Starting Today: The Songbird of the West
Looking for Hellfire? click
Rance
Dehner awoke and stared into darkness.
At first, he didn’t recall where he was. He was lying in a strange bed in yet
another hotel room somewhere in…Texas. Yes, he was in Dry River, Texas. He had
arrived in town a few hours before, checked into the room, taken off his boots
and dropped into bed with his clothes still on.
Clumsy
steps sounded in the hallway. “A rich man, I’m gonna be king of the world!”
Dehner
sighed deeply. This always seemed to happen. On nights when he got to sleep in
a hotel bed, his slumber was disturbed by some drunken fool.
For
a moment, an odd sense of depression came over the detective. Was his whole
life going to be spent moving from one hotel bed to the next? Of course, he spent
more nights sleeping under the stars than in a hotel.
The
detective laughed softly to himself, alleviating the depression. How the poets
loved to rhapsodize over sleeping under the stars! Rance figured those poets
didn’t spend many nights actually sleeping outside.
“Gonna
have anything I want because I’m the best there is!”
Dehner
tensed up. The voice was shrill with threat. Of course, it could be just
drunken bravado, but…
A
door somewhere down the hall opened. Heavy footsteps clomped into a room. The
voice remained loutish though a bit muffled. “None better…lots of money…”
A
loud shot resounded through the second floor of the hotel. In almost one
movement, Dehner was off the bed and into his boots, strapping on his gunbelt
which had been hanging on the bedpost.
The
detective opened the door of his hotel room cautiously. Across from him and at
the far end of the hall, a blade of kerosene light cut across the floor. A
loud, moronic laugh came from the other side of the partially open door.
Dehner
moved toward the slash of yellow. Two doors down, a head protruded from a dark
room.
“What’s
goin’ on?” The question came from a bony face topped by long, greasy black
hair.
“Don’t
know,” the detective replied. “Get back in your room.”
“I’m
a farmer,” the man spoke as if that fact lent him moral superiority. “Only come
into town now and again. Towns is evil places.”
“Get
back in your room.” The head withdrew into darkness, like a small creature
retreating into a shell.
The
laughter suddenly stopped. Laughing man had heard Dehner approaching. As Rance
drew closer to the lighted room, the door was pushed open wider, creating a
small carpet of light which also splattered a murky tinge of yellow against the
opposite wall.
The
detective could hear anxious, erratic breathing coming from inside the room.
Someone was waiting for him.
Tomorrow:
Episode Two of The Songbird of the West
