“Fastest”

Steven Thompson

It was over long before the dust cleared. There was no ceremony to it, nor was there a silence. Benjamin Rathbourne had only time to think as he moved wooden, trembling legs towards the spot where The Hand was now kneeling. There were no more than thirty paces between them, and that wasn’t a lot time to think. The Hand was screaming: something guttural and near inhuman. The Hand’s God-given name was Levi Hasbrouck, at least it had been, but that was to be over soon. The sun baked the dirt beneath Ben’s feet, and his breath was loud in his ears: in and out to the time of his heart beat, which was oddly slow. He only had thirty paces to walk to the man he had just bested gun-to-gun, he had to think, and his mind was full of the sound of his own breath and the dying cries of an outlaw.

Levi “The Hand” Hasbrouck was an outlaw, that much was Simon pure, and as good a place to start the thinking process as any. The Hand was an outlaw, and Ben was to put a stop to him, which was nothing anyone could call immoral. It wasn’t self-defense or anything. He had challenged him, albeit in a fit of pride and jealous rage. Seeing the woman he loved struggling against the filthy, unwanted grip of this man in the dirt had driven him to call out the fastest gun in Missouri. By skill or luck or fate, Ben Rathbourne was faster, yet his shot hadn’t rang true. He had shot The Hand in his left hand, and it was what remained that Levi Hasbrouck now clutched to his chest. Only fifteen paces to go now, and it was decision making time. The bells had begun to strike at high noon, and the last toll was ringing now. People had begun to come out of doors and peek out of windows now, having heard the shot in the street and knowing that everything was over.

Ben took the last step to bring him in front of Levi Hasbrouck, and his shadow fell over the kneeling figure, who had seemed a sentinel or a boogey man from his posters around the state. Now his face met with Ben’s, and Ben saw nothing but a man in his eyes. They were the coolest of blues, and Ben thought about how he never would have known the color of them from the posters, and how little he knew the man at all. There were darkening circles under his eyes, and they had begun to flutter with the effort of staying conscious. Ben thought about how he could have been anyone at all. He wasn’t. The Hand was a killer, a murderer in cold blood, and he didn’t deserve no better than what he had gave men and women for the past three years throughout Missouri. Ben’s arm raised mechanically, and he pressed the barrel of his 1873 Peacemaker to Hasbrouck’s forehead. He saw the man wince, as like out of fear as out the smoldering heat of the barrel. Ben looked into his eyes once more before squeezing the trigger. He had imagined that he saw a question forming on the lips of The Hand, but before he could see anything for sure, his head had snapped back, and he fell to the ground. Benjamin Rathbourne took a last look at him as he heard the swelling of cheers and shouted accolades coming from the people around him. They floated to him in a wave, and he allowed himself to be carried away.

The first of the attempts on his life and title as fastest gun came less than a week after the noon-day showdown. He was coming in to town at around dusk. Someone was tickling ivories at the inn, and low conversation could be heard around the streets. Everyone was on their way home to be safe and indoors as night began to come on. He heard his name called out in a high, squealing kind of voice. He turned around with a hand already working the strap on his holster.

“Well, well, then.” called the voice. It came from a squat figure just getting down off a paint horse. It was near-dark, and in the waning light of the day, his figure was cast in shadow and his hat drawn low over his face. Ben swallowed and thought he had never wanted a drink or the comfort of a bed so bad.

“Can’t we just take a look ‘atcha now, sonny.” the man continued, “Why, you ain’t nothing but a boy between hay and grass aint’cha? Shoot, if I’d a-known tweren’t nothing but a youngin’ that sent The Hand to the grave, I wouldn’ta rode here quick as I did.”

In a voice Ben hardly recognized as his own, he called back.

“That’s a lot of talk coming from a small man ridin’ in on a crow-bait paint horse at supper.”

