Chapter 1-
Dust settled on the window sill of the farmhouse. Standing on the porch, gazing out into the vast arid plains, Janna turned her head to cast a stoney expression to her side. She took three steps towards the sill, ran her finger along its edge, and studied the gray and yellow hue on her slender finger.
"Dad?" She called.
"Sweetheart?" came the reply from within the house.
"When's the next rain coming?"
Her father lumbered out to the threshold. He was a short, stocky man of middle age, his hair was graying in several patches and his face was worn from years of labor.
"Well, usually we get a rainstorm in no time after the summer dusts," he assured her.
"But it's been five days already, do you really think you should still be planting to get ready? You could be wasting a lot of seed..."
"Jan, don't worry, nature won't break tradition come a little dust."
His voice was suddenly gravelly and wise, an anecdote he'd been told by his father, and his father before him.
"Then at least let me help you plant!" his daughter petitioned.
"No can do, that's another tradition we won't break," he said with a good-hearted chuckle. It was a cultural tradition of their people that women not to work so as to be able to devote all of their time to study, a practice which endlessly tortured Janna while she watched her father toil over the fields.
"Hey," he said with a sudden excitement, "you know what you can help me with?"
"Huh? What?" She sought, suddenly invigorated.
"I gotta go into town to pick up some new horse shoes, wanna come with me?"
"S-sure..." she dejectedly replied.
"Sounds great, glad you're excited," he shot back, with a trace of sarcasm.
He returned into the cool shade of the house to retrieve his things, the floorboards creaking and screeching with every step.
Janna turned back to the wild plains, at the dead remains of the tree near their house. She gazed down at her faded maroon dress, and sighed deeply, closing her eyes.
---
Heavy boots tromped across the dried cells of the earth, a black silhouette clashed against the overbearing sunlight of the desert. A young man of average build and height, clad in a black flowing jacket and a hat with a pointed brim. A single blond streak gilded the side of his dark hair. At his waist was slung a pistol, at the other a canteen. His breathing heavy, his brow drenched in sweat, he reached for the canteen, bringing it up to his face to unscrew the cap and tip it back.
Nothing but dust.
"God damn it."
He lazily drops it to his side again, where it knocks against an additional two canteens.
"How long have I been here?" he mumbled to himself, annoyedly.
"Long enough to run through three canteens of water," he replied.
"But that's because I'm a big drinker..." he counters.
"Still, your fault for going out into the desert in all black in the first place," he retorts.
"Fine, god, you win," he laments.
Suddenly, he stops dead in his tracks and looks up into the sky.
"What the hell am I doing?!" he beseeched the world.
Suddenly, from the corner of his eye, he spies a white bird swooping through the sky.
"A Petrichor?" he exclaims, with newfound intrigue.
No doubt about it, he could pick it out by its white wings tipped with gray, along with its peculiarly shaped beak. Petrichors were well known in the region for being flashy alpha predators of the sky, always nesting near water sources. In the South Western Military Corps they were a folkloric symbol of hope for wandering units with limited water supplies.
His pace picked up as he followed the foul in what could only be the direction of its home. Thirst, hunger, exhaustion, self-loathing, all fell away as his eyes fixated on the way to relief.
---
"H-how many pairs of horseshoes do we n-need?" Janna choked out, carrying the weight of several stacks of iron.
"You know how many horses we have, don't you?" Her father replied, carrying the bill for the transaction.
"No! I don't actually, because you don't let me work!"
"I thought you might at least care to notice."
"Sorry I'm so busy studying, father!" she sarcastically spat back.
"Can you at least carry half?" Janna pleaded.
"I thought you wanted to work, dear daughter?" he replied, enjoying her cool ire.
Abruptly, she tripped over a stray stone on the dirt street. Iron horseshoes spilled out from her arms, casting about on the ground.
"There, there, now..." Her father said with a sudden softness, helping her to her knees. "I'll carry half."
"Thank you," she said in a small, embarrassed voice, dusting her dress off.
"I know you want to work with me, but work is hard, this is what I do all day, dear, and splitting it halfway with someone isn't worth what you'd have to give up," her father said in a voice that could only be used from father to daughter.
To their right sat the town saloon, a two-storied building built of longstanding hickory wood. Over the years, several pieces of the structure more prone to damage had been replaced with wood which was not hickory. One such commonly broken element was the swinging doors of the establishment. As if fate held a vendetta against those doors, a great noise resounded from the inside, as if space itself had cracked open, and gunshots blasted through the now diverse range of woods.
Janna shrieked as her father covered her, grabbing her shoulder and shielding her from the action.
"Where the hell is it, old man?!" Screamed a hoarse, ugly voice.
From the now smoldering doors stepped out a man robed in a gray vest and black undershirt, two slings of bullets criss-crossed his chest. His greasy black hair matted against a browned complexion; his eyes looked about wildly as he looked for an answer to his inquiry. His glare settled upon Janna and her father, cowering on the street.
"You two!" he barked, approaching.
"Please sir, I'll give you any money I have, you can have these horseshoes if you-"
"Shut up!" he growled, waving his pistol at them. "I'm looking for the Spring!"
"S-spring?" the older man asked cautiously.
"Yeah, of course!"
"I don't know of any-"
"Then why are you still here?!!"
"B-because you're pointing a gun at me..."
