I'd like to apologize for you who unfortunately read the first Chapter 8 i threw up here. let's just say it was VERY VERY premature and i was being a lazy jerk by not revising my work. so sorry loves. here's a better one for your troubles!!!
~
CHAPTER EIGHT - Headstrong Crumble
"Frank?" Jesse turned his head, getting an eyeful of Frank's blond hair, his head lying on his shoulder.
"Yeah?" he didn't have the strength to raise it up to look at him, only to slur his words against his brother's shoulders in a weak, fading voice.
"You alive still?"
"Just barely." He coughed hoarsely after the words in Jesse's ear, digging his forehead hard into Jesse's neck as an answer to the pain; sagging as a new weight against his back. His hands were laced loosely around Jesse's waist, his frame bouncing with the horse.
"Hang on," Jesse said, peeking a look behind him at the shadow of some of the Rain's men hot on his trail. "I'm gonna get you someplace where you can sleep. Then it's over, alright Frank? It's all over after that."
The shadows were riding hard, their silhouettes a smudge through the pelting rain that turned the dark sky a deep blue. Jesse didn't want to tell Frank of the men still at their heels, he just wanted them to vanish.
"We make the hills and we'll be home free." He glanced to his brother again, feeling him shake against him out of coldness and weakness.
"If we make the hills." Frank said tiredly, his breath ragged against Jesse's wet neck, sending a shiver down his spine. His clothes were soaked through until not an inch of him was left dry, his hair dripping, his coat sticky and heavy.
Gritting his teeth behind his pressed lips, Jesse leaned down towards the horse's gray neck, getting a whiff of its rancid breath as it came out in a milky plume, smelling like rotting grass as it rolled around his cheeks.
He kicked the horse hard, watching its ears lie back against its head as it pumped and kicked itself up to a new level of speed. Jesse could feel the lapels of his long coat kick out, caught in the wind and fighting the buttons that held it closed around him.
Frank groaned in his ear fitfully as a hand left Jesse's waist and went for his side, wide palming his wound. And Jesse couldn't do anything to help.
He didn't want to look back again, hoping he would outride his followers, or at least not see them when they rode up and shot him in the back.
"I can almost see the hills Frank," he said to his big brother, feeling Frank's face roll on his shoulder so that it was now facing outward, the back of his head against the side of Jesse's neck. "We can make it. You stay alive, you hear me?"
Frank moaned an answer and Jesse kicked the horse harder, hoping it had another speed in its stretching lungs and twisting legs.
It seemed like hours before the ground began to break into bumpier and bumpier terrain, signaling that they were now crossing the footsteps to the small, shallow line of hills that had grown forward from the horizon as Jesse'd ridden closer.
His brother had almost slipped loose off the back of the horse a couple times throughout their ride, Jesse quick to grab him by his coat and haul him back against his back, lacing his arms around his waist again. Each time Frank almost fell, he'd have to slow the horse, and each time he almost swore he could hear Rain's men catching up, their horse's hooves slamming into the soil, gaining ground.
But each glance he took back, he could see them getting smaller and smaller until they were nothing but a tiny group of black specks on the horizon, blotted out by the rolling gray clouds.
"Hang on brother," he spoke to himself. "We're almost done." He tipped the horse to the left of a sudden pleat that rose up through the middle of the first small bluff, forcing it up the hill until he could hear the horse's haggard breathing without straining and he could feel its muscles shaking from between his legs.
Just as they cleared the top of the hill and were making their way down the other side, much too fast for the sodden earth, the horse caught its foot in the mud. It came down on its long face right into the muddy ground, not able to stick its curled legs back out fast enough to catch itself.
As its massive body flipped ass over nose, Jesse felt Frank's weight slide off him and watched the dark tan blur of his soaked clothes go flying overhead.
Frank hit the ground with a cry of pain and surprise as his body curled up and he went rolling clear of the tumbling horse, safe of the stallion. Jesse, however, could not.
Somewhere in the midst of the flip, the reign had slipped down over one of his hands, catching at his wrist as the horse rolled and spun and kicked in panic, knocking his body like a rubber ball tied to a paddle.
He felt the horse give him a hard kick to the ribs as he spun up into the air then came back down with a hard crunch, an immense pain rupturing through his hand as the horse came to a stop at the bottom of the hill, stopping him too.
Cursing, he lay there a moment, feeling the world slowly bend down to stop around him as his head filled with a cloudy pain and a wetness roamed down his upper lip to his cheek.
