Sindune

It is the year 1870; the bloody American Civil War ended only five years ago.

 In a bar, in the middle of a small town in the wild west, sits a man, he is young, but he doesn't look it, his blue eyes are sharp like his face, like an old fox, he wears a brown leather jacket, leather pants with long boots and a poncho.

 He wears a brown leather jacket, leather pants with long boots, and a poncho. 

On his head, he wears a hat that covers part of his face and leaves the other part in shadows; along with that, he carries a shiny revolver. 

 The man is drinking whiskey while people are dancing and having fun. 

 In front of the man is the bartender, who is cleaning glasses.

 Out of nowhere, a rough-looking man with already white hair approaches the outlaw.

 "I'll get straight to the point," the man starts to say as he pulls out a leaf cigarette and lights it.

 "I've got a tough job, but it pays well," The man tells him, but the outlaw doesn't look at him; he looks straight ahead as he takes another shot of whiskey, and there just now he says to him. 

 "I hear you, old man," the outlaw says as his head turns towards him. 

"Fine, but first I need to know your name," the man says as he takes another puff of his cigarette.

"Claude is the name; now tell me what the job is about."

 "The job is about kidnapping a girl, the daughter of a rival that my gang and I have around this area," the old man tells him in a lowered manner. 

 "I see, and what am I supposed to do after that?" asks Claude. 

 "You wait for us to take care of her father and his gang" the old man tells him as he continues to smoke his cigar. 

 "And where is the girl?" Claude asks him as he pulls out a map of the town. 

 The old man marks the place, and, without further Claude gives him the place where he plans to hide with the girl. 

 "Alright, finally, how much will be the payment for this job?" Claude asks him, somewhat distrustful of the old man. 

 "It will be about $500 dollars" the old man tells Claude, to which he replies: 

 "Say no more then" Claude gets up from his seat, takes the last sip of whiskey from his glass, and heads out of the saloon.

 Outside was the small town of "Sindune". Different personalities roamed the town; there was the saloon, the hotel, the small church, the houses, the sheriff's office, stables and a gun store. Claude walked down the small stairs of the saloon while holding his hat and watching out not to slip on the rotten wood.

Claude was an outlaw; five years ago he had finished the civil war, and five years ago he had left the army. Now he was dedicated to doing shady jobs, and the least shady was the protection of stagecoaches or caravans. 

He was just 24 years old and came from a family not badly off; his family had a ranch not far from Sindune, but that was in the past, and now he was alone.

 Sindune was a thriving town, surrounded by greenery sindure are green everywhere you looked. 

People wore boots all the time because it used to rain a lot and the roads in the town were almost pure mud. 

 Claude walked towards a horse mooring, where his horse was. 

 Claude let the horse loose and almost immediately got on the horse's back to give it a little bump on the lame with his knee to get it to start walking. The day was cloudy, and it almost looked like it was going to rain by the way the clouds looked.

Claude began to gallop calmly through the small village while looking around the post office, the hotel and other things. Behind the village was the old cemetery, but Claude kept going on the main road of the village. 

The address the old man had given him was a compound not far from the village, a farm. When Claude finally left the village, he began to gallop faster. Little by little, what was once a village,houses and different wooden buildings, became a meadow and forest in the background, with small streams where small fish swam, In the distance, white and high mountains could be seen, and Claude kept galloping.

Finally, he arrived near the farm, it was a not so modest farm, in fact, with a big white main house; that was where the girl should be, Claude started to prowl around the farm; already on the ground, he had left his horse tied to a tree.

Claude went into the farm bushes and began to go deeper inside, pulling tall plants and fruit bearing branches out of his face.

Claude was no longer far from the house and began to spot armed people. Now came the part where he had to identify weak spots, and it didn't take him long to find them. When one of the guards of the place entered the barn, there was a possible blind spot left to enter. Now he had two plans: enter through that opening or trade clothes with the guard.

Claude crouched lower, to avoid being seen, and went through the back towards the inside of the ranch. There the guard had sat for a moment while he took out a canteen and drank something that Claude could not distinguish; that was no longer important because, with the speed of lightning and the discretion of a cat, he hit the guard in the back of the head.

The guard falls, Claude now had to be quick before the guard's other companions got suspicious, so he quickly changes clothes and goes out, as if nothing, the guard's hat covers almost all of his face, and when he runs into the other guard, a conversation begins.

"It looks like it's going to rain soon, isn't it Clinton?", a man asks Claude, this man thought Claude was his partner, so in order not to raise suspicions Claude answers him:

"Yeah, yeah. That's what it sounds like, cough, cough" Claude coughs at the end of the sentence and brings his gloved hand up to his mouth.

"Your voice seems different today," the guard says to him.

"Yeah, yeah, I think I caught a cold. Cough, cough, cough" Claude replies amidst more coughing.

"Careful with that, Clinton; we have to be more alive than ever. I've been told that the gang from the neighboring town is planning an attack.

"Oh yes, yes, yes, so more work and less talking" Claude replies and walks away from the guard, who is somewhat confused to see his lazy friend acting like that. Maybe it was nerves, thought the other guard.

Finally, now that the other guard has turned around, Claude can take advantage of the opportunity to get into the big house.

Claude jumps the fence, looks at the window, nothing at all, looks at the other one, nothing at all, looks for an open one, and finally finds it, in what seems to be the centerpiece of the house. Claude then opens the window and climbs in, hoping not to attract attention because of the noise.