Even though it was getting dark, Ben could feel the shift in the newcomer’s mood. He figured the bantering was mostly over. Truth be told, Ben was much younger than most men who’ve shed blood. He had spent some time on a ranch outside of town, and hadn’t been doing so much cattle-wrangling as he had been post-digging. He was only three and twenty, and Levi Hasbrouck had been more than forty when he died. Ben supposed this man was here either out of retribution of some sort, or for the target that Ben had unwittingly taken and painted on his back. When the man’s voice came back to him, it came back in a growl.

“I reckon then it’s time to put up. Looks like we got ourselves a little crowd anyway. That’s all fine then. One question for ya: how’s your night shootin’?”

On the word night, the man, the coward had drawn and fired twice: once from each hand. The first one kicked up a blast of dirt off behind Ben, having missed by at least an arm’s length. The second dragged a long scrape across his ribs, no more deep than what you’d get from a length of barbed wire, but Ben wasn’t aware of either of these. He had drawn at the first side of movement and put two rounds in the gunman, one offset in the chest, and one through his mouth.

Benjamin Rathbourne called it self defense to himself over and over the rest of the night when he couldn’t seem to find sleep in the dark of his room, but however he talked around it, it acquainted to murder. A second murder, if you wanted to add it all up. He couldn’t help but feel the unceasing momentum that was building up in the wheels driving his life, and he didn’t know how he could stop it. He spent most of his nights this way following, thinking about the course he was on, and where it was headed. He’d try to close his eyes, but that only made it easier to hear the things he’d been pressing into the back of his head. Funny how it was easier to remember certain sounds than it was dates or sights. There were two sounds that most nights Ben heard rising from behind the black curtain of his subconscious mind: the pattering sound of blood on dirt, tapping lightly like an evening rain; and the sound of someone’s last breaths. They didn’t sound right, like a man trying to swim upstream with one foot caught. They were so unlike the breaths of the woman sleeping next to him.

Her arm was curled up above her head, delicate skin finding the moon’s light in the middle of the dark room and becoming light itself. Her chest rose and fell with the steady sound of easily drawn breath. She had slipped some way down the bed, and Ben slid down a ways to lay level with her, his ear lying just next to her pursed lips. It was that sound that drew him to sleep most nights, and kept the other sounds in the realm of his dreams, where he could hardly remember them the next day.

He had not liked her to go with him on the times that he was out to the ranch. It was a long enough ride on horseback for a woman, but there were dangers between here and Gulver’s Ridge, and he didn’t fancy having to check over his shoulder the whole way there and back for her. Her name was Anne, and she was a California widow whose husband had come down with consumption making his way west, leaving her here in Missouri. It was fitting enough she wanted as much to keep an eye on him as he did on her. She’d make more of a fuss on some days than others, but she was there at the door when he came back, arms crossed and face lined with worrying through the day. They looked out for each other, the two of them, and Ben figured that was a much as any one man could expect from someone he loved.

It was times like these he was happy. Coming back to her as the sun slanted over the hills outside town and lighting her in a hazy ring. That was early enough on in his reign as fastest, and he couldn’t have imagined the lengths the scum-filled and glory-seeking dogs of the surrounding towns would go through to gun him down. Sometimes they’d come to him as he worked at the ranch, coming within inches of putting holes in his employers and their stock. It wasn’t long that he could stay at any one place, and the time inevitably came where the owner would approach him with something like fear and anxiousness. They’d wring their hands unconsciously and look out over the pasture while they spoke, stealing a glance at him to gauge his reactions. “A man’s livelihood is his property.” they’d say, “I got a family to think about” they’d say. Ben couldn’t help but agree, and he’d move on. They always found work, and they got along fine enough.

It wasn’t until they rode into Waynesville that Ben figured it was time he angled for a change in career. He’d come to fame shootin’, and he couldn’t exactly turn away from it at this point. Waynesville was just outside Fort Leonard, and he figured if he couldn’t find work as a lawman in town, he could see if the troops out at the fort needed him. They came into town, the two of them, and Ben could feel eyes on him from windows and alleys. He thought he saw a man turn and run, but he couldn’t be sure of that. He tied up outside the Mayor’s office. It was at the head of the town’s only street, and a sweeping, white portico set itself as welcoming for newcomers to Waynesville. Ben thought it looked like an open mouth. There was a big, brute of a man standing just inside the door to the office. When Ben went to move forward the man pulled his weight in front of him. He was at least a head taller than Ben, and one of his eyes rolled carelessly when he settled a stern gaze on him. Ben realized it was glass.

