Disclaimer: While the plot is entirely mine, the characters of William Shamrock and Woodrow Daniels are not my original creations. They were creations of two friends who approved of the story after reading it. However, Red Barker is my character. With that said, hope you enjoy!

There was a bar in Little Town where people would go to play cards, watch the dancers or just get drunk for the fun of it. The townspeople loved the bar. It was their main source of entertainment, and it was even the biggest building in the whole town. Little Town was a very small town who had recently been cleaning up their run down conditions after a new sheriff had been appointed.

Before Sheriff Charles Ross arrived in town, the place was an absolute mess. Homes were broken down or in the process of breaking, the streets were cluttered with others' garbage, which led to the town smelling like a dump. The bar was rarely a good place for all the people to hang out because real sketchy characters would hang out there. When it was a home for a bunch of travelling criminals and outlaws, the town remained to be a quiet place.

There was a reason the people of Little Town loved Sheriff Ross.

Nobody really knew too much of the man's past as he asked them to respect his wishes to keep his personal life in the past.

It was normally a festive atmosphere. Loud music would play, spirits were high in the room, and almost everybody who stepped in the bar was friendly and brought up conversation with each other.

This man wasn't an incredibly tall man, but he wasn't short either. He stood at 6'0 and by looking at his clothes, the customers could tell he was a cowboy. There were many things that set him apart from the usual crowd. There was the large cowboy hat on top of his head, and the sunglasses covering his eyes. One hand was in his jeans' pocket while the other had a glass of whiskey in it.

Because of his dark sunglasses, nobody could see it but the man had his eyes closed. Since arriving here in Little Town, those memories of her were coming back to him crystal clear. They weren't supposed to be coming back. He was trying his best to forget the pain behind those memories. He rubbed his temples as he felt another headache coming.

* * *

He found himself back in the kitchen of his old home back in Oklahoma, watching a much younger version of himself and his former fiancee having a conversation. His younger self had an innocent look on his face and something else that was all too rare to find these current days that was a large, genuine grin. Less facial hair, a lot shorter hair, but a small cowboy hat on himself.

When he saw his fiancee even in a memory, it made his heart still skip a beat. She was still as gorgeous as he remembered. He saw her long, straight chestnut brown hair that he would often run his fingers through. Then there were those calm, hazel eyes that he missed staring at nowadays.

In the memory, those eyes weren't the main thing he was captivated by. The two of them were staring at an extra weight around Ms. Rebecca Nyman's stomach, and they were talking to the heavy space that was to be his future child.

“So, it's a girl y' say?”

His fiancee chuckled at the excited tone in Red's voice.

“Yes dear, a girl. A beautiful baby girl will be arriving in a few months.”

“Well then, I guess I gotta be addin' an extra room to the house.”

“Mmhm. I know this might be a bit sudden and all, but I've already got a name in mind.”

“Already?”

“Mhmm. If you don't like it, we can always figure out other names.”
“What was the name y' got in mind?”

“Jessica Anneta Barker,” Rebecca Nyman replied with a beautiful smile on her face the moment she said the name.

“Jessica Anneta Barker...” Red repeated the name.

There was a pause of silence at this. Rebecca frowned at the look of thought in her soon to be husband's face. He was thinking deeply and repeating the name a little bit quieter for her liking.

“You don't like it?”

The question snapped the man out of his thoughts.

“No, that's not it. That's definitely not it. I think it's a great name!”

Rebecca smiled again.

“So our child will be Jessica Anneta Barker.”

“Yup. Jessica Anneta Barker.

* * *

“Bartender, gimme another whiskey. An' make it a bit sronger this time.”

Red rubbed his temples once more and said nothing as the bartender when his whiskey was placed by him. He just drank as fast as he could.

