"A Bullet for my Broken Heart" (closed)

[Alice2015]

"A Bullet for my Broken Heart"

(closed)​

Alice Hooper heard the approaching horses long before they came into her view from over a hillock to the south. She slipped the revolver from the holster on her hip, carefully checking that it was loaded without allowing the auto-ejector to accidentally kick out the unspent rounds.

Once upon a time, Alice had carried a Colt M1873, known popularly as The Peacemaker. The Colt Single Action Army revolver was a more solid gun than the Smith and Wesson Schofield she carried now. And the Colt didn't have the drawback of a hurried, careless user accidentally activating the top-mounted barrel catch and accidentally kicking out all or some of the weapon's unspent rounds. In addition, the Peacemaker could fire the ammunition made for both the Colt and the Smith & Wesson while the Schofield could only shoot the shorter rounds made specifically for the weapon.

But while the Colt was more flexible regarding the cartridges it shot, the Schofield -- with its top break opening feature and auto ejector for spent shells -- had the ability of being quickly and easily reloaded with just one hand, even while the rider was on the back of a galloping horse. That had come in handy for Alice while she'd been evading the posse that was just now coming into view over the hillock.

It wasn't a posse, per se, though. There likely wasn't a Lawman amongst them. No, they were likely just hired guns -- bounty hunters and other such killers -- who had been employed by a North Texas rancher to bring Alice back to El Paso to stand trial and hang for the killing of the man's son. For more than two weeks, she'd been leading them across the Western Texas Panhandle and up into the Southeastern portion of the New Mexico Territory.

The party's numbers had decreased significantly during the chase, despite being replenished twice; the posse had begun with a dozen men, slimmed, expanded to a dozen and a half, then waned yet again until there were only seven of them left now. Alice's skill with the Schofield had left many of the now absent killers dead or injured, and others had simply dropped out of the quest to avoid a similar fate.

Try as she might to evade the group, Alice had come to the conclusion that diminishing their numbers one man at a time wasn't going to do it. There would always be another man or two or ten who would join the surviving members when the purse of gold proffered was jingled in their face. No, the only way Alice was going to finally shed the posse was if she disposed of it -- of each member -- all at once.

And this was the time and place to accomplish that feat. After a gunfight day before yesterday in a little village next to a pretty, shaded river, the posse was down to just seven men, the lowest it had been in more than a week. Alice watched the riders spread out left and right as they rode over the slight rise and slowed their horses to a comfortable walk.

She surveyed the men and their weapons as they slowly approached and stopped their horse roughly thirty feet short of Alice's position. Three of the men already had their weapons pulled; two revolvers and a Winchester rifle were at the ready should Alice decide not to come quietly. The readiness of the other four men varied from hand-on-gun-butt to seemingly unconcerned that their quarry's weapon was brushing up against her hand and only a flash of a second from deployment.

The eight of them simply stared at one another for the longest moment. Alice's face was expressionless; the faces of the men ranged from true concern for their lives to cockiness. Alice looked into the eyes of the man who seemed to be in charge -- the most confident appearing of them -- and found herself wondering whether he'd been a member of the posse from the start and fell bold because he'd survived this long; or he'd only recently joined and had no idea of the danger this lone female presented.

"Alice Hooper," the supposed leader finally spoke, continuing with a very formal tone and cadence, "You're under arrest for the murder of Kenton Johns of El Paso, Texas, killed dead by your hand on the Twelfth of August in the year of our Lord eighteen hundred and eighty-two. The warrant for your arrest doesn't specify whether you are to be brought in dead or alive. Personally, I'd like to take you in alive…"

The man's gaze lowered to take in the curves of Alice's figure, well displayed by her profile stance to him. His lips spread in an evil smile as he added, "At a comfortable pace, it's a five day ride back to El Paso … five days … and five nights in which I think we could--"

He wasn't able to finish his threat to his quarry's honor as Alice drew the Schofield in a flash and fired. The round entered the man's skull through his left eye and exploding out the back of it just behind the ear. Alice held the trigger of the revolver back as she turned to present her left side to the posse and -- aiming carefully at one man after another -- fanned the hammer of the .45 until it was empty.

