"THE DEVIL'S KIND"

a small western...for the violent type.

The soil of Black Canary was red long before the war, long before guns and gold twisted men into monsters. Jacob Marek knew that. He’d bled into it with his own hands, building a farm, burying his past in the roots of wheat and bone.

….but the past didn’t stay buried.

They came at dawn…five shadows on horseback: the Gallow Boys. He knew them before they even dismounted. Dorian Pike, their leader, still wore the same blood-slick duster. Luther, towering and cruel. Briggs with his eye-patch and twitchy trigger hand. The two others were new, young and hungry.

They torched the barn first.

Jacob ran toward the smoke, heart hammering…but in the end just…too slow.

They had Clara by the porch. She screamed as Briggs hauled her behind the house her feet kicking desperately… knowing the cruel fate in store... Eliza, their daughter, was nowhere in sight.

Dorian met Jacob’s eyes and smiled.

“You turned soft, Marek. Thought you could vanish into dirt and daylight?”

Jacob reached for his rifle leaning on the fence. Luther shattered his forearm with the butt of a revolver before he could lift it.

“You ain’t welcome in peace, Jacob,” Dorian whispered. “You belong in the blood.”

They left him there, broken, burning, choking on ash and loss.

Clara her body brutalized and cut to many times to count…was dead by the time he crawled to her……Eliza was gone.

Three nights passed.

Jacob stood, arm in a makeshift sling, eyes hollowed by grief and rage. The farm was gone. The man he’d become…. ash.

He found his old gear under the floorboards of the root cellar: a rusted six-shooter, a bone-handled knife, and the old black hat he hadn’t worn since Coldwater Ridge.

He rode north. The trail they left was sloppy, bloody. Dorian never cared who saw the damage…men strung from trees, women well they got much worse…. kids usually left sobbing in the wake…. unless they were old enough to remember a face… then well ….

Jacob followed like a ghost.

He found Briggs first, half-drunk in a mining town saloon.

The door slammed open. Faces scattered. Jacob stood framed in dust and moonlight.

Briggs went for his hip.

…too slow….

Jacob’s shot took his right hand clean off. Briggs dropped screaming.

Jacob walked in silence, stepped on the stump, forced the gun barrel into Briggs’ mouth….brought back the hammer …..

“CLIIICCCKKKKKK……”

“Where’s my daughter?”

“I….I don’t…….KNN….!”

The trigger clicked.

“BLAMMMMMMM”

The back of Briggs' skull painted the bar.

Next came the young ones. Jacob caught them sleeping in a canyon outcrop, bedrolls near cold coals. No words. Just the cold steel slip of a knife through the soft temple….n then a hard slice across a throat…Clean, efficient. Like a man trimming the fat…

Luther? Well now that was a bit, shall we say…. different.

He was in a town called Bleakridge. Thought he was safe among whores and cowards.

Jacob didn’t knock. He kicked in the brothel door. Luther stood from his chair, a woman screaming behind him.

Jacob ducked under a wild swing and buried his knife under Luther’s ribs, twisted hard, pulled it free, n then slammed it into the big man’s throat….clear through the back…

Blood sprayed across the velvet curtains.

Luther gurgled, eyes wide with the knowledge he’d never see sunrise.

Dorian was waiting.

A burned-out church. Eliza tied to a pew, gagged, eyes swollen from crying, mouth dry from screaming, body broken…from well …. pure evil….

“ohhhhh the things Ima do to her, when I’m done gutting you,” Dorian said, candlelight dancing on his face.

Jacob didn’t speak. He walked into the center of the church.

Dorian drew first. Jacob rolled behind a pew…wood splintering behind him…

Bullets snapped through the chapel. Jacob dove, rolled, fired, n caught Dorian in the thigh. He screamed, dropped to one knee, but shot true grazing Jacob’s neck.

Jacob tackled him into the altar.

They grappled n Dorian pulling a knife, slashed wildly. Jacob caught his wrist, slammed it down and snapped it against the altar stone, then slowly applying steady pressure, jammed the broken bone into Dorian’s throat… one inch at a time…

The outlaw choked n gurgled bleeding out on the floor, eyes locked with the man he’d made.

Jacob cut Eliza free and helped her to her feet.

She reached for her daddy’s gun…and pulled back the hammer….

Raising the gun, she slowly let out a breath and fired a shot, right in between Dorian’s legs…. his body jerked, and he tried to scream around the blood pooling in his lungs…

…but he didn’t have time, as Eliza let a final shot go…. right into Dorian’s left eye.

Jacob, let her stand there in the moment as he lit a torch…

and set the church on fire.

As the wood crackled and splintered from the heat, two shadows could be seen saddlin up and heading due South….

….South where I hear the devil deals the cards…