The Fiddler's Tune, Part I

There was a fiddler, back in eighty-three, a young fellow who called himself Monty, wasn’t much of a worker, that is no lie, but oh, how fast his fingers could fly… He came from the east, most people did then, was more handsome than the everyday man, he could work those strings, master of his craft, knew all the best songs, from first note to last. He’d bust out a piece for coin in saloons, get all the customers humming his tune, the cathouse owners would ask him to play, sometimes give him nights with the girls for pay. He would roam town-to-town, plying his trade, and his notes cut sharper than any blade, the girls would come see him; oh, how they pined, which just about brings me up to the time that Monty showed up here, in Sutler’s Point, and set himself up to play at Red’s joint. At first the miner’s thought it was very strange, a soft-handed gent here in the Front Range? But as the notes flew, the stress would die down, soon enough word had spread all over town, and the was how dear, innocent Monique came to hear Monty make the fiddle speak. She’d hear him burn through Stephen Foster songs, then something classical, lilting and long, between sets they’d chat, and a small spark grew, Monique and Monty seemed more one than two. She’d never known a man who could create something from his soul, in a sublime sate. He’d not met a woman with such innocence, who still strove to see the beauty in men. But they did not know that watching them both was Big Harry Spears, who harbored a hope of taking the lovely Monique for himself, the son of a rancher, he had much wealth. Yet every gift she’d politely refuse, with an obliviousness born of youth, and when her parents talked up Big Harry, she’d laugh at the thought that they should marry. She’d go to the fiddler to pass her days, the sight of it fed an envious rage, when Harry heard rumor the two had poked he decided this was no longer a joke. Harry wrote a note, in a cursive hand, the kind fair Monique would write to a man, slipped it in the case of the young fiddler, telling him where to go to be ‘with’ her. That same afternoon folks saw Monty ride out, he went to a canyon, by a river loud, expecting to find the young woman he loved, instead a gunshot rang out from above. Monty lurched and pitched over to the dirt, Harry arose from a crack in the Earth, shouldered his gun and smiled evilly, dumped Monty in the river, left no body… CONCLUDES IN PART II.