Fallen Star- Fantasy Western (and Fallen Star: The Psychedelic Version)

Itchy finger tugged at trigger and cylinder turned, lining up chamber after  chamber with a nine inch barrel,  cocked hammer springing forward repeatedly, striking primers; igniting propellant in  brass coloured cartridges and firing them deep into soft tissue and bone.

 

Loud screams and shots echoed within the dark cavern as muzzles flashed and, one by one, bodies fell bleeding upon its sandstone floor as the bounty hunter, a tall, lean old man with a gaunt, grim reaper like  face, dressed from steel spurred heel to stetson in black, pressed the warm, smoking barrel of one of his Lamatt revolvers between the shaven brows of a kneeling Osage indian.

 

But the man who was kneeling upon the floor didn’t flinch or tremble. Death was a part of the cycle of life and he was prepared to die; he was a warrior.

 

“When the clowns rode into Coffeeville”, said the black garbed man, talking like a father who was retelling some old story to a child, “The townsfolks just laughed, at first, at those odd looking men in white greasepaint and wearing red noses and the one that was all blacked up like a minstrel, plucking on an old banjo and wearing a get up just like Abe Lincoln with a tall stove pipe hat and a set of false whiskers.

 

No one could have predicted that, underneath that stove pipe hat, there might be a loaded pepper box or that they’d all just bust into the First National bank and there leader who, they say, was dressed up like Buffalo Bill Cody, would leap across the counter and stick the barrel of his Colt Thunderer under the Cashiers nose.

 

‘This here’s payback time’, the red nosed outlaw leader had yelled, “Now you best open up that safe you got in the back and give me everything that’s in there or I’m gonna have to put some space atween them ears of yours”.

 

Then, they say, he handed that dumbfounded bank clerk a burlap bag and told him to fill it up right quick and, meantime, the one dressed up as Abe Lincoln took off that tall, black hat and fired that pepperbox  up into the air to disperse the crowd that was starting to gather round the bank entrance.

 

And, before any of them townsfolk could make a move to call the Marshall or round up a posse, them clowns were back up on their horses and riding out of town with almost $ 60,000 stuffed in their saddlebags.

 

Now, some claimed it was the Dalton Gang that did it while others tried to pin the robbery on Jesse James or some other of them Bushwhackers but I had my own theory about who they was and why exactly they was made up like clowns.

 

See, according to one of them customers who was in the bank at the time of the hold up; a feller named Jim Dowdry who ran the dry goods store across the street from the bank; while he was crouched, shaking and panicking on the floor, he saw a couple of them bank robbers using a funny kind of sign language to each other; not like the kind that deaf folk use, he said, but more like the kind used by  injuns out on the plains and that’s when I reckoned maybe that’s what them clowns was, injuns. Maybe getting some payback from ole Abe Lincoln for giving away their reservations to the homesteaders.

 

Maybe, Osage injuns too I thought, judging from the description this feller gived me. Nearly all of them, he said, were between six and seven feet tall; he also said that, from what he could see, they didn’t none of them  have no eyebrows under that make-up and they carried themselves with a

strange dignified bearing, like gentlemen, almost .

 

What’s more, I thought,  if they were Osage injuns then maybe they’d fought in the war on the side of the union or the confederacy because the way they organized that robbery they’d’ve had to have

had military training.

 

Anyway, the law never did find those clown faced outlaws cause, once the Marshall and his deputies finally did catch up with what they thought was them men, all they found riding their horses was a bunch of wooden dummies wearing the same costumes and made up to look just like ‘em.

 

Them outlaws, I reckoned, must have ditched those horses and headed off on foot into the forest  which, if they was genuwine Osage injuns, would have been their traditional hunting grounds and the perfect place for them to lose themselves in”.

 

“That’s a good story”, said the kneeling Osage warrior, his slaughtered friends lying dead and bloody round about him, shot by the black clad bounty hunter who now had a wide smirk upon his pallid face, “I could tell you some good stories too, about what the white man; the heavy eyebrows,  has done to my people. The crimes that they have committed against us”.

