The Walking Fella in Hell: Heretical Murmurings

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,

The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes

Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,

He meandered past my window in that devilish fog, chanting quietly to himself in some heathen tongue. Doctor Henniway told me all about the walking fellow and his murderous ways. Shameful that in a civilized society men should still be killing men over trifles. And now Sheriff Hedge had gone mad and shot the little Vandeusen boy. Such a terrible shame. All this violence. Most certainly caused by the walking fellow. He had brought trouble with him to this little town—though we have long deserved chastisement for our sinful name. Blasphemy and pride! It has called down ruin upon us! 

The Walking Fella in Hell: Whiskey Exorcism

In a world so unforgiving

You mean more to me each every day

So may the living be dead in our wake

He sat at my bar, down at the end, as far from daylight as possible. What the hell was he—Festus got it started calling him the walking fella—doing in my bar? Besides paying too much for rotgut whiskey and pouring it over his head, that is. Occasionally he drank some. But most of it went into the sawdust by his feet. A big damp pile of sawdust.

The Walking Fella in Hell: Ishtar and Judas

I will smash the door-posts, I will force the doors.

I will bring up the dead to eat the living.

And the dead will outnumber the living.

I reckon he’d been hauling that saddle for days when he found Hell. In the sweltering Sunday heat he stunk like the grave. An’ his white duster was stained with enough dirt and blood to make him look like the dead risen again. Mebbe he was. The unliving walking through Hell.