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dochermes"DUSTY HEROES: Curse of the Brimstone Kid"
9/21/2000
I.
In a soundless flash of blue light, two fgures appeared from nowhere atop a rocky hill. Below them, a deserted highway pointed toward the horizon under a cloudless Arizona sky. The air was stifling and oven-hot, without any movement. This was actually a good thing, since under these conditions a stiff wind might easily start fires in the dried out brush. Nothing seemed to stir. Not even an insect or a lizard on a rock could be seen. At the base of the hill, a delapidated shack stood silent.
"Whoa," said the younger of the two, a short black man named Levon with closely-trimmed hair and a round face. "That's going to take some getting used to, Josef. One blink and we're two thousand miles away!"
"At least we arrived on target," replied the Blind Archer, glaring suspiciously in all directions.
The two members of the new KDF Third Team barely maintained their balance upon arrival. When the Eldar travel crystal had brought them here from New York City instantaneously, its effect had landed them on uneven ground and they had both stumbled as they got their footing. In twelve hours, the gralic charge placed in their bodies would wear off and they would be drawn back to their starting place. But neither thought of that now. The urgency of their mission occupied their full attention.
Both men wore the field suits of tough black material, heavy boots and pants and a waist-length jacket over a layer of the silk-thin Trom armor. The suits were loaded with a dozen small gadgets and weapons. Clipped to their belts were the communication devices called Links. Levon Bingham had an airpistol holstered at his right hip, an odd-looking weapon with an extended needle-thin barrel. His hand dropped to graze the butt automatically.
In contrast, the taller of the two, a lean muscular man with sandy blond hair and dark blue eyes, was armed in a more dramatic way. Strapped to his back was a Y-shaped leather leather quiver holding eighteen arrows three feet long each. In his right hand was a traditional longbow he had fashioned himself from seasoned English Yew. Now, as they watched for any signs of life, Josef Jubilec bent the great bow and fastened its string to the loop at the top end. With that weapon in hand, he was a formidable opponent for anyone to face. There were few groups in the Midnight War more feared than the Blind Archers of Chujir.
"Josef?" asked Levon uncertainly. "I'm sensing something down there. Gralic force of some kind. I can't be more specific, I'm afraid, I'm just too green at this business."
"I'm getting to trust your instincts, Levon," the Archer said. "You're the new Black Lion, after all. Wearing the Cat's-Claw seems to be opening your perceptions quickly. And, I myself am also sensing lifeforce. A single Human. "Time to investigate. This way down seems the most negotiable."
"Let's go then."
"No. I think it best if I remain here with a clear shot at anyone entering or leaving the building," Josef mused. "You should approach while I cover you."
"Sure, why not? I'm game. But first, I'm still not clear on this whole Preincarnation business," Levon said as he studied the possible route down. "I get that it's a Darthan spell. I get that it transforms a modern person into a semblance of some ancestor of theirs. I mean, I've read the file back at headquarters. But why are the Preincarnators suddenly such an urgent threat that our team is searching all over the country to track them down?"
"Because Warren Vidimar has carried the process a step farther than his father did," said the Blind Archer. "Before him, the Preincarnators worked on a random basis. If a gang member happened to have an anestor who had been a pirate or a Viking, they could change to become that ancestor. But it was rare than anyone was found with a useful predecessor. This kept the cult numbers low. "
"So how have things changed?" asked Levon. "Why the urgency?"
"Warren Vidimar had stepped up the game. Our sources tell us he is bringing back specific Midnight War individuals who have been dead for decades or even centuries... and these are powerful, dangerous men who would be better left unrevived."
Moving with a sure-footed agility he had not possessed a year earlier, Levon scrambled down to level ground. He found himself facing the only landmark in the immediate vicinity... a pile of weathered boards barely holding each other up, the wreckage of a tiny shack which had been evidently standing out here in the desert for a century as sun and wind broke it down. By the front door was a water barrel which had long ago split apart and become useless.
