Category: The Stone Field

The four slid from town as the dawn sun turned the westward mountains into beacons.  None had slept much, but they had rested more than the dry store owner who fixed their provisions and had them waiting.  The man also buttered some bread for them to work over as they rode, in place of a proper breakfast. They left through the western side of town:  Herman, then Samuel, then Abner, and finally Ottilie.  As their misfortune had it, their path took them by the undertaker’s shop.  The two men Ottilie had killed the day before were propped nearly upright in…

Pueblo wasn’t much to look at on approach, Herman always thought, and was less impressive upon closer inspection.  It was much like every other ruddy speck in the territory, which meant comfort was a secondary or tertiary concern, though Pueblo was larger than most.  All these towns were meant for miners and westbound travelers to get in, provision, and get out. Herman didn’t expect or need more than that, but it would have been nice to have a decent mattress every now and then.  That’s what he rued the most about his decision to go west – he missed the…

The sky gorged itself on the sun’s reds and oranges, the hardscrabble dirt beneath and the three riders plodding across it little more than fleeting witnesses to the eon’s old routine. Herman was tired.  His lip hurt.  His ribs hurt.  His ass hurt.  Still, he wouldn’t be the one to call for an early break to the ride.  Herman could feel his brother’s awareness of his pain.  That was the thing with Samuel, he knew when other people were hurting.  He could smell it.  He often took pleasure in poking at it, prodding the pain and wiggling a figurative or…

Herman didn’t much care for much anymore, but he did care about scraping together enough money to settle somewhere in the west.  That’s why he and Samuel were crossing the desert, headed south, carrying a box for an old man named Mueller.  Neither of them knew what was in the box and their curiosity wasn’t all that great, either, just as long as the coin was good, and it was.  In XXXXXXX where they’d picked it up, rumors had swirled and there was much intrigue regarding it.  Some people said it was full of gold, others gems, others yet some…

Ottilie hated the west almost as much as she hated the smells of tobacco and whiskey.  She didn’t care for the men in the west because they often smelled of both.  She loved daises and her family’s home in Pennsylvania.  She loved her brothers and the way they called her “Tillie.” Ottilie had killed 23 men and she suspected she would kill a number more unless she was killed first.  She didn’t expect old age or the pox would get her first, not at the rate she was going.  She wasn’t pretty or well-read enough to marry a wealthy man,…

El Campo de Piedra, the Stone Field, was still thirty miles south toward Mexico and Herman did not like the look of the approaching ridge one bit.  It was craggy and steep in places, boulder-strewn and sun bleached and looked mostly like God had put it there to piss off Herman and his mare more than anything else.  But the sun was dropping and it would do for shelter. “I guess that’ll do for tonight,” Herman said. “Yuh,” came the lazy reply from Samuel, who rode next to him.  Samuel was Herman’s little brother. “We’re gon’ wish we had a…