From a bit of a distance, the barkeeper stood, wary of this man. While the two didn't know each other very well, tons of stories and rumors about the man in sunglasses spread out through the south. From the stories he'd heard, the red haired cowboy had been in tons of bar brawls and he always ended up being the last man standing. The pudgy bartender would have asked the cowboy to leave, because the whole bar had their eyes on him, but he knew better than to start a conversation with the red haired man in front of him. Nobody was playing cards, the beautiful women weren't dancing, and it was quiet enough to hear a penny drop.

When the cowboy stood up, everybody held their breaths. Many expected the cowboy to get into an infamous brawl, and some even expected him to pull out a gun and start shooting. The truth was that while he did enjoy a good brawl every now and then, nobody was aware of Red Barker's torment. Nobody knew his tortured mind, nobody understood his past, and nobody could tell what he was going through. He didn't always get in a brawl every single time he stepped into a bar. Especially not now. Now he had a little business to take care of.

None of the customers' expectations were fullfilled as the cowboy pulled out money from his pocket and calmly placed it by the bartender. The bartender blinked at this, and the customers tried their best to turn from silence to acting casually as the man turned around to leave.

His steps were slow and impressionable. While he was infamous for his bar brawls and he was in his mid 30s there was no denying that he was still an attractive man as he caught the eyes of some of the dancers. Paying no attention to the lust in their eyes, he walked out of the bar leaving the people in the bar to breathe a sigh of relief. For such a small town, it would have been terrible if the only bar had been wrecked.

He felt another headache coming on, and knew he had to move as fast as he could. He took out a flask of whiskey from his pocket and drank again.

* * *

“I can't believe that the wedding's only three weeks away.”

“Yeah, me neither.”

“This whole wedding planning thing, it's been mighty stressful, hasn't it?”

“Yup.”

“But just think of how much this will all be worth! I'm gonna be Mrs. Red Barker and- hey, you smiled!”

“Huh, I guess I did.”

“It's been a long time since I've seen you smile, you know.”

“Well, like you said, this whole weddin' plannin's been mighty stressful, and I ain't got much time to think about how rewardin' this is all gonna be.”

“Well there you go! Just keep thinking about the reward, and you'll be smilin' more. You do know how much I love havin' a smilin' husband and- hey, let's take a picture!”

“A picture? We gonna be doin' tons o' those on our wedding.”

“Yeah, but still. This picture can remind us how happy we are when things will get bad.”

“All right...”

“Good, now smile,” Rebecca said, holding up the camera to take a picture of them.

* * *

It was a hot and humid day in Little Town. In the scorching heat, a man sat on a comfortable chair with his legs crossed on the table. The fan was turned on, blowing some warm air at his face while he could just sit back, relax, and have a drink of some ice cold lemonade. This was one of those rare days where everybody would be on their best behavior. Nobody would really try to pull anything because it was just too darn hot outside. If something broke out in the bars, he'd be notified and would immediately come in to break it up, despite his hatred of the only bar in Little Town.

It wasn't that the bar was a bad place – he acknowledged that it was the town's best source for entertainment, but entertainment wasn't a thing that he needed, especially not in a bar. Any kind of bar reminded him too much of the terrible mistakes he'd made in the past, despite the atmosphere it presented. He made tons of mistakes back when he had a major drinking problem and it was best to put aside his terrible past and think on the present, but it wasn't easy to. Staring at the bottle just brought him back to theincident that caused Rebecca Nyman her life.

As the sheriff of a town who could use him, he was trying to make up for his wrongs in the past and trying to leave it all behind. Oh, he knew how terrible and unjust it was of him to kill Rebecca Nyman, especially pregnant, but he was...

He sighed. Being drunk was never a good excuse for the death of one, well, technically two, when there was a baby in her womb. And running away wasn't one of the smartest things he could do either. He'd spent many nights after the mistake, crying in sorrow and trying to find some sort of inner peace. Nothing ever came.

Charles Ross did anything he could to try to redeem himself. He worked tons of jobs wandering around the world but no matter what he did, the guilt just wouldn't disappear. When he ended up in Little Town, years had passed since that incident, but he still couldn't forgive himself for what he did to Rebecca Nyman. Nobody could. But when he arrived in Little Town, he used much of his strength, which was with fighting, to bring down any criminal who harmed the small town.

