The Saloon of Eternal Dusk

Upon the ranch where wild winds blow,
the cattle graze and grasses grow.
A girl of twelve, with spirit bright,
lived with her folks in golden light.

Four men rode in with hearts of hate,
to rattle at the rancher's gate.
They came to claim a debt in blood,
to drag the family through the mud.

The floorboards groaned beneath the weight,
of iron spurs and rusted hate.
She huddled in the cellar’s gloom,
as thunder shook her parents' room.

Through splintered cracks, she saw the flash,
the spray of red, the sudden crash.
Her father’s hand, so broad and kind,
was pinned by lead and left behind.

Her mother’s dress of printed blue,
was shredded as the metal flew.
A scream was strangled in her throat,
beside her husband’s heavy coat.

The killers laughed with yellow teeth,
while bodies slumped on wood beneath.
One kicked her father’s cooling head,
to check if every spark was dead.

They tore the locket from her neck,
amidst the ruin and the wreck.
The smell of copper filled the air,
entangled in her mother’s hair.

The girl’s own breath was sharp and thin,
as darkness seeped beneath her skin.
She memorised each scarred and twisted face,
before they vanished from the place.

She watched the killers ride away,
through mists of gold and crimson grey.
No tears would fall to wet the silt,
upon the house her father built.

She knelt in dirt where shadows creep,
where blood ran thick and wounds were deep.
"Who stands for them?" she cried to the sky,
"In lands where law has gone to die?"

The wind blew cold, the sun turned grey,
as mercy withered from the day.
She vowed revenge for parents blood,
and payback would torrent like a flood.

She walked a trail of shattered glass,
where blackened serpents watched her pass.
The sky turned plum, then bruised to ink,
upon the desert’s jagged brink.

She reached a town of weathered pine,
where sun and sunlight ceased to shine.
The clock tower stood with broken hands,
above the shifting, cursed sands.

No lantern flickered in the gloom,
each doorway gaped just like a tomb.
The silence shrieked within her head,
a city built for all the dead?

She pushed the swinging saloon door,
which groaned across the splintered floor.
The air was thick with ancient musk,
and trapped within a permanent dusk.

An outlaw sat in shadow’s grip,
with silver death upon his hip.
His face was lost in velvet night,
far from the reach of lantern light.

"How does a girl with skin so warm,
walk through the center of the storm?
No living foot should press this floor,
or find the handle to my door."

He leaned into a sliver of moon,
that pierced the gut of the dark saloon.
His jaw was bone, his eyes were glass,
watching the sands of eternity pass.

"I seek the men who took my home,
and left me in the cold to roam."
She did not see her shadow fade,
in the grim and ghostly light he made.

"You crossed the bridge from life to death,"
he gravelled through his whiskey breath
"To hire a hand that’s long been still,
to do a deed that’s meant to kill."

The girl looked down and finally saw,
the breakage of a natural law.
The mirror held no face at all,
just ancient dust against the wall.

Her heart still hammered in her chest,
a rhythmic drum within her vest.
"I am not ghost, nor am I shade,"
she told the man of rusted blade.

"I walked the path of salt and tears,
to trade the harvest of my years."
The outlaw leaned into the light,
a jagged tear within the night.

"No bridge of spirit, wood, or stone,
should lead a pulse to this dark throne.
You stepped across the vellum thin,
with living blood and living skin."

He reached a finger, cold as sleet,
to touch the pulse that dared to beat.
"To hire the dead," the outlaw hissed,
"you must be more than smoke and mist.

The price is high for one who breathes,
among these dry and rotted leaves."
She pulled a locket from her chest,
the only thing she still possessed.

"I have no gold, but take my years,
take all my laughter, all my tears."
The outlaw grinned a lipless grin,
beneath his grey and parchment skin.

He reached a hand of knuckle-white,
to claim her bargain on that night.
He drew a needle made of thorn,
from a shroud that time had torn.

"Your signature must sting and stain,
to bind the soulless to living pain."
She took the point and pressed it deep,
where secrets of the marrow sleep.

A single drop of crimson heat,
fell on the floorboards at his feet.
The outlaw drank the heavy scent,
of life and rage and dark intent.

"The pact is sealed in red and bone;
Your enemies are now my own."

They found the camp by stench of greed,
where vultures circled overhead to feed.
The killers sat by a dying fire,
toasting their sins in a blackened pyre.

The outlaw rose like a column of smoke,
before a single murderer spoke.
His duster trailed like a tattered shroud,
beneath a thick and suffocating cloud.

The first man’s jaw was shattered wide,
by a heavy slug that burned inside.
He choked on teeth and desert sand,
grasping his face with a mangled hand.

The second killer tried to flee,
but the outlaw caught him by the knee.
The iron roared with a thunderous sound,
and pinned his splintered leg to ground.

He crawled through dirt and his own red spill,
as the night grew suddenly, deathly still.
The outlaw stepped on his craven back,
until the sound of irons lightning crack.

The third man screamed as he pulled his blade,
but his vision began to blur and fade.
A bullet caught him in the eye,
and painted the brush with a crimson dye.

His skull was split like a rotted melon,
a brutal end for a murderous felon.
The impact threw him against the stone,
in a tangle of gristle and broken bone.

The outlaw fired a heavy round,
that slammed the last to the ground.
He clutched his stomach to hold the heat,
as the girl approached on silent feet.

She saw the locket in his dying grip,
with no expression upon her youthful lip.
The gold was stained with a sticky smear,
of his final, frantic, shaking fear.

He led the men, the last of the four,
with no strength left to settle the score.
The girl stood still as the light grew dim,
casting a shadow over him.

She held the iron with a steady hand,
fulfilling the law of that lawless land.
One final flash in the desert night,
ended the long and bitter fight.

His hand became stiff and cold,
still clutching tight the stolen gold.
She knelt beside the mangled mess,
to take the prize he’d once possessed.

The chain was snapped, the casing bent,
stained by the blood of his descent.
She wiped the red from the etched design,
where roses and the ivy twine.

Inside, the faces of her kin,
were shielded from the desert’s sin.
The outlaw watched with hollow eyes,
as she reclaimed her broken prize.

Two lockets now, a matching pair,
the only weight she had to bear.
One for the living, one for the dead,
to match the path that she had tread.

She clicked them shut with heavy sound,
upon the carnage on the ground.

The outlaw tipped his tattered brim,
as morning light grew grey and dim.
He vanished like the desert haze,
into the labyrinth of his eternal days.

The girl turned back to where she came,
to walls still scorched by dying flame.
The porch was slumped in weary grief,
beside a withered, autumn leaf.

She buried them beneath the oak,
Where shadows fade like dying smoke.
No hymns were sung, no prayers were said,
No verse of Scripture there was read.

She sat upon the porch’s edge,
and carved her name into the ledge.
Her hair was silver, skin was thin,
the price she paid to kill their sin.

The ranch was silent, cold, and vast,
a monument to all the past.
She watched the sun begin to creep,
she knew her soul would never sleep.