Cougar County

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:]