With no sheriff and officers who couldn't seem to help the townspeople, he found that the townspeople eventually came to accept him and even appoint him to sherrif. As sherrif, he helped rebuild the town and managed to make people happier. Except himself. Charles Ross sighed and closed his eyes for a bit. Now the guilt felt stronger than ever.

“I'm sorry Rebecca...” he whispered.

“Sh-sheriff Ross!”

“What is it?” Ross asked, hiding how startled he had been.

“There's a strange man in the front who walked up, a-an' he told me to getcha as soon as possible.”

“Some kind of commotion going on?”

The officer shook his head. “H-he just said he wanted to speak to you. Said something about being an old friend.”

The sheriff frowned. That was odd. Usually when a person came into the office looking for him, there was something going on that needed his interference. Even if people stopped him for some small chat, it was done outside of his office. His office was for business purposes and serious matters and the townspeople, even the criminals, respected that.

“Did the feller give a name or anything?”

Again, the officer shook his head.

The sheriff grabbed his belt and gun holster. He didn't like how things were looking right now. Something had to be up.

“Thanks, Officer Williams. You don't worry 'bout me and head back to patrolling duty. If I need you, I'll give you a holler.”

Nodding, the officer left the office and went back to his duties.

Slowly, Sheriff Ross walked over to the front to see who was at the front. When he found out who it was, he froze.

This red-haired cowboy had a mischeivious grin. It had been a long time since the two men had seen each other, and they weren't exactly the best of friends. There was a long dark history with the two men.

Charles Ross knew he'd made tons of mistakes in his life and he'd been taking a path on the road to redemption to atone for all his previous sins in the past – becoming a sheriff of a town and changing it for the better was part of the steps he took on that path. But Sheriff Ross knew that the man in front of him could ever believe such a thing, and he had every right. From the moment he shot down his ex girlfriend Rebecca Nyman in a jealous rage to the next morning he awoke with one of the worst hangovers in his life, he knew this day had to come.

“Ain't never fancy I'd ever meetcha as a Sheriff, Mr. Ross.”

When the cowboy spoke, he spoke with a deep voice and a Southern accent that was one of the heaviest ones the sheriff knew in his entire life, and that was saying a lot as he lived in a town with people with such accents.

The sheriff took a deep breath, trying to get over his shock. He wanted to say something intelligent, something that showed his deepest sympathy for what he did to the man, but that wasn't possible. For the man to show up at his office at such a random time shook up Charles Ross, and the only thing he could say was the man's name.

“Red.”

“Glad y' remembered who I am. Was afraid ya'd ferget who I was after all this time.”

It had certainly been a long time since that incident from a long time ago. As much as Charles Ross wanted to break down in tears and apologize to the man in front of him, he just couldn't do all that. He didn't deserve the man's forgiveness at all. What he had done to the man was unforgivable, and he deserved all the guilt that had never fully washed away since trying to atone for all his wrongdoings.

“Now you don't got nowhere t' run.”

Charles Ross knew this. He knew that his last moments were among him, and strangely, he could accept all of this. While he'd tried everything he could do to get rid of the guilt, it stuck with him, and it was a horrible feeling after all these years of what he did to the woman who was to be Red Barker's fiancee and mother of the cowboy's future child.

“Fine, but let's do this duel outside.”

“Duel? This ain't no gun duel. I'm here t' kill ya and that's that.”

“I promise that I won't shoot you back. I just want to address the townspeople one more time. Please, just give me that much before I die. I even promise to tell them I'm making you the sheriff. It's the least I can do for you.”

Honorable man, this new Charles Ross was. Of course, the man known as Red Barker wasn't buying it.

“Boy, I ain't stupid. I ain't fallin' fer none a' yer jokes or lies.”

