Jimmy Hickok stood, staring at himself in the cracked mirror hanging out back of the bunkhouse where the riders bathed. He didn’t recognize himself in his reflection and it scared him. He didn’t like who he was becoming. The hardened, wary man looking back at him looked like a lost soul on the road to hell and he was terrified at where he was heading in life. He’d just killed another man, whom he never met, when the fellow called him out as he walked through town just the day before. His hands started trembling as he recalled how easily his gun swung towards the man. How he watched him fall to the ground, dead through a haze of smoke. He slammed his fist against the post holding the mirror, causing it to rattle. He hung his head; anger building at the way life kept giving him the short end of the straw. “Just like one of Teaspoon’s special runs,” he muttered thinking how he always seemed to be the one to have the shortest straw then too. He wasn’t a very religious man. He’d seen his mother night after night, reading her bible, looking for an answer that would help her and her children get out from under his father’s domineering thumb to no avail. That’s why he had to laugh as he looked up to the heavens asking, “Is it because I don’t believe in you, that this is happening to me? I did at one time you know, but you let my mother die, you let him beat all of us one too many times. You left us when we needed you the most!” Grabbing his holster, he let his gun hang around his waist, a familiar feeling that he couldn’t help needing. “Just because you’ve given up on me, doesn’t mean I have to give up on myself. I don’t have to let this road that I’m headed down be the death of me.” Taking one last look into the mirror, he told his reflection, “I can change. I will change. I won’t allow myself to become someone I hate…a killer…someone all alone in life…” Drop me a note and let me know what you thought!