The Reckoner: Riding Shotgun, Part 1

He was awake before the sun, not sleeping well was a common torment from the time he was a young man.  He listened to the night tell her stories as he laid on the floor next to the bed, the hooting of the owl, the howl of a distant coyote, the slow stir of the wind through the empty streets.  Simply chaotic in the serenity it somehow offered to him.  He waited for it, could feel it traveling through the cool night air, it was a story of life getting on alone, the fine line between life and death, he had heard the siren song in the story and had come to know it all too well. 
It had been two days since he had consented to riding guard on the Wells Union Stagecoach.  It had been two days of wrestling between the idea of leaving town and staying.  He was accustomed to running but was too set on the idea of seeing a job finished that he had decided to stay.  It was easier to kill a man out in the desert, there was no man to answer to.  But in the city too many men had chosen to take it upon themselves to seat themselves high and thought it their grace to pass judgement.  He felt it but he still wondered why he had killed a man in the city.  And to his unnerving dismay he didn’t feel the need to run.
The coach was ready and waiting for him.  Two passengers waited just outside the coach, a man and a woman who were finely dressed, he had a top hat and morning coat on with a cane in his hand, she, a white dress that accented her petite frame and parasol opened to block the morning sun,  there were multiple sets of luggage packed on top of the coach.  The driver sat on the coach, he had his hat tipped back and a wide smile on his face.  His clean shaven face belied the age that clearly showed in the silver hairs that made their way from underneath the hat.   Aiken could only shake his head as he walked up to the coach, what had he gotten himself into, he wondered.  He wasn’t a gun for hire and he wasn’t a guard.  He knew how to use a gun and there he found himself.
“Mr. Young, your new guard’s here.” The driver turned and yelled through the open doors of the bank.
The banker, as clean and dapper as he was the night that he managed to hire Aiken, walked out of the bank.  His smile hid something and Aiken did not have a clue of what it was, but he knew that his new employer was just a little too slimy for his own liking, and he refused to shake his hand when it was offered once again.
“Mr., huh, Aiken,” The banker pulled his hand back, “How are you doing this fine morning?”
Aiken climbed up to his seat at the left of the driver, ignoring the banker’s question as he did so.
“Well, then,...” The banker wiped the smile off of his face, “You’ll be taking Mr. and Mrs. Tidwell to Albuquerque and delivering the payment in the strongbox to the Wells Union branch there.  Virgil, give the man his shotgun!”
The driver next to him pulled a sawed off double barrel shotgun from the luggage rack at the top of the coach.  It was a strong built piece of iron, it felt cool in his hands as he rubbed them over the well worn stock.  The lacquer used to protect the walnut stock and forearm had been worn and the deep brown was slowly fading to a light tan color.  The action was loose, with a simple flick of the lock the barrels fell open and Aiken could see the cold brass that had been loaded.  Aiken could feel that it has been used and had taken more than one life.
Smooth and cold, Aiken handed the gun back to the man seated next to him, “I won’t be needing that.”
“You have to carry something.” The banker incredulously started.
“I am carrying something,” Aiken fired back as he pulled the rifle from his holster, “And if anything happens that this can’t stop that shotgun wouldn’t have stopped it either.”  He chambered a round as he stared down at the banker.
The banker turned his attention to the man and woman standing at the side of the coach, nervously watching the the exchange between the men, “Alright Mr. and Mrs. Tidwell, Virg and Aiken here will see you safe to Albuquerque.” The smile returned to his face.
After seeing the couple into the coach the banker returned to the front of the coach, “Make sure that nothing happens here or you’ll need more than that rifle to slow me down.”  He hissed through his smile at Aiken.
“Then get the hell out of the way.”  Aiken took the reins from the driver next to him and whipped the horses into a run.
They were out of Santa Fe before he slowed the horses down and handed the reins back to the driver next to him.
Taking the reins, the driver still had a smile on his face.  The events minutes before were completely forgotten, “Well, my name is Virgil, friend.  And you are?”
“Aiken.”
“It’s nice to meet you, Aiken.”  Virgil held his hand out for Aiken, and held it long enough that after Aiken looked at it and then back at the rode, and then back again, that Aiken shook it.
There was something in that handshake that Aiken had never felt.  Perhaps it was what made men shake hands upon introduction, even if it was the hundredth time the introduction had taken place.  It was warm and kind, strong and firm, yet gentle and protective.  It was friendly.  And Aiken pulled his hand back before the shake had finished and went back to looking at the rode.
Virgil didn’t seem to mind, he went back to looking at the rode as if nothing out of the ordinary had occurred.  The bumps and holes in the rode forced Virgil to pull back on the reins and slow the horses down a little bit.  Aiken scanned the road ahead, behind, and the land to the right and left, nothing stirred and the coach continued down the dusty road.
It was some time before Virgil spoke up again, “I’d like to thank you for saving my life.  How was it that you were in the right spot at the right time?”
Aiken just shrugged his shoulders.  How was he going to tell the man next to him that he felt it in the air.  Was there a way to explain that every breathe that he drew before that moment tasted of death, decay filled his nostrils as he chambered a round?  If a man would stop and listen he could hear the reverberation of a soul coming close to the oblivion. 
Aiken just shrugged his shoulders, “Lucky I guess.”
“A man who carries whatever you call that on your hip and argues about carrying it versus a shotgun is a man who understands something more about life and death than just getting lucky.”  Virgil answered his own question.  “Where are you from?”  He continued his jovial interrogation.
“Idaho, but that was a long time ago.”  Aiken surprised himself with the answer.
“Never been to Idaho myself, but I had an uncle that moved there after the war instead of living under reconstruction.”
Aiken nodded and went back to watching the road.  It was an uncomfortable silence that he found himself in.  He hadn’t said where he was from for a long, long time, long enough that he had almost forgotten himself.  Or at least had tried to forget.
The rest of the trip to Albuquerque was uneventful.  The two sat in mutual silence as the desert passed before them.  It was mid-afternoon before they arrived in town and unloaded their passengers and strongbox.
“The bank puts us up in the Occidental down the street before we head back to Santa Fe in the morning.  Grab whatever you need and I’ll buy you a shot.”  Virgil said as he climbed down from the stage.
Aiken followed Virgil from the stage and down the street.  The older man made him uncomfortable, he couldn’t put his finger on it.  Virgil kept the smile on his face the entire time the road down the dusty, bumpy road from Santa Fe.  He was difficult to read and Aiken didn’t like that, he prided himself in the fact that he could read anybody.  It was the simple, overlooked body language and intonations that communicated so much more than what a person said.  Aiken had staked his life on that ability more times than he could remember, and meeting someone like himself, and yet so different, made him uncomfortable.  He felt exposed, he felt vulnerable, and he couldn’t shake that feeling.