Blood Vengeance

Another prompt from the #writingpromptchallenge. As usual, no edits. The prompt cards are:

What nobody wants to talk about

Fear of getting old

Person with arthritis

“Rebel, you’ve been quiet boy! You ain’t ‘bout to do sumthin’ stupid, are ye?” the cockeyed gunslinger from Arkansas spouted. He hated when the man called him boy. It crawled up his spine and pissed him off every time he heard it but he always kept his tongue. His father used to call him boy. He never bothered to call him by his name even though he was the one that gave it to him as a curse. Growing up with that name in the north meant an ass whoopin’ more times than he could count. But it toughened him up.

He looked down from the ridge at the cabin hidden behind the trees. The man that was supposed to be inside had a bullet just for him in the Smith & Wesson on Rebel’s hip. He had been tracking the notorious outlaw all the way to the New Mexico Territory and back to Missouri. Rebel took a drink of warm water from his canteen and put it back in his inside coat pocket.

“Rebel? Ye hear me,” the man said and spit out his chaw.

“Yeah, I hear you. And the answer is…probably.”

He took a deep breath of the autumn air and thought back to what had brought him here to this moment. It all started five years ago…the longest five years of his miserable life. Growing up during the war was hard on children. All that blood, lost family, the smell of death on the wind. Rebel Lincoln was a peculiar name for a boy barely a man in Pennsylvania. After his father was gunned down in the field he packed up everything he had with his mother and two sisters and headed west at the end of the bloodshed. His uncle Kyle served out west with the cavalry during the war to help put down the Indian uprisings. He was there the day after Christmas when they hung thirty eight Dakota to make an example of them. Kyle couldn’t take it either, so he quit after the war and went west to Oklahoma where he sent word back to his sister to come join him. They would travel westward for a new life in the California territory. West of the Sierra’s was where his heart was from the moment he heard about it.

The railroad was still being laid for travel . It was mostly people of wealth that rode the rails in luxury. Rebel offered to keep the steam engine roaring in exchange for passage for his family but the rail master laughed him out of his office in Pittsburgh. Instead, they loaded their rickety wagon and lit out on the dangerous trek west.

His grandfather insisted on coming along and riding shotgun despite his old age and slow draw. His fingers and knees were wrecked from the rheumatism and no amount of laudanum helped him get along, it only made him drunk, angry and dangerous. Rebel rode alongside the wagon with a pistol of his own strapped to his hip. He was only sixteen but he already knew that he didn’t want to see old age if he had to live like the old man.

The hateful old bastard had lost every one of his sons in the war and his youngest daughter was raped by the very soldiers stationed in Pennsylvania that was supposed to protect them. War was hell. The old man carried a hatred inside him and wanted to murder every soldier in the war. Both sides. They took everything that he cared for except for his whiskey and the three grandkids that survived with his daughter in law. Hell, he didn’t even like her. He was just along for the ride and to get as far away from the blood soaked fields of Gettysburg as he could. He was looking forward to drinking himself to death once they got to California.

Their wagon rolled around the wrong bend at the wrong time as they traveled through Ohio. Rebel was lucky that he was on horseback and could get away only missing part of right ear. The pain from the bullet that ripped through it left a lingering hot throbbing that reminded him every day of the famous outlaw that gunned down his mother and two sisters in their wagon. The mean old man riding shotgun got one blast off that took down one the robbers of the Wells Fargo before the James Gang filled him with lead. The old man would never see his dream of dying in California. He died before he fell face first in the mud. His sisters would never grow old enough to become mothers. But he grew old enough to run with a bad bunch and seek his revenge.

He’d traveled through dangerous territory to track him all the way to Las Vegas, New Mexico. He was a week late but the outlaw had been to the haven of murderers and thieves and outlaws, the only safe haven at the time for the notorious and lawless. He left the safety of Missouri after his brother quit the gang to start a family and rode all the way to New Mexico to find Billy the Kid. He thought they would make a powerful force if they worked together. To the credit of the Kid, he turned the man down on his offer. He had no intention of running from the territory where he felt he still had unfinished business.

Rebel knew better than to ask about the notorious outlaw when he rode back into Missouri. No one would talk about the James Gang. They were revered as heroes even if they were insanely dangerous. Besides, if he asked about Jesse word would get around that a new man was hunting him. That would only put a target on his own back. So he rode in with the cover of night with Arkansas Jack by his side. He still had no idea why the man would insist on riding with him on such a dangerous mission except that he had some dangerous business to attend to himself. He had a story to tell but had no intention of sharing. Rebel didn’t bother to pry.

Rebel dismounted his horse and stood by the brush and looked down at the cabin. “Wait here,” he said to the man.

“I just want you to know that I’m real sorry about what happened to your maw and sisters,” Jack said. “But you got too close, boy. You should have just went on to California. I can’t let you kill my cousin.” A blast rang out in the night. Jack spat on the body and turned his horse and rode back toward town. He’d come back around at first light. Jesse would have his guns at the ready by now. It would be safer in the day.

Jesse jumped up from his seat by the fire when he heard the rifle shot off in the night. It was close. Too close.