Disclaimer: Do not own Marvel, DC or The 100
Warnings for typical violence in a western, typical gun violence, arson, use of a knife, murder, talk of slavery and the normalizing of slavery, and typical mentions of racism and misogyny of that time period, too. And warnings for child abuse, child rape and more.
The terminology that I will be using in this story will be unfortunately, be harsh. Not so harsh that it's authentic, because I didn't feel comfortable using that language in the story. But still will be using harsh language.
Also tried to make it authentic in the wildlife that lived in the are of that part of the west
Life of a bounty hunter
The 10th of September, 1889
The sun beat down hotly against the pale sand, as it always did in this part of the west.
The ground was littered with shards and shards of broken glass; what was left of the targets that the young woman dressed in black had destroyed. And she had discharged several of the bullets from one of her many pistols.
She relied on all of the same brand. Smith and Wesson.
It was the type that her pa had used, and he had relied on it greatly.
Her pa, Jacob Griffin, had been only a young boy, when this time that was considered "the wild west" began. He had helped his ma and pa and two younger brothers form a life along a farm out here in the Arizona Territory of the western territories.
Jake Griffin, unlike most of his family, hadn't feared the territories where Indians lived. And had disdained using the words for Indians which his brothers, his own pa and his ma had used.
He addressed each tribe as their respective tribal names. And he had taught his daughter, Clarke Griffin, to do the same.
Personally, Clarke didn't care about white men or women or Indian men or women or the freed black men and freed black women.
As long as they didn't try to break into her home.
She'd shoot any of them, including any white man or white woman, with her pistols, in a heartbeat.
Her pa had told her to never discriminate, and that included when she was defending herself against a possible threat.
Now, Jake Griffin, who had been considered a madman in his own family at the time, had seen the people who his ma and pa unfortunately, literally ownedbefore the Civil War, as actual people, unlike his family.
And he had loathed his ma and pa for keeping human beings in shackles, for seeing these human beings as less than people.
When the Civil War had ended, Jake had been in his late twenties. But before the Civil War came to an end, and so too, did slavery, or rather, in official name it ended, Clarke had no doubt that it continued discreetly in other places, during the Civil War itself, Jake had earned himself hate from his own ma, pa and brothers.
Arizona had been declared a Confederate territory in 1861, but many families had varied in which side they had raised their sons to be a part of. However, despite the varying allegiances that some families raised their sons to have, Jake's family would have been happy to kill a soldier from the Union, in a second, and would have happily offered their home to a Confederate soldier in that same second.
And his family firmly believed in what the Confederacy stood for. Keeping other human beings as slaves, which was something Jake had firmly been against.
He had seen how his pa had tried to get him and his younger brothers to join the Confederate army, and had done what he had needed to do. He had taken his brothers to the house of one of the families that had raised their sons to join the Union, and had pleaded with them to make sure his pa and ma didn't enter the house to speak with his brothers.
As soon as that was finished, Jake had gone back to his ma and pa's farm, had grabbed the guns there, and had grabbed as much money as he could and had gone to the house where the slaves were kept.
The Griffin family at that time, had not been rich. They had not owned many slaves. But owning so much as one slave was already too many.
And Jake had given as much money as he could to those slaves, got them off of the farm and provided them with horses and guns and extra bullets, sending them on their way.
By the time he had finished, the Griffin home had been without the slaves which they had owned for years.
When Jake's ma and pa had returned from where they had gone, which was to a meeting where only Confederate backing families were welcomed, and they had made the discovery of their son's rebellion against them, they had, as to be expected, been enraged.
Jake could easily have told anyone about his pa, Henry Griffin, had looked at him, as if he were contemplating going to where the few remaining guns were on the property and shooting a hole right through his oldest son's head.
Neither his ma nor his pa had touched him or shot anything at him, but they had stared at him as if he had committed some horrific atrocity against the family for the rest of his life. From then on, they had referred to him as the disappointment of the family.
For Jake, he decided that if such an act, made him a disappointment? Then he was happy to be a disappointment.
He had loved his ma and pa, without question. But he could never live with the things that they believed in.
Two years later, Jake had met his wife to be, Abby, and they had married only a few months later.
Jake had been thirty at the time.
In the February of 1870, Abby had given birth to her and Jake's only daughter and child, Clarke Griffin.
Abby at first had been against the name, which Jake had suggested, given that she had felt the name was unfitting of a girl, however, Jake had insisted that it was a perfectly good name for a boy or a girl.
Ten years had passed on by, and Clarke had been taught by her pa, who had formed a home far from his ma and pa's place, with his wife and daughter, a great many ways of surviving here in the west.
