Challenge at Crown Valley

SYNOPSIS
by Deborha Alemanni

This story takes place in Crown Valley, a lonely and dusty village in the arid lands of New Mexico. It’s the last decade of the 19th Century, a time of development, frenzy, willingness to do things and move around,  of railways that run through the lands of the United States like unrelenting monsters of modernity. These are the years in which Caleb Kingsley, a fifty years old former sheriff and much more former horse thief, grows old and wanders around the depopulated streets of Crown Valley, with his heart deep in the past memories and his mind focused on revenge against an enemy as last living act.

Caleb has one only true friend, Old Bessie, also known as Elisabeth Steelman, a former prostitute that owns a deserted Saloon, in a deserted city, where only two women are left working, the German native Martha and the Spanish Isabèl. Bessie would like to leave the town, but she feels the need to stay close to Caleb, the only man she really has admiration for, so she decides to stay in the city against her wishes and wait with him for his enemy to come back.

So, as the sunny days slowly pass by, they remember the most poignant days of their lives.

They meet for the first time in 1871 in Abilene, when they both are young and full of hope. Bessie is a prostitute admired by many men and wants to move to Newton searching for fortune, and Caleb is the deputy of the reckless, hair trigger tempered Sheriff Wild Bill Hickok.

One year later Bessie has fulfilled her little project: she’s  in Newton, working in a Saloon, and in a romantic relationship with the Texan herdsman Frank Larsen.

Three years later Bessie and Caleb meet again in Crown Valley, where they both live. Bessie runs the city Saloon with her man, but their  love story is not so loving, as Frank is often out of town working ,or stealing horses’ herds with his brother Clint and their henchman Chico Alvarez, and when he’s in town he disrespectfully claims a big part of the saloon and girls’ collection.

That’s one of the many reasons for Bessie to tell Caleb that she should be with him, that they would be happy together. But Caleb dismisses her, because he’s happy already; he’s in a happy relationship with Juliet, and he’s got a great job. His life is perfect:  he tenaciously hunts criminals across the county, even  miles away in the desert, and he’s respected by the people.

However, there’s always a darker side of Caleb lurking. It shows up when he decides to come to terms with a murderer and rapist of his own daughters and even on a more personal level, because he loses Juliet over his fear of taking responsibilities. So his incertitude drives Juliet to another man that gives her what Caleb can’t, or won’t: a family, children, an ordinary life.

Caleb’s life, at this point, takes a turn for the worse. Desperate after Juliet leaving, he starts drinking and neglecting work. When he finally gets to arrest Frank Larsen and his company for their crimes, he’ too drunk to do it properly, so he gets beaten by the men and miraculously saved by Bessie, who shoots to her own fiancée to protect Caleb, giving him a proof of how much she cares for him.

Frank is sentenced to seven years in prison, while Caleb loses the people’s respect and, above all, is own dignity. He becomes the shadow of the man he used to be, and he jumps from bed to bed to fill a void that only revenge can fulfill. From that day, in fact, the sole purpose of his life is waiting for Frank to come back, because he knows Frank will seek his revenge too.

All Caleb has lived for went lost in a moment, and when Frank and his gang  come back to town, as he predicted, all is resolved in a hasty, violent shooting. Bessie, once again, puts aside her own safety and proves to be Caleb’s most loyal friend, the one he owes his life to.

The tragic ending is widely expected, because of Caleb and Bessie choices, strength and tenacity. All their mistakes, hopes, memories and stances condemn them to death, which is physical for one and spiritual for the other. But, as the Phoenix does, one can reborn from the ashes of a past life, as a different future is still possible, if one looks straight at the horizon.