The Feeder Project

"I sang this song a hundred,
maybe a thousand years ago.
No one ever listens;
I just play and then I go
Off into the sunset like the western heroes do.
Tell me what you're goin' to do."

From Miracles Out of Nowhere
Kansas

Jacob Barley arrived in Yellow Set without his hat. After stopping at the saloon for a shot, he sauntered to the boarding house to check on availability of a room. His head pained him. Dust clouded about him as he walked through the bone dry street. Not only did Jacob Barley lose his hat, he lost his horse as well, with a broken a leg, just past the gulch.

Things had gone better for Barley. Things had certainly gone worse. This early evening in Yellow Set, though, was to be unlike any other day before or since.

Lucinda Treebach looked at Barley through the window of the boarding house as he painfully climbed the rickety wooden stairs and walked into the foyer. He walked the four steps to the desk. They grunted at each other. At least that is how it sounded to Judge Rufus Geen who sat in the adjoining parlor. She told him a price. He paid her the money. She gave him a key.

"Barley?" Judge Geen's voice rumbled from the parlor. "''Bout time you got here."

Barley turned and spit on the floor. Geen stood and tottered to the doorway between the parlor and the foyer. Barley said nothing. He just stared at the old man.

"You, son, are an inarticulate fool," Geen said.

"Big word there, Geen," said Barley. His hand brushed aside his duster to expose his pistol.

"To you, I'm your honor or Judge Geen."

"Yes, sir, Your Honorous Geen," said Barley. "If I had a hat, I'd tip it in your judgeship's direction."

Judge Geen didn't like the tone of Barley's voice. So he shot him.