Light footed adventurer who is going to take this villain down with the ultimate power - the power of dance.
Yea, there's a hoot and a hollar planned tonight and I'm startin' early. Pour me some of that Whiskey kid, I need strong stuff 'cause I got a thing wrong with me about music. Lemmy tell you about the man in that photograph right there next to the Chimney, and listen up good 'cause I ain't gonna repeat myself. At the time that photograph was taken, Ol' Sheriff Thomas Reynolds is 48 years young, blind in his left eye, deaf in his right ear, missing two fingers on his left hand (pinkie and ring), and the best goddamn gun in our little bounty-hunting posse. We was headed out of Tombstone, north along an Apache raidin' trail, there was five of us and to be quite honest none of the book learnin' I'd done about sewing gashes and bandaging wounds back east could have prepared me for the kind of madness I was about to witness just a few days ahead of Good Friday. March n' April was cold that year, it snowed on Easter and sometimes I think that was just God fuckin' with us all after we'd danced with the devil. You might need to pour me another drink, or three, I'll need 'em once I'm done tellin' you about that man who put down the infamous bandit Red Buckeye with a single shot.
We'd slowed down on a pass west of Phoenix, on the way to Yuma 'cause the word at a nearby waterin' hole suggested Red Buckeye and his gang had moved that way. There was a passway that those Pinkerton boys ran stagecoaches through, and by the time we got there it had become awfully crowded. Of course, it wasn't just us following Red Buckeye and company, $5,000 dollars is a lot of money, that kinda cash that can change your life. Even split five ways like the plan was, we'd all be kicking easy in the saloon for months, maybe think to buy some land before it all turns into whiskey. Trouble was plenty of other people was after Red Buckeye and the gang he kept, and their corpses was strung up 'round the little hole in the ground we'd stopped at. We'd half expected to see the bandit's guns pop out of the bushes, but instead it was just a bunch of picked apart dead bodies left as a warning to anyone who was after that money. We counted heads and tried to find any identifiers on 'em, most of 'em was a bunch of boys no older than 19, well over 30 men all shot dead between the eyes. Red Buckeye perhaps had the power of the Devil on his side, he was so good with a gun it seemed like he didn't need the gang 'cept to load his walking arsenal of rifles and pistols. When we got to the stretch of badland that the gang had been haunting, it was just a bit past noon, and despite that it was as cold as a Christmas morning.
I wish we would have known that the Devil kept his methods from being so easily divined by mortal men, there's a whole book about that and despite havin' since read from cover to cover, I ain't convinced any preacher from here to the Mississippi knows what they're talkin' about. You see, we was actually being accompanied by the real Devil or at least a proper demon. Ol' Sheriff Reynolds clicked his tongue, told us 20-somethin' youngin's to handle the gang, this was 'cause he had a special trick for killers like Red Buckeye that he'd worked on since he was our ages. He earlier had suggested we borrow some of the deceased's guns to "multiply force" and that we spread out across any rises or hills so's we couldn't be easily surrounded; that little trick stuck with me when I was Sheriff and that's mostly why you won't see Apaches or gangs 'round here. Anyways the four of us did pretty good when we came across the gang's hidey-hole and began our plan, the gang picked a nook that was near a stage couch route but was hidden from being seen by anyone driving the route. Even just in the simple sense of things, they was fish in a barrel and up against a wall from where we'd come at them. The boys in the gang itself weren't worth as much as Red Buckeye even all together, the 10 fellers were valued at about $50 to $100 each. The gang was camped out with the man himself in the middle, givin' some kind of rousing report about the loot they'd just stole. Red Buckeye must've been pretty hardy, because he wore no coat despite it being a bit past nippy still, he was just clad in britches and two bandoleers loaded with as many guns he could wear, with a bullseye painted over his right eye. As the four of us youngin's crawled into position and waited for Sheriff Reynold's signal, we all quietly realized we didn't know what the signal was.
Ol' Sheriff Reynolds ambled up to Red Buckeye's camp, challenged the man to a contest of some kind, then reached into his rucksack. The pulled out somethin' that didn't look like it should have fit inside of that sack, it was a fancy metal chest with an odd shape like old breastplate. He put that thing on the ground and a loud ruckus came outta it as he fiddled with some kinda latch or something on it. From a distance, it sounded like he'd trapped an entire saloons' band in that tiny chest, a low echoing thud bumped out in steady time like a drummer's beat. The melody was all kinds of gay and energetic, rousing us to tap our feet as if there was a song we all knew playin' somewhere. It was noise like I've never heard, and just like that, Red Buckeye, tappin' his feet and everythin', stood up from where he was sittin', waving his arms back and forth like a lunatic, his gang doing the same, looking confused. 'cept for one fella, who sobered up real quick, dropped his pistol and chased it around on the ground for a few seconds, that was long enough for me to sight my rifle on him and put him six feet under. I hesitated, and at first I thought it was 'cause I'd never killed a man much less thought I'd do it to someone who wasn't even shootin' at me. But that devilish beat had possessed my trigger finger, makin' me hold it until some kinda crash symbol rang out along with the echo of drums.
