Once Upon a Time in the Wyrd West

By Diane Morrison

In a post-apocalyptic Saskatchewan, the Gunslingers are a holy order of Law empowered to keep the peace and protect the common people. They have supernatural powers to back it up.

The Walsh siblings are about to find themselves entangled in the nefarious schemes of a necromancer! But they're not Gunslingers -- not yet. Graeme an

• Language: English
• Publisher: Aradia Publishing
• Release date: Jun 4, 2019
• ISBN: 9780995927698

Diane Morrison

DIANE MORRISON has published and taught thirty graduate courses in the last twenty-oneyears. "Seven Lives: A Diva’s Story" is the author’s debut memoir. She is the founder of Diane Morrison Consulting and is a speaker, professor, life coach, and online gallery owner. An expert on the Enneagram, a personality study, she types herself as a positive, adventurous, risk-taker who has survived many difficult experiences in her lifetime. Diane and her husband Alex, both avid art collectors, live in a 100-year-old house in Colorado.

Book preview

Black Smudge Once Upon a Time in the Wyrd West

Wyrd West Chronicles #1-6

A Fantasy Western Serial

DIANE MORRISON

aradia

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events or locales is purely coincidental.

© 2018 by Diane Morrison

http://www.dianemorrisonfiction.com

Aradia Publishing

5583 Silver Star Rd.

Vernon, BC Canada V1B 3P7

Cover Design: Diane Morrison

Interior Design: Diane Morrison & Katje van Loon

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review to be printed in a newspaper, magazine, website, or journal.

Showdown

First electronic edition: March 2017. ISBN 978-0-9959276-0-5

Vice & Virtue

First electronic edition: May 2017. ISBN 978-0-9959276-1-2

The Vigil

First electronic edition: July 2017. ISBN 978-0-9959276-2-9

Way of the Gun

First electronic edition: October 2017. ISBN 978-0-9959276-4-3

The Reaping

First electronic edition: December 2017. ISBN 978-0-9959276-5-0

The Widow’s Gambit

First electronic edition: February 2018. ISBN 978-0-9959276-6-7

National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Morrison, Diane 1975—

Once Upon a Time in the Wyrd West / Diane Morrison

Serial Novel

ISBN 978-0-9959276-9-8

1. Title 2. Serial Novel 3. Fantasy Fiction, Canadian 4. Western stories 5. Science fiction, Canadian 6. Dystopias 7. Steampunk fiction 8. Short stories, Canadian—Canada, Western 9. Saskatchewan—Fiction 10. Fantasy Adventure 11. Regression (Civilization)—Fiction

WYRD WEST CHRONICLES

The Wyrd West Chronicles were originally published bimonthly as a series of post-apocalyptic Weird Western fantasy-cattlepunk short fiction ebook serials. The series continues and future volumes will be forthcoming.  Follow the author’s blog at www.dianemorrisonfiction.com for publication schedule, updates, special events, occasional giveaways, and a whole lot more!

Acknowledgements

No writer truly writes alone.  I would like to thank the Vernon Writer’s Critique Group for helping me to formulate my story into something greater than the sum of its parts.  I would like to thank my beta readers for their extremely helpful feedback.  I would like to thank the indie authors’ community, especially the ladies of the Vegas Fight Club, for being so supportive and welcoming.  Most of all, I would like to thank my partner and editor Jamie for his hard work and his bravery in taking me on, and my husband Erin for his unrelenting love and support.

Patrons & Backers

This book was published in part with the help of my Patrons and Kickstarter Backers!

Special thanks to: Alan & Jeremy VS. Science Fiction, An Angell’s Life, Jean-Pierre Ardoguein, Michael Baker, Kate and Andrew Barton, Kent Böettner, Cyndi Brannen, Sarah Buhrman, Robin Cahill, Courtney Cannon, Donalda Cassel, Joshua C. Chadd, Serena J. Fleming, The Creative Fund, Ivo Dominguez Jr., Eryn Driscoll, Robert E. Easton, S.A. Gibson, David Holley, Stephen Hunt, JennQKW, Kedrix, Andrew T. Kuligowski, Dawn Dianna Landry, Sionainn E. McCann, Bonnie Milani, Lanette Miller, Scott Mohnkern, Isabella Mori, Amy J. Murphy, G Man No, Eugene Plawiuk, David Pollard, Kevin Purtell, Reading Indie, Gualter Reis, Joshua Robertson, J.I. Rogers, Selene Shiro, Derek Devereaux Smith, D. Kevin Stilwell Jr.., Katje Van Loon, Robert Walters, Astrid Winegar, Dominic Wheeler, Casey June Wolf, and Judith Wouk. Thank you so much!

