A Tired Old Cliche (Man with No Name Fiction)
He rode into the town, one of many along the dusty old trail.
His horse neighed as it smelled fresh water. He kept on riding till he spotted the familiar noise and odor of the saloon.
As he went in, the room fell quiet, all eyes on him. Calculating, watching, as his eyes took to the dim-lit room. Going to the barkeep he could feel the weight of their eyes on him, on his worn clothes, on his holsters and the iron he was packing.
He ordered ale and kept feeling them, as their eyes went back to what they were doing prior.
**
He bartered with the man keeping the livery stable. He did not comment on the blood on the floor, hid by fresh hay but its scent still hanging heavy in the air. It never did to comment on such.
Leaving the stable, he was confronted by two men, one of them he'd seen in the saloon, had seen his money. The other man was unknown to him, but he was dressed sharply. Sharply enough for a town such as this at least.
He spat on the ground, and looking at them from under the rim of his hat, he waited, knowing they'll state their business. Or they'd go away. Either was fine with him. He spat again.
"Hold it right there!" the sharply dressed man said.
"You stole from me, and I want my money back, or else you'd find yourself dead, par'dner", his drawl indicated he used the last word as an insult, or at least meant to.
As he watched this silently, people started pouring out of the saloon, and out of his office the sheriff has come out.
"What's this about Earl?"
The sharp man, Earl, looked quickly at the sheriff and back at him, "He was in my store and stole gear and food sheriff!"
The sheriff gave Earl and his friend a calculating look, and looked back at him, "Is that so?"
He looked from under his hat with cool blue eyes, and squinted at the sun, "Can't say it is."
**
A tumble-weed had blown across his path like a tired old cliche.
He looked at the wounded man kneeling in front of him, his gun not empty but not quite full in his hand, his other gun quite empty and holstered again.
"Get him, get him and kill him" the man told his dog.
He glanced at the dog, his eyes as cool as the lead he had put into the dog's owner.
The dog at least knew better, and didn't get any closer. He turned away.
**
He knew this was only the beginning. His job in this town, were he to take the one of cleaning it, was just beginning.
But he was too tired, there was always another town. The job never ended, and all he got for his trouble were more holes in his body, more holes in his soul.
He rode out of the town onto the trail, just one town like so many others.
Check out my latest posts:
art and flair courtesy of @PegasusPhysics
The image in this post is taken from The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.
© Guy Shalev 2007.
This post has been upvoted and resteemed. i also started following you to see more of your work
This is a great stat to something that can be spectacular. Do you plan to add to the writing? Are you just doing some practices in order to learn how to write with prompts? Any critiques you would like, I would love to provide feedback. You have a strong voice, and I want to see more.
Thank you for the kind words Bee!
This was written a decade ago. I actually have never written a piece of fiction longer than a couple of pages, but I'm starting to air again some of my older pieces, and then I'll consider going for short stories of "proper" lengths and maybe something longer. In a day or two a companion piece to this will be shared.
And we'll see where writing takes me. Like if you check my poetry, I actually hadn't written poetry in 9 years since coming back to it last December, so maybe there's hope for my fiction writing as well.
I'm a fan, and here to support!
Ha, I love the title, it set me up for this ride of a piece. Nice work on the subtext and driving it home.
Glad you liked it! It was very much your urging that more of my older writing should make it to Steemit that pushed this piece here. Now, I wonder, what do you consider the subtext of this piece? :)
Love this line @geekorner, it made me smile. Very atmospheric short story, I could smell the dust on their boots :-)
Thank you! Capturing the impression of the movies and stories was what I was going for :)
I wish my dog knew how to kill people. Nice one!
Do you? :( I mean, how would you find out? :P More seriously, it'd likely change a dog, being sicced on another human till they kill them.
And thank you!
Sometimes tired old cliches are given new life and almost go unnoticed as the cliches they once were. Gritty and real little western story. Could picture the scene as I read through it. Cool story.
Isn't that what we call retro? And if you know something is a cliche, and you do more than just say, "This is a cliche, isn't it cute?" It can indeed do things. Glad you liked it :)
Cliches have their place. Often it's the bin, but not always. So I'll go with retro, I like that.
Ah you definitely have the tone down lol. These are fun, interesting tidbits. It's strange seeing you write a western, but I like it. Interested to see where it goes :D
Since going for the tone was the purpose of these, I'm glad it worked! Also, I'm glad it was fun, I thought you needed something small and fun after all your trawling for anthology stuff :)
BTW, @marianne also commented it's strange seeing me write a western, how so?
For some reason, I didn't think that you are writing Westerns. Those old gunslingers - a tough life...
I wonder if I am writing westerns. Looking over this piece again, and especially the one I'll publish in a day or two, they're more like... impressionistic images of westerns, almost poetic prose so to speak.
And yeah, I like that sort of story.
Great read @geekorner, I could just imagine whistling going in over the stand off. Maybe just from an onlooker, though. Looking forward to reading the next part.
Thank you! Sorry I got to this comment so late.
Congratulations! This post has been upvoted from the communal account, @minnowsupport, by Thunder_God from the Minnow Support Project. It's a witness project run by aggroed, ausbitbank, teamsteem, theprophet0, someguy123, neoxian, followbtcnews, and netuoso. The goal is to help Steemit grow by supporting Minnows. Please find us at the Peace, Abundance, and Liberty Network (PALnet) Discord Channel. It's a completely public and open space to all members of the Steemit community who voluntarily choose to be there.
If you would like to delegate to the Minnow Support Project you can do so by clicking on the following links: 50SP, 100SP, 250SP, 500SP, 1000SP, 5000SP.
Be sure to leave at least 50SP undelegated on your account.
Pew was worried for the pooch, glad he did not get hurt.