Call and the Saint of Killers

I do not own Lonesome Dove: The Outlaw Years and make no money from the writing of this story. I likewise do not own Preacher or The Saint of Killers and make no money from this story.

******

Somewhere in the world, a person dies violently. In this place the Saint of Killers is present with the man holding the gun, the knife, the blunt instrument. In the unsettled West, he is more present than God. His shade is everywhere that violent death is, while his demonically-reconstructed body sleeps under Boot Hill, a rattlesnake on the lid of his coffin, awaiting God's call to duty.

But something disturbs his slumber. He, whose hate froze over Hell, feels his hatred being challenged across time. Someone out there hates as much as he does and it cannot be allowed.

The lid of the coffin creaks open and the Saint steps out. Glancing around the slipstream of time, he picks a direction and goes.

***

Call sensed the blow as it was coming, but didn't duck in time. The side of his face exploded and he tasted blood in his mouth. Enraged, he turned and slammed his fist into his assailant's face. Again. And again. So many times. With a red mist obscuring his vision, a berserker's rage upon him. He hit the man repeatedly until he was pulled off him and hurled into the street.

"Jesus, Call! You bout killed that man!" exclaimed Silas, a bounty hunter Call was riding with.

Call glared at him, seething at being interrupted. "He hit me first." he said, and spat blood into the dust.

"Don't matter, Call! That don't give you the right to beat him near to death."

Call said nothing. He stood and stalked to the town's livery. He saddled up the Hellbitch and rode out of town, glancing neither to the left nor to the right. How many towns, how long had it been since he had left one particular town? How many outlaws brought in or killed, none of them able to erase the self-loathing, the self-hate at his basic uselessness?

Call hated himself. No amount of bounty hunting could erase it because no amount of bounty hunting could ever bring her back. He hated himself with a pure, white-hot hatred that burned the humanity right out of him and made him a machine for justice. If he couldn't bring her back, he could at least rid the world of other criminals capable of extinguishing the light of life.

Only in sleep was Call unsafe, when the dreams of happiness would overwhelm him, tempt him with memories of self-worth.

Call didn't sleep much.

He made camp around sunset, waiting for Silas to catch up. He tended to the Hellbitch and ate dinner. The sound of a horse trotting reached his ears and he leaned against his saddle, watching alertly. Only when Silas rode into the circle of firelight did Call relax.

"Sometimes," Silas said, dismounting, "I think you don't want to ride with me at all."

Call grinned, but there was absolutely no humor in it. "Shouldn't let what I do reflect on you." he said.

"It ain't your reflection on me that's the problem. Hell, in some places, it's a benefit. I can't tell you how many whores have asked me what it's like to ride with 'Cold-blooded Call, bounty hunter'." Silas unsaddled his horse. "It's when you decide to beat drunks nearly to death and ride off, leavin' me to explain that I have a problem with it. I ain't your keeper."

"Don't recall ever askin' you to be."

Silas rooted around in a saddlebag and came up with a bottle of whiskey. He took a pull off it, recorked it, and tossed it to Call.

"Wild animals never do. You know, bein' your friend's like tryin' to tame a timberwolf? Never know if you're gonna bite my hand off or not." Silas stretched out against his saddle and tilted his hat over his eyes.

"I'm not anyone's friend." Call muttered, leaning against his saddle. His knuckles were sore from punching and the side of his face hurt. He shoved the pain to a distant corner of his awareness. He was adept at this by now. His consciousness was so ringed with deferred pain he carried it like a reverse halo. Only his self-hate was incandescent. It was what made people stay away from him. It was what made him so good at his vocation.

Call felt unsettled. His tracking senses were alerted somehow. Something was coming.

***

There were disconcerting rumors. Massacres. Call heard whispers in the little cow towns he and Silas passed through. Whenever they stopped in a saloon there was always a little knot of cowboys or farmers muttering about it.

Silas, being the approachable type, would go over and talk to the grouped men. Call, being the hostile type, would have to wait til Silas was done and they were out of the saloon to hear the same story.

A lone gunman. A dead shot. Positively ruthless. If you drew on him, you died.

"There any bounty on him yet?" Call asked.

"Not yet, but it's only a matter of time. We can check at the next town."

Call shook his head. "Somethin' 'bout this don't feel right." he said.

"Well, why?" asked Silas.

