Deal With The Devil

By Rick Hartford

There was a full moon and a man wearing a black duster and wide brim fedora threw monstrous shadows behind him as a pick thudded into the earth.

Sweating heavily, he removed the duster, throwing it to the side, His long barrel Colt revolver was holstered on his belt. Another weapon in a holster on his ankle. His belt buckle was a two shot .45 caliber derringer.

Jack Stark was the sheriff of Connelly Hill, once a rural place with cow farms, a slaughter house, a saloon and a funeral parlor.

Now in the aftermath of the discovery of gold in the hills that rimmed the town, Connelly Hill was overrun with men seeking fortune. Hard men. Desperate men. Grifters and preachers, whores and snake oil salesmen.

The place was one of bad luck and misfortune and it was rumored that many of the men sold their souls to the devil in order to get that one big strike. Some people even claimed to have met Satan in the saloon. Some others said that they had even had a drink with him.

Stark pulled into town one day on a black horse and declared himself the new sheriff. He called the real sheriff out onto the street and as a crowd looked on in silence he bullwhipped the sheriff's gun from his hand and then shot him in the back as he turned to pick the revolver up. The sheriff’s name was Sly Beaumont.

There was no court system in Connelly Hill. There was no judge, no jury. Only Stark to decide that a crime had been committed and then carry out a sentence.

Stark hand picked his deputies and gave them tin stars and sidearms. He picked tough men. Men who liked to inflict pain, loved to intimidate.

But none of them was on a par with Stark, tall and rangy, with a large black mustache and a thick scar running down his cheek to his neck, a reminder of the first and last time anyone had gotten the drop on him, Reports of his brutality followed him wherever he went.

There was another thing that followed Stark. His secret. He had killed almost every man who knew it. The man he was digging a grave for tonight was the last of them.

Sweat dropped from his brow into the ever deepening pit.

Stark was an exceptionally strong man. His breathing deep, his hands enjoying the shock of violating the earth as he swung down hard.

Stark rested for a moment, wiping the back of his hand across his brow and then lighting up a hand rolled cigarette.

He looked up and he saw it flying silently above. A barn owl. A harbinger of death. Stark could hear its mate screeching in the distance urging the male bird to kill.

“The wife wants her dinner,” he said as he watched the bird dive from the sky and strike like lightning on a creature on the ground. He couldn’t see what it was. The bird was gone in an instant, returning to his mate with a feast.

Ellie Mae Armstrong was Sly Beaumont’s lover as well as one of his deputies. She had left Connelly Hill on horseback as the leader of a party that sought out the killer Randy Stone.

Stone was a serial killer targeting young women of the night, strangling them and scalping them for his bizarre collection of wigs. He even wore them. Ellie Mae vowed she would get revenge for those women. Her party of deputies had tracked Stone to a place called Paradise Valley, an enclave of outlaws and murderers who had set up a a defense in the high rocks overlooking the only trail into the town.

There were 50 deputies riding to bring Stone to justice, and their assault on the town rivaled the famous Charge of the Light Brigade, with murderous villains by the dozens firing down on top of the deputies who raced through a hail of lead. Ellie Mae was one of those who made it through, engaging the Thugs of Paradise, as they were called, shooting with revolvers in each hand. When she ran out of ammo, she jumped from her horse and took guns off fallen villains, continuing on the battle until there was nobody left to kill.

Except one.

Randy Stone smiled, revealing rotting and crooked teeth as he walked slowly toward Ellie Mae, ready to draw down on her.

They both stopped about 12 feet from each other and pulled their weapons, firing simultaneously.

Stone clutched his gut and sat down hard, the blood seeping through his fingers onto his leather chaps.

“Prepare to die, maggot,” Ellie Mae said, raising her Colt.

“Would you like to hear a story first?” Stone croaked.

“It involves a secret a man has killed dozens to keep it hidden. I am the only one left who knows it.”

“You’re a liar” she said. But she handed Stone her canteen and watched as he drank.

“What I am about to tell you involves a man called Stark,” he said.

A few minutes later, Ellie Mae walked away from Stone’s body and called for help to truss it up on the back of a horse for the trip home.

Ellie Mae returned to town to find out that her lover had been killed by the man called Stark.

She rode out in search of his murderer, cold revenge in her heart.

It was early spring and the Cottonwoods were starting to blossom, turning the landscape into a soft green and yellow haze.

Ellie Mae would not let herself grieve, stoking the flames of anger as she rode alone across the plain.

The sun was still burning off the fog when Ellie Mae came to the plateau overlooking the valley. She took out her binoculars and scanned the landscape below.

There it was. A horse, tethered to a dead tree, eating some grass and occasionally thrashing its tail to keep the flies away.

There was no sign of Stark, although there was nowhere to hide. Ellie Mae noted the grave barely 25 feet from the horse.

Ellie Mae rode down to the gravesite. She looked down into the grave. Nobody home.

She turned to find Stark, his revolver in his hand, pointed at her chest.

“So you are Ellie Mae, Stark said. I guess that because of what happened you have come to kill me. Sorry to disappoint, but that’s not going to happen.”

Ellie Mae looked at Stark in the eyes. She slowly paced in a circle, keeping her hands on the handles of her revolvers until Stark’s back was turned toward the grave.

“Whose the grave for, Stark?

“I dug it for you, Ellie Mae.”

“No you didn't,” Ellie Mae said.

“I just killed the man who you dug this grave for. You see, after I tracked him down and gut shot him he said that he wanted to reveal your secret. He said that you made a deal with Satan that all the people who knew your secret would be killed in exchange for your soul for eternity."

Ellie Mae laughed and spit into the grave.

“But here’s the thing, Stark. You’ll appreciate this. I never let Stone tell me your secret. I killed him just before he was going to reveal it. So guess what? You are the only one left in possession of it. This is your grave Stark. Are you happy with it?”

The next moment two booms echoed across the plain. Ellie Mae had pulled both her guns and shot from the hip. Stark grabbed his chest and fell backward into the grave.

Ellie May came to the edge and looked down.

The deal Stark made with the devil had been a long time ago. There were only bones in the grave, the clothes rotted away with a rusty six gun clutched in a bony hand.

Stark was a dead man the moment he had made the deal.

He just didn’t know it.