One Man's Fire

by Ralph Compton

  WARNING SHOT

  The gunshot sounded like a muffled thump to Eli’s tortured ears, and the bullet rattled around inside the wagon like a pebble being shaken in a tin can. All three riflemen flopped onto their sides or bellies in their haste to clear a path for the bullet or any more that might be following on its heels. Even Eli could make out the dull murmur of those men’s excited voices, but he couldn’t see any blood. When he felt the rough hand slap down on his shoulder, Eli twisted around while bringing his pistol up to bear.

  Jake took his hand away and stepped back. His other hand kept his .44 pointed up at the driver while Cody made his way to the top of the wagon. Although Eli couldn’t make out the words coming from Jake’s mouth, there was no mistaking the victory etched into the gang leader’s smile.

  Ralph Compton

  One Man’s Fire

  A Ralph Compton Novel

  by Marcus Galloway

  A SIGNET BOOK

  SIGNET

  Published by New American Library, a division of

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street,

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  First published by Signet, an imprint of New American Library,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  First Printing, May 2012

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Copyright © The Estate of Ralph Compton, 2012

  Excerpt from Skeleton Lode copyright © Ralph Compton, 1999

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  ISBN: 978-1-101-58523-8

  REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA

  Printed in the United States of America

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

  If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

  ALWAYS LEARNING

  PEARSON

  THE IMMORTAL COWBOY

  This is respectfully dedicated to the “American Cowboy.” His was the saga sparked by the turmoil that followed the Civil War, and the passing of more than a century has by no means diminished the flame.

  True, the old days and the old ways are but treasured memories, and the old trails have grown dim with the ravages of time, but the spirit of the cowboy lives on.

  In my travels—to Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, Wyoming, New Mexico, and Arizona—I always find something that reminds me of the Old West. While I am walking these plains and mountains for the first time, there is this feeling that a part of me is eternal, that I have known these old trails before. I believe it is the undying spirit of the frontier calling me, through the mind’s eye, to step back into time. What is the appeal of the Old West of the American frontier?

  It has been epitomized by some as the dark and bloody period in American history. Its heroes—Crockett, Bowie, Hickok, Earp—have been reviled and criticized. Yet the Old West lives on, larger than life.

  It has become a symbol of freedom, when there was always another mountain to climb and another river to cross; when a dispute between two men was settled not with expensive lawyers, but with fists, knives, or guns. Barbaric? Maybe. But some things never change. When the cowboy rode into the pages of American history, he left behind a legacy that lives within the hearts of us all.

  —Ralph Compton

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Skeleton Lode

  Chapter 1

  Wyoming Territory, 1883

  The wagon was supposedly secured against any attempt to rob it. At least, that’s what was said by all the men hired to protect it before it had left Omaha. Enough iron plates were fixed to the sides to make it necessary to add an additional pair of horses to the team pulling the monster on wheels. Slits had been crudely cut into the plates so any of the three men riding inside could fire at anyone foolish enough to approach the wagon without permission. The man who might grant such a boon rode up top in a seat partly surrounded by a thick wooden shell that wrapped around the driver’s back and sides. Another man sat beside the driver, carrying a shotgun that had been stored among several other weapons in the box at the driver’s feet. Strictly speaking, the wagon should have been close to impenetrable. To the young man gazing down at it from atop a ridge south of the trail, it was a big fat egg dying to be cracked apart.

  “What do you think, Eli?” another man asked from behind the younger one. He had a thickly muscled torso wrapped in a duster that had been with him through more hard days than most men saw in a lifetime. Dark brown eyes gazed out from behind narrowed lids set within a heavily scarred face that looked like something a goat had chewed up and spat out. It was difficult to discern which dark streaks on his chin and cheeks were dirt and which were wiry stubble.

  The younger man kept a pair of field glasses close to eyes that were the color of a sky smeared with mist from an approaching storm. His voice had a faraway quality when he replied, “I think I can take her.”

  A second pair of anxious men crouched behind the first two, and hearing that didn’t do anything to alleviate their situation. The bigger fellow with the dirty face waved back at them as if he were shooing away a pair of annoying hound dogs. “Either one of you messes this up,” he snarled, “and I’ll use yer carcasses to trip up the team pulling that wagon.”

  Both of the other men settled down quick enough.

  “You sure we can take that thing?” the scarred man asked. “Looks like a rolling fort
ress.”

  Eli lowered his field glasses to get a look at the wagon with his own eyes. Smiling at what he saw, he said, “You brought me along this far, Jake. You about to stop trusting me now?”

