Flies always found the dying before the vultures did. Silus swatted one away from his ear boots, sinking into horse manure and wet clay outside the saloon. Inside, someone screamed. It wasn’t a hero’s call to action. It was just another damn headache in a town smelling of piss.
Trement was a dying mining camp that had dug too deep and found nothing but rock and misery. The saloon, a crooked structure called the copper keg, sat warped on its foundation, leaning heavily to the left as if exhausted by its own existence. Silas pushed through the swinging doors. The hinges shrieked a sharp scraping noise like a rusted nail being wrenched from wet timber.
Inside the air hit him like a physical blow. was a suffocating humid wall of stale body odor spilled cheap rye and the sharp alkaline tang of chewing tobacco spat into unwashed brass spatoon. He didn’t look at the patrons, huddled in the dim light. He didn’t want to know them. He just wanted to cod a bowl of anything hot and silence.
He limped toward the bar. His left boot dragged a fraction of an inch, a nagging souvenir from a cattle dispute in Abalene a decade ago. It flared up into a deep grinding ache whenever the barometric pressure dropped, and it had been raining in Tmont for three solid days. He leaned against the sticky mahogany bar.
The bartender, a balding man with pale, nervous eyes and liver spots, mapping his forehead, slid a cloudy glass across the scarred pine. Silas picked it up. His swollen knuckles popped softly in the dim light. He took a sip. The whiskey tasted of iodine, copper, and regret. It burned going down, settling in his empty stomach like a swallowed coal.
Then the noise started. Silas closed his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose. Just drink. Swallow the fire and walk away. In the back corner, near a boarded up window that leaked rainwater, four men were amusing themselves. They wore long canvas dusters, heavy and stiff with dried gray mud. They held the sprawling, relaxed posture of men who hadn’t been told no in a long time.
The girl clearing their table couldn’t have been more than 17. She wore a wool coat three sizes too large, the sleeves rolled up to reveal wrists as thin as kindling. Her hands were raw chapped red from lie soap and freezing water. Silas watched her through the mirror behind the bar. The glass was cracked diagonally, splitting the reflection of the men into jagged, distorted halves.
One of the men, a thick-necked brute with a jagged scar bisecting his left eyebrow, grabbed her wrist. The movement wasn’t lightning fast, but it was heavy, deliberate, and final. The girl gasped, dropping a tin pitcher. It hit the floorboards with a loud, hollow clatter that made Silus grit his teeth.
“Ain’t you going to stay and pour us another sparrow?” the scarred man muttered. His voice was thick, wet with fleg. “Let’s call him Wade. Let me go,” she said. Her voice didn’t tremble. It was flat, exhausted. It was the sound of a girl who had been grabbed before who knew the mechanics of this routine.
That bothered Silas far more than if she had dissolved into tears. Another man, leaner, with a face like a starved ferret, kicked the fallen pitcher under the table. “Wade asked you a question. It’s polite to look a man in the eye. Silas stared down into his cloudy whiskey. The amber liquid sloshed slightly, catching the light of a flickering kerosene lamp as the floorboards vibrated beneath the heavy boots of the men. He took another sip.
It tasted worse the second time. He argued with himself. She’s nothing to you. This rotting town is nothing to you. You intervene. You catch a bullet in the lung. And for what? The gratitude of a barkeep who will pawn your boots before your body is cold. The girl yanked her arm back hard. WDE’s massive grip held firm.
She twisted her worn leather boot slipping on the damp sawdust covered floor. With her free hand, she grabbed a heavy ceramic beerstein from the table and brought it down awkwardly toward WDE’s head. She was clumsy, driven by panic rather than skill. The stein glanced off WDE’s shoulder and shattered against the edge of the table, splashing tepid ale across his canvas coat.
The saloon went dead silent. The murmur of conversation died. The scratching of a fiddle in the corner abruptly ceased. The only sound was the drip drip drip of stale beer falling from the table edge into the sawdust. WDE slowly looked at his wet sleeve. Then he looked at the girl. He didn’t yell. He didn’t curse. He simply backhanded her.
The crack of his heavy calloused knuckles against her cheekbone was sickeningly loud in the quiet room like a dry branch snapping under a heavy boot. The girl fell hard. Her temple struck the edge of a wooden chair on the way down, and she crumpled to the floor, limp looking entirely too small. She didn’t move.
