Behold, the last two chapters! Hope you like how everything turns out -- I'll meet you at the end of the story with a fistful of notes and some happy news!
9: TIME HAS COME TODAY
"We had to see if it was true." That was what the Green Lanterns told Hal when he asked why they'd disobeyed the Guardians' wishes. Apparently, the signal he'd sent out through the relay network had been picked up by a few other Lanterns as it made its way to Oa, but the quarantine prevented any of them from answering directly, and they could only listen as Hal argued his case. "After they cut off your transmission, those of us that heard it decided that it should not be dismissed," the more human-looking Lantern said. While his skin color was rather ashen and his eyes a little too blue for close-up inspection, at a glance no resident of Earth would even notice the difference. "We three were the closest in proximity to your planet, so we were chosen to come investigate."
"Not that I don't appreciate you coming," Hal said, "but aren't you afraid of reprisals when you get back to Oa?"
The second Lantern, a tall fellow with a broad face and two sets of pitch-black eyes, flashed a toothy grin at him. "From what I've heard about the great Hal Jordan of Earth, you never seemed to concern yourself with such thoughts when it came down to obeying the Guardians or doing what was right."
"Later is for consequences," the third, insect-like Lantern said, "now is for action."
Hal agreed, and the sooner the better. The only question was what sort of action to take. They had relocated to inside the warehouse, and after a getting-acquainted period with the residents of Maple (which involved a lot of the kids being fascinated by the "big bug"), the Lanterns, Hex, Stiletta, and a handful of the residents got down to business. "First priority is getting that engine out of the hands of the Slabberz," Hal said. "Hopefully, they haven't tried dismantling or scrapping it yet. Once we secure it, we have to see if it still works, and then try to figure out if there's any way we can direct the energy to suit our needs."
"So we're plannin' a raid, thet it?" Jonah pulled out one of his guns and cocked the hammer. "Hell, Ah'm game."
"No...no guns." Hal answered. "We do this the Corps way: no killing, not unless it becomes absolutely necessary."
"Ah'd love tuh see how yuh plan on corralin' all them skunks, then."
The tall Lantern used his ring to grab Hex by his gun hand, pick him up off his feet, then pull him over to where he stood. A little extra force made the bounty hunter drop his Magnum into the Green Lantern's outstretched hand. "Is that enough of a demonstration?" he asked, lifting Hex up until he was looking straight into the alien's four eyes.
"Reckon it'll do...mind puttin' me down, big fella? We's on the same side, last Ah checked." With a laugh, the alien set Jonah back on his feet and handed him the gun. "Ah still think some backup couldn't hurt," he grumbled.
"It looks to me like you don't even need help," Stiletta said.
Hal shook his head. "Even with the rings, we're not invincible. The more people we have with us, the easier this will be."
"But if you don't want us to use guns, how are we supposed to help you out?" Red asked, Mookie by his side. "Are you guys passing out those rings to everybody?"
"Not quite." Hal had taken a moment earlier to charge up his own ring, and used it now to construct what appeared to be an ordinary rifle, save for the fact that it was fashioned out of green light. "These won't fire normal ammunition, but they will pack enough punch to stun anybody hit by it," he explained, holding it by the stock, "and so long as our rings are powered up, they'll never run out of ammo."
"Let me see thet," Jonah said, and took it from Hal. He was surprised at the heft the thing had, even though he could see through it like it was made of glass. When he worked the loading mechanism, it made a solid kla-chack just as a real, metal rifle would. "Ah'll be damned. Kin yuh make anything with thet there ring?"
"Just about." Hal turned to the others. "Mookie suggested earlier that the scavs might be taking the night off because of the holiday, and if that's true, then we can catch them off guard. We need to do this hard and fast. Don't give them a chance to retreat or figure out why we're really there. And remember, the only purpose of this is to get that engine back. This isn't a smash-and-grab or vengeance mission. Anybody that wants to come along to take care of a grudge against the Slabberz can stay right here. Those that really want to help can meet us at the motor pool in a half-hour."
The group dispersed after that, some deciding to opt out, others sticking around to talk more with the newly-arrived Lanterns. Hal went over to confer with his fellow Corpsmen, leaving Jonah to examine his new weapon some more. As he did so, Stiletta came up to him, standing quietly beside him until he noticed her. "This is a fine trick, ain't it?" he said, holding up the rifle. "Just think 'bout something an' there it is." Then he saw the look in her eyes. "Whut's the matter?"
