Bill’s dead
(I wrote this as a possible opening for a western similar to the man who killed Liberty Valance to be told as a flash back film)
He walked slowly between the graves. The moon was lit above him, a full face glowing without a smile, making this world a haunted place which frightened him. He'd come to see for himself the grave of Bill Travers. It was the only was he could believe the man was dead. He spent too long looking to give the man the same final home not to be sure.
The path before the row of graves was muddy and he walked along its sides, leaving foot marks in the elevated mounds themselves to avoid the water-filled ruts of the death wagon who had traveled this same way too often.
He glanced up at the moon again and shivered. It was March. Spring thaw had already started. The streams were flooding the county and getting here had cost him one lame horse. Still, had to witness the thing, had to see the wooden cross and ingraved name for himself, and not word of mouth or even the small, mispelled newspaper article which said he'd been shot in a barroom brawl.
Though if Bill Travers had gone, such a story wasn't far from likely. It was how Bill Travers had killed Dan's brother, one in a long list of killings which the paper had listed at twenty, which Dan knew was far too low.
Dan listened to his boots sucking at the mud, like a child drawing on the breast of a low world. He listened to the mood owls, hooting in the night, guardians to the dead.
The local sheriff had wanted to come with Dan. But he'd insisted on coming alone.
"This is a private moment, between me and him," he said, leaving the sheriff to wonder over what Dan's story might have been. Everyone had one.
Dan thought of Carol, too, the woman who waited in Taylor for either Dan or Bill to return. A year, two years, the time didn't matter. She'd understood the need for them to settle, and knew neither would take up with her until it was-- though Dan had often felt she'd prefer Bill's arrival to his.
As kids, it was Bill who'd dominated her attention, and over Bill that her eyes shone.
The road turned and he stumbled over some loose stones as something sounded in the dark behind him-- the nay of horse, maybe, or the cry of some wounded animal to which he'd heard no shot. The thud of hooves came soon after and the horse with its rider pulled to a stop near him, the sheriff's badge catching on the moon light as he dismounted.
"Got a message over the wire from Taylor," the man said. "It's addressed to you. Though God knows who knew you'd be here."
The sheriff pushed a dirty piece of paper into his hand, its folds worn from the wet ride. The words in the moonlight filtered into Dan's brain like cold molasses. Carol was telling him not to come. He stiffened. There was something wrong in those words, something which he couldn't fanthom for a full moment, and when he did, he felt his heart rising up his chest to his throat, raging in his windpipe so he could hardly breathe.
The bastard wasn't dead after all!
"You got the wrong man in that grave, sheriff," Dan said, crushing the paper and letting it fall to the mud.
"What?"
"That's not Bill Travers in there."
"How do you know?"
"I can't explain it, but I know," Dan said, turning back the way he'd come, his horse waiting beyond the mud near the rusted gate. Carol wouldn't be in Taylor when he got there. He was sure of that much. Nor would Bill Trevors. But Dan would find them both, and shoot both, even as they were laughing in their love-grip at him, even if it took him another two years.