An Outlaw Named Canebrake Divinity

Prologue:
The mysterious outlaw and pistoleer named Canebrake Divinity placed the barrel of his gun to his horse's eye.
"I remember not loving you." Canebrake whispered. "I smiled more then."
He pulled the trigger. His horse took another two steps then fell. They happened to be in the middle of a rope bridge. The canyon was so deep that Canebrake had time to re-breath his scream, twice maybe thrice in midair.

Chapter One:
For every miner who managed to pan himself a living on the banks of California's sun-dappled streams, another twelve found only sand and ended up drinking themselves to death in that wretched, sloping, bayside shanty-town that would one day add some Trolleys and a Wharf and call itself The City.

Tipperson Gentry was one of the few. In the spring of 1851, young Tipperson happened upon a river bend that had been more than a little blessed by geology. He worked that shore for nearly three months and was well on his way to becoming quite wealthy.

But that all changed one morning, when a mysterious outlaw named Canebrake Divinity fell screaming from the sky, crashed through the boughs of a river oak and landed at Tipperson's feet.

"Good heavens!" Tipperson exclaimed, shoving up his floppy hat and rubbing his eyes with calloused hands.

"Urrrg." Groaned Canebrake.

"Good heavens!" Tipperson replied, faintly aware he was repeating himself but temporarily unable to otherwise converse.
"You're gonna want to move now." Canebrake Divinity managed to say with a feeble wave. "Here comes my horse."
Tipperson looked up to find half a ton of plummeting horse heading straight for his eyes.
"GOOD HEAVENS!!!"

Tipperson Gentry learned two things in the very next instant: One, he could move much quicker than he thought himself capable of, and two, the sound of a horse hitting the ground from hundreds of feet in the air actually sounds exactly like one would expect a horse hitting the ground from hundreds of feet in the air would sound.

It landed square on its back and the impact separated flesh from bone. All four legs drove themselves over half their length in the earth, and for a moment it looked like some sort of adorable tiny-legged dachshund-horse taking a nap. Then pressure and sloshing innards split its barrel open like a melon in a furnace.

"Good heavens." Tipperson murmured in a voice so struck with shock and awe that the words could have never been uttered before.

Epilogue:
Tipperson Gentry tenderly nursed the mysterious outlaw and pistoleer named Canebrake Divinity back to health. It took months. Not a day went by that Canebrake didn't warn Tipperson that when he was well he fully intended to beat Tipperson senseless with his own cookware, tie him to a tree and make off with all his gold. Tipperson shrugged it off as the delirious ramblings of a man who has bled too much. But he shouldn't have. Canebrake Divinity was the purest outlaw the world has ever known. And not only that, but mysterious to boot--he acted on motivations unfathomable.

As soon as Canebrake Divinity was well, he beat Tipperson senseless with his own cookware, tied him to a tree and made off with the gold.

The End




Can't get enough of Canebrake Divinity? I don't blame you--he is spectacular.