"You know."
He was about to say that he didn't, then realized what she meant. "This don't change nothin', sugar. Ah ain't packin' muh bags, Ah swear." He touched her face, but she pulled away.
"I...I need to do some things before we leave," she said. "I'll see you in half an hour." Stiletta then walked away from him and down the hall leading to the sleeping quarters. Jonah watched her go, feeling like he'd been punched in the gut.
While he hadn't been standing near enough to overhear the conversation, Hal did see Stiletta's departure, and left his own group to check on the gunfighter. "Everything all right, Hex?" he asked.
"Right as rain," he answered, not meaning a word of it, then turned and began to walk towards the motor pool. "Ah'd better get muh ride warmed up."
Hal put a hand on Jonah's arm to stop him, saying, "Forget it. I've got something better for you."
"Whut did yuh have in mind?"
"Just something that you told me the future was a mite short on," he said with a smile.
About eight blocks away from the parking garage where the Casimir engine lay, the two gangbangers Hal Jordan thought of as Baldy and Flyboy were making their way down the snowy, moonlit street. Locked arm-in-arm for mutual support, they sang raunchy versions of Christmas carols as they split a bottle of schnapps between them. Flyboy currently had possession, and he took a long pull while Baldy tried to come up with a way to pervert "Joy to the World".
"Joy to the girls, I am so hung!" he started, then paused to think of the next line.
"In bed, I am the king!" his friend chimed in. They both burst out laughing, Flyboy doubling over and almost dropping the bottle. "Ah-haha...aw, shit, I think...huh...I think I'm gonna puke."
Baldy let go of him quick. "Don't puke on me! Here..." He pulled Flyboy's aviator cap off his head and held it under the bent-over man's face. "Let 'er rip!"
He grabbed his cap away, saying, "You lousy fugger," then let out a belch, a line of spittle dribbling from the corner of his lip. "Ugh...that tasted like shit. Here, you take this." He passed Baldy the bottle.
"Merry Christmas to me!" He turned in a circle in the middle of the street, toasting the empty buildings around them before taking a swig. "And a Happy muthafugging New Year!"
Flyboy laughed at him, then stopped and cocked his head. "Hey, you hear something?"
"Nope." He was still turning in small circles, waving the bottle to and fro.
"Listen a minute, man." He grabbed hold of Baldy's arm to make him hold still. The noise soon grew louder, and they both looked up the eastbound street, straining to make out any sort of movement in the darkness. "Sounds like engines."
"Well, then I guess we'll have to give 'em a little Season's Greetings." They drew guns and pointed them in the direction of the noise, ready to open fire the moment they got a visual. Unfortunately for Flyboy and Baldy, once their targets came into view, they were each too stunned to pull the trigger.
The cycles they'd expected, that was obvious enough by the noise, and the fact that there were only three of them was no big deal at all. But the two black-and-green figures in the air above them caught the scavs completely flat-footed, and even that wasn't as big a shock as what was leading the charge: a scar-faced man on an emerald-green horse, standing tall in the saddle and letting loose with a blood-curdling Apache war cry.
"Holy..." was all Flyboy could get out before Jonah leveled his rifle at the man and blasted him in the chest, then did the same for Baldy. They both crumpled to the ground unconscious, neither of them aware that on the southern end of the city, their compatriots were falling to a second assault as the invading force worked its way towards the parking garage. Any scav that stood in their way soon found themselves either knocked out cold or locked in the shell of a building by a green force-field. Resistance was pretty low until they reached the garage itself. Many of the gangbangers were doing their partying at home this year, and some of them were still sober enough to pose a threat. Gunfire rang out in the street, causing the non-superpowered members of the raiding party to take cover.
"Keep 'em busy!" Jordan called out as he and the humanoid Lantern flew up to the third level.
