The Ornery Stranger

I remember, like most folks in these here parts, the day when that hunchback Reverend Nathan Johnson brought death to Bad Billy Cole and put an end to the tyranny of the Cole gang for good.

For 20 years, or thereabouts, the Cole gang
had been terrorizing farmers and cattlemen
all across most of Texas and Arkansas; stealing horses and cattle, robbing corncribs, holding
up banks and stagecoaches and indiscriminately murdering innocent men, women and children.

Everyone knew that the Cole gang always liked
to hole up in a ranch house near Dead Man’s
gulch just outside of the town of Silver Star
but no man, whether lawman, cowman or farmer
had the guts to go up there and face them sons
of bitches. Not even the State troopers or the Texas Rangers would go near ‘em.

So when a stranger rode into Silver Star on the back of a mule dressed just like a preacher but wearing a long black duster, with two sixguns strapped to his hips and a Winchester rifle in his right hand, saying he was lookin’ to shoot Billy Cole dead, most folks in town thought that he was either plum crazy or just plain suicidal.

Then he kicked open the batwing doors of the Golden Spur saloon and, striding in, pinned back the handlebar moustache of Jim Kelly, the bartender, with the barrel of his rifle and said, loud enough for all in creation to hear, “I know that Billy Cole and his boys like to come in here and what I want to know is if any of them varmints is here right now. Down here cheatin’ at the Faro tables or upstairs with one of them fancy painted harlots, cause I aim to do me some killin’”.

Then, I swear, old Jim just bust out laughing. He couldn’t believe the balls on this hunchback.

“Reverend”, he said, dipping his hands into the pockets of his fancy silk waistcoat, “Upstairs, in the arms of a young miss Parnell, is Billy Cole hisself but, sitting right behind you there, at a poker table are two of the Cole gang; namely Edgar Marshall and Big Tommy Evers and they’ve both got pistols pointed right at your back. So I got a hunch that you got as much chance of putting a bullet in Billy Cole as I have of joining the temperance movement”.

“Well”, replied Johnson, grinning widely as he told Kelly straight, “That’s cause you ain’t got what I got. You ain’t got faith. Faith is my constant companion; my best friend and protector and she’s got a dead eye when it comes to shootin’ down mad dogs like Billy Cole”.

Suddenly there was two gunshots fired and then, lying on the floor of the saloon, in pools of their own blood was Marshall and Evers; killed afore they even had time to pull their triggers and the most remarkable thing about it was that nobody even saw that dadgummed reverend turn and fire.

Then, the next thing you know,Jim Kelly was down on his knees praying and swearing that he’d just witnessed a miracle and the Reverend was a headin’ upstairs to find and kill Billy Cole.

Now I heard tell, but I don’t rightly know if it’s the honest truth, that when the Reverend Nathan found Billy Cole he had his britches down round his ankles and Miss April Parnell, one of the prettiest ladies you ever saw, was bent on her silk stockinged knees suckin’ at his big old dick and they also say that, then, the Reverend Nathan put the barrel of his Winchester against the back of Miss Parnell’s pretty blonde head and told her, “You best bite down hard, missy, or else I’ll put a window atween your ears”.

Lucky for Bad Billy and his dick, one of his boys, name of Robert Longtree was in the next room and,seeing the reverend with a rifle in his hand, he came up behind that old hunchback and pressed the barrel of his loaded pistol against the back of the Reverends head.

“Just who the hell do you think you are, boy?”, yelled Billy Cole, purple faced with rage as he hurriedly yanked up his britches, “Thinking that you could harm the great Billy Cole. Why, don’t you know that I have been blessed by an old Cheyenne medicine man and he told me that I would only be killed if I was bitten by a two headed rattlesnake. So who in tarnation d’you think you are, comin’ up here and waving your gun around me ? ”.

“I’m Just a simple man, Mr Cole”, the Reverend replied, “You got your faith in injun charms. I got my faith too, only I reckon my faith is a lot stronger than yours”.

Then Robert Longtree that had had his pistol cocked and pressed against the back of the preacher’s skull, now fell down dead, shot clean through the heart.

“What the fuck?! Who the fuck are you any hoot?”, asked Billy Cole, trembling and scarcely believing his eyes.

“I’m your son, daddy”, said the Reverend, “The one you left to die back in Little Rock when you discovered that he and his sister were a pair of abominations. They say you shot off the cord and took us, still covered in birth blood, from the arms of our grieving mother and you left us out in the middle of the desert for the buzzards and the coyotes to pick on. Thank the lord that an old preacher named Johnson took pity on our poor mother and rode out into that desert to save us and raised us in the way of the lord. He told us, so many times, that “thou shal’t not kill” but when we was grown up, me and my sister, we thought about what our daddy had done to us and we swore that we would find our father and execute the son of a bitch.”.

Suddenly, they say, there was a flash of recognition in the dark eyes of Billy Cole, “Sister?”, he said, “You mean…?”.

Then the reverend turned about and Cole saw that in the back of the Reverends coat there were two
eye holes and a flap beaneath them like a mouth and then the Reverend let his long black duster fall to the floor and Cole saw his sons,shrunken, deformed Siamese twin sister growing out of his back wearing a criss-crossed bandolier and leather gun belt strapped to her legless torso; her two hands gripping a pair of pearl handled peacemakers and her eyes full of lightning.

“I told you I had faith, Mr Cole”, said the Reverend, “This is my sister, Faith”.

Then Faith Johnson pulled the triggers on them guns and shot her wicked daddy, Billy Cole to hell.