She knew how to throw a punch, knew how to shoot better than probably any man she had seen besides her pa, she knew how to start and put out a fire, knew how to find water even in a supposedly barren area, knew how to hunt and prepare animals that she had killed, and knew how to avoid the law or work with it to her advantage.
Then her father had been betrayed and murdered.
While Jake's ma and pa had not raised a hand to their oldest son, after he had freed all the slaves on their land, it didn't mean that they forgot what they had perceived as an act of treason in their household and on their land.
They had fed vicious words about Jake to Jake's two younger brothers.
And after the youngest of the brothers had seen a Union soldier getting water from a well, one year before the Civil War ended, and had decided to act, pulling out a knife, and had attacked the Union soldier and had been shot and killed by that same Union soldier in self-defense, the second youngest brother, had decided that his ma and pa were right.
And he had planned. Not to mention it likely had taken years for him to gain the resolve that he needed to do what he thought he had to do.
But at last, he had that very resolve.
Years later, when Clarke was fourteen years old, in the September of 1884, her uncle, Frederick Griffin, arrived at Clarke and her ma and pa's farm, and he had a gun. Not a surprise, as most people, especially most men, carried guns around these parts, around all of the west, really.
But it was the intention this man with the gun had, which was dangerous.
Frederick got his brother alone, took aim, and a shocked Jake had been murdered by his own brother, had been shot right through his head.
Clarke, hearing the shots near her home, had run back, terrified for her ma and pa.
She had thought bandits or Indians had raided the farm and attacked her ma, pa and uncle.
Anyone who knew better than to think that all Indian tribes were the same, and knew better than to feel prejudice against the Indian tribes, knew what tribes lived around these parts. And Clarke had doubted that the Navajo or the Hopi would ever attack a settlement, without good reason. That was what her pa had always told her, anyway.
But the tribe that Clarke feared attacking her family? Were the Apache. Anyone with even a clump of common sense, would know to fear the Apache.
When she had arrived back at the house, she had been horrified by what she had seen.
Her uncle being responsible for the death of her pa.
And as it turned out, her pa hadn't just been betrayed by his brother.
It seemed that Frederick Griffin and Abby Griffin had been spending a great deal of time together. A great deal of time, which apparently, consisted of Clarke's ma, and her uncle Frederick, doing things together which Clarke's ma was only supposed to do with Clarke's pa.
She realized this, when she had come upon finding her pa's body on the ground, in front of her house, a hole in his head, a blank look on his face, a bloody hole through his head, blood right under his head, Frederick standing over him, holding the gun in his right hand holding it off to the side and hugging him, and kissing him on the lips? Was Clarke's ma.
Clarke…she had known what she had done wasn't right. She always knew it. But in that second, hate had filled her entire being.
Clarke had a gun in her hand at the time, her pa had sent her out to the "range," which had been a few stones where he had ordered her to place multiple bottles along, to practice shooting.
And Clarke had just reloaded the gun, and had been about to walk back to the house to get more bottles, when she had heard the gunshot, and then she had proceeded to run back to the house.
And here she was in that moment, seeing her beloved pa dead, her ma in the arms of her uncle, the man that had shot and killed her pa.
It had sent young Clarke who was armed with a fully loaded gun, over the edge.
She had run out into the open from where she had crouched, holding the gun out in front of her, taking the hammer off, and aiming the barrel of the Smith and Wesson right at her uncle Frederick's face, tears streaming down her cheeks as she had glared in rage at the man who had used to buy her candies at the sweet shop and used to tell her that she and her ma could always stay with him at his place, whenever they wanted to get away from the house for a while, never inviting along his own brother.
Clarke had one time entertained the notion that he had intended to violate her after violating her ma.
But she suspected that that had partially been a child's fantasy of simplifying her uncle's intentions.
She had vilified him, deciding to make him more like one of the more heinous criminals she hunted down today as an adult woman, rather than realizing what the more likely answer to her uncle's intentions had been.
Her uncle likely had hoped to marry Abby, and have Clarke see him as her new pa.
A ridiculous notion. Clarke would never in any life, call the man that had murdered Jake Griffin, her pa.
Her uncle Frederick had pulled away from Abby and had seen Clarke aiming the gun at him.
The gun that Clarke was sporting at the time, was smaller than most of the pistols that her pa had possessed, but it didn't matter the size of the weapon, as long as it did the trick.
And this gun certainly had done the trick.
Frederick's eyes had widened and he had yelled at Clarke, "Clarke, no, wait! Clarke, listen to me! He wasn't your-"
Clarke had pulled the trigger then, unable to bear listening to Frederick, knowing exactly what he had been about to say.
And oh, knowing that, she just couldn't allow him to finish that sentence.
How could she?
To know that her pa by blood might just be the man that had murdered Jake? Jake, the man who had loved and raised Clarke for years?
Clarke couldn't allow such information to touch her ears.