Dedications

Showdown

For my mom, for many things, but mostly for giving me the gift of a lifetime of joy in reading.

Vice & Virtue

For my son Dan, who inspires me to be a better person.

The Vigil

For Tamara, who believed in me before anyone else did.

Way of the Gun

For Steve, for putting up with my shit.

The Reaping

For the crazy-as-I-am people who do NaNoWriMo every November.

The Widow’s Gambit

For Jamie and Erin.  They know why.

Once Upon a Time in the Wyrd West

For Blue, who was my Sandy.

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

Patrons & Backers

Dedications

CONTENTS

SHOWDOWN

Last Stand

The Signpost

Smelling Trouble

Answering the Call

Slinger’s Apprentice

Pine Boxes

Baptism of Fire

Showdown

Dead Book

VICE & VIRTUE

Coffee

The Posse

Nightfall

Gunslinger’s Work

Marks of Cain

THE VIGIL

The Posse Splits Up

On the Road

Laughing Bear

Nightmares

Home

The Lodge

The River

Unquiet Dead

The Vigil

WAY of the GUN

Waiting

Celebration

Too Quiet

Bandits

Hide-and-Seek

Getting Help

Thunderstorm

Rumble in the Kitchen

Slingers Always Get the Chance

THE REAPING

The Posse Rides

Shooting Gallery

Gadgets and Specters

Dowsing

Dusk Falls

Suffer the Children

The Cotton Candy Man

It Never Is

THE WIDOW’S GAMBIT

The Widow

A Message

Northern Lights

Blood Magic

The Courtesan

Single-Malt and Cigar

Ghosts of Murdered Children

Red-Eye

Outpost

Spectres

The Judge

The Apprentice

The Fence

A Gunslinger’s Gift

Planning

House of Ill Repute

Dunn’s Antiques

Let There Be Light

Insurance Policy

Sorcerous Forensics

In the Chapel

Breakout

On the Battlements

Aftermath

Shakedown

Change of Plans

Gladiators

The Widow’s Gambit

Boxcar of Death

Last Stand

Voices in His Head

The Law of Contagion

Motes of Light

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

On the Web

ALSO BY THE AUTHOR

As Diane Morrison:

As Sable Aradia:

SHOWDOWN

Last Stand

The Gunslinger and the Desperado drew.  Their hands were flashing smears of colour as they streaked towards their targets.  The crash of shots rang out.  The scent of brimstone filled the air. Graeme Walsh watched from his horse with narrowed gunmetal eyes, knowing at once that the Gunslinger had drawn her last.

The Gunslinger’s shoulder splattered blood. Her arm jerked and her shot went wild, shattering the window of Joss Smith’s alchemy shop.  The Desperado’s second bullet found the Slinger’s square chin and tore it off.  Blood and bone sprayed into the air.  The Gunslinger’s second shot ripped a hole in the sleeve of the Desperado’s duster.

The other three flashed past like silver lightning.

One of them sang past Graeme’s ear. The Gunslinger fell, the pistol flying from her flailing hands.  The man in the black hat marched forward, fanning his pistol’s hammer back until the chamber was empty.  The Gunslinger was struck three times before she hit the ground. Her body twisted and jerked as the bullets ripped into her in a horrible, bucking dance.

Graeme had never seen anybody shot before.  His father had warned him that it was nothing like they described in the stories.  His stomach twisted like a coiled lariat.  The stallion beneath him tossed his head in challenge.

Blood was already pooling on the broken pavement around the fallen body by the time the Desperado reached her.  The air reeked of it. The dandelions and plantain growing between the cracks were splashed in red.  He studied the dying Slinger and her dead apprentice with his coal-black eyes and nodded just once. His blond mustachios twisted up into an easy smile that came nowhere near his eyes.  For a moment, the silence was so loud that it rang in Graeme’s ears.  The Desperado stepped over the groaning, broken shells of what had once been living people and made his way towards the saloon.

There are law abiding town-folk in that saloon.  That thought galvanized him.  Before he knew he was going to speak, he heard himself say, I reckon that’s far enough.