"Easy fer y'all tuh say," Hex answered, "we ain't got no fancy magic rings tuh keep the bullets off us!" Nevertheless, the gunfighter directed his mount into the thick of it, picking off scavs on the fly. Most of them had never seen a horse before outside of photographs, and the fact that this one was green didn't settle their nerves any as they dived out of the way in an effort to not get trampled. All's Ah need is muh spurs an' a cavalry sword, an' this'll be like Old Home Week, he thought. The other raiders were giving it their all as well, providing cover fire or following Jonah's lead and running down the fleeing scavs on their cycles. Some of the gang members wised up and began to go for their own rides, which caught Jonah's attention real quick. "Hey, big fella!" he yelled at the tall Lantern nearby, "want tuh help storm the fort?"
The Lantern immediately headed for the garage's street-level entrance, Hex right behind. The gangbangers soon found themselves severely lacking in transportation as beams of emerald light tore their vehicles to shreds, and their owners were also swiftly taken out of the picture by Jonah's lightning-fast trigger finger.
With all the action on the ground, the two Lanterns breaking into the upper level of the garage went virtually unnoticed. The plastic tarp protecting the interior from the elements did little to deter them, and the third floor seemed clear of hostiles as they set down inside. "It should be over this way," Hal told his companion, and they headed over to where he'd last seen the Casimir engine. Before they reached it, however, they met up with a couple of scavs running up the ramp, probably on their way to find sniper's positions so as to defend their hideout from above. They opened fire the moment they saw the strangers, paying no mind to the fact that their bullets bounced off the emerald shield the Lanterns had tossed up.
"I hate to say it," the humanoid Lantern mused, "but I am beginning to see the point the Guardians were making."
"Nobody's perfect, not even them." Hal forced the shield forward until it began to envelop the gunmen, pushing them back down the ramp. Once they'd been forced down to the lower level, they sealed off the ramp with a larger shield. The gangbangers beat their fists against it in frustration. "There's at least one more access point to this level, back that way," Hal said. "Go seal it up and check around for others. I'll look over the engine."
Lucky for him, the machine appeared to be mostly intact, with only some of the outer housing peeled away. Some tools lay scattered around it, but whomever was using them had made no obvious progress in either repairing or dismantling it. When the other Lantern came back around, Hal was kneeling in front of a large access panel that someone had pried open, inspecting the innards. "The area is secure," he informed Jordan, kneeling beside him, "and it appears that many of the scavengers outside have been subdued." He looked at the mess of wires pouring out of the machine. "Is the device still usable?"
With a sigh, Hal said, "I have no idea."
When the dust settled, over 150 cutthroat scavs had been defeated by a band of only a dozen people. There were a few bullet wounds to patch and some other minor injuries, but otherwise neither side suffered any loss of life. It was the most bloodless battle Jonah had ever participated in. Kinda takes the fun out of it, he thought as he helped with moving the captured gang members to one of the intact buildings near the parking garage. Many of them had been stunned into submission, but some of them were still up and kicking...and punching and biting and whatever else they could think of doing in an effort to get free. Those that tried to pull any of that nonsense with Jonah soon got knocked out the hard way. Personally, he didn't understand why they were making such a fuss to keep the little maniacs alive, but Hal made it very clear that none of them were to be permanently harmed. It's a lovely sentiment, Hex said to himself, but damned impractical.
Once all the gangbangers had been herded inside their temporary prison, Jonah went inside the garage itself, joining Hal and his fellow Green Lanterns as they busied themselves with repairing the Casimir engine. They'd been at it for hours, going over the machine inch by inch to determine what caused the original malfunction that brought Hal to this reality...and to see if it could be safely duplicated. Stiletta had been helping out where she could, and she stepped away from the others when Jonah came up the ramp. "How's things going out there, cowboy?" she asked him, hugging her thick coat to her body.
"As well as kin be expected," he said, "them skunks ain't too happy 'bout us kickin' 'em out of their home." The two of them walked over to the machine. "So, is this thing gonna do the trick or no?"
The insect-like Lantern poked its head out from behind the machine. "Very soon. Device is almost disengaged."
"Ah don't follow...yuh mean yo're turnin' it off?"
"Just part of it," Hal explained. He reattached some of the outer housing, then stood up to face them. "From what we can tell, Dr. Steveling and his team got a little overzealous: apparently, a true Casimir engine is only good for one use. Once it's extracted energy from the quantum vacuum and expelled it, the engine burns out. They thought they'd found away around that problem, but the truth is, they had inadvertently wired the thing so it would never stop extracting energy. It just keeps cycling over and over." He twirled a finger in the air to emphasize. "Luckily, when it let out that burst that knocked me here, it burned out the mechanism that allowed it to draw power. This thing's been idling for the last four days, just waiting for somebody to give the order to expel its full load."
