Dust settled on the window sill of the farmhouse. Standing on the porch, gazing out into the vast arid plains, Janna turned her head to cast a stoney expression to her side. She took three steps towards the sill, ran her finger along its edge, and studied the gray and yellow hue on her slender finger.

"Dad?" She called.

"Sweetheart?" came the reply from within the house.

"When's the next rain coming?"

Her father lumbered out to the threshold. He was a short, stocky man of middle age, his hair was graying in several patches and his face was worn from years of labor.

"Well, usually we get a rainstorm in no time after the summer dusts," he assured her.

"But it's been five days already, do you really think you should still be planting to get ready? You could be wasting a lot of seed..."

"Jan, don't worry, nature won't break tradition come a little dust."

His voice was suddenly gravelly and wise; this was an anecdote he'd been told by his father, and his father before him.

"Then at least let me help you plant!" she petitioned, her voice raising.

"No can do, that's another tradition we won't break," he said with a good-hearted chuckle. It was a cultural tradition of their people that women not to work so as to be able to devote all of their time to study, a practice which endlessly tortured Janna while she watched her father toil over the fields.

"Hey," he said with a sudden excitement, "you know what you can help me with?"

"Huh? What?" Janna perked up, suddenly invigorated.

"I gotta go into town to pick up some new horseshoes, wanna come with me?"

Her features drooped again. "Sure," she sighed.

"Sounds great, glad you're excited," he shot back, with a trace of sarcasm.

He returned into the cool shade of the house to retrieve his things, the floorboards creaking and screeching with every step.

Janna turned back to the wild plains, at the dead remains of the tree near their house. She gazed down at her faded maroon dress, and sighed deeply, closing her eyes.

---

Heavy boots tromped across the dried cells of the earth, a black silhouette clashed against the overbearing sunlight of the desert. A young man of average build and height, clad in a black flowing jacket and a hat with a pointed brim. A single blond streak gilded the side of his dark hair. At his waist was slung a pistol, at the other a canteen. His breathing heavy, his brow drenched in sweat, he reached for the canteen, bringing it up to his face to unscrew the cap and tip it back.

Nothing but dust.

"God...damn it."

He lazily dropped it to his side again, where it knocked against two other canteens.

"How long have I been here?" he mumbled to nobody in particular.

"Long enough to run through three canteens of water," he replied.

"But that's because I'm a big drinker..." he countered.

"Still, your fault for going out into the desert in all black in the first place," he retorted.

"Fine, God, you win," he relented.

Suddenly, he stopped dead in his tracks and threw his gaze up to the sky.

"What the hell am I doing?!" he beseeched the world.

Suddenly, from the corner of his eye, he spotted a white bird swooping through the sky.

"A Petrichor?"

No doubt about it, he could pick it out by its white wings tipped with gray, along with its peculiarly shaped beak. Petrichors were well known in the region for being flashy alpha predators of the sky, always nesting near water sources. In the South Western Military Corps they were a folkloric symbol of hope for wandering units with dwindling water supplies.

His pace picked up as he followed the fowl in what must have been the direction of its nest. Thirst, hunger, exhaustion, self-loathing, all fell away as his eyes fixated on the way to relief.

---

"H-how many pairs of horseshoes do we n-need?" Janna's voice struggled, carrying the weight of several stacks of iron.

"You know how many horses we have, don't you?" Her father replied, carrying nothing but the bill for the transaction.

"No! I don't actually, because you don't let me work!"

He held in a smirk. "I thought you might at least care to notice."

"Sorry I'm so busy studying, father!" she spat back. Huffing in defeat, she went on to bargain. "Can you at least carry half?"

"I thought you wanted to work, dear daughter?" he replied, enjoying her cool ire.

A stray stone caught her shoe where she couldn't see. Iron horseshoes spilled out from her arms, landing all around her as she hit the dirt street.

"There, there, now..." Her father said with a sudden softness, helping her to her knees. "I'll carry half."

In a small, embarrassed voice, she said "Thank you," before dusting her dress off.

"I know you want to work with me, but work is hard, this is what I do all day, dear, and splitting it halfway with someone isn't worth what you'd have to give up," her father said in a voice that could only be used from father to daughter.

