vulture wind

Vulture Wind

An experimental short story/work in progress/western

© Christoffer Petersen, 2021

The man pulled back the hammer on his revolver, another Colt made for the army, and leaned around the door. He paused as if he was listening to something, then turned his head to look at Cal.

“She’s coughing,” he whispered. “Inside the stall.”

“Step to my left,” Cal said. “I’ll go right.”

The girl held her breath and licked a spot of blood from her lips as she slipped the revolver through the stall’s slatted gate. She rested it there, tucked both her index fingers around the trigger, and waited.

“One more step,” Cal said.

The girl dipped her head to look beneath her fringe. She wanted to brush the hair from her eyes but couldn’t let go of the gun. She pulled the trigger the second the man stepped into view.

The bullet slammed into the man’s chest, flipping him onto his butt as the horses shied, screaming and snorting, and kicking a cloud of dust out of the stalls to blow up the length of the barn. The man sat there for a second, before keeling over onto his side to die, just as Cal fired the first of the two shotgun shells into the stall.

The girl screamed as the wooden wall splintered into two halves. The free half crashed onto the barn floor as she rolled out of the way, and under the wall into the next stall. She slipped in the shit and dust covering the floor, ducking her head as the horse kicked, before crawling beneath its belly and into the next stall as Cal fired the second barrel.

The wall between the stalls took most of the buckshot, but a few balls of lead puckered the side of the horse, throwing the beast into a frenzy as it kicked open the gate and whirled into the barn. Cal dropped the empty shotgun as the horse charged towards him. He leapt through the door, rolling clear of the horse as it galloped into the paddock and leaped the fence.

“Cal,” shouted Sam, from the rear of the barn. “You all right?”

“I’m fine. But those two friends of yours are dead.”

“She killed ‘em?”

“That’s right.”

“So what are we going to do?”

“We’re gonna kill her back,” Cal said.

He stood up and brushed the dirt from his shirt. Cal reached for the new revolver he bought in town and tugged it out of his holster. He cursed the feel of it in his right hand and swapped it into his left. It was awkward, just like the fight between him and the girl, when he shot her horse and leaped off his own. He wondered at the time if all Apache women were taught to fight when they were just little girls, or if it came naturally? But try as he might, as they fought at the foot of Roberts Pass, he couldn’t get a grip on her. And when he did, pressing his fingers around her chin, she bit his index finger to the bone, severing it at the second joint. That’s when she kicked him in the crotch and grabbed his gun.

“She’s a fighter,” he said, as he hefted the gun in his left hand. “But then, ain’t we all?”

“Cal?” Sam said.

“Yeah?”

“The boys are working on something.”

“What’s that?”

Cal’s nose twitched as he caught the first scent of smoke.

To be continued…

Vulture Wind

An experimental short story/work in progress/western

© Christoffer Petersen, 2021

Cal waited for the bearded man, Sam, to climb over the paddock gate. He nodded for him to keep going, around to the right of the barn. He sent two men to the door, and the other three to the left. He’d seen this kind of barn before, and there was usually a large door on the side. One of the men whistled when he found it.

“All right,” Cal said to the two men in front of him. “Open that door.”

“You said she had a gun?” said the shorter of the two. “Your gun?”

“That’s right.” Cal broke the barrel of the shotgun, thumbing the dust from the shells as he nodded. “What of it?”

“You want us to just open the door?”

“You’re scared now, huh, laughing man?”

“I ain’t scared,” the man said. “I just don’t wanna get shot, is all.”

Cal snapped the shotgun closed with a click. He tucked the butt into his shoulder and fiddled his middle finger onto the trigger. It was awkward, but no more so than trying to shoot left-handed.

“I got you covered. Go on now.”

The man took a step closer to the door and nodded for his partner to open it.

The girl twitched behind the door, crawling back from the peephole. The door shuddered as the men outside took hold of the handle. The girl coughed, doubling over, searching for breath, as the horses in the stalls behind her fidgeted and snorted.

“She’s right there,” said one of the men.

The girl caught her breath and grasped the revolver in both hands. She brought it up to her chest, and then stretched her arms like she had seen white men do. She curled two fingers around the trigger, and when the men opened the door, she squeezed.

The kick threw her back into the dust and straw on the barn floor, but she didn’t let go of the gun. The girl scrabbled to her knees, pushed off the floor with one hand, and darted into the first stall. It was empty. She tucked in against the side and listened to the man outside as he cursed the girl and God, and Cal Pine for ever roping him into his God-damned posse.

“She shot me, and I’m dying, Cal. It’s all your damn fault. All of it.”

The man said a whole lot more, but Cal stepped around him, pointing the shotgun into the barn, lifting his chin to get the laughing man to step away from his wounded partner and go inside the barn.

“I got you covered,” Cal said.

“That’s what you said before.”

“Well, this time I mean it. Now, get to it.”

To be continued…

Vulture Wind

An experimental short story/work in progress/western

© Christoffer Petersen, 2021

“And just like that, she stabbed him with a hot poker in the eye,” Cal said.