“Fine then, on my ma and pa's grave I promise to make you the sheriff. I don't have any more reasons to run no more and you can be rest assured that this ain't no lie. I owe this much to you for my errors.”

Red really didn't want to be convinced at the man's words, but the deal that was being offered did sound better than his original plan. Red knew that once the sheriff was killed, he would end up being a man constantly on the run, and he didn't like that very much. After Rebecca Nyman, his wife, had died and Charles disappeared, Red had gone on a long search for the man. He became a wanderer, started (and finished) many rough brawls in bars, and grew a love for whiskey. However, he was being offered the chance of being a sheriff, and the tone in Charles voice did sound 100% sincere and filled with regret. The man had even promised on his parents' graves! Still with doubts, he had to take that much of a risk.

“You promise on yer ma and pa's grave,” he repeated Charles' words, just to make sure this man was that serious.

“I promise on their graves. Come on, you notice I haven't even reached down to get my gun, haven't you?”

That part was true. If he was really trying to get out of this, the sheriff could have easily reached down to his gun in any attempts to shoot Red. Of course, Red would still be prepared and would have shot him even in those attempts, but the man did have a point.

Without taking his hands away from the trigger, the cowboy reached to his whiskey flask and drank before speaking.

“Fine then. Let's mosey on outside.”

With a heavy sigh, Charles Ross nodded. None of this had been a lie, and none of this had been any trick of some sort. He had lived through too much guilt after killing his ex girlfriend Rebecca Nyman, future fiancee of Red Barker and future mother of Red's child as well. He knew that it was an even worse reason for her death, but he'd been drinking heavily when he found out that Red had proposed to the woman he still loved.

It was all one of the stupidest things he wished he could ever take back in his life, but such a thing could never happen. In the past, he'd always had a drinking problem and when Rebecca entered his life, there were short periods where he could go on for weeks without drinking. After believing he was free, he'd asked her to go out with him and she agreed. They did become a couple, but he abused that privilege when he fell back into his drinking problem that had never truly healed. He did many things to her that he wished he had never done in his drunken state and it was for those reasons that Rebecca left him. It took a long time for the girl to recover from the abuse, but Red was a man who helped her recover, and was the man she truly fell in love with after leaving Charles. A year passed and Charles Ross found that the woman he was still in love with was pregnant and Red proposed to her. He went out for a night of heavy drinking and broke into there house with a gun, and well, the rest was already explained.

The burden was too heavy to continue living on and he knew that he had made plenty of changes to try and erase the guilt. He'd even went to the church down by the street and sincerely found a new faith in God. Though the guilt was temporarily supressed after his newfound religion and he'd even quit his drinking problem, the guilt never truly vanished. It haunted him in his dreams and as a result, he rarely slept these days. After all this time of being haunted by his past, he could finally be free of it.

* * *

When they were outside, Charles made his voice as loud as he could make it.

“Citizens and good people of Little Town! I want you to hear what I have to say! I have challenged this man here to a gun duel for my pride and honor! If I lose, this man is to be the new sheriff of this town, and not, I repeat, not to be arrested!”

As he kept on yelling, many of the townspeople came out of their homes, houses, and even the bars, shocked at what their sheriff was saying.

“I can see that I've made my words clear, so let this duel begin!” he shouted.

Immediately, Red drew his gun. Charles acted like he was going to reach for his gun to make it look more like a real duel, but he never actually pulled out the gun. Once the shot came, Charles Ross was sheriff no more.

Red Barker took the badge off of his fallen body, and turned to the shocked town.

“I'm yer sheriff now, and ain't nothin' y'all can do about it. Y' heard the man,” he said with a grin on his face that made the townspeople shiver.

* * *

1 month later

* * *

A loud noise awoke one Woodrow Daniels, who had been taking a rest on a running train. When he opened his eyes, Woodrow Daninels could see what all the racket was. Somebody had just hopped onto the train, and it seemed the trainhopper was aware of Daniels' presence immediately as he jumped a little bit.