The initial shot had spooked most of the horses, causing great confusion, with two horses rearing and throwing their riders while a third spun so quickly that the man aboard was thrown a fair distance before slamming face first on the hard ground. Simultaneously, the posse members' ability to shoot back at their quarry was diminished. Within seconds, Alice had killed or critically wounded four of the men, picking her prey by the danger they seemed to present to her, without a single one of them getting a shot off in her direction.

Alice wasn't oblivious to math and understood that she would be out of bullets before she was out of pursuers. As she'd been firing, though, Alice had also been moving forward, finding a place within the mayhem of the spooked horses and panicking gunmen. Within the kicked up dust cloud, she ripped a Winchester out of a saddle scabbard, took an ax swing with it at the nearest man's skull disabling him, then levered one shell after another into the .30-30's chamber and fired at any man moving until it, too, was empty.

The echoes of the rifle made their final ricochet off the nearby cliffs and pass over the scene. As the wind cleared the fine brown dust away, Alice was reloading the Schofield while surveying the result of the fight. Three men were still alive with two of them moaning or crying out at the pain of the bullet fire's damage. Alice walked over to each and put a bullet through their skull, silencing them. She searched pockets, taking coins and paper dollars; it was the wanted posters that had a fairly good likeness of her that was what Alice was really after, though.

Once content that the quest for her had finally ended, Alice mounted her horse and headed off to the north. The pursuit of Alice Hooper might be over, or at the least postponed for a considerable amount of time; but Alice's own pursuit of the man responsible for her fiancée's murder was still very much in process.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

Leah Rhodes

A middle aged, heavy set man stood at the bars, his thick fingered hands wrapped around the bars and his fleshy face pressed in between two of them, looking as pathetic as he could manage. His pale blue eyes looked beseechingly across the little jail at his captor, trying to will the sheriff into glancing his way.

In contrast, the sheriff looked as relaxed as a coon dog during a siesta. Fingers laced behind the head as they balanced the wooden chair on its back legs. Long, denim covered legs stretched over the desk, spurred boots resting on its scratched, paper strewn surface. The sheriff’s hat was low over their eyes-maybe napping. The tin star shone on the right side of their black vest, and even from here he can see that fabled six shooter holstered on one hip.

“Sheriff, when am I getting on out of here?”

“When you sober up, Richard.” Even casual, there’s a smoky, silvery feel to the sheriff’s voice, one that sends a little thrill through him when his name is spoken in it. Weren’t no shame in that-the sheriff was one of the prettiest women in Harrisville.

“I’m sober enough to be standin’ up.”

“So you are.”

“Which means I’m sober enough to go home.”

The leggy sheriff tipped her hat back and fixed him with an amused look, letting the chair fall to all four legs before she swept her boots off her desk and swung them to the floor to stand. She was tall for a woman. Tall for a man, even. In the black leather, white stitched boots she wore, the woman was easily five eleven, maybe even six feet tall. No willowy thing, though-even in the loose white blouse she wore beneath that black leather vest, her feminine charms were apparent. A shapely, proportioned woman, their sheriff. The dark red hair didn’t hurt, either. It was in its usual low ponytail over the front of her shoulder, opposite that shiny badge.

Amber, green flecked eyes studied him a moment, that air of amusement sparkling in them, a genial smile on her lips. “I let you out of there, you’ll head right back to the saloon.” She says without disapproval, merely stating the fact.

“No I won’t sheriff, I swear.”

“Hm…”

“Well...I am getting just a mite bit hungry, and they’ve got that chili on special…”

She laughed, shaking her head as she drew the ring of keys from her hip, counting through for his. “Well, don’t go picking any fights and you can get as drunk as you like. Davison’s gone on home to the farmstead by now, I reckon.”

“Thank you sheriff.”

