It’s been a long four day ride from Trail’s End.
I was fixin’ to call it quits for the evening, to veer Rowena towards the smell of water and set up camp for another night, when in the dying light of day it loomed into view. The Slaughter Mansion.
The outline of the desolate, rotting structure seems even more ominous in the waning sunlight, as though backlight with the very fires of Hell. Old man Slaughter was Governor here once, the locals told me, and his home a shining beacon of Antebellum culture and pride.
But that was a long time ago.
Governor Slaughter’s been dead nearly two centuries, the last of his family perished before The Great War. Only the house remains, with its warped and sagging gallery and half caved in roof, it dominates the weed choked fields for miles around. A perfect representation of the old south: Long dead, but still menacing.
It’s full dark when at last I ride up to the main house, slipping easily down from the saddle and looping Rowena’s reins about the railing of the weatherbeaten gallery. Pulling a bottle of Boot Hill bourbon from the saddlebag, I loosen the straps and slide the saddle off the roan’s back, before patting her lovingly on the rump.
“Shouldn’t be long, darlin’, but momma’s got work to do. Oh, and if you see anyone else come ridin’ up? Be a dear and bite ‘em!’’
With that, I turn and mount the crumbling stairs, vanishing into the gaping aperture of the Slaughter mansion.
