One Man's Fire

by Ralph Compton

  “This would have gone a lot smoother if you would’ve just let me be a partner instead of an appendage!” Eli said.

  “Partner?” Saunders raged as he pivoted on the balls of his feet to snap the back of one fist across Eli’s chin. “I had to see if I could trust you first. And just when I thought I could,” he snarled while clasping his hands together so he could pound them against Eli’s shoulder blade as though he were swinging an axe, “you show me what a mistake that was!”

  That backhand had come at him like the end of a cracking whip, and there was no way short of precognition for Eli to avoid getting hit by it. The second blow landed solidly and drove him down to both knees. Eli’s hands slapped the water to prevent him from landing facedown in the creek, which also reinvigorated him with a cold splash to the face. After getting back up, he took a step forward to drive a kick into the sheriff’s body. He wasn’t concerned with where it landed as long as it put a pained look on the lawman’s face.

  It was all Saunders could do to turn away from Eli and cover himself before that boot landed in the softest of a man’s soft spots. It pounded against his hip instead, weakening that leg just enough for him to lose his footing in the slippery creek. Saunders flopped onto his side, rolled away from Eli, and quickly wound up with his head below the shallow surface of the water. When he stood up again, he could hear nothing but Eli’s laughter.

  “Now, that,” the outlaw said, “was worth all the trouble of getting here.”

  Saunders gasped to pull some air into his lungs and then coughed out the water that had trickled into them. Now that his hair and whiskers were plastered down by the water, two scars running down his left chin to reach a spot near the top of his neck could be seen. They’d been hidden by the whiskers before, and now that they were exposed, the sheriff’s feral side was also more clearly visible. He bared his teeth and rushed at Eli amid a spray of water that was kicked up by his churning feet.

  Eli might have been laughing before, but that changed as soon as he got a look at the wild man in front of him. The shallow water prevented him from moving too quickly for fear of slipping and breaking his neck, which also kept him in perfect position to be nailed by Saunders. The lawman’s charge began similar to Eli’s previous move, but ended in a much different way. Rather than simply knock Eli back, Saunders wrapped him up in a bear hug, lifted him from the water, and then tossed him toward the middle of the creek.

  At the pinnacle of his arc, Eli let out a surprised yelp and flailed his limbs in preparation for what was bound to be an unpleasant landing. He managed to twist himself around somewhat so a hand and foot were the first things to break the surface of the creek. The rest of his body landed heavily in the water, and once he rolled onto his side, he stayed there.

  “Men like you think you can just do whatever you want,” Saunders said as he sloshed through the water toward Eli. “You think the law don’t apply to you.”

  “The law,” Eli groaned with a pained wince, “is just a bunch of rules set by rich men.”

  “I look like a rich man to you?”

  Eli went through the uncomfortable motions of turning his head so he could look at the approaching lawman. “You look like a self-righteous horse’s ass.”

  Once more standing over him, Saunders placed one foot on Eli’s shoulder and shoved him over so the outlaw flopped onto his back. “And you look like a pitiful young man who thinks he’s too good for this world.”

  The only response Eli had for that was to reach out with one hand, grab Saunders’s ankle, and yank it out from under the lawman with enough force to send him straight back into the water. Saunders landed on his backside, expelling all of his breath in a grunting wheeze that left him too crumpled to move.

  “Now,” Eli said in between hard breaths, “you just look wet.”

  After pulling himself up so he wasn’t gulping creek water, Saunders didn’t have enough power in his limbs to do much more than get himself right side up. Sitting in the creek with the water up to his waist, he propped his elbows upon his knees and started to laugh. “Ain’t we just a sight?”

  “Yeah. Jake should be quaking in fear.”

  That got both men laughing for a short while until they started pulling themselves from the water and making the short walk back to shore. Once there, they each went through the process of wringing out what they could. Saunders grunted as he took a seat on a log and pulled his boots off so he could dump the water from them. “So, why take a poke at me after going through so much trouble to pull my fat from the fire?” he asked.

  Eli lowered himself to sit on the ground with the creek on one side and the sheriff directly in front of him. “I got sick of you looking down your nose at me.”

  “First of all, I wasn’t looking down my nose at anyone.”

  “Sounded like you were.”

  “What made you think that?”

  “You get a tone in your voice,” Eli replied without having to think it over.

  Saunders scowled and asked, “A tone? You started this whole scrap because of a tone?”

  “And…you called me boy. I’m not anyone’s boy.”

  “Guess I can understand that,” Saunders admitted. “Makes more sense than a tone.”

  “Depends on what the tone is.”

  Waving away that topic as if he were chasing a fly away from a picnic lunch, the lawman said, “Secondly—”

  “There’s always a second with you, Sheriff. And thirds and fourths.”

  “You gonna let me speak?”

  Eli lowered his head and made a benevolent sweeping gesture with one hand.

  Ignoring the condescending motions, Saunders continued. “I’d like to know what you were thinking when you handed me over to those outlaws.”

  “Oh,” Eli grunted. “That.”

  “Yeah. That. What was that nonsense about? I thought we were on the same page.”

