The sun had started to dawn in the East. Its youthful rays spread across the wide swath of the barren plains and dusty dunes. The streams of light baked the ground underfoot into fine silica that seemed to flow every which way, with the gentle breeze of the winds. Out of the sands, sun-baked stones seemed to pierce from underneath the surface creating the rugged terrain laid bare before the world. The wasteland of dust seemed endless in its appearance from one horizon to another. The ground gave off emanations of heat only visible in the distance. In the scorched landscape, only the dust and hard rock existed; alone in a soundless world of their own. For this wasteland of evermore expansion, with its looming sun and its everlasting gaze; will continue long after the feuds of man and their ambitions have faded into the dust.
Out of the confines of the dust arose a lone rider on the back of a weary mare. The solitary man steered the mare nonchalantly forward, staring off into the expanse, looking for something. The rays of the sun seemed to sear the man’s skin a deep red, but this did not bother his search. He scanned the horizon constantly; vigilant of anything that would justify his venture into this wasteland, while his frail mare lugged him continually forward. The wind scooped up pockets of loose silica and tossed the dust up into the man’s face. He could feel it, those loose particles floating around him and landing softly upon the skin. A humbling of the spirit, a return of man to the place for which he once sprung. The breeze carried a coarse grit that would scrap man of his worldly vestiges, and at once reveal what eternally lay at his heart. Those deep tendrils of that original sin pierce deep into the once pure heart, leaving only a fallible deluded creature spawned in sin to surely one day die. The revelatory nature of man’s eternal destiny; the unconscious march toward his birthplace that follows all men. An ever-present cradle and grave preordained in man’s destiny.
The mark of his authority lay upon his hip, along with his Colt Single Action revolver that hung in his holster on his dominant side. The mark, carried by many a man in his profession, had taken him across the territories in pursuit of those boundless individuals yet tamed by the ever-present march of civilization. The weapon: a ubiquitous tool for those wandering the territories. Though, the bore of this revolver had not seen more than a hundred slugs go down its narrow passage, nor did the weapon's finish see any real wear. Almost untested, the forged metal lines had not seen the true possibility of wear that comes with an experienced ranger.
The eternal wanderer himself reeked a foul odor of dried sweat from the arduous journey. His greasy hair maintained a matted condition with several knots, and the beard upon his face had grown wild. His linen clothes had darkened from the sweat and dust. Gone were the pomp and proper, and in its place, man had revealed himself to the emptiness of the open plane. The baseness of man on display.
He had descended into the empty planes on the promise of profit. A bounty of somewhat high acclaim and every more worldly currency. He had appeared out of the desert, what felt like years ago at this point, to be greeted by a sign inscribed with the title “Goodsprings.” A modest plot of land with a few interspersed rickety wooden shacks. The pine siding on each of the buildings had started peeling itself off the frames of the houses, as the shafts of the nail shanks had slowly been eroded by rust. The dust had coated the windows in a thin film; obscuring the interior of each building from the rider as he passed.
The hollow echo of silence bounded across the township. He roamed in silence until he came upon the town’s steeple and heard the faint murmuring of hymns. He stood at the base of the steps of the white Chapel. He did not dare to step inside the pure building, for he feared he would be struck down by some ethereal force for his tainted heart.
As he waited for the session to end, he took long drags on a rustic cigarette he had just lit. The smoke bellowed out, and ash slowly bled from the tip while leaning against a baluster at the bottom of the stairs. The hymns stopped, the doors opened, and a flood poured out from the conclave. The passing people side-eyed him but did not bother to speak to the foreign one. As they shuffled out, the wanderer proceeded to call out to the amorphous blob, asking for the town's sheriff. A disheveled wrinkled old timer separated from the mass to meet face-to-face with the wanderer.
“What can I do for you?” he croaked with slight apprehension.
“Have you seen this Man?” He held out a folded poster with a lightly sketched picture of a man. The sketch of another wanderer, just as devoid as the last. The ghostly image of a face, skin clinging to the bone, of eyes sunken into the skull. A gaunt illustration of somewhat questionable validity, to only yield the basest of assumptions from these exaggerated features.
“I ain’t ever seen a man like this,” he had stopped for a second. “A few nights ago though, someone whipped the shit out of old Austin over a hand of blackjack. He rode off into the night before anyone had the balls to try to catch him.”
“Do you know which way he went?” the loner bellowed out under the taste of smoke.
