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“You lied to me,” Adam said after he was sure that Whietchapel was dead.
Breathing heavily and laying on the ground with his back against a rock, Samuel looked over at Adam as he approached, surprised to see him.
“Yes I did, about somethings, not about everything.”
“I didn’t see it, I was a fool to trust you. That whole sob story about that gun and your mother.” Adam kicked the Deringer away, confident that it could only hold a single round, but still not taking any chances.
“The Deringer did belong to my mother. She was a strong women, told me on her death bed to give it to the girl I married. She said it was a cruel world out there and that a gun was more important then a diamond ring.” Blood now trickled from his mouth down to his chin.
“She was wrong.” Adam said mater-of-factly.
“She was different, I’ll give you that, from a different place and time.”
“We need to get you some help.” Adam said as he kneeled down, ready to sling Samuel over his shoulder.
Coughing violently, Samuel motioned for him to stop. “Leave me. There are things in the world worth living for and thing worth dying for. I have lost everything worth living for and lived to accomplish all the things worth dying for.”
Shaking his head Adam kneeled down once again to pick him up.
“No!” Samuel did his best to yell. “I am a bad man, a true monster who has done bad things his entire life. I can only hope now that I am forgiven in the after life. Take that,” he pointed to the Deringer, “and bury it. It has brought everybody nothing but bad luck – my mother and now me.”
Adam looked over at the Deringer and picked it up, wondering if it was possible that an object – any object – could be the cause of somebodies misfortune. He had heard of stranger things; haunted houses, ghosts, possessions, but never a gun with a destiny all its own, and one that spelled doom for all that touched it.
When he looked back at Samuel, his chest had stopped moving with his struggled breaths and his gaze now starred at nothing.
Adam buried Samuel in a grave in the open desert. He then got on his horse and rode towards the town he new to be a handful of miles to the west, hoping to catch-up with Ann-Bell before sunset. When he reached a stone arch bridge that was slowly crumbling into the Bent River on the outskirts of town, he threw the gun into the muddy waters below, hoping the mud would bury it for all eternity or that the current would take it far, far away.
Adam raised around the edge of the large boulder behind which Whitechapel had gotten the drop on them. As he brought his horse to a trot Samuel came into view, only now he was standing, the Deringer pointed at somebody just out of view. The two gunslingers that had accompanied Whitechapel lay on the ground, no sign of a gun shot wound or any other obvious way that they had met they’re end.
As Adam slowed his horse from a trot to a slow amble, Whitechapel came into view, kneeled and turned away from Samuel and tears streaming down his face and Samuel’s Derringer pointed at the back of his head.
Adam couldn’t hear what they were saying, but as he stood there and watched he could see both Samuel’s and Whitechapel’s lips moving, Samuel clearly agitated over something, as he kept ramming the Derringer into the back of Whitechapel’s skull, causing him to rock forward.
It was then that Adam got to thinking about the Derringer, my ma’s, Samuel had said, but he had also said it was the same weapon that had killed his wife, Mary. Adam hadn’t noticed the discrepancies in his story before, probably because he was worried about how bluntly Samuel had told them that they were going to help kill Whitechapel.
How could it be the same gun? Adam thought. Could Whitechapel have somehow stolen it from Samuel? Maybe. No, Samuel was to careful with his guns. In the short time that Adam and known Samuel, he knew that whether awake or asleep, Samuel would never let his guns get more then an arms length away from him.
As Adam drew closer he could hear the two talking – Samuel was yelling at Whitechapel and Whitechapel was sobbing, begging for his life.
“I did you dirty work for all those years.” Samuel was yelling. “I was your right hand man.”
“Don’t kill me, we can work something out, can’t we?” Whitechapel was mumbling as he fell forward from on his knees to all fours.
“Those men in the desert, Whitechapel, huh? Did you forget about that? I took out a posse of ten men, including a deputy, that was looking for you.” Samuel was now angrily poking the Derringer in the back of Whitechapel’s skull. “I had to leave Burntwood in the middle of the night and even then, barely got away alive.”
