Five Days Out

✥

‘Alright, alright. It has been roughly five days. Still safe, ain’t seen one of those freaks around. Don’t dawdle, now. Keep on moving.’

This was how Bessie kept herself sane. Go over the facts. Keep track of the days. Who did she see, what did she hear? Not a thing. Not yet. 

This was attempt number two, as well as her final chance. She was never going back to that place. She’d rather jam the barrel of a gun between her jaws and let that bullet fly. It would at least be a quick death, compared to whatever that old wolf might have waiting for her. She wasn’t even going to let him have the chance.

Bessie considered herself quite lucky, really. Made it onto some sort of main path, pointed her gun at an unfortunate bastard, and took his horse. A big horse too. This was how she made it through the desert, riding a stolen horse. This was maybe how she avoided recapture. The horse didn’t seem to be too pleased to be rid of its owner, but it kept on running, and that was all that mattered. 

And where was Bessie now? Not even she knew. Some real pathetic excuse of a town, probably not even on any maps. She’s never heard of it, never seen it. And only one saloon? Good Hell. 

Nevertheless, that’s where she decided to go. She tied the horse to the post, eyeing it just as nastily as it eyed her. 

“You stay here, now,” Bessie told the horse, who glowered at her silently. Bessie turned, heading into the saloon. It’s been hours of traveling under that sun. Definitely time to stop for a drink. She had a few dollars left, and a few shots of liquor were well worth the money to her.

She was immediately greeted with the stench of cigar smoke, the strong smell of booze, and at least an entire bottle’s worth of perfume. It was enough to make someone gag. This place must be where all the harlots came to lure their prey in, with their violent red lips and hungry eyes. 

Bessie pulled a dime and a nickel from her pocket, tossing it onto the bar and leaning against it. The bartender looked up at her, sliding the coins toward himself with two nimble fingers. 

“Whiskey, if you please,” Bessie said to the bartender. He nodded once, preparing the drink. In the meanwhile, she looked over the rest of the saloon. In every town, it’s the same stew of miserable workers, desperate gamblers tossing their cards across the table and women looking to make a few easy dollars. It never changes. And that was comforting, in a way, after being away from actual civilization for so long.

The sound of the shot glass being set down and the amber stream being poured in brought her back to reality just a tad, and she nodded her thanks to the bartender. 

Bessie grabbed the glass with dusty fingers and drained its contents in a second flat. 

‘Alright. Made it to this town. It has been roughly five days. Still safe. No one recognizes you. You don’t recognize anyone. Don’t get comfortable. Move along soon.’

She sat the glass down, silently requesting a refill. Now, she needed to plan her next course of action. While hiding in a town no one has heard of was a good place to lay low, it was also just not enough. She needed more people to be covered by. And say, hypothetically, one of those crazy, fatuous, bloodthirsty sons of bitches came here, started asking around, people would be able to point her out in a second. 

She was quite recognizable now, after all.

 Even though it's been a couple of years since her eye was, to put it nicely, liberated from its socket, it still felt horrendously empty. Like she needed to shove something up in there just to fill the void. 

Not that she wasn’t recognizable before. She often towered over people, making her the first to be seen in a crowd, typically. But a woman of her size with one eye and dark hair? Well, it would take any moron about seven minutes to find her. And her predator was no moron. 

That terrified her. It terrified her greatly. 

No, a real town, a good town to hide in. That’s what she needed. 

“You gonna drink that, or just let it sit for a while?” Asked the bartender. Bessie turned to him, glancing down to the drink, and then back to him again. 

Wordlessly, she grabbed the drink and cleaned the glass out once more. 

Bessie set the glass down, tapping on the bar for another shot. She then gestured out toward the general town. “What do you call this place?”

“Typically, a saloon.”

Bessie gave an annoyed look to the bartender. “I meant this lil’ settlement ya’ll got here. What’s it called?”

“Didn’t catch the sign on your way in, or something?” The bartender responded easily, pouring more liquid into the glass. 

“I was occupied with other things,” Bessie replied. And it wasn’t entirely a lie. “So?”

The bartender opened his arms wide, as if presenting something extravagant. “You’re in Last Prayer. Bit small here, not much to see. Mostly just for outlaws like yourself passin’ through. Hardly on any maps, either.”

Bessie narrowed her eye to him. “What makes you think I’m an outlaw?”

“Ah, my mistake, you must be here to attend the church and start building homes for the less fortunate,” Sassed the bartender. Bessie didn’t exactly have a reply to that, so she instead busied her mouth with drinking another shot. 