So, she had pulled the trigger of the pistol that she had held, aiming the pistol right at Frederick's face.
Clarke had never aimed a gun at a person before at the time.
Knowing that she was about to kill an actual person, had thrown her off balance, regardless of how good a shot she was.
So, she hadn't aimed for Frederick's forehead, like she had been meaning to. The bullet went sideways, after it was discharged, and it fired past Frederick's face, not killing him, but most definitely harming him.
Abby screamed as Frederick's face was slashed by the bullet, the skin around the left side of his face, tearing right off, revealing his jaw and teeth.
Abby screamed at Clarke, and Clarke, regardless of knowing that this was her ma, couldn't stop herself.
This woman had betrayed Clarke's pa, had been going behind her pa's back for years with Frederick.
And now? Now, Abby had had a part in Clarke's pa's death and assumed that Clarke should be happy with it.
So, Clarke pulled the trigger again, this time, aiming the gun at her own ma's face.
The bullet flew out at her ma, and again, Clarke hesitated, only this time, not because she was only afraid of shooting a person, but because she was also afraid of shooting her mother.
Still, the bullet had flown, and it had pierced the right side of Abby's forehead. Abby screamed and Clarke saw Abby drop down.
Clarke's heart stopped as she watched it happen, feeling cold.
Her ma collapsed to the ground, dead.
Time seemed to have held still then. She stared at her ma's dead body and so did her uncle Frederick.
Frederick had dropped his rifle, when he had been hit by the bullet on his jaw.
Clarke broke out of her shocked and horrified gaze, when she saw him look down at that rifle and she moved quickly.
She leaned down and grabbed the rifle, keeping her pistol aimed at Frederick, cocking the hammer back a third time.
Her uncle never got a hold of that rifle again.
Clarke had told Frederick, that unless he wanted her to shoot him again, that he needed to leave, to run. And she was going to the sheriff and tell him that he had murdered her pa, and that she had tried to fend him off, and in so doing, had accidentally killed her ma.
Frederick, to Clarke's shock, had pleaded with her not to tell the sheriff, because he feared that Clarke would be imprisoned or even hanged or shot for having killed her ma, even if she claimed that it was an accident.
But Clarke said coldly, that Frederick had a choice, he could leave or get shot. And the next time she fired on him, she had no intention of missing. His choice.
That had been enough to get him going, running from the bloodshed and the house and from her.
Clarke had never gone to the sheriff.
She had known how it would play out. It would play out, just as her uncle had said.
The sheriff likely would decide that she, a young girl who dared to pick up a gun, had killed her ma intentionally, which she had, but even a convincing story wouldn't be enough to convince the sheriff not to have her hanged or shot for Abby Griffin's death. They might even decide that she was the one that killed her pa.
So, she had done a horrific thing again and had run to the house, getting a knife.
She had hated herself for all of what she was doing, but she had gone to her ma's dead body, kneeled down next to her ma's body, had taken the knife out, and as she had wept, feeling sick with what she was doing, she had carved the bullet out of her ma's head. She had then buried the bullet far from the house, then had taken Frederick's gun, aimed the barrel at her ma's head and had fired it, blasting her ma's head open.
She had dropped the rifle then, whimpering out, "I'm sorry, mama," and had emptied her stomach into the dirt only a foot from her ma's body.
She quickly had grabbed the Smith and Wesson she had used and had stuck it in a compartment beneath the floorboards of her home.
She then had gone outside to her ma and pa's bodies, and had stared, trying to find her mind again.
But regardless of what story she thought of, she couldn't come up with one, where she wouldn't be killed for this.
Laws in the west were nearly nonexistent.
And here in the wild west, a sheriff could be your best friend or executioner, going solely on if he liked you or not.
And while the sheriff closest to here, liked Clarke's pa well enough, Clarke recalled how sheriff Cage Wallace looked at her pa, when her pa had mentioned repeatedly being against slavery, and mentioned repeatedly that they should treat blacks and Indians alike, as friends and neighbors, treat them equally as they would with people that looked like Jake and Cage Wallace.
Clarke had seen how sheriff Cage Wallace had looked at her pa, when her pa had said these things, and knew instantly that the sheriff would not under any circumstances, try to put her uncle Frederick behind bars.
If anything, the sheriff might throw Frederick a party and buy the other man some drinks.
So, Clarke had done yet one more unthinkable thing. She had grabbed her ma by the ankles and had dragged her inside the house. Then she had grabbed her pa's ankles and had dragged him inside the house.
She had retrieved the Smith and Wesson pistol from the compartment under the floor, then she had taken the matches from the top of the wood burning stove, and had set he place on fire.
She had grabbed what things she could and had fled.
She had known her life after that, in that particular part of Arizona, was over.
