One Man's Fire

by Ralph Compton

  “I ain’t a child!”

  “Then stop acting like one. At least a child has an excuse for not knowing how things work. A grown man should have his eyes open well enough to see that nothing happens because of a greater good. Nobody lives or dies because they deserve to. And there’s no guarantee you’ll live to see the next sunrise. That goes for everyone no matter how young, old, good, bad, sweet, or surly they may be. You can’t believe you were about to be gunned down because you can’t imagine such a thing happening for no good reason. Well, I can! I’ve seen men shot like animals for no reason at all. Sometimes the reason is just that the man doing the shooting likes the way a gun feels when it goes off in his hand or enjoys the sight of blood.

  “Those men who had us were going to kill you. They found that bit of money you had and got it into their heads there was more. The more you would have tried to convince them otherwise, the more they would have beaten you to get the answer they were after. And if they didn’t get the answer they wanted after a while, they would have started hurting you just because you’re a lawman! Why would you bring that to their attention?”

  “Thought it might help,” Saunders said earnestly.

  “Because you think any reasonable man should step in line if a man with a badge asks him to.”

  “Zack seemed ready to deal. I could have talked him into something sooner or later. Before we got too far down a bad road, at least.”

  “Maybe,” Eli said. “But that one, Eddie, would have found a reason to gut you, and them others that were too yellow to show their faces would have gone along with him. It’s a sad, ugly fact that most men are just looking to be led. If they’re already riding with ones like Eddie and Zack and Robert, you can plainly see where they want to go.”

  “They would’ve found the badge eventually.”

  “Yeah, but you had to rub it in their faces. What I was talking about before meant you would have been killed, Vernon! And it would have been an ugly death.”

  “That why you came back, then?” Saunders asked. “To spare me that ugly death?”

  “I didn’t come back because I thought I made a mistake. I came back because I had a change of heart.” Eli took a deep breath and spoke as if to someone only he could see. “I got away, free and clear, and started thinking about what I wanted to do with my freedom. You wanna know the first genuine prospect that came to mind?”

  Through a knowing smirk, Saunders replied, “Lyssa Beihn?”

  Eli seemed genuinely taken aback. “That’s right.”

  “See, just because we don’t both see the same things, it don’t mean one of us is blind.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “So you really have it bad for her, huh?”

  Eli cast his eyes in another direction. Since his horse was nearby, he decided to walk over and make sure it was ready for the ride ahead. “I want to go back to her, even though I honestly don’t know what I would do once I got there. I’m a man who’s spent too much time thinking about how things truly are and what truly needed to be done. Romantic interests don’t really figure into all of that.”

  “They rarely figure into any man’s plans. I never woke up to see I was with the wrong woman until the right one came along. Now, there’s a sticky situation!”

  Eli grinned and shook his head. “I don’t reckon it was stickier than a man like me coming back to a woman like her with hat in hand. Odds are, she’d turn tail and run after knocking me out with the heaviest thing she could reach.”

  “Or she could see you for who you truly are. Everyone tends to have one or two sorts of things they can see pretty well. She took a shine to you before I thought you had much to offer. Fact is, she’s the one that told me to give you a chance to prove yourself.”

  “Is that a fact?” Eli asked as the wrinkled corners of his cloudy blue eyes pinched in a bit more.

  “It is.”

  When he turned to look back at the creek, Eli seemed several years younger. “When I managed to get away from you and them robbers, part of me was ready to strike out on my own, maybe lie low somewhere or try to meet up with Jake. But that was what I would have done before meeting Lyssa and it’s not what I wanted to show her when I got back. The fact of the matter is that she wouldn’t have wanted me to hand you over that way.”

  “I imagine she’ll think pretty highly of you when she finds out what you did.”

  “I don’t know if she ever will find out,” Eli said. “That’s not the point. What matters is the man I want to be when I see her again. That’s what she’ll see, just as surely as she would have seen a self-serving thief if I went back to her after slipping away and leaving you the first time.”