“Fork over yer iron there, Ace.” the man spoke with a throat that could’ve been coated with dust. The sound struck Ben as corpse-like, and he instinctively shivered. The man must’ve seen it as a sign of resistance because he laid a large hand on Ben’s shoulder.

“Look here, we got a lot of trouble in this town. We only got one Mayor, and no one’s strollin’ in here with no violence in mind. Got it?”

Without a word, Ben reached behind him and unclasped his holster. It was leather of the darkest brown outside black, and the Rathbourne family crest had been branded into it. His father had explained it him when he was younger, that each animal and section of the tower shield had a long history with his family. Ben couldn’t remember any of that, he’d been born here and lived in heat and dust his whole life. Thinking about anything like royalty in his family seemed damn near laughable, and he didn’t really give a continental about the history of the holster anyway. What he cared about was the familiarity of the piece itself, and the way gun and holster fit each other in a natural way. He placed his Peacemaker and holster in the beastly hand of the door guard and the missing weight on his hips settled a heavy, acrid feeling of dread in his stomach. He was told the Mayor would see him directly and so he went inside.

A few minutes later he was crossing the street outside the Mayor’s office with the man himself, Anne walking just in front of him. The Mayor was obviously an Easterner, and Ben had to swallow some rising contempt for the man’s lavish way of living in a town as small as this, but he had taken a shine to Ben and wanted to get him work. They were going to have supper, all three of them, to talk business and “get acquainted and friendly with another.” The Mayor rushed up the steps of the Inn to grab the door and clear Anne’s way inside. The combination of his overemphasized gentility and puffy way of breathing as he trotted to the door put a laugh just inside Ben’s chest, and he smiled a little.

The unmistakable sound of a hammer pulled back. A dull metallic click as the mechanisms locked into each other, waiting to release their potential energy with deadly force. It was the only warning Benjamin Rathbourne got. Everything else after that was instinct. Two shots quickly passed through Ben’s left shoulder, and he was aware of the curious feeling of losing blood and mass. A third shot ripped through one of the banisters as Ben simultaneously turned around and dropped his right hand to his hip. The extra second it took him to register the absence of his own gun was enough for a fourth shot to skim off the top of his right shoulder, just above the bone. He threw himself backward up the stairs and almost fell on top of the Mayor, who was cowering just past the top stair. He ripped his flashy, silver-plated Smith-and-Wesson from the Mayor’s belt and prayed the most fervent prayer he could remember praying since he was a boy. Let it be loaded. Let it be loaded. Not just for show. One full chamber.

He slid the hammer home and had fired four times before he had finished appealing to the Lord. His right arm burned dully, and his left arm felt like it’d taken French Leave. Each shot found it’s way home to one vital area or another, and the ambush was over. There had been around a dozen shots fired: three plugged into Ben Rathbourne, four into the curs who had tried to shoot him in the back, one had hit the Mayor high up on the thigh, and he was moaning dimly. Ben took a long minute to look over the scene, as his own blood dripped in small rivulets to mix with the pale dirt on the ground. The blood of the outlaws ran into the same ground, and spread towards his feet. In that minute that he stood there, Ben wondered how much of the dirt was blood and bones and death. He wondered what ghosts lingered here, and for the first time, he allowed himself to wonder about where he’d finally lay down in a spreading pool. He turned away from the death on the street, and saw Anne for the first time since the whole thing started. He began to scream inside his mind before he ever cried out audibly. It built up under the weight of his fatigue and pain until his mind was searing white flash behind his eyes. It began to drown out all thought and all sound. It drowned out everything except for one inescapable truth: I couldn’t stop it.

