A Detour

WHAM!

The bounty hunter’s punch felt like a steam locomotive derailing directly into Curran’s face. His vision flared town fair fireworks before going grainy and dark, and somewhere, dimly, he felt blood gush from his nose. He gasped, sucking droplets in along with a ragged lungful of musty afternoon air. His vision returned enough for him to see the son of a bitch in the middle of another swing, this one was aimed at his gut.

WHAM!

It hit like he imagined a cannon ball would at this range. He puked bile, and crumpled forward on his knees, his cuffed hands touching the ground as if in prayer. A voice spoke, somewhat in the distance.

“Just so you know, we coulda done this the easy way. This is on you, friend...”

Curran spat blood into the dirt.

“Go t-to hell, y-you...asshole!” he wheezed.

His words were stammered, so he tried to control himself by controlling his breathing, but found that was becoming increasingly difficult. Hurt like hell to boot. Hurt even more when the piece of shit bounty hunter lifted him off his knees by the handcuffs, cold steel yanking sharply at his wrists. His head swirled, and he waited for the sensation to pass, for the caliche that had warped into a turbulent ocean beneath his feet to solidify once more. He blinked, feeling the effort of such a simple function, and braced himself, as much as he could, for the oncoming blow.

WHAM!

It sent him sliding backwards in the dirt, and hurt as much as the first two - pain radiating from just above Curran’s jaw, to the left of his nose. He couldn’t feel much of anything else at the moment, but he swore he felt one of his teeth loosen some. Sonofabitch.

“Fuck...y-you, mister,” he almost whispered.

Through the one eye that wasn’t already beginning to swell over he saw the bastard bounty hunter crack his knuckles and then shuffle his shoulders, cocking them the way you’d cock a rifle. Smug son of a bitch. Blood began to run into Curran’s eye, and in the time it took him to blink it away, the devil threw his hands again.

WHAM!

This blow put Curran down on his ass, and despite that, the pain was slightly less intense this time round. Curran figured the shock of the first couple of hits were beginning to dull his senses. I swear to every god out there, mister, I will kill you first chance I get, he said to the man in his head. He pictured taking a knife and plunging it into the man’s guts, or slitting his throat. He pictured taking a pistol, and shoving the barrel down his throat, and firing the weapon til it went dry. He pictured strangling the life out of him with his bare hands. He grinned up at the bounty hunter’s silhouette, his vision hazy.

“Come...on...mother...fucker. That...it?” he moaned.

Curran braced for another hit, but it didn’t come. The shape of the bounty hunter stood still a moment, long enough to hear the passing crow calls in the distance. He heard the bounty hunter sigh, saw the man’s face come into focus as his shadow knelt down in from of him.

“You’re picturing everything you’d like to do to me right now, ain’t you?”

Curran would’ve spat blood and dust at the man if he could’ve, but gave him nothing instead. The man’s eyes bored into his own, and he felt a chill as they infiltrated him, but brushed it off.

“Yeah...this was what I was afraid of. You still got that fire in you. I know ain’t nobody wanna get hauled in to face the law when they done broke it, but I don’t have time for this kind of shit. I guess you still havin’ fire means I’m just goin’ to have to make some time...”

The bounty hunter’s face backed away, the shadow receded, and Curran braced himself for another hit that did not come. He pointed his good eye around in the direction the shadow had moved, and the whole world spun, the dizziness so intense he felt like puking. When things steadied, he found that the skin on his face burned from the flexing as well. He wouldn’t be doing that again soon, but could at least make out the shadow next to a larger, slowly shifting one, confirmed to be the horses when one of them - he couldn’t tell which - blew.

A chorus of sounds came from the silhouettes, a lot of rustling and shuffling, something that sounded like flapping leather, something else that Curran couldn’t place – could maybe have been cloth swiping over itself. Was the bastard going to hang him? Doubtful, he could’ve done that sooner. Could’ve shot Curran unawares back in town and just had a corpse to contend with.

A brief silence was followed by the sound of footsteps moving away, and then snapping and crunching. What was that, branches, twigs; perhaps? Maybe he was gonna burn Curran at the stake? Was he that bad a sport, after Curran’s hollering brough those two gunslingers riding directly on into their path? Curran’s train of thought was broken by the sound of the bounty hunter’s boots getting closer, and the shadow returned to loom over where he sat slumped.

For a few seconds, Curran felt the cuffs pinch his wrists even more than they had been, before a sudden rush of cool afternoon air kissed the skin that had been pressed under metal. He moved almost instinctively to rub at them, but the action was futile as he found himself being yanked to his feet, the bounty hunter digging a rough hand under his armpit, pulling him around. His feet slid and scraped for a couple of yards until the bounty hunter halted both of them, and shoved Curran upright. He felt something thin and hard at his back.

“Arms up,” Curran heard the bounty hunter say, dimly.

Fuck you, he answered the bounty hunter in his own head.

A barehanded slap to his already sore face made him jerk his elbows skyward without realising it.

The bounty hunter grabbed at his left wrist and yanked it higher, his grip so firm that Curran knew he’d have a tough time breaking from it should he deign to try. Now they were standing so close, it also dawned on Curran just how tall the bastard was. He heard a shuffle of metal-on-metal, and felt a painful pinch around both of his wrists. He moved to lower them, met resistance.

What?

His view beginning to clear some, Curran looked up at his hands, which were cuffed over a sturdy-looking bough of a Ponderosa pine. Several small, jagged stumps ran along it, which explained the snapping noises from earlier. It was only when he heard a shuffling that he realised the bounty hunter had disappeared from his field of vision. More shuffling from his feet had him dropping his gaze; the bastard was taking Curran’s boots off, a length of cloth in one hand. The asshole bound his ankles tightly, and then rose from his haunches, extending to his full height, and looking down on Curran.

