The Flask

Chapter one.

                                                                                  1.

    In hindsight, Ray thought briefly that he may have been better off remaining within the confines of the town; perhaps hiding somewhere there. But this was what he always did. He ran. He ran away from his troubles. He ran away from his family. And now he was running from the law… again. “Probably not a good idea to stick around.” he thought. “Town’s too small and they’d find me, probably real quick too”.

   He pulled back firmly on the reins to signal his horse to slow down. The animal chomped down on the bit, shook his head in mild protest, and then did what was expected of him. He’d been in a full gallop for over two hours now and was likely getting overheated, and Ray’s ass was beginning to ache terribly. He felt a saddle rash coming on. He took a quick look over his shoulder, as he’d been doing regularly since he’d left town. What had happened at the bank played over and over in his mind, and he wrestled with the justification of killing three people just as he was about to leave the building with the money he’d stolen. He adjusted his riding position and took a long draw of whiskey from the old sterling silver flask he’d kept in his breast pocket, the one he had taken from his father just before he died. He took a quick look at his left hand, and then looked away in disgust. One of the fingers had been blown clean off at the middle knuckle in the gun fight, and he’d stopped briefly earlier to light his pipe, then he jammed the weeping stump into the glowing tobacco embers to staunch the flow of blood. The crude medical procedure had worked, but it hurt like hell. The pain was still making him shake and sweat, but at least the initial shock of losing the finger had worn off.

    He muttered angrily to himself: “Just five more minutes, no one would’ve gotten hurt, and I’d have been on my way. Five lousy minutes was all I needed. Well, at any rate I did what I had to do to get out alive”.

   There were about fifteen patrons conducting their daily business in the bank, and they had all done as he’d instructed; they all dropped to the floor face down and remained there, and no one tried to cause any fuss. Ray was hurriedly fumbling with the process of trying to tie up the open end of an old worn canvas sack with one hand, while pointing his pistol at the terrified crowd with the other, when he heard the first explosion, followed by the whizzing of a bullet singing past his ear. He instinctively jumped to his left and rolled along the floor under a nearby desk, which he kicked over to use as a barrier. He propped himself up, back against the desk top, and levered a cartridge into the chamber of his .32 special. He wondered momentarily who might have been lucky enough to get out of the building to warn someone that he was robbing the place, then cautiously got onto his knees, turned, and peeked over the top corner of the desk only to be met by the thunderous “KABOOM” of a twelve gauge shotgun round followed by the smaller “crack, crack, crack” of pistol fire. Just as he ducked back down, the corner of the desk vaporized into splinters, and his black felt hat was knocked off his head and across the room.  Ray crouched down, grabbed the corner of the desk and began dragging it across the room toward the open door while using it as cover from the hail of lead coming his way. “KABOOM, KABOOM” he heard again, but this time the sound was followed by an unbearable pain in his left hand. He stopped, his ears ringing, looked down, and noticed that a hole had been blown through the desk top directly where his hand was, and half of his index finger had gone missing along with a square foot of yellow pine.  It felt as though someone had splashed blazing kerosene all over his arm. He fell to the floor behind the desk, poked the muzzle of his .45 pistol through the gaping hole created by the shotgun, and opened fire. As he emptied the magazine of the bucking weapon he heard two people fall to the floor. Ray peered around the corner of the desk just in time to see the cloud of gun smoke clear as Deputy Sinclair and a woman he didn’t recognize toppled over. Both were dead before they hit the floor planks. 

“Christie!” he heard a voice scream from across the room. He recognized the voice as that of the Sherriff, John Barker. “You’ll never get out of this God damned building alive Christie! You might as well give up right now and toss me those weapons. There’s no point in fighting or running because I’ll hunt you down and”……….KABOOM!!! Christie quickly stood up, spun around, shouldered his rifle and touched off a round before Barker could finish his sentence, the kickback of the large rifle sending him reeling backwards. The slug entered the Sherriff’s left cheek and exited the back of his head, leaving a pattern of blood spatter on the wall behind him. Sherriff Barker twirled on one foot, and then fell awkwardly to the floor, landing on his face. His front teeth were knocked out on impact and they scattered on the floor beside his twitching body. Ray heard blood-curdling shrieks coming from two of the female bank tellers behind the counter. He got to his feet, looked around, and yelled between clenched teeth “Everyone else stay down and no one gets hurt, understand?”  Some men on the floor looked at him and nodded to signify cooperation, others were crying, face down holding their hands over the tops of their heads…trembling uncontrollably. He noticed that one of them had wet his pants. Ray ran out of the building, slowing down just enough to stoop over and grab his hat, then jumped on his horse. He kicked the spurs into its sides, and the animal reared up and squealed in protest, throwing Ray to the ground on his back and launching his flask out of his inner pocket and spinning in the sand. Ray quickly managed to get to his feet. He paused briefly, looked the horse squarely in the eyes, and considered punching the animal in frustration.  Instead he instinctively bent over and grabbed the flask and pocketed it. He mounted again, then slapped the horse on the hind quarter and quickly rode off.

   As he rounded the corner to leave the small town he happened to look to his side and noticed a figure standing on the steps of the Sherriff’s office.  Ray recognized him as Richard Clark. Ray remembered picking on him as a kid, mostly due to the fact that Clark was continually mouthing off to anyone who would listen to him for more than two seconds, and he had a habit of tattling on everyone for even the smallest of reasons. He once ratted Ray out for skipping school, and Ray’s father beat him senseless when he walked in the front door. Ray swore all through his childhood that someday he’d have his revenge on Richard Clark. Richard had icy blue eyes, blond hair and very fair skin, so fair in fact that as a kid he was teased relentlessly about being an albino, even though he wasn’t.  As Ray rode he snickered to himself, thinking about the time when they were kids; he had given Richard a tall glass of piss to drink, telling him it was warm apple cider. He laughed aloud as he remembered Clark vomiting all over the place and screaming “Ray Christie, you miserable son of a bitch!” Clark had recently been sworn in as the town’s newest deputy Sherriff. He wasn’t aware of how serious the whole situation at the bank had gotten, but he could tell that something had gone terribly wrong. The gold star on his left shoulder caught Ray’s eye as it glinted in the sunlight. The blue-eyed deputy grinned, drew both side arms and began shooting wildly at Ray. 

   Ray ducked, and Clark could hear him laugh out loud.  “Kid, you never could shoot straight, still can’t” he yelled as he passed.

   He rode as hard as he could until the town vanished into a cloud of dust behind him.