One Man's Fire

by Ralph Compton

  “We?” she asked with a smirk.

  Eli nodded. “Wouldn’t you say?”

  “Yes,” she replied in a tone that might not have been heard if not for the calmness surrounding them. “But there’s more than one beautiful thing on this earth.”

  “Maybe, but they all seem to pale since I’ve had you to think about.”

  “I don’t know what I’m supposed to say to that.”

  “Say that you came out here with the sheriff to do more than enjoy a cold winter’s ride.” Eli clasped her hands delicately at first, as if he were holding something precious that would break if he got overly excited or careless. “Ever since I first saw you, I knew I wanted to be anywhere I was close enough to see your face. Before long, I stopped trying to figure out why it happened or how smart it was to act on it. A friend of mine once told me I spent too much time studying the world, and maybe he was right. I notice a lot of ugly things and even more that are just plain and ordinary. When you see so much of that, it gets tedious. Life loses its flavor. Things hurt worse than they should. I ain’t never seen anything like you, Lyssa, and I never felt the way I do whenever I get the honor of looking into your eyes. I don’t much care for an explanation of why it happened or how. I just know that it did and I don’t want to throw it away.”

  She blinked a few times and drew a long breath before saying, “Vernon told me about what you did. How you helped bring in those killers that used to be your friends.”

  “I did it because I wanted to be the sort of man you deserve to be with,” Eli said before he had a chance to think about it. “I don’t know how we’ll pay our way, but it won’t be through me stealing. I promise you that. I put all of that behind me.”

  “You did all of that with the sheriff on account of how you felt when you looked at me?”

  “I know it sounds crazy, but yes. You’re the fire in my chest that made me want to get out of that jail cell instead of rolling over and waiting to be hanged. The fire that made me want to start trying to live. You know what I mean?”

  Lyssa nodded.

  “I probably couldn’t live in Seedley, though,” he sighed. “Not since there are probably still those there who want to see me hanged.”

  “I have family in Colorado. Do you like the mountains?”

  “Never been to the mountains, but I think I’d like them very much. Care to take a gamble on me, at least for the duration of a ride to Colorado? If you change your mind, I can put you on a train to wherever you’d rather be.”

  She nodded again. The gesture gained momentum as tears showed at the corners of her eyes to glisten in the harsh winter sunlight. “I don’t think it’ll be a gamble.” With that, she placed her hands on either side of his face, pulled him close, and kissed him gently.

  It was a kiss that let Eli know he would be warm for the rest of his days.

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  SKELETON LODE

  A Ralph Compton Classic

  Now available from Signet

  Los Angeles, California, March 15, 1857

  “This could be the easiest haul we’ve ever made,” said Arlo Wells. “Three hundred and forty miles back to Phoenix, with the Colorado the only river we have to cross.”

  “I wish I was as much of an optimist as you,” said his partner, Dallas Holt. “I don’t aim to even think about all them miles between here and home. Tonight I’m goin’ to sleep in an honest-to-God bed and eat grub we ain’t cooked in a skillet over an open fire. Tomorrow, after our wagons is loaded with that barreled whiskey, I’ll think about the trail ahead.”

  Arlo and Dallas had begun punching cows in south Texas while in their teens. Finally, after winning a stake in a poker game, they had ridden west and taken up residence in Tortilla Flat, an undistinguished little town near Phoenix. They had invested their stake in a pair of freight wagons and two teams of mules. For a while, their two-wagon rawhide freight line wasn’t much better than punching cows, with unprofitable short hauls to Tombstone, Yuma, or Tucson. But then their luck seemed to take a turn for the better. The owner of Tortilla Flat’s Gila Saloon, Joel Hankins, engaged them to haul two wagonloads of scotch whiskey from the docks at Los Angeles. The journey west took them twenty-one days.

  Morning came all too quickly, and after a breakfast of fried eggs, ham, coffee, and hot biscuits, the Texans got their teams of mules from the livery and set out for the docks. Each loosed the pucker of his wagon canvas and checked out the load. The whiskey came in fifty-gallon kegs, upright and well loaded. The dock foreman presented Arlo with the bills of lading, which he signed.

  “My God,” said Dallas, looking at the bill, “Joel paid near a thousand dollars for these two loads of booze.”

  “Bite your tongue,” Arlo replied. “This ain’t just booze. It’s scotch booze, and it’ll go for six bits a shot, even in Tortilla Flat.”

  Arlo’s optimism seemed justified, for the return took only twenty-one days, too, and there was no trouble to speak of. The partners breathed a sigh of relief as they approached Phoenix, but even Arlo’s confidence suffered a jolt when they reached Tortilla Flat.

  “By God,” said Dallas, “if them boards nailed across the windows and the door mean anything, the Gila’s closed.”

  “That can’t be!” Arlo exclaimed. “What in tarnation are we goin’ to do with all this whiskey?”