The door swung open and he mosied past, the woman giving a slap to his back before she swung the door shut again, unlocked. “Get on outta here.”

~*~

A female sheriff might be an unprecedented oddity in the territories, but then again, Leah Rhodes was an unprecedented sort of woman. She had moved to town with her aging, former lawman father to run a boarding house for prospectors, and had drawn notice immediately-but Leah wasn’t interested in suitors. Oh, she was friendly enough-but she preferred her own company, and all attempts to woo her were met with polite, amused indifference.

The eligible bachelors were sure they had a shot once her old man had taken ill and died-particularly when the business began failing as claims were mined out. She had run it for as long as it was practical too, and then she’d finally sold the place to a grocer to get out from under it. She was temporarily staying in the saloon and drinking with the men per usual when Bill Ryder and his boys came back to town. He’d been freed on a mistrial several towns over, and went right back to terrorizing the place he used to call home as if the cattleman hadn’t shored it up into something decently proper in his absence.

Leah hadn’t been able to make much sense of that-what had been a relatively peaceful town turned sour overnight, and everyone seemed too afraid and too meek to do anything about it. Women were suddenly nervous about walking the streets in broad daylight. Families with children were talking about moving. And the sheriff-well, he was no help. For all the obvious intimidation and bullying, he refused to budge. Didn’t want to bleed out in the street, he’d said.

They’d even tried to fuss with her-she’d drawn on them!-but they only seemed amused at that, and there’d been no shooting.

The saloon owner had warned her to get out of town after that. Bill Ryder and his boys didn’t take no for an answer. Leah ignored the advice, still deciding where to go and what to do, and stubbornly refusing to flee from any two bit thugs-that simply wasn’t in her nature to turn tail and run.

And when they finally killed someone in their tomfoolery, smack in the street-poor old Tom, a harmless drunk and one armed veteran of the war, always in his uniform coat-and no one seemed inclined to do anything about it-well, that’d finally been a step too far.

So she went and did something about it then and there. The shoot out hadn’t lasted long, and she’d hardly left much for anyone else to do-but when the smoke cleared, Leah Rhodes was still standing, and Ryder and his boys weren’t.

The sheriff was half ran out of town, and half too humiliated to stay. And well-she’d always been a charismatic, popular figure about town-someone handed her the tin star, and the deputy didn’t argue any-too old, he said. So she’d agreed to take it until election time...and long story short, she’d proved a popular candidate year after year, and eventually no one bothered to run against her-not that many had in the first place. Mostly newcomers who thought they’d beat out a woman easy.

Strangers thought it strange, but Leah was a staple to those that belonged-she believed in the law, was fair, and when the going got tough-so did Leah. The twenty eight year old knew the lay of the land, was more than a match for the roughest of outlaws, and drew respect and lust in equal measure throughout her growing town. There was no denying just how steady the ground beneath her feet was.

‘Course, she hadn’t counted on Miss Alice Hooper.

 

[Alice2015]

Harrisville...

Or is it Purgatory?

Alice had been standing on a small hillock east of the town for an hour or more, just looking upon it. She was hesitant to enter, knowing that her fate was to either die here while in conquest of killing her lover's murderers or to kill them and bring an end to her only remaining purpose in life.

My Purgatory … or his?

Alice wasn't a Bible thumping kind of girl, so her knowledge of Purgatory was … well, she had no knowledge of Purgatory, direct anyway, except to believe that it was somewhere on the road to Hell. In the hours or days to come, Alice knew that someone was going to hell, whether it be herself or that murderous bastard, Preston Johns.

The 20-something Preston had been in El Paso visiting the branch of the Johns family living there when he and his cousin went out on the town, got blind drunk, and ended up shooting Peter Hooper to death. Peter Hooper … Alice's Peter Hooper … her husband of just under two years who she'd come to understand was indeed her sole mate and the only person -- the only thing -- she'd truly loved and wanted in her entire life.

She hadn't imagined when it happened -- the murder, that is -- that she would wind up here in the New Mexico Territory hunting a man down. She certainly hadn't imagined that before she even got to that man, she would already have two dozen bodies to her credit. She wasn't a killer. Or, at least, she hadn't been until her true love's death.