“I know, I know. I can make it up to you.” Adam heard Whitechapel say as he got closer, now off his horse and crawling on the sand around the end of the large boulder.
In front of Whitechapel, Adam could make out the handle of a pistol buried in the sand. Whitechapel was inching for it, slowly waiting to make his move to grab it.
“How Whitechapel, the only thing that I loved you took.” With a last fit of anger, Samuel shoved Whitechapel onto his stomach, where he was able to quickly grab the gun and hide it at his side. “You have nothing I want now, except for maybe one thing.”
Samuel thumbed the hammer back on his deringer, the slow clicks echoing off the surrounding rocks.
“If you have-” Samuel started to say before the sound of a discharging pistol errupted.
Adam peaked his head over the bushes he was hiding behind and saw that Whitechapel had taken a single shot with his hidden pistol which he must have had hidden between his mid-section and left arm, where he waited until Samuel was standing right over him to take his shot.
Samuel stumbled back, shocked, pawing at his side that had a large, bloody wedge missing. Adam thought he would never see that look on Samuel’s face, that look of total shock, of realization that he did not have complete control over the situation. As he raised his hand to his face and saw that it was covered in blood, is when the look of shock disappeared and was replaced, once again, with rage and hatred.
Samuel raised the Derringer and pointed it at Whitechapel, but before he could get off a shot, Whitechapel fired again, hitting him in the shoulder. As Samuel stumbling back, Adam could see that Samuel was still determined to do Whitechapel in, even if it meant he wouldn’t survive himself.
As he stumbled back, Samuel aimed carefully, knowing that he had only one shot with The Deringer. With another loud, echoing boom, Samuel fired getting Whitechapel – who was now turned to face Samuel – in the neck.
Adam took the bullets and threw them to the ground. Whitechapel watched as each hit the sand and seemed almost memorized by the small puff of dust that each bullet kicked up.
“Is that all of them?” Whitechapel asked, raising his gun in a new vigor as a lust for blood boiled behind his bulging eyes.
Adam nodded that it was, concerned now, that since he was essentially unarmed that Whitechapel would go back on his promise to let them go and kill them right where they stood.
“Good,” he said and waved them to ride away with a motion of his pistol.
Adam looked over at his wife and mouthed the words you first, convinced that Whitechapel was going to shoot them in the back as they road away. Adam was hopeful that if any shots were fired it would be at him and Anna-Bell might have a slight chance of escape.
But the shots never came and after they had made the turn to the far side of the large boulder that Whitechapel had been perched on when they were discovered, was when Adam first noticed the half dozen or so bullets spaced sporadically in the bullets loops on the belt.
“Ann-Bell,” Adam called ahead to her as she kicked her horse into a trot, anxious to get as far away as possible. “You go ahead, I need to go back.” He told her when she brought her horse to an abrupt stop and turned around.
“What? Why?” She answered back, eagerly looking from him to the distant horizon. “No Adam, this is his fight. He knew that he could be killed when he started this. He is crazy is what he is. Now let’s go!”
“Ann-Bell, he ain’t crazy, he’s just a man who was starting out his life like we were once. The only difference is his world came crashing down around him.” With shaking fingers, Adam loaded the gun from the bullets from the gun belt, being careful to drop as few as possible, cursing when one slipped from his fingers and fell to the ground, digging a crater in the sand.
“If I had seen that happen to you, Ann-Bell, I would want revenge. I would ride day and night to see that those responsible got what they deserved.”
“Adam!” Ann-Bell cried as Adam took the last bullet from its loop and loaded it into his gun.
“He’s just a man turned into a monster, Ann-Bell. Somewhere deep down in all of us is a monster, just like deep down in every monster is a man.” Adam wrapped the gun belt around his waste. “I’m going to go find the man and bring him back home.”
“Who are your friends, Mr. Dean?” Whitechapel asked, waiving his gun towards the group.
“Nobody, just a dim witted couple that I made a deal with if they help me out. This here is Adam his and his wife, Anna-Bell” Samuel answered back, sizing up the gunman on either side of them.
