Wildfire

by Ralph Cotton

  “Take a guess,” Bagley said, looking up at him through pained, fading eyes. A big Remington revolver lay on the table near Bagley’s bloody right hand. His left hand held a bath towel against his large bloody belly.

  “The Cheyenne Kid,” Sam said without hesitancy. He put Gilley down onto the stacks of blankets and helped her lean over onto her side while he talked to the badly wounded trading post owner.

  Bagley gave a dark, strained chuckle.

  “You kind of know us ol’ boys, eh, Ranger?”

  “Yep,” Sam said. He raised the gourd to his lips and took a long drink, then filled his cupped hand and rubbed the water on his blackened face as he spoke.

  “‘Us ol’ boys’? ” Sam said, quoting him. “Are you saying you’ve been one of them?” He looked at Bagley’s tortured face.

  “Right up . . . ’til today,” said Bagley, fighting a surge of pain racking through his stomach. “I know all you lawmen always thought it . . . never could prove it, though.”

  Sam surveyed all the blood—on the floor, on Bagley’s chest and stomach, on the towel, the table.

  “You figure you’re dying?” he asked.

  “What’s your thinking on it?” Bagley said, lifting the bloody, wadded-up towel enough to give Sam a look behind it. “The son of a bitch shot me so close it caught my shirt afire.” He coughed and held the towel back in place. “Bullet’s hung somewhere in my damn hipbone—hurts like hell. Yeah, I figure I’m gone.” He glanced at the Remington. If I ain’t dead by dark . . . I’m taking it upon myself. I ain’t sitting here and burning alive.”

  “Where’s he and his gang headed?” Sam asked, focusing back on his purpose in being there.

  “I knew you’d get around to that,” Bagley said.

  “He’s no good, Bagley,” Sam said with finality. “Tell me where he’s headed.”

  Bagley grinned weakly and nodded.

  “Hell, I know he’s no good,” he said. “I knew that long before he killed me. But the others haven’t . . . wronged me in any way.” He paused as searing pain rose from the bullet lodged deep in his hip. “But I expect you’ll kill them too. I heard you like killing.”

  “You heard wrong,” Sam said. “If they give themselves up, I’ll take them in.” He stared pointedly at the wounded man. “How many men you know want to give up their guns and go to prison?”

  “I know . . . what you mean,” Bagley said, his voice starting to sound even weaker, more labored.

  “Tell me where they’re headed,” Sam persisted.

  “Ah, hell,” said Bagley, “they’ll head where they always head when somebody’s hunting them—Dutchman’s Gulch.”

  “Blind Gully?” Sam said.

  “Yeah, some also call it that,” said Bagley. “Some call it Dutchman’s Gulch. You’ll pick their tracks up out front.” He raised the blood-soaked towel from his belly and wrung it between his thick hands. Blood splattered heavily on the plank floor. “Ever seen that much blood . . . from one human being?”

  “It’s a lot,” Sam said. “How long ago did they leave?”

  “This morning after sunup,” Dewey Fritz said, speaking for his wounded boss. He stepped in and stood beside the table. He reached down, took the bloody towel and laid a fresh one in its place. “They argued over what he owed for the drinking and the tents, and Cheyenne shot him.” He stared at the Ranger, then added, “He’s got a woman with him, you know.”

  “He does?” Sam said.

  Gilley looked at the big bartender for confirmation.

  “He does,” said Dewey, nodding his bald head. “Her husband was out there starting fires—crazy as a June bug, that one. All because him and his woman haven’t, you know . . .”

  Sam just stared at him.

  Bagley gave a dark chuckle, gripping the fresh towel to his stomach.

  “Cheyenne has always had . . . a terrible weakness for the womenfolk,” he said haltingly as pain rippled through his stomach and hip at the same time. “It’s got him in trouble . . . the last two gangs he rode with.” He gritted his teeth, stared at Gilley and asked, “Are you the one he left out there to burn up?”

  “That son of a bitch,” Gilley said, in spite of her exhausted condition.

