When he raised his head the fires of the village still burned in the distance, but lower now, the steeple of the church lit by the flames. It would never be the same now, it could not be. He stared across the river at the body of one of the beasts, cold and dead, stripped of all its terror. Men were gathering wood to make a pyre and burn it. Between him and it the river flowed on, silent and relentless, as it had done since before there was a village or a road here. Of the pilgrim there was no sign.
Iron Achilles Heel
Jennifer Brozak
“You ready?” Eric asked as he glanced from the sounds of gunshots and screams towards the spirit on his right and back again.
“I’m always ready to do God’s Will,” Joseph said. He looked through the bank office window and nodded.
Eric did not have to look again to know that Joseph had disappeared from his side. He could already feel the avenging spirit taking control of his body and let it happen. He knew all he had to do now was watch, listen and learn. If necessary, warn Joseph of something the spirit had not already seen.
Like an experienced thief, Joseph slid the boot knife blade up between the window panes and flipped the latch. He swung the windows open and pulled himself into the bank’s back office. There, he crouched behind the desk, waiting to see if any of the bank robbers had noticed him. Considering they were in the front with the terrified bank patrons and there was no backdoor, Eric wasn’t surprised none of them expected an attack from behind.
Joseph and Eric had tracked this band of robbers for the last hundred miles or so through towns too small to be remembered on any map. Once they got the gist of where the robbers were headed, Palmer, Arizona and the site of the most profitable of the small towns in the area, they had hurried on ahead with the intention of stopping the robbers before they made their mark there, too. However, only a day off the trail and just long enough to get the lay of the land, the gang had ridden into town and struck again.
But this time, there would be an accounting for their crimes.
“Please, mister, you have the money. Please, just go!”
“Never tell me what to do!”
The crash of the gunshot was followed by a surprised gasp of pain that faded into a weak whimper.
“Dammit all, they’re shooting people.”
“Not for long,” Joseph murmured as he stood and moved to the office doorway, no longer hiding himself. In front of him was the teller’s countertop. Beyond that, a score of frightened folk and the four bank robbers he was set to stop and bring back—alive or dead. Joseph’s first shot took the bank robber at the end of the counter between the eyes. His second shot swung wide as one of the robbers, the one closest to the front door reacted, shooting Eric’s body in the chest.
“Move it, Daniel!” that robber ordered.
Daniel, the original target of Joseph’s second bullet and the robber who had just murdered the bank manager, cursed, shot wildly in Joseph’s direction and ran towards the door. Joseph leveled his gun but stopped as Daniel grabbed the nearest woman and used her as a shield. Both men backed out it, Daniel still holding the crying woman hostage.
The fourth bank robber, to the left of door, the one who had seen Joseph shot but not react, stared as Joseph used his left hand to pluck the bullet from his chest and his right to aim and fire. The fourth robber gurgled as he dropped his gun and clutched at his throat to staunch the blood that spurted forth. He went to his knees, still staring at Joseph, before toppling over.
Eric knew the bullet to the chest had to have hurt but Joseph was a master at ignoring pain. When you could heal all wounds within a matter of moments, all you had to do was wait it out. And all Eric had to do was mend yet another bullet hole in his shirt. Fortunately, his body rarely bled while Joseph spirit-rode him.
Joseph headed towards the front door but stopped as one of the womenfolk, a girl from the General Store, frantically shook her head, “No!”
“What is it?”
She drew back from him as if understanding that Eric wasn’t exactly himself. “Those two are the Marlin boys. They wait and shoot anyone who comes after them.”
Joseph nodded, curt and polite. “Thank you, ma’am.” He turned from her, walking towards the back of the bank, stepped over the first robber he shot and returned to the bank manager’s office. He slid himself out of the window and crouched down, listening. There was a cry of a woman, not a mortal cry, but one of distress and outrage, followed by the sound of men’s rude laughter and the pounding of two horses pushed into a gallop.
“Looks like it’s chase then.”