Around the edge of the shack stepped a slight figure. Not more than five feet four and weighing maybe one hundred and fifty pounds, he was a young redheaded man dressed in black... high-arched riding boots, well-worn Levis and a flannel work shirt with an open denim vest over it. On his head sat a black Stetson with a beaded Navajo band, and low on narrow hips was a gunbelt with two holsters holding matched Peacemakers. There was nothing flamboyant or silly about the outfit because the man wearing it took it for granted. He wasn't playing cowboy, he actually WAS a 19th Century cowboy brought somehow into the modern world.
Standing with feet well apart, thumbs hooked in his gunbelt and not far from the pistols, the redhead smiled tightly. "I reckon you could be looking for me, amigo. Packard's my handle, Johnny Packard."
II.
"My name is Levon Bingham, from New York City. I'm not certain you understand what your situation is. Do you know it's the twenty-first century? That it's September 2000, not September 1876? You may think you're Johnny Packard, the Brimstone Kid but actually you're a modern person inhabiting a perfect copy of Packard's original body..."
"Ease up there, amigo," Johnny interrupted. "That Vidimar feller explained all this. As far as I can tell, though, I AM Johnny Packard pure and simple, somehow walkin' the Earth a hunnerd years after the last I remember." The Kid shrugged and exhaled hard. "Phew. Mebbe I was frozen alive somehow, mebbe I was brought to this year somehow like being brought across distance. I dunno. It's a puzzlement to me."
Levon nodded and stepped a little closer. "I have to say, you're taking these, well, extraordinary circumstances well. You seem to be adjusting where most people would be stunned."
"Heh. Friend, you don't know about the life I led," said Johnny. "I been strange places and I seen strange things in my day. This ain't that much more odd."
For the first time, Levon visibly untensed slightly. "You're posing an interesting philosophical question. Is a difference which makes no difference really a difference? I don't know if there's any way to ever tell."
"Aw, to Hell with all that." The small taut figure moved around to face Levon from one side. The twin Peacemakers were holstered low so that Johnny's hands brushed against the butts when he moved. He seemed always ready to draw. "Now I got some questions. Just who are you anyway? You don't talk like no colored man I ever met. You sound like a schoolmarm. Did you get special schoolin' or what?"
"Colored man...? Oh well. Yes, I'm educated. A lot has changed since your day, Mr Packard. If you return to the Preincarnators, I suspect Vidimar will try to use you as an enforcer. Or if he thinks he can't control you, he might just undo the spell and return you to the modern cultist."
A remarkably wicked grin lit the cowboy's narrow face. "He can try!"
"Let me tell you something about myself," Levon went on. "I'm a knight of the Order of Tel Shai. I don't know if that means anything to you."
"Yeah it does. I met a few hombres who claimed to be Tel Shai boys. There was a Paiute called hisself the Eagle Star. They was all good men in my estimation."
"That's a help. I want you to come with me and my teammate to New York, where we can meet with other Tel Shai knights. Maybe we can help you decide what you want to do with this new life you've been given."
"Nah," Johnny said, pausing to spit on the ground off to one side. "Shoot, I cain't change sides that easy. I swore I'd go back and talk to that Vidimar coot after I took care of seein' my grave. I mean to do that. After I square with him, we can parley if you like."
Levon shook his head sadly. "That won't do. Our captain said you're too important to leave as a loose end."
The young Black Lion made his first mistake then. Instead of using words, which had worked well so far, he dropped his right hand to touch the butt of the dart gun at his side. Johnny had noticed the odd-looking air-pistol of course. As soon as Levon's hand touched his weapon, the time for words had passed.
Nothing in the Black Lion's experience had given him the slightest clue just how fast a genuine gunsliger could be. Levon never saw the draw. Something punched hard into the center of his chest, knocking him over backwards, and he only heard the shot and saw the white flash after he was already hit.
Johnny's right arm was half extended, the heavy Colt steady in his hand with a whisp of pungent smoke seeping from the barrel. "I cain't believe you was fool enough to pull iron on me. And you knew I'm the Brimstone Kid, too. It's a lesson you only learn once..."
