One Man's Fire

by Ralph Compton

  “Where should I go?”

  Another shot was fired that came a little closer than the first.

  “Just keep moving along this trail!” Saunders shouted as he drew the rifle from the boot of his saddle. “And don’t stop!”

  As more shots sped at them, Eli could tell there was more than one rifle being fired at them. More than that, the men behind the rifles were trying to box them in between two lines of fire that closed in like a set of pincers. In Eli’s personal experience, the tactic worked fairly well. Unfortunately, it seemed to be working pretty well now as well.

  When sending a few quick shots at the plumes of smoke that had arisen to mark the spots where the other rifles were being fired, Saunders wasn’t trying for accuracy but hoping to get those riflemen to let up for a moment or two. More shots blazed from behind that got close enough to whisper in his ear as they passed him by. When he turned to fire at the riders coming up from the rear, more shots from ahead thumped into the ground near his horse’s hooves. The animal reared up and churned its front hooves in the air.

  The sheriff was no stranger to being pitched from a horse’s back. He managed to get his feet out of the stirrups so he could throw himself clear, but it was impossible to do much firing on his way down. His boots slammed against the ground to send a painful jolt through both legs. Rather than try to fire before collecting himself, he staggered away from the trail and dropped to one knee. More gunshots came from farther down the trail. and when Eli’s horse was brought to a halt, Saunders cursed under his breath.

  “You two there!” someone shouted from the trail ahead. “We been nice before. You make one more move and we’ll put you down for good!”

  “Eli?” Saunders called.

  “I’m here.”

  “You hit?”

  “No.”

  “How many are there?”

  After a slight pause, Eli replied, “More than enough.”

  Knowing the outlaw was speaking the truth, Saunders cursed once more and checked his rifle. There were three more rounds he could fire and some spare ammunition in his saddlebags. Whether or not there would be time to reload was a question he couldn’t answer. The Army Colt was at his side, and both of Eli’s .38s were tucked beneath his gun belt. The .38s weren’t loaded, which meant they were useless.

  “We got one of you dead to rights,” announced the man who’d spoken up earlier. “Whoever you are that got tossed off his horse, you should know one of my boys has got you in his sights as well. Ain’t that so?”

  From behind him, Saunders heard someone yell, “That’s right!”

  The lawman didn’t need to see all of the gunmen to know they had him surrounded. Their voices were coming from too many directions and they’d already demonstrated they had the firepower to back up their words. That only left one more factor to determine.

  “You men are barking up the wrong tree!” Saunders said. “We can part ways now and be done with it or we can keep this up until someone really gets hurt. I don’t think you want that.”

  “We know what we want,” the first voice replied. “Hand it over and you two can crawl away.”

  “This has got to be a mistake. We’re just trying to catch a train, is all.” Saunders waited for a reply, but heard nothing apart from a restless breeze brushing against tall grass. Soon he heard a rustling of several sets of boots closing in around him.

  “If it’s a mistake,” the first voice said, “then I’ll be the first to apologize. Until then, you’d best follow your friend’s lead here and give up quietly.”

  Saunders strained his neck to try and get a look at Eli. Not only did he see the outlaw standing beside his horse with his hands raised, but he also picked out three more armed men covering the outlaw with shotguns and pistols. The footsteps were getting closer and he knew there would only be more guns among them.

  Outnumbered.

  Outflanked.

  His only partner wasn’t armed.

  Saunders wasn’t the sort to swear very often, but this had become the perfect day to rectify that.

  Chapter 14

  “You men are making a big mistake,” Saunders growled. He and Eli had been led about a quarter mile from the trail to a spot where some dusty boulders could hide them from anyone else making their way along the main path. They’d been relieved of their weapons and the robbers were poking through their saddlebags.