 

But the bounty hunter wasn’t interested in hearing the Osage’s grievances, instead he was looking round about the cave anxiously as if trying to spot something but all he could see was rubble and dead Indians.

 

“I don’t care about that”, he said, “To be honest with you, I don’t even care ‘bout claiming the reward on your sorry scalp. I’m more concerned about what else you stole from  that

safe back there in Coffeeville. You see it wasn’t just money in that safe. There was something else

worth a lot more. Something even them tellers in that bank didn’t know about. Something in a strongbox that was waiting to be delivered to the Smithsonian institute in Washington D.C.”.

 

“You mean that old rock with dirt on it?”, asked the Osage, with surprise in his voice.

 

“That sounds about right”, said the bounty hunter, his severe flint, grey eyes suddenly lighting up as he looked back towards his kneeling captive, “You fellers prob’ly  didn’t know what you had there. See that old rock is what scientists call a pallasite meteorite; fell down from the stars.  It was found over in the next county by a farmer there about a month or two back.  Farmer didn’t know what he had either but that old rock is worth a heck of a lot more than the price on any injun outlaws head. See, from what I hear, that meteorite is the world’s biggest bright green Peridot. That’s a kind of a fancy gemstone and the greener they are, the harder they are to come by”.

 

“I tell you where that rock is and you’ll let me go?”, asked the Osage, looking up, warily, into the eyes of that greedy, flint hearted old man that no one, perhaps not even his own mother, would have trusted.

 

“That’s the idea”, said the bounty hunter, taking a few steps back from the kneeling man but keeping the barrel of his gun steadily aimed at his forehead, “Why settle for chickenfeed when

I can have gold nuggets”.

 

The Osage pointed to one of the dead men lying on the cave floor that was wearing a bear skin medicine bag slung over one shoulder.

 

“In that bag”, he said, tired, “Walks-In-The-Night. My friend. He thought it must have some power. Now he is dead”.

 

The bounty hunter looked over at the dead medicine man’s leather pouch and the Osage saw a fire of greed fill his eyes, “Oh it’s got power alright”, he said, side stepping cautiously over towards it  but keeping his gun pointed at his captive, “’cause it’s worth a powerful heap of money that’s gonna make me rich”.

 

And then, crouching down low he reached out with his free hand; turning his head for just a second and snatching hold of the medicine bag by its beaded strap;  tearing it away from the arm of its dead owner and hanging it  around his own shoulder.

 

Not believing that the bounty hunter would ever keep his word, the Osage now saw this as his only chance to escape being killed like his friends and so, quickly seizing a tomahawk that was lying on the ground near to him he raised it ready to hurl but the old man’s gun was faster and the young warrior felt the sudden, violent shock of a heavy piercing blow to his left shoulder making him feel weak and he fell backwards.

 

“You should have trusted me”, said the bounty hunter, angrily, “Now I feel like I’ve got to kill you”.

 

But, just then, the old man heard a strange sound coming from the medicine bag and turning to look

he saw the dark crystalline surface of the meteorite cracking and something was moving and scratching within, tearing it open from the inside with sharp little claws.

 

The Osage was lying on his back clutching his left shoulder;  blood pouring out between his fingers when he heard the bounty hunter let out a terrible scream and, struggling to sit upright, he saw

the man groping at  his face, frantically trying to tear away some strange, small, scaly creature that had latched onto it and was noisily crunching into it.

 

Leaning against the sandstone wall of the cave, the Osage now clambered awkwardly to his moccasined feet. He had it in his mind to leave the bounty hunter to the mercy of that thing but the sounds of horror and pain that were coming from the man who had now fallen and was rolling helplessly upon his back were so terrible that the warrior couldn’t bear them and, grabbing hold of the 9 shot revolver that the bounty hunter had dropped in his frenzied struggle with the beast, he emptied the 5 rounds left within it into the old man’s face and the hide of the creature that was clamped to it.

