Title: Are You Quick Enough To Be Dead?
Summary: The Quick and the Dead After they burned his mission Herod gave him a choice, Fight or Die. He had chosen death. They had made him fight. They had forced him to fight because Herod knew he was fast. But Cort doesn't want to be fast. All Cort wants…is to die.
Disclaimer: I own no characters from the movie, The Quick and the Dead. And the town & people names I mention may or may not be real people or Towns.
A/N Oh my goodness! It has been so long since I've updated! I am so sorry! I have good excuses though! Lol. First I had writers block and then the hard drive on my pc broke. So I lost everything I've ever written. Including a chapter I was almost finished with for this story. And then….I forgot about the story…. And my iPod broke…..Ah well. What's done is done.
I'm afraid this chapter will be short, I'm pressed for time at the moment. Hopefully the next chapter I get out to ya'll will be longer.
Ridin' On
Ellen sat back on her heels and stared grimly out into the horizon. Earlier that morning she had strapped the dead man to his horse. The horse had bolted after she had given it a slap on the rump, but after galloping a few miles it slowed to a walk. She had been tracking it all day. When it first lit out she thought it was headed north-west, to Pheonix. But now the trail petered out in virtually the opposite direction, to Cartersville, a small silver town on the border.
She had sent Doc Wallace and Arnold east, to the nearest town to purchase supplies. From there they would go to Gallup in New Mexico and wait for her there. Ellen had loitered at the camp for a few hours, solidifying her plans, before tacking up and heading after the corpse bearing horse.
Removing the hat from her head, she wiped her forehead with the back of her wrist. After slapping it on her thigh to remove some of the dust, she put it back on. It was gonna be a long hard ride before this was over and the girl was found.
…………
In southern Arizona there is an outfit. The Hardesty Clemmins outfit to be exact. This band is composed of what's supposed to be the hardest, meanest, and most ruthless men in all Arizona. They rob trains, stages, banks, and have burned whole towns to the ground in the process. They've run off cattle, men and Indians off land they want. Anything they see that suits their fancy they take. That includes horses, women, whiskey and range. Their base of operations has never been found, and perhaps that's why they've never been stopped. Rumor had they shacked up south of the border when they weren't raiding, and the Mexican government never did anything about them 'cause they brought good business and U.S. Gold down with 'em.
The gang was said to have more than fifty members. And their leader, Mr. Clemmins himself, was said to have killed more than that many people, two of them Texas Rangers. Originally Clemmins was a wheat farmer in Kansas, he had a pretty little farm, a wife, two sons and a daughter. He went a little crazy after his family all died of Scarlet Fever. He took and axe and butchered the town Doctor and his family. Then he ran. And disappeared. The posse that went out after him came back empty handed after a two month search. He popped up in a small Texas town three weeks after the posse had given up. He robbed the bank and shot the town Marshall. Another posse went out after him. They too came back empty handed.
It went on like that for months. The outlaw would suddenly come out of nowhere, shot up a town and disappear again. And just like his spree's started, suddenly, they stopped. It was almost two years before anyone ever heard of him again. Clemmins came riding out of the desert like he always did, loaded for bear and just as mean as one. The difference this time was that he was not alone. There were seven men with him. They rode into a small town that went by the name of Clarenceville. They razed it to the ground and killed half the people who lived there. That was nearly four years ago, and many towns have gone the way of Clarenceville in the face of Hardesty Clemmins and his gang.
Ole Jake McCullin was mulling these things over when the man rode into town. Ole Jake was nearly eighty years old. He had seen a lot of things during his years; and though he had never seen the man that rode past his house that day, he knew him. He knew his look. He knew his kind. Gun-fighters were all the same and they were all different. Each one of 'em were hard men with hard pasts. This one was no different in that respect. The old man could see it in the man's weathered face and his cool grey eyes.
Where the man differed from other gun-fighters was easy to see as well. He sat in the saddle like a ranch hand, one of those cowboys that rode the range, forked broncs and ate the dust of cattle trails. The gloves on his hands were made of the heavy leather those range riding boys usually wore, and not the special kid-skin ones the 'slingers used to protect their hands and keep 'em soft for a faster draw. He wasn't flashy, everything he wore was cut simply and economically. But still, Old Jake could tell the edge was still there.
The man got down at the Saloon, tied his horse, and walked inside. He stayed inside. No shots were fired and Jake decided the stranger wasn't on the prod for anyone. Just yet anyways. A man like that never stayed in one place too long before he went hunting some poor fool who made him mad. Its just the way it was.