Gunslinger Darius

Chapter Two

Abigail Hiram bent down to wash the grease on her face off with the water from the river. She had been working all day with her father on steam engine parts.

Abby occupied a strange relationship with her parents. Her mother and father had wanted her to be a prim and proper lady but after she took apart and rebuilt a small steam engine at the age of four, her parents realized that their daughter was not going to fit conventional roles. Then once she went to school, it became even more apparent. Three years into school, she was removed for brawling with two boys in the class ahead of hers and beating them to the point where they had to see a doctor. After that, William and Anna Hiram had little choice but to teach Abby the family trade of steam engine repair.  

Her skills as a mechanic had become widely known throughout the area, and as a result Hiram's Engine Repair was now the premier engine repair business in Eden Valley. However, that was not much as the Valley had not fully recovered from the damage caused by the Six Year War almost ten years before. Federalist forces had seized the slopes and higher ground of the valley and bombarded the Separatist forces below into submission. The damage to the town was extensive and the families moved in to the valley once the Separatists had been removed were hard pressed to fix it all. Abby had been five at the time of the war but still remembered the destruction. It surprised her that somehow they still managed to get by.

A steam whistle blowing—William Hiram's signal that their break was over—broke Abby from her thoughts. She quickly rubbed her hands on her denim coveralls, drying most of the water off of them. She tried to scramble up the banks of the river but slipped on a patch of mud and slid back down, almost right into the water. With a huff of frustration, Abby tried climbing back up the banks. As she stood back up to try, she could a glimpse of something floating in the river. It looked like nothing more than a bunch of rags but she was not sure. Curiosity got the better of her and she decided to try a find out what it was.

Abby walked along the riverbank until she was across from the thing floating. Sure enough, it appeared to be a bunch of rags and torn clothes. However Abby got a better look and saw a glimpse of skin under the rags. It was a person! Then she saw the stream of red that was following the person. Before she even knew it, she let out an uncharacteristic high pitched scream.

Abby had only screamed a few times in her life: when she was born, when she first hurt herself falling on gravel and when she saw a bear behind their house. Because of the rarity of her screams, William and Anna had associated any scream with urgent trouble. Abby's scream brought both of them running to down by the riverside. Anna brought the family's double-barrel shotgun with her—holding it with a familiarity that seemed at odds with her plain and casual, but still feminine, dress—while Will had his old Army revolver.

"What is it, dear?" asked Anna, looking around to try and see anything that would have cause Abby to scream.

"Mum, Dad," said Abby, pointing, "There's someone in the river."

William squinted and strained his eyes to get a better look. "I'll be..." he muttered and then rushed into the river.

Abby watched next to her mother as William swam towards the body and pulled it back to shore. He dragged the body onto the muddy banks and began trying to move some of the waterlogged clothes to get a better look at the person. Abby dropped down on her knees to help her father. She pulled away a patch of rags and what appeared to be a slouch hat, revealing the face of the person. It was a boy, only a few years older than her. Her father pulled more of the rags away—this time soaked with blood. He pulled back what appeared to be a jacket, revealing a small hole that had to be a bullet hole and what looked like a graze mark from another bullet in the boy's sunburnt chest. Small pools of blood formed on the holes almost immediately as the blood was washed away.  Abby caught a glimpse of something else on the boy's chest—a mark of some kind. She did not get a good look at it as her father covered it back up with one of the rags.