The Widow

by Heather Leet

She stood over his prone form with her colt revolver drawn and ready to shoot again. It had taken her months to track him down, months of ceaseless riding, months of dirt, months of hate, and now that she had finally filled him with lead she felt empty, as if all of her anger had been fired from her body like the bullets from her gun. The first time she had seen him had been that rainy night a year ago when he and his gang had ridden in while the moon was obscured by the clouds, killing her husband, shooting her pregnant belly and leaving her to bleed in the rain as she listened to their laughter as they rode away. She had survived but the child had not, so when her sister had arrived to take her back east she did not resist at first, but then she found her husbands old trunk of clothes left over from his days as a gunslinger and at the bottom was the buttery soft white leather jacket, when she put it on she knew what she had to do. She practiced every day for three months, honing the skills she had begrudgingly learned when she first moved west to marry her husband and after three months she knew that when she found him she would beat him shot for shot. She found him in a whore house in Abilene and at noon the next day she had eased the knawing, burning anger in her gut.

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Heather Leet, whose full catalog is here, is a modern day Robin Hood, but instead of stealing from the rich she cajoles them into giving her money to help fund programs that will hopefully one day make the world a better place. She spends not enough time writing on her blog, and hopes to one day publish her collection of Love Poems to Dictators.