Woodrow Daniels looked very much like a creepy hobo who was just living on some train trying to collect money, but he really wasn't. Maybe he was a little creepy, but he certainly wasn't a hobo despite what others thought. He just liked the clothes and felt that having a cup of change by him was a good idea. After all, there was never anything wrong with getting some extra money, was there?

He could play the guitar, he had a story to tell to anybody that'd listen, and he'd been travelling for a few hours now. It would take the train a long while to get to his preferred destination, so in the meantime he managed to gather up a lot of of nice money from random people who would hop on the train to get to where they wanted to. This one looked a bit different from the rest, though. When the rest had all been tons of country folk who could barely afford money for a ride, this one appeared to be the exact opposite.

The man in front of Woodrow was sharply dressed, and there was lots of dust on his expensive looking dress clothes.

“Aw man, that'll take forever to clean out,” the city guy mumbled to himself.

“You's a city folk.”

“Well aren't you the brightest one.”

The fancy dressed man was angry, and he had reason to be angry. His means of transportation was to be in much more high quality than, than this dump. The company he was working for had scheduled one of the more expensive trains to ride on to where he was going to but he ended up oversleeping and missed the time that train came around. While he was rich, he didn't think of bringing that much money along with him because he already had the train ticket and wasn't going to be out of town for too long. Because he was left out of any other way to catch transportation, he'd been reduced to the low level lifestyle of hopping on any random train that wouldn't suspect it. The place he was heading to wasn't too far away, so he knew he could get off easily. It was a pain that his suit and khakis had to be ruined because of this stunt.

“Where you headed to, city folk?”

“My name is William Shamrock,” the irritated man growled.

“Oh, well then, where you headed to, William Shamrock?”

“Somewhere.”

Shrugging at William Shamrock's attitude, Woodrow Daniels decided to ask another question.

“Spare some change in return for a little song?”

Normally, the William Shamrock wouldn't bother to give any beggar or hobo change they asked for, but there was something... intimidating about this hobo. Maybe it was the intense staredown in his brown eyes, or maybe it was the wild red hair. His clothes looked like any other hobo's clothes, but this man looked scarier than most. The handsome city man reached into his wallet and dropped a dime into the cup.

Woodrow Daniels smiled at this. He picked up the guitar that had been lying next to him and started to adjust the sound of it a little bit. After adjusting the sound, he began to play a few strings, just to make sure that it was in the proper tuning, and, of course, it was. When it was playing, the guitar sounded dark, which was supposed to set the atmosphere of his song fairly appropriately.

He knew he never had the best singing voice out there, but it was a fine voice for his choice of songs. Most of them were to send some chills down others bones, and most did the purpose in telling his life's story which he always let remain a mystery to ongoing travellers. It also made for good money. He could tell that even this city boy showed a bit of interest in the way this was song started. Making sure his throat was clear enough, he began to sing in his deep, resounding bass voice.

The cycle of life

It ain't a pretty one

It goes round and round

Till you're eventually gone

Yes, it's a short life we live

So think of those highs

Before you see your lows

Cause the cycle of life, it ain't a pretty thing

When you got your friends

All's well that ends well

But when ya don't got nothin'

That's when live's in the lows

You see how the cycle spins

It spins till you're dead – you see how it goes

We all got our friends

And we all got our foes

After he finished his song, there was an irritated look on the city boy's face.

“That's what I payed money to hear? You-you coulda sang something that was at least a whole lot depressing, you know.”

“Yeah well, ya pay for what you get.”

“I don't believe this” were words Shamrock was dying, er, wanted to shout out at the moment, but he knew it was better to keep his mouth closed in front of this crazy hobo.

“Son, you wanna hear a story?”

“I'm not so sure I do.”

“I'm tellin' ya anyway. I don't see you got much better things to do with your sweet time.”

Shamrock looked down at his expensive gold watch and could see that the train probably wouldn't go by his destination for another half an hour. He sighed. It was going to be a long ride, as that crazy hobo droned on...

