Wildfire

by J. R. Roberts

  “Where do we go from here?” Bower asked. “Did either of you hear what the killer intended to do next?”

  “I don’t think we need too many guesses to figure it out,” Mark replied.

  Clint set down his water and stood up from his chair. “He’s right. And since it’ll be dark before too much longer, we should get out and start walking the streets.”

  “Where are we going?” Bower asked.

  “I intend on covering as much ground as we can and making as much noise as possible along the way.”

  Bower and Mark both looked confused.

  Seeing their expressions, Clint led the way out of the saloon so the other two would follow him. “The time for sneaking around is over,” he told the two Rangers. “That killer knows he’s being tracked, and he’s not worried about it. What we need to do is take the wind from his sails and show him we won’t be deterred so easily.”

  “How do you intend on doing that?” Mark asked.

  “By walking the streets. By being seen and heard. That’s how.”

  “And you think he’ll be watching?”

  “He didn’t get this far not being caught without keeping an eye out for the likes of us. Once he sees us out and about as if none of his punches landed, he’ll come out from wherever he’s at to finish what he started.”

  All three of them were standing on the boardwalk outside of the saloon. Clint stretched his arms and started walking just as he’d said he would. Bower and Mark walked alongside him, but they didn’t seem too eager to be there.

  The Rangers followed Clint down the street. They shot anxious glances at each other and then shot some impatient glances at Clint. When they reached a corner and saw Clint come to a stop, Mark and Bower seemed ready to jump out of their skins.

  That condition worsened once Clint found a spot next to a post at the corner, leaned back and crossed his arms.

  “What’s the meaning of this, Adams?” Bower snapped.

  “That’s the way,” Clint replied. “Nice and loud. Just like that.”

  “To hell with that! You’ll answer my question!”

  “Weren’t you listening before?” Clint asked. “We’re going to draw him out before he gets a chance to do what he’s intending on doing.”

  “And what’s that?”

  Clint scowled at Bower before saying, “If I need to tell you that, then you really haven’t been paying attention.”

  “I know he starts fires. I know he kills. God damn it, Adams, we’ve been chasing this bastard a hell of a lot longer than you!”

  Mark stepped in between them before Bower made one wrong move too many. “I think we all know what we’re dealing with, Clint. It’s just that this asshole tends to set his fires out away from a town, so even though seeing us may draw him out, he may not be anywhere near this spot.”

  “Oh, he’s near this spot,” Clint said.

  “Oh, is he? Did he mention where he was going to be when he was pounding your face in? Because he didn’t say a word about it when he was kicking in mine.”

  Clint turned to look at Mark, but he wasn’t upset with the young lawman. In fact, Mark was the only one around who could have gotten away with saying that to him at that moment.

  “He’s right around here,” Clint stated confidently. “And he’s probably close enough to have seen or heard us by now. You want to know how I know?”

  “Yes,” Bower replied. “Just spit it out.”

  “You sure you don’t know already?”

  Mark pulled in a deep breath to calm his nerves. Suddenly, his eyes snapped open and he reached out to slap a hand on Bower’s shoulder. All the while, Mark kept pulling in one quick breath after another.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Bower asked.

  “Take a breath.”

  “I don’t need to take a breath. I’m just fine with—”

  Cutting Bower off by gripping his shoulder even tighter, Mark repeated himself through gritted teeth. “Take a breath.”

  Bower took a breath. It didn’t take long before his expression changed and he looked across the street.

  Mark was also looking across the street as his hand drifted to the gun hanging at his side. Neither of the Texas Rangers was speaking. They were too busy pulling air in through their noses.

  “I believe we’re all on the same page now, gentlemen,” Clint proclaimed.

  “That smell,” Mark whispered. “Is it . . . ?”

  “Yep,” Clint said. “It sure is. Kerosene.”

  TWENTY-NINE

  Now that they were standing still and facing the right direction, they could all smell the odor of kerosene drifting through the air. Once the wind shifted direction, Clint could hardly take a full breath without feeling his head start to swim.

