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The blackness of unconsciousness faded as the pain in his shoulder and face grew to extreme levels of tolerance. Gunpowder taste ran in his mouth, mixing with blood. He involuntarily swallowed, and gagged on his own blood. He got up with his good arm, and retched up. He felt a good bit of blood leave, along with an unknown lump that came from his mouth. The man looked at the ground, and saw that it was a bullet. Slowly getting up, the man put his good hand to part of his shirt, and ripped it off. Wadding it up, he pressed it to the hole in the bottom of his mouth.

The wounded man crawled slowly to the other body in his yard. He could tell without looking closely, his wife was dead. He moved closer, to where he could almost touch her. He looked at her face, the blank look of surprise on her face. The wounded man first closed her blank eyes, then her mouth, and lightly kissed her lips, and almost passed out from the pain.

Getting up on wobbily knees, the wounded man lurched to the farmhouse, colliding with the door frame, dizzy from pain and lack of blood. Making it through the moving door frame and spinning room, the wounded man made it to the only bed in the small farmhouse, near a trunk full of his wife's things. Kicking it open, the man sifted quickly for a small mirror, and his wife's sewing kit.

Setting up the mirror on a nightstand, the wounded man first looked at his shoulder. The bullet had gone clean through, which was good. The wound still bled a bit, but looked as if it were going to stop. He next looked at the bloddy rag under his chin. The blood had begun to crust, and taking it off was painful. So was the sight of the hole under his chin, where a flap of skin hung down. Wincing, the man grabbed a neddle and thread, and put the needle in his mouth to hold with his teeth. Painfully, he threaded the needed.

After thrity minutes of pain, grunting, false starts, and sticking himself over a dozen times, the wounded man finally finished the fifth stitch holding his skin over the hole near his throat. The work he had done was almost awful, but it held the wound close, and the bleeding had finally stopped. With that, he worked on his shoulder with the same method. This time, it was easier because he could see what he was doing. Twelve stitches in both front and back of his shoulder, the man laid on the bed, exausted from his dramatic ordeal. His body felt bone tired, but he couldn't rest. Not yet.

Pulling the sheets from the blood soaked bed, the man drug them to the body of his wife. He laid the sheets next to her, and slowly lifted her onto the sheets, lower body first, then upper body. The man was careful with her head, since the back part had almost disintergrated with the shot. Laying her on the sheet, the man drug the sheet one handed back to the house, dragging her inside. He slowly and painfully lifted her body to the bed, the one she shared with him for years. He laid her outbrushing her hair from her face, saying goodbye.

Closing his eyes, the man reached under bed, and pulled out a smaller chest than his wife's. He looked at if for a minute, and pulled out a kiy from the fireplace. The man inserted the key into the lock on the chest, and turned it. It opened with a snap, and the man lifted the chest.

In the chest was a Marshall's Star and a revolver.

The man picked up the tin star, looking at it for what seemed a long time in his hand. He tossed it on the bed with his wife, not needing it anymore. Instead, he took the single-action revolver from the chest. It was a blue-steel hard caliber, much like the one the Man in Black used on him. He cocked the hammer back, feeling the action of the gun that he hadn't touched in years.

The man stood up, gun in hand. The gunslinger had returned.

12/15/2003

Author's Note: Explainations: blue-steel hard caliber - In reference to a gun, usualy a .40 caliber bullet or higher. The blue-steel was a finer grade metal, and the barrel was less proned to clogging and wearing out. single-action - You must manually cock the hammer on the gun every time in order to shoot. Double-action's work by pulling the trigger harder to pull the hammer, but it works both ways. Cops carried single-action .38's until about the mid-60's, and even into the 70's.

Posted on 12/15/2003
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