Shapeshifters

Shapeshifters (western)



Mar. 1, 1885 Just north of Deadwood

Doc "Killer" Kanton’s gang, sometimes referred to as the Seven Horseman Of The Apocalypse, rode without reservations and at the whim of a tightly knit group of wealthy investors who financed them when necessary. They were faster, tougher and meaner than anyone they’d ever encountered, so far.
When they reached the edge of town, Kanton raised his right fist cautiously in the air and halted the others.
Deadwood looked as sleepy as many of the other innocent places they’d ridden in on. Although each town had been easy pickings, Kanton had to be cautious this time, for Deadwood had gotten a terrible reputation lately because of an new arrival who was reputed to be more skills.
So Kanton had his men arranged in a protective formation with a row of three in front, another row of two and Long John Hickcock in the back.
“Looks like a pleasant little place, Boss,” Hickcock said, getting a skeptical glance from Kanton. One of the Younger brothers: Colt, pulled out and spun the action of his revolver, sighting it randomly toward the saloon.
Kanton squinted as he looked toward the town, sizing it up.
“Where is everyone, Boss?” Colt asked. From that distance, they could see the saloon and hotel, bank, blacksmith, a general store, barber and doctor, land office, post office, stables, and undertaker, along with the twenty odd out-buildings on the side streets: tinderboxes that would go up quickly when they lit them up. But with no people to be seen anywhere, it had the strange appearance of a ghost town.
“My best guess is that most of them are in the cemetary. Deadwood still has the reputation as one of the most violent places in the west,” said Kanton, tamping down his mustache with his right hand.
Typical of these two-bit mining towns where little or no gold had been pulled from the ground, the majority here had to scratch for what little they got, which led to sudden and deadly gunfights.
But Kanton's seven horseman were here to get what they could.
“Keep a lookout from up there. Any sign of trouble, you whistle,” Kanton said, taking his best sniper Aston aside and pointing upward to an ornamental front piece on which a sign had been painted: “Emmett’s Saloon. Entertainment and Rooms.”
“Sure boss," Aston said, his hands resting on his sighted rifle as the gang dismounted at the hitching post and tied up their horses. Kanton waited until Aston was halfway up stairs to the roof, before he led the others into the saloon.

The bar room was composed of eight poker tables, a player piano, a long bar, and stairs which wound up to the second floor rooms. There were men at all the poker tables and at every spot at the bar, but the real crowd seemed to be just beyond a set of double doors.
The swinging doors led to the music hall, and a show was in progress that packed them in. Kanton and four others entered without restriction and moved to the back wall, amazed by the crowd. It was as if the whole town had come out for this show; and they were docile too, preferring to laugh rather than to shoot through the roof.
Kanton and his men stayed along the back wall and watched the show. Rim shots, musical segues and one or another of the feisty and beautiful chorus girls helped the entertainer sell her every well chosen word.
“Who is this entertainer?” Colt asked Kanton.
"Someone who claims he can soothe the savage beast!" Kanton exclaimed, with admiration.
After the chorus girls danced for a while, the entertainer came back in her gunfighter's outfit with clown makeup on her face and wanting to connect with a new audience.
"Who is she?" Colt asked, nodding toward the stage but not even being heard because the laughter was so loud.
"I'm the happy clown. I don't mean no harm. I'm just looking for love," the entertainer sang, finishing up a string of jokes that all got laughs.
"It's Tempest!" Kanton whispered reverently, as he watched. He'd then turned toward the exit, hoped a few of his men would recognize trouble when they saw it, but they were too captivated by the show to go along with him.
“Come on Boss. Can’t we stay a little longer?” Colt moaned. To wake him, Kanton slapped Colt gently on the back of the head as they moved toward the exit.

