Snippet #2251287

Red Hawk Nocona

The silence between them beckoned the darkness of the night, heavy air tingling with the electricity darting through the night sky and permeating the distance between his blood-covered hands and the fair skin of the woman he eyed with vicious intent. The silence was marked only by a distant clap of thunder and a tired groan of the floor beneath them having seen years of stress and seconds of violence, both enough to end a lifetime.

"Yes."

The woman's voice broke the silence. Somewhere in the darkness, the dark man smiled.

"Good."

The book flew at him, honestly catching the man off his guard in the instant, giving the young woman a chance to flee. Nocona's hand shot up to protect his face, the binding of the book catching a glancing blow at his cheek as the large invader covered his right eye for a moment out of instinct. It was long enough for Amelia to pour into the street. Into the storm, out fo the danger. For now.

Shaking off the blow, Nocona grunted and charged after her, his large frame passing through the door and noticing the last of the young woman's body and skirts diving into the saloon. It would be suicidal to follow her now -- too many white men, too many guns, and too many drinks in their systems for the white devils to avoid pulling the trigger the moment that he appeared. Red Hawk Nocona may have been a man with a death wish, but that wish was set on his own terms and following the girl strayed from the vision he'd been given.

The sound of shoed horsefalls through the mud of the street carried the man's eyes up and meeting the eventual gaze and words of the lawman. It had only been a matter of time until he'd come, only a distance of death to summon the wrath of men who believed their word to be a truth from above destined to rule the hearts and souls of other men. Control was everything to them and Nocona did not fit neatly into the grids and plans by which the white men were so eager to live their lives.

"You're a long way from home!"

Water dripped from the white man's hat as thunder clapped again, this time closer as if heralding the heroic call to action of the man charged with keeping the peace and protecting the innocent from the likes of this savage. Nocona stepped forth from the protection of the library's porch and into the cold rain, beginning to wash away the blood covering him. Some feared the rain, feared the cold, feared the elements. Nocona felt a new strength surge through his body at the sensation of the coming emar.

"This is my home, lawman," Nocona spoke in the broken English that carried the tone and meaning of his words without loss. "Badge and gun you carry does not take my home away forever. Makes you a thief. A sickness."

His hands hung down to his sides, but the mere size of the man and the blood covering his torso gave rise to the threat he carried even if no weapon was visible as he stood in the street.

"Girl inside is dead, lawman. Too weak for what comes. Her spirit free, no suffering. Do not weep for her."