[CENTER][IMG]http://i.imgur.com/xd25o72.jpg[/IMG] [B]Last Killer Standing Part II: Washed in the Blood of the Lamb[/B] [I]"There are no second acts in American lives." -- F. Scott Fitzgerald[/i][/CENTER] [B]Jefferson City, Missouri 1873[/B] Reverend Timothy Partlow looked up from the pulpit at the sound of an opening door. The reverend almost recoiled at the sight of a tall, lanky man with a horrible scarred face stumbling through the nave towards him. He seemed to sway with each step, grasping on to the wooden pews for balance as he walked. "There's no service at the moment, friend," Partlow said, stepping away from the pulpit and cautiously walking towards the man. "We've got one coming up this evening you're welcome to attend." "Ain't here for no service, rev," the scarred man said with a drunken slur to his voice. "Need someone to witness to me. I need to get right with God." A drunken man stumbling into the church was nothing new to Partlow. With a rowdy saloon down the street and an even rowdier cathouse beside it, men regularly came in to repent their wickedness. In the reverend's experience, every man succumbed to temptation, himself included. As willing as the spirit may be, the flesh was always weak. The feat was not exactly in avoiding temptation, but in asking for forgiveness once it had happened. What happened more often than not was they would soon leave after getting sober, never fully embracing God and going right back to their sinning. "Come sit next to me on the pew, son. We'll talk." The man reeked of liquor. Not just on his breath, but seemingly his whole body had been doused in it. Partlow could barely stand to sit just a few feet away from him on the pew. He noticed for the first time the man wore the gray of the Rebels, even though the war had been over for nearly ten years. "What have you exactly done?" "What haven't I done? Name the sin, rev, and I've done it. I've fornicated, fought, cursed God, and even killed many men." Partlow gingerly placed a hand on the man's back in order to comfort him. He seemed genuinely remorseful, but he was convinced that had to be the hooch talking. This man had the look of a real gun thug, almost like the men Partlow knew from his past. If the sins were true, then Partlow had more in common with the drunk than the man realized. "What's past is past, my friend. Wickedness may have been in your heart, but that wickedness can be driven out and replaced with the Lord. I speak from experience. In my youth, I battled my own demons before I let Christ into my heart. I was once a wicked man, but through His grace I have repented my ways. I was washed in the blood of the lamb and I became a different man." "Have you really, rev?" The drunk fixed his eyes on Partlow. The reverend found it hard to maintain eye contact with the man, especially with the scarred side of his face that made the right eye look bigger and unblinking. "Changed, I mean," said the drunk. "I don't think it works like that. I had a man explain it to me like this one time: Our lives are a series of doors that lock behind us. We walk through a door and we can't go back. Soon or later we run out of doors to go through and we're left in a little room with the person we've become. We make our choices and we have to live with them. Now, the guy who told me that was coming down off a three-week opium high and I had just recently kicked six of his teeth out with my boot... but I think he was on to something. We are who we are and no amount of praying and weeping and gnashing of teeth can change that." Partlow recoiled backwards at the man's words and at the fact that, slowly, is drunken slur had seemed to disappear. "Like how you may be doing good here in Jeff City as Reverend Partlow, but saving all the souls here won't change the fact that you're really Timothy Perkins, and you are an evil bastard." The reverend's blood seemed to run cold at the mention of that name he thought he'd left behind. He started to back away from the man, but before he could get too far away the man's strong hand found itself wrapped around Partlow's wrist. "You tell your flock about what you did in Abilene? All the men you and your gang killed when that bank got robbed? What about those fires outside Wichita? All them women and kids that got caught in them burning houses? I bet them old ladies love hearing about the smell of burning human flesh and the way a human being screams while their lungs on fire. That gets them going, don't it?" "NO! NO! NO! NO! That ain't me!" Partlow struggled against the man's iron grip before he was pushed to the floor by the scarred man. He thrashed and spat and tried to fight back, but the man was too strong. The stranger jerked the preacher's hands behind his back and tied them together with a short length of rope before knotting it tight. "I'd kill your sorry ass right now if I could. Unfortunately, the bounty stipulates you're wanted alive. That judge out in Kansas really wants to see you at the end of a rope." "Whoever you are, you're mistaken! I'm a preacher, for God's sake!" "Keep denying it and I'll cut out your tongue. You'll bleed out plenty, but I'll stop it before it gets too bad." The reverend was brought to his feet by the bounty hunter. The scarred man's face was in a permanent sneer, but he felt that the man's face would look like that if he could make the face by choice. "What I want to know is why is Bill DeVery killing the rest of your gang?" Partlow blinked in surprise and looked at the bounty hunter. "Bill?... I mean, who... is Bill?" "Nice save there, rev, but it ain't gonna make a bit of difference. The rest of your boys -- Migs Malone, Swede Harden, Wilbur Helms -- all got gunned down by someone before I could collect the bounty on them. You and DeVery are the only two members of the gang still alive. With you acting all pious I imagine it's Billy boy doing the killing." The reverend's heart raced. He was on the verge of hyperventilating, but he licked his dried and cracked lips before nodding. "I... yes, I am Tim Perkins. I [i]was[/i] Tim Perkins. All those things you said I did, I did. I was a monster... but I have changed my ways. I know why Bill is after me. Let me tell you my story and, after I've finished, you can decide if you'd rather take me in for the bounty... or make ten times more than what you would if I hang." The bounty hunter snorted loud and long before he spat a wad of mucus on the church floor. "Talk fast, rev. You're using up what little bit