A Gunfight in April
After having twenty or so shots of whiseky, the barman refused to give Hiryuu any more, though he showed no signs of intoxication. He watched the Rider Gang members start to fight amongst each other over who knows what. He looked over at the doors as a man walked in.
"What can I get you Gary?" The barman asked. The man was the gunsmith Hiryuu had bought the six-shooters from. He walked over to the barman and looked around the bar. He spotted Hiryuu. The man's eyes got wide and he looked at the barman.
"Funny, that guy," the barman said. "He's had twenty shots a my strongest stuff and doesn't look like he's so much as touched a drop a alcohol."
"That's him," the gunsmith whispered.
"Who? The kid who shot a dozen bullets into a rod of lead? That kid doesn't even have a holster, an' 'e looks sixteen," the men whispered at each other.
"Actually, I'm seventeen," Hiryuu said beaming from across the nearly empty saloon.
The barman and the gunsmith looked at each other. How could he have heard that over the brawling riders? The barman turned to the kid and walked across the bar.
"Just who are you, kid?"
"I'm David," Hiryuu said smiling pleasantly.
"I hear tell you got a nine-shooter and shot perfectly with unusually modified guns at Gary's shop."
"I don't know. I didn't time it very well so I had to skip a shot so the bullets from the two guns didn't collide before they hit the target. I shot it after, but I don't think it did what I wanted it to."
The gunsmith had walked over and thought about the one bullet that fell from a line of twelve of them.
"I was really slow, too," Hiryuu added.
"How was it slow," Gary said. "My surveillance tapes looked as though you'd fired them all at the exact same frame.
"What's the frame rate?" the barman asked.
"60 frames per second," the gunsmith said.
The barman's jaw dropped. He expected 30 per minute like his own surveillance system. The kid in front of him had fired eleven shots within 1/60 of a second to the exact same spot. One sixtieth!
"Who in God's name are you?"
"I'm David," Hiryuu beamed.
"Is that so?" Haierra Kayne, the leader of the Rider Gang stated.
----
Myra followed Kristyn into the inn. They hadn't found a single trace of Hiryuu anywhere. They got as far as the stairs when a harsh woman's voice called to them.
"You gals' Kristyn an' Myra?" the lady behind the desk asked.
"Yes, ma'am."
"You have a call. Here's the message," she said holding a slip of paper with only a number written on it.
"Who is it?" Myra asked.
"It's … the boss," Kristyn said, panicking.
They went to their room.
"I have to go to the bathroom, you call, kay?" Kristyn said, gleaming.
"I was going to say that first!" Myra complained.
Kristyn went into the bathroom when the phone rang. Myra didn't have a chance to step towards the phone when Kristyn answered it.
"Hello, Mr. Rockafeller. … Yes he did, Mr. Rockafeller. … Well, the only possible eyewitness was insane, Mr. Rockafeller. … He said that Hiryuu the Flame was a dragon, Mr. Rockafeller. … We can't find any trace of him, Mr. Rock- … Yes, Mi- … No, Mr. Rocka- … We will, Mr. Rockafeller, sir."
"Who was it?" Myra asked. Kristyn looked at her like she was crazy.
"Let's go to sleep, Myra. The boss is going to rip us apart if we don't find him tomorrow."
----
Myra finished a slice of toast and the two girls set out from the inn to continue the search for Hiryuu when a boy burst in.
"Some kid in black named David and Four Barrel Kayne are going to have a draw in front of the gunsmith shop in ten minutes!" the boy yelled suddenly.
"That man's name rhymes with yours!" Myra said brightly to Kristyn.
"That David kid is going to get killed!" Kristyn said, thinking of the awkward boy that they had run into at the bar and saved from the fire, not to mention Kristyn had to pay a room for.
Kristyn remembered that Haierra Kayne was the leader of the Riders, they had been the ones who first fled the shop Hiryuu had been at. Maybe they had seen him.
The two girls, and about everyone else in town, ran to the scene of the gunfight. Kristyn couldn't see a thing through the crowd. Myra peered out above the sea of heads like a tree over grass in a field.
"Hey look it's David," Myra beamed down at Kristyn who only saw the shoulders of everyone around her. "I hope he wins."
"Tell me what's going on, I can't see a damn thing."
"They're looking at each other, now there turning, now taking paces."