Blood dark and sluggish began to pull from her nose, mixing with the spilled ale in the dirt. Silus let out a long rattling sigh through his nose. The dull ache in his knee suddenly felt like a spike driven into the joint. The fire in his stomach turned sour. He didn’t feel righteous fury. He didn’t feel like a savior or an instrument of divine justice.
He felt overwhelmingly crushingly tired. He hated them, not just for what they did, but for making him deal with it. “Amos,” Silas said to the bartender, his voice barely above a grally whisper. The bartender wouldn’t meet his eyes. He stared rigidly at the floor, furiously, wiping a relatively clean spot on the bar with his filthy rag. “Ain’t my business, mister.
Ain’t yours neither.” Silas turned his back to the bar, resting his elbows heavily on the sticky pine edge. He looked across the room at the four men. They were laughing now, a low, wet, cruel sound. WDE was wiping the ale off his coat, annoyed, but already losing interest in the unconscious girl at his boots.
The lean man was nudging her limp arm with his toe, checking to see if she would twitch. At the table nearest the swinging doors sat an older man, wearing a heavy canvas apron, nursing a mug of black coffee. A wooden folding rule, and a handful of iron nails stuck out of his breast pocket. The town carpenter. Silas pushed off the bar.
His joints popped in the oppressive quiet. The sound was small, but in the suffocating tension of the saloon, it drew eyes. He walked toward the carpenter. His boots fell heavy on the floorboards, a slow dragging cadence. Thud, scrape, thud. He stopped at the carpenter’s table.
The older man looked up his eyes, roomy, bloodshot, and frightened. He smelled of fresh cut pine and harsh wood glue, a clean, honest scent that temporarily cut through the saloon’s filth. Silas reached into his vest pocket, his thumb brushing against the cold, familiar brass of his spare cartridges. He fished out a gold double eagle and tossed it onto the table.
The coin spun for a second before settling with a dull clink next to the coffee mug. “Prepare four coffins,” Silas said. His voice wasn’t a booming theatrical declaration. It was conversational, flat, utterly devoid of energy, a simple, weary transaction. The carpenter stared at the gold coin, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallowed hard, then slowly looked up at Silus’s weathered face.
Across the room, the cruel laughter evaporated. The silence that rushed in to fill the void was heavy, thick as unspun wool. The four men by the back wall turned their movements synchronizing like a pack of stray dogs catching the scent of fresh blood. “What did you say, old man?” Wade asked. He took a heavy step over the girl’s legs, his hand dropping casually, instinctively toward the worn grips of the heavy colt strapped to his right thigh. Silas didn’t turn his head.
He kept his tired eyes on the carpenter. “Make them pine. No need for brass fittings. They won’t appreciate it. You got a loud mouth for a drifter with a limp. The lean man sneered, shifting his weight, his hand hovering near his belt. A third man, sporting a faded red bandana around his neck, slowly slid his hand under his duster, reaching for a shoulder rig. Silas finally turned.
He looked at them. Really looked at them. They were young, maybe late 20s, flushed with cheap liquor and the specific fragile arrogance that only comes from never having met a man who didn’t care if he lived or died. “The girl,” Silas said, his voice grading like two stones rubbing together. “Leave her.
Walk out the door. Keep walking until you hit the salt flats.” Wade hawkked and spat a wad of brown tobacco juice onto the floorboards. And if we don’t, Silas felt the familiar cold creeping in his veins, the slowing of his pulse, the hyperfocus that always felt like a curse. He hated this part. He hated the mechanics of it, the brutal, unforgiving math of violence.
The man with the red bandana moved first. It was a jerky telegraphed pull fueled by whiskey and nerves. Silus drew. He didn’t fan the hammer like a dime novel gunslinger. He pulled his heavy Remington, leveling it with a stiff locked elbow. The gun weighed 3 lb, but in his arthritic hand, it felt like an anvil. He fired.
The noise was catastrophic in the enclosed space. A deafening physical roar that slammed against the walls rattled the tin roof and shattered the remaining glass in the mirror. A thick plume of acrid gray black powder smoke instantly blinded half the room. The man in the red bandana didn’t fly backward. He just folded.
His knees gave out instantly as a heavy lead slug tore through his collarbone, shattering bone and severing the artery. He dropped with a wet, sickening thud, screaming a high, reedy sound that pierced the violent ringing in Silas’s ears. Wade drew his colt, firing blindly through the swirling smoke. The bullet hissed past Silas’s ear so close he felt the unnatural heat of it and splintered the heavy oak door frame behind him.