In the next second, the Kid received his own brutal surprise. He caught only the faintest glimpse of motion whizzing toward him before a small blast cracked sharply against his hand. The gun went spinning far out of reach, and bones snapped from that explosive arrowhead. Johnny's wrist felt like it had been broken and his little finger was not bent at an angle it had never been designed to reach. In an instant, the Kid had plunged back into the limited shelter of the doorway behind him. All his life had been spent in dangerous spots and his instincts were good. Even before his Colt hit the ground, Johnny was crouched low to present a smaller target and his other gun was raised in his undamaged hand.
Johnny Packard was not nearly as good a shot with his left hand, but he would make do.
III.
One hundred feet above him, standing up on the side of the hill, a bowman drew back his string to his ear and readied to loose. This shaft was tipped with a hard rubber bulb that was designed to bruise and stun rather than kill, but Johnny had no way of knowing that.
The Peacemaker barked once and the Yew longbow flew apart in unequal halves as a heavy .45 slug smashed through it just above the grip. Dropping the ruined weapon, feeling his hand go numb from the shock, Josef Jubilec was as surprised as he had ever been. He would have sworn no one could have made such a shot. Yet there it was. He lowered his hands, disarmed and vulnerable as he seldom had been.
"I cut my teeth fightin' Comanche and Mescalero," Johnny called up. "I'm right sorry about yer colored friend here, but you saw him go for the hook and the draw."
Even as he spoke, the Kid received still another surprise. Levon Bingham leaped up off the dirt and tackled him full force, slamming him against the shack's front door. Johnny had no way of knowing that the new Black Lion wore the flexible Trom armor under his field suit and that even the point-blank impact of a .45 bullet had hurt but done no real damage.
Johnny Packard took the full impact and the breath left his lungs with a whoosh. Levon stepped back, setting himself to drive his other fist into the Kid's stomach. He thought he was winning this fight rather easily. But he froze motionless as he felt something pressing against the side of his head, something that could only be the barrel of a pistol.
"That's enough manhandlin'," Packard growled. "Hold still like yore life depends on it, compadre, because believe me it does."
"You got it," Levon managed to answer in a tiny voice. He had not brought his helmet and a bullet in his unprotected head would finish him off as thoroughly as it would anyone else.
Johnny's Stetson had fallen off in the brawl. His thick red hair was shaggy, and he was unshaven although still young enough to have only meager stubble. Thick red eyebrows lowered over angry green eyes. "That's better, old son. Let's see if I can restrain myself from letting some sunlight through yore skull."
Running up, Josef called over, "Don't do it! Hear us out. There's no need to fight, Kid."
"Ya think?" asked Johnny. "Take a look at my hand, you busted it with that dynamite arrow. You might say it hurts a mite. I think a lead pill would improve the manners both of yuh remarkable well."
Lowering his open hands, the Blind Archer used his calmest, most reassuring voice. "Think about the amazing resurrection you've been given! You've been brought back to life after a hundred years. What an opportunity. Did any man ever get such a literal second chance at life? You're not going to throw that away, are you?"
After a long uncomfortable silence, the Brimstone Kid lowered the hammer on his Peacemaker carefully and returned it to the left holster. He released Levon and stood up. "I been a fool lotsa times but I'm hopin' this ain't gonna be one of them. Come with me, you two. I intend to explain somethin' about my first life."
Following the resurrected cowboy, Levon and Josef marched around behind the decrepit shack to where a single flat rock stuck up at an angle out of the dried dirt. Johnny continued on for another few yards and stopped next to a long stretch of earth that had been turned up recently. He had brought his Stetson and now he pressed it against his chest in a gesture of ironic respect.
"I don't haveta tell you gents what's a-lyin' down there, do I?"
Levon had clapped a hand over his own mouth in mingled unease and awe. "Oh my God. You don't mean.. that's your own grave?"
"It purely is," answered the Kid. "The mortal remains of Jonathan Benjamin Packard, stretched out at rest for who knows how long? You see, my memories stop at the age this body is now. How long I lived in my first life, how old I got to be, that's something I jes' don't know. Neither do I know how I came to buried way out here instead of in a churchyard with a proper headstone."
