[center][img]https://i.imgur.com/6bK49TU.jpg[/img][/center] [b]”The Ranchero of Miracle Mesa” - Riders on the Storm: Part Six[/b] [center][i]“The Cowboy must never shoot first, hit a smaller man, or take unfair advantage.”[/i][/center] [center][indent]-Anonymous[/indent][/center] [hr] [indent][b]Warpath, Texas[/b][/indent] [hr] Greg Saunders had always liked the old cowboy pictures. Ever since he was knee high to a grasshopper he’d always find himself tuggin’ at his Pop’s pant leg, askin’ him to put Mister Eastwood on again. There was somethin’ appealing about those oldies. There weren’t no flash and bang or fancy schmancy computer effects gettin’ up all over the screen, just a good old fashioned cowboy. A man, his gun, and his horse, and the open sea of possibility. He’d ride into towns that didn’t always want him, but usually, he’d make things better. No matter what he lost along the way. But sometimes it weren’t so clean. They didn’t all romanticize the life. You had to take it all: the good, the bad, the ugly. They were riders on the storm, charting out that great untangled wild of America, the soul of this country. It was for much those reasons didn’t like most of the newer stuff that came out. He’d never been much of a buff on it himself, but things just didn’t seem to connect to life no more. Action heroes jumpin’ through windows with girls on either arm, shootin’ at folks from a faraway place. People with families, lives. Wrong folk, but… Well, folks all the same. There wasn’t as much focus on a man doin’ what he could for his town. John Wayne’s steady hand gets replaced with Bruce Willis killin’ folk with his bare hands for his and his alone. AN’ then there were the effects. A mess of computers n’ wires vomiting all over the screen. Huge explosions that couldn’t rightly exist. Even the biggest and fanciest of ‘em couldn’t touch the practicals. Maybe that appreciation for the genuine article was why it was so easy for him to watch the corona of the explosion coming towards him. A little earlier than he’d expected, sure. But it’d done the job just fine, shoulda fried every Hunter in the town, just about. Hopefully Frank had gotten downrange enough. Time seemed to slow to molasses for the explosion. It was a beautiful sort of thing so see up close. First there was the pressure wave. His guns got yanked out of his hands and his hat blew clean off his head; but that was only a split second before a sweet orange glow crawled out from the center of the explosion. It was a soft light, creeping closer to him and growing brighter and brighter. Warm, welcoming. He accepted it. Felt it all around him. And then there was nothing. [hr] The only reason Vigilante knew he wasn’t dead was because where he was wasn’t Hell -- and it sure as shit wasn’t Heaven, either. He found himself in some kind of Movie Theater, with the sies and the ceiling crawling off into infinity, like before. Yet somehow, the fog over his mind had lifted. Whatever spirit it was that had kept him tied in here before was gone now, leaving him to properly piece together his thoughts instead of snagging them at free random. This, it seemed, was The Spirit’s domain. A grand chamber full of the wailing dead and the cackling demons. It must feel right at home among them. But The Spirits had quieted some. They sat in solemn silence, gaing up bleary eyed at the screen. Bags traced most of their eyes. Their pallor seemed even paler, if that were even possible. The Demons still had unnatural smiles drawing up to their ears and even past them, but they weren’t so rowdy, now. They just sat rapt. Watching, waiting. Vig felt a hand on his shoulder. He bristled and snapped around, grabbing for a gun that wasn’t there. His eyes met a pair of baby blues. Johnny Blaze. “I won’t lie to you, Saunders. I didn’t expect you’d make it out of that one alive.” Blaze leaned back in his seat and kicked up his boots. He flashed his pearly whites. [color=#f92a0e]“Neither did I. Figured the explosion’d make me look more like chunky salsa than man.”[/color] Vig relaxed his hands and set back to gazing around the room. The souls and demons still stayed locked on the screen. They didn’t seem to much notice that Blaze was among them. [color=#f92a0e]”Now… This seems t’ me like a question you might get a lot, but… Why ain’t I dead?”[/color] Johnny threw back his head and laughed. The metal buckles and spikes on his jacket jingled with his movement. “Oh, Greg fuckin’ Saunders. I love you, man! It’s like this: if any jackass that wants a shot at killing whoever holds The Spirit, they have to kill both halves. You got yourself blown up, sure. But The Spirit’s still kicking, and that means you are, too.” Johnny rubbed Greg’s shoulders. “And you did it, man! Those Hunters are engineered to kill people like us. Like poison to The Rider. Even making him fight them is like cramming a horse pill down his throat. But you took them down the old fashioned way.” [color=f92a0e]”Yeah…”[/color] Greg shuffled his shoulders, shaking Blaze’s hands off. [color=#f92a0e]”Just doing my duty.”[/color] Greg pulled his hat from his head and held it, wringing it in his hands. Something didn’t feel quite right about the place, like it was before. Something had taken what life there was to the place and drained it right on out. Now it was just silence. Blaze’s voice leapt down ten rows before it even started fading. “Just your duty? Man, that was more of them than [i]any[/i] of the other guys have ever seen!” Blaze whooped. “Hey, check it out! He’s waking up. Concentrate, now. All you need to do to fight with The Rider is focus. It’s like a ‘zen’ kinda thing. At least, that’s how I understood it.” Greg nodded and tore his attention away from the spirits around him. He locked his eyes on the screen. The blackness that swallowed it was being pushed away, bit by bit. It was like The Spirit was being crushed, but pushing its way through the rubble, piece by piece. Greg reached out with his mind, and he felt an acid sting push back at his prodding. He pushed through it. He felt a squeeze on his temples while he soldiered on through the mental barrier, only to feel sharper resistance stab into his brain. It wasn’t like his dreams anymore. There it fought with a kind of acerbic style. Confident and zealous in its superiority. But this was like fighting a momma dog. He drew back and he felt a set of controls had risen up out of his armrests. They were alien to him. A series of buttons and do-dads with no real meaning to ‘em. He frowned. His eyes flickered over the crowd again. Many of them had curled into themselves, arms wrapped around their legs while they stared with eyes like the moon. “Greg? What’s wrong?” [color=f92a0e]”I think I’m… I think I’m gonna jes’ see what happens.”