A man called: Death.(Kevin Hughes) He didn’t say much. Dead men rarely do. He just laid there in the dust.
Sprawled. Bereft of life. A small hole was enough to empty his whole life.
A beetle of some type crawled through the blood mud created by the left over stain of life.
Looking down on him, was the man who shot him. He didn’t speak either.
Instead, he shrugged.

The towns people cowered when the man turned to look at them.
He wasn’t the kind of man you stared at, in open admiration.
Nor did you look at him with estimation. If you did, you died.
He wasn’t given to small talk. To small thoughts not his own.
He gave you the courtesy of minding your own business, and expected the same in return.

Once, as two rowdy drunks tried their best to engage him in a fight, he ignored them.
Not just ignored them, but dismissed them. It was the silent treatment with teeth.
They became less than nothing to him, and soon after, to themselves. They left to find other sport.
In the morning, when told what they said, and to whom, they both sobered up…for life.

Another duo was not so lucky. They weren’t drunk. They were looking for trouble.
He knew it the moment they started to open their mouths at the bar. They knew it the moment they spotted him.
In that saloon, guns were not allowed to be worn. It is the only reason those two "would be” trouble makers, are still alive. If you can call what was left of them - living.
Oh sure, they can’t make much trouble anymore. Since the beating he gave them left one of them with a broken spine, shattered jaw, and the loss of his left eye.
The other one fared a little better. He was battered so much in the head, that only childhood memories remained, but not any that allowed him to feed himself, or bathe, or do something difficult, like talk, add, or think. He just sat in a chair most days, until a kind person wiped his drool for him.
Fists, for the man who gave them that beating, were just guns made of flesh.

He had killed more than fifty men in fair fights. Another thirty in dirty fights, and four from ambush. Not his, theirs.
He kept moving from town to town. Looking for a place to just be. It took him half his life. He was 24 when he found her.
When he found her, he found a place to be. In the 12 years it took him to find her…he had killed 84 men. He had earned a nickname: Death.
Since he found her, he had only killed one man. The man called Death... died the day he found her.

Wherever souls gather, 84 of them must have wished that he had found her sooner.
She never met the man called: Death. He never let her. As far as she ever knew; his name was Benjamin.
Big Ben she called him, so did the folks in town. He never carried a gun, never got in a fight, and was respected by all for his wisdom and restraint.
In a blanket roll, inside a box, in the back of the barn, a well oiled, well used, well kept gun sat waiting.
No one knows when Death will come again.

by Kevin Hughes

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