Lonerider

Tales

PeacemakerClosed Forever

Story by Sumit Vohra.

The stranger stepped down from the carriage and waved the driver off. The last of the sun lay across the town like it had nowhere better to be. Voices drifted out of the saloon, and his boots carried him toward them. He wanted a meal, a drink and a bed, in that order.
The scarred stranger steps down from a stagecoach onto the main street at sunset
The chatter stopped when he opened the door. Every head turned, looked him over, and turned back. He was tall and broad, and the scar across his face usually earned a second look. Here it earned nothing. Sheriff's offices across three states had his face nailed to the wall, yet this room had judged him and moved on.
The stranger stands in the saloon doorway as the room turns to look him over
He shrugged off the itch at the back of his mind, put it down to a long road, and took the far corner of the bar.
"Some grub and a pour of whiskey, barkeep."
"Food's twenty minutes, mister. Whiskey's now." The barkeep set the glass down. "You'll be wanting a room?"
"What's it run?"
"Two coins. Slow season. Back stairs, last door."
"And the sheriff's office?"
The barkeep looked at him as if he had asked where to find the ocean. "Don't have much call for a sheriff here. If you need something, ask me."
The stranger leans on the bar while the barkeep dries a glass and studies him
No sheriff. The stranger liked to take a deputy's badge for a week before he took a town's bank. Nothing teaches you the lay of the land like being trusted with it. But the barkeep was already gone, and the food had come.
He ate slowly and watched. Good people. Kind, easy, well fed. Unafraid. That last one kept scratching at him. He told it to hush and went up to bed, asleep before his head found the pillow.
The barkeep sets down a plate of food beside the stranger, who watches the room
Morning brought a busy street, polite nods and a town too prosperous for how far it sat from anywhere.
The stranger walks the busy main street in the morning as townsfolk nod and smile
He found the sheriff's office at the end of the main road. Fresh paint, swept steps, a building somebody respected. Then he read the sign.
The locked door of the sheriff's office with a plank nailed across it and a tin star beside it
SHERIFF'S OFFICE. CLOSED FOREVER.
Beside it hung a tin star with a bullet hole clean through the center. A full stop.
A tin sheriff's star nailed to weathered wood with a bullet hole through its center
The itch became a bell, and the bell became a roar. He walked back to the saloon faster than he meant to. The barkeep looked up from last night's glasses.
"The name of this town. What is it?"
"Lone Star, mister. You lost?"
He knew the stories. Every outlaw did. A town with no sheriff because it didn't need one. A badge shot through as a warning. Somebody watching who never missed and never forgave. They called him the Peacemaker.
The stranger was on the noon train before the barkeep finished drying the glass.
From a station rooftop, the Peacemaker watches the stranger stare out of the departing train window
He didn't breathe easy until the town was a smudge behind him, and the high sun watched him go with the same indifference it had shown when he arrived.

SHERIFF'S OFFICE.CLOSED FOREVER.

Meet Peacemaker. See the beer

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