It was still forenoon and nobody else in the Lucky Nickel Saloon but us regulars when the Grim Reaper pushed through the batwing doors.
Outside, the August sun beat down relentless on dusty Second Avenue, Laramie, Wyoming Territory, U-S-of-A. Inside, it was cool and tranquil, which is how us regulars like it.
"What'll it be, stranger?" Mick the barkeep asked without looking up from his glass-buffing duties at the bar.
"Whiskey," a voice from the bottom of a grave demanded. "Bring the bottle." The batwing doors squeaked shut behind him as he entered and took a table.
At which point Mick looked up at the stranger, as did we all--me, Banky with gun-hand aquiver near his ever-ready Colt, and Casper with his one good eye. Charlie lay passed out and Jack Thatcher hadn't arrived yet.
"Lordy be," Mick muttered and crossed himself, a good Irishman. "It's the Banshee."
"Well, what tribe is that, Tom?" Casper inquired of me. His good eye watered from the jalapenos he'd been munching and he couldn't focus worth diddly, which makes it hard to tell the Angel of Death from an Indian.
"Ain't no tribe, Casper," I informed him. "It's trouble for certain sure."
Casper blinked, focused and exclaimed, "Well, I'll be left for dead." He wiped his sweaty forehead with a trembly hand.
"Reckon I ought to persuade him to skedaddle?" Banky offered, as he crouched in his ready-to-shoot stance.
Mick considered, sucking on his teeth and tugging at his prodigious black mustache. "Don't guess you ought, Banky."
"Whyfor not?"
"The feller ain't totin' iron, for one."
Gunless. Indeed the feller looked like a Spanish monk, all decked out in a dirt-brown robe from head to foot. The robe hood was so big a guy couldn't see the face hidden deep within, which was maybe a good thing, as what we could see of his parts like to make your skin crawl right off your body. Which may have been what had happened to our guest. The hands protruding from the huge robe sleeves were naught but skeletal appendages.
Bones, just bones. Skinless, like his feet, sticking out from under the tattered, dusty robe fringe. Yet the hands twitched with such animation as one sees in a guy impatiently waiting for a barkeep to fetch up his drink. As we discovered was the case in this instance.
"I believe I just ordered a whiskey," the voice, like a cold wind at midnight, recalled.
"'Sides," Mick went on, "gunplay this early might retard the day's commerce a touch."
I figured gunfire might lure in a few customers, curious ones, who otherwise might not be thirsty, but it was Mick's bar so I didn't say squat.
"I believe I just ordered--"
"'Sides, we ain't made the feller's acquaintance yet."
"--a whiskey, bring the bottle." He tossed a dollar on the table.
"'Sides, he paid in advance." Mick brought a glass and a bottle and scooped up the dollar, which he examined as he returned to the bar.
"Well, 'scuse me." Casper sidling up to the stranger. "You look like, uh, that is, uh--"
"Who's going to get killed?" Banky interjected.
A skeletal hand grabbed the bottle and splashed a shot into the glass. The other bony hand brought the glass into the dismal dark cave of the stranger's hood and the hood tipped back a tad. We heard gulping noises emerge from within. Soon the glass emerged, empty, slapped on the table with a wet smack and the feller intoned, "I am the Grim Reaper and I have come."
"We got that part figured out, Mister Reaper, sir," I agreed, "but what we ain't got figured is whyfor."
"I am the Grim Reaper and I have come," again came the sepulchral retort, a touch whiny.
Just then Charlie woke up.
He struggled to the semblance of an upright stance, shaky as a snake with a crutch, and tried to focus on the Reaper.
"Land O' Goshen," Charlie uttered when he saw. Then he eyed the near empty gin bottle he held and raised his arm as if to cast it away. Instead, he shrugged and gulped the gin. "Mick, how about one on the house," he said tearfully, "on account of it's a going-away present?"
Mick didn't have time to ponder his friend's request for Charlie passed out again.
Banky drew lightning quick and aimed his Colt Grim Reaperwards. "Charlie's my friend, you no-good dirty, rotten dadgum low-down yellow-bellied, snake in the grass--"
The Angel of Death waved a dismissive bony gesture as if to say it wasn't Charlie for whom he'd come. "I am the Grim Reaper and--"
"We got all that part," I repeated. "What we want to know is whyfor have you come."
"Yeah," Banky demanded, squinting down his sights. "Who you come to reap?"
The Grim Reaper held up a bony finger as if to say "Hold yer horses," removed a notebook from his robe and flipped it open. "I've come for--"
Just then Jack Thatcher hobbled in through the batwing doors. He stood and wiped his sweaty face with a bandanna and put it back in his pocket. Then he saw. He took one look, eyes bugged out. He pointed with his cane and insisted, "Why you, you--you're--"
"I'm the Grim Reaper and I've--"
Jack Thatcher screamed and lit out, leg, stump and cane flying every whichaway.
)
When the Angel of Death pushes through the batwing doors of the Lucky Nickel Saloon, Laramie, Wyoming, U S of A, and sits down with a bottle of whiskey, the regulars wonder who he's come to reap.