  “Ain’t about trust. It’s about a job that we can or can’t do. I won’t charge into a slaughter just so you can scratch that itch you always got for stealing.”

  “That itch has served this gang pretty well so far.”

  “Sure has,” one of the men farther down the rise said. He was definitely older than Eli, but carried himself like the youngest of the bunch. A wide, round head made his eyes look more like holes knocked into a pumpkin with a roofing nail. White knuckles were wrapped around a Spencer rifle, and every muscle in that arm trembled at the prospect of putting the weapon to use.

  “Shut up, Cody,” Jake snapped. “When I want your opinion, you’ll know about it.” Once Cody was sufficiently cowed, the scarred man hunkered down and gazed down at the trail where the wagon was still rolling. “How many men you think are on that thing?”

  “There’s two up front,” Eli said. “Couldn’t tell you for certain how many are inside.”

  “Hank?”

  The fourth man in the group was the most raggedy of them all. He resembled a scarecrow thanks to his wiry build as well as the tattered clothes he wore. Even his long hair was stringy enough to look more like strands of wet straw plastered onto his scalp. Three guns were strapped under his arms and at his hip. For all Eli knew, Hank could have had three more besides the .44, .45, and derringer. Ever since he’d lost his left eye, he seemed one twitch away from gunning down anyone in his sight. That twitchiness made it awfully hard for anyone to sneak up on him, and he prided himself on being able to get to anyone before he could be hurt again. Those things made him a perfect spy. “There’s five in all,” he said with absolute certainty. “If you see two up front, that leaves three in the wagon.”

  “You’d stake our lives on it?” Jake asked. “Because that’s what we’d be doing.”

  “I watched them load up myself.”

  Jake showed Eli an ugly grin and slapped the younger man on the shoulder. “All right, then. I suppose we should get moving before all the money in that wagon gets away.”

  Eli looked down at the trundling wagon as if it were a fat, limping goose on Christmas Eve. “No danger of that. We’d be able to hear it from a mile away even if we did let it get out of our sight.”

  “How much money are we talking about again?” Cody asked.

  Jake was looking down at the wagon hungrily as he told him, “At least twenty thousand. You hear any different, Hank?”

  The scarecrow man shrugged. “They loaded up a few strongboxes. If I could get into them things, we wouldn’t need the young’un.”

  Patting the youngest member of the gang once more on the shoulder, Jake said, “That’s right. Eli here can crack open the Devil’s own coin purse. Ain’t that so?”

  “Yeah,” Eli said. “It is.”

  Neither Jake nor any of the other men in the gang knew for certain whose money was down there. They’d heard rumors of a bank shipping funds to cover a payroll or provide a loan to a large customer with deep pockets, but none of them had cared enough to ferret out the truth. There were even rumors that some businessman was shipping a bribe to a politician, but when there was a large batch of cash involved, speculations were bound to arise. Those fires were stoked even higher when that money was ferried about in a rolling spectacle like a crudely armored wagon. More than likely, the money was just a payroll being shipped by a company that had been robbed one too many times already. All most of the gang cared about was that the money was inside the wagon and there was lots of it.

  But there was a different kind of glint in Eli’s eyes when he stared down at that trail. It was a dull, yet intense thing that hinted at a hotter fire deep beneath his surface. “Yeah,” he said. “Let’s get moving.”

  The gang mustered like a disciplined army regiment. They kept low so as not to skyline themselves before enough of the ridge was between them and the men riding on the wagon below. When it was safe to move faster, they broke into a run toward the horses that were tethered to trees nearby. Having already scouted out the area while waiting for the wagon to roll by, all of the men knew their way down the narrow path around the ridge, through a stand of trees, and across a short stretch of bushes that had been turned into scorched brambles by an unforgiving sun.

  It was no surprise for Jake to fire the first shot, and when Hank joined in, Eli’s world became a mush of cacophonous sound. Despite the horse’s jostling movement, he kept his eyes locked on the wagon. Even as the animal wove between pits left by deep puddles or jumped over a fallen tree, Eli kept his eyes glued to the wagon. As soon as the ground in front of him leveled out, he snapped his reins and rode ahead of his outlaw pack.

  “You two move around to the other side of that contraption!” Jake shouted. “I’ll see to it the kid don’t get himself killed!”

  Cody and Hank peeled away to circle around the back of the wagon. Compared to the horses that had swarmed around it, the iron-encrusted vehicle might as well have been standing still. It was far from defenseless, however, as rifle barrels poked out from the slits in its side to spout smoke and lead at the gang. Bullets hissed through the air past Eli’s head, causing him to duck down as if that would be enough to keep him safe for the remainder of the journey. Before the rifle rounds could get any closer, they were diverted toward a greater threat.

