By M.S. Taheri

‘’Here you are,’’ Kaythe let out with a sigh of joy.

Looking for footsteps was like looking for a key in this forest. The beams of sunlight hid behind the silver peaks of the Rocky Mountains, making the sky turn a fiery red with hues of purple. As the sun crept towards the horizon, the lush green leaves changed to a warm yellow, and they were all over the ground, hiding any evidence of footsteps, if they ever existed.

She took off her leather hat, and wiped the sweat off her forehead. There was a small silver badge on it in the shape of a circle, with the infamous code of her own honor, ‘Duty First.’ A reminder of what ought to matter most to a bounty hunter.

As beautiful as she was, with her wide green eyes and curling blonde hair that moved in tandem with the wind, Kaythe was unfortunate to be born a woman for this line of duty. Catching someone was one thing at her job, being intimidating was another.

A deep bellow came from her right, rumbling the leaves around her dusty boots like a dust storm. Her heart skipped a beat; their deep brown fur, two horns like a lamb and humps on their shoulders. Kaythe took a deep breath and let it all out in a rush. She watched them thoroughly, watched them walk in herds, watched the shadows that danced against the yellow grass fields they lived in. They were bison.

Whatever you guys did to deserve all of this, Kaythe thought.

In the distance she noticed a thicket of dark green bushes moving against the wind, interrupting the dwelling thoughts on her former life.

She pulled the .45 Long Colt from its holster, and opened the cylinder with twitchy fingers. Three bullets filled the chambers. Witnesses had supposedly seen three men around the fields at night, and by daylight, more dead bison.

#

The night’s veil had completely taken over the sky by now. The biting cold of the wind and the smell of moist rock and dirt caught her nostrils from the many closed-off mines of Leadville surrounding her. She covered her mouth with a hollow palm, her chest felt drained, her lips cracked. They better be here …

And her wish was granted by God himself.

After she climbed the last few steps of the hill she finally saw them: a man and a woman. It was different than what the witnesses had seen, though it made no difference to Kaythe. She ran towards them; her heartbeat hammered; her lips bent into a smile without trying — showing her crooked yellow teeth. It had been far too long. Bounties were what made hunters whole. It was what made Kaythe whole.

As she came closer, she slowed down near a hunk of timbers and she took a better look at them. She was almost invisible in the shadows. The both of them stood at the edge of a hill, overlooking the grass fields the bison lived in.

The man had thick oily hair that was black as the night itself; it almost reached his waist. His hair was so shiny and reflective, the light of the moon bounced off of it and blinded Kaythe. All she could tell was that his back was facing towards her. The woman, on the other hand, stood there in full view. She wore her hair in a French braid, black as whetstone and she was clad in a buckskin dress covering her whole body. It was milk-white, shining bright in the moon shine. Her face was covered in red paint — it covered half of her face like a mask — and was marked with the lines of another tattoo stark against the redness of it. It was white and pointed towards her brow, then the rest …

brown of skin …

Kaythe almost wanted to turn around, maybe she’d been wrong. The witnesses did say three men, and she only counted one. She didn’t believe it, but she had to wait. She had to make sure they were innocent, so Kaythe stared them. The woman carried arrows, and the man had a bow tightened around his back. They were looking at the bison. The man spoke a language that sounded alien to her, his voice was phonetically vibrant with every syllable that escaped his lips.

Then, everything happened all at once. The man grabbed an arrow from his lady, knocked the bow ready and shot it with precision. A loud thump came from the field near them, Kaythe didn’t need to look to know what it was.

She drew her .45 and made her way towards them, slowly. The bison were getting louder as she neared the field — it was only a pack of them. She pulled back the hammer, hard. The metallic click echoing through the sudden stillness of the night – shattering it.

Both of them turned around, the woman moving close behind her man, grabbing his hand.

‘’Who are you, folks?’’ Kaythe asked, her voice had a tremor.