"Ah ain't even gonna pretend thet Ah understood a bit of thet," Jonah said.
"He means it still works," Stiletta told him, "and as soon as they finish disconnecting the energy-cycling thing from the rest of the engine, it'll be safe to turn it back on."
"Once we get rid of that piece of equipment, we should be able to control the engine with our rings and not have to worry about it sucking them dry like before," Hal continued. "All we need to do then is manipulate the quantum-energy field to make another hole in space-time, and we can slip right through."
"'We'?" Hex said. "Don't yuh mean..."
"No, you heard me right. This engine should have enough energy stored in it to open two portals, one for each of us." He put a hand on the gunfighter's shoulder, saying, "I know you told me that you didn't want me to get your hopes up, but I'm not playing around here: you're finally going home."
Jonah stared at him for a moment, then at the engine. "Ah'm...Ah cain't," he said eventually. "W-whut Ah mean is..."
Stiletta took Jonah by the hand and said, "Can I talk with you for a minute? Just the two of us?" She pulled him away from the Lanterns and led him over to the far end of the garage. The tarps had been torn down in that section, and a gray, pre-dawn light was pouring in from outside.
As soon as they were alone, the first thing Hex said was, "Ah'm not goin' back."
She put a hand over his mouth. "Don't talk, just listen. I know that you love me, and you're willing to just walk away from this chance at going home to stay with me, but...it's not right. You don't belong here, and no amount of love will change that. I had to think about that long and hard before I realized it was the truth. I wish it wasn't true, because...I'll admit it, the thought of letting go of you hurts, but it's the right thing. We may love each other, but in the long run, that still won't make this place your home."
"Don't Ah get any say in this? Ah don't want tuh leave yuh, sugar. It don't matter tuh me where Ah am, just so long as yo're there, too."
"You say that now, but what about five years from now? Or twenty-five? This isn't some bus ticket you can cash in whenever you like. If you don't go now, then that's it, no second chances. Can you live with that for the rest of your life?" Jonah turned his head away, but Stiletta wouldn't let him ignore what she was saying. She placed a hand under his chin and made him look at her. "When you love somebody, even a little, sometimes the best way to show them that is to give them up. I want you to be happy, Jonah. Not just now, but forever. And I know that if you stay here, you won't be."
He closed his eyes for a moment, taking stock of what she'd said. He'd had similar thoughts, but he'd refused to acknowledge them. Just once, Ah'd like tuh get whut Ah want, he thought. Maybe someday...but not today. When he looked at her again, tears had begun to form in his eyes, but he held them back. "If'n yuh think it's the right thing, Ah'll go...but Ah think it'll be along time afore Ah'm happy 'bout it." He reached down and patted the Magnums still sitting in his gun holsters. "Reckon Ah'll have tuh get one of them Lanterns tuh fetch muh Dragoons. Cain't go back with these things."
"I know," she answered, and opened up her coat. From one of the large inner pockets, she pulled out Jonah's old guns, carefully wrapped in one of his shirts. "I stopped by your room before we left Maple," she explained, handing them over, "just in case."
He turned the guns over in his hands. They'd been loaded with the bullets he'd bought the other day: three in one gun, two in the other. He hadn't even thought about bringing the Dragoons along, he'd had no intentions of leaving...but Stiletta knew, she knew before he did. "Maybe...maybe yuh could come with me," Hex said to her. "Yuh ain't got nothin' tyin' yuh down here, so why don't yuh..."
"And what then? I don't belong back there any more than you belong here. Can you imagine me running around in a hoop skirt...and I'd love to see you try and explain me to your girlfriend Emily."
"Her name's Emmy," he said quietly, "an' she ain't muh girlfriend...she done left me a couple months afore Ah got stuck here."
"I'm sorry. The way you've talked about her..."
"Ah still love her, if'n thet's whut yo're thinkin'. Ah've loved a lot of women over the years, fer lots of dif'rent reasons...an' Ah've never stopped lovin' any of them, deep down." He brushed a hand against her cheek. "Same goes fer yuh, Stiletta: Ah may never see yuh again, but Ah'll love yuh 'til the day Ah die."
