Colt Redhawk — Moonlight and Mourning

The desert wind hissed low across the sand, whispering secrets only the dead could understand. The rattlesnakes had all bedded down for the night. Under the pale glow of a blood moon, a lone figure rode toward the sleeping town of Gallow’s Rest.

His poncho flapped behind him like a tattered banner, stitched with dust and time. Shadowspur, his midnight-black horse, moved silent as a ghost, hooves thudding soft against the earth. Colt Redhawk didn’t need a map or a signpost. His intuition drew him here, like a compass rooted to due north.

Strapped across his back an old Winchester rifle he rarely used, and beneath his coat, a silver-inlaid Colt revolver — both tools of the trade. But it was his intuition that he trusted most. That and the old spirit who whispered truths no man could know.

“There’s pain here, Colt,” came a voice in accented Navajo. A voice only he could hear. Greyfeather. Ever-present, ever calm and now residing in the spirit realm.

Colt just nodded grimly, pulling Shadowspur to a stop in front of the saloon. It leaned almost crooked in the moonlight like a drunk trying to stand proud. He heard the tinkle of an old piano and faint laughter emanated through the saloon doors.

Its windows were boarded against the wind, but a pale blue flicker escaped through the cracks in the poor carpentry job.

Colt stepped inside.

The saloon was almost empty except for a couple of old timers playing cards in the corner. A…