The White Revolver: Prologue and Chapters 1

The White Revolver (prologue and chapter 1)

by Nathan Carter

~Prologue~

Hank buttoned up the rest of his shirt and walked out of the stables, leaving the girl battered and ravaged, lying unconscious in the hay. He began crossing the street heading towards his favorite saloon in the tiny establishment he was preparing to loot.

"You aint nothing more than a whore," he had said to her cruelly. "Its time you learned how to behave like one"

He had beaten her badly, her bottom lip cracked open and he thought he might have broken her left arm. Smirking at the thought of how she cried, but didn't dare scream, he stuffed some tobacco in his jaw as the evening sun began to disappear behind the western horizon. His boys would be in town about an hour past dusk, at which time the fun would begin. His steel tipped boots, stolen from a peddler after shooting the fool in the throat, clacked atop the aged wood floor as he pushed his way into the drinking hole.

Zed, the bartender, was little more than an old prospector who had started serving his own stock to the folks of the town in its early beginnings. His home had transformed into a saloon and stayed that way for two decades. Zed looked up to Hank from behind the bar and gave a big yellow-toothed smile. He knew the despicable rascal Hank was, but didn't see fit to judge any paying customer.

"Howdy partner" Zed said in his friendliest tone. "I was wonderin when you'd stroll yerself on in here"

Zed rapidly poured a double shot of his best whisky, setting it on the bar top. Hank tipped his hat to the appeasing simpleton he intended to rob and downed it in a gulp. Licking his lips, he smiled benevolently at the aging miner.

"You got the best whisky this side of heaven old man."

"You best be believin it" Zed replied with a proud smile.

Hank turned to spit a healthy wad of brown murk into the old spittoon two seats away from him and full of foul refuse. It seemed there was just as much splashed on its outside than what it contained. He looked back to Zed, as he wiped his lip with the back of his hand.

"Don't you ever clean that thing?" Hank asked.

Zed looked at it and shrugged.

"The cuspidor? Why you need to be cleanin a filthy thing like that fer? Folk just gonna spit in it agin when yer through"

"Suppose you're right" Hank replied with a disinterested frown and poured himself another shot.

Zed leaned in a little closer to Hank and shifted his eyes to the left and the right.

"There was a man in here lookin for ya Hank? I thought you oughtta know"

Hank frowned, his mind instantly recalling his enemies, which were too many to list.

"Who?" he said with a particularly malignant scowl, that caused Zed to back away just a little.

Zed brought his palms up and shrugged.

"Didn't catch his name? but he was a black man' with a white revolver"

Hank cocked a brow at that statement, eyeing Zed in a long pause. Then he burst out into laughter. He laughed only long enough to trigger a cackle from Zed.

"A black man you say' With a white revolver?"

Zed nodded his affirmation.

"Zed? you don't even let black folks in here,"

Zed shook his head. His face was grim.

"Think I was gonna argue with the likes of him? No sir, he was the blackest man I ever saw, and he looked mean as sin. When he spoke, I started shaking from my toes up' looking back, I reckon he even smelled mean' made me wanna get up and run at the sight of him."

Hank studied Zed's face a moment, not knowing what to make of all this. He scratched his chin and poured himself another shot.

"Go on' what'd he tell you?" Hank said.