Seth MacFarlane - A Million Ways to Die in the West

Everyone held their breath. Then finally, after several seconds of silent scrutiny, Clinch spoke in a low, deadly tone.

“Someone in this little shit-box town is gonna die. One of my boys saw a man kissing my wife last night. I want to know who it was.”

Edward whistled softly. “Jesus.”

Albert nodded. “Yeah, no shit. Someone’s gonna get fuuuucked uuuuup.”

Clinch offered the room a hideous, wraithlike approximation of a human smile. “You seem like good people,” he said. “And good people know better than to take what isn’t theirs. And this—this is mine.”

He reached out through the batwing doors and, with a hard yank, pulled a woman roughly inside by the elbow. Her head was down as she tried to avoid eye contact, but even before Clinch gripped her chin and thrust her face upward, Albert knew who the woman was. His heart stopped. It was Anna.

“Oh, my God…”

Edward and Ruth both turned to him in shock. Albert felt as though he were watching events play out from afar. He had known all along that Anna was protecting a secret of some kind, but he’d never fathomed it could possibly be something this dark. She’s married. To Clinch Leatherwood. The deadliest, most ruthless, most murderous outlaw in all the West .

“Now, I’m gonna ask again,” Clinch said quietly. His smile had vanished. “Who is it?”

No one answered. The move happened with blinding speed, and Clinch’s gun was suddenly in his hand. He pointed it at the head of one of the gamblers.

“Who?” he said.

The sound of pressurized liquid impacting fabric could be heard as the card-playing cowboy pissed himself in fear. “I… I dunno,” he managed to croak.

Clinch shot him in the head. The man slumped to the floor, blood slowly pooling outward from his ruined skull.

Clinch looked around at the terrified saloon patrons. “I’d very much like to be introduced to the man I’m looking for. So you all make sure he gets this message: Either he meets me in the thoroughfare at noon tomorrow—or I start killing more people.”

He turned to depart, pulling Anna forcefully along with him. With great shame in her eyes, she stole a furtive glance at Albert that lasted all of a half second before she was dragged away.

The room breathed a sigh of relief. Edward and Ruth stared at their friend.

“Albert, you gotta get outta here!” urged Edward with alarm.

How fleeting Albert’s dalliance with blissful clarity had been. He was devastated all over again.

The horses came to a halt in the middle of the prairie just north of Old Stump. Clinch dismounted and gave Anna a brutish yank, pulling her down from the saddle with him. Plugger moved anxiously nearby, whimpering as if he knew there was trouble afoot. Clinch thrust Anna against the side of a rock formation jutting up from the ground and made it clear with one sharp, deadly glance that any attempt to escape would be met with unchecked violence. He turned to Lewis. “There’s an abandoned sod house over around that bend. We’ll stash the gold there. Take the boys and set up camp. I need some alone time with my wife.”

Lewis flashed Anna a rat-faced smile of vindictive satisfaction. “Will do, Clinch. C’mon, boys!”

The rest of the gang galloped away with him as Clinch turned his full attention toward his immediate concern. He approached Anna, who looked at him with the revulsion most people would have reserved for a decaying corpse. He gently caressed her cheek with one hand, then swiftly backhanded her across the face, knocking her to the ground.

“Who is it, you whore?” he growled.

She pulled herself to her feet, never taking her eyes off him. “Mark Twain,” she said.

Clinch stared at her for a long moment before he finally spoke. “It is?”

“No! Jesus, how fucking stupid are you?”

His face twisted into a snarl, his eyes narrowing to razor-thin black slits. He drew his gun and pressed it into the center of her forehead. She pulled back slightly from the pressure but did not flinch.

“Who?” he said in his deadly soft tone.

Anna waited just long enough to make the theatrics of the moment seem convincing, then averted her gaze to the ground with an expression of shamed resignation. “It’s Sheriff Arness,” she said at last, turning to Clinch with moistened eyes. “Please don’t hurt him, I’m begging you!” Part of her felt a pang of guilt for passing such a mortal buck to the sheriff, but he was the sheriff, after all. It was his job to deal with assholes like this.

Clinch made it a moot point, however. “After all these beautiful years together, you don’t think I know when you’re lying?” He cocked his pistol. Anna shut her eyes and prepared for the inevitable. Then, suddenly, the piercing sound of Plugger’s barking split the air as the nappy mutt bounded up, growling and baring his teeth at Clinch. The outlaw looked down, and that bloodless gash of a smile split his face open.

Anna felt the barrel of the gun pull away from her forehead, and she exhaled as she opened her eyes. Her relief quickly evaporated, however, as she saw that Clinch had aimed the gun at Plugger. “Either you tell me his name,” he said, “or ol’ Plugger here gets a plug in his head.”

She knew her options were exhausted. This time when she averted her gaze to the ground, there were no theatrics at play.

“Albert,” she whispered. “Albert Stark.”

Clinch lowered his gun. “There. That’s much better.”

For one horrifying instant Anna thought he was going to shoot Plugger anyway, but Clinch holstered his pistol.

He turned and strode back to his horse, removing his hat. “I’ve missed you, darling,” he said. without warmth or affection. “I’ve missed you a lot.” He removed his vest and his shirt and draped them over the saddle. His back was to her.

I’ll never get another chance , she realized.

Clinch went on, while undoing his trousers, “But now we got time. We got time to be husband and wife. The proper way.” His pants were only halfway down when the blow struck the back of his head. He fell to the ground, unconscious, as Anna stood over him holding the bloodied rock. His bare ass stared up at her in a most undignified way.

Anna went to mount his horse, then paused as she looked down at him again. “Ah, shit,” she said. “I can’t leave him like this.”

She approached the base of the stone formation, picked a small flower, and stuck it in Clinch’s ass crack with the bloom facing upward. “That’s better,” she said. She mounted his horse and raced back toward Old Stump.

Edward was one of many local businessmen nailing signs to the front doors of their establishments reading CLOSED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE. No one was taking any chances with the gang of outlaws in town.

Ruth approached him as he was pounding away at the final nail. “Eddie?” she said, her tone indicating a subject of importance.

“Yeah, sweetheart?”

“Eddie, I’ve been thinking. With Clinch Leatherwood in town, and with everyone so scared, I… it’s got me wondering.”

“What is it?” he said, giving her his full attention.

“Well, any of us could die tomorrow. I mean, we don’t know what’s gonna happen. And… I think we should have sex.”

His full attention doubled. “What?”

“I think we should have sex tonight.”

“Okay.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Let’s.”

“I mean, under the circumstances, God will forgive us,” she said, looking to him for affirmation.

He gave it to her. “I think so. We’ll make sure there’s a Bible in the room so God can watch. Then He can be a part of it. Ahhh, I’m getting excited now!”

Albert was hastily packing his bag when he heard the hoofbeats. His breath stopped as he hurried to the window, expecting to see Clinch and his gang descending on the farm. But when he peered out through the uneven ripples in the glass, he saw Anna galloping toward the cabin. He couldn’t decide whether that was better or worse. He did not want to see her, now or ever again.