Rising with heavy breaths, he wiped at the blood on his face, before looking down onto his opposite aching palm, surprised to find a stick run clean through his hand.
Gritting his teeth, he grabbed the haft of the stick with his good hand and pulled hard with one big yank, curling over his fist as the pain came. Reaching into his shirt, he pulled out one of the stolen handkerchiefs and wrapped it tightly about his hand, tying it off and checking that he still had movement in it.
"Jesse!" Frank's voice sounded thin and anguished as Jesse craned his head to see Frank scuttling around on his back with his elbows, taking his palms off his wounds to look and become frightened at the blood. The crash having knocked him conscious and somewhat belligerent of the cause of his wounds. "Jesse?"
"I'm coming." Jesse called quickly as he pushed himself up onto his feet, tearing his caught wrist loose from the reign and causing the wheezing horse to give a cry of surprise from its supine position.
His boots shucked in the mud, causing him to slip and slide and flail as he scampered through it, dropping next to his brother and putting his hands out towards him.
"It's alright Frank," he grabbed at his brother's wrists, trying to calm him down as he held him so he couldn't crawl around on his elbows anymore. His face was caked, the rain doing good to try and clear some away from his cheeks and forehead, but it still remained in his eyes and around his lips.
He lifted Frank's clutching hand from his side, revealing the bloodied shirt beneath the open vest, a sudden thought coming over him. "We gotta get you changed." He said as he looked towards the capsized horse, heaving in the gully like a drunk in the gutter. Then, he looked down to his own shirt and suddenly began stripping. He had his shirt almost all the way unbuttoned before Frank had the sentience to realize what he was doing.
"What the hell are you doing?" The words came out like it was just another stupid thing Jesse might've done back home, not forced by conviction or bellicose.
"I'm switching shirts with you Frank," he told him as he lifted him up and laced Frank's shoulders beneath his own, working to unbutton Frank's shirt with his head against his shoulder, working blind.
"Why?" Frank looked down as Jesse pulled the sticking shirt off of his packed wound, exposed the stuffed stocking still crushed inside his shotgun hole. He cringed through a lopsided smile as Jesse shook him from his long coat and pulled off his shirt, covering his bare shoulders quickly back up before the rain could get to too much of him. From all the blood he'd lost, Frank was in a drunk-like state, just wandering between pain and death, not really knowing which side to let himself fall into.
"Cause your shirt may come in handy for us later, plus, mine's clean and warmer than yours."
Frank just smiled passively as Jesse replaced and buttoned up his mackinaw, before redressing himself in Frank's bloody shirt and his own long coat.
He rubbed at Frank's shoulders briskly, careful to watch out for the bullet wound as he tried to heat Frank up, then decided movement was the best thing he could do for him. "Come on, we gotta get going." Jesse started picking up Frank by the shoulder, digging in under his armpits as Frank's body lulled limply to fight, barely enough strength left in him to live, he'd already given up on himself anyway.
"Leave me here Jesse," his eyes had closed when Jesse looked to them. "You gotta keep riding."
"Shut up Frank." Jesse said as he lifted Frank up with a grunt and wrapped his bad arm around his shoulder, as they began forward, back towards the horse.
It took effort to keep his limp brother standing and get the horse up, but Jesse managed to do so and now worked hard to get his brother up into the saddle.
"Come on," Jesse pulled at Frank's bad leg to get his boot up in the stirrup, then began to push him up from his back the thighs. "Get your ass up onto that horse."
Frank, as he clambered up, sort of fell over the horse at the end, mangled across the saddle as Jesse jumped up in front of him, turning to situate him as he had been before the fall. His ribs ached horribly from the kick and his hand stung considerably, but he knew he brother was in worse pain. The pitch may have knocked a few things loose in him that might not be so easy to fix; Jesse had to get him to a doctor and fast.
He kicked the horse in its hard flanks, but the horse took a step and stopped stubbornly. Frank shook against him, his body pressing in against his brother's for warmth, his entire frame shivering from the wetness of the rain that still hadn't softened.
"Come on you sorry piece of shit," he kicked again, and again, the horse refused to move. Not in the mood, Jesse reached into his gun belt and drew out his pistol, twisting around to see the horse's rump as much as he needed to.
Lowering the pistol, he fired, taking off a small red strip of sinew with the bullet, sending the startled horse off through the slight gorge like a frightened lightning bolt.
