A Short Story of the Old West
by William Florence
Author of "The Killing Trail"
© William Florence, 2004
Salem, Oregon
The Killing Trail
Dally Press Gazette
Desert Destinations
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The relentless sun pounded Hard Willy Smith's tough, wiry body like a blacksmith's hammer: consistently, rhythmically, deliberately. The blows of shimmering heat were staggering - gut punches that could suck the breath right out of a man and drop him to his knees. But Hard Willy Smith was not easily discouraged on this hellishly hot August day, and he concentrated for the moment not on the heat but on the vast expanse of thickly treed canyon and narrow meadow that opened up before him, looking for the slightest sign of sound or movement. Long streams of sweat streaked the sides of his weathered face, following the cracks and lines of his well-tanned, leather-like skin, and ran off his cheeks or his chin or down his neck. Occasionally a flowing stream of perspiration would catch in the crow's feet beneath his bushy black eyebrows and flood into his eyes. He would shift the position of his Sharps carbine slightly then and rub at his eyes with his fists, trying to clear his vision - all the while keeping his attention focused on the faint game trail that snaked through the meadow immediately below. Even though the sun was momentarily blocked by clouds that snagged on the tall mountain peak at his back, the sweat coursed down his arms and leaked into his heavy flannel shirt, the sleeves of which were bunched up above his elbows; he also could feel it raining down his legs beneath his dirty denim trousers - already turned a damp, sooty dark blue - and soaking into his boots. There was so much sweat, in fact, that it poured off him like sawdust when it is pulled and pushed, pushed and pulled, out of a fat pine board by a sharp-bladed saw. Hard Willy had thought to bring thin deerskin gloves to help keep the sweat off his hands, and he pulled them on now - casually, confidently, his eyes at all times fastened to the trail. He needed the gloves so that when the time came to pull the trigger - and he was confident that the time was fast approaching - his finger wouldn't slip off the Sharps and cause him to miss the shot. He didn't figure that he would get a second chance, anymore than he could avoid the heat. There was no shade to speak of - nothing to block the sun's intensity or to shield a man or any living thing from the scorching furnace of the day. Still, this was the best place he had found during a search that had lasted more than a week; he had ignored the tracks of a big mountain lion that littered the area because he knew that from this position, he could watch and wait and then bushwhack an approaching rider without so much as even an outside chance of being seen or heard. And if the big cat came by while he waited, Well, it'll be too damned bad for the cat, Hard Willy figured.
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Watch and wait, he said to himself. He liked the sound of it so much that he said it aloud: "Watch and wait. Watch and wait." Then he took a drink from his canteen, filled that morning from a small clear stream near the base of the mountain, and said it again: "Watch and wait."
Hard Willy was holed up in a jumbled pile of fallen rocks and boulders near a moraine more than five-hundred yards above timberline on the east face of a peak called Three Fingered Jack. Below him, thick sheets of scree - long-since shucked from the mountain's side like hungry ticks scratched out of the fur of a sweaty dog - swept down into the vast forest of ponderosa, lodge pole, and jack pines that stretched across the horizon in all directions. The pines were so thick that the entire range of earth around him looked black; only an occasional poplar or quaking aspen, or the sudden rise of a snow-capped Cascade peak, broke the black, dense, timbered monotony.
Hard Willy didn't pay much attention to the trees, though. His eerily dark eyes were fixed on the remnants of the game trail that led around from the north face of the mountain at his back and eventually would take a man clear down into the tiny settlement of Sisters, where Hard Willy worked as a sometime ranch hand, breaking horses and herding cattle.
Hard Willy's eyes were reptilian - a snake's eyes. They shifted and roamed and moved about constantly, unceasingly - seemingly never blinking despite the fierce glare of the sun or the streams of sweat that coursed downward from his battered, dusty Stetson as though his hat were filled with water and had somehow sprung a leak.
Regardless of where his eyes went and what they recorded in his mind, they always returned quickly to the trail.
All content is (c) William Florence, 2004. All rights reserved.
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