Damned Charlie

souti · January 7

Chauncey Skipp was always the type of young boy who never wanted to accept anyone's guiding hand; pride and a latent problem with authority - wherever it came from - got in the way. Coming from lands not yet integrated into the United States, growing up for him was hard. Disputes, lawlessness and the constant challenge to his parents' property from outside forces led him down the path of the gun. It's not what he wanted, it's what life required of him.

Charming in a way, but not quite. Certainly proud, but youth did not bring him exalted impulsiveness; rather, discernment. More than some of his peers. Discernment that would be used for not so noble ends in the future. He never runs out of words to say, but it's debatable whether it's for bad or for good. Sometimes it works well, and sometimes poorly. Not out of the ordinary, just a young man.

Poverty and lack of a good quality of life would push any young man into a life of crime, and Chauncey was no exception - when pushed to his limit, the best decision his young head could make was to grab a gun and cover his face to set up an ambush. The feeling of success, of accomplishing something in an otherwise miserable life, of proving to himself that he wasn't destined to be born and die in the same hole made the gears in Chauncey's head move - he was no longer a boy, he was a man. Money, it's always money. Happiness is bought, it is never attained any other way. No one could convince him otherwise. The coin had already been flipped and the die had been cast.

By 1884, Chauncey enlisted with the Union Stock and Brand Regulators for the same reason he started living by the gun - money. Slowly, the brutality of the New Austin territory transformed the nineteen-year-old Chauncey - who had killed no one in his short years of life - into someone no longer afraid to pull the trigger. Scruples were lost if there were any, and what little innocence he had left as well. They were no longer stories told by someone else when he was a child, they were the reality in front of his eyes.

When the U.S. Marshals came for Eli Hood, a man young Skipp respected and feared, there were doubts in his mind that made him run and even ride his horse in a vain attempt to escape, but when the bullets began to drown the silence in the town of Armadillo the decision in the young ruffian's mind was clear. Eli had sworn he would do the same for them if the situation were reversed, Hood told this to his best friend Tate before he was sent to Sisika for life, and in such a way all the young murderers and thieves Eli had taken under his mantle like stray dogs did not hesitate to defend him in a slaughter, never mind that Eli died in it. Loyalty always came first, and the conventions and laws of men are no impediment to living by what they believed to be their principles.

And so, Chauncey Skipp is the most wanted in the New Austin territory and the young leader of a gang of ruthless savages who overcome his own brutality and propensity for violence. A curse that will haunt him until he meets the end he so desires.