Seth MacFarlane - A Million Ways to Die in the West

“Foy,” said Albert, a tone of uncharacteristic confidence in his voice, “she’s all yours.”

The crowd’s murmuring rose as they struggled to assimilate this unusual development. They didn’t have to wait long for an explanation, as Albert turned to face the woman who had driven him to this place on this day.

“Louise,” he said, “you are… God, you are so beautiful. And I really do care about you. But… I don’t know—I think somewhere along the line I forgot that a relationship is a two-way street. And I’ve been reminded recently of what it’s like to have someone care about me . And you know what? I like it. So if you wanna spend the rest of your life with a pussy full of hair, I say go with God and best of luck to you.”

Albert gave her a gentlemanly tip of the hat and strode away from the thoroughfare with a lightness and an optimism that he had not felt in a very long time. After a moment, however, he turned around to face the crowd again.

“I just realized, that joke may not have been clear. I didn’t mean that she has a hairy pussy; I meant that Foy has a moustache, so… she gets hair in her… when he… goes down there. Yeah.” He smiled gamely and walked away once more.

One cowboy in the crowd spoke up. “I got it.”

Albert practically sprinted up the steps of the hotel. Maybe Anna was watching from her room , he thought, knowing full well that was absurd. She should have been there to support him. Regardless, whatever her reason for being absent, he knew he would forgive her. He felt too good today. Too intoxicated with liberation.

In fact, he realized that he had become accustomed to waking up every morning feeling like shit. There was a normalcy to it that had taken up residence in his body and soul. As he took the stairs two at a time, he thought, I feel great. Is this what I’ve been missing out on? How could I have spent so much of my life being denied this feeling?

He reached Anna’s room at the top of the stairs and banged excitedly on the door.

“Anna!”

There was no answer.

Albert knocked again and then tried the knob. It was unlocked, and he poked his head inside and looked around. The bed was unmade. A full washbasin sat on the side table. A hairbrush lay on the floor. But the room was empty.

“Hey, guys, have you seen Anna?” Albert asked as he puffed up the street toward Ruth and Edward. The rest of the crowd had more or less dispersed, grumbling to themselves with dissatisfaction over the lack of bloodshed.

“No,” said Ruth. “Not since last night at the dance.”

“Huh,” he said, at a complete loss.

“Albert… it’s her, isn’t it?”

Albert smiled. “Yeah. It’s her.”

“You love her.”

“Yeah. I do. And what’s even better is, I think she might love me back.”

Edward grinned. “Oh, that is so great. I think she’s so neat.”

“So nobody’s seen her, huh?” Albert was now beginning to worry. “I don’t understand. She said she’d be there this morning. She wouldn’t just not show up.”

Ruth patted his arm. “I’m sure she’s fine, Albert. And she’ll turn up soon. Especially if what you said is true.”

“Yeah, I guess so.… ”

“Hey, in the meantime, why don’t we all get outta this heat and go have a beer, huh?” Edward suggested.

They made their way into the saloon, ordered three glasses of beer, and sat down at their usual corner table.

“Hey, um, Albert?” said Edward with an awkward expression on his face.

“Yeah?”

“Do you think you and Anna will have sex?”

Albert was caught off guard. “I… I dunno. I mean… maybe at some point.”

“Well, when you do, how about let’s make it like an all-us-friends thing. Like, we all get, like, in sync. Sexually.”

“Eddie, we’re not having sex,” Ruth said flatly.

Edward hung his head in shame. “I’m sorry, I know, it was a stupid idea.”

“Ruth! Let’s fuck!” shouted the dirty cowboy from the stairwell.

“Coming!” She hurried off to do her job.

“She keeps my head on straight,” said Edward gratefully.

Albert was about to question that, when they heard the sound of approaching hooves outside. The saloon was fairly packed with townsfolk who had dragged their asses all the way from home to watch a gunfight that hadn’t occurred, and they’d now turned their attention to drinking and gambling, for lack of anything better to do. They all looked up as two perspiring local farmers hurried into the saloon, wearing expressions of abject terror.

The hoofbeats came to a halt just outside. Albert and Edward heard the sound of spur-heeled boots ascending the wooden steps. The batwing doors opened…

… and in stepped the biggest, most sinister-looking man Albert had ever seen. He was cold-eyed, dead-faced, and all too recognizable from the posters in the sheriff’s office.

“Clinch Leatherwood,” Edward said with horror, almost too softly to be heard.

Albert rolled his eyes in dismay. “Great. Another thing that can kill us. We should all just wear coffins as clothes.”

Clinch Leatherwood brought with him a dark, bloody history, even prior to his emergence as a notoriously deadly threat to peace, law, and order on the frontier. He was born in South Carolina in 1836, the son of a poorly compensated overseer on a struggling rice plantation. His mother had died the day she gave birth to him—not as a result of the birth itself, but because a heavy summer rain had caused the roof to collapse immediately following the delivery, crushing her beyond recognition. Miraculously (or not, depending on one’s point of view), Clinch had survived. His relationship with his father had, by adolescence, decayed to the ugly degree that outbreaks of physical violence between father and son were not uncommon. Inevitably, it escalated to such intensity that one night, after a particularly heated argument about which of them disliked Mexicans more, Clinch broke a whiskey bottle in half and stabbed his father in the throat with the sharp end. Having no intention of being tried for murder, the younger Leatherwood fled the scene and roamed aimlessly throughout the South for several years, successfully avoiding blame for the patricide.

Then, as luck would have it, the outbreak of the Civil War provided him with an appropriate conductor for his electric temper. Clinch enlisted in the Confederate Army, where he wound up as part of a regiment stationed in northern Virginia, not far from Union lines. However, long stretches of inaction coupled with a shortage of supplies soon brought his barely controlled rage bubbling back to the surface. A quarrel erupted one night between Clinch and a fellow noncommissioned officer over a chunk of ham. The ham had been sent to the noncom as part of a care package from his family. Clinch wanted the ham for himself, but rather than ask the noncom if he would be willing to share it, Clinch attacked the man in his tent and beat him to death, using the ham as a blunt instrument. This time, however, there was no escaping awareness of his crime. It was a small camp, and there were witnesses who would testify to seeing Clinch emerging from the tent holding the bloody ham. Once again, Clinch fled. He made his way west, west, and farther west, until he reached the southern Arizona territory. Here, there was barely any law at all. Here, the toughest men forged the moral compass with their whims. This was where he belonged. And he had flourished, cutting a swath of terror and death through the region, creating a name for himself that struck fear into the hearts of everyone who heard it.

Clinch scanned the saloon. He took a few steps into the room. Three other rough-looking men followed, flanking him on either side. All were armed to the teeth, with two pistols apiece and fully loaded gun belts.