James Butler Hickok had hit rock bottom. He was without a job; he had no place to call home, no close friends to confide in.
His moniker haunted him wherever he went.
Men and women alike shied away from him. The only comfort he found to sooth his soul had been in the bottom of a bottle. Little good that did when he really needed a comforting touch of another human being.
He’d been drifting from town to town for several years now. Ever since the day Lou and Kid got married in fact. He was supposed to walk her down the aisle, but couldn’t do it. He waited until the others had fallen asleep the night before the wedding. Then he grabbed his saddlebags that he’d packed and snuck out of the bunkhouse without a word to anyone. He couldn’t stand by and watch the woman he loved marrying his best friend. His heart couldn’t take it.
He’d lost so many things in his young life, but losing Lou was the worst. That she never really was his didn’t matter. He loved her with all his heart and knew that there would never be another woman who would take her place in his heart or his life.
Lord knows he had tried to replace her in his life, but no other woman ever came close to his Lou. Over the years there had been many whose company he enjoy. It would end when the lady in question would begin talking of a more permanent relationship. He could not see himself growing old with anyone other than Lou.
It didn’t matter to him that they would never be together. She had Kid and he knew she was living the life she had always dreamed of having. A house, husband, probably children by now, all things he could never have given her.
It was the marriage of the woman he loved that had led him where he was tonight; sitting in a darkened room, a bible in one hand and his Navy Colt in the other.
He sat staring at them for hours, waging a war inside himself, determined that one way or another one of them was going to save him.
He’d never been a very religious man. He’d put that all behind him when his mother died, blaming god for abandoning them in their time of need. Now, he was begging for salvation from the life he was living. He’d grown tired of the roaming, drinking, whoring and gambling. He longed for solitude. His soul was searching for something he would never find living life as a gunfighter and gambler.
If he couldn’t find the peace he needed to go on in the book, he would find it with the gun. Just one pull of the trigger and all his troubles would be over. Part of him wanted it to be the gun that won, but another part of him was terrified the gun would win in the end.
His finger caressed the leather book, the one issued when he signed on with the Pony Express all those years ago. He had never even opened it during his eighteen months as a rider. There was never a need, or so he had thought.
Why he had even kept it, he didn’t know. He just left it packed in his saddlebags everywhere he traveled.
Setting the gun down on his lap, he slowly opened the book. He had started flipping through pages, not reading them. He stopped at the Psalms. Stuck in the middle of them was a photo that he had long ago forgotten he’d even had.
He didn’t know it at that moment, when he looked into the smiling face of his love, that he had found his saving grace.
Tears began to fall as he drank in her face, the eyes he knew to be the most beautiful brown he’d ever looked into. He remembered how tender her touch could be when she was concerned for her fellow riders and how ready she was with a smile when she greeted them.
He also remembered how quick her temper would flare when she was angered, causing her eyes to light up like fireworks on the Forth of July.
How he longed for that touch. The need to see her again, to hear her voice say his name became an ache inside of him. Growing with each second that he sat looking into her sweet face.
He took the gun off his lap and set it on the bedside table. There was no longer a need for it tonight. Lou had saved his life once more.
Setting the bible next to the gun, he grimaced at the irony. He’d always believed that his life was saved due to his skill with the gun, but tonight he learned that it was not so. The book he had shunned for so long had been the one to save him from the gun in the end.
Lying down upon the bed, he put one arm behind his head so he could continue to look at the picture he held upright in the other. The loneliness began to fade the more he thought about going back to see her. By the time sleep overcame him, he had made himself a promise to leave first thing in the morning.
With a smile playing upon his lips, he whispered her name as he fell asleep, “Lou…”
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