  There were five robbers in all. At least, that was how many had shown themselves after Saunders was disarmed and trussed up like a steer in a rodeo. They carried an assortment of weapons, all of which could make short work of anyone who gave the bandits a reason to be nervous. The man who’d done most of the talking was clean-shaven and covered in layers of grime that must have come from spending a good portion of the day lying in wait with his belly pressed against the dirt. Judging by the condition of all the others’ clothing, they’d been lying right alongside him.

  “Big mistake, huh?” the lead robber asked. “You hear that, Eddie? We’re making a real big mistake.”

  Eddie was a tall fellow with a darker complexion than the rest of the men. He displayed an incomplete set of yellowed teeth when he smiled and said, “I hear that, Zack. Big trouble.” He turned to consult with some of the other robbers, the rest of which still had bandannas covering the bottom portions of their faces. His filthy clothes were wrapped just a bit too tightly around his midsection to make a rounded gut stick out even more.

  Zack had a round face, framed by a wide-brimmed hat and a bandanna gathered around his neck. His mouth was curled into a twisted grimace that looked as if he were either sneering or had dipped his bandanna into the bottom of an outhouse. “Only real mistake I can see comin’ up is you squirmin’ too much when I search you.”

  “You want to find something interesting?” Saunders snarled. “Pull aside my jacket.”

  “Don’t,” Eli warned.

  Zack immediately went to his right, which was Saunders’s left. “They want to know about their mistake,” Saunders said. “I’m about to show them, is all. Other side, you danged idiot.”

  Still sneering, Zack moved his hand to the other lapel and pulled it aside. Raising his eyes at the sight of the badge pinned to Saunders’s chest, the robber let out a slow whistle. “Well, well! What have we here? We got us a genuine law dog, boys! Maybe we did make a mistake.”

  The remaining robbers all stopped what they were doing so they could step up and take a gander at the sheriff’s tin star, filing by as if they’d paid to gawk at a sideshow freak and showing the lawman even less respect. Zack stepped up again when the others had backed away and handed his shotgun up to a man with a solid build and more hair on his arms, face, and neck than a bear. Even though the big fellow wasn’t wearing a bandanna, his whiskers were covering an equal portion of his features.

  “You ain’t a sheriff around here,” Zack said conversationally as he stuck his hands into Saunders’s pockets.

  The lawman didn’t respond.

  Eli was being searched as well by the one who’d been called Eddie. Since he barely even had any lint in his pockets, the robber was finished fairly quickly.

  “And you ain’t no federale,” Zack continued. “Where do you call home, mister?”

  Saunders kept his mouth shut.

  Considering how widely the sheriff had spread the money he’d gotten from Cody, Eli was surprised it took Zack this long to find the first batch. When the robber did, he pulled out the handful of cash and stuck it in the lawman’s face as if he were scolding a dog by making it sniff its own mess. “See, now? Why didn’t you just give this up when you had the chance?” Zack asked. “Instead, you make us go through all this trouble to chase you down.”

  “Take the money and go,” Saunders growled.

  Zack handed the cash back to the fellow with the thick beard and continued searching. In a matter of seconds, he found the next stack of bills. “Wanna save me some trouble, Sheriff?”

  Not only did Saunders remain
quiet, but he lifted his chin so he could glare at the robber directly while doing so.

  That didn’t go over well.

  Zack closed a fist around the money and pounded it against the lawman’s chin. The impact rocked Saunders back against the boulder he’d been propped against and sent his hat flying. Zack gave Saunders just enough time to collect the blood in his mouth and spit it at him before punching him again.

  “There’s more in his other pockets,” Eli said.

  “Shut yer trap!” Saunders said through a mouthful of blood.

  Everything the lawman could see was eclipsed when the big, shaggy fellow stepped in front of him. Instead of using his fist, the bigger man gripped his shotgun, turned it around, and drove the butt into Saunders’s face. Surprisingly enough, the blunt impact didn’t hurt as badly as the punches he’d been given. Rather than point out how the shotgun hit him flush, Saunders rolled with the blow and allowed his head to hang forward.