of patience I got." --- [B]Rockford, Illinois 1868[/B] A pitch black engine steadily chugged and poured smoke from its stack as it roared down the rails. Connected to it were six cars that swayed with each dip and divergence on the tracks. The town of Rockford began to rapidly disappear behind it, giving way to the open country of Illinois. It was headed north towards the Wisconsin state line, the towns of Janesville and Madison before the big city of Milwaukee. That was its planned destination, anyway. The five men following the train had other plans. They watched the moving train from a close hilltop with their horses hitched and waiting. The five men looked every bit like the roughnecks that they were, scraggly facial hair and dressed in dark clothing with bandannas hanging around their necks. One of the men watched the train’s movements with a looking glass in his hands while another stood next to a dynamite plunger. “Alright,” Timothy Perkins said to the other men. “Mount up. Swede, you got about a minute until the train gets close enough to blow it.” Swede Harden nodded and prepared to pull the plunger’s handle down while the other four mounted their horses. Perkins pulled his looking glass back out and watched the train approaching a bend. “Now!” Swede pushed down on the detonator, sending a electrical impulse a quarter of a mile away where three sticks of dynamite were wedged against the train tracks. The dynamite exploded just as the engine passed over it, sending the engine up ten feet into the air in a fireball of burning coal and twisted steel. The fiery engine landed on its side and slid off the rails, twisting and dragging the rest of the train with it in a heap of battered boxcars. “Let’s go,” said Perkins, slipping the bandanna up across the lower half of his face. The five masked outlaws charged towards the wrecked train with guns drawn. Their intended target was the mail car three spots behind the engine. Part of its delivery in Janesville was payroll to the workers of the various factories and industries in the town, a cash sum totaling nearly twenty thousand dollars. The gang approached the overturned train car, quickly dismounted their horses and pulling their revolvers. The mail car’s door swung open with a loud clatter. Two hands reached through the door and began to pull someone up through the door. As soon as the burly and mustached face of a man appeared through the hole, he was blasted through the head by Wilbur Helms’ big Smith & Wesson and fell back into the car, dead. Somewhere, someone moaned and someone else cried. “Spread out along the train,” Perkins told the others. “Anybody even looks a bit like the law, gun ‘em down. Billy, you’re with me. We’re going into the mail car. “ Perkins and Bill DeVery climbed up across the car towards the open door where the marshal had attempted to come through. They jumped down through the hole into the capsized boxcar. It was a mess of scattered mail and twisted bodies. There were a lot of men on the floor, either unconscious or too hurt to put up a fight thanks to the crash. Perkins narrowed his eyes at the men. There were nearly a dozen in here. That was way too many for a simple mail run. Perkins found a dead man’s body and rifled through his jacket. He found a badge announcing the dead man as an agent of the United States Treasury. “Bill,” he called over to DeVery. “Something’s not right here.” “I think I found out what it is.” Perkins looked over where DeVery had a very large trunk opened at his feet. The trunk was easily four feet across and two feet tall. The trunk had been knocked around in the crash, flying open and spilling large amounts of United States greenbacks across the floor. DeVery looked up from the cash and grinned at Perkins. “It’s all twenties and hundreds. I think there’s at least three more of ‘em in the train.” “Sweet Jesus,” Perkins said under his breath. “To hell with that payroll. Get that money back in the trunk and let’s find the others.” --- “The Great Rockford Train Robbery,” Jonah Hex said mostly to himself. “That was y’all?” “It was,” Timothy Perkins replied. “We found out later that all that money was on the train because it was being put into circulation and the old bills being brought back to the Mint. They had just dropped off one of those trunks at the Treasury field office in Chicago and were headed to Milwaukee to do the same. All told we took at least three million. We eventually gave up counting.” “You got scared, didn’t you? That was a hell of a lot of money to take, nowhere near what you had planned.” “We got spooked, yeah. This time we ripped off the federal government, not some wildcat bank or some penny-ante factory owner. It was a big crime that they wouldn’t stop trying to find the money or the robbers. Three million dollars. More money than anybody could spend in ten lifetimes. We took a small share of the haul and split it up, hid it, and went our separate ways.” Perkins reached into his tunic and pulled out a scrap of paper. He held tightly to it as he looked at it. “This—“ he held out the paper before pulling it back close to him. “—is part of a map to find the money. Upon our death, we would pass on our part of the map to the others. Last one left alive gets all the piece of the map and gets the money. In theory, it was a good plan…” “But Bill got tired of waiting,” said Hex. “After just, what? Five years? Surprised y’all took this long to turn on each other.” “I don’t want the money any longer, Mr. Hex,” said Perkins. “That is part of a past I wish to forget, it was a version of myself that no longer exists that did those things.” “Well, tell that to DeVery when he shows up.” “That will not stop Bill from killing me, if only to prevent me from coming back one day and killing him for the money… but what if I give my part of the map to you? You take out Bill, you get all five parts of the map, and get the money and I get to live in peace.” Hex looked at the preacher. A line of perspiration ran across his hairline and beaded down his forehead. He looked at Hex with an almost fevered sense of optimism. Hex was about to reply when the doors to the church burst open. The two men turned and saw the tall, meaty frame of Bill DeVery with a shotgun in his hands. “Tim,” he called in a thick southern twang. “I come for ya!” “Get down,” Hex growled, pushing Perkins to the floor and drawing one of his Colts from its hip holster. The outlaw and bounty hunter opened fire upon each other simultaneously.