Tears rolling down fer face, she threw her arms around his neck. "Goddamn you, Jonah," she sobbed.
He held onto her tightly, wishing that he never had to let go. "Ah think He already has, sugar."
The Green Lanterns finished their repairs not long after sunrise. Christmas Day had finally arrived, and with it a miracle for two men, one of whom had stopped believing in such things a long time ago. Jonah stood in front of the engine, Stiletta beside him and holding his hand. He'd already said a brief goodbye to those who'd come with them on the raiding party, though it didn't make a bit of difference to him one way or the other. There would only be one person he'd miss once he was gone.
Hal's own goodbyes were taking a little longer. While he didn't know these Lanterns, they knew of him. It didn't matter to them that he really wasn't their Hal Jordan: either way, he was a legend, and they couldn't just let him leave without telling him so. "It's been an honor to work with you, even for such a brief period," the humanoid Lantern said. "I wish you could stay, it would mean so much."
"I'm sorry, but I've already been away from home for a long time, even before I came here," Hal told them. "You could do something for me in my absence, though."
"Anything, just name it."
"When you speak with the Guardians...and I'm sure you will after this little escapade...do your best to talk them into lifting the quarantine. These people need help, not isolation, and the Corps' presence could really turn things around here. Also, give them this." With his ring, Hal made a small data disc, imprinting on it all the pertinent information about the Parallax entity, and what it had done to both him and the Corps in his reality. So far as he knew, the thing was still imprisoned in the Central Battery, but what happened once could happen again. "Make sure they look at this, it's vitally important."
Taking it from him, the tall Lantern asked, "What is it?"
"Something they forgot."
With a nod, the alien tucked it away. Hal wondered how the Guardians of this reality would react when they saw it. He turned around and looked at Jonah. The gunfighter had ditched his long coat, and the Dragoons were once again sitting in their holsters, the yellowing ivory grips standing out in contrast to his dark clothes. "Are you ready?" Hal asked him.
Jonah didn't answer, his attention still focused on Stiletta. They stood together for a moment longer, neither willing to part just yet, then shared final kiss before stepping away from each other, Stiletta moving off to one side of the machine, Jonah walking over to where Hal was waiting. "So...this is it," Hex said. "Who goes first?"
Smiling, Hal said, "I figured age before beauty."
"Very damn funny."
"Sorry, couldn't resist." He nodded towards the engine, saying, "When we get this thing started, don't hesitate, just walk forward. The rings will generate a field that'll read your chronal signature...it's like a fingerprint your body gives off, showing where and when your proper place in the timestream is. It'll help adjust the quantum energy so that it can plug you back into where you're supposed to be. You should end up near your original point of departure, but it might be a little before or after, time-wise. Brace yourself for that."
"Alright." Jonah looked down at the floor. "Reckon Ah should be thankin' yuh fer all this."
"I'm just repaying a debt to an old friend, that's all."
He picked his head back up. "Yuh won't know none of this when we meet later on, will yuh? If'n we do meet, Ah mean."
"Nope, I'll be in your shoes...and remember, you didn't mention anything about this the first time, so don't say a word if you do run into me. Everything has to play out the same as before."
"Hell, Ah wouldn't know where tuh start, anyhow." His face began to cloud over with worry. "Listen, when yuh get back tuh yer end of it all...one of them Vietnam fellas said he'd read 'bout me in some book. Could yuh maybe...yuh know, take a look-see? Just tuh be sure..."
"First chance I get. I promise."
That seemed to ease his fears a bit. "Okay...reckon Ah should quit draggin' muh feet," he muttered, then held out his hand. "Take care of yerself, Hal."
"You do the same, Jonah." They shook hands. "Remember: 1878...Desecration, Arizona."
The gunfighter nodded, then turned away without another word. As he did so, the trio of visiting Lanterns aimed their rings at the Casimir engine, activating it one last time. As before, the device produced a high-pitched whine, but it was nowhere near as deafening. The emerald energy mingled with the white light from the engine, smoothing out the sparks until it became a uniform green glow from the front exhaust ports. Jonah did hesitate a moment, taking just enough time to look Stiletta's way, then stepped forward. The glow enveloped him, tinting his visage a deep shade of green, then there was a sudden flash of white around his body. Jonah began to raise his arms to shield himself from the brilliance, but he was gone before he could fully bring them up. The engine shuddered at the same time, hard enough to shake the floor.