  Sam watched her hang her head in shame.

  “When are you leaving here, Bagley?” Sam asked the wounded merchant. “It looks like the fires are going to wipe you out this time around.”

  “I ain’t leaving,” said Bagley. “I’m dying anyway . . . why not here?”

  “We’ll take you with us,” Sam said. “You can die somewhere else, away from the fire.”

  “Why would I do that?” Bagley asked. He patted a bloody hand on the big Remington. “This big banger will take me wherever I’m going.”

  “This is a bad way to die,” Sam offered.

  Bagley shrugged and said, “Once I’m dead . . . what does it matter how bad I died?”

  “What about your bartender?” Sam asked.

  “Dewey Fritz?” said Bagley. “He says he’s staying too. He figures I’m dead. . . . This place doesn’t burn, it’s all his.” He gave a weak laugh that ended in a cough. “Running a business . . . has always had its risks.”

  “We need a horse for the woman, some saddles if you’ve got any,” Sam said.

  “I have three horses,” said Bagley. “Twenty dollars each, including saddles . . . thirty for the mare. Cash, of course . . . I’m past taking anything of a promissory nature.”

  “What can we do for you, Bagley?” Sam asked flatly, knowing there was no point in wasting his breath trying to get the man to leave.

  Bagley didn’t answer. He only shook his lowered head.

  “Pay Fritz for that horse and rigging,” he said in a pained voice.

  Beyond the walls of the trading post, the deep roar of the fire echoed in off the rocky surrounding hillsides.

  Sam reached into his saddlebags for a fold of cash he carried there. He counted out twenty dollars and dropped it on the bloody tabletop.

  “I’ll just pay you while I’m here,” he said. He looked at Gilley and asked, “Are you able to ride?”

  “I wish I could eat, get some rest, maybe drink some more water,” she said.

  “Can you do all that while we ride?” Sam asked.

  She staggered to her tired feet and dusted the seat of her trousers.

  “Yeah, sure, why not?” she said. “If it gets me farther from this blasted fire.”

  Chapter 13

  In spite of his side wound, Little Foot rode hard, Segan right beside him, having caught up to the Indian on one of the wagon horses. The two had circled wide of the trading post and pushed their horses hard, farther up the trail, until the blackish smoke and the raging fire lay below them. From a high ledge, they stopped long enough to look down behind them, seeing the black-orange fire blow across an open stretch of wild grass between two stands of pine.

  “I’m glad that’s all behind me,” Segan said with a sigh, looking back as far as his eyes could see at the devastation the wildfire—both his and nature’s—had wielded on the wildlife and woodlands. “This being drought and fire season, I can’t say how much was mine and how much wasn’t.” He paused, then said, “But I almost wish I hadn’t done it at all.”

  The son of a bitch. . . . Little Foot just stared at him. He was sick of hearing about this man’s wife and her first husband. He hadn’t shut up about it since they’d outridden the fire.

  “It’s just that I went so wild-crazy, every time I thought of my Caroline being with another man, I had to hurt something. Else I would have exploded inside.” He turned and stared at Little Foot. His eyes glistened with tears. “Have you ever had anything hurt that bad?”

  Little Foot looked him up and down indignantly, offended that a white man
should even ask him such a question. Then he jerked the horse around and rode it at a walk over away from the ridge to where a hillside of pine rose steeply from their trail.

  “Wait,” said Segan, “I meant no harm. I was considering everything I done, wondering if I should somehow make recompense for it.”

  Little Foot turned in his saddle and looked at him as he rode on.

  “You think I would know?” he said.

  “I was hoping you might offer some advice, I suppose,” Segan said, riding beside him, both horses at a walk, cooling down.

  Little Foot jerked his horse to a halt and stared at Segan, as if being put upon to even speak about such matters.

  “Because this widow woman was once in the arms of her dead husband, your craziness has led her into the arms of yet another man?” he asked, sorting through it.

