One Man's Fire

by Ralph Compton

  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.

  Chapter 2

  The wagon was stopped, the men driving or protecting it had been disarmed and tied up, the dust had settled, and yet not everyone in Jake’s gang was happy. Throughout the entire process of steering the wagon off the trail so it could be detained and searched without being interrupted by any random passersby, Hank had been glaring at Eli as if he meant to bore through the other man’s skull using nothing more than mean intentions. When Eli emerged from the wagon with a strongbox in his hands, he was grinning from ear to ear. Hank’s reaction couldn’t have been more different.

  “What is wrong with you, boy?” Hank snarled.

  The wagon driver and riflemen had been tied with their ropes laced between the spokes of one of the front wheels. Jake stood with one foot propped on the driver’s shoulder in a casual show of dominance while using his bandanna to rub some of the grit from his face. “Leave him alone. He did real good back there.”

  “Yeah. Real good at almost getting killed!”

  “What concern is that of yours?” Eli asked without taking his eyes from the prize in his hands.

  Hank’s one good eye twitched as he surged forward to bump against the strongbox in Eli’s grasp. “If you get killed in the middle of a job, that puts things into confusion. It leaves us one man short and gives these ones here a chance to get a leg up on us.”

  Looking toward the men tied to the wheels, Eli asked, “You were worried about them getting over on you? And here I thought you were so dangerous with all those guns you carry.”

  “I am! And don’t you forget it.”

  “Sure. That’s why you flew off the handle and started firing into that wagon like it was a barrel full of fish. The plan was to keep some men alive so’s they could be questioned in case we need help getting to the money.”

  “If you need so much help getting to the money,” Hank grunted, “then I don’t see why we brought you along.”

  “Come on, now, boys,” Jake said after stuffing his bandanna into a pocket. “This is a happy occasion. Everything went just fine.”

  Hank’s eye shifted back toward Eli. “No thanks to him. Didn’t you get a look at his face when he poked his nose into that wagon? It’s like he didn’t care about catching a bullet.”

  “He was just trying to see what we were up against. Ain’t that right, Eli?”

  Transfixed by the process of gently setting down the strongbox and running his fingers along the mechanism that kept it shut, Eli could barely spare enough time or effort to nod.

  “See?” Jake said.

  But Hank wasn’t appeased. “We’re supposed to work together on the jobs we do. Otherwise, I wouldn’t need to be a part of any gang. If one man gets it into his head that he don’t care about livin’ or dyin’, he does foolish nonsense like what we saw today. Too much foolishness when lead is flyin’ puts all of us in danger. The kind of danger no man walks away from.”

  Jake took his foot down and watched Eli carefully. He looked over to Cody, but that one simply shook his big head at him and continued tending to the horses. “We handled things just fine.”

  Eli’s eyes widened when he said, “I know how to get this open.”

  Hearing that made Jake forget about almost everything that had come before. “That’s what I’m talking about! Crack it open, boy!”

  Eli worked with the speed and precision of a crazed watchmaker. His gaze was focused on the strongbox’s lock as if there were nothing else with him in the world. His hands worked feverishly, occasionally bumping his fingers together but never making a mistake. When he needed a different tool, he reached over to where he’d laid the pouch containing them without having to look away from the iron puzzle of gears, latches, and bars. It was another few minutes before the lock budged, every second of which passed without a sound coming from anything besides the horses or the wind. Even the prisoners knew better than to speak up. They’d only known Jake Welles for a short amount of time, but that was enough to be certain they didn’t want any of his undivided attention.

  “Almost got it,” Eli muttered more to himself than to any of the outlaws gathering around him. By the time the final tumbler fell into place, even Cody was staring down at him intently. Eli set his tools aside so he could place both hands upon the lid of the strongbox. With just a few subtle movements, he could tell that gravity was indeed the only thing keeping it closed.

  “Go on,” Jake prodded. “Let’s get a look.”

  One of the prisoners cleared his throat and started to speak, but was cut short when Jake wheeled around to bark at him in a vicious noise that could have been hacked up from a wolf’s throat. Turning back around to look at the strongbox, Jake still resembled more of a hungry animal than a man.

  Shifting so his back was to the wagon and the front of the strongbox was pointed directly at him, Eli eased the lid up so his were the first eyes to see what lay inside. Wincing at what he found, he flipped the lid all the way up so the most possible sunlight was cast into the iron container.

  “What in the hell?” Jake grunted.

  Hank chuckled while nodding with grim self-satisfaction.

  Cody leaned forward and took another longer glance before muttering, “It’s empty.”

  “You don’t think I can see that?” Jake snapped.

  “But…it ain’t supposed to be empty, is it?”

  Jake’s eyes narrowed into fiery slits as he said, “No. It isn’t.”

  Eli picked up the strongbox, felt inside, and then turned it around so he could examine it from all angles. “Maybe there’s a false bottom.”

  “Yeah,” Hank chuckled. “I’m sure that’s what it is.”

