Honor is the last refuge of the damned

Jalen Brooks shot at the rustlers as they high tailed it across the sage and mesquite. His anger was hot as he looked around at the carnage. His beloved Dallas trampled, broken and bleeding. Cattle moaning and being shot as they lay with broken limbs…He got up from his position, took a few more shots at the retreating backs of the men who had caused the horror he saw in front of him and then went over to Dallas and gently moved him and then found a blanket from the chuck wagon and gently wrapped him in it and carried him back to the chuck wagon. He laid him inside and when the rest of the carnage was cleaned up, with the dead cattle buried he looked up to the sky and wondered what he had done to deserve such a punishment…why he had been damned…He had known a man who had done nothing…a man of honor and he himself honored the man by riding alongside the chuck wagon during the day and guarding it through the night until the battered and broken body had received a proper burial. He paid homage to the man who had taught him about honor and many other things that would help him to continue on even though the love of his life was now gone.