The Seer And The Stetson

The Suddenness of Parting

The darkness of Clyde's aura was misery that penetrated everything around him. It cast darkness only she could see. Every monochrome from silver through storm grey encompassed his surroundings, leaving gaps only for black as dark as night. Clyde's aura literally stole the brightness from this world. He was a disease. The kind only death could cure.

"What's your name, little darlin'?" Clyde nods toward her.

He didn't know her but she sure as hell knew who he was. His face was plastered on every wanted poster from here to El Paso.

"That would be none of your business, Mister." She replied with a haughty air.

His lips pulled into a slow smile and every muscle in Ellie's face tightened. Her eyes narrowed and her chin jutted outward. She would never give him the satisfaction of seeing her fear.

He reaches up to adjust his hat. Placing it at a jaunty angle back of his head. "I make it my business." His cold grey eyes pierced her where she stood. "Here tell, there's a nigger family been hiding my son, River Collins. I came here to fetch 'im."

"I couldn't say I know yer talkin' about." Ellie lied, hoping he wouldn't see through her paper-thin deception.

Smiling wider, Clyde took long strides as he sauntered in her direction. "Oh, I think you know more than yer lettin' on darlin'."

She gasped when she saw his hand switch from his sidearm to his knife. An enormous, murderous-looking blade with a golden handle. He meant to extract information from her by one means or another. No one got to be the leader of a notorious gang without having the morals of a sewer rat.

She turned frantically scrambling for the cabin door. It swung open just as she reached for it. Her mother stood in the doorframe. 

Ellie struck motionless by her mother's sudden appearance, stood slack-jawed. Abigail's eyes squinted at the figure in the distance and peered fruitlessly behind Ellie. 

"River, is that you, Sugar?" but before she could utter another word. BANG! The sickening blast rang out, scattering the birds loitering in the fields. 

Red liquid stained the front of Abigail's simple brown dress, dripping down to her waist. Her eyes widened, the prominent white showing as she beheld her fate. 

Time slowed, Ellie watched her mother fall to her knees and collapsed on her side on the front porch. She grimaced, wanting to look away as a mixture of repugnance and fear overwhelmed her but she couldn't.

"No! God Please, No!" She screamed, shaking her head slowly in a sweep of denial. She clutched her skirt staggering to her mother. Her hand pressed against the hole in her chest pleading as she begged God not to take her mother from her.

Abigail's horrified eyes found her wordless as she gasped and fought to take her final desperate breaths. Her struggles stilled. Her eyes went glassy. A scream of pain tore through Ellie. She knew she'd lost her mother forever.

"Abbie..." Hershal whispered with a disbelieving tone. He'd just arrived to see Ellie holding her mother. He moved slowly from the door to his daughter and deceased wife. 

Wailing, Hershal's tears came, hot, and endless as he knelt slumped over Abigail's lifeless body. "Who could have done this?" He cried. "She was a good woman. She ain't never did nothin' to nobody." 

"I'm sorry for your loss, boy, but that girl there's to blame. I asked her point-blank where my son River is and she didn't say a word. Then that girl came out here calling me by his name." Clyde spoke for the first time in a tone that revealed remorselessness.

Grief-stricken, Hershal turned his rage on Clyde. "I pray you never find him." He spat.

Clyde chuckled with a bit of a scoff, "Tell me what I want to know and I'll let you and this girl go free." He gave a reassuring smile but still had his hand pressing lightly against the trigger and the gun pointed at the ground.

Hershal's head swiveled to Ellie, "Don't you say a word. I would rather let that information die with me right here and now than to let you ever find him." He clutched Abigail's limp body to his chest.

"I don't think you fucking heard me." Clyde's face darkened for the first time. His true nature surfacing. "You don't give me what I want. I kill you and your pickaninny ." 

"Papi-" Ellie said nudging at him as the horizon filled with mounted riders. At least thirty or forty men racing toward them. 

"Hush up gal." Hershal insisted. "I pray you never draw another breath, Clyde Puckett, without remembering all the breaths you took away." 

"You dare!" Clyde's voice amplified in the silence. He raised his weapon to Hershal's face and Ellie's heart all but stopped. 

Just then a gunshot whistled past Ellie's ear striking Clyde in the shoulder. 'Maskwa,' Ellie's hope for survival was alive again. She turned to see him riding toward them and prayed he'd make it on time to stop the villainous Clyde. But what was one man against an army?

Seeing an opportunity in Clyde's injury, Hershal leaped at him. The men struggled, wrestling over the weapon. She could hear her father sucking at air as if it became thick. And with their bodies in such close proximity, it was impossible to tell who would be the victor. 

Clyde pulled the Arkansas toothpick from his thigh. It disappeared smoothly into her father's flesh. Hershal held the knife sticking from his flank. He turned to Ellie with remorseful eyes as he too fell. 

"Papi-"Ellie choked through her tears. Leaving her mother, she rushed to cradle her father's head on her lap when he fell. 

"You gonna make it Ellie. You gonna be alright. I love you, my baby girl..." He touched his bloody fingers to her cheek, then he gave one final agonal breath, his eyes shut and his hand fell limp.  

Ellie sat numb with her father's head still upon her lap, watching the world move around her. She'd lost all the family she had left in a matter of moments. She heard more shots ring out above her head. Maskwa's desperate attempt to reach her before he too was beaten back by gunfire from both Clyde and now his men. 

She felt arms around her waist as she was hoisted gracelessly to the back of a horse. Her eyes focused on the discarded corpses of her parents. She no longer cared if she lived or died. Her fate was now in the hands of the same God she had trouble being on an even keel with.