Ignobles

Chapter 2

The Pioneer walked. He could barely tell whether or not he was still breathing. Some said his heart didn't beat any longer. They said a man who kept company with crows and hunted the damned couldn't have a heart. 

Few of the cacti he passed by had managed to outgrow him. The black poncho he kept over his shoulders was torn in some spots, but his black leather hat was polished to perfection. He waxed it every other night if he wasn't on the move.

Out of Las Tres Cazadores ('The Three Hunters' or 'The Three' for short), he was the strongest. Against what Crake advised, he never used a horse to wander between the towns in search of a bounty. He walked. 

He normally had a Colt hanging at his hip and a Winchester's barrel tickling the back of his neck when he traveled. But he knew old Wisefield wouldn't be happy with him entering Gravestone armed. Dragoon and Crake had kept his weapons. But he never let them keep Imitar.

The crow sat on his left shoulder. The black wings of death. The messenger for when the three were apart. Imitar let out a soft caw as the Pioneer walked, his head down. His boots were of pure leather, metal buckles with a gold charm that resembled a coyote's skull dangling from his right. But even they weren't a guarantee against the fangs of a rattler. Especially not a big one. The coyote's skull was beginning to lose its fade after all those years. But its memory hadn't faded. Not one bit. 

The grass was withered, some blades simply snapping where he stepped. The sand looked as if it hadn't tasted rain in ten years. The sun was blinding, but he could see the sign that read 'Gravestone' growing closer in the distance. He pat the pen in his breast pocket, then held the handle of the knife he had sheathed against his lower back.

His neck ran with sweat that tickled his light-tan skin, following a vein that stuck out on the side. Imitar's claws were beginning to feel like razors slipping through the poncho and into his skin. But the bird knew to swap shoulders every half hour or so. His constant half sneer was softening as he grew closer, the thought of water and shade moving him along. To anyone who passed him by, however, he looked as if he didn't need either. Each step he took rustled the grass, lifted a plume of sand.

The shivering sound of a rattlesnake's tail rose into the air like a swarm of grasshoppers on his left. Imitar let out a grinding caw, raising his wings and pointing his open beak at the serpent. Without moving his foot an inch, the Pioneer turned his head just enough to look at the coiled reptile, its brown and sand-white scales blending in with the ground it lay on. Its tail was upright, neck curved in an 'S,' a dark, forked tongue flickering in and out.

The Pioneer stopped, staring at the reptile for a moment, "I'm sure you wish I had my foot closer," he paused, looking back up, "We both wish our prey was closer. But I chase mine when it isn't."

****

Andrew Slain walked down the same sand path he had walked up two hours prior. The southern entrance to Gravestone was on Fifth street. Two lefts and right from his home.

People visited often for various reasons. Passerby's, in need of a hotel. Merchants in need of buyers. Bounty hunters were the rarest. And the arrival of the Pioneer was apparent as he walked down the street.

Andrew reached into his pocket and pulled out his watch. An hour and fifty-eight since he had seen Arturo. He stuffed it back in his pocket and kept walking with his head down.

The entrance was well in sight. But Arturo wasn't there. The two trees that stood on either side of the entrance towered above what remained of the wooden border fence. They were still as tombs most of June. For once, they were being swayed by a wind that whistled like a songbird, rattling the wind chimes that hung from the overhang of a little white and blue house on Andy's left. The rest of the buildings were all neatly packed beside each other.
Barbers, saloons, motels. Some red, others brown, others white. Some were streaked or painted in part with blue. Some held a large window that was tinted a sickly yellow, some with a pair of windows barely large enough to stick your head out.