“Oh yea, what was the deal?” Whitechapel called down, still on his rock.
“That he wouldn’t kill us if we helped him.” Adam answered back, glaring at Samuel, taking exception to being called ‘dim whitted’.
“Huh,” Whitechapel said under his breath. “Well, you must be a gunslingers of some sort, so throw down your guns, you too, Samuel.” He said as he climbed down from the rock.
“We have no guns, sir. We are not gunslingers, just simple farming folk who have no need for firearm’s when off the farm.” Adam said, looking down from atop his horse at Whitechapel, now standing on the front of the three of them.
“And my guns are heirlooms. I would rather not throw them in the sand. I would appreciate it you would allow to me give them to these kind folks for the trouble I caused them?” Samuel unstrapped the his guns from around his waist, wrapping the belt around the holsters. Whitechapel kept a close eye on him, his trigger finger ready to fire at the slightest movement from Samuel that made him uneasy.
“Adam, Anna-Bell,” Whitechapel said, still eyeing Samuel. “Can I trust you? After all, I saved your life from this cold blooded murderer. If I let Mr. Dean here give you his guns, you and your wife will be free to go.”
Adam nodded his head, relieved.
Samuel handed his guns to Adam, giving him a smile and a nod as he did as if saying sorry for all the trouble. As Adam took the guns he noticed a design on the leather belt, where the eyelets were. It was the same design as on the Dirrender – a skull with roses as cross bones, only this design also had a rising sun in the background. Adam wasn’t sure what it meant, but next to it were other pictures engraved in the leather. Next to the skull was a picture of a horse with a small child mounted atop it and the name Skinfaxi, then a coffin with a date below, and so forth, all the way around to the other end of the belt. The last picture, freshly cut into the leather right next to the buckle was a simple heart shape and a name inside – Mary.
“Before you go, Adam, do me a favor and empty that there pistol of all its bullets. Don’t want you getting any ideas, now. Who knows what kind of lies, Mr. Dean here, has has filled your head up with in the short amount of time he has held you as a prisoner.” Whitechapel smiled as his aim drifted over towards Adam.
“Not a bad idea, Samuel . You thought of that all by yourself?” Adam asked.
“Well, I can’t take all the credit. I did see a similar situation, once, in a mutoscope. A man tried to dress-up as a women so he could sneak into the ladies privy.”
“Did it work, Samuel?” Anna-Bell asked.
Samuel shook his head.
“Well, it doesn’t sound like a bad idea, if I do say so.” Thundered a voice from overhead. “And it might of worked, too.”
In the blazing sun that shown right above their heads, Samuel, Anna-Bell and Adam struggled to see where the voice was coming from. Then, like a forelorn shadow indicitive of an approaching thunderstorm rolling across the plains, the sun was blotted out, replaced by a figure standing on a high rock in front of them.
It took a minute for his eyes to adjust, but Samuel could see that the man wore a ten gallon cowboy hat, an overcoat, and in his right hand Samuel could make out the clear outline of a pistol.
“Shouldn’t have come, Samuel, shouldn’t have come.,” the voice said, a voice that Samuel instantly regonized when it said his name. “You escaped me the first time. I might have just let you be, but now here you are, trying to hunt me down and kill me. You should have known Samuel that I wouldn’t be easy to kill. I have eyes and ears everywhere. I was informed the minute you left Dearborne.”
“You know this man, Samuel.” Adam asked, raising his hands when he saw the man was holding a pistol.
Samuel nodded. Whitechapel.
“Is it him?”
Samuel nodded again and then told him yes.
“Doesn’t matter, Whitechapel, I’m still going to kill you.” Samuel shouted, the gun was still in his hands at his side.
“You and what army, Dean?” Whitechapel shouted down.
“Just me. That’s all I need to take you out.”
With that, Samuel and the others heard rustling from eaither side of them and looked to see two more men both caring shotguns. They pointed them at the trio and cocked them to let them know it was loaded.