~
Jesse'd lost track of Rain's men well before the time he'd hit the mouth of the small lane that cut its way through an orchard. The trees shadowed the sandy lane comfortingly, its large green trees swaying in the rain as they whizzed by Jesse as nothing more than an evergreen blur.
The horse was still shaking beneath him, running out of energy for good as he took it for all it was worth. He would kill the horse riding it if he had to, as long as it meant saving his brother.
He'd seen the lane from about a half a mile away, strange as it sat alone in the middle of the dotted grassland. His heart had vaulted into his throat with joy as he'd seen it rise up from the horizon like a new sun, his hastily chosen salvation whether they welcomed him or not.
"We're here Frank," Jesse smiled to his unconscious brother bouncing pale behind him. He kicked the horse for the umpteenth time since they'd picked themselves up from the stumble, even though he got the same speed as before.
Well before he made his way halfway up the lane, he heard barking off in the distance, their harsh voices catching and held by the wind. Dogs, that meant people still lived there.
As a white fence came into view, smiling like a big toothy grin at the end of the lane, he saw a figure make itself distinguishable on the wide maw of the front porch, carrying a large shotgun over its yoke shoulders. The man looked bigger due to the fact that he wore a thick buffalo skin coat wrapped around his shoulders, hulking his already broad frame. The hairs on the coat were matted and twisted from extensive fatigue, much like the twist of sharp white hair that sprayed up from his flaking head.
The two dogs circled viciously at the fence as the old man made his way as quick as his bowed legs could down the steps, flipping out his shotgun to hold it aloft, with one outstretched arm. The opposite sleeve of his large, hairy coat swayed empty at his side, that arm gone up to the shoulder.
"Don't you come any closer you god damned Yankee!" Taking offense to that, Jesse reached down and unbuttoned a couple of the buttons he'd done up on his coat, partially revealing Frank's borrowed shirt with its huge bloom of blood across his chest, the first step to his uncultured plan.
He saw the man's shotgun sway back and forth aimlessly, unable to be held by only one old hand, giving Jesse an advantage.
He swung his shoulders down low and stiffened as the horse's knees tore into the picket fence, snapping and ripping up the posts as it flip rolled and flew sideways threw the air, its caught feet launching it strangely.
The old man fired one shot, which completely missed anything even remotely close to Jesse. But just as the report came out with a puff of smoke, the horse's neck snapped sideways and it opened its gummy lips to scream in pain when an explosion of blood came pouring out of its throat. More shot out from beneath its tail as it crashed down hard on its side, its heart having exploded. The landing snapped the horse's neck with a sharp, wet crack - a mercy killing as it slid to a stop near the porch base.
Jesse let his body tumble as he felt his long coat lose its last button and come open, fully revealing the stained clothes to make it look as though the old man had shot him good. He let his body roll to a stop, even though his ribs screamed and the mud shoved its way up his nose and into his eyes as he slid facedown across their wet yard.
He came to a stop about three feet from the old man's feet, his head buried sideways beneath his shoulder, just enough for him to see as he peeked out from beneath his lashes.
The rowdy greyhounds barked and glared their teeth until they were summoned to quiet and clear off, instead wandering over to encircle and take nips at the dead horse.
What worried Jesse a little was that he couldn't see Frank. But he didn't have time much to contemplate it when the old man's booted feet scuttled a bit closer to him timidly. The shotgun muzzle dug beneath his arm as he was hoisted up using by the gun used like a lever, flipping him onto his back to look into the face of the man he'd just shot.
Jesse lay still, letting the thrust take him where it wanted to as his face was attacked by the rain, the drops digging into his eyes and clearing away some of the mud enough for him to see through squinting eyes.
"Damn Yankees..." the old man breathed hard, standing over him enough to umbrella the rain from Jesse's face with his slick, balding head.
He poked at Jesse's shoulder hard with his gun, digging the double barrel between his bones as he tried to make sure he was dead. The man looked up and over to the other man lying limp a few feet away, not moving, giving Jesse another leg up.
He snatched up the gun with a firm, hard grip.
"We ain't Yankees." Jesse gritted as he swung hard, tearing the shotgun from the man's hand and bringing it up into his angular jawbone, cracking it across the bottom, snapping the old man's head up. The man's feet lifted full off the ground as he spun back and landed belly down like a spineless fish.
Slowly, cupping a hand gently to his roaring bruised chest, Jesse rose to his feet and twirled the shotgun up so that the butt now lay in his grip, pointing it towards the old man who lay stunned and bleeding from his split lip, but still conscious. "We need help."