With her, when she had left, she had multiple Smith and Wesson pistols, matches, a few knives, multiple pieces of extra clothing, provisions which were preservatives, and therefore, would last a while, and almost all the money that she could find, not to mention her pa's favorite hat.
Honestly, thinking about what she had heard her uncle Frederick say to her, before she had shot at him?
She honestly understood even less than she had before.
Because if Frederick in fact had been Clarke's pa by blood, why hadn't her ma married him? Why had she married Jake, instead?
Had she been married to Jake already, when she had become pregnant with Clarke?
If that was the case, then that meant that her ma and Frederick had to have been having sex behind Jake's back for years, so, again, why had her ma married Jake if that was in fact what happened?
Or perhaps it had been some drunken night or curiosity, or, who knew what.
But then again, maybe Frederick had just lied to Clarke right before she had shot him.
After all, there he was, and he had just shot her pa through the head. Which meant that he probably had needed to come up with some story to get Clarke to listen to him, to make him not look like the villain in that particular story.
That was likely what had happened. He saw Clarke with the pistol and desperate to save himself, had cooked up a story about how he was Clarke's real pa, that Jake was not, and so, Clarke shouldn't shoot him.
And yes, there was no chance that Clarke had inherited Frederick's looks. Because her hair was pale blond and her eyes were blue. Frederick had light brown hair and brown eyes. Not to mention her ma's eyes were brown too.
So, it was unlikely that Jake Griffin hadn't been her pa by blood.
Then again, as Clarke understood it, physical traits could skip a generation. Jake Griffin had inherited his pa's hair and his ma's eyes. And Frederick had inherited his ma's hair and his pa's eyes.
Henry Griffin, Jake and Frederick's father, had had brown eyes and blonde hair.
Henry Griffin's wife, and Jake and Frederick's mother, Alice Griffin, had had blue eyes and brown hair.
So, who knew how inheriting those traits had worked exactly.
In any case, five years had gone by, and now it was 1889, and Clarke was nineteen.
She had made a living for years, being a bounty hunter, finding the scum of the west-even for the west, and bringing them to more better refute than sheriff Cage Wallace.
Which even in the west, wasn't all that difficult, as sheriff Cage Wallace, was one of the worst ones out there.
She had made a home for herself here, many, many miles from where she had burned her first home down with the corpses of her ma and pa inside.
She always sported her pa's favorite black hat with its semi-wide brim. Even as an adult, the thing was still somewhat big on her, but she refused to ever discard it.
Clarke was ashamed of what she had done to her ma. And for what she had done to her ma's body and her pa's body and to her childhood home. But she wasn't ashamed of having shot Frederick. Or of bringing in the worst of men and some women as well, since then, for the things they had done to innocent, good people like her pa, to justice.
Or what people believed nowadays to be justice, whatever justice actually was.
She had learned that her decision to become a bounty hunter, came with benefits. Soon after Clarke had fled the home that she had grown up in, she had learned that the sheriff of the town at the time of her leaving, had been discharged from his job, because he had raped a couple of deputies' daughters.
The town had turned against him and had forcefully thrown him out.
The former sheriff, Cage Wallace, had then gone on a drunken rage, and had shot a couple of people and had raped a few young girls, then had fled that town, on horseback.
And then the reward posters had been placed up in every town that Clarke had come by.
It was that time, she had decided to take up the business that she sought. To find the man who likely would have rejoiced over her pa's death.
And no, she hadn't cared at the time that she had no experience.
She had grabbed up her pa's best pistols, had dressed as much like one of the more intense cowboys she had seen and had gone into town for information.
It hadn't been easy. Naturally, the grown men and women had looked at this young girl, strutting around, trying to act like a bounty hunter of great fame, and even then, she hadn't been able to blame them for laughing, but she had known what she'd have to do, to get their attention.
She had grabbed the nearest man, who had thrown his head back and laughed and she had barreled her whole weight into him and had pinned him to the bar's counter, in the tavern where she had walked into, reaching into the left side of her belt and pulling out one of her pistols, taking the hammer off, and putting the barrel of the pistol against the left side of the neck of the man she had pinned to the counter.
Instantly, the mood in the tavern had changed.
Women cried out. Men gasped. Those same men, pulled out their guns and took aim at the small girl, who now was a threat to one of them, and Clarke had grinned at them as she had held the man in place, practically sitting on him and restraining his arms with her knees as she laid down on him, his head in a lock with her right arm around him, her left hand holding her pistol against his neck.
She had spat at the rest of those aiming a gun at her, but also at the man she was using as a shield, "Alright, now, you cackling sons of whores listen to me. I'm looking for this man, Cage Wallace, and you're going to help me find him. You don't? Well, you can say 'goodbye' to this yellow-bellied sack of cow dung."
