The moon leered down at the bitter night. Like a pallid cadaver, its dead gaze felt no compassion. Indifferent was the icy wind. Upon the exposed skin it took bites, and left a chill in the flesh. Bones felt brittle, joints leaden. Frost bitten smell of the dead campfire left the specter of warmth that haunted the flesh. No amount of curses or prayers could keep flames alight, only left a grave chill. No beast or man dared to speak, but only the wind’s lament lingered. Like long dead lovers, under a silver glow, damned promises seemed just beyond one’s mind.

For a week, Cassidy had been plagued by this sour gloom. Across the merciless desert he fled, though the manic darkness gained. Ever closer, the shifting shadows were beyond the campfire’s light, but bolder it grew. The bounty hunter had instincts honed by intimacy with death that howled endless in the nights. Snatches of respite were brief, always he awaken gun in hand. Before the veil of blackness was withdrawn; the revolver sought shadows. In the dark, alone and far from the civilized world, unnatural forms or figures frolicked at the tip of frayed wits.

Westward he’d retreated each day. Something followed. Be it god or devil he wished to remain ignorant. Madness a dark voice promised, and no amount of bourbon could still its tongue. Until the smell of the ocean he’d denied any revelation. Truth of its natural nature was beyond his ability. There was a reasonable answer, he assured himself. The promise of scientific explanation was hollow.

One could only run so far, before the truth finds them. Cassidy would retreat from no man, except himself. Ghosts of his family trailed him, kept a cold comfort of the lost. Amidst the corpse of the campfire’s dying embers, his mind found memories of ruination, family or friend. Never could he understand or accept he still lived. He lingered; his recollections played over in hellish repetition. Bitter was the sweetness of joy, which loneliness recalled. Gone, it was spent to never reoccur, but to live on in a cursed life.

Past the campfire, eyes blue as the dawn over the desert moved to the shadows. They breathed. In the realm of dark forms impish figures lurched. Stalkers came to beckon to implore; yet, skeletal hands never dared to reach into even the stingiest of light. The campfire died, Cassidy held his ground. He would have the truth, which it was a phantom born of life’s horrors. Closer they ventured. Dark Watchers congealed in the night. Only an empty hole, full of inky black, looked at the bounty hunter. Out of this fathomless pit a wretched shriek rasped through the air. All the torments endured in the lowest reaches of the infernal realms were encapsulated in its lament.

To his feet he flew, hand upon the revolver. “Are you a devil or phantom?!” raged Cassidy.

The horrid truth he had implored; yet, still their ghastly shadows were only lies. Forms beguiled. Raspy were their voices. Surely, be these ghosts or imps, Cassidy felt thirsty at this thought. All his senses, only falsehoods, were truths of a damned mind. Jealous angels or saintly devils, these Dark Watchers beseeched him, almost as words at tongue’s tip. Beyond yet below, there entreaties were only gasps upon the ear and mind. Such as those lost figures of doom could speak only oath, curse or prophecy? Queries led to questions. More came, were born, to offer only broken rasps of unbearable proclamation.

Secret of their choir, unveiled as one, they said, “Cassidy.”

At his name spoken as a blasphemy caused a terrorized revulsion. To stay was to succumb. Only a fool or mad man conversed with such dregs. Away he cast himself; trusty horse and only friend came at his behest. Into the saddle, out into the dark, rode the bounty hunter to the Dark Watchers’ weeping wail of sorrow.

In the desert he’d tried to find some truth or purpose, after the loss of his family. Among the scrub brush he prayed for some sort of revelation. Cassidy balanced the scales of justice, a purpose to live. He searched in the wastes, far from man or between saloons. Next to the campfire, alone except for the past; days of violence bled into nights of madness. Things challenged the most rational of minds, often left only questions or denial. The Unknown Lands were all that were past the limited experience of man, or in the darkness below the conscious. The light of reason’s sanity sputtered yet clung to life.

“Too long in the desert,” he whispered, but the words fell under the sound of hooves. Over a shoulder he glanced, but again he was alone.

The amiable steed slowed to a walk. Everyone said that the desert could be terrible upon the mind. He’d heard many grew mad in the heat. Shimmering warmth above the merciless land hid many illusions, which shocked the dreary with mercurial forms. Beauty haunting and unrefined, of the endless scrub desert delivered a peace. In the great silence, away from the world but immersed in self, they were revelations that caused the soul disquiet. Reflections of past failings came to life, so to wonder the illusory night. Cassidy had prayed for some lifting of his burdens, absolution of a troubled heart. Whatever he’d sought, it could never be revealed in the dry wastes.

Perhaps, pondered the bounty hunter, a new place to roam would set these megrims and maladies at ease. A change of the land might change the heart, make it lighter. Mountains instead of brush, snow instead of heat, away to places untamed, where he could see less of the Dark Watchers.

As in all endeavors, big or small, there was always the matter of supply. To the North West pined his scarred heart. Tales of the forest, opportunity, fell as much as snow on the Rockies. Gone from the dry heat, he would at least escape the insanity that bedeviled the South West.