Before dawn had so much as flickered at the horizon, his breakfast, a pale green desert snake, was gutted and mounted above the embers of the fire. He sat closeby as it cooked, the packs that were normally slung over his mount unwrapped, his shotgun stripped and oiled in front of him. Also laid out were two automatic pistols, newly reassembled, and the knife that he carried in his boot, newly sharpened. It was a ritual for him, this methodical maintenance of the tools of his trade. His power was no secret – a clear mind and the best tools he could find; lightening hands, strong grip and a bullseye aim. This was how he killed.

He looked down at his shotgun, in pieces before him. He could do it with his eyes closed, had done in fact, in more carefree times. Now he was methodical and precise, every piece put together with fatherly care and endless patience. He would put his life in the hands of this weapon, and the lives of others as well. It was no time for games or frivolity. He never had much time for that. The wind whistled like an old drunk as it played across the surface of the dunes to his east. He saw vast swathes of sand whirling as they moved across their heaped surfaces, playing on the horizon. The sky turned as blue as infinity as the sun slowly rose, and the world became too hot to bear. The Bounty Hunter did not sweat though. He was grim as he rose and shouldered his arms, grim as he tucked the pistols into the holsters at his side and the knife back into his left boot. He face was set in the same expression it always carried, distant and impassive and haggard and terrible. The eyes that saw everything looked out across the sand.

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He had spread his canvass blankets either side of the dead fire, giving his guest the cleanest one, which wasn’t saying much. His capacity for delicacy and tact was limited by what he was, what he had to be. Still he thought of the man he once was and what he might have done, and followed those conventions. The girl, once he set her down, had still been afraid, and he had still been reticent. It was just past midday when they returned and four hours had passed, with no word spoken between them. He looked at her intently, focussing his gaze upon her every feature. She just lay and rested, occasionally lifting her head to look about her at the world she knew. He was sure that she thought it would be her last day upon this earth, as she lay there in front of him. She was not to know the truth. He was impressed by her silent defiance, her endless dignity.

“Who are you?”

Her voice was strong, and resonated through the night all the more strongly for the strange silence that had preceded it.

“I am The Bounty Hunter”

The simplicity and immediacy of his reply invited no argument.

“That is what you are. I want to know who you are, who is this man that I see before me, who takes me away from my village and stares at me all day?”

The Bounty Hunter regarded her gravely. He was not used to conversation, to people speaking to him in this way. This girl, given time to conquer her fear in his presence that he had never granted to another soul, had become reckless in her hopelessness.

“I am nobody. But I have not seen such a girl as you in many years, this is why I must speak to you. I take a terrible risk in doing this, you understand?”
“But why, Bounty Hunter?”
“I don’t know yet.”

This admission numbed and shamed him. They sat again in silence, for a long time. As their breath grew visible in front of their faces The Bounty Hunter moved to swiftly build a fire, more for his guest’s sake than his own. Once he had kindled the brush into flame, he carefully built a small pyramid of driftwood, an altar of all that was gone and lost forever. The tinder dry fuel exploded into sparks as it caught alight; snapping like pistol shots, echoing across the sparse landscape.

“Have you ever loved anyone?”

The question was unexpected and unwelcome, but in his mind he knew that this was what he had come to find. He had not, he didn’t think.

“This was a mistake. I will take you back tonight.”

She was silent a minute more, but unperturbed.

“A lot of the men in the town have said they love me, and some of them meant it I think. Others just want to touch me, to sleep with me, because they say I am beautiful, that I speak so well. I do not love any of them though, none of them move me; they are all foolish, cowards really. None of them inspire anything, they just fight for the scraps they can find in life. I do not mind this attention, in a way I feel it is my role, to be this figurehead for them, something to aspire to. All they aspire to. I am privileged, although you probably find this hard to believe. I am Jeb Golding’s daughter, leader of our hamlet, and he has raised me to read and write and learn. A lot of people aren’t so lucky. Not everyone even has houses to live in, out here. We are forgotten, unwanted, left to rot in the desert – people take hope where they can find it and I don’t mind. Where do you come from, Bounty Hunter, who raised you? What is your name?”

The girl offered so much information it was almost a challenge to him, to respond in kind. They sat in silence as the sun dipped lower and the shadows lengthened before them. The fire too, cast strange shadows across the camp, made the girl look a lot older than she was as the light danced across the hollows of her features. The Bounty Hunter looked at her, and felt pity; regret. Feelings he was deeply unaccustomed to. He felt a sudden responsibility for the disastrous world this girl was forced to grow up in, the hardships she faced with worse to face still. He was of this world, too, and his place in it was far from hers. There was no unifying purpose to what he did, but he decided if it were anything it should be to let creatures such as this live life without such cynicism and coldness. He trusted nobody, ever. And yet he relented.

