Robert James Russell

Earlier today I made it known to the world that my Western short story “Blood Quantum” was available to purchase as an eBook (check that out here).  Now, for all you old fogies out there that still prefer your books in hardcopy form, click here and quit your whining!

😉

Hey, remember that Western short story I posted on my blog a while back, “Blood Quantum”? Well, I decided I wanted to try something new and offer it up as an eBook on Lulu.com.

Basically, I’m going to take my story down eventually from the site, so check it out while you can, and if you think it’s worthy of the $2.99 I’m asking, get yourself a copy by clicking the logo below. Cool?

Full text below.  Enjoy.

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Blood Quantum

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Bob Antrim felt a cold steeled barrel matt his thick hair down and wedge into the back of his skull.  He heard the hammer click back metallically and in that moment recalled his wife dying of consumption, spittles of blood curtained along the contours of her sunken face and chest, and then he mulled on his boy who had died in infancy.  His hands gripped the splintered haft of the pick and for a minute further he dreamt of spinning in place and lodging the wedged spade into his attacker but amid the hallucinated escapades a shot thundered out like drums.  The bullet churned down the barrel of the spunked and dusty revolver and it crushed through Bob’s skull and out his right eye socket as fluids sprayed like some geyser and his body fell to the ground sharp like stone.

Everett Root rolled the dented .44 caliber Dance revolver around his index finger and holstered it as if he were some dashing and wily roughrider that had been wrangled into a Wild West Show.  He coughed a bit and waved the smoke away from his face with his hands and then set his eyes on the heaped body, smiling crookedly and scratching his chin. The ache in his leg gathered up again like a fist and he snorted out a dollop of snot from his nostrils and lowered himself carefully to the floor of the gritty mine.  He set his feet up on the twin timber planks that bridged across mud and wet recessed puddles in the rock.  The air smelled like sulfur.

He unwound a piece of stained-red cloth from around the upper part of his left thigh and he dropped the saturated tourniquet into a soaked pile beside him.  Then he took two fingers and peeled an opening in his gray trousers that sat dark like cotton flesh and beneath the opening laid a bullet wound that fizzled deep, the opening lipped out as if it had been disturbed by some plated tremor deep below.  A glossy covering of black-red blood formed at the surface and he thumbed at it curiously as if he had previous familiarities with human anatomy, then recoiled from the shocks of pain that shot back.  He coughed deeply and squinted his eyes at the gaping hole, imagining he could see the top of the stunted round poking out and he wished he had dug the thing out in San Augustine.

He scooted himself along the ground to alleviate the pressure on his hurt leg and kept at it until he reached the miner’s boots and he stopped.  He sized them up mechanically and concluded they were too small and then he wormed his way along the body further, grimacing with hurt at every length he moved.  He stopped again at the miner’s waist and breathed hard and squinted his eyes again into the dark and smiled at the smoking wound lodged in his pale face.  Then Everett took a smudged hand and turned the man’s head from side to side, gripping it along the jaw with the charm of a grandfather admiring a boy.

“Sunnuvabitch!”

He guffawed and looked around for encouragement as if he had hallucinated an audience that likewise enjoyed his clowning and then let the head flop back with a heavy bump.

“From the right angle, boy, you look like my brother Jesse.”

He coughed again and rummaged through the large denim pockets of the man’s overalls and pulled out a small pocketknife with a pewter handle that it folded back into.  He unfurled the blade and it was dinged around most of the edge but the tip still pricked hard into the whorl of his thumb.  He collapsed the knife and slipped it into his shirt pocket and kept digging.  He pulled out a piece of folded paper that had browned along the edges.  He placed it into his teeth and bit down to keep it in place and the prospect of something other than his tongue taking up room in there caused him to slobber a bit around the corners and wet the edge of the note.  He then pulled out another folded and waxed piece of paper and he unfolded it.  He examined it and it appeared to be a map of the area with hashes penciled in and around the mountains he was currently in, possibly marking failed claims and there was a longer scratch that portended to what might be a homestead a few miles off.  He laid the map down and then dug through the remaining pockets, pulling out a length of twine and he pushed it aside.  He noticed the claw hammer slung along a leather belt askew along the miner’s hips and he fingered the splintered handle and the iron cheek felt cool against his skin.

Continue reading Short story: “Blood Quantum”

Finally! The conclusion of my Western short story “Blood Quantum”!

If you missed any of the previous Parts, catch up here: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

Enjoy!

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Everett peeled a blackred paste from his lips as he sped through the trail.  His groin excruciated in waves and he knew it was lead poisoning.  He pushed through the hurt further and eventually slowed his pace, confident that his attacker took to rummaging through his belongings back at the cabin in an attempt to look for the silver, still tucked away safely in his shirt.  He ran a hand through his hair and coughed a bit and the path eventually opened up into the flood plain, dotted with lone cottonwoods and sweeps of greenbrown desert grasses.  He stood briefly to navigate and spied the Rio Grande about a mile out, gray and loud.  Mesilla was still further south but he noticed a road on the far side of the river that would take him there and he smiled crookedly.

He trotted down the steep slope and across the range, passing monuments of salt cedar and sagebrush and croppings of bouldered limestone and sandstone.  Everett marched on, glancing back to the pass like clockwork.  His vision began to blur and he mistook shadows of dashing clouds overhead as armies of villains bent on doing him harm.  He crept on as his headache worsened and soon he forgot his sentried errand.  He kept low to the ground and stopped himself twice from collapsing completely, bracing himself on passing man-made edifices of rock and earth.  His limp had worsened and he stumbled upon wreckage of some wrecked wagonette and used a long timber from the wagon-bed as a crutch until it snapped in half ten minutes later.  The sun was hot and without his hat or coat he felt the full effects of it on the nape of his neck.

Everett had been walking for three quarters of an hour in an unintentional crisscross route through the plains and had been stopping every few minutes to realign himself amid his worsening condition, finally stopping at a large and rounded granite stone at the bank of the river.  He gently lowered himself into the damp mud and his body throbbed all over as he arched his back along the boulder, the bullet buried in his shoulder shouting in pain.  The rock gave him significant cover and a cool draft washed over him.  He began another succession of coughing fits and spit up blood at the conclusion of each.  His hands were shaking from his wounds and the hunger that plagued him and he took out the last acorns and chewed them skins and all.  They were rubbery and sour and he felt puke come up in his throat but he managed to keep them down.  He untwisted the canteen from his torso and drank the rest of the water.  Some of it spilled down his chin and felt cool against his skin.

Continue reading “Blood Quantum” Part 4