Carson leaned against the scarred wood of the saloon’s bar, his eyes riveted on the ceiling fan lazily spinning against the dim light. Outside, the sun baked the dusty streets of the Western town, but inside, the air was cool and filled with the murmur of muted conversations. Jess, polished-glass in hand, interrupted Carson’s reverie with the kind of familiarity only years could forge.
“Thinking again, Carson?” Jess’s voice carried the weight of countless drinks shared over the years.
“Just breathing, Jess. Bought a new toy for the cabin,” Carson replied, his voice the rough gravel of a seldom-used road.
“Oh? Something to keep the coyotes at bay?”
“No, Jess. A carbon monoxide detector. Peace of mind, they call it.” Carson’s face cracked into a fleeting smile.
“A what-now?” Jess’s brow furrowed.
“It’s a fancy doodad. Keeps you from conking out from the poison gas.”
Their talk was interrupted by the clatter of boots. Dave, a rancher with hands quick and sharp as his wit, joined them. “Cowboys need carbon whozits now?” he teased, settling onto a stool.
“You’d be surprised, Dave,” Carson said, arching an eyebrow. “Them silent killers got a way of creeping in.”
“What else got you worried, Carson? Bandits? Outlaws?” Dave grinned, but Carson’s response was serious.
“Everything’s quiet. Too quiet.” He rubbed his chin, eyes narrowed.
Jess chuckled, oblivious. “It’s the West, Carson. Quiet’s all we got.”
“Ain’t about quiet, Jess. It’s about what ain’t been told.” Carson’s words drifted into the silences only a place like this could hold.
Days later, the silence snapped like a twig underfoot. An eerie unease seeped through town, whispers of something wrong on the air. Carson, always watchful, noticed the owners of the biggest ranch hadn’t been seen for days. Seized by instinct, he rode the winding trail to their isolated homestead.
He found nothing but silence and a palpable tension, the ranch eerily still beneath a glittering sky. Carson pushed open the door, the threshold groaning under his weight. The air inside was heavy, wrong somehow, tainted by a distinct scent he couldn’t place.
There, in the heart of the ranch, the truth lay bare. The carbon monoxide detector, his “peace of mind,” chirped relentlessly its warning of unseen danger.
Beside it, the ranchers lay still, beyond reach of earthly concerns. Carson knew, in that sparing way of his, that he’d been right to trust his instincts—not just for himself, but for others who wouldn’t hear the silent song of the silent killer.
He rode back to town to find Jess and Dave, the dusk bleed into night, his thoughts his only companions.
“Carson,” Jess greeted him at the saloon’s boardwalk, seeing the somber cast of his features. “What’s amiss?”
“The silence,” Carson replied, voice edged with steel. “Wasn’t just the gas.”
“You look as if death rode with you,” Dave added, concern shadowing his eyes.
Carson nodded. “Sometimes, it ain’t the coyotes or outlaws. It’s what you don’t see coming. The silence was trying to tell us something, after all.”
And as the night enveloped the town, they spoke no more, understanding that out here in the West, the greatest threats come from the things you never hear.
Carson knew they’d wake to a new day, a fresh resolve among them to listen more to the silence that filled the spaces between their words.