Read Online The Last Ride of German Freddie by Walter Jon Williams - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Walter Jon Williams
Tags: Science-Fiction, Literature & Fiction, Science Fiction & Fantasy, Genre Fiction, Westerns, 90 Minutes (44-64 Pages)
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ran back toward the sound of shooting. A man ran across his field of vision and Zarathustra boomed. The man kept running.
Freddie neared a bush and ducked behind it, polished his spectacles quickly on his bandanna, and stuck them back on his face. The added clarity was not great. The Earps' camp was in a great turmoil in the dust and the half-light, and people were shouting and shooting and running about without any apparent purpose.
Fools! Freddie wanted to shriek. You do not even know how to live, let alone how to die!
He approached the nearest man at a walk, put Zarathustra to the stranger's breast, and pulled the trigger. When the man fell, Freddie took the other's gun in his left hand, then stalked on. He fired a shot at a startled stranger, who ran.
“Stop, Freddie!” came a shout. “Throw up your hands!”
It was Holliday's voice. Freddie froze in his tracks, panting for breath in the cold morning air. Holliday was somewhere to his right—a shift of stance and Freddie could fire—but Holliday would kill him before that, he knew.
Troy is burning, he thought. You have killed as a human being. Now die as one. Freely, and at the right moment.
“Throw up your hands!” Holliday called again, and then from the effort of the shout gave a little cough.
Wild exhilaration flooded Freddie's veins—Holliday's cough had surely spoiled his aim. Freddie swung right as he thumbed the hammer back on each of the two revolvers.
And, for the last time, Zarathustra spoke.
*
The Earp posse caught up with Josie a few hours later as she rode her solitary way to Tombstone. John Holliday shivered atop his horse, trembling as if the morning chill had not yet left his bones. He touched his hat to her, but she ignored him, just kept her plug walking south.
“This was Freddie's, ma'am,” Holliday said in his polite Southern way, and held out a book bound between cardboard covers, Freddie's journal. “You figure in his thoughts,” Holliday said. “You may wish to have it.”
Coldly, without a word, she took the worn volume from his hand. Holliday kicked his horse and the posse rode on, moving swiftly past her into the bright morning.
Josie tried not to look at the bodies that tossed and dangled over the saddles.
*
What have I found to cherish in this detestable land? Josie read when she returned to Tombstone. Comrades, and valor, and the woman of my heart. Who came to me because she was free! And for whom— because she is free —Troy will burn, and men will spill their lives into the dust. Every free woman may kill a world.
She will not chain herself; she despises the slavery that is modern life. That is freedom indeed, the freedom to topple towers and destroy without regard. Not from petulance or fear, but from greatness of heart! She does not seek power, she simply wields it, as a part of her nature.
Can I be less brave than she? For a gunman, or a philosopher, to live or die or scribble on paper is nothing. For a girl to overturn the order of the world—to stand over the bodies of her lovers and desire only to arm herself—for such a girl to become Fate itself—!
This Fate will I meet with joy. It is clear enough what the morning will bring, and the thought brings no terror. Let my end bring no sadness to my darling Fate, my joy—I have died a million times ere now, and will awake a million more to the love of my—of my Josie—
*
The words whirled in her mind. Her head ached, and her heart. The words were not easy to understand. Josie knew there were many more notebooks stacked in Freddie's room at the hotel, volume after volume packed with dense script, most in a frantic scrawled German that seemed to have been written in a kind of frenzy, the words mashed onto and over one another in a colossal road-accident of crashing ideas.
There was no longer any reason to stay in Tombstone: her lovers were dead, and those who hated her lived. She would take Freddie's journals away, read them, try to
Freddie neared a bush and ducked behind it, polished his spectacles quickly on his bandanna, and stuck them back on his face. The added clarity was not great. The Earps' camp was in a great turmoil in the dust and the half-light, and people were shouting and shooting and running about without any apparent purpose.
Fools! Freddie wanted to shriek. You do not even know how to live, let alone how to die!
He approached the nearest man at a walk, put Zarathustra to the stranger's breast, and pulled the trigger. When the man fell, Freddie took the other's gun in his left hand, then stalked on. He fired a shot at a startled stranger, who ran.
“Stop, Freddie!” came a shout. “Throw up your hands!”
It was Holliday's voice. Freddie froze in his tracks, panting for breath in the cold morning air. Holliday was somewhere to his right—a shift of stance and Freddie could fire—but Holliday would kill him before that, he knew.
Troy is burning, he thought. You have killed as a human being. Now die as one. Freely, and at the right moment.
“Throw up your hands!” Holliday called again, and then from the effort of the shout gave a little cough.
Wild exhilaration flooded Freddie's veins—Holliday's cough had surely spoiled his aim. Freddie swung right as he thumbed the hammer back on each of the two revolvers.
And, for the last time, Zarathustra spoke.
*
The Earp posse caught up with Josie a few hours later as she rode her solitary way to Tombstone. John Holliday shivered atop his horse, trembling as if the morning chill had not yet left his bones. He touched his hat to her, but she ignored him, just kept her plug walking south.
“This was Freddie's, ma'am,” Holliday said in his polite Southern way, and held out a book bound between cardboard covers, Freddie's journal. “You figure in his thoughts,” Holliday said. “You may wish to have it.”
Coldly, without a word, she took the worn volume from his hand. Holliday kicked his horse and the posse rode on, moving swiftly past her into the bright morning.
Josie tried not to look at the bodies that tossed and dangled over the saddles.
*
What have I found to cherish in this detestable land? Josie read when she returned to Tombstone. Comrades, and valor, and the woman of my heart. Who came to me because she was free! And for whom— because she is free —Troy will burn, and men will spill their lives into the dust. Every free woman may kill a world.
She will not chain herself; she despises the slavery that is modern life. That is freedom indeed, the freedom to topple towers and destroy without regard. Not from petulance or fear, but from greatness of heart! She does not seek power, she simply wields it, as a part of her nature.
Can I be less brave than she? For a gunman, or a philosopher, to live or die or scribble on paper is nothing. For a girl to overturn the order of the world—to stand over the bodies of her lovers and desire only to arm herself—for such a girl to become Fate itself—!
This Fate will I meet with joy. It is clear enough what the morning will bring, and the thought brings no terror. Let my end bring no sadness to my darling Fate, my joy—I have died a million times ere now, and will awake a million more to the love of my—of my Josie—
*
The words whirled in her mind. Her head ached, and her heart. The words were not easy to understand. Josie knew there were many more notebooks stacked in Freddie's room at the hotel, volume after volume packed with dense script, most in a frantic scrawled German that seemed to have been written in a kind of frenzy, the words mashed onto and over one another in a colossal road-accident of crashing ideas.
There was no longer any reason to stay in Tombstone: her lovers were dead, and those who hated her lived. She would take Freddie's journals away, read them, try to
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