 "Nothing was stolen, was it?"

Silas shook his head in the negative.

"No claim-jumping, no land grabs?"

Again Silas shook his head.

"It just don't make sense." was all Call said. "But if there's a bounty on 'im, you can bet I'll catch the son of a bitch."

 ***

The dreams came. A whispered word, the smell of violets. His name, a drawn out sigh, "Newt." A feeling of well-being, of rightness with the world.

"Hannah." Call said clearly, and woke himself up.

He stared unseeing at the night sky, allowing one second of self-pity before the hate iced it over again. Worthless, he thought. Why am I alive and not her? She deserved the best of everything and got me. I am nothing. I am a dead man walking around in this body.

A wordless litany of accusation and anger spun in his head. Call relived every shattered moment from the time the general store exploded to the present. When he had finished his emotional flaying, the horizon was lightening and Silas was stirring.

Unsure of the why of his certainty, Call stated to Silas, "We'll find out what we need to know at the next town." He did not answer Silas' questioning look, but went about saddling the Hellbitch.

***

Call and Silas rode into a town as quiet as the grave. They hitched their horses to the post in front of the saloon and went in.

"Where is everyone?" Silas asked the barkeep, after ordering a whiskey.

"Funeral." the man said shortly. "Whole family was killed just outsidea town. The Winigers. Two teenage sons, one daughter. All died defending their home."

"Parents, too?" Silas had a look of horrified fascination on his face. The man nodded.

"They know who it was?" Call's voice cut across the air.

The barkeep looked startled. "No, but we figure as it's the same fella been killing all over the territory. We called in the Marshals after the Winigers was shot."

"Where's their homestead?" asked Silas. The barkeep told them.

They stayed for another half hour to finish their drinks.

Call told Silas as they left, "You go on 'n' get a room. I'm gonna head out to the Winiger's 'n' look around."

"Okay, but don't ride out after anyone without me, hear?" Silas replied, obviously planning a foray into the local sporting club.

"I hear." Call swung onto the Hellbitch and rode out. All day he'd felt a breathless anticipation, a nameless something pushing him onward. Pulling him here, to this place.

The day was bright and sunny, yet Call felt a lowering in himself. His own internal climate, forever at subzero, was suffering an eclipse as well. The Hellbitch felt it too. She was tense and alert, responding to her master's commands instantly, as if they'd touched a raw nerve.

They rode up to a small house. It was utterly silent. The livestock had been taken in by a neighbor until they could be sold or given to next-of-kin. Call dismounted and tethered the Hellbitch to the porch rail.

In the house it was equally as peaceful, no violence had disturbed this domestic scene. Call felt a tremor pass through him, the shadow of a memory, but he squelched it quickly before it could really touch him.

He went through the house out the back, where a scene of horrendous carnage met his eyes. The dirt of the yard was still damp with blood. There were splashes of gore on the whitewashed wall of the house. Impassively,

Call tracked the spills with his eyes. They led to the barn.

He moved across the yard quietly and opened the door a crack.

"Been waitin' on you, boy." issued a sepulchral voice from within.

"Figured you might be." replied Call, as if he'd expected this.

He swung the door open to reveal a ghostly pale man with a hawk nose and squinting eyes under the brim of his hat. His skin was a sickly green-white, not the color of any living flesh. He stood.

"You the man's been murdering all these folks?" Call asked.

"I am." the man asserted.

"Why?"

"Why what?"

"Why did you kill them?"

"I was lookin' for you, boy, and they got in my way."

Call was speechless at this. He'd encountered stone-cold killers, but none that struck him the way this stranger had. He contained not one shred of remorse, not a spark of decency. Utterly no humanity.

“Why were you lookin' for me?" Call asked, outwardly calm but inwardly incredibly confused. He didn't fear for his life, that was immaterial to him, but he still searched for a meaning to all this.

"Call it job security." the man said. "I got where I am through hate. This hate got me out of Hell. Come to my attention there's someone out there hates nearly's much's me and don't care if he dies, figure I oughta do somethin' about it."

"You gonna kill me?" Call was not frightened so much as he was curious.

"Wellnow, that's the question, ain't it?" the man took a considering step towards Call, who held his ground. "I kill you, you die, go to Hell, maybe old Scratch finds out you're a better man for the job. Then again, I let you live, your hate keeps gettin' stronger, you die and go to Hell, you're still a better man for the job. Think I'll just kill you."