  “So…you came back to gun down those bandits, nearly get killed in the process, and cut me loose…to impress a woman?”

  Eventually, Eli had to admit, “I don’t know if I’d say it was to impress her per se, but…yeah.”

  Saunders slapped the front of his shirt to get rid of some of the water that still trickled over his chest and said, “I can think of worse reasons.”

  Chapter 19

  They arrived at Mayor’s Crossing several hours behind their original schedule. Some of that time had to be spent riding after sundown, but the sky aided their cause by remaining vaguely illuminated by a warm, purple, and orange glow well past the point when the sun had dipped below the horizon. The last rays of light clung to the Wyoming terrain like spectral hands digging into the jagged rocks and fighting to keep from being swallowed up by a cool, starry night. Still skittish from being picked out of a crowd so easily in the last town he’d been in, Saunders refrained from stepping foot into a hotel. With Saunders having split up what was left of Cody’s money, Eli followed the sheriff’s lead and spent the night curled up in the corner of the stall he’d rented for his horse at a local stable. The liveryman wasn’t keen on the notion, but a bit of smooth talking on Eli’s part got him past his concerns without making the pair seem like anything more than a couple of cowboys that were down on their luck.

  The two men didn’t speak very much throughout that day or night. Instead of it being an uncomfortable silence stretched across several agonizing hours, it was more of a comfortable truce shared by two men who simply didn’t have much more that needed to be said. It was the closest thing to peace that Eli had felt since the last time he’d laid eyes on Lyssa Beihn.

  “Well,” Eli grunted as he shifted and drew in as much hay as he could reach to build something of a nest in one corner of his horse’s stall, “at least I finally got my own room.”

  “And no bars on the door,” Saunders replied from the other side of the wooden wall separating the two stalls. “That’s gotta count for something.”

  Coarse pieces of straw scraped against Eli’s back where his shirt had come untucked and nibbled like annoying sets of teeth at his elbows. Splintered sections of the wall gouged the back of his neck and poked through his shirt to dig into his shoulder blades. There would most certainly be painful kinks along his spine and in his joints to greet him when he awoke the next morning. The air smelled like the wrong end of a horse, and still, Eli was in good spirits as he drifted off to sleep.

  Having arrived with their eyelids drooping low from fatigue, Eli and Saunders hadn’t gotten much of a look at the town of Mayor’s Crossing until they stepped outside to stretch and take a gulp of fresh air the following morning. Judging by all the campaign signs still hanging as a display from two of the four storefronts to be found along a road that led from one end of town to the other, the town had been founded strictly as a stopover for political candidates of the last two elections. One president, two senators, and three mayors had been through those parts, more than likely to do no more than wet their whistles, shake a few hands, and move on to the next real stop.

  The train station was easy enough to find. It was one of the only things on the wide path that could be considered the town’s only cross street. For that matter, Eli figured calling the place a town was
stretching the definition of the term, but he wasn’t there to split hairs. He stood outside the ticket office with his hand resting on the grip of his holstered .38. Eli had to remind himself that not only was his other .38 also in its place at his hip, but both guns were loaded. Saunders was either a man who committed to his character assessments or one of the most wide-eyed optimists there was. Whatever the reason, after their scuffle in the creek the lawman seemed more at ease with him.

  Eli was restless and it had nothing to do with the sheriff. More than likely, this was a spot where one of the other men in the gang might have tried to catch a train if they were headed to or from Cheyenne. Eli didn’t know whether anyone in the gang had left Cheyenne or had any reason to ride the rails, but the slightest possibility that he might cross paths with them had become more than enough to put him on edge.

  “We’re back on schedule,” Saunders announced as he strode from a ticket office that looked like a large, single-story home. “There’s a train due to arrive at noon, which isn’t far from now.”

  “Great.”

  Saunders scowled at the younger man as he slapped a ticket against Eli’s chest. “What are you so glum about?”