Jagged wood shards sprayed against Silas’s cheek, drawing immediate stinging blood. Silas cocked his Remington. The hammer pinched his stiff thumb. He stepped to the left, his bad boot sliding slightly in a patch of spilled liquor. He caught his balance-sighted Wade’s chest through the haze and squeezed the trigger. Click. A misfire, a dead primer.
Silus’s stomach dropped into his boots. You stupid, tired old fool. Wade grinned through the smoke, pulling back the hammer of his colt again. Gotcha. Silas didn’t panic. He didn’t have the energy or the breath for it. Instead of trying to reccock his heavy gun, he lunged forward, throwing his entire weight and his left shoulder into WDE’s chest just as the man fired.
WDE’s shot went wild. blasting a hole in the ceiling, showering them both in dry plaster and rat droppings. They crashed into a poker table, the wood splintering loudly under their combined weight. Wade smelled of rotten onions, unwashed hair, and sour sweat. He was incredibly strong, thrashing violently, trying to bring the heavy barrel of his gun down on Silas’s skull.
Silas brought his right knee up the bad knee, driving it viciously into WDE’s groin. Pain flared blindingly up Silas’s own leg, making him see flashes of white light, but Wade gagged his grip loosening for a fraction of a second. Silas shoved the barrel of his Remington hard against Wade’s rib cage, pinned the hammer back with his palm, and pulled the trigger.
The gun fired this time. The muffled blast ignited Wade’s canvas coat, the dry fabric instantly catching fire from the muzzle flash. Wade went rigidly stiff, his eyes rolling back in his head before slumping dead off the broken table. Two down, Silas rolled off Wade’s body, gasping for air, tasting sharp sulfur copper and ash on his tongue, his bad knee screamed in pure agony.
Unable to hold his weight, he scrambled desperately on his hands and knees behind the overturned bar, just as the lean man and the fourth thug opened fire, chewing the mahogany wood into flying splinters inches above his head. Silas lay flat on his stomach behind the overturned section of the bar, pressing his cheek against the damp sawdust caked floorboards.
The wood smelled of stale beer, old vomit, and the sharp chemical bite of lie. Above him, the air was being methodically dismantled by hot lead. Heavy point45 caliber slugs tore through the thick mahogany bar top, punching jagged craters into the wood and raining sharp toothpick-sized splinters down onto his neck and shoulders. Each gunshot was a physical slap to his eardrums, layering a high continuous ringing over the chaos. He didn’t move.
He couldn’t. His left knee felt as though it had been packed with ground glass and set on fire. The pulse in his leg throbbed with a sickening heavy rhythm competing with the frantic hammering in his chest. He closed his eyes, tasting the metallic tang of blood from the deep scratch on his cheek mixed with the sulfurous ash of black powder coating his tongue.
Three rounds left, he thought. The heavy Remington dug into his palm. His knuckles were white slick with sweat. He forced himself to breathe through his nose. In, out, let them empty their cylinders. A massive jar of pickled eggs caught by a stray bullet exploded on the shelf directly above him.
A waterfall of stinging, pungent brine and chunks of pale rubbery eggs cascaded over the edge of the bar, soaking his shoulder and splashing into his eyes. The vinegar burned violently. Silas gritted his teeth, his jaw muscles cramping, refusing to let out a sound. It was humiliating, pathetic, and filthy. This wasn’t a duel at high noon. It was a butchery in a sewer.
Keep him pinned, Jessup. A voice barked. It was the fourth man. Let’s call him Harlon. His voice was higher now, stripped of its earlier whiskey soaked, arrogant draw. It was laced with the frantic, reedy pitch of a man who suddenly realized mortality applied to him. Harlland’s boots crunched heavy and fast over shattered glass.
He was flanking right, moving toward the open end of the bar where Silas’s legs were exposed. Jessup, the lean man, stayed back blindly, fanning his revolver, wasting lead on the thickest part of the wood. Silas wiped the burning brine from his eyes with the back of his dirty sleeve. He shifted his weight and a sharp, breathtaking spike of agony shot up his left thigh.