  “I know how crazy it is,” said Segan. “I know that right now she’s with Cheyenne, doing God knows what. He gave me his word, but they’re still doing it. I know they are!” He swallowed a knot in his throat and said, “I’m a blind, jealous fool, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it.”

  Little Foot shook his head slowly.

  “You should take a gun and shoot yourself in the head,” he said flatly.

  Segan looked at the butt of the big Colt standing above the edge of the Indian’s trousers. Something grim and dark flashed across his mind for a moment, but he managed to shake it away.

  “There’s no cause for you to say something like that,” he said, turning tight-lipped. He put his horse forward a few feet ahead of Little Foot.

  But Little Foot saw the wagon horse jolt to a halt and rear up in terror so suddenly that Segan slid from the horse’s bare back and hit the rocky ground, still managing to hold on to the long wagon reins he was using. No sooner had Segan fallen than Little Foot’s horse also spooked at the sight of a thin, soot-smudged panther cub wobbling in the middle of the trail facing them.

  Little Foot turned his horse sharply to the side and brought it to a halt sitting quarter-wise to the snarling cub. He patted the horse’s withers, settling it.

  “Shoot it, shoot it!” Segan shouted, seeing the cub snarl at him from twenty feet away.

  Little Foot stared at the cub for a moment, then reached over, took the wagon horse’s reins from Segan’s hands and jerked the spooked animal back a step, getting it under control.

  Seeing the ragged condition of the cub, Little Foot shook his head in sympathy for the small, frightened creature.

  “Leave it be,” he said. “It has lost its mother, to the fire, no doubt. It’s mindless—doesn’t know what it’s doing.”

  “I see,” Segan said, collecting himself, picking at the seat of his trousers. “It surprised me, is all,” he added.

  “Leave it alone. It will walk away pretty soon,” Little Foot said.

  “Pretty soon . . . ?” Segan said, a little embarrassed, needing to make up for having been so rattled by such a small animal. “We needn’t wait all day while it makes up its mind.”

  “It is scared and lost,” said Little Foot. “The fire has destroyed its lair.”

  “Watch this.” Segan seemed not to hear him as he walked forward.

  Oh . . . So you must fool with it. Little Foot watched blank-faced in silence; he crossed his wrists on his saddle horn. Patient.

  Approaching the small cat, Segan stomped his big boots up and down on the ground to frighten the cub off the trail.

  “Get out of here, pussy!” he growled, spreading his arms high and wide to shoo the little cat away.

  The cub only cringed and crouched down in place as Segan stalked forward.

  “Stubborn little pussy, huh?” he chuckled.

  But his chuckle vanished as a sudden flash of tan-colored fur, of tail, claws and fangs streaked from out of nowhere, over the cub’s cowering head and straight into Segan’s open arms, taking him to the ground.

  Segan screamed long and loud, his voice in strange duo with the snarl and growl of the big panther atop him, its back arched high, mauling, clawing, biting, slashing.

  Well, he was wrong about the mother cat being dead, Little Foot told himself. So . . . ? He shrugged mentally. He didn’t know.

  He watched in rapt fascination as the big cat rose on its hinds on Segan’s stomach and slapped his head back and forth as if it were some child’s ball in play.

  Little Foot shook his head slowly as he raised the Colt from its holster, cocked it and took aim, hearing Segan screaming, pleading for help.

  Yet, before squeezing the trigger, he noted that somehow Segan had managed to roll sidelong and wrestle himself atop the cat now, pinning it to the ground—a new twist of sorts, Little Foot thought.

  He lowered the pistol a little for a second, staring at the snarling, screaming mass of man and cat. While Segan held the cat down, both hands clutching its throat, he turned his bloody face toward Little Foot in wide-eyed terror.

  “Shoot iiiit! Please God! Shoot it!” he bellowed.

  In a calm, level voice, Little Foot said, “I’m afraid I’ll hit you.”

  Then in a flash, the cat’s hind paws came up under Segan’s belly, throwing him a high flip in the air.

  Segan hit the ground on his knees; the cat backed into a crouch and got ready to pounce again.