~
CHAPTER EIGHT - Headstrong Crumble
"Frank?" Jesse turned his head, getting an eyeful of Frank's blond hair, his head lying on his shoulder.
"Yeah?" he didn't have the strength to raise it up to look at him, only to slur his words against his brother's shoulders in a weak, fading voice.
"You alive still?"
"Just barely." He coughed hoarsely after the words in Jesse's ear, digging his forehead hard into Jesse's neck as an answer to the pain; sagging as a new weight against his back. His hands were laced loosely around Jesse's waist, his frame bouncing with the horse.
"Hang on," Jesse said, peeking a look behind him at the shadow of some of the Rain's men hot on his trail. "I'm gonna get you someplace where you can sleep. Then it's over, alright Frank? It's all over after that."
The shadows were riding hard, their silhouettes a smudge through the pelting rain that turned the dark sky a deep blue. Jesse didn't want to tell Frank of the men still at their heels, he just wanted them to vanish.
"We make the hills and we'll be home free." He glanced to his brother again, feeling him shake against him out of coldness and weakness.
"If we make the hills." Frank said tiredly, his breath ragged against Jesse's wet neck, sending a shiver down his spine. His clothes were soaked through until not an inch of him was left dry, his hair dripping, his coat sticky and heavy.
Gritting his teeth behind his pressed lips, Jesse leaned down towards the horse's gray neck, getting a whiff of its rancid breath as it came out in a milky plume, smelling like rotting grass as it rolled around his cheeks.
He kicked the horse hard, watching its ears lie back against its head as it pumped and kicked itself up to a new level of speed. Jesse could feel the lapels of his long coat kick out, caught in the wind and fighting the buttons that held it closed around him.
Frank groaned in his ear fitfully as a hand left Jesse's waist and went for his side, wide palming his wound. And Jesse couldn't do anything to help.
He didn't want to look back again, hoping he would outride his followers, or at least not see them when they rode up and shot him in the back.
"I can almost see the hills Frank," he said to his big brother, feeling Frank's face roll on his shoulder so that it was now facing outward, the back of his head against the side of Jesse's neck. "We can make it. You stay alive, you hear me?"
Frank moaned an answer and Jesse kicked the horse harder, hoping it had another speed in its stretching lungs and twisting legs.
It seemed like hours before the ground began to break into bumpier and bumpier terrain, signaling that they were now crossing the footsteps to the small, shallow line of hills that had grown forward from the horizon as Jesse'd ridden closer.
His brother had almost slipped loose off the back of the horse a couple times throughout their ride, Jesse quick to grab him by his coat and haul him back against his back, lacing his arms around his waist again. Each time Frank almost fell, he'd have to slow the horse, and each time he almost swore he could hear Rain's men catching up, their horse's hooves slamming into the soil, gaining ground.
But each glance he took back, he could see them getting smaller and smaller until they were nothing but a tiny group of black specks on the horizon, blotted out by the rolling gray clouds.
"Hang on brother," he spoke to himself. "We're almost done." He tipped the horse to the left of a sudden pleat that rose up through the middle of the first small bluff, forcing it up the hill until he could hear the horse's haggard breathing without straining and he could feel its muscles shaking from between his legs.
Just as they cleared the top of the hill and were making their way down the other side, much too fast for the sodden earth, the horse caught its foot in the mud. It came down on its long face right into the muddy ground, not able to stick its curled legs back out fast enough to catch itself.
As its massive body flipped ass over nose, Jesse felt Frank's weight slide off him and watched the dark tan blur of his soaked clothes go flying overhead.
Frank hit the ground with a cry of pain and surprise as his body curled up and he went rolling clear of the tumbling horse, safe of the stallion. Jesse, however, could not.
Somewhere in the midst of the flip, the reign had slipped down over one of his hands, catching at his wrist as the horse rolled and spun and kicked in panic, knocking his body like a rubber ball tied to a paddle.
He felt the horse give him a hard kick to the ribs as he spun up into the air then came back down with a hard crunch, an immense pain rupturing through his hand as the horse came to a stop at the bottom of the hill, stopping him too.
Cursing, he lay there a moment, feeling the world slowly bend down to stop around him as his head filled with a cloudy pain and a wetness roamed down his upper lip to his cheek.
Rising with heavy breaths, he wiped at the blood on his face, before looking down onto his opposite aching palm, surprised to find a stick run clean through his hand.