He swallowed a groan, dragging himself backward by his elbows, his boot sliding uselessly in the mud and spilled liquor. He didn’t try to stand. He knew his knee would buckle and he’d be dead before he hit the ground a second time. Instead, he rolled onto his right side, bracing his back against the base of the bar, and looked at the thin decorative pine paneling that faced the patrons.
It was barely half an inch thick. Through a narrow gap where the paneling had splintered, Silas saw movement. The scuffed mudcake toe of a brown leather boot. Harlon. Silas didn’t wait for the man to round the corner. He didn’t issue a warning or demand a surrender. He simply leveled the heavy barrel of his Remington at the pine paneling, tracking the movement of the boots, aiming waist high.
He thumbmed the hammer back. The click was swallowed by Jessup’s covering fire. Silus squeezed the trigger. The gun roared, bucking violently in his tired grip. The bullet punched through the thin pine with a sharp crack, spraying pale wood chips outward. On the other side, Harlon’s forward momentum stopped instantly. He didn’t fly backward.
He simply folded as if his skeleton had been abruptly removed. The heavy lead slug had caught him in the lower abdomen, shattering his pelvis and ripping through the soft tissue of his bowels. Harlon hit the floor like a sack of wet grain. A second later, the screaming started. It wasn’t a heroic shout or a defiant curse.
It was a guttural, bubbling shriek that tore out of Harland’s throat, a primitive anim animalistic noise of total, incomprehensible agony. He thrashed in the sawdust, his hands clutching desperately at his ruined stomach, his boots drumming a frantic, meaningless rhythm against the floorboards. The smell hit the air almost immediately.
a thick copper heavy stench of arterial blood mixing with the foul, unmistakable odor of open bowels. The gunfire from the other side of the room abruptly ceased. The saloon descended into a horrifying echoing quiet broken only by Harlland’s wet, ragged wailing and the steady drip drip drip of rainwater leaking through the roof.
Silas lay still, his breath rasping in his throat. He felt nauseous. He hated this. He hated the mechanics of tearing a human body apart. He hated the sounds they made when they realized the damage was permanent. He let his head fall back against the wood, waiting for his racing heart to slow down. Two rounds left.
One man standing. Harlon. Jessup’s voice cracked. It was a small, fragile sound, entirely stripped of bravado. Harlon, get up. Haron didn’t answer. He just gurgled a wet rattling sound as his thrashing slowed to weak twitches. The dark pool of blood beneath him spread rapidly, seeping into the dry sawdust like water into a sponge.
Silas heard the unmistakable sound of Jessup’s boots retreating. The lean man was shuffling backward his steps, erratic slipping on the slick floor. Panic had fully set in. Silas forced himself to move. He reached up his fingers, gripping the heavy, splintered edge of the mahogany bar. He needed to stand. He needed to finish this before Jessup found his nerve again, or worse, found a hostage.
He pulled himself up. The agony in his left knee was blinding. White hot spots danced at the edges of his vision, and for a terrifying second, he thought he was going to black out. He leaned heavily against the wood, his chest heaving, his right hand gripping the Remington so tightly his fingers went numb. He felt ancient.
He felt like a rusted piece of machinery grinding itself to dust. He looked over the top of the barricade. The smoke had thinned clinging to the ceiling and lazy gray ribbons. Wade lay charred and dead across the splintered poker table. The man in the red bandana was a motionless lump near the wall. Harlon was curled into a fetal position, his breathing shallow and erratic, dying in a puddle of his own filth.
And then there was Jessup. The lean man had backed himself into the far corner near the boarded up window. His face was the color of old parchment slick with greasy sweat. His eyes were wide white and frantic, darting from the corpses of his friends to the bleeding, exhausted man leaning over the bar.
Jessup looked down. The girl the young waitress they had assaulted was stirring. She groaned softly, pushing herself up onto her elbows, a thick string of blood hanging from her nose, dripping onto her oversized coat. Jessup lunged. He grabbed her by the collar of her wool coat hauling her up with frantic, terrified strength.
The girl choked a brief surprised cry escaping her lips before Jessup jammed the barrel of his colt against her temple. Don’t, Jessup screamed, his voice, breaking into a hysterical screech. Drop it. Drop the gun, you old bastard, or I blow her head clean off. I swear to God. Jessup was shaking.
His entire body vibrated with adrenaline and terror. The barrel of his gun rattled against the girl’s skull. He was entirely unpredictable, a cornered, rabid dog. Silas didn’t lower his gun. He rested his left forearm on the top of the bar to steady his trembling right hand, leveling the sights on Jessup’s face. Silas looked at the girl.
