By Benjamin GroffMedia© | benandsteve.com | 2025 Truth Endures©
Chapter Ten: Stand Still, and the Dust Will Bury You
By dawn, the desert wind carried more than heat. It took silence—the kind that comes before thunder.
- Chester Finch stood on the steps of the half-burned church at the edge of Serenity’s main street. His badge was pinned high and proud. His ribs ached. His coat was torn. But his eyes were sharp, and the ledger in his hands could end a dynasty.
- The Marshal had pulled his moped from hiding and had it juiced up for duty. The Vespa GTS (300cc) moped shone as slick as the day it was new. It had US Marshal emblems on it and had been stowed inside the jail’s secret compartment. A hiding place that Chester designed the night he arrived in town.
Chester looked out over the gathering.
Wren was there, her arm in a sling, a rifle strapped across her back.
Petal stood beside her, bruised but alive, clutching a satchel full of Cain’s secrets.
Julep Jake leaned against the doorframe, sharpening his miniature whittled guillotine.
“A town’s only worth the blood it takes to keep it,”
He said.
“Reckon we’re due.”
Even Buck Harlan was the old stagecoach driver who hadn’t spoken more than ten words in a decade. He stood with a shotgun across his knees.
And behind him came the others—storekeepers, grooms, forgotten women, broken men.
Cain had ruled them. Gallow had hunted them.
But now –– now they remembered their names.
Chester raised his voice.
“I’m no savior. I’m no sheriff. I’m just the last man they sent when no one else would come.”
He held up the badge.
“But I say this badge still means something. Not because it’s brass. Not because the government gave it to me. But because I’m willin’ to bleed for it.”
He threw the ledgers down onto the church steps.
“These are Cain’s sins. Every payment, every name, every blackmail note, every fix. And when this town turns that over to the federal office, I just wired—they’re gonna come. Not with a whisper. With subpoenas and dogs.”
A beat of silence.
Then a single voice called out:
“And Gallow?”
Chester turned.
“He’ll come. Tonight, maybe. It could be sooner. He’ll bring fire.”
He looked to Wren.
“But fire don’t mean nothin’ if you’ve got water and grit.”
Wren nodded once.
“We stand.”
The townsfolk murmured.
Then they shouted.
Then they began to build.
Barricades. Traps. Makeshift outposts from overturned wagons and scrap wood. Petal turned the saloon into a war room. Julep Jake strung piano wire across alleys. Even the bell tower rang for the first time in years, warning off the vultures.
The Last Hour
Cain, watching from The Assembly, saw the town rise against him and knew he’d lost the crown.
He poured a final drink, set it aside, and vanished through a trapdoor in the fireplace, bound for nowhere.
The Arrival
Gallow came at sunset, just as expected.
He walked straight down the main street—unarmed, unhurried—like he owned time.
But this time, time fought back.
The first tripwire knocked him off balance. A spotlight lit him up. A warning shot clipped his boot.
He crouched, ready to vanish into shadow—until he saw Chester.
Standing in the street. Moped beside him. Rifle in hand.
“You’re outgunned,”
Gallow called.
“Nope,”
Chester said.
“I’m out-cowed.”
The townsfolk emerged—on roofs, behind crates, on balconies.
Gallow took a step. Then another.
Chester held firm.
And Wren, from the bell tower, raised her rifle.
The shot rang out.
Gallow stumbled. Not dead. Just marked.
He turned—bleeding, seething—and ran.
He vanished into the dust from which he’d come.
And the town never saw him again.
Epilogue: A New Kind of Quiet
Serenity changed.
The ledgers made it to Washington. Petal was deputized. Wren chose to stay and built the first real school the town had seen in thirty years. Julep Jake finally finished his guillotine and gave it to a museum in Tulsa.
As for Chester Finch?
He stayed, too.
He never left Serenity.
Not because he had to.
But sometimes, the worst places can create the most profound kind of peace.
Even if you get there on a moped.
The Town Called Serenity
A hero did not save it.
It was saved by the last man willing to stay when everyone else ran.
So the moped was hidden away in the jail’s secret spot—one no one else even knew existed. Good thing Chester made it out alive, or that Vespa would’ve turned into a time capsule! More importantly, this story is a great reminder: the bad guys never truly win.
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