“Better for the townsfolk. Less likely to get killed.”
Eric, suddenly in charge of his body again, knew what was expected. He whistled for his horse. In all the time he and Joseph had been together, the spirit still had not learned to whistle.
*
Eric never thought he would get used to being a passenger in his own body, watching the gunfight with a sleepy eye, like a man who has seen the same vaudeville act one too many times. But here he was; nothing more than a human vessel for the Lion of God, Sheriff Joseph Lamb, doing his sworn duty to smite sinners and bring justice back to this wild land. It was the pain that broke him out of his complacency; pain in his hand and pain in his neck. Something he had never felt before while being spirit-ridden by Lamb.
Then he was falling.
As he hit the dirt, the pain in his hand and neck was replaced with the jarring sensation of his teeth clacking together and the scrape of rocks against his cheek. The sounds of his horse galloping toward parts unknown covered the other man’s groans until Eric rolled over and saw Joseph lying in the dirt, blood streaming between fingers clamped to the man’s throat.
“Joseph! Holy God! What happened?”
“My gun,” Joseph croaked. “What happened to the gun?”
The gun in question was a Colt 1851 Navy revolver with a series of intricate flame engravings on the barrel and a well worn handle. It was the Sheriff’s weapon. Decades ago, it was used to murder him. Eric saw it lying in the scrub a few feet from where he landed. He limped over to it, picked it up and saw the deep notch in the barrel of the pistol where the bank robber’s bullet must have hit it. One in a million shot.
Eric turned back to Joseph as he held up the pistol. “It’s here. A bullet hit it.” He rubbed a finger in the bullet groove and Joseph gasped in pain. Eric frowned and touched the bullet groove again and saw Joseph wince at the same time. “You didn’t tell me you could get hurt,” he said as he walked over to where Joseph was.
“Didn’t know it until now.” Joseph struggled into a seated position.
“Huh. The almighty Lion of God is not invulnerable after all.”
The spirit looked up at his companion with a wry expression, “Appears not.”
Eric hunkered down next to Joseph and stuck an experimental hand through Joseph’s incorporeal arm. “That hurt?”
“No.”
He touched the bullet groove on the pistol and did not have to repeat his question. Joseph winced in pain. “Well, hell and damnation, Lamb. How am I supposed to get you fixed? Your body isn’t of this earth and any touch to the gun makes you weep like a child.”
Lamb shrugged a little. “I don’t know. Never been hurt like this before. But the bleeding’s stopped. I think I’ll live. It’ll just take time to heal. A lot of time. More time than we have. We’ve got a job to finish.”
Eric holstered the revolver and stood. “Not like this we don’t.” He turned in the direction the bank robbers went. West, towards the setting sun and the Mexico border or maybe a slight turn north and they’d be in California in the same amount of time. Either way, the Marlin boys were home free. “You’re too hurt.”
“You’re right. We can’t do anything. You need to finish the job.”
“Like hell.” Eric turned on Joseph, only to find him gone. The next words Joseph spoke were from inside his head.
“If you let these men go because of yo
ur yellow streak, it’ll be one more step on your road to damnation. We made a promise. The words you spoke were your own. I did not force you.”
“Damn you, Lamb.”
“Not likely. We don’t have much time. I’ll be with you the whole way. You aren’t helpless. You’re not some mewling child. Now call your horse back. There’s work to be done.”
Eric resisted the urge to pull leather and bash that Colt revolver with a rock until it, and the spirit of Sheriff Joseph Lamb, were no more. Instead, he took a breath and whistled for his horse, Dusty; he used the whistle that promised the gelding a treat even though it was a lie.
*
As the fire red coal of the sun touched the horizon, Dusty picked his way through the darkening desert landscape. Eric kept an eye out for leg-breaking holes. He also scanned the line where the fading light met the blackness of earth, looking for sign or silhouette of his quarry. All the while, he tried not to think of just how frightened he was of facing the Marlin boys alone.