"No, I meant on this Earth!" the gunman howled, pulling the hammer back on his weapon. Janna burst into tears, trembling beneath her father's frame.
Suddenly, a voice cut through the terror, that of a young man: "Hey, what's this about a Spring? I'm thirsty as hell right now, if you don't mind!"
The wicked gunman snapped his attention to the source of the disturbance. Approaching from the West end of town was the neurotic, black-clad wanderer.
"Hey! Who're you?!" yelled the villain.
"I told you, I'm thirsty!" came the reply.
Within moments of the words escaping his lips, he was aware of his mistake. Faster than the eye could see, finger grasped trigger and a bullet came whizzing from the barrel straight towards this newfound font of annoyance.
"Yuh-ho!!" the man in black cried, the bullet narrowly missing him.
"What? How did you dodge that?!"
"Well, you missed!"
"No, I can't miss!" the vested man launched another two rounds at his opponent, and watched as both subsequently flew past their target to land somewhere in the dirt many yards away.
The man in black, as if the speed of lightning, unholstered his own firearm and let off a speeding pellet his assailant's path. With a meaty "thwack!" the bullet lodged itself in his shoulder.
"Agh!!" cried the black gunman's victim. "I'll give you that, you're a good shot," he said, clutching the wound, blood now running down his arm.
"Relying on items like that only makes you lazy," was his cold reply. "As for that, I could have done that any time, I just wanted to try this out," he added, turning his right hand to reveal a thinly outlined symbol of four arrows enclosed in a diamond shape, intersecting at a small circle in its center.
"Hunh," the gray-vested man muttered to himself. "Do you have a name?"
"Depends, are you planning on killing me?" he replied.
"Of course I am! Stop messing around!"
"Then my name's Gallow!"
"Gallow? That's an odd name for someone who isn't looking to die."
A smirk crosses Gallow's face before he suddenly leaps to the side, firing two shots in his enemy's direction several meters away. After a swift roll to the side, the other belligerent takes the offensive and sends a projectile at his spry opponent.
"If that's who you are, then you should know that I'm Malvado, the Wicked Gunman of Cactina!" he proclaims loudly.
"I guess your story doesn't travel very far," chortles Gallow from behind the cover of the General Store porch's beam.
"Go to hell!"
A flurry of gunfire fills the air, punching holes into the sides of the local businesses. From around the corner, Janna and her father are huddling at the ground, attempting to minimize their chances of becoming collateral damage.
"I told you, Malvado, you can't hit me with that handicap pistol!" Gallow shouts as another shot passes right above his head.
"And I told you, Hanging Boy, this thing can't miss."
"What-" Gallow manages, before the rope holding the General Store's hanging sign snaps, grazed by Malvado's bullet. The thick hunk of wood swings down, slamming into him for a full body hit. Gallow is knocked to the ground, the wind beaten straight out of him.
Malvado cocks his gun one last time to take aim at his target.
"Damn it," flashes Gallow's mind. "DAMN IT!"
A flicker of uncanny rage alights in the downed gunslinger's eyes, and with one movement, faster than lightning, he fires without aiming. The bullet drifts from his gun with the grace of the Petrichor that had led him there, he watches it dance and shimmer in the air, moments before it plants itself in Malvado's right tricep.
"Gagh!!" he gasps. Suddenly, the Wicked Gunman's arm falls limp, his gun hanging lazily at his side.
"What- agh!- What did you-" he screams, clutching his arm.
Gallow coughs up a speck of blood. His eyes shine with the brutal elation that only comes from the infliction of pain.
"My arm can't- you!" Malvado's words cling desperately to his world. His eyes dart about frantically, finding a horse in the direction Gallow had approached from. In an instant, he was up and running, rushing for the stallion.
"Viento, go!" he cries, hopping onto the back of his mare. With the rushing of hooves against the dry Earth, the gunman departs.
Townspeople slowly edge out of their places of hiding. First to approach is the saloon's owner, an elderly man with thick-rimmed glasses and a hunch in his back.
"Son, was that you?" he inquires peacefully.
"I guess it was," answers Gallow honestly.
"Thank you, thank you, thank you."
"It's alright, I only shot because he shot first," the black gunman says straightly.
"Well, good thing you were the one he shot at!" the aged man amusedly comments.
From around the corner comes Janna, rushing to his side.
"Sir? Hello, I'm Janna, thank you so much, really, thank you so much-"
"Yeah, yeah, ok I get it, you're welcome." Gallow attempts to rise from the ground, but a sudden rush of pain elicits a high cry from him, forcing him back down.
"Are you ok, son?" Asks the saloon owner.
"I think he has a few cracked ribs from that sign," explains Janna.
"Well, if you need to rest, I've got a room open for you, young man, we can carry you out," offers the gray-haired owner.
"Uh, let me- AGH," another cry of pain rings out from Gallow as he tries to sit up once more.
"You should just lay down now, sir, we'll take care of it for you," Janna reasoned.
"No, it's just that... I was beginning to see up your skirt."
With sudden wide eyes, the girl looks down at her clothing to see her skirt torn enough to make visible her calves.
"Ah- ah- I didn't mean to--"
"Don't worry about it," he says with a laugh, an expression which immediately leaves him choking on pain once again.
"Okay, yeah, you guys could just carry me."