Doug Donnan
Executive Editor/OMNI-GENRE+MAGAZINE!
(OM-GEN+)
donnan.doug@yahoo.com
"Cougar
County"
('La
Ciudad del Puma')
by
Doug Donnan
[:Welcome to Las Pimienta,New Mexico:]
They rode up, seemingly, out
of nowhere. There was no gallop or gait left
in
either of the two rider's weary horses. It was in fact the end of a long,
arduous,
drag-ass day of untangling and mending mile upon lonely mile of
sporadically
sprung and rusted barbed wire fencing. They sat there atop their
done
in mounts, bent low with bare forearms crossed over their saddle's worn,
hard
leather pommels. The cowboys stared down at the whitewashed, slapdash
wooden
sign as if it might just be the pearly front gate plaque to heaven itself.
The
sign announced, albeit rather pathetically without question, that this was,
indeed,
a town
or pueblo of some sort. Food, beds or cots, chairs to sit in with blistered,
barking
feet aloft, whiskey and, just perhaps, even a few painted 'chupitas de la
noche'
with
both revealing character and cleavage.
However, eventually, as the tired twosome
slowly sauntered in...
"Man, oh man Carlito," Rollins
sighed as he yanked away his weathered and time
worn
ten gallon black Stetson hat. "This little piss-ant town looks to be damn
near
abandoned.
Hell-fire, this place is so dang small a sharecropper could roll his rickety
ass
buckboard
right on up in here pretty as you please and both of his floppy-eared pullin'
ponies
would already be half outa town fer Christ's sake! Comprende?"
"Si amigo," his sidekick Carlos
replied as he tried to negotiate his snorting, skittish
Appaloosa
up to the lone stake and rotting pinyon wood water trough.
"Mira
aqui... lookey here!" he chortled as he swung-to in a cautious attempt
to dismount
his
recalcitrant spotty rumped indian pony. "The horse water box is only just
the size of a
Winchester
rifle crate."
The oppressive all-day fiery circle of sun
had mercifully chosen to succumb and
submerge
behind the not too distant, jagged peaks and pinnacles of the majestic
Sierra
Blanca Mountain range that proudly guarded the expansive western horizon. In
the
foreground
a family of rambling sagebrush addorned tumbleweeds silently bounced right
along
down 'Mainstreet' just behind the two range weary cowboys. It was as if they
might be
hurrying
along to obey some peculiar twilight curfew or attend a sundown townhall
meeting.
"I wonder where in hell everybody's
at?" Rollins almost whispered as he gingerly
dismounted
his wild-eyed temperamental, golden Palomino. He smacked him a hard
handfull
right
atop his rearing haunches and then peered all around and about the now
moon-measured
ghost
town. "Kinda eerie. Sure as shootin' sumthin's up. These damn ponies of
ourn' are onto
whatever
it is that's fer sure. They're both graveyard spooked."
"Si amigo," from the
apprehensive, eye-rolling Mexican vacquero, "I wonder where...
anybody
is?"
"Aw hell," Rollins blew out in
exasperation. "That looks to be the makins of some kinda
saloon
or waterin' hole across the way over there," he pointed. "Don't see
no light or sign of
life
though. Come on Carlito let's just see if these cut n' run rabbits left behind
any whiskey
for
two saddle worn sidewinders the likes of us huh?"
"Si otra vez mi amigo," Carlos
replied anew as he drew a sweaty, sunbaked forearm across
his
stubbly, whisker-centered mouth, "Por que no?"
The two cowboys affixed their pony's
leather leads and reins to a spindly, jutting boardwalk
post
and then, vigilanty, crossed the road.
*
* *
They were fortunate enough to find two
unlit but fully fueled and functional kerosene
rope-wick
storm lanterns hanging on pegs just shy of the swinging doors to the tavern.
Rollins
fished
around in his tobacco sack for stick matches. He lit the the tiny tongues of
the stubby
wicks
and dialed up the amber glow. He handed one to Carlos and they pushed inside
like they
owned
the place. Almost everything was merely a matter of serendipitous luck
(be it good or
otherwise!)
from there on in.
