Clinch nodded.
Albert took a deep breath. “One… two…”
Albert fired.
He hit Clinch in the left arm.
Clinch looked down at the wound, then slowly lifted his gaze back to Albert, that awful smile spreading across his face in tandem with the blood. He let out a big guffaw that echoed eerily across the expanse of the empty town. “I been playing cards a long time, and I’ve never seen such a bad gamble, Stark. Where’d you learn to shoot?”
“Your wife.”
“Aw, snap,” whispered Edward from his doorway.
Clinch stopped laughing. He raised his gun and cocked it.
Albert dropped his own gun and raised both hands plaintively. “Look, before you shoot me… grant me a few last words. Please?”
Clinch sneered. “Why not? Yes, let’s savor this moment.”
“Okay, good. Thank you. Look—just promise me one thing. Let Anna live. Please. She didn’t kiss me, I kissed her. So it’s my fault.” Albert paused in momentary thought. “I mean, she didn’t tell me she was married, so it’s kinda her fault too, I guess, so… yeah, actually, that’s true. So maybe just shoot her in the leg? That seems fair, right?”
Anna gave him a what-the-fuck stare.
Albert went on. “And one more thing: My grandparents were Arabic, so if you’ll indulge my religious beliefs here… Immediately before death, I’m required by Muslim tradition to recite the Islamic death chant. This’ll only take a moment.” And Albert began to warble a stream of vocal dissonance that sounded like a goat being castrated.
Has he lost his fucking mind? Anna thought. It wasn’t until he’d been at it for several seconds that she became aware of a change in Clinch. He was blinking rapidly. And he’d broken out into a sweat. He glanced around unsteadily, appearing to falter a bit. His aim drifted, until eventually his gun fell from his quivering hand. He seemed to be having enormous difficulty maintaining his balance.
“What the… what the hell is happening?” he grunted weakly.
Anna had the same question. Is this witchcraft or something?
Albert ceased his warbling and addressed Clinch again. “You know, Clinch, there are a million ways to die in the West. There’s disease, famine, exposure, gunfights… and wild animals. You know, like snakes. And the interesting thing about snakes is, you don’t even have to get bitten. All you have to do is get the venom into your system, and you’re pretty much screwed. Let me tell you about a little trick some Apache friends of mine taught me recently: You take a certain amount of venom from a diamondback rattler and drain it into a hollowed-out bullet tip, and, you know what? You really only need one shot. Now, I knew my aim wasn’t good enough to hit you anywhere important, but if I caught you by surprise… Well, Anna taught me enough to get me in the ballpark. And it didn’t matter where I hit you, as long as the bullet broke the flesh. Because just a little bit of venom in an open wound is enough to kill a man if he’s—”
“Albert. He’s dead.”
“Huh?”
It was Ruth who had spoken. She stood over Clinch’s collapsed body. “He’s dead. You killed him.”
“Oh.” It was true. Clinch lay unmoving on the ground.
“Did he hear all the smart stuff that I did?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“Oh. Okay. It’s still good, though.”
A wide grin broke out across Anna’s face as she elbowed Lewis in the gut. He doubled over in pain and surprise, just as the sheriff and deputy emerged from their office, guns trained on Clinch’s men.
Anna ran to Albert and threw her arms around him, raining kisses upon him with all the passion of a parched castaway suddenly being given water. His lips melted into hers for a full minute before she pulled away, gazing at him with love, pride, and profound relief.
“Not bad, sheepboy,” she said. “Not bad at all.”
“Sorry I killed your husband.” He felt at least some obligation to say it.
Anna took his hands in hers. “Albert… it’s the sweetest thing anyone’s ever done for me.”
“Which is kinda fucked up, huh?”
“Yeah, it is kinda fucked up, isn’t it?”
They kissed again. When they parted this time, Albert became aware that he was being observed. He turned to look behind him.
Standing there was Louise.
“Hey, Albert,” she said flirtatiously.
“Oh. Hey, Louise.”
“Listen, um… if you wanna… talk about things, I’d like that. I could come by your place later on tonight.”
A very short time ago, Albert would have shot himself in the knee just to hear her speak those words. And now he felt nothing. It was not until that moment that he knew he was truly free. Free from her emotional grasp. Free to pursue happiness with someone who was ready to love him for the rest of his life.
“I can’t, Louise.” He smiled. “I really need to work on myself. But thank you for your interest.”
He didn’t see her face fall, as he was already walking away, hand in hand with Anna.
Anna turned to him with electrified eyes as something new occurred to her. “Y’know… you shot Clinch Leatherwood. The deadliest gunman on the frontier. There’s probably gonna be reward money.”
“Huh. I didn’t think about that.”
“So, what are you gonna do?”
And that was how, in the warm Arizona summer of 1882, Albert and Anna Stark, newly wed in the little town of Old Stump, came to embrace beside his small cabin, in the center of a great flock of sheep five thousand strong. And through the gift of a new, mint-bright outlook fueled by a woman’s love, Albert Stark found that he was happy to live in the West.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
SETH MacFARLANE is an animator, writer, producer, director, actor, and singer. He is the creator of the show Family Guy and co-creator of American Dad!, for which he also voices many of the shows’ various characters. He is the executive producer of the television series Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey. MacFarlane’s film Ted is the highest-grossing original R-rated comedy of all time, and he is the co-writer, producer, director, and star of the film A Million Ways to Die in the West. As a singer, MacFarlane has released a Grammy-nominated album of American standards, Music Is Better Than Words. He is a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design.
Copyright
A Million Ways to Die in the West is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2014 by MRC II Distribution Company, L.P.
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of Random House, a division of Random House LLC, a Penguin Random House Company, New York.
BALLANTINE and the HOUSE colophon are registered trademarks of Random House LLC.
This novel is based on a screenplay by Seth MacFarlane, Alec Sulkin, and Wellesley Wild.
ISBN 978-0-553-39167-1
eBook ISBN 978-0-553-39168-8
Jacket design: Alex Merto
Jacket photograph: © 2014 Universal Studios and Mrc II Distribution Company L.P.
Digital retouching by Robert Hunt
v3.1