A/N: Because I fell in love with Sergio Leone's Spaghetti Westerns all over again...
E L E G Y
Sweetwater is her home now. The name befits her new purpose in life, a widow with three children who are not hers and a good – but dead – man whose last memory is standing beside him on the altar.
Only that altar and that church played host to four people, two of whom belong to the worship and the third lasted long enough to lend his name.
Jill blinks and the deep-set crinkles around her bright fearless blue eyes thinks she shouldn't be so harsh on her husband of one month. Not for the sake of the children. Poor darlings. So young, and she so old… was it wrong of her not to cry for their untimely deaths? A not-so-forgotten past as a reputable lady of the brothel house still creeps into her restless bones and as she shreds the house for the misplaced fortune Frank seeks.
Cheyenne is in her kitchen now, this large cabin of wood and lace is home.
Give them water, he says. And black coffee for me.
Strawberry-blonde hair and black eyeliner. Jill was always a looker, and the woman every man outwardly sought for bed but inwardly harboured the memory of his mother. The woman doesn't mind, she gets it all the time, and years of experience with strange men dozing in her arms is one of the better compliments than a cowboy leaving his boots on as they lie on the bed.
And the strange man with the dark, weather-beaten face throws her down on the hay, his hands tearing at the excess frills of her black clothes. At first she is skeptical, than angry, than the feeling that rose to her throat once she drove up to the funeral house with her baggage in tow comes up again – anxiety.
A few expert strokes and naturally tousled hair make a mourner out of a widow. Harmonica lays her bare without a single hand across her cheek. It is his unspoken artistic gaze which leads to Frank's downfall.
And Frank is dead now, or so she's heard. Everyone who had a hand in shaping the first crucial days of her barren existence will be leaving now, either in a coffin or on a horse. Sometimes both.
The dying breed of lone cowboys is swept up by the wind. She is just here for the water.