  Howling like a mad dog, Jake gripped his reins in one hand and a .44 Smith & Wesson in the other. Rather than fire wildly at the wagon, he gazed along the top of his barrel as if he had all the time in the world to take his shot. When he squeezed his trigger, sparks flew from the edge of one of the slits in the wagon’s armor and angry curses echoed within. More shots cracked through the air on the other side of the wagon as the second half of the gang was greeted by another batch of riflemen. Eli tapped his heels against his horse’s sides and surged forward as the spark in his eyes grew to a roaring flame.

  “Bring this thing to a halt!” Jake bellowed.

  The driver responded with a barking command directed at his team. The horses pounded their hooves against the rocky ground even harder as leather straps slapped against their backs. The shotgunner emerged from behind the wooden barricade atop the wagon like a target in a shooting gallery to unleash a smoky payload from one barrel and then the other. Jake had already veered away from the wagon by the time hot lead ripped through the air, and he fired at the shotgunner, clipping his shoulder and spinning him around to collide with the driver. Both men wobbled atop the wagon before becoming entangled in the reins. Once that happened, the team was pulled to the right, causing the entire wagon to lurch.

  Eli was close enough to see in through one of the rifle slits by now. When the man behind the weapon poking out through the opening looked his way, Eli had plenty of time to grab hold of the rifle and yank it from him. He could have taken it away completely if the slit had been just a bit wider. As it was, the rifle clanged against iron while the man inside struggled to regain control of it. The driver’s predicament caused the rattling iron monstrosity to swing away from Eli, taking the rifle barrel from his grasp and causing something of a panic for Hank and Cody on the other side.

  Jake fired two more shots before snarling, “Bring this thing to a stop or I will!” Although the driver had gotten his team pointed in the right direction again, the wagon had slowed to something slightly better than a crawl. This allowed Jake to grab on to a post at the front corner of the wagon as if he meant to hop from his saddle and onto the driver’s lap.

  With the blood pounding through his veins amid the hammering rhythm of his heart, Eli felt as if he were charging down the trail at a breakneck speed instead of keeping pace with a wagon that was barely moving at all. Now that Jake had gotten under the driver’s skin, the wagon slowed even more. The riflemen inside were still ready for a fight, but were preoccupied by
Cody and Hank. That meant Eli was able to get back to the slit on his side a second after the rifle barrel poked through it again. Still rattled from his last confrontation as well as the unpredictable movements of the wagon itself, the rifleman on Eli’s side pulled his trigger before he even had a target.

  No bullet chewed through Eli’s skull, but a mighty loud screech pealed through his ears. Apart from his hammering pulse and the dull thump of his own horse’s hooves against the ground, he couldn’t hear a thing. And yet, not so much as a hint of panic showed on his face as he pointed one of his .38s at the rifle slit and shouted at the man on the other side. Eli only had a vague idea of what he said, but it was enough to get the man to relinquish his grip on the weapon.

  The wagon came to a halt and the gang surrounded it like a pack of dogs vying for the biggest chunk of a discarded hunk of meat. Eli was still mostly deaf as he came up alongside the wagon and stared in through the slit. His eyes were searching for one thing, but found another as all three men within the armored box turned to face him. The pair that had been dealing with Cody and Hank still held their rifles and the man on Eli’s side had gotten to the pistol holstered at his hip. They all looked through the slit back at Eli and struggled to get their weapons pointed in his direction. From the corner of one eye, Eli could see the shotgunner on top of the wagon swing his weapon around to aim at him.

  For that brief instant, Eli felt as if he’d drifted outside his own skin to watch everything from afar. Even if his ears hadn’t been ravaged by the close-range gunshot, he doubted he would have been able to hear much of anything. He recalled folks talking about something like that when they’d been about to die. Their bodies drifted up and everything got real quiet. It was said to have been peaceful. As far as Eli could tell, he was about to find out firsthand.

  Just as well, he figured.

  Once more, the gang acted like a well-oiled machine. Jake brought the shotgunner down with one shot while Hank stuck the barrel of a .44 in through a slit on the other side of the wagon and pulled his trigger. The gunshot sounded like a muffled thump to Eli’s tortured ears, and the bullet rattled around inside the wagon like a pebble being shaken in a tin can. All three riflemen flopped onto their sides or bellies in their haste to clear a path for the bullet or any more that might be following on its heels. Even Eli could make out the dull murmur of those men’s excited voices, but he couldn’t see any blood. When he felt the rough hand slap down on his shoulder, Eli twisted around while bringing his pistol up to bear.