  “I’ll feel better once this is over.”

  “So will I. Smells like something’s cooking over there. Care to have a look?”

  It seemed unlikely that there would be any bloodshed at that train station, but if there was, Eli doubted it would matter where he was when the lead started to fly. “Sure,” he said. “Let’s eat.”

  The lunch being served on the other end of the ticket office was an overpriced ham sandwich with a piece of stale cake wrapped in a napkin in a bundle meant for travelers too rushed to find cheaper sustenance in town. What had caught their noses’ attention was a thin piece of steak being cooked by a clerk who wasn’t in a mood to share. Eli and Saunders ate their sandwiches and wolfed down the cake by the time their train announced its arrival with the scream of a shrill whistle and a trail of smoke in the distance.

  The train rattled to a stop at the platform and exhaled a steamy breath or two while men streamed from her sides to gather more coal, wood, or other supplies needed to continue their journey south. Both horses were led up a short ramp into a car with a wide door and a scant amount of hay on the floor. The kid who took the reins couldn’t have been more than thirteen, but moved with the efficiency of someone who’d been doing his job for decades. Eli and Saunders gladly handed over their mounts, handed the boy a little extra for a job well done, and stepped onto one of two passenger cars.

  Eli thought he might catch some sleep while on the train. Although the motion of the car rocking back and forth as it clattered along was soothing, it wasn’t enough to put him completely at ease. With all the thoughts of what could be waiting for them in Cheyenne still rattling inside his head, Eli wasn’t about to let his guard down long enough to doze off. Saunders, on the other hand, didn’t have that problem.

  Less than ten minutes after finding his seat, the sheriff had his arms folded across his chest, his hat down over the upper portion of his face, and his head lolling back and forth to the swaying motion of the car. Deep, grating snores could be heard above the commotion of wheels upon rails, giving a few of the ten other passengers inside the car something to snicker about.

  Just seeing the other folks relaxed and enjoying themselves through polite conversation, reading a book, or playing some sort of game seemed strange to Eli. Mostly, he wasn’t accustomed to riding on trains. Chasing them and eventually robbing them, yes. Not riding in them. Also, he’d gotten so used to an outlaw’s life that it was difficult to recall what it had been like while on the other side of the fence. Most of his days while riding on his own or with a gang were spent worrying about simple things like eating, surviving, staying hidden, and planning the next job.

  Targets needed to be found.

  Threats needed to be assessed.

  Terrain and escape routes needed to be scouted.

  Whatever time he had when he wasn’t doing any of those things was spent watching for the next person that might try to kill him, lock him away, or string him up. That didn’t leave much for reading.

  Eli watched the folks on that train with an alternating mix of scorn and jealousy. They seemed simple and oblivious to him. Sheep that didn’t know they were in the company of wolves. Too stupid to protect what was theirs because of a childish faith in their common man. But they also seemed very fortunate. They got to enjoy their lives without worrying too much about the uglier things. Death would come for them as it came for everyone else, but it would either be a surprise or a slow, natural process. There was very little concern for how badly it might hurt if they got stabbed in the liver as opposed to catching a blade in the leg. For men like Eli, getting shot was a certainty and he could only hope it wouldn’t cost him a limb or make him bleed out slowly like a stuck pig. For the laughing sheep on that train, such thoughts were morbid and peculiar, and for that reason above all others, he envied them.

  “Hey, mister.”

  Although Eli heard the summons from the little girl with the red hair pulled back into twin braids, he stared out the window and pretended to ignore it. His head was aching worse than ever, and pressing his fingers against his temples did little to alleviate the discomfort.

  The child would not be assuaged, and her mother was too distracted by the girl’s younger brother to prevent her from walking down the narrow aisle to climb onto the seat directly in front of Eli. The bench creaked beneath her negligible weight. Iron brackets strained against the tenuous hold of old screws in the floor as she leaned against the backrest and set her chin on top of the seat to stare back at him.

