TIME: IMMEMORIAL

9.5a Lone Gun (2007/1890)

THE COWBOY

'... three kinds. Them who made the pact or swore to it, others in the know and all the rest. Guess you could say I'm in the second group - They gave us the substance in small doses, so that's why ...'

<tape fast forwards>

'Please state your name for the record. And your date of birth.'

'Bartholomew. J. Allenby. Born 1879.'

'You were eleven years old when the events took place? In 1890?'

'Yes Ma'am. That I was. I seen it all.'

***

1890 - The old west was dying. One by one the heroes, adventurers, masked and mysterious men - the noble Injuns, the dark and spooky riders, well there were less of em year by year. Some went out in a blaze of glory, while others just faded away as civilization came ta the west. A few hung on.

After the civil war, an the roarin' high adventure of the 70's, the 1880's was, I guess you could say, the beginning of the end of the era and by 1890, those brave men and a few intrepid wimmin were already more myth than flesh in the eyes of most.

The Kids - Billy, the Outlaw, 'Pache Kid, the one what was named for his gun - Colt I think, and his buddy the masked fella with the two guns. All dead. Kids from Texas, Dodge City, Montana and Ringo ... dead or disappeared, except maybe the gunslinger from Rawhide.

Then there were the riders. Rumor had it that the Phantom had given up the ghost, that in fact t'weren't one man but several who had worn the white duds ... though others said it was just one lost soul, returned from beyond. In any case by 1890, that man or ghost had gone to whence he came. As had the Grey Rider, a confederate relic of the past. Now some folks were still talkin' about a Black Rider, but that's another story.

Our story concerns a man who didn't feel the need ta go by any fancy name, nor wear a mask or distinctive duds. Most called him Tex, on account of his birth state, but that weren't hardly unusual - there were as many Tex's as there were 'Kids.' This un though was Taylor. Tex Taylor - a grim man, drawn by some weird quirk of fate to strange and uncanny situations.

They say as a youth he declared for the Union and took the blue, rising to an officer's rank. Now, as ya can imagine, this didn't set well in his home town and state, an dire consequences followed that decision.

In 1865, Lt. Tex Taylor returned home to his young bride and four year old daughter, only to discover a scene of horror that no man should behold. His family had been most heinously slaughtered by a group of southern loyalists, hell bound on gaining some small measure of revenge. Their plan was to let Taylor live a while, before puttin' him out of his misery.

It didn't quite work out that way.

Always a taciturn man, the young ex soldier grimly set about usin' his considerable skills on a methodical and systematic path of retribution. Over the course of a decade, Tex Taylor tracked and killed over forty of the men responsible for the killings of Clara and Annabel Taylor, plus some hundreds of others, who sought (through kinship, friendship or by dint of bein' hired guns) to place themselves 'tween Taylor and his vengeance.

By 1875 all of the original malefactors  had died by the hands ... and guns ... and blade ... and on one notable occasion, garrote, of Tex Taylor. All save one ... a particularly despicable reprobate by the name of Calhoun.

At this point the cycle of vengeance had been passed to the next generation. The sons and once, a daughter of the justly killed perpetrators of the horrific event of 1865, came after Taylor, individually or in groups. Many diabolical plans were hatched - some involving the hiring of costumed villains of the west, or ancient Indian rites.

One time saw Taylor teamed with the Black Rider to prevent an incursion from what they called, another dimension. He gained possession of a mystical artefact on that occasion - a cursed gun, said ta have belonged originally ta Billy the Kid and latterly to another adventurer by the name of Blaze Barton.

Tex Taylor killed any and all who came against him, sparing only one individual, a boy who was dissuaded from his own desire for revenge, following the revelation that his own father had committed acts more fit for a beast. The boy rode with Taylor for some years and in fact was able, eventually, to furnish him a vital piece of information.

Calhoun had been located ... up Iowa way, in a small town.

That town was Ratbend. The year was 1890.