They buried her on a hill facing west. Besides her name on the marker, it was no different than any of the other dozens of graves outside of town. He couldn’t bring himself to leave town, which was a combination of grief and the knowledge that it wouldn’t be no different anywhere else. He had kept up with his duties around town. It mostly consisted of breaking up barroom brawls and settling land disputes and the like. During the day he found himself in a plane of thought somewhere just above his body. If he had known about out-of-body experiences he probably would’ve figured it was about the same. His interaction with the people in town was minimal, and it was dwindling day by day. He found himself skinnier through the legs, arms, and face and realized that sometimes he sat through supper forgetting to eat. He wasn’t hungry for anything.

He wasn’t dreadful keen on this feeling of disconnection as he became aware of its existence, but stopping his floating off was never permanent. He could bring himself back, but it never stuck. He would let his mind wander to darker, deeper thoughts during a long-winded conversation or a silent ride out of town and he’d be gone. Before he knew it he was blinking back into existence in front of someone with a problem. Benjamin Rathbourne was trying to keep a-hold of thing, but the reigns were slipping. He had once had them wrapped twice ’round his hand, finger digging into rough cowhide, but now he had only a tenuous grasp on them, and his grip was weakening.

Ben hadn’t allowed himself to think of her death too much, but it was harder at night. It was dark, and things were so quiet. It was impossible to keep anything at bay. The only time he had grieved was at her pitiful hillside funeral. The undertaker was saying his words to those gathered, and Ben realized with shark, searing suddenness that he didn’t have any black clothing fit for mourning. Here were strangers to his Anne, dressed in black befitting a funeral, and Ben didn’t have a scrap on him. He felt the pressure behind his eyes build and he wept in hitching sobs into his palm. Distantly, he felt a hand on his shoulder, and was morosely pleased it wasn’t the light touch of a woman. In the dark of his palm and the state of his sorrow, it’d be too easy to imagine it was hers. The hand on his shoulder was intended for comfort, but Ben wondered if the owner would continue his sympathy if he knew Ben was crying not for his fallen love, but for his lack of proper dress.

Hastily, he rubbed his face on his dusty sleeve and ground his palms into his eyes. He wouldn’t sully her memory like this. He had let those men sneak up on them, he had allowed himself to be unarmed and slow, and most of all, his own body had allowed the very bullets that killed Anne to pass through his own traitorous flesh and bone. He hadn’t been enough to stop it, in mind or in body. He felt the swelling heat and pressure of another sob coming up from his throat into his eyes, and he suppressed it. It wouldn’t do him any good here.

He had found out from some of the people in town that the men who had come after him were sent by a man by the name of Red Jack. One of his boys had watched Ben and Anne ride into town like Christ into Jerusalem and had ran off to alert Red Jack. He had called for the hit, and he had spilled blood alright, but it definitely wasn’t the end of things. A week after the shootings, a boy of no more than twelve had approached him at the jail, where Ben spent most of his time. He was white as a sheet and shaking, his eyes wide and darting from Ben to the door and back. He handed him a note and flinched when Ben grabbed for it. It was a scrawled note on cigarette paper, and Ben read it three times, slowly. “I know you’re here. I know who you are. I’m coming for you.”

His fear must’ve shown on his face, because the boy’s face turned from fear to sorrow. “I’m real sorry, sir. Weren’t for Red Jack keeping’ my Ma, I wouldn’t be bringin’ things for him. He says if I run around for’m he won’t let any harm come to her. I’m sorry” he ended lamely. The boy’s face was kind enough and Ben swallowed hard.

“Don’t you pay it any mind. We all do what it takes for who we care for, and we can’t do no more than that. Go on out of here.”

He knew Red Jack hadn’t set a time on purpose. The fear was enormous and it had a weight that settled on Ben’s shoulders every time he moved. For every shadow he imagined a crouching figure, for every movement he imagined a dark assassin. It was everywhere, and his hand never left his side as he walked the streets of Waynesville. He would sweat with cold fear despite the noon day sun, and he spent so much time in his head that he wouldn’t have known it if anyone had walked right up to him. The fear made his steps heavier than they should’ve been in his boots. He felt like a clock was ticking down, but he couldn’t read the numbers. More and more he began to cast looks of apprehension over his shoulder as he attempted to patrol. He stopped talking to people on the streets and in the bar, and if anyone did stop him to speak with him, he looked at them with paranoid suspicion.