Some small part of him wondered at how calm and flat his own voice sounded in his ears. His hunting rifle was leveled and braced against his shoulder.  The ozone hum and crackling blue light of the magazine indicated it was charged and ready.  No Gunslinger’s weapon, this.  It was a newfangled voltaic rifle, powered by technomancy.  An inferior weapon to the holy guns of the Slingers maybe, but then, Graeme was not a Gunslinger; not yet.

Beside him, astride her graceful mare, Piper had her own rifle leveled at the Desperado.  Their horses moved not at all, though no hand lay on the reins.  Gunslinger steeds, these, born and bred to serve the Order and trained by their own father’s hand.

The Desperado turned in the deserted dusty street to regard them with a jaundiced eye.  He gave them both a long, considering, dead-eyed gaze.  Graeme glared back.  A shutter still swung loose in the wind, creaking, creaking.

The Desperado spat.  You ain’t goin’ to start something you can’t finish, are you, boy? he sneered in a cold rasping baritone.  His eyes were darker than coal-black.  No apprentice then; this man had sold his soul to Hell and leased it back at compound interest.  You’re so wet behind the ears I don’t reckon you can sprout a beard yet.

Graeme turned his head just slightly so that the Desperado could get a glimpse of the pointed ear sticking out of his hair under his hat brim.

The Desperado’s eyes narrowed.  Fuckin’ faeries, he growled, almost under his breath. Well, guess I got no real idea how old you are.  But you smell like children to me.  Why don’t you go back to your farm and leave the grown-ups to do their business?

Graeme thought about the Gunslinger this man had cut down.  He could still hear the gurgle and wheeze of her struggle to breathe. He could smell the iron of her blood seeping into the dust.

I don’t think so.

The clack–click of a large caliber weapon being cocked got everyone’s attention.  A man in a newsboy cap and vest was pointing his prosthetic arm at the Desperado.  The prosthetic was a double-barreled shotgun.  Graeme wondered how he could handle the recoil until he saw the pressure gauge and the shock absorbers.  I won’t let you in me bar, the man with the prosthetic snapped in the close-clipped tones of a foreign accent.  We don’t need your kind ‘ere, hey wot? E’s empty.  Let’s kill ‘im, kids, and be done with ‘im.

He must be a foreigner, thought Graeme, to make such a bald threat. Desperadoes were trained like Gunslingers.  This blackhat just might be able to reload and shoot them all where they stood before anyone could pull a trigger.  If he hadn’t fired his chambers empty they’d be dead already.

The Desperado’s black eyes stared back at the three of them like a scrublands rattler’s.  His iron spurs jangled a little as he slowly tapped one foot with ill-concealed impatience. His eyes flickered to the bronze spurs of a Gunslinger’s apprentice bolted to Graeme’s own scuffed dun boots.  They gave the lie to his bluff, but maybe that would work out in his favour.

A smile like black clouds before a tornado spread over the Outlaw’s face.  Then I call you out, boy.  I reckon you’ll honour a Showdown.

Piper’s eyes widened and she gravely pursed her lips.  She shook her head just a little, almost a twitch.  But Graeme’s answer came from his soul, hard as the words on a tombstone. He nodded.

The Desperado’s eyebrow raised.  Noon, then, he grunted.  With that, he sprang into the saddle of his devil-horse mount and galloped out of town.  Graeme’s stallion bared and gnashed his teeth at the Nightmare as it swept by in a cloud of flaming hooves and brimstone.

Slowly Graeme lowered his arms.  They were shaking.  Piper lowered her rifle too.  Her bottom lip trembled as tears began to swim in her eyes. She blinked rapidly and reached down to pat her horse, scrubbing at her eyes on the sleeve of her duster.

The foreigner lowered his prosthetic shotgun.  Then he tipped his hat.  They call me Cockney Pete.  But me name’s Woodhouse.  Picked a fine day to come to town, kids!  Why don’t you come sit and ‘ave a drink on the house?

Well, that’s right kind of you, Graeme mumbled.  He tipped his hat in return.  Think I could use one.  But duty has to come first.  He knelt beside the two bodies in the street – the Gunslinger and her apprentice -- and pulled the stopper on his canteen.  This would be the second time in two days that he had delivered a Benediction. Only the second time ever, really, he thought. Damn! Was that only yesterday?