My shot found its mark, striking the first man in his heart. His eyes wide as he clutched his chest, he, the gang, and the rest of us watched as blood gushed outta his chest in time with the music. His head went limp, but his body stood right up, steppin' into line with the rest of the gang as they danced and joined in as if not missing a beat. For the rest of the gang, all hell broke loose as they was still tappin' their feet and dancing now clearly forcefully, we could see the look of fear and pain on their faces as they seemed to strain against the unseen current of music that had so ominously emanated from that little steel chest. Red Buckeye started to move first as he tried to grab hold of his pistols holstered at his hips, but Sheriff Reynolds didn't pay him no mind and kept dancin' as he drew his own pistol in time with some kinda woman's voice peaking from the din that radiated across the desert nook. The gang all fumbled with their guns, and the other three boys up on the hill with me found their senses and their sights, started letting loose hellfire on the gang. We was shocked as the gang danced even after they'd been shot and were gushin' their lifeblood out of several holes in their chests, even their blood was compelled to stay on beat. The gang started to wrangle their bodies enough to shoot back at us, but the shots were going wide and only being let loose in time with that thumping rhythm we was all tapping our toes to.
Our gunfire had pauses between each shot, I don't even remember reloading, in fact, no one reloaded, shots was going off left and right and no one was able to stop. I watched a feller with a double barrel shotgun fire eight times before he was shot dead, even then, the dead bodies were still shooting off bullets left and right like crazy as they kept up the routine. They was like puppets, strung up and dragged two and fro in the throes of death, gushin' blood and shooting bullets only when the all powerful music demanded it of their shufflin' empty mortal coils. Sheriff Reynolds was dancing like he was 16, spinning, ducking, his arms ablur in some kinda violent satanic jerking motion. Red Buckeye had started shooting but all the shots were going on-beat like the rest of us was, except he was shootin' the ground near the Sheriff's feet, as-if the shots were aimed to make the Sheriff dance. Sheriff Reynold's didn't mind it and seemed to know when and where each shot was, such that his foot barely moved out of the way. As the gang around Red Buckeye turned into an ambling musical procession of queer cadavers, the bandit himself began doin' some kind of routine mimicking the show girls you'd see on a red light stage, he and Sheriff Reynolds got up all close, nose to nose, doin' a mirror of each other's dances as if it was a duel. Then once the music hit its final notes and the air went silent the two turned and walked three paces, then Sheriff Reynolds spun 'round and put a bullet right through Red Buckeye's painted-on Bullseye as the bandit's two guns went click.
With just one shot Red Buckeye was dead, then he and the rest of the gang all fell to the floor all at once when things were silent for just a few beats. About then my toe finally stopped tapping and I noticed just how tired my foot had gotten. When the smoke cleared and us youngin's counted our blessings and crossed ourselves, we made like children sneakin' around after dark, carefully treading our way down hill to convene with the Sheriff. No sooner than we got down did Sheriff Reynolds pack that silver chest back into that ruck sack it was clearly too big to fit in; yet the thing just sank clean to the bottom like the sack had a hole in it. The Sheriff didn't say nothin' about how he did what he'd just done, just that we needed to try to find anything that looked stolen and pack it up along side with the guns and ammo. He had us bundle the bodies up two at a time, and put 'em on the horses the gang had left bereaved after the shoot out, and we walked those bodies all the ways back to Tombstone where the Marshall had gathered us up in the first place. Ain't no one spoke of the gunfight the whole ride back, I think we was all fearful that Ol' Sheriff Reynolds was actually a demon, but the man stayed quiet and polite the whole way, said we boys had done good and that our mama's would be proud. The man died of old age, but not before gettin' that photograph up there made of us all, he said it was a night to remember, and for twenty years, I've just been tryin' to forget.
Pass me the whole bottle of Whiskey, my boy wants to play the piano tonight to impress some young thing he's fancying and I don't wanna miss it. Though now ya oughta know why I need the drink before anyone start's playin' music. When I start tapping my toes, I swear I can see some of those dead gang boys dancin' while they bleed out each time I blink.