  “When did you find this?” Bower asked.

  “On our way to that saloon,” Clint replied.

  “And how is it that none of these people can smell it?”

  Clint looked up and down the street at the people Bower was referring to. Although some of them cast a glance or two at the buildings, most of them wound up shifting their eyes to one of the few lamps on the side of the street. “They do,” he said. “They just don’t know what to make of it.”

  “Forget about them,” Mark said. “How is it that we missed this before? I must have walked straight past this building at least twice earlier today.”

  “That kerosene wasn’t out here before,” Clint said more as a way of thinking out loud. “It couldn’t have been.”

  Bower nodded and cocked his head slightly to one side. “You’re right. Someone would have noticed it or even sparked it long ago if there’d been that much kerosene around. As a matter of fact, I think I see where it’s at.”

  “Good,” Clint replied with a sudden sense of urgency. “Because if we know how far along it’s spread, we can start to warn folks. I’ve been trying to get a look at what buildings have been doused.”

  “Those,” Bower replied as he raised a finger to point across the street.

  Mark looked that way and squinted. “Which ones?”

  “Near as I can tell . . . all of them.”

  “All right. You two head over there and split up,” Clint told them. “Show your badges, shout as loud as you can, just try to get as many folks as possible away from those buildings.”

  “But we’re not the law here,” Mark reminded him.

  “Once you shout what’s about to happen and wave around any piece of tin, folks will follow your orders. Just try to direct them away from there before things get too crazy.”

  Mark and Bower settled a few quick things between themselves before charging forward and shouting that the buildings were about to go up in flames. That was more than enough to get folks moving. In fact, it was more than enough to create a stampede.

  As much as Clint would have liked to keep things a little better organized, there was no way to make that happen on such short notice. The best he could do was hang back a ways and make sure nobody got trampled. Fortunately, the two Texas Rangers were doing a fairly good job of keeping the locals moving in an orderly fashion. That left Clint to keep his eyes peeled for another face amid the crowd.

  Amazingly enough, Clint didn’t spot Voorhees right away. What caught his eye was a little flicker of flame coming from somewhere a bit too close to one of the doused buildings. The moment Clint saw that spark, he ran straight toward it.

  Voorhees stood in the shadow of one of the buildings with a bunch of matches in his hand. He’d already struck the matches and now was about to toss them onto the wall of a general store.

  “Toss those matches away,” Clint shouted, “or I’ll gun you down where you stand!”

  While Clint had thought the big man would want to kill him on sight, he couldn’t have been more wrong.

  Unlike most men who made a try for Clint Adams, Voorhees hadn’t tried to kill the Gunsmith in order to put a feather in his cap. He’d just been taking out another obstacle in his path. His
true passion was the fire in his hands, which was about to ignite an entire building before spreading to engulf the whole street.

  Voorhees barely seemed interested that Clint was alive or dead. He hardly seemed to acknowledge Clint was there. Instead, he held onto the matches in one hand while reaching out to snag a woman by the arm with the other.

  And then, after pulling the woman in front of him like she was a rag doll, Voorhees showed Clint a lifeless, predator’s smile and looked down at the kerosene-soaked spot at his feet.

  “Oh my God,” Clint whispered as he realized the big man was going to light that fire whether it meant getting shot or even standing in the middle of the inferno.

  With the same effort he might toss away an old newspaper, Voorhees threw down the bundle of lit matches.

  THIRTY

  Clint drew his Colt and pulled the trigger in a flicker of motion. The gun in his fist blazed several times in quick succession, spitting out a flurry of hot lead in a tight cluster.

  It seemed to take forever for the bullets to cross the street, but in that time Clint found himself thanking God that the other man was so damn tall.

  The matches fell from Voorhees’s hand and headed straight for the puddle of kerosene he’d poured. He was watching the matches so closely that he saw the exact moment when Clint’s bullets found the matches and snuffed out all of them except for one.

