More work on my Western Short

Yet again I remind you of the rough draft nature of this story. This is one I just like to continually update the two or three of you that read this on. I hope you continue to enjoy it.

Once again I'll post the whole thing instead of just the new part.

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The rider spurred his horse southward away from town, hooves thundering across the dusty earth. Stealing frantic glances over his shoulder he found that the massive cloud kicked up by his horse had blocked his vision of what lay behind. Sweat beading on his brow despite the cool air whipping around him, he spurred the horse harder to milk every bit of speed he could out of it. Better to kill the horse from exhaustion than to dawdle when he needed distance between him and town. Many amongst the townsfolk who witnessed his flight spoke of him fleeing like a man with the fear of God in him or like a man chased by demons thought long exercised. He was doing just that and with good reason. I was riding behind him; and the gap between us was closing fast.
“Why you runnin’ Ray?” I taunted over the din of our horses. “What’s the hurry?”
“Twasn’t nothing personal, it was just business.” He screamed back. A smile raised the corners of my mouth. He recognized me even after all these years and that recognition had brought fear. I heard it in the way his voice went up and saw it in his eyes. He knew who I was and more importantly knew why I was here.
“I’ve been looking for you for a long time Ray, don’t make this harder than it has to be.” I said.
“I swear, I didn’t even want to do it. I told ‘em all we shouldn’t.” His voice starting to shake.
I was just beginning to grow tired of the chase when Lady Luck smiled on me, maybe she frowned at him. In either case, his horse stepped in a hole and as its leg shattered he was thrown clear. I dropped from my horse as he tumbled a fair distance away. While he lay bloodied and dazed I ended his horse’s misery with a single shot to the head. I hated to do it but there was no other way to go about it. As I stalked across the arid ground I let the spent shell fall to the dirt and slipped a new one in. I may not have enjoyed putting down the stallion but without a doubt I’d enjoy what I was going to do next.

***

It was five years ago. Five long years since the day Ray and the rest of those bastards destroyed everything. I was hardly more than a boy at the time, working alongside my brothers and our parents on our family ranch. When we boys weren’t tending to the handful of cattle the family owned or working the field we were receiving lessons from our mother. She came from a well off east coast family and wanted to make sure her boys didn’t grow up to be more “ignorant farmhands”. Of all my brothers I took the deepest liking to the lessons and would often be found reading in the shade of a tree on the rare occasion when a lull came in our chores.
Our father was a good, decent, God fearing man by all appearances. In addition to the running of our homestead he was a skilled carpenter and made decent living selling cabinets, chairs and the like to merchants and nearby townsfolk. What none of us apart from our mother knew was that prior to his days as a husband and father he ran with a group of murderous, thieving hooligans. The lot of them terrorized many a town and homestead; robbing banks and trains, stealing cattle, murder, arson. If it was illegal chances are they had their fingers in it.
My father was in all likelihood just as bad as the rest of them but to my brothers and me he was a noble, kind and caring man. Always stern but never unfair, we knew him as nothing less than a gentle soul. I’ve thought a lot about it in the years since and I think something changed in him while rotting in an Illinois prison. The gang had attempted to rob a bank near the Missouri border and things went a wrong as wrong can be. The story as best as I can discern is that one of the patrons drew on Ray and the bank was turned into a charnel house as a result. My father took a round about his right knee and in the chaos that followed didn’t escape with the rest of the gang. The events that followed tend to be skewed depending on who you talk to, more upstanding folks say my father did the right thing, scum like my father was and Ray still is find them the actions of a coward. The short of it is my father, in exchange for his life and a reduced sentence fed the U.S. Marshalls information that directly led to the capture and incarceration of nearly the entire gang.
After doing his time my father came out a different man with a different life. He lived on the coast for a while, met my mother and after marrying her brought her as far west as he felt he safely could. From that day forth he led a good and honest life as a husband and father. That was until his old friends found themselves freemen and came looking for the man who helped put them away.
As the oldest I had been sent to town to pick up some necessities from the general store. I had been gone maybe two hours and was returning when I heard screams and gunshots from the direction of home. I dismounted and tied my horse to a nearby tree and crept to the top of the hill blocking my view of home. When I got to the top what was playing out before me turned my stomach in on itself. My mother was laying in the dirt, clothes ripped open with a pair of men assaulting her in ways no son should ever have to witness. My brothers where lined up along a fence, arms tied behind their backs watching the horrors up close. Several other men were alternating beating my father and forcing him to watch what they were doing to his wife. Behind it all our home was aflame, spewing coal black smoke into the sky.
Crouching atop the hill I was frozen by fear and shock. I had no idea why it was happening but I knew I was watching life as I knew it coming to an end. Time felt as if it at froze while I watched my family assaulted at the hands of these men. After what felt like a lifetime the men pulled my father to his feet and made him watch as they put two rounds into each of my brothers and then my mother. I sunk fully to my knees and swooned with each report collapsing to all fours by the time they fired on her. I pulled my head up in time to see the leader of the group lean inches from my father’s face and speak. As he spoke he drew a boot knife and with a quick slash ended my father’s life with a slash across the throat.
Finally my paralysis broke and I rose screaming at the sky and at the men gathered amongst the ruins of my family. At first they appeared to be startled by the sudden screams but it wasn’t a heartbeat before they recovered and opened fire on me. The distance was too much and the bullets sailed past. Even full of rage I knew I had no chance, if I were to survive I had to get to my horse and back to town. I turned and ran as hard and fast as my weary legs could carry me. I heard the thunder of horse hooves drawing close and I knew I wasn’t going to make it.
I barely had time to register the gunshot before I felt the round smash into my right shoulder and was spinning towards the earth. I tried to fight through the pain and get back to my feet but the men had all dismounted at a run and were already on top of me. The stomped, kicked, punched and pistol whipped me to a bloody pulp. By the time they finished I was a broken and bleeding mess and on the threshold between this life and the next. As I lay there bleeding out onto the dirt I remember looking up through my swollen eyes and marking each man’s face. If I survived I made an oath to myself and to my fallen family that each of the men looking down at me would fall by my hand. I resolved that I would not die until these men were cold and in the ground.
The pain and blood loss overtook me and I blacked out.