The wind whistled about the gun slinger as he road in to town. It was a town in the arse end of nowhere, there wasn't an awful lot to do in a town like St. Couans but raise cattle, drink whisky and tend whores. Not unlike many he had seen before in his travels.The streets were lined with small box shaped buildings, mostly one or two storeys tall and made of wood, people flitted between buildings, looking to buy cattle feed or tools for farming no doubt, a few even stopped and stared at the gun slinger.
There was always a wary eye cast on strangers in the town of St. Couans, especially ones that looked like him, he was tall, taller than most but not gangly, he had grace about him that exuded confidence and a gait that evinced power. He was clad in the gun metal grey (a colour that matched his eyes) of the southern cavalry. Atop his head he bore a faded stag hat with a gold cord, his light brown hair pushed back beneath it. On his hips he wore two Kerr Paten Revolvers and on his face he wore a scowl and scars no man could look directly upon.
He had been on the move for at least a week now, he was never one to make himself to cozy in a place, out staying your welcome usually warranted trouble and that is something the gun slinger was used to. After so long on the trail he ached for a cold drink and a hot bath, he slowed his horse with a click of his tongue and tips his hat to a passing towns woman.
“This town got somewhere I can get a drink?”
The stranger was not surprised to see the distrust in the lady’s eyes nor the subconscious grimaces on her face as she saw his scars. In fact he had come to expect it in the years since he earned them.
“Ye'll be wantin Jeb's then, not but a few yards over yonder, it's the only watering hole in town”
“Thankee, kindly”
The stranger gently kicked his horse on after he tipped his hat at the woman again and she continued to stare in distrust until he'd hitched his horse and with one hand in his travelling pack, sauntered in to Jeb's Saloon.
The wanderer began to scan the room upon entering, he knew by experience that if there was going to be trouble he had to spot it early. the old fellow with the reddish beard behind the bar was most likely Jeb, the three cow hands over to the left playing cards were all to drunk to even hold a pistol let alone hit a target with it, towards the back of the saloon was a young man with a Stetson pulled down over his eyes and his boots propped over a table, he looked to be a sleep, the gun slinger didn't think so. The man most likely to pull, the gun slinger thought, was perched at the end of the bar scowling right at him, small but thickly built, his face reddened with drink but the clear look in his eye let him know that he wouldn’t fumble if it came to shooting. The slinger went straight to the bar.
“Whiskey”
“Right you are good sir, prosperous travels I pray?” Jeb asked, his voice full of imitation kindness.
“Stop talking and leave the bottle and you'll have just doubled your intake I reckon”
“Aye... Aye, I reckon so”
Jeb went back to wiping his bar rather annoyed, he loved to tell a story or two and since the locals had heard every one of his story’s more than once they knew how much sh!t came out of the old man when he got to talking, so much so Daryl McReadie, the butchers son, had threatened to shoot the old bar keep if he didn't keep his trap shut.
Still with his hand in the travelling pack, the gun slinger empted his glass and immediately pored another one. The whiskey burned at his throat as he drank, that was good, not as watered down as he was expecting.
“Hay solider boy, ya know the wars over, right? Ya lost”
The scowling man at the end of the bar had finally piped up. He wore a stained white shirt and had a red scarf tied around his neck. Small and stocky, like a tree stump.
“I aint trying to make trouble, just passing through, but if you aim one more comment at me I reckon trouble's all your going to find”
The slinger's steel grey eyes bored in to the man and what ever stump seen there must have gave him a change of heart, a slight tremor flickered across his eyes and he stepped away from the bar at sat down at the nearest table with a grunt, the gun slinger went back to his whiskey.
An hour or so passed without much commotion, a working girl named Miss Lilly came down to check for custom every 30 minuets or so, not liking the look of the current clientèle she went back up to the rooms. A two other men had came in and joined the other three at there game of poker, the stumpy feller continued to skulk at his table eating an apple and the young man was apparently still asleep at the back of the room. The gun slinger was contemplating searching for a bath house when two men entered the saloon, one was small and fat, the other tall and skinny. The small man was in a neatly presented suit with an expensive looking time piece attached to a pocket, his face was the shape of a melon and and his side burns where wide and bushy, the gun slinger couldn’t tell if his hair was swept back with grease or sweat because the little man was clearly out of sorts.
“Listen up, we need men for a posse and I, Chester P. Cockburn, Mayor of this town will give each man 100 gold to transport Mike Harley, to El Paso to be put on trial of murder and robbing”
The only noise in the saloon was the clink of the gun slinger's glass after each swig. The Mayor was obviously expecting a bigger reaction as he stuttered to gain the saloons attention he gestured to the tall bespectacled man beside him who was impeccably dressed with dark slicked back hair and an oiled moustache.
“This is Dr. Amadeus Arkham, criminal profiler extraordinaire, who will be travelling with you to testify at at the trial”
Dr. Arkham shuffled uncomfortably with his face beaming red, the gun slinger's gruff voice broke the silence.
“Let the Martial take him”
“Good sir, Martial Eldrich has been dead going on two years now, the man Mike Harley and his boys done for him and we'v been unable to fill the post since.”
“200”
“What did you say mister?”
“You up the pay to 200 gold an al take yar man to El Paso”
On hearing that the stumpy fellow spat out a gob of half chewed apple and chimed in.
“Names Caleb Skinner, sign me up for that, Harley ain’t nothin' any ways, I could take him in a fight if I had to”
There was a thud as the young man that had been sleeping at the back of the room let his feet drop from the table, with half a smile on his face he pushed his stetson up from his eyes and began towards the the group of men. He was a young man alright, only about 19 or 20 by the gun slingers reckoning. He had long brown hair tied back with a leather strap, he wore a blue vest below a dark brown duster and strapped on his back was a sawed-off double barrel.
“Dat' sounds like a mighty fine offer der, Imma take you up on that”
“Your a little far from the swamp ain't ya kid” retorted Skinner “What you going to bring to the table”
“Looks like ta me it's gonna be a long journey and we gonna need some stress release before we head on, and les face it am tha only one here pretty enough to get les filles interested”
“Are you as fast with that there sawed-off as you are with your mouth kid?”
The next move happened so fast that the saloon patrons would later on testify that he hadn't moved at all. The Cajun's hand moved so fast Skinner never even saw it coming, with the flick of his wrist he sent a dagger flying, it took the apple Skinner had been eating clean out his hand and embedded directly in the wall next to old Jebs head, after the bartender had time to processes what had happened he gave I tiny sequel
“I'd say I'm fast nuf, names Batrtholomew Aloysius Lash, but mos folks call me Bart Lash. Gambler by trade, womanizer by design and outlaw by tragic error”
“Never heard of ya” said the gun slinger.
“Considerin ya trade mista, I find dat very comforting”
Mayor Cockburn had been hoping he could raise a posse in the 20s but if all he could get was a scarred gun slinger, the local trouble maker and a young Cajun, well, all that meant was this business wasn't going to cost him as much as he thought it would.
"Well Dr. Arkham looks like we have our men. Oh an Mister what would your name be?
“Names Hex, Jonah Hex”“
Inside his travel pack Hex slowly released the hammer of his Kerr Patten Revolver. He'd had all of them covered the whole time.
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