[/color] There was nothing left for it to hurt. All the people he cared about were puppets, and Frank seemed to be on the thing’s good side. And if not? Well, he could take care of himself. [hr] The Spirit of Vengeance emerged from the smoldering rubble of what was once The Crossroads Saloon. There was no fanfare to it. The skeletal form of a man rose from the ashes, pushing aside a slab of floorboard. It surveyed the destruction silently, ignoring the quiet sobs of the man who knelt near the crossroads. His heart yearned for vengeance, for blood. But The Spirit only spoke for the dead, and today, the dead had to be collected. Its fires did not rage as they once had. They boiled low, a muted yellow giving a ghastly glow to the head. It didn’t stand out much in the shine of the Texas sun. The only thing a passerby might have noticed was the sound of his gait, the crunch against the debris. Finally it reached a chunk of ceiling, laying against the three foot nub of a support beam. It reached down and tossed the debris aside. The crumpled form of a Hunter lay there. Wounded, but not dead. It looked up at the creature before it, and a broken hand squirmed for a spectral gun. The Spirit toed it away. The Hunter’s red eyes looked up to meet The Spirit. They squinted in the sunlight. The Spirit reached down and hoisted the Hunter up in both arms, like it were carrying a child. It burned. The mere contact sent agony spiraling through its arms, bones and marrow trying to curl back from the pain. But The Spirit pressed on, and sat itself on the last shred of the bar that remained, an end corner. The Spirit caressed The Hunters jaw with a bone hand, drawing the creature to look it in the eyes. Pain exploded through The Spirit’s fingertips. It did not care. [color=#3d045e][b]“Look into my eyes, little one.”[/b][/color] Tendrils of black fire spiraled out from The Spirit, evevolping the Hunter in their embrace. [i] It was a cool day for the summer, but he’d still dressed too warm for it. The leather of his coat barely kept the hot metal plates pressed against his body. Those things had gotten hotter n’ hell, but ol’ Nate Cassidy had tol’ him it’d help keep them bullets from gettin’ him killt. It had worked out pretty good so far, but he hadn’t gotten shot, yet. Least he had that going for him. The fellers they were fighting today knew what they were doing. They were cool and clean with their revolvers. Mosta their shots hit, an’ the rest of the gang was falling to pieces around him. Nate said it was going to be a clean heist. In, out, take the money and run. Nobody gets hurt, and we get rich, he said. Even tried spiking the Sheriff’s shipment o’ water that morning to make double-sure. Hadn’t counted on the teller keeping hisself a boomstick under the counter. The screams. Or the shooting. God, the shooting. But they still made it out in the end, cash in hand. Took a while to wash the blood out, but Nate said to pay that no mind. The river’d get everything clean enough if you gave it time. Meanwhiles they jes had to lay low in town, keep an eye out for any lawmen that might come lookin. Whoever these folks were, they sure weren’t the po-lice. Towns didn’t hire Sheriffs like them, no sir. N’ they certainly didn’t work for one of the gangs. Golden Joe wouldn’t a hire a mex’can, n’ neither would the Domergues. Far as he could see, it was a mex’can n’ two of his buddies. One of em had a real messed up face, but they’d got ‘im, at least. Frank Horn had tagged ‘im real good before takin’ one between the eyes ‘imself. Then there was the mex’can, and a feller swingin’ a whip like crazy. The mex’can was a real good shot, give him that. He worked his irons like nobody's business. At least the whipfighter was slowin’ down. His hits were getting sloppier. He’d taken a few hits but he hadn’t dropped yet. But exhaustion was about to get him, yessir. The fight went on for a while. Mostly cover shootin’ and shoutin’. Til’ the whip boy dropped. The Mex’can dropped his guns. Stepped right on outta’ cover n’ asked to talk to Nate. They were sittin pretty. Soon as Nate stepped out, the mex’cans face started to… To melt. It wasn’t like nothin’ he’d ever seen before. Fire jumped out of every one of his orifices, n’ that mex’can just started killin’. His whip was everywhere, slashing so hard that people’s necks split clean open. Eventually, the mex’can got to him. The string of that burning whip around his neck. The draw of those eyes… Those black, black eyes… And then? Then there was anger. Nothing but anger and anger and anger and…[/i] The Hunter was gone. The Spirit held the form of a boy no older than seventeen in his arms, swaddled in a Yankees sweatshirt. His switchblade hung out of his backpocket. A peashooter of a pistol poked out of his waistband. A piece of the Crossroads had pierced him, through and through. He was dying. The Spirit could felt his soul, calling out. Waiting. [color=#3d045e][b]”Who sent you, my child?”[/b][/color] The Spirit brought the boy in close, holding him against its breast. The fires in The Spirit’s chest died, turning down to a subtle warmth. “I…” The boy looked up at him. His eyes were glossed over, uncomprehending. “Momma? I’m sorry. I...” The Spirit laid him down, pushing aside rubble and sweeping up a pillow of ash. [color=#3d045e][b]”Please.”[/b][/color] The boy looked him up and down. “I… I went to Mr. Solomano’s office today, momma. He… He had… Something… Something for me to… Why is it so cold, Momma?” [color=#3d045e][b]”It’s okay. You can rest, now.”[/b][/color] The Spirit touched the boys face. Fire danced off of his fingertip. The boy smiled. The funeral pyre had begun. “Thank you.”