The man returned an answer she did not understand. She looked at him. His face was chiseled and cruel, his eyes cold and dark as onyx, he was almost twice her size. Kaythe would sometimes get scared by her targets, but not the way this man frightened her.

She put her left hand up, with three fingers sticking out.

‘’Where is the third?’’ Kaythe turned halfway pointing her index finger towards the forest. She hoped they would understand.

They did.

The man called out loud in his language, and she could hear rustling in the woods from a far. A copper skinned boy appeared from the woods; he must’ve been half her age. His hair was all ruffled up in his plump face, his eyes stuck out through them, they beamed like two golden coins. He dragged a bag with him.

The man spoke again, his deep voice hitting just the right notes of anger. That, Kaythe could understand no matter the language.

The boy dropped the bag, and there he was with a bow and arrow in hand, ready to shoot. It happened so fast, Kaythe didn’t see it until it was too late.

‘’Drop your arrow, boy, I’ve seen girls your age with a better grip on that thing.’’

‘’If I drop it, you will kill us.’’ The boy replied, and she could understand him.

Kaythe raised her brows as she did not expect a young native child to speak English this fluent, but he did.

‘’I could’ve killed you by now, and yet I haven’t.’’ She let out a sigh and smirked. ‘’You think bows are a match to a gun? Ask your fellow natives how that went for them.’’

The boy screamed loud, and let go of the bowstring. The arrow flew almost to the moon if that was his target. Kaythe couldn’t keep her laugh to herself, ‘’next time try aiming at this planet. Go next to your parents, or whatever they are to you.’’ She said.

The kid dropped his arrow, he let his head down to the ground. Ashamed, he refused to look at his parents. When he walked past her, Kaythe could hear the ringing of metal in his bag, or that of gold.

‘’What’s that I’m hearing, boy?’’ She asked, taking a step backward to get them all in her view.

The kid ignored her. He ran to his mom and hugged her tightly around her waist. He hid his face inside of her dress before anyone could see his tears roll down his cheeks. She went down on her knees and spoke to her son, face to face. When the kid stopped crying, she slapped him so hard, he would’ve flown off the cliff, onto the field, if she wasn’t holding him by his shoulder.

Kaythe’s throat felt heavy, she gasped. Her targets were usually rapists, thieves and other sorts of gutless men, and they all had one thing in common with each other; they were alone when she caught them. As soon as the chips were down, and the gangs knew a large enough bounty was on their heads, they would betray each other as quick as lightning, and yet now she stood in front of a family — all three holding each other tight. The man in front was their guardian, just like Kaythe’s father was hers when she was younger.

She firmly grabbed the revolver in both hands.

‘’Why are you hunting bison here?’’

‘’Food…’’ The mother let out, and said something to the kid in her own native tongue.

‘’It’s our food, paleface.’’ The kid answered sharply. ‘’Before your kind came here, they were ours.’’

‘’And now they’re not. That’s too bad.’’ Kaythe’s crooked teeth were visible in her smile.

‘’Skip the bullshit, kid. Your kind has been purged to the west. There are only twenty living bison here. Counting the one you folks just shot dead that makes nineteen, plenty for food I’d say.’’

The kid looked at his dad, then his mom. He didn’t know what to say and began speaking in his native tongue. They didn’t sound happy to Kaythe.

‘’Hey Redskins, keep it in English, okay?’’ She said.

‘’Do you want an answer or not, whitey?’’ The kid said. She remembered him from somewhere, though that didn’t make much sense. This was the first time she met the Redskins.

‘’Sure.’’

The minutes felt like hours, her legs started to ache as she hadn’t rested in almost a full day. She took a seat on a nearby rock, it created less distance between the four of them. She put one hand on her lap, and it was shaking so badly she clenched it into a fist, then her whole forearm shook with it. She looked again at those three, and in her mind the boy turned into a girl. The big mouth reminded her of her younger self, yes that’s what it was. Of a time when she played with guns instead of dolls, or when she wouldn’t cry as easily as the other girls did, even if father did tell her girls could cry.

