Winter Don't Soften Much

by Sam McMahon

Chapter 1

The winter was grim on the valley’s low rim, and the wind was a howling gale,
When a stranger stepped in from the storm and the spin, looking frozen and ghostly pale.
He walked through the glare of a flickering flare just to fly from the freezing rain,
And the boys at the bar didn’t know from afar he was a drifter named young Henry Lane.

But the room became still with a beautiful thrill as a melody sweet and pure,
Broke the dark of his grief like a sudden relief or a sickness that found its cure.
A woman was there with a crow in her hair, and a softness that broke his chain.
She was singing of love like a light from above to the heart of young Henry Lane.

He stepped to her side with a feeling of pride and he asked for a gentle turn,
And she stepped to the floor from the stage she adored, making all of his winter burn.
They drifted away like the dawning of day, and the blizzard was spent in vain,
For the warmth of her breath was a triumph o’er death to the spirit of young Henry Lane.

But a shadow stepped out with a menacing shout from the back of the liquor-stained room;
It was Cold-Eyed Flint with a murderous glint, and a face like a cast of impending doom.
He leveled his gun ere the dancing was done, and he blasted a hole through his brain,
With a flash and a roar on the sawdust-strewn floor, he laid low the body of young Henry Lane.

They dragged his downed head where the pine trees were dead, in the howling and merciless storm,
And left him to lie underneath the black sky, where the blood was still running and warm.
When the springtime returns and the valley-side burns, and the sun thaws the snow on the plain,
The coyotes will tear through the flesh that is bare, til’ there’s nothing left of young Henry Lane.