Whiskered Stranger In the Night

He stood there in the streetlight looking somber, I didn't know whether to trust him or to run; his eerie shadow stretched long on the pavement I saw beneath his duster the glint of a gun. The night air held a chill upon the breeze, the blood within my veins came close to jell; but warmth began to flow as his lips parted and as he spoke I fell under his spell. He told me he was a wanted man out west, close to Pima County he was framed. He said, "I shot a man in self defense, but gunned him down in cold blood, the sheriff claimed." "Can you find it in your heart to help me out, Mam? I need a place to stay to hide away, I promise you I'll hit the road tomorrow before the sunrise greets another day." I looked into his whiskered face and stuttered, "Just so happens there's a place out back, at the edge of the field behind my house. It's nothing but a tidy little shack." He said, "That be fine, Mam, thank you kindly." He jumped in back of my old Ford pickup truck. I dropped him off at the shack and headed home but I hollered back at him and wished him luck. Because I figured that's the last time I'd see him and I was right because no sign of him by dawn; not a ruffled sheet left of his presence, like a dream he was there and now was gone. Fifteen years had passed before I knew it since the whiskered stranger in the night, I wondered if he might've been a phantom and if that sheriff shot him in his last gunfight. August 7, 2013 Copyright © 2013 H. L. Smith