Josef Jubliec dropped to one knee and studied the grave. "I begin to see. This was where Warren Vidimar recovered your DNA. A few strands of hair, maybe a tooth or bone with some dentine or marrow intact enough to use. That was how he cast the Precincarnation spell that brought you back. Am I right?"
"Far as I can tell, yore speakin' gospel," Johnny replied. "Old man Vidimar, he thought he could use me both as a hired gun and for any knowledge I might have of buried loot or such. He had no idea what a hellion he was bringin' back. I weren't made to serve any man, much some fancy witchman who treated me like a peon fresh from the fields."
"You broke away from the Preincarnators," Levon said quietly.
"Damn straight. I gave him a backslap that spun 'im in a circle and I took to my heels. A few times, some of his bad boys caught up with me. They think they're tough, but they never stood up to a genuine Texas shootist. I been on the run before. It don't bother me."
Josef had straightened up and was regarding the revived cowboy thoughtfully. "Johnny, I don't think it was morbid curiosity that brought you all the way out here. There was something important you wanted to retrieve. Am I right?"
Again, Johnny did not answer for a long painful moment. "I ain't a-saying. They is things you're better off not knowing about, mister. It's enough to say I'm living under a curse."
Neither Levon nor Josef pressed the matter. They had both read up about the Brimstone Kid in the KDF files before leaving New York. They knew what had not been revealed during Johnny's lifetime and which only Dr Vitarius had discovered by accident and left a cryptic reference in his notes.. that Johnny had been given an ensorcelled Darthan token which he could not give up. This was a coin of red Gremthom metal, and it had brought about a weird transformation over Johnny at nightfall. The legends of a hell-rider who laughed at bullets and who rode a demonic black horse were all true, the two KDF members realized.
It had been to recover that cursed token that the revived Johnny Packard had traveled out here. What a traumatic experience that must have been, Levon reflecting, digging up your own dried-up mummy from the ground. But the Preincarnation spell would not have been potent enough to create a duplicate of the Darthan coin. Josef reflected thst Packard would have been free and a normal person but he had to come here to regain that token. Maybe the real curse of the Brimstone Kid was wanting to live under it.
Instead of mentioning any of this, the Blind Archer asked, "Didn't you have a famous black stallion? His name was Terror, if I remember correctly."
For the first time, a crooked smile broke across the Brimstone Kid's face. "Right enough, old son. I miss 'im something awful. Truth be told, if'n I could somehow find a hair from his mane, I'd force that dirty warlock Vidimar to pull his Preincarnation stunt and bring my hoss back. Terror was a cantankerous four-footed bad-tempered devil but me and him was used to each other."
"We should get your hand bandaged up," Josef broke in. "Did you have a car?"
"Nah, I rode a bus as far as it could take me and I hiked along that highway the last day or so," Johnny said. "There's so much to learn about this new world. I wouldn't have no idea how to steer one of the auto-MObeels. I know what a phone is, but most everything else is puzzlin' me sorely."
"All right, here's an offer," the Blind Archer said. "No strings attached. Come with us to our headquarters. We have a doctor who will fix up your hand. You can get some good food, a hot bath and catch some sleep in a decent bed without keeping an ear open for Preincarnators. Then you can decide what you want to do with this new life."
"I don't see why I should trust you fellers far as I could throw a mule, you're two of the most unlikely boys I ever did see," Johnny said. "But then, I gotta go with my instincts. You seem like straight-shooters. Supposin' I do take you up on yore hospitality, you understand it don't put me in your debt, savvy?"
"Fair enough," Josef agreed. "If nothing else, we can fill you in on what's going on in the world. Believe me, it's been an interesting century since you last walked the earth. Men have walked on the moon, hearts have been transplanted, the sky is full of artificial satellites relaying information..."
The Kid tugged his Stetson on, then thumbed it back on his head and grinned. "I'm always ready to listen to some tall tales."