  “Of course you did. You’re a lawman.”

  “What’s that got to do with anything?”

  Having emptied his own boots of water, Eli sat for a moment and gave his legs a stretch before putting them back on. He looked up at small bunches of clouds chasing each other across the wide blue sky and said, “Lawmen all think their words carry more weight than anyone else’s.”

  “Don’t they?”

  “See?” Eli chuckled. “There you go. You may have the law behind you, but that don’t mean everyone else feels like they gotta step in line. You’d think, since you were men before the badge got pinned to your chests, you’d remember what it was like to be part of the rank and file. But whatever your intentions may be, you all feel like you just have to speak loud enough for everyone to agree with what you’re saying.”

  “So you think most folks don’t like to have rules to go by?”

  “That’s not what I said.” Eli leaned forward and gestured with his hands as if he were trying to teach a mule to build a bookshelf. “Rules ain’t a bad thing. The law ain’t bad either. Just because I break laws for a living doesn’t mean I can’t see the value in them. The problem is that lawmen take them as gospel and tend to expect everyone else to give ’em the same weight. Gives you all a holier-than-thou tone to your voice.”

  “You think some of that spite might come from your bad experiences with lawmen who hunt you down and toss you into cages?”

  After pondering that for a few seconds, Eli shrugged. “Could be, but it’s not just that. You heard about Billy the Kid?”

  “Sure. Most everyone this side of the Mississippi has heard of that one.”

  “Why do you think he stayed ahead of the law for so long? What about Jesse James? He and Billy were famous! Everyone had a good idea of where to find them, but couldn’t quite pin them down for a good, long while. Why do you think that is?”

  “Those men got what…” Saunders said in a tone he immediately recognized as the one that had so recently perturbed Eli. In a more conversational manner, he started again. “Both of them met their end fairly r
ecently and neither one was very pleasant.”

  “But they put up an impressive chase after pulling off some equally impressive jobs. Seems like someone with that kind of notoriety shouldn’t be able to poke their noses out without getting them shot off. Men like them two managed to pull off the trick time and again long enough to make you lawmen look like fools, so I’ll ask you again. Why do you think that is?”

  “I’m beginning to see what you mean about that tone,” Saunders groused. “Makes me want to clean your clock again.”

  “It’s because folks wanted to stand behind men like Jesse or Billy more than they wanted to stand behind you,” Eli said as if the lawman hadn’t even opened his mouth. “I met Jesse James once and he had a way of talking to folks that made you want to lend him a hand. The lawmen that came strutting around, setting fire to barns just because they thought he might be in there, weren’t like that at all. It’s a difference in lawmen that makes it seem like they think they’re above everyone else. A man like me, long as we steal from the right bank or keep from spilling too much innocent blood, is just following through on things any honest man would like to see done.”

  “So you and Jake are benevolent champions of the people, eh?” Saunders scoffed.

  “No, but we’re not strutting around pretending to be better than anyone else.”

  “Zack and Eddie seemed to do plenty of strutting without having enough to back it up.”

  “Which is why nobody knew their name or will miss them when they’re gone.”

  Saunders slid his boots onto his feet. “This is all real fascinating. Seems like a way to dodge my original question, though.”

  “Not at all. You asked why I would go against our agreement and I’m trying to make you see why someone might not feel an agreement is worth keeping just because a lawman struck it.”

  “All right, then. How about man to man?” Saunders retorted. “We agreed on our plan and you jabbed me in the back the first chance you got. I tried to show you I meant to stand behind my word any way I could. I stood up for you against those vigilantes. I made sure you were fed properly. I swore to give you a fair shake where your legal troubles are concerned.”

  Ticking off the points one by one, Eli said, “You could have been blowing smoke as far as those promises go. You kept me in cuffs even more than when I was locked up. And you could very well have put those so-called vigilantes up to the task of coming after me just so you could gain my trust by looking like the big hero when you drove them off. As far as I knew, it was all a big hustle just so you could get help in bagging Jake.”

  “You really are a suspicious cuss.”

  “Gotta be that way to survive. To be honest, I thought my best chance of survival was in getting away from you as soon as I had the chance. Even if you did mean to stand behind your word, there’s no guarantee I wouldn’t wind up swinging from the end of a rope anyhow.”

  “All right, then. Why would that bother you?”

  “Why would dying bother me?”

  Without so much as flinching at what should have been an absurd question, Saunders replied, “Yeah. Why would that bother you? Near as I could tell, you seem ready to meet your maker at the nearest possible convenience. There’s a look in your eyes that makes it seem like you’re already dead.”

  Eli didn’t have a word to say. Instead, he got to his feet and used one hand to wipe off his face before putting his hat back in place.

  “I saw it when you were staring down the barrel of that gun back at the Lazy V before I bushwhacked you. You were ready to die.”

  “How could you see my eyes?” Eli asked. “You had to sneak up behind me.”

  “I got a better look than you know,” the lawman told him in a quieter, almost haunted voice. “I’ve seen plenty of others in similar situations and there’s a desperation that sets in to keep them alive. I’ve felt it myself on more than one occasion and I haven’t seen it in you until the moment you rode back to burn those robbers down.”

