The Sheriff of Ladytown

She tracked the lawman down the canyons across the desert and through Indian country where they knew him by his booming laugh and his low-dog lying tongue and told her she’d be doing them all a favor, aho then doubted the dust of her passing.

She tracked him all the way from Ladytown to Doucheville beneath a sun that threw no shadows her pursuit so hungry, so heedless of the years even faithful ol’ Red stove up and died ribcage rattling so the crows heard. She shucked the saddle off and hid its worn leather traps under a tuft of sage. (Nothing to see here, just crow-bait.)

Her prey sauntered into the ‘ville and slapped through the doors of Good Old Boy Saloon fat hips gyrating, pistols in the air a stupid grin plastered to his mug: whoooeeee ladies! He was lookin’ for a fight or a good time or both but our horseless hero wasn’t having it. She slid a pink nail down to her nickel-plated and tickled it in a room gone suddenly silent: tap, tap, tap. Boomer wobbled around on bowlegs roses in his cheeks and his third gun slung too low. “Aw blow me,” is the last thing he drawled.

I told you not to fuck with me, she said although whether out loud or not nobody could afterward recall. Not up for debate: she blew his mind and then his heart careful to miss the badge he still wore on his chest. Then she sauntered over cool as death and plucked it off the broke-ass mess so recently Boomer’s sternum. “This’ll be mine now. In the eyes of the law I’m the sheriff of Ladytown: high time that it was so.” Nobody met those flinty eyes nor dared to ask in the eyes of what law nor followed her as she swung out the saloon doors and up onto Boomer’s horse.

She rode out the way she came and, rumor says, back to Ladytown. Though no man ever laid eyes on her again to confirm or deny this rumor, if you ride out on a hot day through shadowless lands of high noon you’ll hear the laughter of the sheriff of Ladytown.