Ascensorian Justice

From The Lawman Days of General Leonard Ford Godred...

It would be a miracle if the gray-furred Cantrell Rand walked after his first encounter with the Ascensores. The thief writhed against the vice grip of a wartime Fleetline and a crumbling wall, desperate to flee, but failing to do so. Staring him down from the vintage sedan’s wheel was the judge, jury, and executioner of this open-air proceeding.

He was a tall, lean black wolf, the spitting image of a Western lawman with the Winchester to match. He wore a cream-colored cowboy hat, a black button-up, midnight-blue jeans, and suede boots. Hopping onto the car’s scorching hood, the darksome hound sat down, laid his rifle across his thighs and shoved his left foot into the gray’s gut. 

“Name’s Leonard Godred, son.” The drawl of his ebony baritone bordered on soothing. “Fess up to them thefts, and you might just live to see another day, give or take the year we’s ready to beat out ya.”