Last Prayer. She’d never heard of it, but there were probably half a hundred little villages like this one, only found by those not looking for them. 

She swirled the empty shot glass around on her finger. “I’m not familiar with this area. Where is the nearest town? A real town, I mean.”

The bartender thought for a moment, his mustache twitching all the while. “Well, we’re sort of in between towns, you see. Not too far south, we got Riverbend Valley. Nice little spot. I heard people find gold in that old river, but I’m sure people just say that to stir up false hope. Gold is in Cali, you see. But to the northwest, there’s Wimble. Now that there is a decent town, I was up there last month visiting a friend. It was a bit of an…”

But Bessie had stopped listening. Wimble. She hadn’t been there in years. Not since she was about, what? Twenty? Maybe twenty-one? Her throat suddenly felt tight. 

Now this was an opportunity. She was so close. So, so close. She was different now. Stronger. Angrier. Crueler. What, exactly, would stop her from heading to that awful town and wrapping her hands around the throat of that damned, damned sheriff? 

‘You know what’s stopping you.’

The fury fled. Of course. How could she have forgotten? Bessie wasn’t simply touring the desert, finding quaint little towns like this to pop in and sample their spirits. She was running. She was being hunted. If she went back to Wimble and caused a scene, she was as good as caught. And being caught meant something worse than being killed. 

The bartender kept on yapping, and Bessie found the shot glass had been removed from her finger and was once again full of whiskey. But she didn’t feel so parched anymore, even though her mouth had gone dry. 

She would have just loved to go back to Wimble. Find Johanna. Make her suffer just as she had suffered. Maybe even worse. But if she did that now, when she was on her own and quite vulnerable, she would more than likely be tossed back into that same jail, where she sat for months, just rotting and rotting and rotting. She didn’t want that. Not at all. 

Bessie stared down into the full glass. Her senses came back, and she knew this because the bartender was still chattering on. She looked up to him, cutting him off. “I didn’t ask for another.”

He stopped mid-sentence, eyes flitting down to the glass, and back to Bessie. “You look like you could use another. I don’t want to be rude now, but you look wild.” 

Bessie hadn’t really given herself a good look in the mirror. She couldn’t even remember the last time she did. It honestly may have been years. Her appearance was not something she really cared for. But now, she was curious. 

“That so?” she replied coolly. “You got a hand mirror back there?”

The bartender, not much to Bessie’s surprise, did have one. He pulled it out, heavy and ornate, and handed it to her. “You think I keep my hair looking this nice by just feeling it with my fingers?”

“I suppose I’m lucky you’re vain,” she held the mirror for a moment, before finally tilting it toward her face. 

What stared back at her was someone she wasn’t entirely familiar with. She was older. She didn’t remember having this many lines on her face. Her hair, though still very dark, lost much of its luster. And of course, the obvious lack of an eye. The last time she truly studied her own face, she likely had two eyes looking back at her. Now, just one eye, and an empty void, and that long, jagged scar that took up a good portion of her face. She could still remember how it felt, to have him dig his crooked nail into her flesh. It made her wince just thinking about it.

But the bartender was right. She did have a sort of wild look to her. Alongside her new and missing features, there were also dark circles beneath her eye and socket, burns from the sun, and a sort of look she held that just screamed “desperate.”

She sat the mirror face down on the bar, sick of looking at the stranger who shared her face. “.. Thanks. I suppose.”

The bartender slid the mirror back. “You must have had a long week.”

She picked up the glass, and downed it. “Something like that.”

“If you need to forget it, I can top you off again,” The bartender held up the whiskey bottle, giving it an enticing swirl. 

“Better not,” Bessie stood from her stool. “I’d better be on my way. I just needed to get out of the sun for a minute.”

She didn’t stick around for good-byes, pushing away from the bar and out the doors, being met with the hateful glare of the sun once more. There stood the horse, chewing on something, still giving Bessie such horrible looks.

She made a face right back at the animal, and mounted the horse, dodging when it reached back to nip at her. 

“Now, we’ll never get along if you keep tryna bite my legs,” she muttered to the horse. “Once we get to a decent town, I’ll sell you for a better horse.”

The horse didn’t really take that for an answer, but Bessie wouldn’t be waiting for one anyways. She dug her heels into the horse’s side, and off she went once more. 

Riverbend Valley was likely her best choice. An actual town. But really, she wanted to get as far away from her hunters as possible. 

‘You’re headed to Riverbend Valley. You’re gonna follow the road, pick up supplies, probably trade the horse for something better, and get to the other end of the state, if not out of it entirely.’

That seemed as good a plan as any to her.

✥