2000 -Rev 7/11/2018
9/21/2000
I.
In a soundless flash of blue light, two fgures appeared from nowhere atop a rocky hill. Below them, a deserted highway pointed toward the horizon under a cloudless Arizona sky. The air was stifling and oven-hot, without any movement. This was actually a good thing, since under these conditions a stiff wind might easily start fires in the dried out brush. Nothing seemed to stir. Not even an insect or a lizard on a rock could be seen. At the base of the hill, a delapidated shack stood silent.
"Whoa," said the younger of the two, a short black man named Levon with closely-trimmed hair and a round face. "That's going to take some getting used to, Josef. One blink and we're two thousand miles away!"
"At least we arrived on target," replied the Blind Archer, glaring suspiciously in all directions.
The two members of the new KDF Third Team barely maintained their balance upon arrival. When the Eldar travel crystal had brought them here from New York City instantaneously, its effect had landed them on uneven ground and they had both stumbled as they got their footing. In twelve hours, the gralic charge placed in their bodies would wear off and they would be drawn back to their starting place. But neither thought of that now. The urgency of their mission occupied their full attention.
Both men wore the field suits of tough black material, heavy boots and pants and a waist-length jacket over a layer of the silk-thin Trom armor. The suits were loaded with a dozen small gadgets and weapons. Clipped to their belts were the communication devices called Links. Levon Bingham had an airpistol holstered at his right hip, an odd-looking weapon with an extended needle-thin barrel. His hand dropped to graze the butt automatically.
In contrast, the taller of the two, a lean muscular man with sandy blond hair and dark blue eyes, was armed in a more dramatic way. Strapped to his back was a Y-shaped leather leather quiver holding eighteen arrows three feet long each. In his right hand was a traditional longbow he had fashioned himself from seasoned English Yew. Now, as they watched for any signs of life, Josef Jubilec bent the great bow and fastened its string to the loop at the top end. With that weapon in hand, he was a formidable opponent for anyone to face. There were few groups in the Midnight War more feared than the Blind Archers of Chujir.
"Josef?" asked Levon uncertainly. "I'm sensing something down there. Gralic force of some kind. I can't be more specific, I'm afraid, I'm just too green at this business."
"I'm getting to trust your instincts, Levon," the Archer said. "You're the new Black Lion, after all. Wearing the Cat's-Claw seems to be opening your perceptions quickly. And, I myself am also sensing lifeforce. A single Human. "Time to investigate. This way down seems the most negotiable."
"Let's go then."
"No. I think it best if I remain here with a clear shot at anyone entering or leaving the building," Josef mused. "You should approach while I cover you."
"Sure, why not? I'm game. But first, I'm still not clear on this whole Preincarnation business," Levon said as he studied the possible route down. "I get that it's a Darthan spell. I get that it transforms a modern person into a semblance of some ancestor of theirs. I mean, I've read the file back at headquarters. But why are the Preincarnators suddenly such an urgent threat that our team is searching all over the country to track them down?"
"Because Warren Vidimar has carried the process a step farther than his father did," said the Blind Archer. "Before him, the Preincarnators worked on a random basis. If a gang member happened to have an anestor who had been a pirate or a Viking, they could change to become that ancestor. But it was rare than anyone was found with a useful predecessor. This kept the cult numbers low. "
"So how have things changed?" asked Levon. "Why the urgency?"
"Warren Vidimar had stepped up the game. Our sources tell us he is bringing back specific Midnight War individuals who have been dead for decades or even centuries... and these are powerful, dangerous men who would be better left unrevived."
Moving with a sure-footed agility he had not possessed a year earlier, Levon scrambled down to level ground. He found himself facing the only landmark in the immediate vicinity... a pile of weathered boards barely holding each other up, the wreckage of a tiny shack which had been evidently standing out here in the desert for a century as sun and wind broke it down. By the front door was a water barrel which had long ago split apart and become useless.