Now the outlaw begins to advance in the room, crouching with his head down, trying to look up, outside the house was full of guard and more over if he left for too long the other guard was going to get suspicious.

Claude passes from the room to where there is a staircase, and begins to climb it. With no one at home, Claude hoped that at least the girl was there.

Claude, when he finishes climbing the stairs, finds a hallway. There are paintings, tables and vases on top of those tables, but that is not important. Claude approaches each door, looking through the lock of each door. Just as he is about to look at the one at the end, he sees the guard from before, just wondering why his old friend is not there.

He had to find her from there and get out fast.

Luckily for Claude and for long discount is that the last room was where the girl was. He looked at her through the bolt, looking at the window and painting on the canvas. He almost felt like kidnapping her.

Claude enters the room, trying not to make any noise, but the girl seems to have fine hearing and lets out a scream.

Here, Claude loses the gentleness of his failed mission of stealth and jumps towards the girl, who screams louder when she sees this, and Claude covers her with his hand. There is a struggle, and Claude begins to hear how people scream to know what the fuck is going on upstairs.

Claude starts to suffocate the girl, not to kill her, but to make her faint, and he succeeds, the girl doesn't manage to say a single word before she faints, but the guards outside do.

"What's going on in there, Miss Vutten Von!!!", he hears screaming, Claude to several guards, and these knocks on the door. Claude couldn't deny that he was quite nervous, and he only had one way out, the window, and outside the window were the bushes.

So with nothing else to do, Claude ties the girl with his lasso, and together at that moment, the men enter the room.

The guards watch in horror as Claude kidnaps the daughter of the boss they were supposed to protect, and the biggest one shouts.

"DON'T LET THAT OUTLAW TAKE THE YOUNG LADY AWAY!!", shouts the biggest of them all, and they all at the same time throw themselves towards Claude to finish him off, but it was too late, and Claude falls into the bushes. Bad luck; they were the ones with thorns, and Claude doesn't have a happy landing.

"Ugh... I inherited father's problems," said Claude, while he was burying small thorns and remembered that his father was almost blind in one eye.

Luckily, the girl was not hurt, as Claude held her up high as if he was juggling, but still he could not stop. The men were furious looking at him from the window, stunned in part, but the men who had stood watch below were already going deeper into the bushes, so Claude started to run and found it good that he had this girl because otherwise he would have been like Swiss cheese by now.

Claude was being chased into the bushes and was thankful that his horse was not too far away. He pulled out his pistol as he put the girl on his shoulder.

Claude began to run towards his horses, and at the same time, he pointed his gun at the guards, who began to drop like flies.

Finally, Claude came out of the bushes of hell and arrived at where his horse was tied up. He threw the girl, and now the guards were already drawing their guns, Claude got on his horse and pulled his knee and pulled the reins so that he flew out of there fast.

It was just before numerous bullets hit where the horse was just now, the horse began to gallop quickly, frightened in part by the shots, just when Claude thought it was going to be a simple get away is that when several guards mounted on their own horses appeared, began to shoot, and the horse was starting to go even faster.

Precisely these were the men who had come into the room, and not far behind were the other guards chasing him in the bushes.

Now there were about twenty or twenty-five guards chasing Claude, and he feared that more would join him who were guarding the farm fields. Claude had to find a way to lose them all, or else it would be his grave. Claude passed large rocks, the forest and rivers, but after almost an hour of pursuit, they were still evenly matched.

It was then that he came up with the brilliant idea to head for the mountains further to the north.

The guards chased Claude; already there was fatigue in their horses, and Claude's horse also showed a little, it was then that Claude went into another forest, the old forest of the north, Claude passed through the forest and finally got closer to the mountains, the guards began to shoot another round and Claude did the same, it was then that one of the bullets of the guards grazed Claude's chest, he bent down on his own horse because of the pain while holding his side. 

It was a great pain and blood soon began to gush from the wound, a little more to the side and it would have passed through a kidney, but Claude already recognized that they were not far from the place where he wanted to go.

Claude passed by a last stream, and already in the mountains he found the waterfall, it was a big waterfall and the passage from one side to the other was divided, only a bridge, a small wooden bridge where the horse could barely pass, without fear, Claude passed by the bridge and then it was that the supply was on his side, the old bridge barely held Claude's horse and one side of the rope that held the bridge passed to better life, with the bridge in that state was that finally Claude looked at the guards for the last time.

The guards continued firing with their Henry rifles, but soon after they ceased fire, now Claude could stop galloping and so he did.

Claude got down from his horse and saw his horse's charge, there he had vedas with which he healed his future scar, it was ugly.

Now Claude did not have much notion of where he was, but the truth is that the sun was already going down, and it was cold, at the foot of the snowy mountains, no more and no less. 

Claude cursed himself for a second and then finally lowered the girl, still unconscious, but not for long. 

Claude had to gather branches and so on to make a fire, and so he did, after half an hour he had enough material, and besides, he gave himself the freedom to remove the trail, if the guards tried anything else, he was not going to find them, but so he had to return, the old man did not tell him where or when, but at some point his band was going to look for him, and his band was surely big, big enough to deal with more than twenty-five guards. 

Now Claude was trying to light the fire. The horse was tied to a tree, and the girl was also tied to the same tree. The day was getting low, and the sun was hardly visible while Claude finished lighting the fire that brought more light to the small place among the trees. 

Just at the moment when Claude managed to light the fire, then, the girl woke up.