a peaceful ride

The clerk crested the hill and looked down on the valley of tree stumps. They were the corpses of a century of pillage, the great ecosystems in their crowns long ago having fallen silent forever. The great swath of destruction showed the first few signs of being erased. Saplings springing up about the bodies of their parents stretched their infant leaves out to catch the sun and rain.

He was facing east by southeast, and the sun dazzled his eyes as he scanned the horizon. The trees came up again after what was likely half a mile of barrenness. There, at the edge of that distant tree line, the clerk saw the red-eyed man standing next to a black horse. The clerk had no glass he could use to get a closer look. No way to tell if he had yet been seen.

The red-eyed man was not alone, the clerk could see once he shaded his eyes with his hand. Three people were standing around the red-eyed man. Too far away to catch speech or to see if they were armed. There was no time. The clerk gigged his horse forward and approached at a trot. His body was as loose and easy as if he were wandering out of church during the recessional. No wind stirred the poncho.

The clerk watched as the red-eyed man turned and disappeared into the forest on the other side of the logging valley. The way toward that tree line was downhill, and the clerk felt his horse pick up speed, felt the footing become uncertain. The three at the tree line were headed toward him. He saw they wore similar clothes, moved in fits and starts. Closer now – they were younger than him, and violent.

Down the hill and the ground leveled out. He could take them in passing if he tried, but they might start shooting. They might start shooting anyway. No cover amid the stumps. No way to herd them if they came at him. At best he'd lose the horse, which he needed if he wanted to catch the red-eyed man.

The clerk knew it was another game. He was always playing games, the red-eyed man.

He slowed to a dignified canter as he approached them. They leaped from stump to stump as they got closer, eventually closing on him and surrounding him. His horse came to a stop as the one in front stepped in. He was a tall whip-thin guy with a ratty face freckled and cratered with acne, hair in some kind of samurai topknot with the whole left side of his head shaved. Clothes black and covered in chains and studs. The others circled behind the clerk's horse. The kid in front was seventeen, if that.

You gotta pay a toll, you wanna cross this field.

The clerk said nothing. Looked down from his perch at the kid and the smirk on his face, looked back at the other two. Nothing on his face, and anything that was on it hidden by the shadow of his wide-brimmed hat.

I said you pay if you wanna cross.

The clerk tugged on the reins and spurred his horse forward into a canter, right past the kid, who stood in stunned silence for a moment, the other two looking to him, confused. The clerk had made no move for the shotgun that hung alongside the saddle. The horse had negotiated a path through a small copse of stumps before the kid and his two companions surrounded it again.

Hey! Maybe you don't hear so good or maybe you don't speak English, but you pay the toll! The gun, a flat-topped polymer toy of a handgun, came out of the kid's waistband as he grabbed the clerk's reins and tugged them to stop the horse.

The clerk's hands moved with no great speed. With the right hand he reached down and jammed his index finger behind the trigger so it couldn't be pulled, wrapping his thumb around the front of the trigger guard and taking firm hold of the entire weight of the gun in that vise-grip. His left hand jacked the gun's slide back and then slid it off of the rest of the gun, leaving the boy with a handle and a barrel and no means of firing any bullets.

The clerk threw the part at one of the other two, striking him in-between the eyes as he tried to pull another gun just like it. The third had a small revolver, but by the time he had it out, the clerk had taken the first boy's hand, twisted it up behind his back, and then dragged him from the ground and dropped him on the saddle behind him, facing backward, the arm braced up by the clerk's back. The clerk grabbed hold of the boy's belt in his right hand as the boy screamed out and cursed, his tendons and ligaments raging.

The horse started a steady trot toward the tree line. The clerk spoke as if to nobody in particular.

Sure would be a shame if anybody interrupted my nice peaceful ride on this sunny morning.

I'll fuckin' kill you, you asshole! I'm gonna fuckin' AAAAAAAAAAH

The clerk leaned a centimeter back in his saddle, his back pushing against the arm and sending the boy into pain that drove all other thought from his head. When the clerk leaned forward and the pain went back to the insistent burning it had been before, he heard the clerk talking to himself. Mmhm – a mighty fine peaceful ride. A damn shame if it got spoiled by talking.

The two others were following, the clerk knew. They were arguing loudly over whether or not they could get a shot in. One of them came up on the right, and the clerk could hear the revolver's hammer cocked back...

So peaceful. Would be quite irritating to have anybody take up following me on such a peaceful ride.

The clerk shifted as if to look off to his left, his right hand dragging the boy by the belt so he hung partially off the edge of the horse's rump, covering the clerk from that angle, the boy's arm still crimped up and the pain the worst yet.

AAAAAAAAHYOUFUCKINGIDIOTHE'LLKILLMEHE'LLKILLMEBACKOFF!AAAAAAAAH

The clerk readjusted himself and the boy and did not hear them following. Soon he had reached the tree line. He let the boy's belt go and leaned back, knocking the boy to the ground face first. He brought the horse around and looked down at the boy, laying there with his arm cradled to his chest and weeping openly.

That was about the most peaceful ride I've had in a long time. I might gladly have paid a toll to have such a fine, peaceful ride.

I'll fucking kill you. Snarling through the tears. I'll fucking rip off your head.

I'll have to pass this way again and have another ride just like that one.

The boy did not look at the clerk as the horse continued on into the woods at a slow canter, that man's eyes again focused intently on the tracks of his quarry.

At length, the boy's two companions made it to him. He punched one of them in the face with his good arm and shouted at them.

We're going after 'em! Fucking asshole with the faggy haircut set us up! We're gonna kill 'em both!

Jer, what's that on your belt?

What is what on my belt what the fuck are you...?

He looked down, found a small cylindrical thing as large as a fun size candy bar dangling from a belt hook he did not own, a green light pulsing on it.

What?

The light turned red, and the three of them became an expanding torrent of the individual parts that made them up. They rained down to the ground amidst the fire.

Some several hundred yards into the forest, the clerk put the detonator back into the saddlebag alongside the two other triggered charges. His eyes never left the tracks the entire time.

By next spring the saplings at the forest's edge had taken hold of the pieces, and in time the roots rose up and consumed those excisemen.

Those who chanced by the place found it to be peaceful.