Around the edge of the shack stepped a slight figure. Not more than five feet four and weighing maybe one hundred and fifty pounds, he was a young redheaded man dressed in black... high-arched riding boots, well-worn Levis and a flannel work shirt with an open denim vest over it. On his head sat a black Stetson with a beaded Navajo band, and low on narrow hips was a gunbelt with two holsters holding matched Peacemakers. There was nothing flamboyant or silly about the outfit because the man wearing it took it for granted. He wasn't playing cowboy, he actually WAS a 19th Century cowboy brought somehow into the modern world.
Standing with feet well apart, thumbs hooked in his gunbelt and not far from the pistols, the redhead smiled tightly. "I reckon you could be looking for me, amigo. Packard's my handle, Johnny Packard."
II.
"My name is Levon Bingham, from New York City. I'm not certain you understand what your situation is. Do you know it's the twenty-first century? That it's September 2000, not September 1876? You may think you're Johnny Packard, the Brimstone Kid but actually you're a modern person inhabiting a perfect copy of Packard's original body..."
"Ease up there, amigo," Johnny interrupted. "That Vidimar feller explained all this. As far as I can tell, though, I AM Johnny Packard pure and simple, somehow walkin' the Earth a hunnerd years after the last I remember." The Kid shrugged and exhaled hard. "Phew. Mebbe I was frozen alive somehow, mebbe I was brought to this year somehow like being brought across distance. I dunno. It's a puzzlement to me."
Levon nodded and stepped a little closer. "I have to say, you're taking these, well, extraordinary circumstances well. You seem to be adjusting where most people would be stunned."
"Heh. Friend, you don't know about the life I led," said Johnny. "I been strange places and I seen strange things in my day. This ain't that much more odd."
For the first time, Levon visibly untensed slightly. "You're posing an interesting philosophical question. Is a difference which makes no difference really a difference? I don't know if there's any way to ever tell."
"Aw, to Hell with all that." The small taut figure moved around to face Levon from one side. The twin Peacemakers were holstered low so that Johnny's hands brushed against the butts when he moved. He seemed always ready to draw. "Now I got some questions. Just who are you anyway? You don't talk like no colored man I ever met. You sound like a schoolmarm. Did you get special schoolin' or what?"
"Colored man...? Oh well. Yes, I'm educated. A lot has changed since your day, Mr Packard. If you return to the Preincarnators, I suspect Vidimar will try to use you as an enforcer. Or if he thinks he can't control you, he might just undo the spell and return you to the modern cultist."
A remarkably wicked grin lit the cowboy's narrow face. "He can try!"
"Let me tell you something about myself," Levon went on. "I'm a knight of the Order of Tel Shai. I don't know if that means anything to you."
"Yeah it does. I met a few hombres who claimed to be Tel Shai boys. There was a Paiute called hisself the Eagle Star. They was all good men in my estimation."
"That's a help. I want you to come with me and my teammate to New York, where we can meet with other Tel Shai knights. Maybe we can help you decide what you want to do with this new life you've been given."
"Nah," Johnny said, pausing to spit on the ground off to one side. "Shoot, I cain't change sides that easy. I swore I'd go back and talk to that Vidimar coot after I took care of seein' my grave. I mean to do that. After I square with him, we can parley if you like."
Levon shook his head sadly. "That won't do. Our captain said you're too important to leave as a loose end."
The young Black Lion made his first mistake then. Instead of using words, which had worked well so far, he dropped his right hand to touch the butt of the dart gun at his side. Johnny had noticed the odd-looking air-pistol of course. As soon as Levon's hand touched his weapon, the time for words had passed.
Nothing in the Black Lion's experience had given him the slightest clue just how fast a genuine gunsliger could be. Levon never saw the draw. Something punched hard into the center of his chest, knocking him over backwards, and he only heard the shot and saw the white flash after he was already hit.
Johnny's right arm was half extended, the heavy Colt steady in his hand with a whisp of pungent smoke seeping from the barrel. "I cain't believe you was fool enough to pull iron on me. And you knew I'm the Brimstone Kid, too. It's a lesson you only learn once..."
