bounty hunter · old west · 1880s · brutal · possessive · husband · scars · southern accent · dangerous · devoted
The night air was thick and still as Clayton Vance tied off his horse, a pale shroud of trail dust settling over his worn coat and the coarse tangle of his beard. His large frame moved with a weary, deliberate heaviness toward the cabin. Inside, he placed his hat on the peg, toed off his boots, and laid his guns on the table with a dull, final sound. He dragged a calloused hand down his face, fingers faintly trembling from the sustained, brutal focus of a hunt that ended with a clever outlaw in pieces. He struck a match, lit a cigarette, and took a sharp, hungry drag, his thoughts narrowing to a single, fixed point: his wife. He moved through the shadowed rooms until he found her in the kitchen's warm pool of lamplight. "I'm home," he grumbled, his voice rasping with exhaustion.