Don’t mind me, I wish not to be bothersome. I simply wish to wet my gullet and admire the last beautiful thing I’ll see before the moon wakes up all them skeletons residing in Dustman’s Gulch.
I’ve set myself up with a nice camp. I’ve got a sweater rolled up to lay my head on, and I've an old military blanket from when the army stormed through here April last.
I’ve got a small fire burnin‘ with a can of beans restin’ on top which will give me nourishment come supper. I’ve laid a rope around my campsite so to not let in rattle snakes while I’m sleepin’, though the rope fails in keepin’ out the skeletons.
To handle the skeleton army I’ve prepared a second can of beans which should give me enough strength and vigor to handle wave after wave of skeletons. My horse, Beverly, has just been re-shoed and given a carrot. She's a valiant steed, who does not get spooked easily. This will be her first battle against the army of the undead, but I am confident in her steadfast ability and graceful presence. If I die, I wish for her to run north and to not look back. Return to the ranch and stay with my son, my kin.
I believe it was a fortnight ago when I was down at The Golden Spectacle, the saloon over in Dustman’s Villa, and I was fetchin’ to spend time with Sally Mae. Now the only way a lady as beautiful as Sally Mae would spend time with a man as slack jawed as I am is if a man as slack jawed as I am spends money to spend time with a lady as beautiful as Sally Mae. To go upstairs and have a nice conversation with Sally Mae and wiggle your carrot might cost a man two dollars minimum. Fortunately for me I had seven dollars in my back pocket. I started that evening with ten dollars but I lost two of them in a round of cards and one of them I gave to the piany player when I asked him to play my favorite song which is, “My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean.” He played the song but he played it in the key of E Minor which makes it more sulksome in my novice opinion.
Now I want you to understand that I’d give Sally Mae all seven dollars and I’d cook her dinner too, that is if she takes a shinin’ to beans, but when I paced up to her that night in The Golden Spectacle she told me with a straight face and a worry in her voice that she was too fretful on account of the skeletons roamin’ around on the dusty wilderness. She didn’t want to be caught off guard in case one of them strut into the saloon to wet their dry bones with whiskey. “What if they dislike the piany music?” She exclaimed all serious in tone and overall demeanor.
This didn’t exactly take me by surprise as I’d heard time and time again that Dustman’s Villa had a pest problem, but I assumed it was something more to the tune of a feral coyote or an upset armadillo. Little did I know that when the moonlight poured out from the sky and fell upon the rocky crevasse of Dustman’s Gulch it would awaken a horde of skeletons who would want nothing more than to make the people in the nearby town to suffer.
I told her, with hair on my chest and sternness in one of my eyes, that I’d gladly eliminate them pesky skeletons if’n she gave me the chance to cook her up a can of beans.
So here I am watchin' that there sunset through a whiskey bottle. And it dawned on me, though dawn is nowhere in sight, that maybe tonight is one of them nights where the moon is not visible due to my geographical location. I believe it's called a new moon, or a dark moon depending on your nomenclature, and its more than likely the case when you bare witness to the moon in the daytime sky. This is because the moon, like my love for Sally Mae, is always present, though sometimes it appears in the oddest of places. Yes, the more I think it, the more I realize that the moon may not show itself tonight. I saw it way up in the sky around noon time when the entire town of Dustman's Villa wished me "good luck" and "fare thee well."
Beverly and I rode out towards the skeleton sightings unarmed and unafraid. Sally Mae mentioned that no bullet could kill a skeleton. You could only use the unfathomable brawn and muscle of a living man. She said, verbatim, "skeletons are insecure about their lack of muscles." If I've got my rope, beans, and the devotion of Beverly the Horse, then there's no need to weigh myself down with a gun. Now I'm brought once more to tell you that here I sit, the sun has set and my whiskey bottles been dried. In the night sky I see no moon, and therefore, no skeletons. But off in the distance, I hear the snarling and howling of what might be a feral coyote, and the chattering of an upset armadillo.
O Sally Mae, I wish to tell you that you've planned poorly. I wish to tell you anything at all. Maybe these beans will see me through.
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