  “No!” Voorhees snarled as he shoved the woman aside and stomped toward Clint.

  Clint ran across the street as well. He kept his back straight until the last possible moment, when he ducked down low to avoid Voorhees’s arm that swung at him like a scythe toward a field of wheat. Clint kept right on running until he made it across the street to where that single match had landed. The little flame had stayed alive just long enough to make its landing and ignite a trickle that had run away from the main pool of kerosene.

  “I’ll kill you!” Voorhees bellowed as he wheeled around and stomped back at Clint. Every step the big man took was faster than the one before it, and he reached Clint before Clint could lower the boot he’d raised up over the kerosene.

  Although he was facing away from Voorhees, Clint was all too familiar with the bigger man’s speed. He turned his Colt to one side and then swung his arm to catch Voorhees in the stomach with the Colt’s handle. The blow didn’t send Voorhees back, but it stopped him in his tracks just long enough for Clint to stomp out the flame before it could truly get going.

  “All right,” Clint said once the flame was dead. “Now it’s your turn.”

  The big man gritted his teeth and swung at Clint with a fist that seemed more like a knotted clump of wood. Clint ducked beneath the swing and leaned away from the one behind it. The bigger man’s fists cut through the air and made just enough noise to let Clint know how much raw power was behind each one.

  Knowing that he couldn’t win a fistfight with Voorhees, Clint brought his Colt around to fire the last shot in its cylinder. Somehow, Voorhees caught Clint’s wrist before the gun could be pointed at him. Clint kept from wasting his bullet and put every bit of his muscle behind the effort of moving the gun to give him any shot whatsoever.

  Voorhees kept one hand on Clint’s wrist and then clamped the other around the back of his neck. From there, the big man leaned forward and let out a slow, controlled breath.

  “You should’ve stayed away,” Voorhees growled. “You would have lived to see this. Now you’ll just have to die here like all these others.”

  No matter how much he tried to move his gun arm in the opposite direction, Clint felt it being pushed toward the kerosene-soaked side of the street. Even worse was the fact that he was being forced to aim at the woman Voorhees had been holding captive when Clint had first spotted him.

  Clint locked eyes with the woman and shouted in a voice that sounded more like a howl. “Move away from there!”

  The woman looked at Clint with eyes full of fear. She seemed rooted to her spot at first, but ran quickly enough when she saw the Colt slowly moving to point at her.

  Clint kept fighting against Voorhees, but the other man was too strong. Not only was the bigger man forcing Clint to shift his aim, but he was dragging Clint even closer to the other side of the street. Within a few seconds, Clint felt Voorhees’s finger settle over the one resting on the Colt’s trigger.

  “Fire!” someone shouted nearby. “There’s gonna be a fire!”

  Clint let out part of the breath he’d been holding when he heard that voice. Just as he’d hoped, the warning was followed by the stampede of footsteps as folks ran to get as far away from that side of the street as possible. Silently praising Mark and Bower for their quick work, Clint focused all of his efforts into his more immediate problem.

  Voorhees looked up at the herd of people running from the building as well. The expression he wore was like night and day when compared to Clint’s. Instead of relief, Voorhees showed anger. Before too long, that anger turned into rage.

  A gunshot cracked through the air to whip past Voorhees’s shoulder and Clint’s head. Voorhees paid as much attention to that as he would to a wasp buzzing near his cheek.

  Letting out a final grunt, Voorhees put every last bit of his strength into pushing Clint’s gun arm toward the closest building. He was simply too strong for Clint to resist. The next thing Clint felt was Voorhees’s finger crushing his own finger as well as the trigger beneath it.

  The modified Colt bucked against Clint’s palm and sent its last round into the nearby boardwalk. Since Voorhees had shoved Clint to within a yard of the boardwalk, the sparks from the gun also ignited the kerosene pooled there.