Alice had been more than familiar with firearms before Peter's death, but she'd never fired one at another person. She'd been a performer with a troupe that traveled the South and West -- or what was called The West at this time in history -- putting on firearms demonstrations. They made a fair bit of money from their shows, but the real money came from sponsorship by gun manufacturers and the sales of the guns with which they traveled.

The two Johns cousins -- stupid drunk at barely past high sun and practically falling over one another -- had recognized Peter from the show they'd attended. The two laughing, teetering men challenged Peter to show some of his quick draw skills in a real life situation, then without warning drew on him and gunned him down.

Peter's hands had been filled with a box of food from the dry goods store he'd just exited; he was unarmed.

Alice's life changed in an instant. She left the show, unable to perform; without income and with her savings spent on booze and opium, she was soon broke and desperate to support herself. She turned to a life of crime -- specifically armed robbery -- masking her face as she hit mostly hotels for the cash, gold, and patrons' valuables in their safes, as well as well-to-do men who tended to carry too much cash and not enough fire power.

She was eventually found out by El Paso's Sheriff, who -- thankfully -- had been a friend of Peter and a fan of Alice. She had harmed no one as of yet; rather than send her to the Women's Prison in Fort Worth, he took her guns and told her to get out of Texas.

And she had, initially. But those guns -- her Colt Peacemakers -- had been the last evidence of her life with Peter, and Alice had wanted them back. She slipped back into El Paso to peacefully retrieve them from the Sheriff's office when to her shock, Alice found herself staring at one of the two men who'd destroyed all for which she'd cared.

Kenton Johns swore he had no memory of the shooting, telling Alice that he'd been so drunk he was shocked he'd even gotten his own Colt out of its holster. But Alice didn't see or hear true regret in his demeanor or words; and she'd been told shortly after the killing that Peter hadn't been the first man to die at the hand of Kenton Johns.

"Are you sober now?" she'd asked. When he hesitantly answered in the positive, Alice told him, "Then I guess you should be able to pull your gun now."

Kenton Johns knew what was coming. And rather than talk his way out of it, he drew on Alice. She didn't have her trusty Colt on her, but she was packing the Smith & Wesson Schofield she still carried now. Her skill from the show and her devastation from Peter's death returned in an instant. Kenton Johns got off a shot -- the bullet barely grazed Alice's side, leaving a rather impressive scar there -- but Alice emptied the revolver in less than two seconds, ripping Kenton Johns's torso to shreds.

The reign of terror that had been Kenton Johns had ended, and the true life of crime that was now Alice's life had begun. She'd fled El Paso ahead of her friend the Sheriff, avoiding the posse he'd reluctantly sent after her; then -- after that one had abandoned the quest -- avoided the second one sent out by Kenton Johns's father.

And now here she was, on the outskirts of Harrisville, trying to decide whether to kill Preston Johns in his sleep simply to end this phase of her so-called life … or face him in the streets and do to him what she'd already done to his accomplice and cousin.

"What do you think?" Alice asked, looking to the horse that stood so much taller than she. She patted the horse's neck before swinging back up onto it, reminding the animal, "We still haven't named you, have we?"

The mare wasn't her horse in any sense of the word. Alice's show-trained horse had been captured by the first posse in the early days of the chase; a second horse had been shot out from under her in the latter days of the chase by the second group of men. But this one had turned out to be well trained and remained calm when Alice shot from its back, so she'd decided to keep it.

"You're an Appaloosa," Alice said, urging the animal forward with the soft tap of her spur-less boots into its side. "So … Appaloosa … loose … let's call you Lucy, okay?"

Alice leaned and looked to the animal's face, as it she expected an answer one way of the other from the beast. She chuckled a bit and urge Lucy to speed up. A few minutes later the pair of them had slowed and were walking slowly into Harrisville. The town was pretty much what Alice had expected; they all seemed to be the same in this part of the country, with the local industries -- cattle, ore, shipping -- being the only thing that seemed to set them apart.

