Guiding Spirit

Light seeped in under, tickling eyes that his hat brim had failed to protect.  Up the hand to pull down the shade.  The man wasn't ready for the day yet.  It wasn't the fierce growl of a hangover that moved the hand, he didn't get those, it was the sizzling activity the sun brought.  Come dawn the people of the town were up, brave enough in the day to leave their wooden shells to explore the dusty plain that town was situated on.  They'd find the corpses.  Twisted things that may have been as much man as they were beast once the light got to them.  Birds picking at the entry holes for his bullets wouldn't help the shape much either.  They would see it all.  Not understanding any of it they would see it and they would fear.  They would fear the things that went bump in the dark and hide away in their shabby fortresses, but they knew that fear.  If the things in the dark were gone, a new fear would take its place somehow, and he wasn't in the habit of sticking around to become a target.  Still, the old one had been there again, and that powerful a spirit took something out of you a drink only massaged away for so long.  He felt it leaving him, that asuredness that he could keep going against any foe, evaporating in the morning sun.  He needed a rest, and he feared one in equal measure.  When they were done with the pre-possessed corpses they would find him, the barkeep first when he heard which way the man had left in the night.  It hadn't been a long walk away, a few blocks down and then into a side street, an alley, if something so small could really be called one.  It was some effort to brace himself to a wall and slide up to standing, took the man a while of real concentration to get it right.  Figured he would wander off toward the next place he felt callin' him, the next destination that thing men called a soul propelled him toward.  Least, any of the ones he had asked had called it that.  Soul was a tricky idea to get a grasp on.  He only knew if he kept walking the way he felt was best he'd get to the next bar or the next abandoned mine, or the next stone cathedral.  The cathedrals were nice, they let him stay and rest a while, didn't ask many questions before he headed off to the next place.  Just kinda kicked the dirt to see where it would go, feelin' about in the mind.  Towards the sunset as usual.  Always a westward trek these days.  Got to cross the main street though.  Draw as little attention as possible with his head down.  The rifle might have drawn some attention, but without the moonlight it lost its shine, more iron in the grip with yellowed ivory inset.  Not a looker.  Barkeep lookin' down the main way saw him go through, one of his best customers in years.  Wasn't sad to see him go though, he had a nose for things and he could smell trouble like a cloud from all the way down the street.  Wasn't there last night but now it sat like an aura around him.  Somethin' would be happening, and it was happening in the west.