-This is a Song About Revenge CHAPTER 1D

“Well, let’s see..,” the old man begins, “Yes, yes. It went like this. Henry, you’re older brother was not the killing kind. A good man not acquainted to such things... and unwise for finding himself in such a quandary. This man your brother was up against is not one to play sticks with. How dare he have it out with him? He knew he couldn’t prevail… I saw that… he knew it. He were at his end.” The old man stops. He seems lost in the memory playing out in his mind, enlivening him.
The old man carries on, “they two were standing there for a time. Fear had Henry Bennett by the back of the neck. You could smell it! The other fellow, Mr. Jack Clemet you say, broke towards Henry to his left a few paces. Henry mighty quick drew… on account of the nerves was off, over shot five or so paces to the left too far.” The old man pauses in reflection looking as if a fire were growing inside him, growing more as he recalls more of what happened to poor old Henry Bennett.
“Then what happened?” William demands.
“The other fellow stopped in his tracks… then turning the other direction, making a couple of paces… Henry tried to track him but went too far to the right, missing him five paces that way,” said the stranger with the memory fully playing out in his mind, consuming him.
A thin hair of a thought crosses William’s mind, thinks that the old drunkard has grown more and more sober throughout the exchange, growing more coherent as he was drinking. William pushes the thought aside. Driven to madness by the desire to know every grueling detail, he asks demandingly, “what then!? What then!?”
“Jack had drawn both guns and was closing to him! He was wild! Poor Henry felt hell coming. He shot poor Henry in the shoulder, nothing bad, but it got him. Henry began to reel back and fired once more but was a wild shot.” The stranger pauses, now more agitated then ever, pushes his mug off to the side and begins to spit out fire, “It was then when this man went straight after your kin. Walking towards him. He just walked straight to him! All Henry done was to turn and stagger away. Taking merely a couple of paces before he felt Jack’s presence bearing over him. Naturally, he looked back and saw how near to him Jack was, panicked, lost his ground and fell. This Jack Clemet you call stood over your brother. Held him with his boot on his wounded shoulder…”
William closes his eyes, feeling as if his own end were coming.
“He put his guns, each through an eye of Henry, making him scream out something fierce, pinning him, head to earth. Holding him fast, yes. He was crying agony and sadness he was before finally Jack was pulling the triggers. One, boom, after the other, boom. Was after the second shot is when your kin quit his bellyaching and lay still as ever. Sleeping then on.”
William opens his eyes with hate and anger burning out the more humane feelings, loss and remorse. Revenge is all William can feel now. “No way for him to die!” he says shaking with madness.
“And it wouldn't have been if it weren’t for him claimin’ I were with his wife.” The stranger quickly adds.
“Excuse me!” says William, baffled. William can’t help but notice how quiet and empty the tavern is.
The stranger continues with clarity, “at least that’s what he heard I had done. One should be weary of another’s retellings, being that some details can get funny. When a story that been told twice too many times. Things get lost. Details get mashed with others. I never was with his wife, as he heard just as there is no Jack Clemet…you see lad,” The stranger says, putting his top hat in the middle of his messy head. Now leaning forward, almost standing with excitement, the strange continues, “you see lad, my name is CLEMET JACK.”
William’s eyes widen. He quickly goes for his gun but finds it missing.
“My name is Clemet Jack and I’ve got the drop on you.”
With no choice but to run, William heads for the way out, passes through the turnstiles, setting them in rapid motion.
Clemet gets up following him at a walking pace. Still inside the tavern Clemet raises a six-shooter, William’s gun, making his arm straight before firing it twice putting William to the ground. The haggard old wretched man, Clemet Jack, lowers his arm. Using his free hand, he pulls out from his coat a relic, an old but unusually large custom derringer, about half a meter long with a wide muzzle, aiming it at the fallen and now crawling William Bennett.
With no remorse, Clemet fires once, making what seems to be the loudest report ever heard, and surely making poor William Bennett good and dead, and still from here on.
Clemet Jack casually strolls out of the tavern whistling a very old and long forgotten Irish song.