‘’Paleface!’’ She heard moments later, which interrupted her thoughts.

She stood up, not moving an inch with the revolver still in her hand. ‘’What is it?’’

The older woman also wore a bag. She dropped it open in front of Kaythe, and inside of it, it was full of meat. Bison meat.

‘’Suppose I believe, suppose you are just hunting them for food,’’ Kaythe started as she pointed the gun at the woman, ‘’then I could also look in your bag, right?’’ She turned her gun to the kid with a smirk on her face. “Kid?”

‘’FUCK YOU!’’ The kid let out and threw the bag with all his might at Kaythe.

It came at her like a boulder. Everything sounded muffled. She looked to her right hand, wanting to push off the bag, but a piercing shriek came at her with an arrow in his hand. Kaythe pointed the gun towards him, and pulled the trigger without hesitation. The arrow laid right in front of her eyes, but his body stopped moving.

She heard a woman scream her lungs out, shortly after. When she looked to her right, she realized she’d killed the boy. He laid on top of her, an inch away from stabbing her. His golden eyes wide open, not moving a muscle.

The woman ran towards her kid and hugged his dead body, crying. The man came closer too. Kaythe pointed her gun at him.

‘’Woman… killed son… happy now?’’ The father said. His chiseled face had turned all soft now, the grief of a father would do that to a man.

Kaythe pushed the bag off her body, and stood up on her feet. Her lower back ached and her head felt hot, even in the cold night, she could feel the muscles in her eyes twitch.

‘’Money… I need money,’’ she said in a voice cold as snow. With her left hand Kaythe rubbed her thumb and index finger together repeatedly, hoping he’d understand.

The man had dropped to his knees as well, next to his wife. He started crying, and words stopped coming out of his mouth. He pointed towards the ruffled-up bag.

Kaythe went up to it, the top of it was tightly knotted up. She opened it up and the bag fell over towards her feet, hundreds if not thousands of coins fell over in between her feet and through the grass.

Her breath got taken away by the sheer number of them. One of them landed — straight underneath her — and when she grabbed it, she recognized it.

Goddamnit, Kaythe cursed in herself.

The coin had a woman’s face on it, and she looked sideways towards Kaythe. It was called the Morgan Silver Dollar. Governments paid Pinkertons with these, and they had paid these three natives with them… Kaythe needed gold, not these things. A hunter seen with them was as good as dead in public.

‘’You work for the Pinkertons?’’ Kaythe asked rhetorically, she’d lost her patience.

The man looked at her, confused with his brows frowning. Kaythe threw the coin at his face, he flinched and fell on his back.

‘’Whitey pays you, correct? To kill your own kind?’’

‘’No… No…’’ The man hesitated in his words. Though Kaythe didn’t know if that was because of the language barrier, or because he was lying.

‘’Found it,’’ he said at last.

‘’You found them?’’ She wanted to laugh at the obscene answer, but couldn’t.

‘’We… paid enough, paleface. You killed son, stole money, leave us…’’

Kaythe stood still for a moment and thought about what the man had said to her, his manly tears tugged at the soft heart of a woman she wore. She looked at the father and mother’s eyes, their eyes welled with tears. She let out a deep sigh and stopped aiming the gun at them.

The father bowed towards her feet, and both of them seemingly thanked her in their own language. Truth to be told, this job was made for those with a heart of stone.

Kaythe took a deep breath and put her revolver back in its holster. She balled her right hand into a fist and looked away into the distance — towards the bison field — to hide the tear that rolled down her cheek.

 The once proud hunter had softened up, and just like that Kaythe felt like the girl she used to be. The innocent one.

She threw her hat like she hated it. It fell off the cliff, making sure she’d never have to see the words ‘’Duty First’’again. Kaythe vanished back into the forest, leaving the bag, the natives and the bounty hunter life behind her.

The End.