The Gaming Outpost

I woke in an alley between two clapboard buildings with dust tickling my nose, and the great sighs of vast flatlands reaching my ears. Gathering my stuff, I heard a foul, drunken cackle.

“Clerkie, just put it on my tab, why don’tcha ya’, unless you have any objection that is?” I stuck my head around a corner, and into a cliche’. It hurt.

A swaggering, half-drunk pistoleer was “paying” for an assortment of stuff from a neatly dressed in white collar and black pants clerk. The confrontation occurred in plain view of almost a dozen frightened townfolk. I stalked forward bent on solving this problem. As I passed this old man leaning against a post, and whittling with an oversize knife, I fell on my face, somehow. By the time I recovered breath, the pistoleer had left on his horse. But he was not out of sight. I reached for a micro-missile launcher.

“Some people jist can’t take a hint.” The old man said in a bored tone as he rested his Bowie knife against my jugular.

“W-what’s going on here? I’m just trying to help.”

“You saying we cannot carry our own water?” Since that had been pretty close to my exact thought, I kept my mouth shut. The knife was withdrawn, and I got up slowly, facing the old man with the dead eyes.

He gestured with his left hand that held a child’s toy to be.

“That big guy in the wagon is a wagon train master. He settled arguements between hotheads in his train with fist, whip and gun while keeping the Indians back. Speaking of Indians, there’s Two Creek, he thinks I don’t recognize him, but I do. He used to be a great war chief until his bones got to creaking in the morning and the evening. But get him riled, and he forgets all that. Pure death, iffen you get close to him.

The lady next to him, I respect even if I think, she’s a bit silly. She was one of them there abolitionists, and helped get slaves up the Railroad, and times she went out at night to lay false scent for the hunting hounds.

Her friend, the pretty one, was one of Mr. Lincoln’s secret weapons. She was a spy in Richmond for the Union. Even ended up infiltrating a Johnny Reb cavalry force as a trooper, and going into battle by mistake.

The two young fellows across the street who are trying to get up the nerve to approach her? They are cowhands for that fellow. He’s tough because he has to keep them in line. They are rawhide because last winter, they slept in a three-sided cabin in January. Every morning they got up and brushed the snow off themselves, or at least the frost.” He sighed.

“And him?” I said pointing to a guy passed out near the tavern.

“If he was awake, he’d be a threat. Shot buffalo for the railroad. Thousands of them went down to his rifle. The barkeep is an old Indian fighter, and his help is an Englishman who when drunk will tell you how he started riding horses when he was a little sprout, and hunting foxes by the time he was seven. Claims to be the third son of some lord over in Londontown.

They all are getting drunk, because of the bad news.”

“What, that that guy’s friends are coming back?”

The old man laughed merrily with complete unconcern for hurting my feelings.

“The Villard Gang are a bunch of coyotes. No, sonny, the railroad is bypassing Hardscrabble. This town is dead. All our effort is dust.”

A newsaman came blinking owlishly out of the tavern, and the old man with me cursed that the reporter had missed the show.

“Are you the sherriff, come to save these people from the dreaded Villard Gang?” The reporter asked me breathlessly.

Before i could say anything, the old man looked at me, and smiled with his three teeth.

“You are prettier than a flower. Yes, this is our new sherriff.”

Since I needed some food, and I wanted to find out what was going on, I accepted. No one explained even when I pressed them, and the newsman was simply clueless.

I stopped another incident at the hardware store. It felt good, but my worries kept me wondering even though it seemed easy to slip into the role I was expected to play. That phrase, a “role I was expected to play” and a tattered document on the clerk’s wall told me the truth.

“I cite for uncommon valor, Captain Fairfield of the 11th Virginia. He was dismounted and wounded, and yet sought another horse to continue to attack. This horse being also shot, he advanced on foot to within fifty feet of the Union lines before being struck by his third bullet that day. He was rendered unconscious, and feared lost in Pickett’s Charge up the hill at Gettysburg.

R.E. Lee, Commanding.”

I turned and looked at the cold eyes of the clerk who had come up behind me. No man such as him would be frightened of a play pistoleer.

“This is just a play.”

“You are correct, sir. We put on a theatre for the newsman. We will become famous, and all the Easterners will demand to stop at our town.”

“I can’t be a part of this.”

The old man spoke from the doorway of the hardware store.

“Why not, sonny? The Villard’s are just a bunch of murdering varmints.” He shrugged when he looked at my face. “Well that’s fine then. I won’t have to beat you up like I did the last time to keep you out of the way.”

I growl at him, and suddenly I see in his cool, panther stare, a match for me, and more.

“I killed a grizzly with this here knife, and my good left hand was choking the bear at the time. Don’t make me kill you.” The old mountain man informed me.

I shrug acceptance, and leave. I later hear that my leaving became famous. The cowardly sherrif flees the town which barely defends itself in heroic combat. Buy the postcard.



I wandered the plains for a while, and practised psionic tricks which got me in good with a local tribe of Native Americans. It also got me in big trouble as I tried to chain a tornado to my will. I think I founded two legends in that world. The cowardly sherrif, and Pecos Bill were the two myths.



Tadeusz