  “For God’s sake, shoot iiiit!” he screamed again, tearfully.

  Almost before he got the scream out of his lungs, the big Colt exploded, not once, but twice in Little Foot’s hand.

  The cat jumped three feet in the air, turned its ducked head toward Little Foot, then backed away toward its cub. Little Foot saw where half of the big cat’s ear was missing; dried blood streaked its side and shoulder.

  With the Colt still pointed straight up in the air, smoke curling from its barrel, Little Foot watched the big cat reach down, grab its cub by the scruff of its neck, jerk it up from the ground and leap out of sight up onto the treed hillside.

  Little Foot watched Segan collapse forward from his knees onto the rocky ground. With the smoking Colt cocked, Little Foot waited a full minute or more before stepping down from his saddle and leading both horses forward. Segan lay facedown, bleeding, shivering, moaning into the earth. Most of his trousers and shirt were gone, slashed away. Blood circled under him and spread in every direction on the dirt.

  “That was the cub’s mother,” Little Foot said, blank-faced.

  “Hel—help me,” Segan groaned. “Water . . .”

  Little Foot looked all around again warily before letting the hammer down on the cocked Colt and sticking the big pistol back down into the waist of his trousers. He turned to his horse, took down a canteen and stooped down beside Segan, rolling him over onto his back.

  As he uncapped the canteen and held Segan’s bloody head up so he could take a drink, he didn’t see the Ranger and Gilley ride into sight on the trail behind him, thirty yards away.

  “You wouldn’t shoot . . . ,” Segan rasped, clutching the canteen in his bloody, mauled hands.

  “I told you I was afraid I would shoot you,” Little Foot said quietly. “Besides, you had no business messing with the mother cat’s little cub.” He also held the canteen, helping Segan drink.

  “Look at me,” said Segan, his face a mass of dark blood, deep claw marks, puncture wounds. “I’m ruined. You should have took the shot.”

  “Maybe so. . . .” Little Foot thought about things for a moment, then said, “Do you want me to shoot you now?”

  Segan gave it some thought.

  But before either one could say any more on the matter, they both turned their eyes toward the sound of hooves and saw the Ranger and Gilley riding closer, moving at a gallop now that the Ranger had spotted a man on the ground.

  Upon seeing the Ranger and the woman, Little Foot jerked a ban
dana from his hip pocket, wet it with water from the canteen and swiped it across Segan’s raw, claw-torn face. He stood up and waved his arms back and forth as the two riders drew closer. When they were close enough for him to see the badge on the Ranger’s chest, Little Foot dropped his arms to his side and stood waiting. The two stopped and looked down at him, at his bloodstained shirt and at the wounded man on the ground.

  “We heard shooting,” Sam said, swinging down from the barb, Gilley getting off her own horse beside him. “What happened to you two?”

  “A cat got him a little while ago,” Little Foot said, gesturing a hand toward Segan. “I was shot in my side by a man named Red Gantry. One of the men you’re looking for.”

  Sam looked him up and down.

  “How do you know who I’m looking for?” he asked, knowing Little Foot was the Indian who worked for Bagley at the trading post.

  “Because the Cheyenne Kid and his men think you might be on their trail,” said Little Foot. He looked at Gilley, then added, “He sent us out here to set fires on any trail you might be riding.”

  “Just as a safety measure?” Sam asked.

  “Yes,” said Little Foot. He pointed down at Segan. “Cheyenne got the idea from this one. He is the one who started the fires. Red Gantry was the one Cheyenne sent to make certain he did his job. But Gantry burned himself up.”

  Segan lay staring up at the Ranger. His face had started bleeding again.

  “I did what I had to do to protect my wife,” he said. “But I swear to God, I’ll never burn nothing again as long as I live.”

  Sam looked around. Evening shadows had grown long across the hills.

  “Don’t talk right now,” he said to Segan. “It’s just going to make you bleed worse. Lie still. We’ll make camp and get you bandaged up first. Then you can both tell me everything.”

  “Obliged . . . ,” said Segan with a fading voice.