She pressed the barrel somehow, somehow even deeper into the flesh of the man's neck, and maybe it was the man's whimper of "don't!" that got the rest of the men to lower their weapons, but at last, they did.
"Now, then," Clarke spat then, "Which one of you lickers of a horse's cock, knows where I can find Cage Wallace?"
Okay, she had had to be inventive with that last insult, but still, it got a reaction.
Eventually, one of the women came forward and told Clarke what she had heard.
Cage's father, Dante Wallace, had supposedly taken Cage in, after he had fled from the town that Cage had been the sheriff of.
Maybe Clarke could get answers from Dante.
After the woman gave Clarke the location of Dante Wallace's home, Clarke had sneered out a "thank you" at the woman, and had informed her that if she was lying, Clarke would put a hole in the woman's head first out of everyone in this town.
She then had slowly gotten off of the men she had been holding captive, then had pulled the gun from his neck and released his head and bolted for the door of the tavern, going out quickly, before anyone could open fire on her.
She got to where some horses were untied the most sturdy, fastest looking one, and had jumped on that horse, steering it away from the tavern and in the direction of the home where Dante lived.
She rode off to where she had learned Dante Wallace may very well, having the horse gallop along.
At last, she reached the house, after several hours, happy she had packed along water and food for the trip.
She stopped the horse next to the house, got off of the horse, tied the reins of the horse to the wooden fence around the Wallace property and made her way over to the Wallace house, pulling out one of her pistols.
After she beat Dance into submission, after gaining her answers, she would use the outhouse. The short, thin, wooden structure just a few feet from the Wallace home, was just a few feet from the chicken coop. Clarke could hear all the clucking from the chicken house.
She smirked.
Too bad there was now a fox on the property.
She reached the front door of the Wallace home, lifted her clenched left fist and rammed it against the door.
As soon as Dante had answered, she had put the barrel of her smallest Smith and Wesson under his chin and made it clear to him that were he not to give her the answers she wanted, he was dead.
She had then tied him to a chair, gone to the outhouse, had used it and had gone back inside, had threatened to kill Dante by shooting him in various parts of his body until he bled to death, and the terrified elderly man told her where Cage was.
Clarke had then decided to do what she needed to do, had put the gun to Dante's head and had told him that if he ever told anyone about this, she'd come back to kill him. She also told him that should she not find Cage, should Dante's answers be lies, she would also come back and kill him. She then had untied him, headed out, untied the horse she had, got up on her horse and rode off after where Dante had told her Cage was.
And she had found him.
Right in the place where Dante had told her that Cage was.
A cabin near the edge of Arizona, right at the beginning of where the California territory began.
Clarke didn't let that stop her.
Californian territory? Arizonan territory? Did it matter? A target was a target. She was going to capture Cage Wallace.
And the thing was, the poster had made it clear that it didn't matter whether Cage was living or dead. Just as long as he was brought in.
And so, Clarke was more than happy to kill the man that would have let her father's murder go unavenged.
She went to the cabin, watched as Cage came out of the cabin, carrying some supplies, she grinned pulled out her Smith and Wesson and shot him right in the head, watching as he collapsed onto the ground.
Clarke had gone to him, dragged him to the horse, and used all her strength to pull him over the horse. It took a while and it strained a great deal of Clarke's muscles, but she managed it.
After putting the dead man over the saddle of her horse, she tied him there, his legs bound to one side of the horse's body, his arms bound to the other side, Clarke then got up onto the horse and rode away to where Cage Wallace was being called in for.
Clarke brought Cage into the town, making sure she was armed.
If any of the townspeople tried to cheat her, well, then they were going to get one hell of a fight while doing it.
When she had presented Cage Wallace's body to the sheriff of the town, the sheriff there, a woman named Anya, had stared at her, shocked.
Anya, a woman, whom very few people from out of town wished to respect, as Anya was clearly in the possession of features which was of someone from somewhere in Asia-though there was no chance any idiot in town would be able to pinpoint where that was, had wanted to make it clear she would put up with no lawlessness. Which was why she had put the hit out on Cage Wallace, a corrupt sheriff, in the first place.
Many within the town where Anya was the sheriff of, still had some time getting used to having a woman sheriff, as well as a sheriff that was not white.
Those that hadn't either left the town, after Anya was appointed sheriff by her predecessor, who had seen Anya as a smart and moral and unflinching woman, or who had tried to kill Anya, but then were either thrown out of town or arrested and executed, had been a lesson to the rest of the town, that if they wished to remain in the town that was their home, they would need to adapt.
So, Anya, an Asian-American woman, had looked after the town for almost ten years by that point. And when she had seen Cage Wallace's body, she had looked at Clarke, and she had stared, stunned and disturbed.