The Signpost

They’d noted one of the signs of the Ancients just a few hours outside of Queenstown, standing against the heavy leaden sky. The word it posted was DOMO.  Graeme didn’t know what a domo was – some totemic thing from before the Cataclysm, he guessed.  It jutted from the prairie hardpan like a single tooth in an old man’s jaw.  Half of the bottom O was submerged in dust.  Something swung from the pointed tip of the sign like a slow pendulum in the scouring wind, a heavy something shaped like a cross draped in dark fluttering cloth.  The horses scented the breeze and snorted.  The spirited dusty bay stallion who carried him, his friend and mount Lightning, pawed the hard-packed earth and twisted his head to regard Graeme with a questioning eye.

Is it a ghost? Piper asked nervously as she clutched his arm.

Nope, Graeme spat, his eagle-sharp Gunslinger-trained eyes making it out at last.  But I reckon there might be ghosts about.  Glancing quickly round to be sure they were alone along the trail, Graeme tossed his reins over the stallion’s neck. His eyes drooped shut and rolled back in his head as he accessed his Inner Eye.

When he opened them, the green glow of ectoplasm was visible to his sight.  He cast his gaze carefully over the area in the manner his father had taught him; not searching, not seeking, just absorbing.  The horses and Piper, his own hands and the far-off aura of Henry, their father’s lead ranch-hand, all radiated an eerie incandescence.  The swinging cross did not.

Nope, no ghosts, he said soothingly to his younger sister.  She studied his face with luminous starry-blue eyes that were more like their mother’s than their father’s.  Graeme’s, of course, were the opposite.  She sat her horse like the graceful sidhe that she was.  Her delicate fingers folded gracefully over leather reins and chestnut mane.  Wisps of flaxen hair escaped her ponytail to whip her eyes in the wind.

What is it then? she whispered.

Graeme sighed.  Don’t worry, there ain’t no ghosts here.

Piper scowled and opened her mouth to argue.  But Graeme took up the reins and clucked his tongue. Lightning led his herd on with a whicker and a toss of his proud golden head and midnight mane.

You might not want to look too close, Piper, Graeme cautioned.

But Piper didn’t listen.  As they drew closer, she studied the swaying cross with a squint that turned into a frown, marring her fair porcelain brow. The big prairie sky was churning with low, threatening clouds, while cicadas droned in the lazy heat.  The horses’ hooves made dull thuds where they hit the hardpan.  Strangely, however, they had no echo.  Lonely tufts of bunchgrass strained their desperate fingers to the sky.

  That’s a body, Graeme, she said at last.

Mmm, Graeme agreed.  The body was swinging from its neck and its head lolled at a grotesque angle.  Its face was a mummified horror, frozen in deadly rictus.  Its eyes were gone.  The fluttering cloth was what remained of wind-tattered robes.  The crossbar that had formed the ominous shape was a board upon which someone had scrawled the word NEKROMANSER with red barn paint. It hung from the lynched man’s neck, dangling across his chest.  His hands had been nailed to it and the board was stained black with blood.

Well, whether the ghost was hanging around its body or not, it must be wandering restless somewhere.  Graeme dismounted and drew a cross in the dirt where the blood must have fallen.  The hard-packed prairie had drunk it down like a gargantuan vampire.  Graeme knelt and sprinkled salt and gunpowder on the cross.  He considered the swinging body, but decided it was simply too high up and he wouldn’t be able to fetch it down.  Ashes to ashes and dust to dust, he intoned.  From ashes we come, and to ashes we return, and the Lord and the Lady watch over all.  I reckon your life weren’t so pleasant, he said to the corpse as he rose to his feet. But rest in peace now, sir sorcerer.  If such you were.

He drew from his canteen and spat.  It was the first time he’d given the Benediction, but he had stood with his father as he performed it.  He wondered if the dead man really had been a necromancer?

Piper’s jaw worked and then set in a determined line.  She glanced around quickly, then glared at him.  Don’t be doin’ no magery where people can see, she advised.

No, Graeme agreed.

He took his hat off and twisted at the brim as he considered the dead man. The Santa Ana continued to slowly mummify the corpse as it swayed gently in the dry wind. Should they turn around?  Henry was bringing up the rear of the train.  Maybe he ought to ask him to ride to fetch their father.  Let him know that folks were out witch-hunting before they killed some poor old cat lady.

No, he decided. With one sorcerer dead, they weren’t likely to go looking for more.  As for himself, surely keeping his head low would be good enough!  They would take the remuda to Queenstown, and keep a sharp eye out as they went. Fleeing uncertainty was not the Gunslinger’s way.

