The tide had pulled back, leaving a scatter of pebbles and seaweed tangled like a woman’s uncombed hair. Jeb Coulter stood at the water’s edge, boot heels digging into the wet sand, staring down at the thing half-buried beneath the wrack. It was a revolver, or at least the ghost of one, its shape worn smooth by salt and time. He bent down and picked it up, turning it in his hand. The weight was gone, its cylinder fused, the barrel plastic. Still, the sight of it sent a shiver down his spine.
It had been years since Jeb last held a gun. Years since the night he rode out of Abilene with his brother’s blood on his hands and a Cherokee war party at his heels. He had made it to the coast, crossed the ocean to escape his past, and found a different kind of frontier along these windswept shores. But some things, it seemed, could never be outrun.
He turned at the sound of footsteps crunching over stone. A man in a long coat approached, the collar pulled up high against the wind. Jeb recognised the stride before he saw the face.
‘Figured you might turn up sooner or later,’ Jeb muttered, slipping the ruined gun into his coat pocket.
The man stopped a few paces away, close enough for Jeb to see the jagged scar along his cheek. ‘You know why I’m here.’
Jeb nodded. He had known for a long time that his past would come calling. He had betrayed the Comanche chief who took him in as a boy, abandoned his tribe when the Army came, and left his own blood to die on the plains. The man standing before him was proof that debts were never truly settled.
‘I ain’t the same man I was back then,’ Jeb said. ‘And that thing ain’t a gun anymore.’
The man smiled grimly. ‘Don’t matter. You know what’s gotta be done.’
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His hand fingered the ghostly revolver in his pocket. Useless. Just like trying to change the past.
The wind howled, carrying the cries of gulls and ghosts alike. Jeb squared his shoulders.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘Let’s finish this.’
With thanks to ChatGPT, and apologies to Elmer Kelton.
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