The last lightning strike staggered him, shaking the ground as it enflamed the lone tree dying in the field. He laid there, staring at the grey sky moving its angry clouds at a feverish pace. His hands met the soil as he pushed himself up to face the roar of the flames.
"Almost got me that time," he exhausted with a slight laugh. He stood and wiped the dirt from his jeans. His steed must've been a mile away by now, cutting the horizon in a gallop.
With no way to escape the storm encasing his midst, he stared at the embers raging in front of him.
"I hear you, but I don't understand," he muttered at the sky, as a slight trickle of rain tickled his cheeks.
His shotgun laid dead in the plains, arms length from where his feet left the surface. Then he saw them. Laying impressions in the pasture, bodies prone and slowly encroaching. It wasn't their mission he sensed, it was their fear. The whites of their eyes broke through the tan strands demanding them to cease.
In the immediate shock of not being the open field kindling, he took his time to stagger to his rifle.
He shouted, valiantly,
"Well boys, it looks like God doesn't want you in these parts," he leaned down and retrieved his resolver,
"you should heed His message, because that's not the only thunder he's brought to you today."
Stone faced, he shot a shell into the distance, just to make em squirm.
"The lord giveth, and the lord taketh away," a slug hanging from his teeth as he loaded two more rounds into his sword,
"And today, I'm your Huckleberry."
The bodies quivered the stalks surrounding them as they finally realized the fearlessness encroaching their position.
"I'm sorry sir, I can't, I've got kids!"
A slumped body rose halfway, running down the hill it had approached upon.
One shot.
The screams melded with the murmur of electricity flowing through the atmosphere.
"Now, I told you boys to leave me be, but you wouldn't listen."
He walked slowly towards the hilltop.
"He got me good sheriff!"
"Shut your fuckin mouth deputy."
"Oh, c'mon now, that's no way to talk to your subordinates."
And then he saw it.
The glistening star shown through the wind and the wheat.
"Should've let me be sheriff."
Aiming down his irons,
he blasted away.