Bullets Met in Border Towns

Latigo Flint had to grow up fast and he had to grow up mean. (The way the very toughest men are made.)

Not much is known about Latigo Flint's childhood--what little of it there was. Legend has it, an old Gypsy was present at Latigo Flint's birth and he took one look at Latigo Flint and promptly prophesied he'd meet his bullet in a border town somewhere east of Nogales, Arizona.

They were just east of Nogales at the time.

That old Gypsy must have been sorely tempted to shoot the infant Latigo Flint and solemnly declare:
"And so it has come to pass--the prophecy fulfilled."

But of course he didn't do such a ghastly thing. Or he tried to but then the spirit of a wolf suddenly possessed the infant Latigo Flint and the terrified Gypsy ran screaming into the night.

There are differing accounts.

On one point, however, history is quite clear: At the age of six, Latigo Flint was in fact ambushed by renegades in a border town somewhere east of Nogales--shot four times and left in the street to die.

And right about then is when Latigo Flint had to grow up. And grow up he did--fast and mean as a matter of fact.

The story goes that young Latigo Flint strapped on pistols that hung practically to his ankles, and tracked those renegades through the badlands for months before finally catching up in the cruelest stretch--a craggy, twisted, sun-ravaged wasteland known as The Bleachbone Bluffs.

According to legend, young Latigo Flint faced them down and taunted them viciously. Apparently even going so far as to gesture at the renegades' eyes and declare that they had "poop-eyes"... that all their eyes were made of poop.

At which point, it's said, one of the renegades went for his gun--followed shortly thereafter by a series of ragged screams in gun smoke gloom as splattery evidence of death dripped like tears down canyon walls.

And then in the silence previously interrupted only by moans, came the rattle of hoof on stone, and there on the bluff stood a donkey named Vengeance. And he came to young Latigo Flint--that six-year-old killer-of-men--and he nuzzled Latigo Flint's baby face with his velvety nose. And then they rode off into the sunset again. Just a boy and his donkey named Vengeance.

The End

***

This is a very special story. Mostly because it's about me... but partially because it has a donkey named Vengeance in it.

Anyway, it was a difficult story to name. So many titles would have worked. It could have, and perhaps should have been called:
A Donkey Named Vengeance

But then of course, The Legend of Latigo Flint isn't bad either; likewise The Bleachbone Bluffs.

In the end I decided to call it Bullets Met in Border Towns--for reasons I no longer recall.



(Hey, could have been worse... I almost named it: Poop-Eyes--The Bad Guys' Eyes Were Made of Poop.

And honestly now, who would ever want to read something like that?!)