“I have lived longer than you might think. You must know from my age, that I have seen the world as it was, and you should guess that I serve those who made it so. I have…. survived, by any means. There is still a war in these lands, and I am but a weapon. I know nothing of why, but I believe in the cause that I once fought for, and I fight for it still. In the East the world is different, you know. You may rarely see those who come from so far away, but there still exists some of that which the world possessed before – knowledge and electricity, buildings buried deep underground – many people, many lives. I serve them, that life may continue. I brought you here to see you and know you, because you show me that my mission is not in vain. I only know this now, now you have stirred my mind into thought for the first time in decades - you represent more that all the vast complexes of the east. Because you represent the future of our race, a new beginning. My time is nearing an end, and now I mostly exist only to serve myself, to fill my days. From today I know why I have existed so long, why I fight - I exist to protect such as you.”

The girl silently nodded. The Bounty Hunter looked down at his boots.

“I will take you back now”
“You haven’t answered my question.”
“Your question?”
“Have you ever loved anyone?”

The Bounty Hunter looked steadily into her eyes, following their path straight to her soul but unable to reach it or make sense of what he found. In turn she gazed upon the pale reflective surfaces of his sheer slate grey irises, trying to unpeel the layered defences that he had spent years erecting. As she looked away, they could both feel frustration. But there was also something else.

“I don’t know” He replied.

When he got back from returning the girl it was late, and the moon was large and looming above him in the velvet sky. The remains of the fire smouldered in the blackened pit, embers still glowing faintly, reaching out for something to sustain them before dying in the cold desert breeze. He sat and looked over the land, his awareness heightened, ready to react. It was a sixth sense he had, although he did not really believe in such things. He was not spiritual, but practical; his ears and eyes were straining against the night air. He had told the girl too much and put himself in danger, he knew this much now. He had put her in danger. He could feel that something was wrong, was against all logic aware of it in his soul, and he primed himself for what he felt was to come.

Across the desert from the direction of the village, he heard a sliver of sound carrying through the night air. The wind was not in his favour but the noise was there, somewhere carried on the night air. He settled and watched, adrenaline flowing now. Half an hour later, a rider entered his vision, a ghostly figure in the monochrome desert. This was remarkable itself in these lean times, that anyone should possess a mount in such a town. As the speck on the horizon grew to a solid form under the light of the moon and the stars, it was revealed as more a beast of burden than a battle mount, a mange-ridden tick infested mule. With his keen vision he could almost see the fleas jumping, a mile or more in the distance. It carried upon it the man the girl had called Jeb Golding. He let the man get close before he rose to greet him. Jeb Golding dismounted and bowed. He was sweating, and looked distressed. The Bounty Hunter read fear in his eyes, of what he did not know.

“Please, I did not know where else to turn!”
“Why have you come?” And more importantly in The Bounty Hunter’s mind, how did you find me here?
“My daughter… they have taken her..”
“Who? Where?”
“Some men, they came into town – when she returned she insisted in siting outside for a while, I told her not to, but….”
“Tell me who, and where?” The Bounty Hunter thought he knew the answer to both questions – he knew that outsiders camped in these parts, and raided the villages for what they needed, but something did not sit right with this handsome, cowering man.
“They were outsiders – we knew of their presence, they are camped out by the old wreck… but I wouldn’t think that they would take her.”

Jeb Golding knelt and wept bitter tears into the fine desert sand

“Go now, it is late”

He looked up, abashed, as if caught unawares doing something he shouldn’t be. His cheeks were still wet with grief; windswept sand and hair stuck to them.

“Will you help find her?”
“Go now, or die” The Bounty Hunter said, in the voice of command.

Jeb Golding scrambled back onto his steed, and galloped as best he could in the direction from which he had come.

As the absurd mount and its unlikely rider vanished over the horizon, a shrill tone carved through the distant echo of hooves. The shrill tone came from the bounty hunter’s rolled up carpetbag, containing his few possessions. He walked to his camp and retrieved the satellite phone from the bag, wrapped in rags so that it would come to no harm. He pressed respond and lifted it to his ear. As he listened, his shoulders dropped and his face became set and harsh as granite. The call had come.