The storm front had caught up to the train. Rain fell against the train car, a low methodic beat reverberated throughout, echoing in his ears the perfect rhythm of his heart. The lightning flashed and thunder clapped as clouds darkened the daytime sky. He usually enjoyed a rainstorm but not this one.
**********
The flickering light from the gas lamps that hung on the walls of the train car danced across the felt of his hat and the oily skin of his duster. He carried the rifle on his hip as he walked down the aisle, ready to pull the trigger if anyone happened to move in front of the barrel. Each footstep grew louder as he got closer to the broken door that separated the train cars.
As he stepped through the broken door and out to the small walkway that connected the two cars he didn't know what to expect, but his finger was on the trigger nonetheless. He wanted to burst through the door into the next car, but he knew better. It was the same feeling that kept him fiddling with the hammer in the train car, he couldn't explain it, he just knew, felt it in the air somehow. With the rifle still in his hand he grabbed the ladder next to the walkway and began to climb up.
The train was burning fast, the wind whipped around him as he tried to gain his footing and he nearly lost it more than once. Finally, his feet were underneath him and the rifle against his hip again. Each drop off rain hit him like it was shot from a coach gun, the buckshot rain forced him to pull the brim of his hat down to protect his eyes the best he could. He scanned over the train cars and hoped to see anything that would tell where the other train thieves could be at.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw the movement he was looking for, two men on horseback were riding next to the train, a horse with an empty saddle between them. He gingerly stepped to the edge of the car and waited. Time slowed down as he he felt the resistance of the trigger against the padded flesh of his finger, his view was clear, the rain and wind had no effect as he stood there pulling the trigger. And it released, the hammer slammed down, the rifle kicked into his hip, and time picked up again.
The kick off of the train car was deliberate and aimed towards the rider closest to him, the rider that rode lifeless in the saddle. He was able to grab hold of the horses neck as his body hit the rider and forced him out of the saddle. In his wet fingers the rifle began to slip. There was a choice to be made, cling to the horse or the gun, he could only do one and the decision had to be made soon. The ground was soft enough he thought and he let go of both.
Tumbling in the dirt and sand, it was an exercise to just avoid being trampled by the thundering hooves around him. Stopping himself, he cautiously stood up as he watched the third man ride off. Nothing was broken, bruised but not broken. Running, he found his rifle in the sage brush. Quickly he checked the barrel, that mistake had cost him once and he wasn't about to make it again. There was no way he was going to make the shot count, but he pulled the trigger regardless. The rider kept pushing the horse to the horizon.
The train was a slithering snake in the distance, there was no way that he was going to catch it, and that was alright by him. He holstered the rifle and began to walk. The rain fell on his shoulders and though his brown coat kept him dry it was a long walk he had chosen to make. There was something about the rain that he enjoyed, he felt clean and that was usually a feeling that didn't last long. On the horizon, through the rain, he made out a lone horse rearing.
**********
The full fury of the storm had hit. The dry, parched ground soaked in every drop that it could. It meant life could eek out its continued purpose, fighting and surviving. It baptized the desert and cleansed her, washed away the blood that covered the land and gave everything a new start. The storm was already beginning to wane, salvation doesn't long exist in hell.
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