The Last Cowboy

The forest was wild and untamed, and the silence of the children, who hide amongst them, hung in the air as they waited.

A sound came, the crack of a branch, the rustle of leaves as someone took flight from the underbrush.

Thunderous footsteps filled the woods. A whoop and a call followed after Ray as he dashed through the forest. He ran barefoot through the grass and shrubs; although he knew all cowboys had boots, he didn’t need any.

Ray clung to the white Lone Ranger hat, his hand on the pearl handle cap gun. They were a gift, his very first gift, the only one that mattered.

A wooden arrow flew by his head, and he dove for cover. The fallen tree was perfect; its large pine-needle branches surrounded him. Ray pulled the guns from their hostler and fired at the three boys following him.

The acrid scent of the cap gun smoke stung his nose.

He was the last cowboy, surrounded. Did the others even catch a single Indian?

A call came from the other side of the tree.

“You’re surrounded, Ray! We got you!”

“No, you haven’t!” He called back and shot two more rounds.

A figure jumped out from behind the tree at Ray’s back, his bow drawn and ready, and a slow smirk pulled at his lips.

“Ya. We have.”

The two others came from the front, one with a wooden knife, the other with a bow.

He lost. Ray holstered his gun and lifted his hands into the air.

“Alright, you got me.”

The boys laughed. “Yer nothin’ but a dirty cowboy! We won!”

They pulled him forward, pushed him against a tree, and tied him up.

“What we gonna do with him?”

“Well, he’s the last. I guess we gotta burn him up.”

“Wait, you can’t do that!”

The eldest dropped to his knees and took out a pack of matches. The boys laughed and chanted, their voices rising to frighten the crows nestled high in the branches.

Ray kicked out as his cousin lit the match, setting the flame to his pants. It only warmed him at first, but as the fire took hold, it ate through the fabric and crawled along his skin.

He howled as the heat seared his calf and shook his leg like a rabid dog, but the action only caused the fire to spread quicker.

The children’s laughter withered in their throats and became a frantic call to put it out.

A crash came from the forest, and Ray’s father burst from the bush. He towered over them, imposing and furious. He smothered the fire with his shirt and pulled the ropes free.

The boys cowered, the silence of the elder bore down on them, and they followed him out of the forest without question as he carried Ray, with long quick strides, out of the woods and placed in him the car.

Ray stared out the window on the drive to the hospital, his hands clenching and unclenching. The time crept by, second after second, each longer than the last.

He needed a skin graft taken from his upper thigh, and he spent months in the hospital with a horrible nurse who insisted that he eat vegetables he had never seen before. Were they vegetables at all? Unlikely.

He read Gunsmoke, the first and only book he would ever read in his lifetime.

And then, two months later, he returned and rejoined the battle, ready with his two shooters. He didn’t hold a grudge because he knew the rules of the game; they took no prisoners.

The forest of Newfoundland may be wild, but the children are wilder still.

And my dad survived their trials.

He’s seventy-four and has jumped icebergs, tamed wild horses, fallen down mountains, and has been set on fire (more than once, if you can believe it).

And through it all, he is still a cowboy at heart.