Jake's Revenge

When he reached the saloon, Jake walked slowly up to the swinging doors. Loud music from an old piano competed with the sound of laughter and voices spilling out of the room. Jake looked over the top of the swinging doors and noticed the saloon had a full house that night. He decided he should wait for daylight before doing anything, but the decision was taken out of his hands.

Lucky unexpectedly glanced up toward the door and spotted Jake. All the color drained from his face as he stood and knocked his chair onto the floor with a loud bang behind him. Ben and Bill glanced over to where Lucky was looking and their faces turned an ashen color. They, too, stood quickly.

 This didn’t leave Jake any choice but to enter the saloon and have it out with the three men. As he made his way in, the music stopped as the piano player noticed something wasn’t right. The man hurried behind the old machine as if to take cover. Jake figured the piano player must have an instinct that trouble was on the way having played in the saloon for so long. He wasn’t about to get in the line of gunfire.

 Jake stood just inside the door and his narrowed eyes landed on the three that were also standing, facing him. All along, Jake thought he knew these three men, but when it came down to it, he didn’t know them at all. There wasn’t the usual confident look lining any of their faces now. They’d been caught and they knew it.

Jake Carson has idealistic ideas about traveling west from his home in Boston and taking on the role as a cattle rancher. He succeeds in acquiring what he sets out to do, but feels bitterness toward three of the men he’s hired to help on the cattle drive. They shoot his two friends, rustle his cattle and then shoot him. Jake is left to die along the hot dusty trail. When Jake survives, with the help of the Ute Indians, his only thought is revenge. What will happen when he faces the three in a shootout on the dusty street of Salt Lake City? Will this satisfy the revenge eating him up inside?