Scareship_Issue8

The story begins
Some folks like a story to start with blood, right in the middle
o’ things, so let’s begin on the day Gilmore Gammesson rode back
into the town of Rockton, what was then called Rook, after a
decade spent down in Texas making quite a disreputable name for
hisself.
Gammesson had become known as Mad Gilly Games, and
since that was what they called him, then that was who he was.
Mad Gilly rode back into the town of Rook on a day like any other,
astride the legendary horse what Gilly called “Horse.” Though
Gilly was older now, and dressed in the style of the Texicans of the
time, it was not hard for the townsfolk to recognize the return of
their golden child. “Gilly’s back! Gilly’s back!” was the loud
whisper that traveled up and down the streets like a wild fire. The
blaze burned a trail to the door of the sheriff’s office, and so
Sheriff Jack “Bull” Evans stepped out into the middle of Main
Street to see what set the flame.
Bull Evans was a nasty feller, a former Pinkerton, monstrously
tall, bald as an eagle, and with a scarred visage covered by a wellwaxed
handlebar ʼstache. Evans had taken a dislike to Gilly even
upon the first day Gilly arrived in Rook, an infant swaddled in a
cavalry blanket. When he growed some, Gilly got hisself into a
dustup with Evans that would require the boy’s hasty departure
from the only home he’d ever known. Because when you blow the
top of a sheriff’s skull clean off, even a dislikable cuss like that
Bull Evans, you best be making tracks afore a posse of Pinkertons
makes your departure from the world their sole and solemn
purpose.
And now all these years later, here they were again, face to
face, despite the unlikelihood of such a reunion. Gilly rode up to
face Evans.
“Mad Gilly, get down off that horse. You’re under arrest,”
said the sheriff.
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