“It seems you might need more then just yourself, Mr. Dean.” Whitechapel gave out a cackle
“How will you get close enough to kills this man, Mr. Dean?” Anna-Bell asked as the three of them road on their horses across the open land, where blackness met clear clear sky in all direction.
“Well, I been thinking about that, ma’am.” Samuel said, giving her a slight smirk as her looked her way. “And I might need your help in this venture after all.”
“How so?” Adam said, looking over at Samuel with a concerned look on his face. “Now, I said i would help, since we have your promise that you will let us go unharmed, and all.”
“Rest your spurs, Adam. She is not going to be in any danger, it just that she brings up a good point.” Grabbing a cigar from his pocket, Samuel popped it in his mouth and lit it by striking a match with his thumb. “How do I get close enough to Whitechapel so I can fill him full of lead?”
Adam and Anna-Bell looked at Samuel with blank expressions of their faces.
“Any ideas?” He asked when it came apparent that they were waiting for him to answer.
“Well, like I said, Samuel, we are people of the land, we don’t know nothing about ambushing people or killing them.”
“Well, neither do I Adam, but it still has to be done.” Samuel took a long, deep drag on his cigar and exhaled it in puff of smoke that seemed to hang over the heads of the them as they road along. “He is liable to have his whole place guarded by four, six, maybe as many as eight men, including himself. After the way I came rushing out of that hotel room gunnin’ for ’em, you bet he’ll be armed.”
With a concerned look on his face, Adam nodded his head in agreement. “Like I said, I won’t pick-up no gun, no sir. So if you have to kill those me to get to Whitechapel, you’re going to have to do yourself.”
“I know Adam, I know.” Samuel said as he took one last drag of his cigar, rolled the dying embers of its end between his thumb and forefinger and then threw it to the ground. “If you let me finish my story, I’ll tell you what I came up with.”
“Please continue, Mr. Dean, we are both listening.” Anna-Bell said, nudging Adam to be quite.
“When I saw you folks back there in town looking for someone to take you across The Forgotten Forest, I knew it was a sign. Whitechapel lives on the other side of the forest, and, well, one look at you too and something popped in mind, a plan you see, that might make it possible to pull this whole thing off.” Samuel stopped his horse, grinning, obviously proud of himself and the plan that he had come up with.
“Back in town people either stepped out of they’re way to let you folks threw or they don’t notice you at all. Then I took a long hard look at the misses, here. She’s tall, about my height. I have broader shoulders then she does, but I figure I’ll fit just fine into that sun dress of hers.” Samuel said, still grinning, tipping his hat at Anna-Bell as if to say much obliged, ma’am.
“Pervert,” she shot back when she heard his plan.
“Maybe, ma’am, maybe. But if Whitechapel sees a married couple approaching his farm, he won’t get agitated one bit, hell, I bet he doesn’t even strap on his pee-shooters when we come knocking on his door. He’ll probably leave them on his nightstand.”
The Forgotten Forest was anything but forgotten. It was a scorched stretch of earth 20 miles wide as you walked from east to west and over a hundred and fifty miles long as you walked north to south. The earth here was black, darker then a moonless night and gave whomever decided to travel through this area at night a sense of vertigo, since you couldn’t tell land from the sky – even though your head told you which was up – and often many began to become convinced after just stepping a few hundred feat into this God forsaken land, that they were going to fall up into the sky.
This is why Samuel, Adam and Anna-Bell got to the edge of the Forgotten Forest just as the first light of the sun creaped up towards the edge of the horizon. Samuel estimated that they would be across by mid afternoon – long before the sun set – but it was still best to get across as quick as possible.
The Forgotten Forest had long been a place intertwined with myth and legend. Small children were told that it was the only place on earth where the spirit world and the world of the living co-existed and it was here, it was said, that the war that would determine if the land would remained the land of the living or fall and become the land of the dead, was being faught.