No, not really alone. He had not been alone since that day in the church a year ago. There, in that haunted place, he had sought refuge from outlaws, found the gun, and with it, the spirit of the murdered Sheriff. He agreed, fearful and shaking, to do the Lord’s work at the threat of his immortal soul, rather than die at that moment with his place in heaven assured. He wondered, and not for the first or last time, if he had made the right choice.
“You’ll need to dismount soon and go on foot.”
No. Never alone. “You want me to keep going in the dark?”
“I’ll help you to see as best I can. With all the ground we lost, this is our best chance to catch them before they cross the border.”
“How you feeling?”
Joseph came forward just enough for Eric to feel the aching throb in his right hand and the searing pain in his throat; a pain so great he had to muffle a groan and tears stood in his eyes.
“I’ve felt worse.”
“Really?”
“Honestly, no. This is bad but I don’t think I’m gonna die…again. I think the Lord still has work for me to do.”
Eric dismounted and tied his horse up in a loose hitch. If he died, he wanted Dusty to have a chance without him. He took a breath and continued following the trail on foot. There was nothing left to do now but go forward.
It wasn’t long before he and Lamb spotted the faint glow of a campfire in the distance. It was low and unobtrusive in the gloom. Just enough coals to warm some food and keep the night from getting too cold. It was also the last mistake the Marlin boys would make, Eric thought. After the shooting they did this afternoon, he was going to shoot first and demand surrender second.
“Ill thoughts from a man doing good works.”
Eric wanted to curse Lamb for his eavesdropping. “You said it first, ‘sometimes a man has to do bad in the name of good.’ These men are stone cold killers and think I’m already dead. I’m not going to give them another chance to actually put me in the ground.”
“Watch that hole.”
He looked down and saw he was moments from plunging his foot into a leg-breaker that would have stopped this foolish quest as well as his life. Eric stepped over it, balancing with one hand against a stone still warm from the heat of the day. He kept close to the rocks and the scrub to keep his own silhouette from announcing his presence.
“In any case,” Eric said, “there’s two of them and one of me.”
“You get the drop on them and they might surrender.”
“Or they might blow my fool head off.”
“You never know, but we’re about to find out.”
Eric halted his careful steps through the darkness and unfamiliar land to look up. Before him was a small hill—a mound, really—with the silhouette of a man propped up against a rock at its apex. The glow from the dying campfire gave the man scant details: Stetson pulled low, a bushy beard and both hands limp upon his chest.
Remembering to pull his ordinary pistol from his left holster, Eric moved with swift, silent motions. Revolver now in his right hand, Eric acted on instinct. He took cover behind a rocky outcrop, cocked his gun and aimed at his target. However, instead of shooting first, he yelled, “Hands up! I’ve got you covered! Hands up or I shoot.”
The Marlin boy—the older one, Jebadiah, Eric thought—did not move. For a moment, he wondered if the man was asleep and where the other one, Daniel, was. Then Jeb twitched. Instead of reaching for the stars, the man’s right hand came down towards his thigh.
Eric fired twice. Both chest shots hit and Jeb fell over.
His heart pounding, Eric waited to hear what he would hear as the echoes of his shots died away—the scrabbling of Daniel fleeing, the crunch of rock underfoot, the yell of an angry, grieving brother or the clack of a pistol being cocked.
Nothing.
The seconds ticked by.
“I think you need to come up here and see this.”
The voice was Joseph’s and Eric could see him now standing above the still form of Jebadiah. Eric hesitated, looking around, flash burned eyes still seeking the other Marlin boy.
Joseph nodded with approval, “You’re learning. It’s clear. I wouldn’t lead you into danger.”
“What do you think you’ve been doing for the last year?” Eric scoffed as he put his normal pistol back in its holster and clambered up the mound to the makeshift camp. Immediately, he saw what Joseph wanted him to see: Jeb’s throat had been cut, and deep. The wound had been hidden by his beard. Now, the almost dried blood glistened black in the light of the coals.