----
"… Four, five, six, seven, eight, nine…"
Click. BANG!
Hiryuu barely dodged a hit in the shoulder. Click, click, click. He opened his cartridge.
"I forgot to load it!"
The man across from him looked at the frantic kid, then let loose a shower of bullets from his four barrel sawn-off shotgun.
BANG. BANG. BANG. BANG. BANG. BANG. BANG.
Hiryuu dodged as each wave of shot whizzed passed him, making it look like he was doing the moon walk. The shots stopped and Hiryuu kept going for a few seconds.
Haierra Kayne looked at this crazy, but lucky as all hell, fool.
"How the…"
Hiryuu looked at the paused man and pulled out a single bullet from his pocket without anyone noticing. He suddenly loaded the gun.
BBAANNGG!
The two looked at each other.
"Heh!"
"Heh!"
They fell backwards simultaneously.
----
The crowd gasped. Myra thought for a second.
"When that man was hit he moved backwards a little from David's little gun, but you wouldn't have known David was hit by anything and he was hit from that big gun. For some reason that doesn't make sense," she said to Kristyn.
"What are you talking about? What happened?"
"They both fell down. They killed each other," Myra said
"Are you telling me that that brat loaded his gun and shot Kayne before Kayne had the chance to shoot first?" Kristyn said shocked the kid had killed such an outlaw.
----
The kid lay on the ground his gun a few inches from his hand and his oval glasses lying next to his face in the sand. Kayne lay there also, his shotgun fallen from his grip and his cowboy hat laying on the ground above his head, blank eyes staring at the sky.
The doctor moved forward and checked Four Barrel Kayne for a pulse. He couldn't find one. The runt had killed Four Barrel Kayne! The doctor went over to the kid and checked his pulse. None either.
"They're both dead!" the doctor said to the anticipating crowd. The only sound heard was the wind between the buildings and the people's own hearts beating wildly in there ears. The tension could dull a knife. Then, slowly, people began to murmur about the death of Kayne and eventually some started to disperse.
Then there was a sputtering sound.
The doctor turned and looked at the kid. He had just coughed up a good amount of blood. Everyone was quiet, again. The doctor checked the kid's pulse again, more thoroughly. Still, nothing. But then the kid coughed again and gasped at the air surging into his lungs. His eyes shot open and the doctor jumped back. The kid shot up. He saw his glasses next to him and put them on. The doctor looked at him like he was a freak.
"You were just dead!" he said. But the image of those eyes. He couldn't force it from his head. Was this kid him?
The kid looked up at the doctor turned to his side and threw up on the ground. There were several lead pellets in the blood on the ground. The kid threw up again expelling more of the lead shot.
Then he slowly stood up looked at the corpse twenty paces away and turned the other way as he walked down the street. His back was stained with blood and there were holes that showed exit wounds from the shot where his heart was. Or at least where it should be.
The kid kept walking, right out of town into the west.
The doctor looked at the speck in the distance.
"That's him," he said, starting to laugh. "That was him. He he he. That was Hiryuu the Flame. Ha ha ha ha ha ha!"
Several heads turned in his direction.
"What are you talking about old man?"
"Those eyes, I will never forget the first time I saw those eyes," the doctor said, quickly becoming solemn. "I saw Hiryuu the Flame once before, but he was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt with shorter black hair. But I saw his eyes, when he burned down the saloon in April twenty-five years ago. He told me to run, and I did. Those were the same eyes."
"How can you tell for sure those were 'his eyes', old man?"
"If you'd seen them, you would never forget those red eyes."
----
"Kristyn, that man said that David was Hiryuu the Flame!" Myra said in shock.
"That screwball? That is completely impossible," Kristyn said. "How could that twerp be the famous outlaw?"
"Vash was a famous outlaw but he was like David," Myra said.
"It doesn't matter. We've got a lead. I figured something out, Myra."
Kristyn dug into her case and pulled out a neatly folded map.
"Hiryuu first struck here two weeks ago, in this small town. Then he struck in this small town, here," she said tracing a line to the west. "Then he struck in March and here in April."
Her finger traced a straight line through the cities in a direction westward and a little north. It led straight to the small town of New Kansas.
"He's struck the oldest saloon in each city, if we beat him to New Kansas and wait for him, he'll come to us."
Next, Chapter 6: The Old New Kansas Saloon