"Get out of here, ya filthy injun!"

A mass of dark hair and clothes came tumbling down the saloon steps. Righting himself and brushing sand and dirt from his pants a stoic faced Dwayne turned down the main road and ambled off towards the edge of town.

The sun had just set and the desert town was wrapped in the dead red purple of twilight. Dust was kicked up as Dwayne shuffled to his house outside of town. He never could make it through his first glass without someone starting something. All his life he'd dealt with the side-ways glances the sneers and the punches. Rage seethed in his heart and he kicked the stair of the general store in passing to vent some of his hate into the empty air. But it was no good he had an endless pool of rage, always had; had since the loss of his parents, no before that, since the first time he was told he was different, that he wasn't fit to step in the school house, that he was only worth was as the resting place of a bullet, that his only friends would be the coyotes. Well he'd be a coyote then silent

prowling 'round the edge of town eyes dark and gleaming, wild. He'd hold the rage back until like a coyote provoked to desperation he'd leap at your throat. The provocation, the final one, that broke the mules back, was approaching but not yet, not yet. For now he just stood tall and walked silently by defying everyone with his simple dark presence in their dusty white town

The coyotes howled across the flats. The temperature was starting to drop rapidly as it is wont to do in the desert. He could see the silhouette to his dwelling hunched against the deep purple blue black of the night sky. The wind was coming up, Dwayne wrenched open the door and let the wind slam it shut behind him.

His furniture was occupied. A man sat in the only chair by the minimalist table his father had made. Another sprawled across his bed, rumpling the blanket. This was not the first time people had attacked him at home. Every so often, someone would take it into his head to drive Dwayne out of town once and for all. No one had ever succeeded. Dwayne spared the men's lives, if only because he knew that killing white men would be a sure way to rid the town of him by way of the noose, but each time such an incident occurred the pit of hate that he carried within himself deepened and seethed. But these men were different. He had not seen them before. They had not yet offered him violence. Yet.

"Get out," Dwayne growled.

"We only came over to be friendly," said the one on the bed, smiling cheerfully. He had blond hair flowing loose around his shoulder blades, and a fine coat that was designed for elegance, not for the empty desert.

"We have an offer for you," said the one at the table coolly.

"Ain't nothin' I need or want from you," Dwayne replied, his body tensing. These men weren't right, they're words sounded sinister, but they still remained relaxed, not having moved an inch from the comfortable places they'd adopted on his furniture.

"Oh, but there is something you want," said the man in the chair. He wore a heavy coat, his hands lost in it's folds. He stood up scraping the chair legs across the floor. Dwayne took a step back away from the man as he moved to close the distance between them.

"Freedom, that's what you want," the coated stranger whispered. Dwayne jumped How'd he get behind me? The blond on the bed laughed raucously at Dwayne's reaction."Freedom, to unleash the rage within you," continued the other, as he paced round Dwayne. "And I can give it to you."

Dwayne stood paralyzed, it was his greatest desire to make this town pay for the hell it had made his life, but he couldn't trust these men, could he? He'd never been able to trust anyone, not even his own kin. But the promise of freedom to unleash the rage that colored his vision everyday, and boiled in his chest, was intoxicating.

"Why?" Dwayne's voice was a hoarse whisper, "why offer this to me? What do you get? What do you want?"

The blond who had been lounging on the bed had now gotten up to answer the question. "We just want at have a fun," he said slinging an arm over the shoulders of the other man.

"What Paul means to say," replied the coated man, while shrugging off the other mans arm, "is that, having you as a comrade and friend, well, we could make all kinds of trouble. We want a brother to run and wreak havoc with us, and I think I'm right in saying that you could use guys at your back." He reached into his coat and pulled out a bottle ornately decorated in precious metals and jewels. "Have a drink with us." He held the bottle out to Dwayne.

The bottle was cold in his hand but the liquid within burned and heated his body. And when it met the pit of rage in his chest the world exploded into a red haze of bloodlust. Dwayne, followed by Paul, and David, ran into town, and when the sun rose Dwayne was far away with his new brothers and there was nothing left in that town in the desert but ghosts.