Stolen novel; please report.

To their right sat the town saloon, a two-storied building made of sturdy hickory wood. Over the years, several pieces of its exterior more prone to damage had been replaced with wood which was not hickory; one such commonly broken fixture were the swinging doors of the establishment. As if fate held a vendetta against those doors, a great noise resounded from the inside, as if space itself had cracked open, and gunshots blasted through the potpourri of woods.

Janna shrieked as her father covered her, grabbing her shoulder and shielding her from the action.

"Where the hell is it, old man?!" A hoarse, ugly voice screamed from within.

From the now smoldering doors stepped out a man robed in a gray vest and black undershirt, two slings of bullets criss-crossed his chest. His greasy black hair matted against a browned complexion; his eyes looked about wildly as he looked for an answer to his question. His glare settled upon Janna and her father, cowering on the street.

"You two!" he barked, approaching.

"Please sir, I'll give you any money I have, you can have these horseshoes if you-"

"Shut up!" he growled, waving his pistol at them. "I'm looking for the Spring!"

"S-spring?" the older man asked cautiously.

"Yeah, of course!"

"I don't know of any-"

"Then why are you still here?!"

A heartbeat of silence passed by like flowing molasses; they could hear the winds picking up a few miles away.

"B-because you're pointing a gun at me..."

"No, I meant on this Earth!" the gunman howled, pulling the hammer back on his weapon. Janna burst into tears, trembling beneath her father's frame.

Suddenly, a voice cut through the terror, that of a young man: "Hey, what's this about a Spring? I'm thirsty as hell right now, if you don't mind!" It was asked like an honest question, with the warbling delivery one might have when asking for directions to the bathroom.

The wicked gunman snapped his attention to the source of the disturbance. Approaching from the west end of town was the neurotic, black-clad wanderer.

"Hey! Who're you?!" the villain yelled.

"I told you, I'm thirsty!" was the reply, not a worry in the world.

Within moments of the words escaping his lips, he was aware of his mistake. Faster than the eye could see, finger grasped trigger and a bullet came whizzing from the barrel straight towards this newfound font of annoyance.

"Yuh-ho!!" the man in black cried, the bullet narrowly missing him.

The man in gray cocked his head in surprise. "What? How did you dodge that?!"

"Well, you missed!"

"No, I can't miss!" the man in gray launched another two rounds at him, and watched as both subsequently flew past their target to land somewhere in the dirt many yards away.

The man in black, as if the speed of lightning, unholstered his own firearm and let off a speeding pellet his assailant's path. With a meaty THWACK, the bullet lodged itself in his shoulder.

"Agh!!" He cried. His voice lowered to a rasp, "I'll give you that, you're a good shot," he said, clutching the wound, blood running down his arm.

"You yell a lot for having that aim," the man in black remarked. "As for that, I could have done that any time," he pointed to the wound. "I just wanted to try this out," he added, turning his right hand to reveal a thinly outlined symbol of four arrows enclosed in a diamond shape, intersecting at a small circle in its center.

"Hunh," the gray-vested man muttered to himself, sizing up his opponent. In a town like this, if the saloon owner didn't own a gun, it was unlikely that anyone did, so he wasn't worried about taking his time at the moment. "Do you have a name?"

"Depends, are you planning on killing me?" the man in black replied.

"Of course I am! Stop messing around!"

"Then my name's Gallow!"

The man in gray squinted an eye, as if to ask "Are you serious?"

"Gallow? That's an odd name for someone who isn't looking to die."

A smirk crossed Gallow's face before he suddenly leaped to the side, firing two shots in his enemy's direction several meters away. Already in motion, the man in gray returned the offensive and sent a bullet for his spry opponent.

"If that's who you are, then you should know that I'm Malvado, the Wicked Gunman of Cactina!" he proclaimed loudly.

"I guess your story doesn't travel very far," Gallow chortled from behind the cover of the General Store porch's beam; Malvado couldn't see it, but he had a devilish grin taunting him.

"Go to hell!"

A flurry of gunfire filled the air, punching holes into the sides of the local businesses. From around the corner, Janna and her father huddled at the ground, trying not to become collateral damage.