Disturbed, Clarke suspected, because of Clarke's age, not because of her sex, since…..Anya was the sheriff of the town.
Clarke had just stared coldly at Anya and demanded her money for having delivered Cage to the town.
Anya had hesitated, but then had told her two deputies next to her, Lincoln and Ryder to get the money.
The two men went into the next room, and carried out large bundles of dollars.
The dollar had been around since the late 1700s. Seeing those bundles of paper money instead of coins, was not a surprise for Clarke.
Clarke kept the barrel of her pistol trained on all three Anya, Lincoln and Ryder, and watched as they counted the money for her.
When they counted up exactly the amount of money which had been promised to her on Cage Wallace's reward poster, and they had stuffed it into a sack for her and handed it to her. Or had tried to.
Clarke had growled at them to place the sack onto the edge of the desk, then back away, or she'd shoot.
Lincoln and Ryder both had done as she had instructed.
Anya had laughed, grinning as she watched the situation.
Anya honestly had looked impressed.
Clarke grabbed the money off of the desk and started walking away when Anya had offered her a job here in the town as one of her deputies.
It wasn't like you had to be an adult to be a deputy. Some had worked for the sheriff even at a younger age than Clarke had been at the time.
Clarke, however, had glared at Anya and sneered, "Why would I take a job that would pay less than that of a bounty hunter? I'm not siding with the law where you deputies and sheriffs are just puppets to other people. I do what I want."
After that, Clarke marched off, taking the stolen horse and all the money, with her.
She had gone back to the cabin where she had been living for a while, gave the horse some food and water, got herself settled in, locked the door to her cabin, kept the money in a secluded spot and planned her career then as a bounty hunter.
She was now nineteen years old.
The horse which she had stolen, a brown stallion, who she had learned from the name carved onto the leather harness around the front of the horse, was named "Samantha,"-really, that was what you named your horse when you were living in the west?-was still with her to this day. The horse had been relatively young when Clarke had first taken it, and by now, that same horse probably was well into adulthood and hadn't aged that far yet.
From what Clarke knew of horses, as long as they were healthy and unharmed, they usually lived up to twenty-five to thirty years.
So, as long as the horse didn't get sick or anything, then Samantha had several more years, maybe even a few decades before she dropped dead, anyway, Clarke hoped.
She had made a good place for herself here, compared to when she had originally found it, years back.
The house had a well that had water in it regularly. And it was a small well, big enough to send a bucket down, but too small for anyone except for a small child, to fall down it. And Clarke was no small child, not any longer.
She had built onto the cabin, using what resources she usually stole or bought with some of the money she had.
There was a near porch that she had out in front of her cabin now, as well as a near overhang of the porch.
Some of the chairs and the tables she had bought for the porch, as far as she could tell, were sturdy enough.
She had no delusions that she might have something like friends. All this was for herself.
She knew better than someone like her, someone who had killed her own mother, could ever have friends.
So, she resigned herself to solitude.
She kept herself busy with books, chores, hunting, hunting both animals for food and humans for money, building up more of the house, painting, drawing, cleaning her guns and her knives, getting food for Samantha.
Occasionally, she'd go walking in the desert near her home, avoiding rattlesnakes and scorpions.
There was a laughable large amount of rattlesnakes in Arizona. It was the west; it was to be expected.
Other venomous snakes existed, as Clarke understood it, but you'd be hard pressed to find them here in the desert, as the rest of the venomous snakes that were in the United States, were attracted to water, after all.
Clarke had heard from her pa, when he, as a boy, and his family had first lived in one of the other states, a state called "New Jersey," before going all the way to the west, that he had seen all sorts of snakes there. That there had been two other types of snakes in New Jersey. One called a copperhead, because of the designs along its scaly body, and another called a cottonmouth, or water moccasin, because of the inside of its mouth.
He also had heard another boy at his school at the time, telling him about a snake the other boy had seen when he had lived in Florida. This snake was called a coral snake, with red and yellow stripes touching, and with some black stripes too. But the black and red stripes never touched, only the red and yellow stripes touched.
There were snakes all over the United States, however, Clarke had realized that there was a ridiculous abundance of rattlesnakes here in the west.
Then again, she had known that even as a child.
Her pa used to bring her snakeskins that he would occasionally find in the desert.
Abby always berated her husband for doing that, but Jake persisted in bringing Clarke those snakeskins.
Clarke honestly loved those shed snakeskins.
She thought they were really interesting.
She had made sure to be careful about the rattlesnakes, though. And the scorpions. And to make sure that the horse, Samantha, was careful.
She had racked up a startlingly intimidating reputation for herself as a young bounty hunter.
She had a nickname now in the west.
Actually, she had several nicknames now.
Any bounty hunter worth anything at all, would have no less than two nicknames to be called by around these parts.
