Rueful Regret

RUEFUL REGRET

Author: Steve Vernon

ISBN-13: 978-1-927765-15-9

First Printing – September 8, 2013

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If you can read this novella without cracking a grin you ought to run and see a dentist – because your mouth must be seriously broken.

What People Are Saying About Steve Vernon

If Harlan Ellison, Richard Matheson and Robert Bloch had a three-way sex romp in a hot tub, and then a team of scientists came in and filtered out the water and mixed the leftover DNA into a test tube, the resulting genetic experiment would most likely grow up into Steve Vernon. – Bookgasm

Steve Vernon is something of an anomaly in the world of horror literature. He's one of the freshest new voices in the genre although his career has spanned twenty years. Writing with a rare swagger and confidence, Steve Vernon can lead his readers through an entire gamut of emotions from outright fear and repulsion to pity and laughter. - Cemetery Dance

Armed with a bizarre sense of humor, a huge amount of originality, a flair for taking risks and a strong grasp of characterization - Steve's got the chops for sure. - Dark Discoveries

Steve Vernon is a hard writer to pin down. And that’s a good thing. – Dark Scribe Magazine

This genre needs new blood and Steve Vernon is quite a transfusion. –Edward Lee, author of FLESH GOTHIC and CITY INFERNAL

Steve Vernon is one of the finest new talents of horror and dark fiction - Owl Goingback, author of CROTA

Steve Vernon was born to write. He's the real deal and we're lucky to have him. - Richard Chizmar

Introduction

Let me tell you just a little bit about this novella.

A very LONG time ago I wrote a short novella entitled Long Horn, Big Shaggy – a Tale of the Wild West and Reanimated Buffalo. The book sold fairly well and it is now available in e-book format. A few years later I approached Richard Chizmar at Cemetery Dance Publishing about the possibility of putting together a four author – four novella collection of weird western fiction.

That sounds good to me, Richard said. Who do you have in mind?

Well – the first fellow I had in mind was Joe Lansdale. I mean who else could I get to write a weird western. The man practically invented the genre. Only at the time that I was putting this collection together Joe had run into a hurricane or two that blew through Texas and his house was in a heap and he was busy putting it back together.

So my next call was to Brian Keene – whom I knew and respected as a fellow who could meet a deadline and get the job done. I also approached Tim Curran and Tim Lebbon – who had both had some experience in the field of weird westerns. In fact, while I’ve got your ear you REALLY ought to check out Tim Curran’s weird west novel Skin Medicine.

It took several years before the collection, Four Rode Out, finally saw print. Cemetery Dance printed 1000 copies and they sold out within three days. You can still find a copy or two but they are scarce and I have ALWAYS wanted to see this book in e-book format so that more readers could discover this quiet little yarn.

I wrote this story thinking about Larry McMurtry’s epic saga Lonesome Dove. No, there isn’t any cattle drive but I was going for the tone of the McMurtry’s wonderful slow and powerful storytelling. I do not know if I truly succeeded in my aim. Perhaps you can tell me better once you’ve sat down and read this yarn.

Yours in storytelling,

Steve Vernon

Chapter 1 – Nothing beats the crowd-clearing pattern of a well-made eight gauge shotgun blast

Bass Clayton stared up at the big yellow moon and frowned thoughtfully.

That moon looked way too damn much like an eye to him. He wondered if he could reach up and stick his thumb into that big yellow moon-eye. At the very least he ought to be able to shoot it the hell out of his existence.

Bass’s Daddy used to say that God looked down on the badness men got up to through a big old spy glass in the moon. Bass figured that God shouldn’t look that hard. What goes on down here in the dirt was really none of God’s business.

Something flew close by overhead.

Bass heard the flutter of wings.

He shivered a little even though it was most likely nothing but a night owl.

It wasn’t likely to be anything else that he could imagine.

He was too far up for people. Bass liked it that way – good and lonely and comfortable. The farmers and the settlers and the man in tall hats hadn’t found these hills yet – but it was only a matter of sooner or later before they finally did.

That sooner or later wasn’t worth nothing but a fist full of runny goddamn shame in the eyes – as far as Bass was concerned. He liked the emptiness that the hills out here offered a man. He liked the peace and the purity of it all. There was nothing but the darkness and the stars looking down and the moon staring blind and quiet.

Bass especially appreciated the quiet.

He had heard way too much noise – and worse things – on the battlefields of Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville and Chickamauga.

Do you think you can take him, Bass? Hawley asked, talking too loud as usual.

We’ll know if I can take him, soon enough, Bass allowed. Unless you go and yell him the hell awake with all of your needless jawboning. You’re making more noise than a rusty tin buckboard bouncing down a frozen road.

There always had to be a tagalong on a job like this.

As a full-time professional bounty-killer Bass Clayton would have given an awful lot to find himself an employer who would truly trust him on his own look-out – just for one time. Bass never did care much about working with other people – but there wasn’t a boss out there who ever saw things Bass’s way.

Why did bosses always think that a hired killing needed a well-paid witness? You didn’t really need to hear a tree fall over to know that the worm or the steel or the flame had taken it on down.

Sorry, Hawley whispered, too loudly.

Bass rode in slowly.

It never paid to hurry into a killing. You wanted to see death coming from a long ways off, rather than riding in too fast. If you could see something you could kill it – and if you killed it before it saw you the odds were that it wouldn’t get much of a chance to kill you on back.

That just made perfect sense.

Shh, Bass whispered.

Killing was just exactly what this going to take.

Bass had no illusions on that. A man like Silver Grimes wasn’t going to lay down his gun without putting up a fight.

Why not?

Bass sure wouldn’t go easily if the positions were reversed.

He wasn’t even all that crazy about being out here like this – but it was his job.

Besides, Grimes ought to have known better than to beat Judge Rupert Chizmar at a poker game. Judge Chizmar was an awfully sore loser and he could swear out an arrest warrant and write up a death sentence faster than a one-handed man could drop a greasy shovel.

Bass kept his eye on his target.

He could see the light of Grime’s cabin – one lonely lantern light staring out the cabin window into the swallow of a mountain nightfall.

Is he in there? Hawley hissed – way too close to Bass’s ear.

No, Bass said sarcastically. It’s likely too warm and comfortable in that cabin for him. A rough old boy like Silver Grimes is bound to be out catching himself a little of this fine and bracing night air, enjoying the mosquitoes feeding on his arms and asshole - and the wind-shivers and the melodious farting of the hoot owls.

Do hoot owls fart?

"Only if you listen for