  “Hey, mister!”

  There was no ignoring her, so Eli grunted, “Yeah?” while still looking out the window.

  “Mister?”

  “What?” Catching himself putting more of an edge into his voice than he’d intended, Eli turned to look at the girl who was addressing him. He came from a small family, which meant he hadn’t had much exposure to children after he’d stopped being one himself. Normally, Eli only dealt with them when he was stepping around them on a boardwalk or getting one to quiet down during a robbery. The instant he looked directly at this girl, memories began to rush from the back of his throbbing skull.

  Hank had been serving time in a Missouri jail, leaving Eli, Jake, and Cody to run a few jobs on their own. Without Hank to scout or function as part of the main unit, Eli and Jake had needed to rely on Cody a bit more. That never worked out well, and a simple job to steal a batch of horses from a poorly guarded stable outside Joplin turned out even worse.

  The owner of the stable was a father who came out calling for his daughter, only to find Jake and Cody leading the horses through a door that had been busted from its hinges. On his way to get the drop on the irate man, Eli stumbled across a frightened little girl who’d either tripped or been hiding in a patch of sloppy mud behind a water trough. She looked up at him with wide, tear-soaked eyes while stretching out a hand in hope that he might help her up or get her to somewhere that wasn’t so scary. Instead, Eli had grabbed her arm and walked her over to where her father could see her.

  He had his gun in his other hand.

  Eli had no intention of shooting her or harming a hair on her head. She didn’t know that, of course, and neither did the man who was only protecting what was his when he’d found a bunch of armed men trying to take it. From an outlaw’s frame of mind, Eli had done the right thing. He got the father to drop his shotgun and step aside. Nobody was hurt. The girl was tossed away seconds before the gang rode off with some new horses. Even so, it was a moment that Eli couldn’t forget no matter how much he wanted to. That was the moment Eli had gone from being a hardened man to becoming the thing that hardened other innocent souls.

  It was early in his time with Jake’s bunch and became one of many that solidified his position within the gang. That pleading, petrified look in the girl’s eyes,
combined with his willingness to use her as a bargaining chip, had been one of the first things to tell him he’d ridden too far down the outlaw’s trail to turn back any time soon. From that point on, his headaches had grown progressively worse.

  The redheaded child on the train to Cheyenne might not have looked exactly like that girl, but he saw those petrified eyes on the faces of nearly every little girl that crossed his path since that day. And in the back of his head, lingering somewhere at the edges of what he could hear, there would always be that timid little voice asking why anyone would want to hurt her or her daddy.

  “Mister!”

  “What?” Eli asked with a start.

  The girl’s eyes shifted over to Saunders. “He’s snoring. It’s really loud.”

  “Oh. I hadn’t noticed.”

  Her eyes narrowed in disbelief. “How could you not notice?”

  “You ever have a dog?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did it ever get sick or eat something that made it break wind for a few hours at a time?”

  The girl laughed and looked over to her mother as if she would be in trouble for even listening to such a question. Lowering her head so only the portion of her face above the middle of her nose peeked up, she replied, “Yes.”

  “After a while, you don’t really hear it anymore or smell the stink. It all just becomes part of everything else.” Hooking a thumb toward Saunders, Eli concluded with “He’s a lot like that.”

  It might not have been a valid or an accurate analysis, but it made the girl giggle loudly enough to catch her mother’s attention. The woman looked up from the little boy she’d been tending and said, “Maggie! Get over here this instant! Stop pestering that man.”

  Eli smiled and waved to let the woman know he hadn’t been bothered, but the mother was having none of it. She smiled nervously at Eli and then pulled her daughter close the moment Maggie was within her reach. For the next several minutes, the woman gave the little girl a stern talking-to in a harsh whisper. On the rare occasion that she or the girl accidentally glanced in Eli’s direction, there was more nervousness in their eyes than seemed to fit the situation.