In the next second, the Kid received his own brutal surprise. He caught only the faintest glimpse of motion whizzing toward him before a small blast cracked sharply against his hand. The gun went spinning far out of reach, and bones snapped from that explosive arrowhead. Johnny's wrist felt like it had been broken and his little finger was not bent at an angle it had never been designed to reach. In an instant, the Kid had plunged back into the limited shelter of the doorway behind him. All his life had been spent in dangerous spots and his instincts were good. Even before his Colt hit the ground, Johnny was crouched low to present a smaller target and his other gun was raised in his undamaged hand.
Johnny Packard was not nearly as good a shot with his left hand, but he would make do.
III.
One hundred feet above him, standing up on the side of the hill, a bowman drew back his string to his ear and readied to loose. This shaft was tipped with a hard rubber bulb that was designed to bruise and stun rather than kill, but Johnny had no way of knowing that.
The Peacemaker barked once and the Yew longbow flew apart in unequal halves as a heavy .45 slug smashed through it just above the grip. Dropping the ruined weapon, feeling his hand go numb from the shock, Josef Jubilec was as surprised as he had ever been. He would have sworn no one could have made such a shot. Yet there it was. He lowered his hands, disarmed and vulnerable as he seldom had been.
"I cut my teeth fightin' Comanche and Mescalero," Johnny called up. "I'm right sorry about yer colored friend here, but you saw him go for the hook and the draw."
Even as he spoke, the Kid received still another surprise. Levon Bingham leaped up off the dirt and tackled him full force, slamming him against the shack's front door. Johnny had no way of knowing that the new Black Lion wore the flexible Trom armor under his field suit and that even the point-blank impact of a .45 bullet had hurt but done no real damage.
Johnny Packard took the full impact and the breath left his lungs with a whoosh. Levon stepped back, setting himself to drive his other fist into the Kid's stomach. He thought he was winning this fight rather easily. But he froze motionless as he felt something pressing against the side of his head, something that could only be the barrel of a pistol.
"That's enough manhandlin'," Packard growled. "Hold still like yore life depends on it, compadre, because believe me it does."
"You got it," Levon managed to answer in a tiny voice. He had not brought his helmet and a bullet in his unprotected head would finish him off as thoroughly as it would anyone else.
Johnny's Stetson had fallen off in the brawl. His thick red hair was shaggy, and he was unshaven although still young enough to have only meager stubble. Thick red eyebrows lowered over angry green eyes. "That's better, old son. Let's see if I can restrain myself from letting some sunlight through yore skull."
Running up, Josef called over, "Don't do it! Hear us out. There's no need to fight, Kid."
"Ya think?" asked Johnny. "Take a look at my hand, you busted it with that dynamite arrow. You might say it hurts a mite. I think a lead pill would improve the manners both of yuh remarkable well."
Lowering his open hands, the Blind Archer used his calmest, most reassuring voice. "Think about the amazing resurrection you've been given! You've been brought back to life after a hundred years. What an opportunity. Did any man ever get such a literal second chance at life? You're not going to throw that away, are you?"
After a long uncomfortable silence, the Brimstone Kid lowered the hammer on his Peacemaker carefully and returned it to the left holster. He released Levon and stood up. "I been a fool lotsa times but I'm hopin' this ain't gonna be one of them. Come with me, you two. I intend to explain somethin' about my first life."
Following the resurrected cowboy, Levon and Josef marched around behind the decrepit shack to where a single flat rock stuck up at an angle out of the dried dirt. Johnny continued on for another few yards and stopped next to a long stretch of earth that had been turned up recently. He had brought his Stetson and now he pressed it against his chest in a gesture of ironic respect.
"I don't haveta tell you gents what's a-lyin' down there, do I?"
Levon had clapped a hand over his own mouth in mingled unease and awe. "Oh my God. You don't mean.. that's your own grave?"
"It purely is," answered the Kid. "The mortal remains of Jonathan Benjamin Packard, stretched out at rest for who knows how long? You see, my memories stop at the age this body is now. How long I lived in my first life, how old I got to be, that's something I jes' don't know. Neither do I know how I came to buried way out here instead of in a churchyard with a proper headstone."