Smelling Trouble

Queenstown had been strangely subdued when they rode in. Graeme’s senses, trained from his early years, began to jangle in a sort of discordant disquiet.  The grey-green Assiniboine River, ancient and implacable, provided some relief from the dry local climate, and the moisture soothed his parched skin and gritty eyes.  The market that lined the canal in the verdant shadow of the domed ruin of the Queenstown Legislature was well underway, but it seemed to him there were fewer merchants than he might have expected at the High Summer Festival.  There were even some spaces unused; though the dirigibles were loading and unloading as usual and the Trans-Dominion bullet train arrived at eight o’clock, as expected.

He’d sensed something; he wasn’t sure what.  It was almost like a smell, an unpleasant undertone of mold or rot in a barrel of healthy-looking apples.  The miasma wafted through Queenstown, past the train station and the marketplace, past the dirigible launch station; past the finely-dressed ladies in their ruffled crinolines taking tea on the steps of the ruins. Lightning didn’t like it either.  His ears were lowered and twitching.  The sense of wrongness lingered as they rode past the hostels, the factories, the telegraph station, the sanitarium, and the voltaic recharging station, even past the tall, ancient stone building that bore the white fan of the Courtesans.  He didn’t study this closely, though first a lithe blond youth, and then a fine young miss about his age with scarlet ringlets, peered over their fans to wink at him.  She hiked her petticoats up a little and he blushed and looked away.  It was a sign of his mixed heritage.  Full-blooded sidhe did not blush.

He scanned the populace.  His attention was drawn for a moment by a small band of Mantis-folk dickering with a family of gnomish apothecaries.  Astride Lightning, he was about eye level with their Speaker.

His silver-blue eyes narrowed as he wondered if this was the source of his disquiet.  The Mantis-folk could be violent, certainly unpredictable; but no, the bugs weren’t posturing, nor were they clattering or fiddling, as they were inclined to do when agitated.

The gnomes grouped tightly around their Eldest, chattering at each other in long liquid syllables that sounded like water in a stream.  Before long the senior gnome, with a white beard almost to his knees, held up his hands to silence his little clan  He reached down to wind a tiny crank at his belt buckle, and his footwear popped open.  Scaffolding folded upward from his shoes, slowly lifting the white-bearded gnome a foot or so upward, so he was closer to eye level when he shook the Mantis-folk’s Speaker-to-Other’s three-fingered manipulator in the ancient sign of a deal struck and bargain made.

Graeme shook his head in wonder at the ingenuity of the gnomes, and their endless fascination with complicated little gadgets, as he made his way through the marketplace.  He hoped the buyer they had come to meet had been on the train that just rolled in.  It would make their job that much easier if he could take the money for the horses, buy some things for the ranch, and be out of town before sundown with no fuss or bother. But the half-familiar scent continued to tug at his attention.  The more he worked to put it aside, the more it seemed to dig at his awareness.  He tried to put his finger on why it was so troublesome.

He decided to wait for the train to unload before he searched out stabling, mostly on a hunch, and he sent Henry on ahead to find lodging. About half of the passengers had finished unloading when the Gunslingers stepped off the train. One was a burly, square-chinned woman with some silver in her long black hair.  The other was a young, unusually tall gnome with a scruff of curly black beard and chocolate brown skin.  He wore bronze spurs and by his relative youth Graeme knew him to be an apprentice like himself.  An older man with steel-grey hair and black almond eyes stepped off with them. They saw Graeme and Piper, nodded, and made their way to them.

Howdy, the lady Slinger greeted them as she tipped her hat.  They returned the gesture.  Guess you’d be the Walshes.  You got your father’s look there, son.  Graeme, right?

Yes ma’am.

She chuckled.  And that would make you Piper.  She shook both of their hands.  This is Mr. Ping, our purchasing agent.  Let’s have a look at our new line here.

The horses, all too aware of the importance of this exchange, started posturing for their benefit.  Graeme found himself bristling a little when their teeth and hooves were examined – as if there’d be any less than the best care on the Walsh ranch! – but the young horses seemed to take it all as a matter of course.

They needn’t have worried.  They all passed Mr. Ping’s inspection.  This way, if you please, said Mr. Ping to the yearlings then, and they all stepped proudly and tossed their heads as they filed onto the train.  The Gunslinger, Dame Rosa Hanover, jokingly offered to buy Lightning along with the rest of the remuda, and the indignant horse snorted and stamped the ground to make it clear he was not amused.