  Voorhees placed his palm over Clint’s face the way a child grabbed a ball, and shoved Clint toward the fire. The moment Clint was clear of the bigger man, more shots were fired from the two men to Clint’s left. But Clint didn’t see where Voorhees went or who was doing the shooting. He was too concerned with pulling off his jacket and using it to smother the flames.

  The gunshots were still coming, and they were even getting louder as Clint kept batting down the flames.

  What started as a crackle turned into a roar as the flames got to the kerosene before Clint could get to them. Even as the heat grew worse and worse around him, Clint wouldn’t stop trying to put out the fire. Even as the gunshots sounded from directly behind him, Clint kept swinging his jacket at the fire.

  “I think I hit him!” Mark shouted from behind Clint.

  Bower fired another shot before saying, “He ducked into that alley. You stay behind and help Clint.”

  “No!” came another voice. “I can help.”

  Clint turned to find the woman who’d been Voorhees’s prisoner a few moments ago rushing up to him. She waved at the people gathered nearby and shouted, “Come on! We can all help before this fire spreads!”

  That got the others moving. Some went for water and some rushed over to Clint’s side. The Texas Rangers nodded and started to run toward the alley they’d been firing at.

  “We’ll be back, Clint,” Bower said. He then shifted his eyes toward Mark and shouted, “You head straight that way and I’ll circle around.” After that, the men were out of Clint’s sight.

  The fire wasn’t out of control, but it wasn’t in control either. Every time Clint swatted out a portion of it, another blaze would be sparked to life. Already, the sparks had spread out beyond Clint’s reach. He knew that it wouldn’t be long before some of it would get away from him and set an inferno in motion.

  “I’ve got this one,” the woman said as she stomped her feet against the edge of a kerosene puddle before it could fully ignite.

  Clint looked at her and didn’t know if he should push her away or let her keep stomping her feet. Then, he saw one flicker of light a few inches out of his reach. The little flame raced toward the spot where the kerosene became thicker and spread out. An instant later, all he could hear was the roar of a real fire gaining its strength.

  “Over there! Over there!” som
eone shouted.

  Clint turned to see a row of four men carrying buckets rush up to the blaze and douse it with water. Some sand was dropped down, followed by more water, which was enough to bury the fire and kerosene in wet mud.

  Only then did Clint allow himself to step back and take in the rest of his surroundings.

  To his surprise, there were a lot more than just a few locals gathered in the street. By the looks of it, nearly all the ones who’d run out of the stores and businesses had stuck around to help put out the fire. A small line of folks had already formed to carry water from some of the troughs near the hitching posts, in buckets that were emptied onto the boardwalk.

  One of the men sported a large mustache that was thick enough to droop down and cover his mouth. “Step aside, ma’am,” he said as he gently eased the woman back. “We’ll have this out in no time.”

  Clint and the woman stepped away as more water was dumped onto the boardwalk. “You’d better wash down all those buildings,” he said to one of the men in the bucket line. “There’s kerosene on all of them.”

  “I thought I smelled something,” the man with the mustache replied.

  THIRTY-ONE

  Clint was more than happy to let the locals put out the fire so he could see about catching Voorhees. “Which way did those other two men go?” Clint asked the woman who’d stepped in to help him earlier.

  “That alley,” she replied. “Right over there.”

  After giving his quick thanks to her, Clint rushed to the alley. Considering how fast everyone had been moving, he wasn’t too surprised to find the alley completely empty. Clint ran down it anyway and had his gun reloaded by the time he came out the other side.

  The alley emptied into another street, which was also empty. Just looking from his left to his right, Clint could see at least half a dozen places Voorhees or the Texas Rangers could have gone. Rather than pick a direction and hope for the best, Clint walked back to the spot where the bucket brigade had been formed.

  The flames were out, and a row of men was making its way down the street to clean off the rest of the buildings. Clint spotted the woman he’d talked to a little earlier at one of the troughs, filling buckets to hand over to the brigade.