 

With a final anguished cry the bounty hunter stopped moving, his writhing legs and arms falling limp and the Osage looked with wide, disbelieving eyes at the dead creature that had been feeding upon him. He had never seen or heard of anything like it, not in all of Kansas, not in Osage legend, not even in the bible or the other books the catholic priests had given him to read in school; almost like a living maple leaf with dark brown leathery skin and a protruding, fan-like ribcage, its blue bodily fluids mixing like paint with the bounty hunters bright scarlet blood.

 

But then, suddenly, the young indian warrior smiled, “This will make a great story to tell my children”, he said, proudly, “How Little Eagle slew the beast from the stars”.

++++++(Fallen Star: The Psychedelic Version)+++++++

 

Itchy finger tugged at trigger and cylinder turned, lining up chamber after  chamber with a nine inch barrel,  cocked hammer springing forward repeatedly, striking primers; igniting propellant in  brass coloured cartridges and firing them deep into soft tissue and bone.

 

Howling screams and rage filled, yellow cannons echoed dreamlessly within the night swelled cavern as beast-mouthed muzzles of empathy flashed  with furious lightning and, one by one, naked spirit bodies of fellow dreamers fell like desolate drum beats and shadows bleeding blinding, new born colours over screaming  scarlet floors as the flaming hunger of bitter darkness, a tall, lean, spindly, dead faced creature with gaunt, green  grim reaper eyes and  a moustache grown of ripened corn dressed, from steel spurred shackles to ominous Stetson, in the colours of a darkened universe , pressed the warm, red blood-smoking  barrel of one of his two lion-faced  revolvers between the shaven brows of a kneeling cosmic dream.

 

But the man who was kneeling upon the floor didn’t flinch or tremble. Death was a part of the cycle of life and he was prepared for the night to come; for Wah-Kon-tah who was everything; he was a warrior and, from his dilated pupils it seemed that he was also deep in the mists of some peyote induced trance.

 

“When the clowns rode into Blantonville”, said the visionless black spectre, talking like a two headed snake from beyond the grey edged wilderness of time, “The townsfolks just laughed, at first, at those odd looking men in white greasepaint and wearing red noses and the one that was all blacked up like a minstrel, plucking on an old banjo and wearing a get up just like Abe Lincoln with a tall stove pipe hat and a set of false whiskers.

 

No one could have predicted that, underneath that stove pipe hat, there might be a loaded pepper box or that they’d all just bust into the First National bank and there leader who, they say, was dressed up like Buffalo Bill Cody, would leap across the counter and stick the barrel of his Colt Thunderer under the Cashiers nose.

 

‘This here’s payback time’, the red nosed outlaw leader had yelled, “Now you best open up that safe you got in the back and give me everything that’s in there or I’m gonna have to put some space atween them ears of yours”.

 

Then, they say, he handed that dumbfounded bank clerk a burlap bag and told him to fill it up right quick and, meantime, the one dressed up as Abe Lincoln took off that tall, black hat and fired that pepperbox  up into the air to disperse the crowd that was starting to gather round the bank entrance.

 

And, before any of them townsfolk could make a move to call the Marshall or round up a posse, them clowns were back up on their horses and riding out of town with almost $ 60,000 stuffed in their saddlebags.

 

Now, some claimed it was the Dalton Gang that did it while others tried to pin the robbery on Jesse James or some other of them Bushwhackers but I had my own theory about who they was and why exactly they was made up like clowns.

 

See, according to one of them customers who was in the bank at the time of the hold up; a feller named Jim Dowdry who ran the dry goods store across the street from the bank; while he was crouched, shaking and panicking on the floor, he saw a couple of them bank robbers using a funny kind of sign language to each other; not like the kind that deef folk use, he said, but more like the kind used by them redskins out on the plains and that’s when I reckoned maybe that’s what them clowns was, injuns. Maybe getting some payback from ole Abe Lincoln for giving away their reservations to the homesteaders.

