48 Hours a Day

On the meadow, the old cowboy, Zhang Heng and the brothers Wendy and Deputy Sheriff were sitting around the campfire floor.

On both sides are the miners and farmers of the town of Bliss, who, despite their decision to act together, are clearly divided, have no communication whatsoever, do their own things, and look to each other with hatred.

The face of the old cowboy swept past the color of anxiety.

“Why?” asked Zhang Heng.

“We are still a little understaffed and inexperienced in combat, and there are internal contradictions, and I'm afraid we will be a little felonious against the Cooks in this state. ”

Zhang Heng did not answer the old cowboy's question, but instead asked, "Do you know much about Cook? ”

“No, the vast majority of us still had the impression of him when we lived in town. He was a seemingly easy-going man, like his wife and daughter, a devout Puritan family. We were all the first people to come to town, in a caravan, and I was six years old, and it's probably hard for people to imagine the difficulties and obstacles we encounter along the way, the bandits, the Indians, the undesirable guys, we've been through a lot of hard wars. Cook was the best shot we've ever had, and you can hardly imagine a man like him fighting so fiercely.

“He was the most brilliant of us, the natural leader, the shooter, and he cared about everyone, and we couldn't reach the settlement without him, and when the town was just built, we decided unanimously to choose him as sheriff, but he refused, and he was the one who put his family first, and he wanted to spend the rest of his time with his wife after he opened his ranch, so we chose Old Thompson as sheriff.

“He is also a respectable good man, but unfortunately he has not sat in this position for more than a year. He went to help the town's widows to collect their debts, was ambushed by debtors and two of his brothers, and they shot him. One of them was later arrested and hanged in the next town, and two remain unaccounted for. Some say they fled to Japan, others say they met a bandit and were killed, others say they changed their name and joined the army, in short, they cannot be found.

“Then Maurice, who worked for four years, was shot blindly in the eye when he engaged a group of bandits who had traveled to town, but miraculously survived, but two years later he retreated from his position as a sheriff. And then there was Little Thompson, the son of old Thompson... during which Cook had two children, the first being a boy, who unfortunately didn't make it, and then there was a girl, Mary, whom I think the Cooks gave their love for the first child to this daughter.

“Cook had wanted a third child, but eventually her wife died of childbirth difficulties, neither adults nor children were able to sustain her, and Cook was depressed for a while, but it was good that he and his daughter, Mary, let him succeed in coming out of the shadows and embracing life again, and then Matthew appeared, Matthew's father was an Apache Indian, his mother was an English immigrant, and his birth was an accident because of his Indian descent and the people in town didn't like him.

“I had a fight with him when he first got here, and I was just a young man, and I couldn't tell the difference between right and wrong. I beat him up just because I didn't see him well, but I didn't think we'd become friends after this one. Matthew said he came to town to find a job, but I was just a poor kid at the time, so I recommended him to Cook, because I knew if there was someone else in town who would take him in, it would be Cook.

“If not, Matthew, though he could have done nothing at the time, but he was quick and learned, and it seemed that Cook loved him, not only to teach him to ride horse shooting, but also to leave him to eat at home from time to time and to think of him as his own son. The vast majority of the world is a fool with no eyeballs, and only a handful of people can see through a person's gender, race, appearance, the flash point deep inside him, and Cook has the ability to do so.

“As you all know what happened after that, I won't say more. Cook married Mary, and then that unfortunate thing happened, until now, I don't know if what we did that night was right or wrong.” The old cowboy broke down, "but then I thought," I don't think it was an accident that things went out of hand that night, when the vast majority of us decided to avenge Mary, but with Cook's cleverness and intensity, he couldn't possibly be unaware of the situation we faced after he killed Ruben's people, so he should have decided from the beginning to kill everyone in town.

“He was probably full of disappointment in the people in town at the time, and given all the things he had done for the town, the people in town should have supported him, but when Mary was killed, few people stood beside him, which made him feel betrayed.

“I heard later, after the breakup of the three of us, he was supposed to have gone to the East Coast alone, killed the director of Pacific Union Railroad, and then he came back to create the Cook Gang, which has been the strongest and most frightening gang in the West for over a decade, robbing trains, looting towns, and even firing head-on with the arriving Rangers, and of course, there were times when they lost a lot of money, even when some thought they had disappeared, but soon they would come out again, and become even more ferocious and powerful.

“With the exception of the larger towns, towns like Glenn live in fear of the Cooks.” The old cowboy looked into Zhang Heng's eyes, "I told you about these past events, to let you know the terrible things about Cook. Once someone like him decides to be evil, he can definitely do more damage than the average bandit. I don't know what happened to him after the three of us split up and eventually pushed him to take this step, but we have to stop him.

“If at first he was just obsessed with revenge, then everything he did after that was long out of the realm of revenge, and his hands were stained with the blood of innocent people, not just big people, but ordinary civilians, because he did not know how many children had lost their fathers, how many wives had lost their husbands, and even the whole family had been slaughtered by him, and what had happened in Bliss was not by chance, and I did not know how many crazy things he would have done had he been allowed to go on like this.” The old cowboy was so thick.