• I remember the day Jack Legion arrived. It was like a moment from a proverb about meeting the wrong kind of man, because that is what Jack Legion was. I believe I was the first to see him, seeing as how I was the only one who would brave the elements to go get a bucket of water from the town well. It was one of those days where it seemed too hot to move, but I walked that long, sandy stretch of road with an oaken bucket dangling from a tired arm. The sky was a yellow-gray, heaving aloft the unmerciful white-hot disk of the sun that battered our tired landscape with a hellish heat. Even the clouds cowered at its mercy, hiding somewhere below the horizon.


    I felt as if I was the only living soul in the town, hooking my bucket onto the narrow rope that led into the well. Dropping it into the murky depths, I couldn’t help but wonder if perhaps it was a little cooler at the bottom of the well than on the surface. The heat clawed at my back, leaving ridges of sweat in the linen of my dress, and as I reached back to peel the soaked material from my skin, I saw Jack Legion for the first time.


    He appeared in a whirl of red dust, just along the sparse valley floor. At first, he was just a flicker of a shape and I mistook him for a thick bush of sagebrush that the wavering sun haze animated. Then he got a little closer, his dark shape becoming clear as he neared the ridge that led to our town. He came on the back of a black horse that stomped and forced his way up the ridge, undeterred by the rampant heat. Jack seemed to dangle from the horse’s side, his eyes focused on the town, or perhaps he was looking directly at me. I remember Mama telling me that the Devil came in many forms, and I secretly wondered if this was one of them.


    For a long while, I couldn’t move, even though I knew the bucket was filled. I could hear the black horse snorting, and I could see the sun-made highlights on its coat turned red in the dust it kicked up. Its eyes were ink black, darting in complete disorder as it tossed its large head, as though telling the man on its back that this place was somehow unsatisfactory. Jack did not heed this and instead persisted forward until I could see every detail of him as well. He wore a black hat like Papa and Sam wore when they helped down at the ranch. His mouth and nose were covered in a dark cloth, and he wore a suit like the coffin making man at the end of the road, with boots as dark and shiny as a pool of ink. When he looked at me, I saw his eyes looked silver like new coins, even in the red light of the afternoon.


    “Girl,” he said to me in a voice that seemed to make the earth tremble. “I need water.”


    I did not hesitate to pull the bucket up from the well, handing it to him atop his horse, though I had to stand on my toes. He pulled down the cloth, showing a beardless face and a thin mouth. As he opened his mouth, I saw all his teeth were straight as pins and some were pointed like dull knives. He drank the water straight from the bucket, the excess dribbling down the front of his suit and onto his saddle. When he finished, he dropped the bucket down to me and I saw it was half-full.


    “For my horse,” he commanded.


    I couldn’t do anything against what he said, so I walked to the front of the horse and held the bucket up to its muzzle. It drank as expected, its inky eyes looking from me to the bucket, and back again. It finished with a short huff of satisfaction, and I hooked the bucket and dropped it into the well again for myself. As I waited, I looked up to Jack wordlessly, wondering who he was and what he wanted.


    He looked at me in turn, as though trying to reach a conclusion on who I was. Finally, he straightened himself on the saddle and gazed ahead at the general store across from the well. “I’m looking for someone,” he said slowly, reaching up and adjusting his hat with three fingers. “And I don’t think they’re here.”


    “Who?” I finally asked, though my voice sounded strained and quiet to my own ears. In comparison to this deep-voiced man, I sounded weak.


    “I have a meeting with the Dark Man,” he responded, idly grabbing the horse’s reigns.


    I said nothing, wondering if he would go on. When he didn’t, I took the chance to pull the bucket back to the surface, curving my arms around it protectively and hoisting it to the level of my chest. I made a move to walk away, but his horse stopped me by walking ahead one step in my way. With a curious look, I glanced to the man on the back of the horse, the question obviously in my eyes.


    “You know Latin, little girl?” he asked.


    “No,” I said.


    He smiled down at me, though it seemed to contort on his face and make him appear more upset than amused or pleased. “I know just a little from when I was a schoolboy. I remember one thing in Latin that never left me. You know what it is?”


    I shook my head.


    “I didn’t think you did,” he continued. “Quia multi sumus.”


    “What does that mean?”


    “I don’t really know,” he said with a grin, reaching up and stroking his horse’s mane with a steady hand. “I just always remembered it. My name is Jack Legion, by the way. I’m meeting with the Dark Man.”


    “You said you were,” I replied, trying hard not to drop the bucket as it was making my arms more tired than they already were. “I don’t know who that is.”


    “Funny, because I don’t know either. I just know I have to meet him on the town on the ridge, above the red desert. He said he would be here, but he seems to have forgotten our engagement.”


    “It is a little warm out. Maybe he decided to stay inside,” I offered.


    “No, not the Dark Man. He would be out here in the hottest or coldest of weather.”


    “I thought you said you didn’t know him.”


    “I don’t.”


    My words seemed to fail me and my arms trembled at the strain from the bucket. Perhaps it was the heat that confused me, but I honestly did not know what to say to Jack Legion. As I tried to take another step, the horse moved forward yet again.


    “Keep an eye out,” Jack Legion said. “Girls like you could fall in love with the Dark Man as easily as it is to put that bucket in the well. Don’t follow him. That’s why I’m here.”


    “To follow him?” I asked.


    “To kill him,” he answered. “He’s done me wrong. Keep an eye out.”


    I looked at Jack Legion again, trying to see what may have hinted to what had been done to him. Other than the funeral suit and his strange horse, there was not much about him that alerted me to anything strange. He was a man on a horse who stopped in a town. There was nothing odd about him, I believed.


    He began to ride slowly into the main road of the town, looking at stores and buildings on either side of the dusty expanse. I heaved the water in the bucket to get a better grip before I began to walk away to my own home.


    “Little girl,” he suddenly called. Of course, I turned. He smiled congenially, glancing at me over his shoulder. “I remember what quia multi sumus means.”


    I looked at him, watching as his horse tossed its head in that disparaging way.


    “We are many,” he called back, tipping his hat to me. Then he rode away into the dusty clouds of our red sand town.



    I may have imagined Jack Legion. He may have been a dream. Perhaps he was just another man to walk into town, looking for another man to fight. Maybe he was going to fight this Dark Man who had wronged him. Though I never told anyone about Jack Legion, I did wonder about him. When I did think about him, my mind would play heated tricks on me, and I mixed his words together, until I heard what must have been pure gibberish.



    “My name is Jack Legion. We are many.”