also wary tone in his voice.

  “Well,” James said, tipping his hat high on his forehead, “maybe you can get me a few things. Let’s start with a shot of whiskey and a glass of whatever that piss-water is the gentlemen down there are nursing.”

  A hint of a glare seemed to enter the young man’s face for just an instant, then it was gone. He went to work
pouring the drinks and returned, setting them down roughly in front of James. The beer sloshed and some foam spilled over the lip of the glass. James smiled at this, but only to himself.

  Barmen.

  “That’ll be a nickel, lest you wanna start a tab,” the barkeep said, the same annoyance and waver in his tone.

  James stared at him hard, a thin smile on his lips as he dug out a coin and flipped it to the bar where it bounced and flipped noisily for a moment before the young man reached out and slapped his hand down over it with a loud clap. His face was red, the forehead encroaching on purple.

  James’s hand shot out and clamped over the younger man’s wrist like an iron restraint. The barkeep’s face continued to redden, but the annoyed look started to border on shock as his eyes went wide.

  “Do I know you?” James asked as he leaned in close. The barkeep struggled to get his hand free, to absolutely no avail. He didn’t answer.

  “I asked you a question, boy,” James said as he pulled the kid’s arm across the bar. “Mighty rude to ignore a man when he asks a direct question, wouldn’t you say?”

  The young bartender’s face was all alarm now as he struggled in futile attempts to free himself of James’s grip. “I-I never seen you before in my life, mister!” he said as he pulled with his arm. It went nowhere.

  “That’s exactly what I was thinking too,” James said. “I’s thinking to myself, ‘I ain’t never seen this boy in my life, yet he’s acting like I come in here and shit on his breakfast.’ Seeing as I did not come in here and shit on your breakfast, what do you say you cut the tough guy act with the stranger in town and act like a goddamned gentleman, sound like a deal?”

  The younger man quit struggling, his face flushing of color, and he sighed. After another moment, he nodded a few times.

  “Excellent,” James said and released his arm. The man immediately began massaging his wrist.

  “Will there b-be anything else, mister?” he asked, averting his eyes.

  “As a matter of fact, there will,” James said as he threw back the shot of whiskey and took a long draw on the beer. He was pretty sure it was piss. “I’m looking for some information, and in all my dealings it seems the best place to find information is the local tavern. If the barkeep don’t know, usually one of the patrons do. Seeing as your patronage is pretty thin right now, I figured I’d just start with you.”