Ten months before a Doc “Killer” Kanton and his bad men came to town, a mystery woman arrived at Emmett's Hole In The Wall Saloon on the morning after it had been destroyed in a big fight the night before.
The mirror behind the bar was broken and the shelves full of bottles knocked down. There were splintered parts of tables and chairs piled toward the right center of the room and broken glass and plates on the left, closer to the bar; holes in the walls, banisters that were knocked off stairs and the balcony.
“It will take us a week to clean up and rebuild, but we hope to be open by next Friday. What can I get you?” asked a big amiable oaf of a man with a broom in his hand.
“I'll have a whiskey. But can anything be done about this mess?” the new arrival asked.
The bartender glanced up at the mysterious beautiful young woman, sizing him up. He thought this woman might be crazy from wondering in the desert for too long. But the visitor - not even twenty years old yet -didn't seem to be a victim of hardship. There was a genuine spark in her eye.
“There’s nothing that can be done about it, 'cept to rebuild,” the bartender said, turning his back to the man for a second to get a bottle off the shelf.
“You need someone to help you rebuild?"
"I'd rather prevent it from being destroyed in the first place."
"What's yer name?”
“Jake Emmett. What's yours?"
"Susanna," the new arrival announced. "You think it might be too big a claim to think I could prevent fights?"
Susanna then pulled a small clay pipe from her pocket to which he added a mixture from a pouch in his other pocket. She didn't smoke any of it herself but gave it to Emmett, who took a puff of it and smiled.
“What's in it?” Emmett asked, immediately feeling the pleasurable after-effects of the mixture.
“Ground up peyote, native tobaccos and spice,” Susanna explained.
“This will calm 'em,” said Emmett, not even doubting it a bit as he took another draw on the pipe.
“Nothing else can,” Susanna said. "And no one is getting killed."
He noticed that Susanna was fiercely intelligent and that she seemed to say and do all the right things, as if she could not fail.
“Life is hard. There isn't much reason to celebrate, until there is,” Susanna said, calmly taking the pipe back when Emmett was done with it.
"There isn't a jail big enough to hold all those scoundrels," Emmett said, with a wizened grin.
"Then we'll have to try a different way: to cheer them up,” Susanna said and let the smoke hang in the air for half a minute. After contemplating it, Emmett expressed his doubts but Susanna answered them immediately.
Sixteen year old Susanna had an innocence about her that was rare in frontier towns. She was as smart as a whip and dressed just like her mother, trim and neat, her hair carefully braided and pinned down. Her eyes, a brilliant shade of blue, shone with pure joy, for what she knew of the world, was not from experience. So far, she’d led a very sheltered life. Everything she knew was learned from books.

Outside, Doc "Killer" Kanton, who had learned everything he knew, the hard way, addressed his similarly tough group.
"The shapeshifter will naturally take on the shape that has been chosen for it, unless it has the power of choice. And that choice can be for good instead of bad," he said.
"What is good?" Colt asked, swallowing nervously.
"You'll know it when you see it. We're seven because seven fighters with our capabilities are needed to go against criminals, killers and cheats," the gang leader said.
The side door opened and someone very spectacular-looking stepped in. She wore a very spare leather outfit that barely covered her generous curvature. All the leather straps connected her breast covering, gun belt, to frilly lower areas that extended to her boots. She wore large frilly leather gloves and topped it off with a custom leather engraved cowboy hat with a tornado on it. There was a gun at each hip, knives in each boot and a Winchester over her shoulder. A half smile suggested ample confidence.
"Where did you hear that word Shapeshifter? Only one person ever used it," Susanna asked, dispensing with the greeting. The boys mouths were agape, although old Kanton seemed to take her arrival in stride.
"I was bringing these boys up to date," Kanton said.
"Please Doc. Let me tell the story," she said.
She strutted among her admirers like someone who knew she was respected by her reputation and she astounded them, but she never looked closely to see who was there.
"Tempest," Colt said, reverently, but she never looked closely at his face.
"Yes, they call me that," said Susanna, not seeing her friend Scout hidden anywhere when she faced trouble.
She explained what Shapeshifters meant and that living in this place was like a nightmare you'd never wake up from.
"Susanna," Colt said, trying to get her attention. "You are Tempest. Angry hero of the people?"
"But I'm not a folk hero," she said, still not yet aware of how deadly any of these men were. "I'm just a girl doing the best I can to try to survive. They wanted me to have the same fate as my friend."
"Who's your friend?" Colt asked.
She explained how they'd had her tied up and were about to touch a hot brand to her thigh, when someone kicked out iron, grabbed it and swung it a few times, blinding her two captors before grabbing their guns and shooting them.
"That was me," she admitted. "But they'd already killed my friend Cosmo the Entertainer. He was the clown who kept 'em calm before me. I became Tempest after my friend died, because I was so angry."
Scout was giving her the signal to wrap it up because he had something to tell her that weighed heavily on him. So she excused herself from Kanton's company, all drunk from the lingering effects of the smoke in the air of the music hall. She found Scout inside.

"Its about your mom and dad."
"What happened?" she asked from faraway, as though it were filtering up from deep below.
"Seven outlaws showed up and shot them. I recognize them as being "Horsemen."
Her face twisted into a mask of ashen shock. She didn't wait to hear the details and shut out anything further he had to say.
"I overheard them asking for the deed to your fathers ranch," Scout added.
She was visibly shaking, a sweat appearing on the crest of her forehead. She was no longer listening and seemed about ready to explode before she went roaring off.
"I think they’re the same devils who killed my parents," Scout added as he nodded toward Kanton's group, but she was already gone. Down the street there were two gunshots. Scout knew that was enough for her.