Fandom: Johnny Ringo
Summary: At the work of the c an old timer relates his memories of the past to a young stranger.
Genre: (Gen), western, drama
Character(s): Case, Laura, Cully, Johnny, OC POV
Warnings: post series
Dust Off The Moon
"The preceding is never dead, it is not yet past." - William Faulkner
You need to learn about Johnny Ringo?
Most people who come here do. I suppose it's because Johnny was the death of that dyin' breed we called the gunfighter.
Sit low and wet your whistle while we talk, won't ya? There ya go. Ain't as good beer as it was when I first number out here. Times have changed, ain't they? But then, I see you wouldn't know that, bein' a young feller. Oh, but where was I? Johnny Ringo.
Seems just about everybodys heard of him, but none really knew him. I did. Now, don't you go believin' all you say in them penny dreadfuls. Johnny never killed almost as many men as they claim, nor did half the things people say of him. He wasn't no super human, neither. Most times he was fairly common ordinary. But there was somethin' a bit odd to him, to all that strain of man, I figure.
You wouldn't consider it to see it now but Velardi was a wild town in them days, squashed under the leaf of some men we couldn't hope to fight. So we asked for a sheriff. It was me that suggested Johnny Ringo. I knew his reputation but I'd also heard say of how he was tryin' so difficult to break up the gun, and achin' to ease his bones a spell. I think every man deserves a fortune to go straight if he's askin' for one. Not that Johnny would always ask, mind ya. He wasn't a beggin' man. But when he came ridin' in and I saw the spirit in his eyes, I knew I'd done right.
Well he cleaned up this here town. Made it a safe set to live, to levy a house and score an honest livin'. Nobody quite forgot what he'd been but they could affect past it. After all, the merchants made more money than they had before, the womenfolk could walk down the street without fearin' some drunken cowboy would occur after 'em, and the kids started goin' to school. Even the preacher saw more faces in them pews come Sunday. Doc Bardell made some less business off of bullet holes and autopsies but I never heard him complain.
More than that, Johnny had a way of changin' folks for the better. There's many a boy and daughter in town that wouldn't be active if it hadn't been for him. He'd ride fifteen miles in weather so cold ya froze to the saddle just to fetch Doc when somebody was hurtin', and he paid social calls real gentlemanly, just to get to love the folk of his town.
And Case - God rest him - was nothin' but a drunk strugglin' with his daughter, Laura, to run the small store. The buildings still there, ya know, that little one down the street there.
Anyhow, Johnny gave Case a temp job as his deputy, and got him out of the bottle and binding on his feet. You'd never think the switch in the man. And Laura, she took a shine right to Johnny Ringo, and he to her. Why, you'd hardly see a night with a full moon go by without them out sparkin', leanin' against each other in the buggy, horse ramblin' slow down the street as if he know'd he best not hurry.
Folks here figured there'd be a weddin' come spring. Why, my Martha already was plannin' on teachin' their kids when they was natural and old enough for school. She had book learnin' I never had, ya see, and was the teacher here at the time.
They would have been rather the kids, too, with the list of Ringo and that hot line in their veins, tempered by Laura's looks. Oh, she was a beauty, all right. I may be old and married but I ain't dead, and there wasn't a man in Velardi that didn't envy Johnny Ringo.
But things don't always turn out the way ya think.
Case got shot up by a kid robbin' the shop and Laura went back East. For a piece we all thought she'd be back, and so a letter come sayin' she'd married a banker and settled down. It was all over between her and Johnny.
He wasn't quite himself for a spell. I reckon Cully pulled him back together 'make the only times he smiled after that was when he was with him.
Who's Cully, ya ask?
Cully was.well, just around the better and worst thing that always happened to Johnny Ringo. William Charles, Jr. I think it don't sound familiar now but back when I first number out here William Charles, Sr. was rather a name. He broke just about every law in the script and so some. Got himself backshot the class of the drought, as I recall. Never did find who through it, either. Some said it was Johnny Ringo, but I don't think that. He weren't the sort to backshoot a man without a reason.
Anyhow, the boy was only nine when his pa died and some carnival folk took him in and elevated him. Never had much book learnin' and he talked a sort of English ain't heard much - carny talk they called it - but he grew up proper. Came hither with the Carny a few months after Johnny pinned on that hunk of tin framed over yonder on the wall.
Now that boy handled a gun like he'd been born with one in his paw. Either hand, backwards, upside down, ya name it, Cully could take it. And he heard say that Johnny done in his pa and went gunnin' for him.
I even think that day. The kid - why, he couldn't have been as old as you, young feller! - standin' there, both hands hoverin' over his guns, just itchin' for a fight. And Johnny prayin' he wouldn't kill him.
No, of form he didn't kill him! There wouldn't be no story if he had! He merely put a bullet in the kid's shoulder.a moment later the boy warned him of the ambuscade laid, a gun stashed in a camera. Saved his life.