[:STAY WHERE YOU ARE...LEAVE ALL GUNS AT THE BAR!:]
"This is like pickin' golden
apples," Rollins declared as he unbuckled his sagging belt with its
six-shooter
and shells and placed the whole coiled affair just atop Carlos' Colt repeater
and hand-
tooled
leather gear at the front corner of the long plank and post bar. "I didn't know you could
read English
too Carlito," he said with a chuckle.
"Si amigo. I unbuckled first off. I
figure it is much better to be safe than sorry. Especially if
you
are a stranger in a strange town?"
"Right you are my friend,"
Rollins replied as he stepped behind the bar to pick out a bottle
or
two. "Even if the dealer has left the table, it's always best, and safest,
to play by the house rules."
"Es verdad amigo," from Carlos
as he checked behind a tattered red curtain off in the back.
Carlos
shook his head in bewilderment as he let loose the curious curtain to
emptiness. "Loco...
nobody
aqui amigo! Just plain loco. There's just nobody anywhere in this whole
damn--"
"Ssh, what the hell was that?"
Rollins broke in with popping, lantern lit owl eyes.
"Que? What was what?"
"I dunno. I thought I heard
somethin'... like the scurrying of quick, scratchy steps up above us
on the
roof somewheres," he whispered back with a whisky bottleneck and thumbs up
gesture.
"Mice probly. Maybe some damn saloon
rats runnin' around up there. Sneaky little bastards is
all
they are, specially at nightfall. Never mind them. What kind of hootch did you
scare up for us?
Any
tequila?"
He drifted in closer to the soft voice of
the cock-sure Carlos. The apprehensive Rollins held his
lantern
out in front of himself like a man that's lost in a cave or deep mine of some
sort. "Yeh, just
mice
probly." He held aloft the two bottles by their glass necks. "Order
Up!" he laughed slightly.
"Muy Bien!" from Carlos.
"C'mon amigo, I got us a big ol' round green felt table back off in the
corner
of this sad cantina. Vamonos!"
* *
*
[:Much
Later That Same Night:]
It would be misleading to say that it was
quiet now. In fact, if the old mahogany wood and
smoke-stained,
etched glass clock behind the patronless bar had been wound and working, its
incessant
pendulum's tik-tik-tik swing of time passing away would have been the only sound
inside
the
now silver mirrored, midnight dark and desolate cantina.
Then...
"Oye,...Rollie!," Carlos called out as he jolted straight up
awake and alarmed in his tilt-back
captain's
chair. "Ahora...I heard it... them and it ain't got nada to do with
no mice or bar rats."
"Say, what's that Carlito?"
Rollins popped up from his head-on-folded-arms at the circular table
in the
saloon's dark shadows and surrounding eerie silhouettes."Que
pasa?"
At first the sounds of the curiously
patient pawing strides came from just outside along the
creaking,
moonlight washed boardwalk, seemingly not in any kind of cadence or hurry, but
measured,
perhaps
calculated might be a more apt description of those midnight movements.
"Esto no es bueno amigo," Carlos
all but gasped as he gingerly reached out for the wire handle
of his
fading oil lantern.
"I... hear ya... Carlos," from
his now fully frightened friend. "Shit... our guns... they're way over
there, where we left 'em, up on the Goddam
bar!"
Now the padding paws and claws
tickitty-tik-tickitty-tik movements were multiplying, by the
second,
all around and about the defenseless duo as they sat there helplessly. Outside,
inside, just
there
now, looming and panting breathing, table high, glowing, diamond shaped, amber
eyes...
everywhere
now, dozens upon dozens of them. They were beyond just some family or pack.
They
were a feral prowling, purposeful, very ravenous four-legged army.
"What in the hell do they want?"
Rollins cried out in disbelief at their hopeless situation.
Carlos sagged back into the sturdy,
indifferent arms of his poker-table chair. He whipped a
woeful
sign of the cross just atop his slowly shaking forehead...
"Us!"
[:THE
END:]