 

Maybe, Osage injuns too I thought, judging from the description this feller gived me. Nearly all of them, he said, were atween six and seven feet tall; also said that, from what he could see, they didn’t none of them  have no eyebrows under that make-up and they carried themselves with a

strange dignified bearing, like gentlemen, almost .

 

What’s more, I thought,  if they were Osage injuns then maybe they’d fought in the war on the side of the union or the confederacy because the way they organized that robbery they’d’ve had to have

military training.

 

Anyway, the law never did find those clown faced outlaws cause, once the Marshall and his deputies finally did catch up with what they thought was them men, all they found riding their horses was a bunch of wooden dummies wearing the same costumes and made up to look just like ‘em.

 

Them outlaws, I reckoned, must have ditched those horses and headed off on foot into the forest  which, if they was genuwine Osage injuns, would have been their traditional hunting grounds and the perfect place for them to lose themselves in”.

 

“Ageless story, though I see your tongue dripping poisonous shallow dreams upon the floor”, said the dream warrior; the radiant souls  of  his fire slaughtered friends lying transcendent and cloaked in emerald reeds round about him, shot by the empty wolf clad in dripping grey of misery who now had a dark blue smirk emanating from his face of black marble, “Inside my right eye are a million bright stories about the sun and her children of illuminating gold”

 

But the dark dog wasn’t listening, instead his eyes spilled over with blindness searching like black beetles among the bright green canyons and unending corners  of that sleep filled cavern.

 

“I don’t care about that injun horse-shit”, he said, “To be honest with you, I don’t even care ‘bout claiming the reward on your sorry scalp. I’m more concerned about what else you stole from  that

safe back there in Blantonville. You see it wasn’t just money in that safe. There was something else

worth a lot more. Something even them tellers in that bank didn’t know about. Something in a strongbox that was waiting to be sent  to the Smithsonian institute in Washington D.C.”.

 

“Seeking a piece of hollow darkness, I see a crystal falling from the shattered mirror  of the imageless night”, replied the voice that had itself become a shimmering green echo of the souls resplendent eve.

 

“That sounds about right”, whispered the dark opening , scratching a decaying remnant of soul with a long grey finger that had become like the head of a scavenging crow, his eyes suddenly burning 

and spilling out as bright blue ash, blowing across an arid waste of outer space, “You fellers prob’ly  didn’t know what you had there. See that old rock is what scientists call a pallasite meteorite; fell down from the stars.  It was found over in the next county by a farmer there about a month or two back.  Farmer didn’t know what he had either but that old rock is worth a heck of a lot more than the price on any injun outlaws head. See, from what I hear, that meteorite is the world’s biggest bright green Peridot. That’s a kind of a fancy gemstone and the greener they are the harder they are to come by”.

 

 

The spirit of the ancient  pointed a bright green finger towards one of his silken brethren lying on the pathway to the warm world of the enlightened soul.

 

“Walks-In-The-Night. Who I hear singing with the jet black eagle. He found the eye that split into

a dozen emerald suns . Now he keeps watch among the stars”, blew the wind from the land of seeing.

 

Broken windows lost within a baying hollowness  found their way like the belly of a rattlesnake to a dead medicine man’s leather pouch and, red greed hollering within an empty heart, the dead coyote squatted like the evening sun and wrapped his sullen claw around a fragment ripped from the night.

 

But suddenly sky-rock split apart and human eyes screamed as green egg hatched, oozing folds of blood shaded slime and  a slithering strangeness from some glittering spiral deep in the above splattered slowly outward with greedy green tentacles and claws like jagged memories.

 

 

“Help me”, shrieked the shadow and then, wild streaming cries of blazing anguish filling the cavern with  undulating wave upon wave of crimson, the face of the hunter turned inwards like a coracle capsized upon  deaths secret ocean and all through him colours and sounds that only exist in dreams awakened.