And Clarke had multiple names that she was called by many of the different townspeople.
"Swift Bullet," "Desert Hunter," "Deadly Shot," "Golden Rattlesnake," and about a dozen other names.
For Clarke, her favorite one, was "The Scourge of Two Points Town." It was a mouthful, but it did bring up one of Clarke's favorite stories about her.
Two Points Town, was a town almost on the other side of Arizona. It was very close to the neutral territory, between what was Arizonian territory and what was considered "Indian territory," and apparently, there had been four murderers who had just done what they wanted in that town and the town let them, because the four people in that town, had killed off Indians and blacks.
As far as Two Points Town was concerned? Those four murderers were doing a "good thing."
But those from outside of the town, feared these four people. Because besides the usual killings, these four also were raping white women and molesting white children.
You wanted to get an actual hit put on you? Threaten and terrorize rich white people.
Had Clarke heard about these people before, she would happily had tracked them down and killed them, reward money offered to her or no. However, she had never even heard of them before that point, exactly because rich white folks, hadn't seen any reason to report them, until after some people that were white like them, got harmed.
Clarke had actually sighed sadly when she had realized that, knowing for certain that her pa was right, and that those who were prejudice against others for things like skin color, were literally the dumbest people that ever lived, along with those that were prejudice against women and thought that women shouldn't be allowed to carry a pistol or own property and money, and shouldn't be allowed to not marry if they didn't want to.
In any case, Clarke had come to Two Points Town, on horseback, armed and ready, two years ago.
She had been seventeen at the time.
She had come along with fully loaded weapons and had found the four targets that she had been searching for.
Their names had been Bellamy Blake, Nathan Miller, John Mbege and John Murphy.
Clarke had honestly been surprised when she had seen them.
Because Bellamy, Nathan and Mbege, all had one thing in common besides being violent men. They weren't white.
And yes, Clarke had gone after criminals who she'd been paid to find, who weren't white before, but she would have thought that Two Points Town, given its inability to tolerate anyone who wasn't white, would have put the reward out for them ages ago, exactly because Bellamy, Nathan and Mbege, were all not white.
Nathan Miller clearly was a black man. John Mbege, Clarke had guessed, had a mixed background, but clearly wasn't white.
Bellamy had perhaps Asian blood in him.
But it seemed that as long as those four murderers had stuck to only killing non-white people, the people of Two Points Town, hadn't cared. But then the raping of white women and the molesting of white children, had begun.
Clarke wondered if it was only one of them or all of them who were doing the raping and molesting.
If so, she'd make special care of making their deaths slow and painful.
It didn't matter to her what color skin a person had, to rape or molest someone sexually, was one of the worst crimes a person could commit.
So, when those four men were about to break into someone's home, she had whipped out her pistol and had shot all four men in the arms, making it hard for them to reach their weapons as they fell off of their horses.
Clarke jumped off of Samantha, had walked past the horses that got scared and run away from their owners and she had gotten to where the four men had fallen into the sand.
She kicked their guns away from them and had aimed her pistol at them.
She had smiled at them coldly and had asked their names, telling them what she had heard their names were, and when they confirmed it, she had shot all four Murphy, Miller, Mbege and Blake in the legs, incapacitating them.
She then had gone to her horse, grabbed some rope, walked back and had tied the four men up to a wooden post.
She then had pulled out a knife and had begun to cut off their fingers.
Until they told her what she wanted to know.
That being, which of them had started the raping and the molesting. And if it was only one of them, or all of them.
Clarke had carefully watched the men's faces from under the brim of her pa's black cowboy hat.
From what she had been able to tell? Murphy and Miller had had nothing to do with the rapes.
But Bellamy and Mbege?
It was Bellamy who…liked attacking the much younger ones. Apparently, he had a thing for young girls.
As young as thirteen.
Bellamy began to make excuses, pale and panicked, but Clarke hadn't listened. Ignoring Murphy, Mbege and Miller's cries, she had gone to work, not harming Bellamy's face, since she wanted him recognizable, after all, when she brought his body to the sheriff, and had cut up pieces of his body, nice and slow.
Clarke had ignored Bellamy's pleas, telling her he had a younger sister waiting for him, and had bled him to death.
Then she had started on Mbege and had done the same to him, leaving his face untouched.
After Mbege died, Clarke had moved to Murphy and Miller, who she had tortured, but much less harshly than she had the other two.
After they all died, she untied them, tied sacks over their heads so that their faces would be protected from the heat, the insects, the sand and other things that would damage their faces, she had tied ropes to their ankles, and tied the other ends of the ropes to her saddle, had gotten on Samantha and had rode off back to the main part of the very large town, to where the sheriff was, her horse dragging Bellamy, Mbege, Miller and Murphy's corpses behind her.