The nights were the worst, particularly when he would retire to his bed alone. A tangible darkness sat at the top of the stairs, seeming to swirl and swim with its thick presence. He thoroughly checked his room each time before laying down, but in spite of this, the fear was always greatest right after he blew out his light. In the sudden darkness after extinguishing a light, the things you see can me murderous. He went to sleep each night with the certainty that someone was standing just above him, waiting to pull the trigger.

It was during one of these, light, tense sleeps that he was awakened by gunshots in the street. The sounds of yelling could be heard, and the orange glow of spreading fire drifted through his window. He ran down the stairs, putting his belt on as he did so and he noticed at the door that his knees were shaking. His mind screamed in fearful protest as he stepped into the ghastly glow of the fire-brightened streets and he looked around in the dark. It was a full on raid of the town, and the yells were a mingled mix of civilian terror and outlaw glee. Somewhere glass was breaking, and whoosh of out rushing flames could be heard. Despite the chaos of the night, he pricked up his ears in anticipation of what he knew would come. It was tonight, and he wasn’t any more ready for it than he had been when he first got the letter from Red Jack himself. He made a promise to himself that he’d best the man by hook or crook, but it sounded weak in the empty space of his mind. He realized with a bolt of sick fear that he didn’t even know what Red Jack looked like, and figured with a grim humor that he’d be the one with the gun trained on him.

In the midst of these musings Benjamin Rathbourne heard or felt or sensed someone stepping out into the street just behind him, and he didn’t even turn to shoot. His hand found its way behind him and shot of its own accord. It was only after the fact that he turned and saw that the bullet had found its mark in an innocent body. It was the boy whose mother Red Jack had kidnapped, and Ben’s bullet, which had been intended for the gut, but on the smaller boy had passed through the neck. He watched the boy’s blood spill down the front of his shirt, carving a thin, fine line down his chest. He fell backwards into the dirt, his hands at his sides, and his palms facing the sky. He had managed to close his eyes despite the pain he must’ve felt, and Ben thought about how his mother--probably long-dead--had likely told him dying was like going to sleep. Benjamin Rathbourne had put a bullet through his neck and the kid still figured he was going to sleep, rather than in the ground. Lying in the dirt he looked small, but calm. He had none of the feat that Ben carried about him like a heavy shawl. He had embraced death almost expectantly.

All of a sudden the night was too loud for Ben. The fact that everything could carry on in spite of the death of this boy in the dirt, that even laws of physics or nature should still apply seemed disrespectful. He found himself again reminded of the fact that he had no mourning clothes, and wondered with thudding pain how many deaths he’d have to stand by for before he finally bought any.

He brought his fists to his ears and shut his eyes tight against the persistent, shifting light of the inferno. He repeated hymns and psalms and prayers in his head to try and drown it out. He prayed to wake up from a nightmare, or otherwise go to sleep. He prayed for escape and then--

Silence.

Had his thoughts been focused on the scene around him, or his judgment less clouded with grief and rage, Benjamin Rathbourne may have felt the cool breath on the back of his neck, whispering an impertinent goodbye. He may have felt the impersonal stiffness of a Winchester Repeating Rifle at the base of his skull. He certainly would have heard the characteristic click that his ears were so accustomed to picking out. And if he had turned around, he would have known the face of Red Jack, who had sent a young boy to his death so he could kill a good man like a coward.

But Ben Rathbourne only knew the Nothing. He didn’t know that the heavy gauge slug entered his brain through the ventral side of his occipital lobe. He didn’t know that the sudden and violent parting of grey matter from cranium severed the path of neurons to the superior temporal gyrus, so that sound was no longer an option for him. The bullet cut him off acoustically from the world. All he knew was the silence that pervaded in those final moments: the sweet sound of nothing, singing him to sleep.