  “There it is again,” Eli grumbled. “Lawman who thinks he knows everything there is to know.”

  Without rising to the bait that was being offered, Saunders said, “There’s a fire inside you, kid, and it ain’t the good kind. It’s something that’s burning you up. Eating you alive.”

  The smirk Eli had put on a few moments ago didn’t last long. It dropped away, leaving only the wet, tired face of a weary man. “Everyone fights to stay alive, like it’s something so great. You walk into any saloon and you’ll see folks trying to do anything but face what life’s got in store for them. You think anyone drinks because the liquor tastes good?”

  “Wanting a respite is one thing. Wanting death is something else, Eli.”

  “We’re all gonna get there sooner or later.”

  “If you’re so resigned to it,” Saunders said, “then you could have allowed that lynch mob to take you. Or you could have ridden into any number of bullets being fired at you while you rode with the Jake Welles bunch.”

  “Maybe I just don’t want to give lesser men the pleasure of bringing me down. I want to go out on my terms. Not at the whim of any lawman and not dangling at the end of a noose while half a town watches.”

  “Usually a hanging gets a better turnout than that,” Saunders scoffed. “There’s something else behind that look in your eyes. I may just be a self-righteous lawman, but I seem to be the only one that gives a damn about whether you live or die.”

  Eli sighed, stared at the creek for a few moments, and said, “I ain’t exactly healthy.”

  “Ain’t a lot of us that are.”

  “No, I mean there’s something wrong that even the doctors don’t know much about. I get headaches, sometimes bad enough that I can’t see straight. Sometimes I feel healthy enough to wrestle a bull by its horns. When I don’t, it feels like my head’s about to blow off my shoulders.”

  “You try some kind of medicine?” Saunders asked.

  “Tried them all. Once I got sick of feeling dizzy from laudanum or whatever else the doctors threw at me, I just had to learn to live with the pain. That was right around the time I decided to put all of that nonsense behind me and do what I pleased.”

  “So you indulged in some diversions of the guns blazing variety?”

  “Yeah,” Eli said. “Something like that. Sometimes I barely have the tolerance to hear a pin drop.”

  “You never seemed so bad to me. Guess that does explain why you were so squirrelly when it came to that talk of the fever that swept through the Lazy V.”

  Shuddering at that particular memory, Eli said, “I’ve had some practice in dealing with the misery. Serves me well knowing I won’t have to put up with it much longer. Doctors say I could drop over dead at any time, and mostly that doesn’t sound so bad.”

  “So you’ve had it rough. You found out you were sick and ran afoul of someone wearing a badge in wherever you used to call home. Is that why you decided to ride with killers and steal for a living?”

  “I don’t have to explain myself to you.”

  “You’ll have to explain yourself to someone sooner or later.”

  The laugh that churned inside Eli was dry as a desert breeze and twice as harsh. “You can spare me the spiritual talk.”

  “All right, then, explain yourself to me. It’s the least I deserve considering what you must know were earnest attempts to keep you from swinging. I understand why you wanted to get away. I figured you’d try to do as much sooner or later, which is why I was watching you like a hawk. But why go on about all that nonsense with the bounty money that was supposed to be back in Seedley? Surely Zack and the rest of them would have found something else to go after sooner or later. You had them hooked without giving them some false treasure to chase.”

  “Wasn’t about giving them anything,” Eli grudgingly explained. “It was about keeping you alive.”

  “Oh, now, that’s rich!” After he’d stomped over to his horse and checked to make sure the saddle was buckled tightly, S
aunders turned back around to find that Eli hadn’t moved from his spot. “You seriously expect me to believe that?”

  “I do, because it’s the truth.”

  “And just how does that keep me alive? If anything, all that did was get them worked up about some fat bunch of money that wasn’t there. Money, let me remind you, that they all but needed me with them to get.”

  “Right,” Eli said. “The idea was to make you more valuable as a hostage because the alternative was…well…you wouldn’t have liked the alternatives much.”

  “Now who’s the one who thinks they know everything? You were tied up right there with me until you started spouting off about all that horse manure.”

  “Do you have to know another lawman for years to know what might be passing through his mind?” Eli asked.

  “No, but that’s different.”

  “Not as much as you’d like to think. Just different sides of the same coin, is all. I’ve ridden as an outlaw or with them long enough to know what those men were thinking. Because lawmen see most outlaws as wild dogs, it’s difficult for you to see such a thing. And because you don’t know how a killer’s mind works as well as you might think you do, you weren’t aware of how close you were to dying before I gave Zack and them others something else to think about.”

  He might not have thought about it before, but Saunders took a moment to do so now. Finally he had to rid himself of it by fretting with his horse’s reins. “You made a mistake. I suppose all that matters is that you thought better of it and came back.”

  “No!” Eli barked. He stormed over to Saunders and ripped the reins from his hand quickly enough to give his horse a start. “You weren’t listening before! All that talk when I was trying to explain the difference between you and me. Did all of that go in one ear and straight out the other?”