Phoenix Chapter 1/?

[pdglyph.livejournal.com]

Okay, so here's the thing. I'm getting bored with Casefiles, and I'm sorry if that makes me sound like a flake but, well, what will you do when you have a magpies brain?

So I've always been wondering about a cowboy story, and I've been looking for one in my spare moments, but I was wondering if any of you would be interested in reading one. Cuz here one is, and I did some fanart for it too, over on WLSlash if you want to check that out.

But here we go, for a change of pace, here's my wester WL fic! Featuring most of the Drewsline Cast, it takes place before and after the American Civil War, with I hope interesting stuff in it.

Comments are so very appreciated, constructive criticisms are very welcome, and if you see any historical discrepencies, make like Clay and her modstick, will ya?

<3
-Us

Phoenix

Disclaimer: I own the story, but not WL or the men
Rating Overall: R for language, unsettling themes, sexuality, and violence
Summary: Sheriff Ryan Stiles doesn't want much in life, and when demoted to taking up residence in the small railroad town of Phoenix, Arizona, he doesn't expect much. Until war breaks out...





Tall Tales

1884

The one-office train stop just outside of La Paz, Mexico, was small. Small enough that whoever had thrown it together didn’t think much of proper building construction, and now the dusty thing was leaning to one side, a pigeon’s weight from folding into kindling.

Next to it, the great black train let out a blast of steam as it came to a groaning halt, it’s brakes squealing pitifully, the heat rising in visibly wavering currents off of it’s iron hide, greasy vapor rivulets glittering on the smoke stack.

Inside of the old steamer, Victor Wellsham straightened his starched collar, frowning at the crimp put in it from where he’d fallen asleep and his chin had folded the blasted thing. He reached for his carpet bag and quickly fastened a fresh one on as the conductor came through the narrow hallway knocking on the compartments, announcing La Paz Train Station as though shouting across the ocean. “Bloody fool,” Victor growled, smiling in askance at an older woman with her baby bustled past, her skirts filling the whole walkway and forcing him to subside into his compartment and wait.

He took the opportunity to check his notebook for the address he’d been given by his father before he’d left for college, along with a demand for a promise to someday find this person. He barely remembered the man, partly because of what his friends in the psychology classes call ‘Severe Trauma’.

Victor didn’t think it was so much trauma as that he’d forced himself to forget. After a while, when his family went overseas to see his mother’s family and he had enrolled in school, he just couldn’t remember the man he was supposed to find. He knew this mystery man had something to do with when his family had lived in Arizona, before they’d moved. They’d lived in England for a time, where his mother had struck gold in the opera business and his father gave up the hammer to work the stage with her.

But his mother had never been able to resist his father, so they’d moved back there, and now lived peacefully in Arizona, his last stop on his vacation after this one.

So here he was in bloody Mexico, fulfilling the stupid promise, and apparently doing so without his traveling trunk until the railroad could figure out where it went. In reality, the only thing he might say he was here for apurpose would be a story.

A good enough story for his final paper, to get his degree in journalism from Yale and get into a cushy editing position at The New York Times. His dream, his ticket out of here, his life in waiting.

But that didn’t stop him from complaining. “I could have been in Vermont with the Blessington’s, sipping chardonnay and dancing at clubs,” he moaned softly, eyes squeezed shut as he hopped into La Paz’s idea of a comfortable carriage and directed it to a nice hotel. “Sleeping on Egyptian cotton and goosedowns…”

The heat wrapped around him like a fist this far inland, and his clothes were instantly sticky as the humidity made it difficult to breathe. He supposed it gave the dust a good surface to adhere to.

At his first glimpse of the ‘Plush Hotel’, he decided to start the search for the mystery man tomorrow. He checked in, ignoring the radiant smile the helpful people behind the desk sent his way, gabbling in their stunted English as they led him to his room. He put away his things, ordered a steak and wine, got a piece spicily marinated chicken cut to look vaguely like a steak and a mug of pale beer that tasted something like lime and water instead, and went to bed thoroughly demoralized. “Thanks, dad.”


That morning, the rest had done him well, and he was only slightly irritated with the whole affair as he put on the clothes tucked away just-in-case in his travel bag; his second best suit, pale to mind the dust that always collected on the cuffs, and went about town, his notebook and pencil in a leather case tucked under one arm.

Despite the lack of proper civilization, it was rather like visiting British India.

This far on the outskirts of the city proper by the bay only small, quaint shops catering to the ‘gringos’ flourished, the sanitized tourist traps for visiting Europeans wanting adventure but not too much. Certainly not a fit place to find The Story for an aspiring journalist, and with that thought in mind he pointed his feet towards the sounds of people.

