Django wasn’t sure why he’d volunteered.
Call it misplaced duty -- or something like it. There wasn’t a drop of mercy in his heart for this group of misfits he found himself surrounded by. For all their posturin’ and whinin’ only one or two interested him enough to stick around. Might be they take off. Head West, as he’d said to Day. Still... he did not fancy dyin’. Not now, not soon. Someday, sure; and he’d fantasized about it plenty. Used to josh around with Thomas, makin’ out there’d be some grand stand-off, just like Billy the Kid, if the stories were true. Django, fallin’ dramatically to the ground. Thomas, weepin’ over his body. Of course, this last part was always delivered with a slight smile, a jagged note in his hoarse voice, an invisible question mark. You sayin’ you’d die for me, Tommy? Hell yeah I would. And Django, suddenly shy, ducking his head and mumblin’, Well... good.
Maybe there was somethin’ about his old boys that reminded him of the group. Django, after all, was used to makin’ homes from strays. There might not be another soul for the next five miles.
Which is why Django had offered the clear out the cellar of the general store.
He now sat slumped on the veranda outside, the sun beating down on his bronze skin. Grime and blood and God knew what splattered up his arms and torso; he’d undone both shirt and vest soon as he’d emerged unscathed, breathing hard, sweat collecting in the dips and valleys of his stomach. To hell with propriety.
Django tipped his head back and groaned, feeling the slow ache in his muscles. Leaning back until he was propped up by his elbows, he stuck his legs out into the dusty road and gazed unseeingly at the buildings across the way. Upstairs in the place opposite a child battered her hands against the window panes. Django shuddered and averted his gaze.
When a shadow fell over him, he looked up, squinting in the harsh light.
“Ain’t nothin’ down there now,” Django told ‘em. “Nothin’ ‘cept a whole load of bodies, and I ain’t movin’ ‘em. That can be your job. I’ve sweated enough for a dozen lifetimes. And I need a beer,” he added insolently.