* * *

Hours later

When the train finally stopped, Woodrow Daniels got off, a smirk on his face. That city boy he told his story to earlier sure found the story much more interesting than the song and even dropped in another dime to the cup that was now rattling with change. He was finally at his destination, and knew he had a few minutes to kill.

He made his way off to a bar at Little Town in hope of finding some good drinks at this place. From the looks of such a broken down place, he doubted it. Still, there wasn't any harm in checking it out.

* * *

Red Barker was whistling to himself with a whiskey bottle in his hand. Legs crossed on his desk and sitting down on a comfortable chair was a great thing to do on a scorcher like today.

He'd been a sheriff for a month now, and things couldn't be better in this town. Sure, everybody else hated how he ran the town and there were tons who tried to overthrow him, but he was just too darn strong. He rarely spent his time actually doing his job. From the moment he'd been promoted to sheriff he fired all officers in the town. His idea of having a good time always involved drinking whiskey and getting into fights, and that's mostly what the man did in his time as sheriff. This, of course, disgusted many of the citizens who wanted to get revenge for their former sheriff who had fallen at his hands. Many men tried to sneak up on him or get in a gun duel like he did with Charles Ross, but none of them ever won.

After all, this was a man who had spent his life wandering and getting into many bar brawls in the towns he visited just to feel alive. Nothing ever felt the same for him since his Rebecca died. He stopped caring about other people and vowed that from there on out, he would look for himself only.

The whiskey he drank was to forget about his past, and it seemed to do the trick.

Yes, life couldn't be better for Sheriff Red Barker, but life wasn't any better for the people of Little Town. Ah well, it was there loss.

He'd been lost in his thoughts for so long that he hadn't managed to hear the footsteps of a man coming into his office. What brought him back to his current destination was a man's angry voice.

“So this is the infamous Red Barker...”

Grunting, Red turned around...

Only to be shot right in the chest.

Gasping, he turned around to see who would ever try to do such a bold move. He might have just been shot in the chest, but he was one of the strongest willed men one had ever seen. He reached down to get his gun before two more shots were added for good measure.

Red never got to see his killer before he closed his eyes. He never even got to say any last words.

Walking over to the now bloodied body of Red that was lying on the floor, Woodrow Daniels had a smile on his face. He ripped off the star that was on the man who had killed his best friend's shirt and placed it on his own.

Yes, Woodrow Daniels had finally came and gotten his revenge.

While he'd never actually grown up in Oklahoma like Red and Charles Ross, Woodrow Daniels had always been a wanderer. When he came to Oklahoma and hung out with Charles Ross, it was always at the bars and that's where the two began talking to each other. They'd spend their nights drinking and having long conversations and eventually, Woodrow Daniels knew he could call Charles Ross a friend.

It wasn't up until a week ago that Woodrow Daniels found out of the death of his friend. Though the two never really managed to catch up, Daniels knew the man had cleared his life up for the better and became sheriff. He had his ways of getting information on people. But he hadn't been keeping track of Charles Ross for a while and was surprised to see in the papers that read “Sheriff Charles Ross killed in duel, Red Barker new sheriff of Little Town.”

That story wasn't a headline, as Little Town was still too small to be in any headlines, but the story was interesting enough for somebody to add to the back of it. Surprised at what he read, Woodrow Daniels knew what he had to do.

And now, he had gotten revenge for his good friend.

He had killed the man who took over his friend's job, and he had the star around his shirt. He knew the town was in a mess, and he knew it was Red Barker's fault, but Woodrow Daniels swore to Charles Ross that he would try to go along the same path of life as he did and try to bring Little Town back to what it was.

Did some re-editing as I realized there were some big problems with the story, and there still probably are some that could use some fixing up, one major thing that I feel needs work on is the lyrics to the song Daniels sings. I'm still glad that I've managed to complete an actual story, even if this is just a one-shot. Anyway, any kind of feedback is much appreciated.