L’Ouest Sauvage

“Lash” LaRue De La Paix trotted into town on a magnificent Appaloosa which made the street-tethered roans, pintos and sorrels look like so many hippo-mongrels. Lash was a cow-garçon from Marseilles who had come to Dodge City in search of adventure and some poontang. Sitting high in his saddle, he sneeringly steered his stallion among his lessers, sniffing the air for those female pheromones which would lead him to his evening comfort.

“Lash” wasn’t his Christian name; it was Gregorio. But Gregorio assumed this new appellation on the boat over to America somewhere northwest of the Sargasso Sea in order to distract females from his somewhat androgynous appearance. It worked like a charm. Within fifteen minutes of his rechristening, he was playing the ole in and out with a scullery maid from Bristol who was coming to America to wed her 12-year pen pal from Newark.

When Lash reached the only three-story hotel in Dodge City, The Roxy, he guided his horse to its hitching post. In doing so, he swung his right leg back over the saddle and spent the horse’s last ten paces suspended on his left stirrup. This bit of grandstanding was for the benefit of a comely miss who was standing on the hotel porch with at least eight crinolines hiding her pouting charms (on which Lash was already beginning to fantasize.)

With a tip of his 37.85 liter hat to this potential conquest, Lash tied up his horse and took the porch stairs three at a time. This was a grievous error in judgment. He missed the top step by millimeters and fell headlong into a gunslinger named Mickey from Butte, Montana. Without so much as a how-de-do, this desperado pumped all six bullets from his pearl-handled Colt into Lash’s torso ... which quickly twitched into stillness.

They buried him on Boot Hill with but a single word carved on his graveboard, “Frenchie”. His horse and saddle were sold to cover the funeral expenses. Mickey took the rest of Lash's personal effects for the insult.

© Copyright, George W. Potts

The Farmer in the Dell

The Red Dart bus dropped Geoffrey Granger off at the foot of a long dirt lane leading to a cozy farmhouse. He stood there for a good five minutes sucking in all the sensory stimuli of this bucolic setting. Manure, fresh-cut hay, ozone from a recent thunder storm, and the flowering privet in the hedge-row all contributed to the aromatic melange that Jeff used to resettle his mind into a yeoman’s serenity. A nearby plowed field steamed slightly as it was being plucked over by a troop of magpies foraging for a late lunch. The L-shaped road ahead was paralleled with a phalanx of tall maple trees that swayed in the slight breeze like a line of ballerina dancers at the practice bar.

As he turned and trudged up this rutted path, he gauged the caliber of the herds of sloe-eyed Jersey cows, Black Angus steers, and milky-white Marino sheep grazing in separate, movable pens on the lush alfalfa and clover fields. The husbandry prowess of this croft’s owner was evidenced by the well-fed sheen on the bovines’ hides and the length of the ovine wool. A gaggle of Canada geese paddled noisily in the nearby irrigation pond which was reflecting the increasingly bright August sun and random, racing nimbus clouds throwing crisp shadows across the huddled water lilies.

As he approached the enclosed barnyard he noted a parcel of piebald Guinea hens and russet Rhode Island Reds pecking and scratching and throwing up the afternoon dust. Ten Poland China sows and one enormous boar rooted in the mud of a pig sty attached to the side of a carmine-red barn and their communal grunting created a soothing background cadence. To the side of the white clapboard farmhouse, the kitchen garden was overflowing with lush red tomatoes, purple-black eggplants, vermilion and verdant peppers, and a wide range of salad greens.

Just as Jeff was turning by the silo to enter the straw-filled upper barn his whole world went blank, mute, and odorless. It was quickly clear what had happened. Jeff’s black Labrador, Flatulence, had tripped over and, consequently, pulled the plug to his Dell, Studio XPS 9000 with Windows 7, personal computer system on which he was running the virtual reality software “Agra-Views.” Jeff removed his wrap-around, viewing and smelling, acoustical-helmet and gave his now hang-dog pet a swift kick to the solar plexus.

© Copyright, George W. Potts