The shops he passed weren’t without their charm, though, and he had to admit to a little window shopping. His favorites were the dolls for a macabre celebration of death popping up everywhere in every shop, and he finally broke down and purchased a dancing lady skeleton holding a pair of noisemakers, her black horse hair braided finely, her painted grin leering at him. She was almost worth the two bits he paid for her.

His stroll began to turn slightly less refreshing as the noon sun approached, forcing him indoors for a cup of sour lemonade, but it was cool and braced him for the rest of his walk. A wink of blue in the distance tantalized him, and he turned his steps away from where the last known address on the crumpled bit of paper pointed, his curiosity overwhelming him especially when the closer he got to that lovely blue, the cooler it got.

He turned a corner, and at first he was assaulted by the level of noise coming from the market. Hawkers of copper pots, beads, Day of the Dead figurines, hats, masks, vegetables, pigs, chickens, dogs, cats, beggars and pickpockets, their noise became such a overwhelming shout of life that he had to stand for a moment or two, people pressing in and around him like a river around a stone. All of the people! In skin colors ranging from the darkest black-blue, to mocha, to café au lait, to the pale of porcelain, with a scarlet macaw or cockatoo spotting the tent roofs, a splash of color to assault your eyes.

Finally, as his eyes and ears made sense of the barrage of colors and people, he noticed the sea. He’d seen an ocean before, sailed over one, the Atlantic mostly, and swum in several lakes, but he’d never seen what the waters of paradise would look like. The water was a perfect blue green, and sparkled at him like a jewel in the sand. He felt his breath leave him, and if he’d been stunned by the variety and vibrancy coming from the market, he was in awe of the crystal clear waters of the sea.

He walked through the market, and occasionally his eyes would be attracted to something else that someone was trying to sell, particularly a lovely necklace made of smoothed chunks of copper delicately covered in its aqua patina, resembling the color of the sea perfectly. He bought one, smiling as the seller assured him his girlfriend would enjoy it.

Finally, he arrived on the white beaches.

Ignoring the sand getting on his expensive trousers, he kicked off his shoes and socks in a sudden burst of indolence and sat down with his notebook in his hands, just watching the people passing by. Some wore bathing costumes, a few wore the native garb of loose trousers or a dress in colors matching the sand, a parasol momentarily blocked his sun as the ladies drifted by in full skirts and corsets.

Slowly, the sun began to set, and still he sketched what he saw, the necklace hanging from his hand as he drew the never ending waters, the white sand on which he sat, and the low slung clouds approaching in the deep distance.

He made notes of the kind of sand, the smell of the water, the feeling of it’s cool breeze sweeping continuously over him.

The hours waned and the shadows grew, until finally, he noticed it was cold and he was mostly alone, save for a few optimistic lovers hanging back for the cover of night. He rose and dusted himself off as well as he could, pulling his shoes back on and grimaced at the sand in them.

With his precious bag slung over one shoulder, he clambered up the awkward wooden stairs and back onto the board walk. Shivering a little, he pulled his collar up a little tighter around his neck and was starting in the direction he’d come when he heard laughter and bright music coming from further down the walk. With a shrug to himself, he followed it. After all, a reporter never knows where a story will be next.

He was glad he followed. The laughter originated from a bar quizzically called El Yankee Diablo, and it looked like it was growing out of the ground it had been built on rather than simply sitting on it. And despite the amazing colors of the freshly painted shops and stores next to it, the paint was peeling slightly and bricks showed through holes in the plaster.

Despite its slightly rundown appearance, it merely looked homey, with a vine clawing its way up the west side, the large yellow flowers closing down for the day. The patio near its front was crowded with people of all sorts, mostly sailors and the working class settling down for the day for a beer and good food. His stomach loudly made the attractiveness of the place known, and he hurried into the warm glow of the lamps, the fire, and candles burning from the antlers of several relatives of the deer family chasing away the chill of the sea.

He picked his way around the mixture of people, grinning from the sheer infectious good humor of the inhabitants, noticing the appreciative looks of many a raven-haired lovely with a shy grin until he hit the bar like a man surfacing from a happy lake. The tall, broad shouldered gentleman behind it glanced over at him, having watched his expedition since he hit the front door with mild amusement. “Hey there, young man, looks like you’re in a thirsty way, mebbe a hungry one, too?”

“That is quite right, good sir, very thirsty,” he assured the man, slapping down slightly more money than he had to.

The tall man nodded in appreciation of the tip, his dusty green eyes crinkling heavily at the corners from under his mop of iron curls held in a loose tail. His skin was so brown he could almost pass for a native, but his height belied any doubt of that. “One cold glass of our best with a few chicken and butter avocado sandwiches?”

“Sounds like heaven.”

“A limey?”

