Shoot-out in Jackson on the 4th of July

I have been writing this for some time, wondering when I might ever use it. Its not a normal sort of blog. However, today presents the chance. We are in Jackson, Wyoming and today it is, of course, the 4th of July. We have just watched the Jackson Independence Day celebrations, which included their famous shoot out in the town square. Shoot-outs and gun fights have passed into Wild West folk lore now, played out countless times by children growing up who are, statistically at least, almost certain never to know the real thing. So, just what might it have been like, not just to be in real a shoot out, but to be on the losing end....

SHOOT OUT

He went careering backwards, reeling through the swinging doors of the Million Dollar Saloon and out into the sudden blasting brightness of the day. He was conscious of a huge pounding in his shattered shoulder, as if he had been punched with massive force by a giant fist of rock. Damp warm crimson was spreading across his shirt and his ears echoed and rang with the numbing thunder clap of a close range pistol shot. Disorientated and bewildered, he was giddily aware of the bright blue vault of the empty sky and the blinding focus of the sun swivelling wildly above his head. He felt his feet start to go.

For a moment he was weightless, almost floating, then he felt the crunch, the crash and the buckling of his legs as he collapsed in the dust of the street, then the great wave of agony as his bullet-shattered shoulder hit the hard compact red earth. Out of the corner of his eye he watched his hat roll slowly away from him in the rising dust before it too toppled over. Pain now washed over him in great pulsing waves.

 Dimly he was aware of shouting, of another emerging through the swinging doors, and of sudden menace once more standing tall and powerful before him. He felt his concentration, and awareness start to fragment and drift as his grip on lucidity loosened. He heard voices urging restraint. He heard the canter of hooves nearby, more shouting and a woman's voice somewhere in the crowd.

Then for a brief moment, he seemed to be somewhere else. Powerful memories pulled him away from the terrible present. For some reason he remembered his father from all those years ago, picking him up and putting him on a horse for the first time when he he had been no more than a small boy. The word "Pa" seemed to creep up from somewhere deep and far away inside him. His lips opened, as if to release it into the air, whilst his arm sought to stretch out for a fading memory of a time long before.

Then he was again  aware of that terrible shadowed figure before him, seemingly impossibly tall, raising its arm whilst the world seemed to stop. Overhead a solitary bird; motionless in the vastness of an empty sky.  Then,  another thunder clap like the world ending, and he knew no more....

Written between London and Jackson, Wyoming.