“Congratulations. You just shot a dead man and let his murderer know we’re on his trail.”
“Daniel did this?” Eric’s eyes traced the outline of the gash in dead man’s neck before looking at Joseph. He saw that Joseph had tied a kerchief around his throat and, while the blood was staunched, he saw the blood on the cloth and Lamb’s neck was also black in the light of the firelight. Once again, he wondered at how a spirit could bleed. “Why?”
“‘For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. And some people, craving money, have wandered from the true faith and pierced themselves with many sorrows,’” Joseph quoted. “In short, he got greedy. Money does funny things to a man. Guess he decided he wanted the bankroll for himself. From the looks of it, he planned it that way. Snuck up on Jeb here and cut his throat while the man slept. Then he ran.” Joseph pointed towards the place where the last shades of red met black.
“And now he knows someone’s coming for him.”
“Yep.”
Eric gave the camp a brief look over, saw that everything worth taking was gone and nodded. “Then we’d best go get him.”
*
They did not immediately chase down Daniel as Eric wanted. Joseph pointed out that it would be best to wait until moonrise as it was a clear night and the moon would give them better light to follow the trail. Instead, they argued about Jebadiah’s ring.
With time to kill, Eric inspected what was left of the Marlin camp. Daniel had done a good job of ransacking it. There was nothing useful left. Then he saw a glimmer of light from Jeb’s left hand. Upon removal and some squinting in the scant starlight, Eric discovered that it was a wedding ring.
“Huh. I didn’t know he was married.” He turned the ring over and around before reading, “With Love, Anne.”
“Even outlaws find love,” Joseph said. “You know you can use that as proof of your kill.”
“My kill?”
“There’s still a bounty on Jebadiah’s head—dead or alive. That ring you just pocketed proves you deserve it.”
Eric scowled, “No, it doesn’t. I didn’t have anything to do with Jeb’s death. I’m not a murderer.”
“Ah, but you are.”
“No.” He shook his head, “You spirit-ride me. You do the killing.”
“While you get the reward and accolades?”
Eric swung his head from side to side. He wasn’t hearing Joseph’s voice i
n his head. That meant the Sheriff was around but, for some reason the spirit stayed hidden. He wanted to face his accuser, but suppressed his growing anger at the man’s accusations. “That’s not why I do this.”
“Then why’d you take the ring?”
Eric’s voice was quiet. “Even an outlaw’s wife deserves to know her husband’s dead and who really killed him.”
Joseph did not respond. He remained quiet until they were well on their way to finding Daniel Marlin.
*
Once the moon rose and turned the desert landscape into a myriad of dark and light silver tinted shadows, it was easy enough to follow the double horse track trail to the darkened camp recently fled by Daniel. Finding nothing but an abandoned pot of water over smothered coals, Eric and Joseph continued on. But this time, the double horse track was rushed and spoke of panic. Eric did not like it. A panicked man did risky things…like push a horse through a desert full of leg-breakers after dark.
“There is something up ahead.”
Joseph was back within Eric and he could feel the Sheriff’s lingering pain on the edges of his senses. He pushed it away and concentrated on the moving thing in his path. His heart sank as he got closer. It was a downed horse. A live one, in pain.
With his pistol drawn, he approached, looking all around. The horse groaned loud when it saw Eric. Its eyes begged him to stop the pain. To help it, somehow. There was a touch of a squeal in its next, more urgent groan and Eric could see the front foreleg was broken. “That bastard left you to suffer.”
“No. I think he left her here as a way to tell how close you were getting.”
Joseph was right; Eric knew it and did not need to question his mentor’s comment. The choice was to either immediately end the horse’s suffering with a bullet in the brain or to cause more pain and a slower death with a cut throat.
“What will you do?”
“I don’t know. What would you do?”
“This is your hunt. Your choice.” Joseph paused and added, “Choose with your heart.”
The New Hero Volume 2 Page 12