“Not really. My mother is an Englishwoman, a singer. We lived in her hometown for a few years while I went to school, but I was born in Arizona.”

“Really!” the man asked in surprise as he passed his food order down and drew his beer, dropping the customary lime in.

Victor grimaced at the damned thing but didn’t retrieve it. He didn’t want to be insulting. “Indeed,” was all he said as he slurped it, though his attitudes towards it changing instantly as the pleasantly refreshing sudsy thing washed down his throat like a slice of heaven.

“I lived there for a short while. Knew an Englishwoman once, too, during the war,” The tall man murmured thoughtfully, smiling quietly to himself for a second before he snapped out of it. “Tough broad.”

“So is my moth- The war? The Civil War? You were in it?”

The man frowned at Victor’s sudden interest in the fact but nodded, wiping down glasses while Victor blushed and drank his beer to keep his mouth occupied with something other than his foot. The tall bartender moved off momentarily to take a drink order, leaving the young man to ponder his glass. He couldn’t remember that war very well, because he’d been far from the action. But he did remember father talking of their friends fighting in it, remembered that well because their friends had come home heroes and had saved everyone. This man might know the man his father wished for him to find, and he might also get the scoop on one of most decisive wars in their country’s history since the Revolutionary, from a veteran’s lips.

Oh, if only he could wheedle it from the man.

Victor drank the last of his beer, and immediately the tall gentleman came back and refilled it. “So… I beg pardon, but would you be averse to talking about the war?”

“Yes,” the man grunted, dropping the lime in and setting the drink down without another word, disappearing behind a pair of swinging wooden door.

Victor deflated instantly, drinking half of his refreshed beer in one go before fingering the lime out and munching on it, and when the tall man came back with his plate of food and left right after, he indulged in a rather furious internal deliberation, mixed with fervent appreciation of the food before him and an ever increasing admiration for such tasty beer.

How to approach the veteran? The man obviously didn’t quite like the fact that someone was so eager to hear about such a bloody and horrifying affair that had been his terrifying reality… but… he had to at least know if the tall vet knew the mystery man he was trying to hunt down. The tall bartender returned as he cleaned the last scraps from his plate and had downed the last of his beer with a sigh of resignation when the bartender spoke first. “Listen, kid, to whom do I have the pleasure of speakin’?”

“Victor,”

“Howdy Victor, you a reporter?”

“Why do you ask that?”

“The notebook. Only reporters ever did that during the war, and you look like a more expensive version of the type.”

“Oh, well, yes, I am. I’m a student still, but I’m looking for a grand finale, a- a magnum opus, if you must. I need one last good story for my final paper to get into the newspaper I want…” Victor explained weakly, noticing just how drunk he’d gotten while debating how best to approach such a situation before the bartender had taken care of it for him.

“Well, I got a story, if you want to hear it… it’s not much, but it’s how I came to live here instead of in the states,” he offered, wizened face grave. “But it ain’t for a tabloid rag. My story deserves every last goddamned piece of respect you can find in your little, well-bred dandy, college boy heart.”

Victor’s spine stiffened immediately and he gave the tall man a drunken glare. “I am a professional, whomever you are, whatever your story is.”

To his surprise the bartender’s scowl instantly became an approving grin, and Victor noticed nervously how people began to give them more space, to respect the story being offered. It wasn’t a sensation that he’d felt often, in fact, he’d never felt the level of honor given willingly to one man by many.

That alone might’ve been enough, but he’d been tempted by a story before, and it had been a wild goose chase through briar patches. He swallowed hard. “But why should I hear this story? What’s so good about it?”

“I hijacked Confederate trains at my own discretion under the sanction of Union Law.”

Victor’s mouth went dry as a bone before it began to water. “Okay, I’ll hear your story. But please, why are you telling it now? That sounds like something the government would want to keep quiet,” he hastened to say, lest the tall, obviously dangerous, man think he were snubbing him.

“They would, but in all, I’m not telling it to shake up the big wigs,” The man grinned and glanced back in the direction of the kitchen with a fond smile, making Victor glance in the same direction, wondering who earned such a smile from such a man. “I’m telling it cuz it needs to be told, and I was told by someone smarter n’ me to take signs at face value.”

To that, Victor could only say, “Please, tell me your story.”

“You ready?”

Victor scrambled to get his pencil at the ready, the point quivering with excitement just over the paper.

The tall man took a deep breath, his deep voice sinking into a story telling rhythm, eyes sightless as they cleaned glasses, looking so far into the past. “My name is Lieutenant Ryan Lee Stiles, and I was the commander of a select platoon of men called the 31st Cowboys, and with the full permission of Ulysses S. Grant himself, we hijacked 23 Confederate supply trains in a 5 year period, but that’s later in the story…”