  Eli closed his eyes, ran his fingers along the interior of the box, and then did the same for the exterior. When he stood up, he weighed the box in his hands and then let it drop. As he stomped toward the wagon, he passed the prisoners tied to their respective wheels. Although the bound men reacted as if they’d been scalded by hot water, Eli didn’t cast so much as a glance at them. When he emerged from the wagon holding another strongbox, the driver stammered, “I…I tried to tell you before.”

  Once again, Eli closed his eyes so he could weigh the box in his hands using nothing but his remaining senses to tell him what he needed to know. The result he came to didn’t bring him any comfort. “This one’s empty too,” he said while looking to the driver as if the man had just sprouted from the ground. “Isn’t it?”

  “Y…yes. That’s what I m…meant to—”

  The driver was cut short by a laugh that was hacked up from Hank’s throat like a fetid chunk of the previous night’s supper. “Ain’t that just the way?”

  Eli threw the strongbox down with enough force to put a dent into the ground. “I suppose you knew all about this, Hank?”

  “Nope. You’re the big expert when it comes to cracking safes and the like.”

  “And you’re the man we’re supposed to trust when it comes to gathering information. How come you didn’t know about this?”

  “I was told to watch the men piling into that wagon so we’d know how many guns we’d be facing. I did my part.”

  “Yeah,” Cody grunted. “He did his part.”

  Shifting his focus to the simpleminded outlaw, Eli said, “If we need to know about saddle soap or picking our teeth, we’ll ask you. Until then, shut your trap!”

  A single gunshot blasted through the air, causing the prisoners to tuck their heads in close to their chests and the three outlaws to turn while reflexively reaching for their pistols.

  “You all through with your bickering?” the gang leader asked as he holstered the gun he’d just fired.

  Eli turned his back on the others so he could storm back to the wagon and re
trieve one of the two remaining strongboxes.

  “I was talkin’ to you as well, boy!” Jake bellowed. “Answer me or the next shot knocks a hole through your head.”

  “See?” Hank grunted. “He don’t care about anything but himself.”

  “You’re not exactly the charitable type yourself,” Jake pointed out.

  “Maybe not, but I never done nothin’ that cuts into our profits. Someone went through a lot of trouble to put that rolling contraption together and they’ll notice when it don’t arrive in Seedley.”

  Another strongbox hit the dirt beside the wagon, followed by the final one the wagon had been carrying. Eli kicked them aside as he shifted his efforts to the wagon itself.

  Like a single ship that managed to sail straight in turbulent seas, Jake strolled over to the driver and lowered himself to one knee. “There was supposed to be a ton of greenbacks on that wagon of yours,” he said calmly.

  “Yes, b…but…”

  Jake’s hand was still wrapped around his Smith & Wesson and he raised it as if his arm were a cumbersome mechanism attached to his shoulder. “Just looking at that wagon tells me two things. First off, someone with a lot of funding went through a lot of trouble to protect your cargo. Secondly, that cargo must be pretty valuable to necessitate that sort of care. Those things bring me back to my first point.” Thumbing back the hammer of his pistol, Jake snarled, “There should be a lot of money in that wagon of yours.”

  The driver sputtered, but was unable to form any words. When he looked over to the other men that were tied up, the only support to be found was an array of trembling, fearful stares.

  “All right, then,” Jake said as he calmly lifted the pistol to point at the driver’s temple. “If you ain’t any use to me, you’ve got to go. This gang’s already carrying too much deadweight as it is.”

  “I think I found another problem,” Eli announced. “And it’s got to do with more of Hank’s end of the job.”

  Hank made his way over to the wagon, moving every bit like a scarecrow that had been blown off its post to flop angrily through its field. “I’ve had my fill of you! If Jake won’t cut you loose, then I’ll be happy to—”

  “Shut up,” Jake said in a tone that was just as deadly as the gun in his hand. “You were to find out all the information you could about that wagon. Them strongboxes being empty is a pretty big piece of information.”

  “But he’s the strongbox expert!” Hank replied while pointing a finger at Eli.

  With a humorless smirk, Jake said, “Yeah. He opens things that’re locked, which is what he did. What’s your excuse?”

  Just when Hank thought he couldn’t be cast in a worse light, Eli said, “I think I discovered some information myself.” Eli had climbed onto the wagon, hanging on to a post at the front corner that had been used by the shotgunner to get to his spot on the driver’s seat. Hanging there like a monkey on a tree, Eli tugged at a joint where the iron plate was lashed to the post. “Whoever put this thing together wasn’t necessarily rich.”

  “How do you figure?”

  “It’s not a bad job, but any one of us could’ve done it. It’s just a bunch of flattened plates fastened to posts by ropes or rings. There’s some bolts and such here and there. Solid, but nothing too complicated.”

  Nodding as if he were admiring a finely crafted front porch, Jake looked to the driver and said, “Time to stop sputtering and start stringing some useful words together.”

  Once the driver started to speak, he could barely contain himself enough to stop. “I don’t know who put the wagon together, but they made it to withstand a battle. I could’ve driven that thing in the middle of Pickett’s Charge without getting so much as a scratch to show for it. As for those strongboxes, they are supposed to have money in ’em. Just not until after we made our stop in Seedley.”

