Outlaw Man

"The chaser and the chased! It's a lonely fight in the wilderness!!"

Outlaw Man (アウトロー・マン) is a Japanese shonen manga one-shot written and illustrated by Hirohiko Araki. It was included in a January 10, 1982 special issue of Weekly Shonen Jump.

The bunkoban, aizoban, and digital editions of The Gorgeous Irene feature Outlaw Man as their final chapter. As the original manuscript was lost, the one-shot had to be digitally scanned from the issue it originally appeared in.

Summary
Set in America during the pioneering era, an outlaw is pursued by the after he is given a bounty. He rides through the desert, his right hand injured from a previous encounter with the agency. A bird is seen catching a snake in its claws. He finds a man hanging from a tree, but realizes that the man was faking his death to ambush him. The outlaw man shoots his enemy down from the tree before he can kill him with his hidden revolver. The hanged man, known only as Gap-toothed Boy, is punished by the detective agency; when Toothless is spit upon, he pulls out his gun once more only to be stabbed under the pretense of self-defense.

Although the outlaw manages to escape without leaving any footprints on the ground and travels through the river to not leave any scent behind, the detective agency manages to find traces of his escape and continues to chase after him. The man's beloved horse, Cameron, is eventually shot by the detectives, forcing the outlaw to put the horse out of his misery and flee. Just as he seems to be cornered, the outlaw tricks his pursuers by making them think a rabbit in a bush was him. The outlaw shoots the rocks behind the ones the detectives are hiding behind, ricocheting the bullets and hitting all of his enemies. As the outlaw walks away, further injured from the battle, the bird from earlier hovers over him with the snake still in its claws.