One down, and one to go, Hal thought. He waited for the glow to flare back to green again, then stepped into it himself. He could feel the energy grabbing at his ring again, but it was merely a gentle tug this time. When the white flash came, he shut his eyes, but it did no good. The light seemed to tear right through his eyelids as it washed over him, then tossed him about the timestream like a leaf in the ocean. This will work, he told himself, the first ride was just as rough, you can hold on...
When the light faded, Hal found himself about to crash head-first onto a tile floor. Instinctively, he pointed his ring at it and stopped his descent inches from impact, then righted himself to find out where he'd landed up. There wasn't enough light to see by, so he created some with his ring as he hovered in the air. Though his vision was still blurry from the flash, he could make out the smooth walls of the lab, along with the scattered remains of diagnostic equipment. Both bore scorch marks from the arcs of energy the Casimir engine had thrown off before Jordan contained it. He also saw the gaping hole where part of the lab's wall had been carried away in the original blast. Well, the location's right, he thought, but how long has it been?
"Hal? Are you all right?"
He turned around and saw John Stewart standing in the doorway to the lab. He was clad in a variant of the standard Green Lantern uniform, sans mask as always. "Where have you been?" he continued. "One minute I'm getting a distress signal from here, the next..." His dark hand cut the air. "It's like you dropped off the face of the Earth."
"No, just veered off to the left a bit," Hal said. "How long ago did you lose the signal?"
"Three hours ago. I set the ring to keep scanning for you while I helped out with restoring power. You did a great job containing the explosion, it looks like, but some of the grid got fried out from that engine screwing with it. They're still having trouble..." As he said that, the lights in the lab began to flicker back to life. "Well, would you look at that. Guess everything's back to normal."
"Hooray for the good guys." Hal set down on the ground next to his associate, his right leg buckling when he put weight on it. John steadied him, looking worried. "It's okay," Hal told him, "I'm just a little sore still from that gunshot wound."
"When did you get shot?" he asked, surprised.
"About four or five days ago."
"Hal, you weren't even technically alive four or five days ago." Now John looked really worried. "Are you sureyou're all right?"
Jordan flashed his fellow Green Lantern a grin. "Right as rain."
"Oh my God! What's happening to him?"
Emmylou Hartley stared in horror at the spot where Jonah Hex had stood only moments before. This isn't real, she thought, this is a nightmare, it has to be. She'd been telling herself that off and on for two months now, ever since Brett had kidnapped her off that stagecoach to St. Louis. When she bought passage, Emmy thought she was moving away from trouble: she'd decided to leave Jonah before he broke her heart yet again, as he always seemed to do. If she'd known what lay ahead of her, however, she would have stood through the heartache to spare herself the torture she'd endured after Brett got hold of her. Beaten, starved, locked in a closet for days on end, all in an effort to break her spirit and make her a part of his gang. Emmy wondered if the two other women in his "family" had gone through the same trials before giving in to his whims.
But Emmy was resolved to never give in, not even after she accidentally shot Jonah when he tried to rescue her during that robbery in the assayer's office. She held on, and when she got the chance, she ran. Brett wasn't about to let her go, though, and chased her down as she made her way back to the town of Red Dog, back to Jonah, back to the man that had saved her countless times before. And now...and now he was gone, whisked away in a blaze of red light. The afterimage still hung in front of her eyes, the shock on Jonah's face before he disappeared matching her own. The bar's patrons gaped as well, and who could blame them? This was 1875: things like this just didn't happen, not in Red Dog, not anywhere.
"Looks like that johnny-reb decided you're not worth the trouble," Brett said. The incident had shaken him, but it wasn't enough to take his mind off why he'd come in there. He leveled his revolver at Emmy. "Don't worry, I'll save a couple shots for him in case he changes his mind."
