Back to the beginning of the Slow Western
The scene of him riding along on his horse was magnificent. Whoever did the cinematography for the outdoor things was really good.
He came to the spring, and obvious campsite there. He set up a camp and sat and looked at the screen.
He had no pretensions when he started talking. “That was really spooky, mate. Do you think it was ghosts?”
“I don’t know. It might be what they want you to think. Western America was full of strange things, but that just was weird. And the way the town just shut down. And the way they got you out…”
He took a swig of water from his metal cup. “Something just isn’t right there.” He downed the rest of the water. “And this is a trap.”
I looked at the screen and saw what he saw. The camp was not clean enough, if that makes sense. Like several people had used it, but didn’t have time to clean it up before they left. The fire ring had half-burned logs in it before he had started the fire. There were scraps of clothing hanging over a palette-like piece of fence, a small toolbox under a low scrub brush near the spring.
I could see some of the pieces, and said, “Whatever is going on, you need a plan.”
He looked up into the darkening sky and back at the screen. “Do the pause thing.”
I did, and we talked. We talked about the situation in town. Everything the ghosts could have been. Where the red dirt could have been from on the horse. We even talked about the steaks we had eaten. And then we talked about the other movies. It was…nice. It had been a long time since I had been able to just have a conversation, and this felt so real. But I saw we had been talking for 45 minutes with the streaming on pause and knew we had to get the rest of the movie dealt with.
“Ready?” He nodded slightly and I unpaused it.
We had made a plan. He tamped down the fire and made the bedroll look like there was someone in it. He lay under some of the scrub brush and waited. In movie time, it isn’t too long before the horse reacted to something and a few figures came into camp. The low, red glow from the coals in the fire pit showed it was a few of the guys that had confronted Him in the hotel.
I whispered, “Two from the spring, I think one from the big rocks.” He nodded and stayed where he was.
One of the guys knelt before pushing down on where His head would have been, pulling the blanket off the rock figure. He was confused for a moment and then started looking around. “He’s not here! Look around. He woulnd’a left his horse.”
They looked around, but didn’t see him at all. They gathered up the horse and some of the other stuff and went into the darkness. He waited for a moment and then said into the dirt, “You were right. Let’s follow them.”
Slow Western part 5 ahead
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