"I'm telling you, Malvado, was it? The more you yell, the worse your aim!" Gallow shouted as another shot passed right above his head.

"And I told you, Hanging Boy, I can't miss!" Malvado borught his arm up and shot true.

"What-" was all Gallow could manage to say or think before the rope holding the General Store's hanging sign snapped, grazed by Malvado's bullet. The thick hunk of wood swung down, slamming into him for a full-body hit. Gallow was knocked to the ground, the wind beaten straight out of him.

Malvado cocked his gun one last time to take aim at his target.

"Damn it," flashed Gallow's mind, the gears of survival churning. "DAMN IT!"

A flicker of uncanny rage lit in the downed gunslinger's eyes, and with one movement, faster than lightning, he fired from the ground without aiming. The bullet drifted from his gun with the grace of the Petrichor that had led him there; he watched it rage and shimmer in the air for the split-second before it planted itself right in Malvado's right tricep.

"Gagh!!" he gasped, a cry cut short by pain. The Wicked Gunman's arm fell limp, and his gun hung lazily at his side, knocking against its holster.

"What- agh!- What did you-" he screamed, clutching his arm and snapping his head around wildly, unable to focus on anything.

Gallow coughed up a speck of blood, but his eyes shone with the brutal elation that only comes from the infliction of pain.

"My arm can't- you!" Malvado's words clung desperately to his world. His eyes darted about frantically, finding a horse in the direction Gallow had approached from. In an instant, he was up and running, rushing for the stallion. In no position to pursue him, Gallow as content to watch him flee.

"Viento, go!" he commanded, hopping onto the back of his mare. With the rushing of hooves against dry earth, Malvado departed.

Townspeople slowly edged out from their places of hiding. First to approach was the saloon's owner, an elderly man with thick-rimmed glasses and a hunch in his back.

"Son, was that you?" he inquired with the remarkable calm that comes from his profession.

Gallow took a second to answer. "I guess it was," he said, without a trace of sarcasm

"Thank you, thank you, thank you," the owner's voice quaked from the bottom of his heart.

A half-hearted smile grew on Gallow's face, as if he were uncomforatble being thanked. "It's alright, I only shot because he shot first." 

"Well, good thing you were the one he shot at!" The owner laughed, evidently with little concern for his life.

A little pitter-patter of steps rushed from around the corner, and the two of them turned their attention to Janna, jogging with her skirt picked up so as not to cover it in even more dust.

She started talking before either of them had a chance to greet her. "Sir? Hello, I'm Janna, thank you so much, really, thank you so much-"

"Yeah, yeah, ok I get it, you're welcome." Gallow attempted to rise from the ground and get away from the situation, but a sudden rush of pain elicited a high cry from him, laying him back down to the salloon's front steps, which he never would have guessed were actually more comfortable than standing.

"Are you ok, son?" the owner knelt down, bringing his hand forward without touching him, wanting to help but afraid of orsening the situation.

"Where does it hurt?" Janna asked first.

Gallow took a shallow breath. "The chest, around my ribs."

"Oh dear..." Janna mumbled. "You might have cracked a few of them, or broken them at worst."

Gallow's teeth grit in alarm.

"Oh, don't worry," Janna put on a smile of bedside manner. "I'm sure nothing's wrong, just get some rest first. Dr. Love will have a look at you in no time."

The salloon's owner looked past the doors, now in need of repairs yet again. "Well, if you need to rest, I've got a room open for you, young man, we can carry you in."

"Uh, let me- AGH," another cry of pain rang out from Gallow as he tried to sit up. "Just let me- ee-ah!"

"You should just lay down now, sir, we'll take care of it for you," Janna assured him, clasping her hands together.

"No, it's just that..." Gallow struggled to find the right words. "I was beginning to see up your skirt."

Janna's eyes widened. She looked down at her clothing to see that her skirt was torn from the bottom, enough that even her calves were visible.

"Ah- ah- I didn't mean to--" she stammered, blushing and pulling the ripped fabric closed.

"Don't worry about it," Gallow played it off with a laugh that immediately sent him choking on pain once again. "Okay, yeah, you guys could just carry me."