Gritting his teeth, he grabbed the haft of the stick with his good hand and pulled hard with one big yank, curling over his fist as the pain came. Reaching into his shirt, he pulled out one of the stolen handkerchiefs and wrapped it tightly about his hand, tying it off and checking that he still had movement in it.
"Jesse!" Frank's voice sounded thin and anguished as Jesse craned his head to see Frank scuttling around on his back with his elbows, taking his palms off his wounds to look and become frightened at the blood. The crash having knocked him conscious and somewhat belligerent of the cause of his wounds. "Jesse?"
"I'm coming." Jesse called quickly as he pushed himself up onto his feet, tearing his caught wrist loose from the reign and causing the wheezing horse to give a cry of surprise from its supine position.
His boots shucked in the mud, causing him to slip and slide and flail as he scampered through it, dropping next to his brother and putting his hands out towards him.
"It's alright Frank," he grabbed at his brother's wrists, trying to calm him down as he held him so he couldn't crawl around on his elbows anymore. His face was caked, the rain doing good to try and clear some away from his cheeks and forehead, but it still remained in his eyes and around his lips.
He lifted Frank's clutching hand from his side, revealing the bloodied shirt beneath the open vest, a sudden thought coming over him. "We gotta get you changed." He said as he looked towards the capsized horse, heaving in the gully like a drunk in the gutter. Then, he looked down to his own shirt and suddenly began stripping. He had his shirt almost all the way unbuttoned before Frank had the sentience to realize what he was doing.
"What the hell are you doing?" The words came out like it was just another stupid thing Jesse might've done back home, not forced by conviction or bellicose.
"I'm switching shirts with you Frank," he told him as he lifted him up and laced Frank's shoulders beneath his own, working to unbutton Frank's shirt with his head against his shoulder, working blind.
"Why?" Frank looked down as Jesse pulled the sticking shirt off of his packed wound, exposed the stuffed stocking still crushed inside his shotgun hole. He cringed through a lopsided smile as Jesse shook him from his long coat and pulled off his shirt, covering his bare shoulders quickly back up before the rain could get to too much of him. From all the blood he'd lost, Frank was in a drunk-like state, just wandering between pain and death, not really knowing which side to let himself fall into.
"Cause your shirt may come in handy for us later, plus, mine's clean and warmer than yours."
Frank just smiled passively as Jesse replaced and buttoned up his mackinaw, before redressing himself in Frank's bloody shirt and his own long coat.
He rubbed at Frank's shoulders briskly, careful to watch out for the bullet wound as he tried to heat Frank up, then decided movement was the best thing he could do for him. "Come on, we gotta get going." Jesse started picking up Frank by the shoulder, digging in under his armpits as Frank's body lulled limply to fight, barely enough strength left in him to live, he'd already given up on himself anyway.
"Leave me here Jesse," his eyes had closed when Jesse looked to them. "You gotta keep riding."
"Shut up Frank." Jesse said as he lifted Frank up with a grunt and wrapped his bad arm around his shoulder, as they began forward, back towards the horse.
It took effort to keep his limp brother standing and get the horse up, but Jesse managed to do so and now worked hard to get his brother up into the saddle.
"Come on," Jesse pulled at Frank's bad leg to get his boot up in the stirrup, then began to push him up from his back the thighs. "Get your ass up onto that horse."
Frank, as he clambered up, sort of fell over the horse at the end, mangled across the saddle as Jesse jumped up in front of him, turning to situate him as he had been before the fall. His ribs ached horribly from the kick and his hand stung considerably, but he knew he brother was in worse pain. The pitch may have knocked a few things loose in him that might not be so easy to fix; Jesse had to get him to a doctor and fast.
He kicked the horse in its hard flanks, but the horse took a step and stopped stubbornly. Frank shook against him, his body pressing in against his brother's for warmth, his entire frame shivering from the wetness of the rain that still hadn't softened.
"Come on you sorry piece of shit," he kicked again, and again, the horse refused to move. Not in the mood, Jesse reached into his gun belt and drew out his pistol, twisting around to see the horse's rump as much as he needed to.
Lowering the pistol, he fired, taking off a small red strip of sinew with the bullet, sending the startled horse off through the slight gorge like a frightened lightning bolt.