Laughing, they saw the visiting Slingers to a respectable inn just up the street from the alchemist shop and promised to return to play some cards once they’d found their own sleeping arrangements for the night.  Apprentice Ned Dickens swept his hat low as he bowed to Piper.  Right honoured to meet you, miss. He smiled.

Piper giggled and didn’t blush.  Graeme narrowed his eyes a little. Seeing this, Piper grinned broadly and added, Right honoured to meet you too, Mr. Dickens.

The gnome brightened.  Perhaps I can buy you a lemonade.

She’s fourteen, Graeme growled.

Perhaps you can, Piper said, completely ignoring her brother.

I’m only sixteen myself, he explained to Graeme, running a hand self-consciously over his face.  The beard’s a little early.  It’s the dwarf blood, you know.

Graeme relented.  He supposed it was only natural for his sister to want to start talking to boys, and he guessed she could do worse than another Slinger; though their father certainly would not approve.  All right, we’ll see you later, he said with a nod.

Ned Dickens smiled and tipped his hat.  They returned it, mounted up, and swung their horses around to head for the inn they’d noticed around the corner as they rode from the Canal.

Just what right do you think you have to inspect my dates? demanded Piper.  Her eyes flashed with fury.

I’m your older brother.

That don’t mean you have the right to . . . and that’s when the shots rang out.  The Walshes drew their rifles and whirled their horses back around.

Answering the Call

It seemed Graeme had been wrong.  The saloon was deserted.  Overturned chairs lay abandoned on the floor.  An acrid cigar was still smouldering in a tin ashtray.  The lingering sawdust highlighted the wafting smoke as it trickled towards the rafters.

Henry burst through the doors.  You all right? He clasped Graeme’s shoulder.

He nodded.  We’re fine.  Would you please check on Mr. Ping and the horses, Henry?  Maybe that was what had drawn the Outlaw to Queenstown in the first place.  Maybe he’d come to hijack the train.

Sure thing, Graeme. He headed back through the swinging doors.

I ‘ope they’re not all hiding in the cellar, Woodhouse grumbled.  "Place was full."  He fished around behind the bar and came up with a small screwdriver.  Carefully he unfastened the prosthetic shotgun to replace it with a cleverly-fashioned brass mechanical hand.  The servos whined and the metal tinkled against the glass as he threw a mug under a tap and drew a draught.

He slapped this down in front of Graeme.  One for Piper followed.  The air was so still that Graeme could hear the foam fizzing.  ’E’ll ‘ave to buy ‘is own, the barkeep informed them, jerking a brass thumb in Henry’s direction as he came back in.  ’E didn’t help defend me bar.

They’re fine, Henry assured Graeme with no more than a nod in the barkeep’s direction.  I told the engineer he might want get rollin’ early.

Graeme nodded.  That was probably a good idea.  Then no matter how this ended, the horses would be safe.  From the trough just outside, Lightning whickered his approval.

Woodhouse wrinkled up his nose.  An’ who asked ‘is opinion? he grumbled.

You ain’t from around here, are you? observed Graeme with a wry smile.  Obviously, since he didn’t understand about Gunslinger horses.

I’m from overseas, the barkeeper replied.  "Came over to make me fortune.  Only it seems like fortune made me.  Won this bar in a card game just last week.  Came to see if I could make it go.  He shook his head.  If someone’d told me about the wildlife, never would ‘ave come. You hear stories about these Desperadoes, but you never ‘spect to see one."  He poured himself a draught as well.

They’re rare, Piper agreed.  You just had a stroke of bad luck.  And I guess so did we.  Her expression was glum.

Henry put a reassuring hand on her shoulder.  Odds might not be so bad as we think.

Why not, Uncle Henry?

Henry’s still-sharp eyes narrowed.  The Powers got a way of gettin’ even when someone don’t follow the Code of the Gun.

Graeme considered this.  Henry was probably right.  You couldn’t count on it, but ill luck and mischance followed those who broke the rules, and everyone knew it.  Could be the blackhat knew he’d already tempted Fate too much by gunning an apprentice down in cold blood. Could be that was why he hadn’t killed them.

How long since he rode into town?  Graeme passed the stein to Henry and fumbled in his purse for his money.  Woodhouse let out an exasperated sigh and thumped another beer down in front of him.  He waved away Graeme’s coin impatiently.  Well, thank you again, the apprentice nodded, and he gulped back a swallow of yeasty liquid gold and frothing head.  It was cold and soothing on his parched and dusty throat.  It almost chased away the pattering piece of his heart he found there.