  Zack reappeared in front of him and hunkered down near the lawman’s legs. “You gonna sit still for this,” he asked while reaching for one boot protruding from the rope that had been wrapped around the sheriff’s legs, “or does Robert need to beat you into next week?”

  Turning toward Saunders, Eli grunted, “Might as well check his boots.”

  Rather than grab the lawman’s feet himself, Zack stepped back so two of the others could do the deed for him. Both wore bandannas around their faces and pulled as if they fully intended to claim the sheriff’s feet as prizes along with his boots. After no small amount of tugging and squirming, the boots came off amid a flurry of cash. Turning them over brought several delighted shouts from the bandits as they greedily scooped up their prize.

  “Much obliged to you, Sheriff,” Zack said with a tip of his hat. “Now, if you’ll excuse us.” With that, he stepped away so he could confer with the rest of his men. Only Robert stayed behind. Although the bearded man stood a few steps away from the prisoners, he remained well within the range of his shotgun. He didn’t have to say one threatening word for the prisoners to know what would happen if they got any funny ideas in their heads.

  But Saunders wasn’t interested in funny ideas. He barely seemed interested in the armed men surrounding him. Even when he scraped his feet against the ground, he seemed more perturbed by the loss of his boots than the money that had been inside them. “Just when I thought I could trust you,” he grumbled.

  “Excuse me?” Eli said.

  The lawman snapped his head around to look at Eli when he hissed, “You heard me. I stuck my neck out to keep you from getting hanged. I took a gamble on letting you out of that cell so you can clear your name. I even went along with you when you told me to pretend you got over on me in front of that friend of yours with the big head. After all of that, you still gotta chime in and tell these…” He paused before saying the word that was cocked and ready to fire. Even though Robert didn’t seem to be concerned with what the men were saying, Saunders dropped his voice a little more and continued with “Tell these idiots about where they need to look to find what they were after.”

  Eli shook his head in disbelief. “Are you telling me you seriously thought they wouldn’t have found that money?”

  “Maybe they would. Maybe they wouldn’t. All I know for certain is that they found everything they wanted real quickly because of you.”

  “Were you that attached to the money?” Eli scoffed. “Even Jake would have given it up eventually.”

  “How many times do I gotta tell you that I ain’t anything like those outlaw friends of yours? And maybe you’re a bit too much like them than I thought.”

  “Wouldn’t be the first time you were wrong about something,” Eli grunted. After a few seconds passed, he added, “It would have only gotten worse, you know.”

  “What would? Riding with you? No need to tell me that. I guessed as much all by myself.”

  “No. The beatings. They would have only gotten worse. They weren’t guessing about the money. They knew you had it. Why else do you think they went through such pains to stop us?”

  “Maybe they were after our horses,” Saunders offered.

  “Yours ain’t a bad specimen, but mine? That nag ain’t hardly worth the nails holding her shoes on. Any horse thief could see as much.”

  “Then maybe they were just desperados looking to get lucky by stopping whoever they could.”

  Eli shook his head. “They were waiting for us. They had that trail scouted. There were wagons riding ahead of us. Didn’t you see them when we left?”

  “Yeah, I saw ’em.”

  “Then why wouldn’t they have taken their chances with them? More to pick from and easier to stop than two men on horseback.”

  “You’re just so damn smart, aren’t you?” Saunders spat. “It’s just so easy to act like you know everything once it’s already panned out.”

  “I don’t know much about a lot of things, but I know plenty about this,” Eli said in a whisper that sounded as if it tore apart the back of his throat. “It wasn’t so long ago that I was on the other side of these situations. I made my living knowing who to rob and when to rob them. Isn’t that sort of experience why you brought me along for this suicidal ride of yours?”

  Even if Robert couldn’t hear every word that was being said, it was plain to see that he was finding their argument amusing. A wry smirk crept beneath his thick beard without doing a thing to diminish the deadly promise in his eyes.

  “You’ve got your job to do and I’ve got mine,” Saunders said. “Don’t make things harder by stabbing me in the back.”