She brought all four bodies to the sheriff there, handed the bodies over, and got her payment, which was a shocking sum of money, better than almost all of her paydays.
Eventually, one day, after she had come back to her home, with all of the money you could imagine in her possession, storing it away under the floorboards, and putting the rest of it in the bank, she then had gone about her usual habits around her home.
It was present day and she was doing her usual rounds in the town, trying to find some sort of booze to drink.
She had threatened to take one of the whiskey bottles off of the shelves and crack it over the bartender's skull, if he tried to keep her from what drink she wanted, as he had tried to in the past.
The said concerned bartender in front of her, Nyko, hesitated, the nodded his burly, bearded head.
He went to the shelves behind him and grabbed up the full, large bottle of whiskey and started to pour it into the glass before Clarke.
Around the west, it was common to drink just beer and whiskey, besides water.
Sure, Clarke had heard that in other parts of the United States, there other sorts of drinks people drank, more sophisticated drinks.
Clarke didn't care for that. Water, beer and whiskey suited her just fine.
Clarke snatched up the drink and started to gulp it down, as she heard the wooden doors of the saloon open up, and heard people bearing boots on their feet, walking across the wooden floor.
She narrowed her eyes as she drank the drink and listened to the footsteps. It sounded like a large group that had just entered the saloon.
She pulled the glass from her lips and slowly turned to look at who had just entered the saloon.
Her eyes widened when she saw the number of people that had just entered the saloon, and the number of women in usual cowboy hats and garbs that had just come in.
Her eyebrows raised then. They looked like a bounty hunter lot.
Clarke preferred to work alone, but she had met groups of bounty hunters before. They usually were pretty easily spotted, even if they didn't want to be.
The four of the group at the front, were a white woman with long, straight, dark, possibly even black hair and hazel eyes, a white man with short salt and pepper dark hair in some curls, and dark brown eyes, a white man with short, wavy, pale blond hair and pale blue eyes and a white woman with shoulder length, red hair in curls at the end, and emerald green eyes.
Each of them had a cowboy styled hat, like the one Clarke was wearing, only she was just going to go ahead and assume that their cowboy hats actually fitthem.
Clarke eyed them, as they glowered around the room, causing many in the saloon to look away from the group, frightened, including the piano player, Sinclair, who turned away and kept his head down, continuing to play on the piano.
Clarke had spoken to Sinclair, the piano player before. His mother and father were from another country which Sinclair had not mentioned the name of before. But Clarke never had cared about that. As long as Sinclair didn't stop her from getting money, he could do what he wanted and live peacefully. She'd even beat the shit out of anyone who tried to beat on him.
The group then almost simultaneously turned their attention to Clarke, causing the blond to tense up as they laid their eyes on her.
As soon as the group saw her, then walked over to her, causing Clarke to get ready for an attack.
She kept her right hand around the glass she was holding, and her left hand went to her belt, her hand going around the handle of her Smith and Wesson pistol.
She was hoping that she wouldn't have to open fire in this saloon….again, but she would have to see what was going to happen next.
When the group of men and women came to a stop next to Clarke, and Clarke noticed that there were several people in this group that were not white, which honestly was a surprise to her, but she didn't say a word.
True, there were several bounty hunters out here in the west, that were women, and several that weren't white. Black, Indian; from many different tribes, even some of Asian-American blood, but it was rare to see them around these parts.
This was a backwater town, why show up here?
There was a reason why she had become so successful in this area. Because she was the only competition there was.
Then again, you could ask why show up around the west at all, when there was nothing here except sand, violence, horses, rattlesnakes, scorpions, bullets, blood, vultures, murder and pain?
The blond man with blue eyes said, smiling from under his white cowboy hat, "Clarke Griffin? The bounty hunter?"
Clarke stared at these people. "Yes?" Clarke asked cautiously.
The blonde man nodded to Clarke, smiling, "A pleasure to meet you, ma'am," he raised his hand, taking his white hat off of his head as he said this, "The name's Steve Rogers. These are my companions and compatriots. We would like to offer you a job. To find someone, someone you might want to find and kill."
Clarke still eyed the strange group of men and women in front of her.
"And that would be?" She asked carefully.
"Oh," the black-haired, white woman with hazel eyes said, smirking, wearing a black cowboy hat like Clarke herself, "Just the man that killed your daddy, Jake. The man named Frederick Griffin. He is going by another name now, to stay safe from you, but we found him. The name he is going by now? Marcus Kane."
Author's note
Okay. I wrote this, trying to make it authentic, but I do know that white people in the west during that time, used much harsher language for Native Americans than "Indians," and used much harsher language for black people than "black people," and I know it's technically not authentic to not put that harsher language in, but I really don't feel comfortable putting that language in the story. Just am censoring it.