  “That’s a whole lot of wasted ammunition spent to protect an empty wagon,” Hank said.

  “Our orders were to protect the wagon no matter what.”

  “Why bother when it’s empty?”

  “Because,” Eli said, “if the wagon was taken before it got to Seedley, whoever took it could just ride in and pick up the same money these fellas were meant to get.”

  “That’s right,” the driver said with a nod that made it look as if his head had become unhinged. “The men waiting for us in Seedley are looking for the wagon, not me or my boys.”

  Jake beamed proudly as he looked at Eli. “Always did like the way your mind worked, boy. Is there anything to keep us from taking that wagon the rest of the way into town?”

  “Sure,” Cody said. “We don’t know where in town it’s supposed to go. We slip up too much and we’ll tip our hand.”

  It wasn’t often that the rest of the gang regarded Cody as anything more than hired help. When Jake and Hank looked over at him, it took them a few seconds to realize this was one of those times. “Gotta be a bank, right?” Jake asked. “Where else would have that much money on hand?”

  The driver looked over to the men who’d fired rifles from inside the wagon.

  “There’s more,” Eli said while easing one of his twin .38s from its holster. “It’s written all over your face, so out with it.”

  “We weren’t supposed to go to any bank,” the driver said. “We weren’t even supposed to go into town. We had to stay in the open so as not to be cornered or trapped by anyone like…well…like you.”

  “That plan turned out real good, didn’t it?” Jake mused.

  Shifting his eyes away from the gang’s leader, the driver preferred to look up at Eli when he said, “The place we were supposed to go is a ranch outside Seedley.”

  The next few moments dragged by on leaden feet. Although the outlaws barely moved an inch, they crept in like shadows being cast by a lantern hanging from a moving train. It was Hank who snapped, “What ranch?”

  “Don’t tell him,” one of the riflemen shouted.

  Hank put an end to that one’s protests along with his life with a well-placed shot from his .45. The report echoed through the air, silencing the other men further so they could all hear the last sigh to emerge from the rifleman’s trembling lips. Aiming the smoking barrel at the driver, Hank formed his next two words as if carefully and tenuously sculpting a pile of hot wax. “What…ranch?”

  “The Lazy V.” When the driver said that, he hung his head so as not to look at any of the others tied to those wagon wheels.

  The gears were turning inside Hank’s head. His eye was narrowed as if it was blocking out anything that might interfere with his thoughts. “Even if we find the place, there’s no guarantee we won’t be recognized as soon as we ride in.”

  “That don’t matter,” Jake said. “Just so long as the money will be there. It will be there, right?”

  When the driver hesitated, Eli said, “You’d best answer.”

  “Yeah,” the tired prisoner sighed. “It’ll be there. Leastways, it’s supposed to be there.”

  Jake’s grin widened. “And that wagon will let us get close enough to smell it. Once we catch that scent, it’ll be too late for anyone to do anything to keep us from loading up and rolling out.”

  “There’ll be a whole lot of guns protecting that much money,” Eli pointed out. “That’s a guarantee. And we still don’t know how many men we’re looking to go against.”

  “How many men will be guarding that money?” Hank asked. Since the driver was too rattled to answer, he shifted his gaze to the next closest prisoner. He pointed a pistol at him and snarled, “How many?”

  The prisoner at the other end of Hank’s gun was the same one who’d fired at Eli through the slit in the wagon’s side during the raid. Ever since he’d been pulled from that iron box, he barely had the gumption to lift his chin.

  “Answer me or I kill you right now.”

  Knowing all too well that Hank meant what he said, the rifleman told him, “I don’t know. None of us do. We were just supposed to ride the wagon in where it woul
d be loaded up.”

  “So you’re saying you knew them boxes were empty?”

  “Course we did. We loaded them.”

  “So why all the shooting?”

  “Because that wagon is expensive,” the rifleman said. “It was built special for this ride and more down the stretch. The men who hired us didn’t want anyone else getting their hands on it. Also, they told us to kill anyone who so much as looked cross-eyed at that blasted thing, whether it was empty, full, rolling down a trail, or sitting in a lot.”

  Never one to shy away from asking a question no matter how it might reflect on him, Cody asked, “Why?”

  Always one to revel in pointing out anyone else’s flaws or shortcomings, Hank said, “It’s about fear, you ignorant wretch. It’s why we make sure to knock the tar out of anyone who decides to test their luck against any one of us when we’re in a saloon or somewhere else folks might see. It’s why we ride in, guns blazing, like a pack of wild dogs when we’re coming up to a stagecoach that’s about to get robbed. It’s why we don’t tear down them wanted notices with our faces painted on them whenever we catch sight of one. If folks quake in fear when they see us coming, they’ll be quicker to empty their pockets or do whatever else we tell ’em to do.”

  “Folks are supposed to be afraid of a wagon?” Cody asked.

  It wouldn’t have been the first time Hank struck the simpleminded outlaw, but Eli felt the need to step in before it happened again. “Men like us are supposed to think that iron lummox is too tough to crack,” he said, “or at least not worth the effort.”