Advance: They had all gathered outside along Main Street, Abilene was the town: Amos–from New Orleans had just got into town, heard the commotion, a gun fight was about to start, he stood by his horse, hung on tight to its bridle, and Bill the Bartender from the local saloon, stood scratching his thick neck, and Zelda, the prostituted was hanging over the balcony, trying to get focused from a long drunken night, it was forenoon, and a cold darkness, a silence crept over the muddy street, through the soupy sky…(It was the day his father died, which was July 1, 1844, he was only 46-years old back then. His Mother Margaret Teresa Dalton, had to raise him then after. It was a rough childhood, coming west from Quincy , Illinois, he couldn’t remember the exact year he was born, he thought his father once said it was 1832 (he would die in 1885), now standing in the sun, he felt like the kid said, ‘Old man’ to him, he was 49-years old to the best of his knowledge, longer than most gun fighters ever got to be (Wyatt Earp, would grow old, but not many like him did, he had met him once in Tombstone). Anyhow, today was a hot day in Abilene, and some kid from the far south had come up through Mexico, he said he was from Peru, Lima to be exact, and he had just killed someone in the bar. But Arizona was really thinking about his dad, and his mother, but not for long, not after the kid smack into him.
[The Shooter from Lima] He wore a clad shirt, the young shooter from Lima, his long lean muscled legs were planted far apart in the mud, in the middle of the street, he shook his head from side to side at the recumbent (the tall man he called to have a shootout with ((His name was Manual something…no one got his last name, they just called him, ‘The shooter from Lima)).
Curiously enough (at least to Arizona Blue), the Peruvian said in English
“Go for it Mister!” then he added “Mister Blue…or whatever they call you!”
Blue murmured ‘I’ll kill you sunny…go on while you can to wherever that place called Lima is…!’
And the Shooter laughed, slowly laughed, and Arizona said in his whispering voice, ‘Enough of this nonsense…!” and like a drummer, he shot four holes in his chest, faster than you could blink an eye; the shooter barely got his gun out of his holster.
As Blue’s bullets climaxed in a thundering push, knocking the young kid down into the mud, steadily cramming through flesh and bone and internal organs, Manual’s voice echoed a producing, but dim vocal cry, “I’m actually dying…!” He said. The young man’s laugh became less and less as Blue approached him–the demonstration was over, complete, Arizona told himself. The shooter from Lima was dying, slowly.
His lips became yellow, his face expressionless, his feet, jerking as Blue approached him with his rawhide look, it had been a long ride from Mexico to Abilene, and he was tired, wind and sun burnt, and now he seemed to produce a fascinating grimes, as he stood over the dying lad, “Old, you say, haw…” commented Blue to the dying man. “I see you got no more profanity for me.”
The Peruvian puffed gently as he lay, internally gasping for air, helpless with miner gestures, and Blue, pitiless with grace; thereat, Blue turned to walk into the bar, allowing the shooter delicately to escape for an abstracted interest, his dying wish, quietly and quickly he removed the gun from under his leg, with a burningness in his chest, and his last efforts, he lifted the gun a few inches, shot it off, and a bullet plunged into the left back thigh of Blue. He stopped, hesitated, then without acknowledging the wound, he walked into the bar as if nothing happened, ordered a drink (he’d not allow himself, or the kid, nor the onlookers a show…he’d take care of it later, and suffer the pain now).
Afterward: The Sheriff was in his office looking out the window, holding a curtain with his left hand, and outside his office was Judas, the drunk of the town sweeping the wooden sidewalk clean, and around the pole, his attire–rages. The sheriff shook his head, murmured ‘had not the young man learned a lesson in the bar, when he nearly got his gun out and shot old Zulu, and then bumped into Blue, and called him on, Zulu was not half as fast as Arizona Blue, alas, no one counseled the Kid from Lima.’
Written in Lima, Peru, 6-5-2007