"Way I heard it, you don't kill 'less you're drawn on." Call replied.

"That ain't strictly true." the man said and quicker than Call could ever imagine himself doing, drew. "I'm 'lowed to make exceptions."

Call dove out of the way, behind a piled-up fortress of haybales.

"No use runnin', boy. These guns can't miss." the man's voice came from the other side of the pile. Call watched, fascinated, as one side of it was shoved out of the way.

The man advanced on Call. There was nowhere to go, no time. Call watched as his killer drew closer and closer.

"Go on," he growled. "Get it over with."

The man grinned sardonically and raised his guns, pulled the triggers -- and, incredibly, missed. The hammers had frozen halfway to the chambers. Call stared at the man, who looked at his guns, nonplussed.

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?" a voice to end all voices asked.

Call looked over to its source and his jaw sagged open. A being of such indescribable majesty stood there. Call couldn't have moved if he'd wanted to. It was so immense that it filled his senses to overloading. It held a great sword. Wings trailed from its back. It was naked and sexless.

 "I ASKED, WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?"

"Takin' care of some business. If you'll kindly unfreeze my guns --" the man was unaffected by the being's presence.

"YOU DO NOT BELONG HERE. IT IS NOT YOUR TIME YET. WERE YOU CALLED?"

Sullenly, the man replied, "No."

"YOUR FUNCTION IS NOT PERSONAL VENDETTAS. *I* AM THE ANGEL OF DEATH IN THIS TIME. NOW, GO."

At that simple command, the man vanished. The Angel turned its gaze on Call, who could not look into it's eyes.

"YOU, MAN, NOW YOU KNOW THE PRICE OF YOUR FEELING. DO YOU THINK YOU COULD DO HIS JOB? DO YOU WANT IT?"

"No!" cried Call, alarmed.

"MAKE YOUR PEACE WITH THE DEAD AS THEY HAVE MADE THEIR PEACE WITH YOU. AND MAKE YOUR PEACE WITH THE LIVING. YOU ARE AMONG THEM."

The being turned away and Call cried out, "Wait!"

"WHAT?"

"Will I go to Hell?"

It paused.

"IF YOU CONTINUE ON YOUR PRESENT PATH, YOU VERY LIKELY WILL. BUT CHANGE IS ALWAYS POSSIBLE, AND HARD TO PREDICT."

"Hannah?" Call choked out.

The Angel smiled enigmatically and winked. "WHAT DO YOU THINK?" it said, and disappeared.

Call pulled himself to his feet and stood on trembling legs. He ran outside and, leaning over a fence rail, threw up. Then he started crying.

Call didn't know how to feel. When the Angel had looked at him, all his hatred was held up to him as selfish and self-serving. The shell of grief and unfeeling he'd kept around him had broken and blown away under the Angel's gaze. He felt raw and burned.

"Oh God," he moaned. "What do I do? What am I?"

The idea of change was fearsome. The thought of Hell was so abstract that Call couldn't get his mind around it. But Hannah wasn't in Hell. So Call did not want to end up there. So he had to change.

Call straightened up and rubbed his eyes. He went to the well, drew up a bucket of clear water and rinsed his face and mouth. He walked around to the front of the house, where the Hellbitch was tied. She looked a bit spooked.

"Hey girl, it's okay, calm down," Call spoke quietly in soothing tones. When she was gentled enough, Call remounted and headed back to Silas and the town. He noticed that his anger was gone. In its place was a sort of pragmatism, a matter-of-fact-ness about human nature that he hadn't possessed previously. A gift of the Angel? Call thought not. There was only one gift that angel gave, and he didn't see fit to bestow it on Newt Call.

It was more like perspective.

***

Call met up with Silas in the saloon.

"You find 'im?" Silas asked.

"In a manner of speakin'" Call replied, downing a shot of whiskey.

"You didn't kill 'im, did you?"

"Did you see me come in with a body?" Call replied.

"No. But what happened to 'im?" Silas persisted.

"Let's just say he was abruptly called home." Call stated, and no amount of Silas' prying would get him to say more.

***

The sorrow would always be there, and the grief. But no longer would Call consume himself with hate, or berate himself for uselessness. He saw where *that* path could lead. He wanted no part of it. He was among the living.