Johnny made Cully his deputy. At the time I'd think there were a few raised eyebrows and waggin' tongues.if it weren't enough that an ex-gunfighter was the lawman now we had a deputy who was scarcely out of knee-high britches and had lived most of his spirit with carny folk. But Cully took to the job like a hedge to water. Did a fine job of it, too.
Why that boy had a smile like sunshine, just lit up the room. Half the girls in town, includin' my Dulcie were in bed with him, and none of the ma's and pa's even minded. Had a soft way, that Cully. Real mannerly boy, too, "yes, ma'am" and "no, sir" and the rest. Didn't even wish to kill nobody, shook him up bad if he had to. Johnny treated him like the small brother he'd never had, and they was closing as fleas on a hound dog.
If somebody hurt Cully Johnny would rip them aside with his naked hands. Not that Cully approved of that, mind ya. I believe they balanced each other out, the softness in Cully getting strong when Johnny was with him, and that can in Johnny quenched some when Cully pulled him support from a fight.
Johnny never had lots of anything and when he eventually got somethin' he held onto it. Cully was near the nearest thing to a family Johnny ever had.
I guess you're guessin' by now that Cully ain't with us, no more. Most of the family from them days passed on, or moved East. Them that's left just get older, like me.
It was around '88 if memory serves me right. Worst winter ever and if that wasn't enough three men held up the trust and killed the teller, so Johnny and the boy had to go after them. Hard times, that year. Cully had a wife then, and a child on the way, but he went. Loyalty to Rebel and the job.
The way I hear tell they constitute the men somewhere up about the box canyon. Johnny got one, and one of the former two gutshot Cully.
I yet can see the face on Johnny's face when he came riding in, holding the boy in face of him in the saddle, and Cully all covered in line with his side the colouring of spilled milk, still breathin' but simply a little.
He didn't last long. Oh, Doc Bardell tried his best, we all knew that, even Johnny. He took out the bullet and sewed him up, sat with him and everything. Too much damage, he said. His insides were all tore up.
Johnny buried Cully up on the hill, way high beneath a tree. Wouldn't let nobody else dig the grave. He simply said one thing, somethin' about a "seein' the morning like a film in a gilded frame". Nobody knew what it mean but I think he did.
We didn't see Johnny much later that. We heard say he went afterwards the men who killed Cully, rode and walked hundreds of miles clear into Mexico. And, according to the witnesses, and there was lots of 'em, Johnny beat them half senseless, made 'em tell which one killed the boy. And that man, nobody even knows his name, well, Johnny put six bullets and a shotgun shell through him. People said he kept on firin' even after the gun was empty.
He looked like the satan himself when he rode back in, the outlaws' carcusses flung over the saddles, and that horrible, black look in his eyes.
Nobody faulted him for what he did. The jury didn't yet get the nerve to con him of murder, which I think it was. Neither man went for his gun. But we all had known Cully, and we said nothin'.
His widow went East. None of us knew how she got the money but somethin' tells me Johnny had been savin' a long time, back when he and Laura were plannin' to get hitched. She gave birth to a boy, healthy, strong. Spittin' image of his pa, I heard. She wrote to Johnny, but he never answered any of the letters. Kept the impression of the boy, though, close in his shirt pocket.
I suppose by now you're wonderin' about Johnny Ringo. Ya see, by that time the west that Johnny knew was dyin' fast and hard. No more Indians, gunfighters, outlaws, or rowdy towns. After a while nobody in Velardi even wore a gun 'cept Johnny.
They found Johnny beneath a tree one mornin', with his horse grazin' a ways off, and his boots tied onto the stirrups. He looked quiet in death, those lines finally out of his face. They say he killed himself, a bullet through the question what done it. I guess he died long before that, though, died that winter when Cully did.
Johnny was a foreign man. Never married, never loved anyone but Laura enough to want marriage. Never had any children, and nobody knew if he had parents or siblings still livin'. He never spoke of anyone. But afterwards he died we establish a box of money underneath his bed, all marked for Cully's widow and the boy.
Didn't provide much else, though. Just the gun and everybody decided to forget that with him. Seemed fittin'.
The townspeople put up a marker over Johnny's grave. Not lots of one - he wasn't the type - but a nice stone, with the name, date, a few lines from Chaucer. He loved to read, Johnny did. Even taught Cully how and he was readin' almost as well before he passed on.
About the boy? Well, it's true Cully never did get to see his son. But the boy grew up fine, even came back hither to locate when he was fully grown and his ma had passed on. He became a doctor, and a sound one. Married and had two kids of his own. A bit of the carny in his blood, though, I figure, for he ever got a tone in his eyes when he heard that form of music. Cully loved it so. Yes, I suppose his pa would have been right proud of him. Johnny, too.
Well, that's about all there was to it. Lookin' back it don't sound like much, just simple folks livin' out their lives, but Cully and Johnny and the remainder were special. We won't see their likes again.
I bet you're most ready to leave, son. I can talk an ear off a mule when I get to ramblin' about the old days. Is that your lady friend in the horseless carriage out there? Looks like a fine night for sparkin'.
Go on now, and don't forget to scatter off the moon for all us old folks, won't ya?
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