Maybe, she thought, that was why his eyes were always glowing in the dreams? Glowing and spitting like bloody embers.

“She killed Twice Henry, and then she got young Dean Walker about a minute after that.”

The young man had been faster than Twice Henry Scott. The girl could still feel the grip of his hands around her wrist, the pinch of her skin as her twisted his fingers like he was wringing water from a rag. She kicked him in his shins, but only caught the lip of his long leather boots. When she swung her free hand, he clapped it away, tried to grab her arm, but she ducked and weaved away from him. He still had her hooked by the one wrist, but he was too busy trying to grab her to see her draw the pistol from his holster. It was the first time she had fired a gun, and she dropped it as soon as the bullet left the barrel.

“Gut shot,” Cal said, jabbing his stubby finger towards the barn. “Doc said there was nothing he could do for him. Now, I don’t doubt it hurt worse than lightning, but I think the whole town heard young Dean Walker beg for his life that night. But there weren’t no one who could help him – not the Doc, not God… Even the Devil let him linger, just until he was ready.” Cal paused to look at each of the men. “You understand what I’m saying? You understand that this ain’t just some girl. Most of you have got girls. She,” he said, with another jab at the barn. “She ain’t like your girls. She’s wild. She’s a killer, and there ain’t nothing we can do to bring her back into the good Lord’s graces. No,” Cal said, with a shake of his head. “It’s up to us to stop her before more good men die. Before more men get maimed. She’s a murderer and a thief, and tonight she dies.”

The girl’s lungs failed then, with a cough that she couldn’t control. She caught the spots of blood on her hand, as she pressed her fingers to her mouth, and that was when Cal turned to stare at the barn.

“Oh, and one more thing,” he said. “She’s already dying, if that helps them that’s squeamish. Think about that. She’s already dead. We’re just making certain, that’s all. Now,” he said, pointing to the left and right of the barn. “Get to it.”

To be continued…

Vulture Wind

An experimental short story/work in progress/western

© Christoffer Petersen, 2021

It was a vulture wind that stirred the paddock grass by the side of the barn, blowing thin and warm, tainted with the stink of oiled feathers. It brushed dust against the barn door, spitting a dollar’s worth of grit into the young girl’s eye. She pulled away from the knotty hole in the door and laid low, wiping her eye with the tip of her grubby finger, knuckling it until she wept. The grit spilled onto her cheek in a thin stream of tears. She wiped them away with the back of her hand, as she thumbed the hammer of the stolen Colt army revolver. The man she stole it from was standing in the paddock, together with six more.

“I heard it all before,” the man said, pointing at each of the men with the stub of his index finger. “So, any man one of you who thinks this ain’t right, you can just walk away. Right now,” he said, with a wave to the town behind them, pinched between the mountains and the parched land.

“It’s a girl,” said one of the men. “Why’d they put a bounty on a girl?”

“Why? I tell you why. Look at my finger. She bit it off.”

“Was that when she took your gun, Cal?” said another man.

They all laughed until Cal brought up the shotgun. He held it at hip height, turning a slow circle until the last man choked back his laugh and the men beside him fell silent. Cal lowered the shotgun.

“That’s right,” he said. “That’s when she took it. My finger and my gun. But you don’t know the half of it. We’d already been chasing her through the mountains, down Roberts Pass. You know it?” Cal nodded with the men – they all knew Roberts Pass, knew its twists and sharp drops.

“Crawling with Apache,” one of the men said.

“Ain’t it just.” Cal pointed at the barn. “But you knows she’s Apache, right? You knows that?”

“We knows.”

“Then maybe you also knows why we was chasing her?”

“She shot Dean Walker.”

“That’s right, Sam,” Cal said, nodding at the bearded man beside him. He cast an appreciative eye over the bandoliers stretched in a cross over the man’s blue cotton shirt, before continuing. “And she killed Henry Scott before him.”

“She killed Twice Henry?”

The girl risked another look through the peephole. She felt the heat of her breath on her cheeks as it brushed against the wood. She still had bad dreams about Twice Henry, seeing him stalking her with his hands raised and his long fingers reaching for her throat. She woke up coughing every time, shaking his face out of her mind as she fought for her breath.

The white doctor at the mission had said her coughing was to do with consumption, a white man’s disease. The girl wondered which one of all the white men had given it to her, because she didn’t have it before they came to her village, before they sent the sickness raging down through Roberts Pass onto the plain. She wanted to cough now, felt the pinch of her lungs, but the man called Cal was pointing at the barn again, raising his voice. The girl willed her lungs to behave; she wanted to listen. Cal didn’t know she could speak his language; no white man did. She always played dumb, keeping her face flat when she was serving in the saloon, just playing dumb and listening. Listening helped her stay away from the men when they started to look at her, thinking that her fourteen years were more than plenty, that they would be the first to make her a woman. She found plenty to do out back when they started talking like that. Twice Henry had talked like that, before she killed him with the poker.

To be continued…