’Bout a week ago.  But the locals say they’ve seen him before.  The barkeeper sat back and studied him with piercing grey eyes that entirely belied the untidy mop of reddish hair escaping the newsboy cap.  So, he said after a long moment, "what in all the worlds possessed you to pick a fight with that dodgy tosser?"

Graeme chuckled despite himself.  The adrenaline was wearing off now and he found that the hand that clutched his beer was vibrating.  "I didn’t pick a fight.  He did.  I just answered the call."

Why?

Piper looked at him.  I’d like to know that too, she said in a steady voice that put his own to shame.

He contemplated the depths of his beer for a long moment.  Well, there ain’t no one else, is there? he finally answered. I’m a Gunslinger’s apprentice.  He met his sister’s eyes and held them fast.  What else could I do?

Slinger’s Apprentice

His father had shown him the craft and the trade. His tanned, calloused, thick-fingered hands guided Graeme’s alabaster, fine-boned fingers.  First, you broke open the chamber and you removed the cartridges.  Then you oiled and swabbed the barrels and the pins.  Then you polished the barrels until they shimmered blue.  You wiped off the excess.  You buffed the heavy wooden grips to a rich chocolate gleam. You loaded the cartridges with their blessed bullets one at a time until all six were in chamber.  You snapped the cylinders into place.  Then you aimed as if you would fire, hovering your fingers over the triggers.  Then you broke the revolvers down and did it again.

You never fired those revolvers, not unless you meant to kill someone.  You practiced with lesser handguns of plastic and metal, made in the latter days of the Ancients.  You learned to aim with the power of will through the sights of your eyes.  You learned to kill in your head before you did it with your hand.  Again, and again, loading and reloading, until fine-boned hands carried the same callouses as his father’s.  Rough pressure callouses on the index finger, inside of the knuckles and heels of his hands from the repetition.  Prints burned away from loading and reloading cartridges into hot cylinders.

He could shoot almost before he was out of diapers.  He could shoot birds out of the sky while riding by the time he started school.  He could group every one of those bullets in a bullseye at a hundred yards by the time he started having naughty dreams about his schoolmarm.  Now he could draw and replace those pistols in their holsters before anyone even heard the shot ring out.  He could shoot out a deer’s eyes at a hundred and twenty-five yards.

Later his father had taught him the craft of munitions.  Alchemy to create the powder: how to distill saltpeter from piss, which was a cherished commodity, especially in the Windpan.  All charcoal was carefully preserved in pouches until it could be ground up with the extracted saltpeter and sulphur.  Three separate mortars and pestles, packed away with the molds, to powder each component. That way, the time they spent blended together and exposed to the open air was minimal.

Safety procedures and protective prayers frightened into him at about the time other children learn nursery rhymes.  The uncle who died of sulphur poisoning.  The friend who died in an explosion.   The blessings incanted over the sacred alchemical blend as it was loaded into the cartridges.

How to smelt the metal, pour the bullets, and etch the mystic signs into them so they would fly true.  Sitting together in the evening and pouring bullets while his mother played piano, drawing enchantment from the keys and singing in her ethereal sidhe voice.  Sometimes he would sing along.  He especially liked the sacred hymns and he learned to play them on the guitar, staying up late to practice them in secret, just as his little sister studied the forbidden Gunslinger arts.  Sometimes his singed fingers bled on the strings, but their parents didn’t seem to notice.

Gunslinger lore held that once things had been different.  Once, chemical processes were reliable and predictable.  Guns and munitions were produced in factories; or so they said.  But that was before the Cataclysm.

His father told him of his duty.  The only thing that stops a Gunslinger from bein’ an Outlaw is his honour, he explained when Graeme was still very small.  The cartridges in his gunbelt twinkled like stars in the blue glow of the voltaic lamp.  A Mark of Cain darkened his forehead, so he must have made a kill recently.

Graeme considered his father’s craggy, sundried face with its solemn blue eyes and nodded just once.  He sensed this was very serious.  But perhaps Colin Walsh sensed that his son did not understand.  Hear me, boy, the Gunslinger sighed.  Killin’ hurts the soul.  That’s why we do it; so no one else has to.  But that don’t mean it don’t hurt your soul, just ‘cause you’ll be a Slinger.

Is that why we do the Purification? Graeme had asked.