Emmylou backed up against the bar, her mind still reeling. There's no one left, she thought, nowhere else to go. She braced her hands on the bartop, her fingers brushing against the whiskey bottle Jonah had been pouring from when she'd run in. Barely aware that she was doing it, she grabbed the bottle by the neck and swung it as hard as she could at Brett's face. The glass shattered on impact, tearing up his cheek and shards lodging in his eye. He fired blindly, missing Emmy by inches. She froze for a moment, watching him as he fell to his knees yelling in pain, then she bolted for the door. Once out in the street, she ran as fast as she could, not knowing where to, just so long as it was far from Brett. People blundered into her as they tried to figure out what all the commotion in the saloon was about. "Get out of the way!" she screamed, pushing them aside.
"Come back here, you tramp!" Brett had recovered himself enough to come after her. He emerged from the bar, gun still in hand, blood running down the side of his face. The sight of him was enough to make folks move out his way. He fired a shot at Emmy, missing again, but it was enough of a scare to make her stumble, slowing her down just long enough for him to catch up and tackle her. They wrestled in the street, Emmy doing her best to free herself from his grip, but in the end, Brett was just too strong for her. Flat on her back, choking on dust, she looked up at him as he straddled her. "You just had to make it hard, didn't you?" he growled. His injured eye was squeezed shut, and flecks of blood hung from his moustache. "Figured you'd learn to behave after a while, but it looks like I was wrong. Now I ain't got any other choice." He then shoved the barrel of the gun under her chin, saying, "End of the line, pigtails."
From behind them, a voice called out, "Get the Hell away from her, yuh yellowbellied skunk!" Brett turned his head to look at the man speaking, perhaps even shoot him for daring to interrupt, but when he saw who it was, his blood ran cold.
In the middle of the street, not far from the entrance to the Red Dog Saloon, stood Jonah Hex. The Confederate uniform was gone, replaced by a black shirt and dark blue trousers that clung to his tall frame, and black boots with oddly-thick soles. A breeze stirred Jonah's shoulder-length red hair as he glared at Brett, death in his eyes and his hands dangling inches away from the Dragoons strapped to his hips. "Get up," the bounty hunter told him. "Ah've been waitin' a damn long time tuh finish this."
Brett didn't move. He had the advantage, surely Hex saw that. All he had to do was twitch his finger and the girl would die. But the look in Jonah's eyes, the snarl on his lips...it was like staring down a bloodthirsty wolf. And if Brett didn't take him down first, the man would jump on him and tear out his throat. He quickly stood up and swung the gun around, cocking the hammer as he took aim at Hex.
Those who saw the shootout in Red Dog that day would swear they never saw Jonah Hex draw his guns. One moment the Dragoons were resting in their holsters, the next they were in Jonah's hands, the report deafening as he fired five times at Brett without hesitation. One bullet knocked the pistol from the man's hand before he cold even pull the trigger, three more drilled straight through his chest, and the last ended up squarely between the outlaw's eyes. He staggered forward a few steps, then collapsed, dead before his body even hit the ground.
"Jonah..." Emmy cried weakly as he ran over to her, falling to his knees beside her and scooping her up into his arms. She pressed her face to his chest and sobbed, barely taking note of how strange the clothes he was wearing felt, all slick and unnatural. She just wanted to reassure herself that he was there, that this wasn't a dream. Jonah was crying as well, shedding the tears that he'd refused to show Stiletta as he kissed the top of Emmylou's head, her cheeks, her lips.
"Oh God...Ah missed yuh so much," he said, his voice quivering. "Ah kept hopin' an' prayin' Ah'd get back, but it's been so long...seems like years..."
She looked up at his face, then touched his hair. It was longer now than it had been minutes before in the saloon. "What happened, Jonah?" she asked. "You disappeared, I saw it...where did you go?"
Jonah realized then that people had begun to gather around, not too closely. They were staring at him, at the clothes he was wearing. He could already hear folks whispering to each other, speculating as to what had just occurred in their small town, and waiting to hear an explanation from him. Emmy was waiting too, gazing at him with trusting eyes.
Slowly, he felt the lie forming on his lips. It was a simple lie, but one he'd repeat to everyone that asked him about the incident for the rest of his life. Gently pushing a stray lock of blonde hair from Emmy's face, he said to her, "Ah don't rightly know whut happened, sugar. All's Ah kin remember is seein' this real bright red light, then a bright green one right after. Everything in between...reckon it's just a big blur."