“Okay. Since you keep being a pain in the ass, and since that fire in your belly don’t wanna be beat outta you, I need to try a different approach. You’re gonna hang here, and when that fire burns itself out, I’ll let you down. I’ll be back.”

The bastard began to walk off, stopping after a few steps to turn his head and glance at Curran over his shoulder.

“Don’t go nowhere!” he said.

The motherfucker laughed as he walked off.

Curran sighed. He slowly pointed his chin upward, so to anger his wounds as little as possible, and inspected the branch he was chained above. It was solid, and looked to be almost as thick as his thigh. Too sturdy to break, not that he could get his ankles up around it in his condition, nor with them also being bound. He slowly lowered his gaze, again being cautious of his injuries, and took in his surroundings. No sign of the bounty hunter or either of the horses, not much of anything at all in every direction that he could see in the early evening light. He sighed again.

His thoughts turned to the past couple of months of life on the run. Of the first few weeks of riding as fast as he could, damn near crippling Daisy on a handful of occasions. Of the weeks spent enduring all the extreme that mother nature could hurl at him, from freezing cold nights to scorching hot days. Of the jerky and stale biscuits he’d traded other travellers for, to that first saloon-bought meal he had in Fort Hall. But ultimately, he thoughts turned to Jenny.

He didn’t regret anything, save maybe for having to leave her in Helena - not that he could have brought her, it just stung to be without her. He could picture her deep brown mysterious eyes, her creamy porcelain skin, her smile that made him want to melt, her laugh, oh dear lord her laugh. The thought of her would get him through whatever it was this piece of shit bounty hunter had in store for him. And when this punishment or whatever it was was over, he’d just wait until the bounty hunter got careless. One little slip, one sorry mistake, and he’d be free to have his justice on the man. He grinned to himself, as in the distance, a dog or wolf or coyote or something howled to the clouds, and the sun disappeared behind the horizon.

-----

SLAP!

Curran was roused from a dreamless sleep he didn’t realise he’d fallen into by the bounty hunter back-handing him.

“Morning...sleep well?”

It took a moment for Curran to realise who was talking, where he was, why his shoulders ached.

“Whuh...”

WHAM!

Curran didn’t get more than one word out before the son of a bitch bounty hunter had cocked him square in the jaw. Spiking hot pain spread out from the spot on his mouth where the bastard had hit him, and he involuntarily spat blood, as well as something chunkier than blood. He looked down, saw what could only have been the tooth the bounty hunter had loosened yesterday lying in a small puddle of blood on the dirt.

“Ooh, sorry about that!” the bastard said.

“Go fuck yourself!”

“Is that any way to talk to the one person responsible for giving you food and water, for helping you perform simple tasks like go to the bathroom while you’re bailed up like this?” he asked.

Wait.

Wait a minute.

What did he just say?

Curran got a mental image, and couldn’t help himself. He began to chuckle, which turned into a snicker, which blossomed into a full-blown cackle. He couldn’t see the bounty hunter’s reaction at first, he was too busy laughing. When he finally regained some of his composure, he allowed himself a peek at the bastard, and sure enough he wore a puzzled look.

“You got an odd sense of humour I don’t know about, Curran?” he asked.

Through chuckles, Curran replied.

“You’re gonna help me go to the toilet?” he asked the bounty hunter.

“Well I sure as shit ain’t letting you down from there to go by yourself...”

Curran chuckled deeply.

“Well then I hope you enjoy holding my pecker, and tenderly wiping my ass!”

He lost it, cackling at once more picturing the stern giant prick of a bounty hunter treating Curran like his precious first-born son, wiping his behind. When the laughter had run its course, he looked at the bounty hunter again. The son of a bitch cocked his head to one side, smirking.

Wait, what?

He cracked his knuckles, and laid a succession of powerful blows into Curran’s sides, likely aiming for his kidneys, but Curran was in too much pain to speculate with any kind of accuracy. All he knew is it felt like something on his insides had burst open. Motherfucker, that hurt! The movement jarred his shoulders and arms as well, which up until that point, he hadn’t realised had gone numb. Fresh pain rippled up the lengths of his arms, like ten thousand skinny cactus spines pricking into the skin there.

“Maybe I’ll enjoy watching your piss change colour...” Curran heard the bounty hunter chuckle to himself as he tried to breathe through the pain.

“I’ll piss on you...” was all Curran could manage to get out.

The bounty hunter shook his head, grinning and tutting.

“Hang in there, Curran. I’ll see you later this afternoon,” he said, slowly walking off. Curran stared daggers into the bounty hunter’s back until he vanished from the captive man’s line-of-sight.

I’ll get him, Curran told himself, I will get him. Best I can hope for is using the chain of the cuffs to choke him out, maybe when we get back on the horses and he moves to tie me to the saddle horn again. I’ll choke the life right out of the bastard, and piss on his corpse. He can leave me as long as he likes, ain’t nothing gonna change, I’ll just be more pissed off, more committed to killing the bastard soon as I can.

Curran sighed as the bounty hunter’s footsteps faded into the distance. As his eyes adjusted to the early morning bright, he took in his surroundings. Nothing but dirt, some dry and wispy beardgrass, and rocks of all shapes and sizes nearby. Was the same stretching of into the distance, and far on the horizon he could just make out a mountain range. Well, shit, not even anything interesting to look at. He closed his eyes, taking relief from the glare, and did his best to picture Jenny in his mind.