Shapes in the Shade

 “Your color isn’t too good, kid. Maybe you’d better have a seat.”

Tanner was standing at the window, the setting sun full on his face; he tipped his revolver to spill the spent shells on the cabin floor.

“Or you could make yourself useful,” he said with a sideways glance, “and fetch me the speedloaders from the satchel there.”

I wasn’t in much of a mood to be sassed, but I wasn’t in much of a mood to talk back either, so I did as Tanner asked and brought him a handful. He eyed me as he took one and loaded it.

“Say something, kid.”

I turned and looked out the window, down the hill, to the woods where several dark shapes lay motionless in the shade.

“Are they all dead?” I asked. Tanner laughed and pushed the cylinder in with a click.

“You better hope so,” he said. “Or they’ll be up here as soon as it’s dark, blowin’ the brains right out your head.”

“Right,” I said quietly, and I decided to sit. Tanner strode to the table, straddled a chair, and pushed a tin cup of whisky at me.

“It ain’t gonna come to that,” he said.

I sipped the whisky, then tipped the cup back and poured the whole thing down. It burned my throat and warmed my stomach.

“You were with those men,” I said after a moment. “Why would you kill them for me? You don’t even know me.”

Tanner shrugged and poured himself a cup.

“I was with them,” he said. “But I wasn’t with them, if you understand my meaning. Besides—would you rather I’d let them kill you?”

“No, but—“

“Then why ask questions?”

Tanner knocked back the whisky and went back to the window. I studied the bottom of my empty cup.

“So, when this is done then, you’ll let me go?”

Tanner laughed a little and cocked his gun.

“Now I didn’t say that.”

This little story (which lacks quite a bit of context, I realize) is for the Trifecta Writing Challenge. This week’s word: Color.

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