Her eyes were halfopen, dazed. But as she registered the cold steel against her head and the dead men on the floor, a profound, weary resignation washed over her face. She didn’t scream. She didn’t beg. She just closed her eyes, accepting that in Tmont, this was simply how things ended. That resignation twisted the knife in Silas’s gut.
It fueled a cold, exhausting anger. “Let her go, son,” Silas said. His voice was a harsh croak, barely loud enough to carry across the room. He didn’t sound intimidating. He just sounded utterly tired. “Drop it!” Jessup sobbed, spit flying from his lips, tears cutting tracks through the soot on his cheeks. “I’m walking out of here. I’m taking her.
and I’m walking out. Silas knew the math. Jessup’s finger was twitching on the trigger. If Silas tried to talk him down, Jessup’s frayed nerves would snap. He would squeeze out of pure reflexive panic. There was no reasoning with a man drowning in his own fear. Silas inhaled slowly, filling his lungs with the stench of the room.
He centered the heavy front sight of the Remington on the bridge of Jessup’s nose. But Silas’s arm was heavy. His muscles burned with fatigue, and his bad knee was giving way. His hands were shaking. He couldn’t guarantee a clean head shot. If he missed by an inch, he’d kill the girl. Silas lowered his aim, shifting it 2 in to the left, away from the girl’s head, targeting the exposed meat of Jessup’s right shoulder where his arm clamped around her neck.
He didn’t hold his breath. He just pulled the trigger. The final gunshot sounded hollow. a flat crack that echoed dullly in the aftermath of the previous carnage. The heavy lead ball smashed into Jessup’s right collar bone. The impact was devastating. Bones splintered into shrapnel, tearing through muscle and severing the subclavian artery.
Jessup’s arm went instantly unnaturally limp. The colt dropped from his useless fingers, hitting the floor with a heavy thud. Jessup didn’t scream. The air was violently forced from his lungs. He stumbled backward, his grip on the girl vanishing. He hit the wall and slid down his left hand, coming up to clutch his ruined shoulder.
Bright, frothy arterial blood pumped furiously between his fingers, spraying down the front of his canvas duster in rhythmic, horrifying spurts. The girl dropped to her hands and knees, coughing violently, dragging herself away from the dying man. Silas stood there for a long moment, the smoking gun hanging loosely at his side. He watched Jessup’s eyes roll back.
The frantic pumping of blood, slowing as the lean man drowned on dry land, sliding into the dark. It took 30 seconds for Jessup to stop moving. Harlon had gone quiet a minute before that. The saloon was dead silent again, save for the rain on the tin roof. Silas slowly, agonizingly limped around the bar. Every step was a negotiation with gravity and pain.
He walked past Wade’s charred body, stepping over the puddle of Harlland’s blood. He stopped next to the girl. She was sitting against the leg of an intact table, wiping the blood from her mouth with the back of her trembling hand. She looked up at him. Her eyes were hard older than they should be. She didn’t say thank you.
She didn’t weep with gratitude. She just looked at him, recognizing the violence in him, recognizing that he was just a different kind of monster than the ones lying on the floor. Silas didn’t offer his hand. He knew she wouldn’t want it. He reached into his vest pocket, pulled out a single silver dollar, and tossed it onto the table near her.
It was for the ruined pitcher. It was a pathetic gesture, but it was all he had left to give. He turned his back on her and limped toward the front doors. The old carpenter was still sitting at his table, frozen in place, his coffee long gone cold. He was staring at the carnage, his face ashen, clutching his wooden folding rule like a talisman. Silas stopped at the table.
He looked down at the gold double eagle, still sitting next to the empty mug. Silas swallowed the bile in his throat, the metallic taste of the gunsmoke lingering like a curse. “Four,” Silas rasped, not looking at the old man. He pushed through the swinging doors. The hinges shrieked their rusty protest. The cold wet air of Tmont hit him in the face, smelling of horse manure, wet clay and rain.
It was a miserable smell, but as Silas stepped out into the mud, pulling his coat tight against the chill, it was the best thing he had smelled all day. If this gritty tale of survivalheavy iron and reluctant justice kept you on the edge of your seat, don’t ride off just yet. Hit that like button and share this video with your fellow Western fans.
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