As the three of them stood at the edge, they now realized that these were most likely tales told to keep small children away from the area known as The Forgotten Forest, which was the home of many dangerous animals that lived in its long stretch of gullies or in caves at the base of the many buttes that rose up to meet the sky, here. But this did not make them feel any better. Part of them still took heed in the tales of how the devil made his last stand on this very ground. Of how God when he wanted the devil gone simple placed a large rock upon the earth, trapping him again below the surface for all eternity. They called this spot were this was said to have taken place Cork Rock, a large ominous boulder made out of illustrious sand stone that simply sat on otherwise flat land close to the center of the twenty miles girth of The Forgotten Forest.
As the three of them stood there looking out across the black landscape, this boulder peeked just above the horizon in the distance, daring them to enter, warning them to stay away.
“What was her name?” Adam asked after he nticed that Samuel had drifted off to another place, somewhere where life wasn’t as cruel, Adam suspected, but by the scowl on his face, Adam thought maybe not, maybe he was reliving the whole nightmare over again.
“Mary.” He said simply.
“And how did you meet?”
Not wanting to go any further down memory lane, Samuel took a minute to answer and smiled at the moment when they first met came rushing back to him.
It was a work day, the middle of the week, early in the moring. The sun had just come up and the it’s sunlight was radiating through the sundress of a girl walking down the road leading to his bosses house. There was a bit of a distance between the two of them but Samuel recalls clearly being able to smell her perfume – the scent of strawberry’s – and the sound of her laugh as it escaped her lips and danced across the wind and open prairy, finding its way to his ears. They made brief eye contact and then she was gone inside the house.
“I was a ranch hand. She used to bring the other boys and me water. Her father warned us, ‘that’s my daughter,’ he would say, ‘so no funny business, ya hear?'” Samuel smile turned back into a scowl as the thought of Mr. Whitechapel once again entered his mind. “Every time she brought us water, it was me she came to first. She made me feel light as a feather and warm like the appearance of the sun on a cold morning. Soon we were sneaking off to a tall Oak tree by a gully on the other end of the property, where hardly anybody ever went. We kissed and talked, and did other stuff.” The smile returned to Samuel’s face.
“Her father never found out about us, not until we told him we wanted to get married.”
“That’s when he…killed her?” Adam asked as they both turned and headed back towards the campsite.
Samuel shook his head. “No. We were married in secret and he killed her for going against him. She never saw as no ranch hand, Adam.” Samuel said, turning to Adam. “She never saw me as no poor kid looking for a hand out. She never saw anything other of people then what they were. She could see through everything everbody pretended to be, you know.”
Adam nodded in agreement. “It’s not to late, Samuel, to change your mind.” Adam placed his hand on his shoulder, doing his best to give him some sort of comfort, to let him know that he understood the pain he was going through, even though he didn’t. How could he?
And as if Samuel was reading his mind, he said: “Would you?” And turned to look at Anna-Bell who was putting their gear away, her long brown hair was trailing in the wind behind her in long curled locks of hair.
“No, I suppose not.” Adam answered.
“You couldn’t, neither can I.”
“You know we’ll have to go straight to the sheriff when this is all over, Samuel?” Adam said as he packed their gear onto the horses. “We are good people, we do right by the law and by each other. I won’t be having people thinking that I killed this Whitechaple fellow, hell, I never even heard of the guy. Nor will I’ll be having people believing that I do such things.”
“You won’t have to do no shooting.” Samuel answered back with a calm voice as he stuffed his rifle underneath his saddle.
“Samuel, you don’t have to do this.” Adam shot back as he stuffed utensils and canned goods into his saddle bag, causing the horse to buck slightly. “Let the law handle this.”
Samuel shook his head.
“That’s what the law is for, Samuel. You ain’t judge and jury.”
“Tried it the law way, I did. They said she had gone mad, ran off with some country farmers boy, her being of the high society type, they said that wasn’t right. They said she didn’t obey the wishes of her paw, neither, which gave him the right, I guess.” Samuel shook his head again, speaking as he stared off into the distance, out into the area known as The Forgotten Forest, a forest with almost no trees, just sand and hills and deep gullies, all the color as black as night.
“He was town Overseer to boot. He played judge and jury in more ways then one.”