~
Jesse'd lost track of Rain's men well before the time he'd hit the mouth of the small lane that cut its way through an orchard. The trees shadowed the sandy lane comfortingly, its large green trees swaying in the rain as they whizzed by Jesse as nothing more than an evergreen blur.
The horse was still shaking beneath him, running out of energy for good as he took it for all it was worth. He would kill the horse riding it if he had to, as long as it meant saving his brother.
He'd seen the lane from about a half a mile away, strange as it sat alone in the middle of the dotted grassland. His heart had vaulted into his throat with joy as he'd seen it rise up from the horizon like a new sun, his hastily chosen salvation whether they welcomed him or not.
"We're here Frank," Jesse smiled to his unconscious brother bouncing pale behind him. He kicked the horse for the umpteenth time since they'd picked themselves up from the stumble, even though he got the same speed as before.
Well before he made his way halfway up the lane, he heard barking off in the distance, their harsh voices catching and held by the wind. Dogs, that meant people still lived there.
As a white fence came into view, smiling like a big toothy grin at the end of the lane, he saw a figure make itself distinguishable on the wide maw of the front porch, carrying a large shotgun over its yoke shoulders. The man looked bigger due to the fact that he wore a thick buffalo skin coat wrapped around his shoulders, hulking his already broad frame. The hairs on the coat were matted and twisted from extensive fatigue, much like the twist of sharp white hair that sprayed up from his flaking head.
The two dogs circled viciously at the fence as the old man made his way as quick as his bowed legs could down the steps, flipping out his shotgun to hold it aloft, with one outstretched arm. The opposite sleeve of his large, hairy coat swayed empty at his side, that arm gone up to the shoulder.
"Don't you come any closer you god damned Yankee!" Taking offense to that, Jesse reached down and unbuttoned a couple of the buttons he'd done up on his coat, partially revealing Frank's borrowed shirt with its huge bloom of blood across his chest, the first step to his uncultured plan.
He saw the man's shotgun sway back and forth aimlessly, unable to be held by only one old hand, giving Jesse an advantage.
He swung his shoulders down low and stiffened as the horse's knees tore into the picket fence, snapping and ripping up the posts as it flip rolled and flew sideways threw the air, its caught feet launching it strangely.
The old man fired one shot, which completely missed anything even remotely close to Jesse. But just as the report came out with a puff of smoke, the horse's neck snapped sideways and it opened its gummy lips to scream in pain when an explosion of blood came pouring out of its throat. More shot out from beneath its tail as it crashed down hard on its side, its heart having exploded. The landing snapped the horse's neck with a sharp, wet crack - a mercy killing as it slid to a stop near the porch base.
Jesse let his body tumble as he felt his long coat lose its last button and come open, fully revealing the stained clothes to make it look as though the old man had shot him good. He let his body roll to a stop, even though his ribs screamed and the mud shoved its way up his nose and into his eyes as he slid facedown across their wet yard.
He came to a stop about three feet from the old man's feet, his head buried sideways beneath his shoulder, just enough for him to see as he peeked out from beneath his lashes.
The rowdy greyhounds barked and glared their teeth until they were summoned to quiet and clear off, instead wandering over to encircle and take nips at the dead horse.
What worried Jesse a little was that he couldn't see Frank. But he didn't have time much to contemplate it when the old man's booted feet scuttled a bit closer to him timidly. The shotgun muzzle dug beneath his arm as he was hoisted up using by the gun used like a lever, flipping him onto his back to look into the face of the man he'd just shot.
Jesse lay still, letting the thrust take him where it wanted to as his face was attacked by the rain, the drops digging into his eyes and clearing away some of the mud enough for him to see through squinting eyes.
"Damn Yankees..." the old man breathed hard, standing over him enough to umbrella the rain from Jesse's face with his slick, balding head.
He poked at Jesse's shoulder hard with his gun, digging the double barrel between his bones as he tried to make sure he was dead. The man looked up and over to the other man lying limp a few feet away, not moving, giving Jesse another leg up.
He snatched up the gun with a firm, hard grip.
"We ain't Yankees." Jesse gritted as he swung hard, tearing the shotgun from the man's hand and bringing it up into his angular jawbone, cracking it across the bottom, snapping the old man's head up. The man's feet lifted full off the ground as he spun back and landed belly down like a spineless fish.
Slowly, cupping a hand gently to his roaring bruised chest, Jesse rose to his feet and twirled the shotgun up so that the butt now lay in his grip, pointing it towards the old man who lay stunned and bleeding from his split lip, but still conscious. "We need help."