Josef Jubliec dropped to one knee and studied the grave. "I begin to see. This was where Warren Vidimar recovered your DNA. A few strands of hair, maybe a tooth or bone with some dentine or marrow intact enough to use. That was how he cast the Precincarnation spell that brought you back. Am I right?"
"Far as I can tell, yore speakin' gospel," Johnny replied. "Old man Vidimar, he thought he could use me both as a hired gun and for any knowledge I might have of buried loot or such. He had no idea what a hellion he was bringin' back. I weren't made to serve any man, much some fancy witchman who treated me like a peon fresh from the fields."
"You broke away from the Preincarnators," Levon said quietly.
"Damn straight. I gave him a backslap that spun 'im in a circle and I took to my heels. A few times, some of his bad boys caught up with me. They think they're tough, but they never stood up to a genuine Texas shootist. I been on the run before. It don't bother me."
Josef had straightened up and was regarding the revived cowboy thoughtfully. "Johnny, I don't think it was morbid curiosity that brought you all the way out here. There was something important you wanted to retrieve. Am I right?"
Again, Johnny did not answer for a long painful moment. "I ain't a-saying. They is things you're better off not knowing about, mister. It's enough to say I'm living under a curse."
Neither Levon nor Josef pressed the matter. They had both read up about the Brimstone Kid in the KDF files before leaving New York. They knew what had not been revealed during Johnny's lifetime and which only Dr Vitarius had discovered by accident and left a cryptic reference in his notes.. that Johnny had been given an ensorcelled Darthan token which he could not give up. This was a coin of red Gremthom metal, and it had brought about a weird transformation over Johnny at nightfall. The legends of a hell-rider who laughed at bullets and who rode a demonic black horse were all true, the two KDF members realized.
It had been to recover that cursed token that the revived Johnny Packard had traveled out here. What a traumatic experience that must have been, Levon reflecting, digging up your own dried-up mummy from the ground. But the Preincarnation spell would not have been potent enough to create a duplicate of the Darthan coin. Josef reflected thst Packard would have been free and a normal person but he had to come here to regain that token. Maybe the real curse of the Brimstone Kid was wanting to live under it.
Instead of mentioning any of this, the Blind Archer asked, "Didn't you have a famous black stallion? His name was Terror, if I remember correctly."
For the first time, a crooked smile broke across the Brimstone Kid's face. "Right enough, old son. I miss 'im something awful. Truth be told, if'n I could somehow find a hair from his mane, I'd force that dirty warlock Vidimar to pull his Preincarnation stunt and bring my hoss back. Terror was a cantankerous four-footed bad-tempered devil but me and him was used to each other."
"We should get your hand bandaged up," Josef broke in. "Did you have a car?"
"Nah, I rode a bus as far as it could take me and I hiked along that highway the last day or so," Johnny said. "There's so much to learn about this new world. I wouldn't have no idea how to steer one of the auto-MObeels. I know what a phone is, but most everything else is puzzlin' me sorely."
"All right, here's an offer," the Blind Archer said. "No strings attached. Come with us to our headquarters. We have a doctor who will fix up your hand. You can get some good food, a hot bath and catch some sleep in a decent bed without keeping an ear open for Preincarnators. Then you can decide what you want to do with this new life."
"I don't see why I should trust you fellers far as I could throw a mule, you're two of the most unlikely boys I ever did see," Johnny said. "But then, I gotta go with my instincts. You seem like straight-shooters. Supposin' I do take you up on yore hospitality, you understand it don't put me in your debt, savvy?"
"Fair enough," Josef agreed. "If nothing else, we can fill you in on what's going on in the world. Believe me, it's been an interesting century since you last walked the earth. Men have walked on the moon, hearts have been transplanted, the sky is full of artificial satellites relaying information..."
The Kid tugged his Stetson on, then thumbed it back on his head and grinned. "I'm always ready to listen to some tall tales."
2000 -Rev 7/11/2018