  Eli fixed his eyes on his feet, which were stretched out in front of him and bound by rope that had been hanging from Saunders’s saddle. “You wouldn’t have been able to do your job when you were dead or busted up too bad to move. Those beatings would have gotten worse, especially since you decided to show them your badge.”

  “I been a lawman for plenty of years. I know what I’m doin’.”

  “Yeah, but it’s clear you’ve done more work with cowboys than true killers.”

  Glaring at Eli with an intensity that was akin to sunlight being concentrated through a magnifying glass, Saunders said, “I’ve strung up plenty of killers and gunned down plenty more. You of all people should know better than to question my backbone in that regard.”

  “I’m not questioning anything, Vernon. I’m just saying you made a mistake by showing all that money back in town. Maybe it was an oversight or maybe it was just a wrong guess, but it cost you. Cost us both.”

  Still somewhat taken aback by hearing the outlaw call him by his common name, Saunders gnashed his teeth and shifted so he was staring straight ahead. The robbers were wrapping up their conference and beginning to disperse. A few words were still trickling in, which kept the group together while they began to drift over to the boulders where the prisoners were being held.

  “Maybe they did know we were coming,” Saunders admitted, “but I don’t know how that could have been prevented. As for showing my badge, it’s like you said with the money. They would have found it on their own anyway.”

  Eli nodded. “You got a point there.”

  Nothing more was said because the robbers had arrived at some kind of consensus and were approaching the boulders with steam in their strides. Robert reflexively stepped aside to let Zack and Eddie move past him. The man with the thick beard as well as one of the ones still wearing bandannas over their mouths took positions on either side of the two pointing weapons at Eli and Saunders.

  “What town you say you were from?” Zack asked.

  When Saunders replied, he did so with his chin held high and his chest puffed out as much as his ropes would allow. “Seedley.”

  To his own men, Zack asked, “Anyone been to Seedley?”

  Eddie nodded. The rest of the robbers shook their heads.

  “They know you’re gone?” Zack asked.

  “Yes, but they’re expecting me back.”

 
“How many deputies you got?”

  Before Saunders could reply, Eli said, “Three, but the sheriff’s been wearing that star on his chest for longer than any of us have been drawing breath.”

  The robbers shifted their attention to him and Zack asked, “Who did you say you were again? One of his deputies?”

  Eli’s laugh came up like a piece of undigested meat. “He was escorting me to some prison up north.”

  The faces that could be seen showed keen interest when they heard that. The men wearing bandannas still showed enough in their eyes for Eli to know he’d caught their attention.

  “What prison?” Eddie asked.

  “How should I know?” Eli said. “All I know is that every town in this territory and at least three others have been plastering my face along with the faces of my gang on every wall that can hold a nail. Yellow-bellied law dogs like this one here have been saving all their pennies to pay out on the rewards being offered. You know that money you found on him today?”

  “Yeah?”

  “It’s meant to be a loan for some other law dog friend of this one here’s so they can pay up if the rest of my gang’s ever rounded up.” Turning to glare at Saunders as if he were about to spit on him, Eli added, “Fat chance of that ever happening. He was lucky to catch me at all. Bushwhacked me from behind.”

  “What’s this gang you’re supposed to run with?” Eddie asked.

  Eli relaxed and squared his shoulders as if he were reclining in a padded armchair. “The Jake Welles bunch. Ever hear of them?”

  This time, when the robbers looked at each other, there was something else reflected within their eyes.

  “Sure we heard of them,” Zack said. “That don’t mean you rode with them.”

  “Rode with them into Missouri last year to cut our way through three banks in as many weeks. Dragged out each safe and busted them open myself.”

  “Everyone’s heard of that run,” Eddie scoffed. “I heard of it too. Doesn’t prove I was there. What’s your name again?”

  “Eli Barlow.”

  More glances were passed back and forth among the robbers. Although he was interested in what was going on, Saunders wasn’t quite ready to step in just yet.