And just as with all the towns she'd been through before this, the citizens tended to give Alice a little longer glance as she passed by. She was a beautiful blonde riding atop an equally beautiful horse, wearing a dusty, dirty, baby blue dress and packing a holstered pistol on her side while a Winchester was slung within easy reach. Not what they probably saw every day, she knew.

Of course, if Alice had known about Harrisville's Sheriff, she might have thought about the people What are you staring at...? How much more strange can I look?

She rode Lucy at a slow walk for a handful of blocks -- right past the Sheriff's Office, coincidentally -- then stopped the horse at the hitching rail in front of a boarding house situated between a saloon and a bath house. Inside, the woman behind the desk gave Alice a scrutinizing once over before saying, "The ladies house is down the street … west, two blocks."

"I'm not looking for a ladies house," Alice said with a firm tone. She dug into the leather purse on her gun belt, then tossed onto the counter some of the coins she'd taken off the dead posse members several days earlier. "Will that get me a couple of nights stay … food?"

"Not here it won't," the keeper responded just as firmly. But after a long, tense moment of the newcomer staring her down, the woman slid the coins off the counter into a little basket that served as her till and verified, "One night … then, you'll have to--"

"Yeah, yeah," Alice cut in, adding, "Key."

The clerk pulled a key from a drawer, set it out before Alice, and tapped an opened book. "Register. If you can write, I mean."

With a glare, Alice scribbled in the book, took her key, then dropped her saddlebags on a nearby chair. Before leaving once again, she said over her shoulder, "I'll be back."

A few minutes later, she had her horse boarded at a stables a couple of blocks away, off the main strip where the persistent smell of manure wasn't as much of an issue with proper folk. She paid the boy extra to clean the horse and tend its hooves. "Check the shoes, too."

"What are you?" the boy of maybe twelve asked as Alice was about to leave.

"What do you mean?" she asked, oblivious.

"You're a girl," he pointed out. When Alice smiled and confirmed the fact, he added, "But you're carrying a revolver … with the front sight ground off."

Alice laughed. She pulled the weapon out of its holster to look at the barrel's smooth front end. The lack of the aiming nub at the end made the draw smoother, just what the user wanted when a quick shot was needed. She returned the gun to the holster, asking, "How did you notice--?"

"Are you a gunslinger?" he asked excitedly. "Girls don't be gunslingers, do they? Are you gonna rob the bank? Girls don't be robbing banks either."

Alice thought about the boy's questions for a moment, then chuckled. "I'll tell ya what. When I figure out what I am, you'll be the first one I tell, okay?"

"Can I be your side kick?" he asked with a hopeful tone. "Can I be in your gang?"

"Yes, you can be in my gang," she promised him, reminding him about Lucy's shoes.

The boy seemed happy with her response and went back to his work while Alice herself returned to the boarding house to settle into her room. She came downstairs again with a pair of men's slacks and an oversized long sleeve shirt in her hand. Through a door that connected the two establishments directly, Alice left the boarding house and entered the Bath House.

The man running the place reacted with shock, his eyes and mouth both opening wide. He started, "I'm sorry, Miss, but--"

"You have a private bathing room?" she cut in.

"We service men here, Miss," he went on, looking about at the couple of cow pokes and a businessman who were equally surprised by Alice's appearance. "I don't-- I mean you can't-- I mean--"

"Do you or do you not have a private bathing room?" Alice repeated. When the man nodded yes, Alice set a paper dollar on the counter, demanding, "Soap and a towel, please."

The man hesitated, but eventually Alice was in one of the establishment's four small, private rooms watching the man fill the tub with fresh, steaming water via a leaking, rusting pipe that ran from an unseen boiler. Plumbing … technology marches on, she thought.

The keeper departed, and -- for the first time in almost two months -- Alice stripped to the skin and slipped into a hot bath … with her Schofield under the towel on a changing stool well within easy reach.