As Samuel stood there, continuing to pack his horse and making a mental inventory of ammunition and guns, he flashed back to that day when his new wife’s life was snuffed out like a candle flame in an open wind, gone before she even noticed that her light was extinguished.
It was their wedding night. They had married in secret and stayed the night at a hotel in town where he thought they would be safe. He recalled a loud crack that echoed through the hotel hallways as he slept. Mary had her head resting on his chest and didn’t seem to notice. As he slowly woke-up he saw two men standing at the foot of their bed, silhouettes against a dim gas light in the hall, with a third man standing just outside of the door. When Samuel sat up in bed, the two men looked back at the third who just nodded his head. When they turned back around towards Samuel, they opened fire.
Mary never knew what hit her. The first shot got he right in the head and exploded out the back, killing her instantly – thank God for small miracles. Just like an apple off a fence post, Samuel always thought, feeling the anger well up inside of him.
Samuel was quick, though, quicker then anything these two men had seen, anyway. Before the two men could react, Samuel had rolled out of bed, onto the floor, grabbing his single six shooter that was still wrapped in it’s holster on the night stand by the bed. Before the men could get off another shot, Samuel had emptied his pistol. Only one shot missed, hitting the gas lantern behind the man in the hall. In the fire fight, as smoke and fire blazed out from Samuel’s pistol, he caught a clear look of the man’s face – Whitechapel – and he was afraid.
“Look Jake, we don’t wont no trouble.” Adam said, his eyes wide, lips trembling and hands raised. Next to him his wife, Anna-Bell, let out a slight whimper.
“Then it’s bad luck I guess, ’cause it looks like trouble was out looking for you.” Jake replied.
“Jake. . . Jake-“
“Keep you hands where I can see ’em.” Jake pointed his six shooter at Adam as he started to lower his hands.
“OK, OK Jake. Listen, we ain’t like you. We’re farmers, we hired you to guide us through the Forgotten Forest. If your plans have changed, then I think we should part ways.”
“Nope, my plans ain’t changed and stop calling me Jake. The names Dean, Samuel Dean.”
Both Anna-Bell’s and Adam’s eyes got wide and filled with shock. No, no, Adam started to say, but was only able to mouth the words.
“You going to kill us, aren’t ye?” Adam said as he looked over at Anna-Bell who buried her head against his chest.
“Is that what you read in the papers, huh? That I’m a killer, huh? The cold blooded type.” Angered, Samuel raised his gun again and pointed it at Adam’s forehead. “Tell the truth now, you hear. All a lie ever got anybody was a grave marker and a wooden casket.”
Adam nodded his head. “Amongst other things.”
“Other things, huh?” Samuel replied more comely and holstered his six shooter. “Well, ain’t ever killed anybody in my life – at least nobody that didn’t try and kill me first – and I don’t ever plan to, except that Whitechapel, he nailed his coffin shut when he killed my wife.”
For the first time Samuel noticed Anna-Bell and how she still had her head buried against Adam chest and held on to his shirt with a clenched fist so tight it appeared she was trying to rip the cloth right off his back.
“Ma’am,” Samuel said, nudging her shin with his boot. “Anna-Bell! I ain’t gonna kill you, ain’t you been listen to a word I been saying?”
Adam wiggled his chest to try and get her to raise her head, being very careful not to take his hands off his knees. Slowly she raised his head and with tear filled eyes looked straight at Samuel and nodded her head that she understood.
“And if we refuse to help you kill this man, Whitechapel, what then Samuel?” Adam said as he slowly raised a hand from off his knee and wrapped it around Anna-Bells shoulders.
Samuel hadn’t thought of that. That possibility never occurred to him. Help me or die, the decision that they had to make seemed like an easy enough one.
“Don’t know. I can’t let you go ’cause you would go straight to the sheriff, and I can’t let that happen. I won’t let nothin’ stand in the way of me getting at Whitechapel.”
“Where does that leave us then?” Anna-Bell asked as she wiped the tears from her eyes.
“I don’t know,” Samuel answered, “I don’t know.”
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