The old timer waved for the blunt youth to follow. As the two walked slowly across town, he leveraged a question into the silence, “What’s your name?”
“What does it matter?” he blurted out with a slight smile.
“I guess it doesn’t matter much, but it would make things go easier…let's stop at my house for a drink; you look thirsty.” They had stopped in front of a two-story shack with a precarious hanging balcony. The lacquer paint had eroded, exposing the veins of the wooden siding. The sheriff ran behind the building to a lowly well with the loner’s leather water bladder. He had returned with two filled bladders, along with a hunk of hard tack. He broke the giant piece of hard tack in half and handed him one piece along with his water bladder.
“Thank you…I’m sorry. I guess when you're on the road forever, you forget the normalities. The name is Judas.” He grasped the leather bladder with one weathered hand and poured the cloudy water onto his face. A baptism in hospitality, for which the dust of the desert evermore wiped from man, but never fully erased. The looming event hung above his head, every present and never forgotten. The dust awaits all, born out of the first sin, and he could not forget his place concerning the needed action of justice and the end where true judgment is cast.
“It’s all right, living in this world makes a person think twice about everything. I mean who the hell left you with a name like Judas?” He smiled at the thought, as they both chewed on their pieces of hardtack.
“I think my parents believed I was destined for infamy or some sort of fame,” he chuckled as the aged man smiled. The sheriff waited a second then responded, “What did this fella do anyway.”
“John Martin? He tried robbing a bank back in Oklahoma, but things didn’t go to plan. He ended up shooting dead two bank tellers when they got in his way. He walked away with nothing.”
“Christ, something is wrong with people,” the sheriff remarked honestly. The statement hung in the air for the time being. They sat for a few minutes taking swigs from their leather water bladders when a young deputy approached and exchanged a few quiet words with the sheriff. The sheriff proceeded to point the loner back on a road into the desert, and with that, he departed into the scorched wasteland.
Over time, the remembrance of water heightened thirst and the continual wandering become a purposeless stumble. As the heart gave way to doubt, Judas spotted a solitary shack over the horizon. The denigrated shack was made from scraps of spare lumber and faced outward to the downtrodden road. It leaned slightly with the warp of the wooden frame as the wood’s moisture had been deprived by the desert. The sunken windows, covered in a residual layer of dust, made a lifeless structure of the solitary building.
Judas plodded down the road to the front of the shack and dismounted his mare by the narrow path up to the house. Once he had dismounted, he peered down into a shallow ditch by the entrance to the path. There lay two lifeless bodies in the cradle of each other's arms; one of an older man wearing coveralls with a white undershirt and the other, a young brunette woman in a cloth dress. A bullet for each of them; that was their prize for living. The loner could not feel anything; only the hardening of his heart, for which he could only look on in slight disturbance at the display. They died in each other’s arms, only to be consumed by the dust.
He trod closer to the house as the dust-filled door was thrown open and a familiar bald man walked out. The sketch of the pale, white man was somewhat accurate as Judas had started to observe his many distinctive features. The eyes reflected a hollowness, a feature that Judas could not take his own eyes away from. A human without reservation, like a dog with rabies.
“Watcha want boy?” he grumbled under his unkempt beard. He wore his revolver openly on the front of his torso for convenient reach, but he did not seem phased by the randomness of the encounter.
“Are you John Martin?” Judas spoke as the man inched his hand closer to his weapon. With danger present, Judas moved his hand onto the handle of his revolver but he did not draw. “ I want to bring you in alive.” He added into the silence of the confrontation, as they stared at each other over the drumming of the heart.
“Ain’t going. Why keep on living if you can’t do what you want,” he mumbled slightly. For a moment, there were two poised against each other, and then there was one. Two shots rang out from both guns, but only one shot rang true. Judas, seeing that his adversary lay upon the wooden boards, shakingly lowered his weapon and reholstered it. He stumbled over to the corpse to find a piece of lead lodged below his right eye socket, devastating the structure of his face. After seeing his creation, Judas could not but sit on the steps to the doorway. Nausea slowly crept into his knees and his arms continually sat heavily upon his knees. He could only sit and think about what he left home for. He finally lifted himself to drag the body of the villain to his horse. As Judas strapped him to the butt of his horse, he peered into the ditch once more. He knew then why he left home. Once more, he retreated back into the desert as his nerves slowly began to settle and his eyes became a little dimmer.
The End