  “I reckon we can drink it,” Dallas said gloomily. “Without the money Joel owes us, we’re broke.”

  “Well, hell,” said Arlo, “we might as well find out what’s happened.”

  Jubal Larkin owned the combination livery and blacksmith shop, and having heard the wagons coming, he had stepped out into the dirt street. Arlo and Dallas reined in their teams and it was Arlo who stated the obvious.

  “The Gila’s boarded up.”

  “Yep,” Jubal said. “You fellers wasn’t gone hardly a week. Joel didn’t open up, and I went to see about him. Found him dead in his bunk. The doc came, rode out from Phoenix, and said his heart just called it quits. Sheriff Wheaton done some askin’ around, and decided old Joel either didn’t have no living kin, or they was so far away, he’d never find ’em. So we buried him behind the Gila.”

  “I don’t aim to speak ill of the dead,” said Arlo, “but he’s left us in one hell of a mess. We hauled these two wagonloads of whiskey all the way from Los Angeles, and now we got nobody to pay us.”

  “Anything owin’ on the whiskey?”

  “Not that we know of,” Arlo said.

  “Then you can claim the whiskey for charges owed,” said Jubal.

  “That makes sense,” Dallas said, “but what are we goin’ to do with it? We’ll have us a shot on the Fourth of July and at Christmas. This would last us five hundred years.”

  “Sell it,” said Jubal. “Open up the Gila and sell it across the bar.”

  “It ain’t our saloon,” Arlo answered.

  “It could be,” said Jubal. “Joel owned the place and the patch of ground it’s on, but Sheriff Wheaton says it goes for taxes at the end of the year if somebody don’t pay.”

  “We can’t pay, either,” Dallas said.

  “It ain’t but twenty-five dollars,” said Jubal, “and you got seven months to get the money together.”

  “I don’t know, Jubal,” Arlo replied. “I reckon we’ll have to talk to Sheriff Wheaton, if we got to claim this whiskey. You got a couple of horses and saddles we can borrow? I’m fed up to the eyeballs with jugheaded mules.”

  “Sure,” said Jubal. “I wish you’d consider takin’ over the Gila. Hell, all Tortilla Flat’s ever had was my livery, Silas Hays’s general store, and the Gila. Scratch the Gila, and one-third of our town is gone. I bet Silas will grubstake you until you can afford to pay.”

  “I’m not promisin’ anythin’ until we talk to Sheriff Wheaton,” Arlo said.

  Tortilla Flat was twenty miles east of Phoenix and ten miles north of the Superstition Mountains, and the main str
eet was its only street. It had no sheriff, and that accounted for the Gila Saloon’s popularity among the cowboys and miners of Gila County. County sheriff Harley Wheaton secretly approved of the arrangement, because it kept most of the hell-raisers out of Phoenix. He never bothered riding to Tortilla Flat for anything less than a killing. Now he listened as Arlo and Dallas explained their circumstances.

  “Way I see it,” he said, “you’re entitled to the whiskey. That’s a hell of a lot of firewater. What do you aim to do with it?”

  “I reckon we’ll sell it,” said Arlo.

  “By the barrel or by the drink?”

  “By the barrel,” Arlo said. “Why?”

  “You could make ten times as much sellin’ by the drink,” said Wheaton. “For the tax money you can pick up the Gila. Why don’t you do that?”

  So the two itinerant cowboys sold their freight wagons and mules, bought a pair of horses and saddles, paid the taxes, and went into the saloon business. They knew nothing about the running of a saloon, but they found it required little skill to slop whiskey from a barrel into a glass. What they did understand—and what required considerable skill—was gambling. They put their profits back into the business and added a second floor to the building for living quarters. Soon Tortilla Flat’s Gila Saloon became a mecca for gamblers, and Arlo and Dallas seemed set for life—until that fateful night in April 1859.

  “You slick-dealin’, tinhorn bastard!”

  The grizzled miner kicked back his chair and went for his gun, but he didn’t have a chance. The gambler in the derby hat palmed a derringer, and it spoke just once. The miner’s chair went over backward and the gambler made a break for the door, but a hard-flung chair caught him in the back of the head. He fell facedown on the sawdust floor, and half the miners in the Gila Saloon piled on top of him. The rest began throwing bottles and glasses and shooting out the hanging lamps. The proprietors fought their way out from behind the bar, Arlo with a four-foot-long wooden club and Dallas with a shotgun. They were immediately beaten senseless, and the brawl went on. Some of the struggling men shrieked as flaming coal oil from the shattered lamps set their hair and clothing afire. The exploding lamps splashed oil on the resinous, pine-paneled walls, and the flames soon took hold.

  Dallas sat up, coughing. The place was filled with smoke, and even though he couldn’t see the flames, he could feel and hear them. His and Arlo’s days in the saloon business were coming to an ignominious end. His head hurt, and when he mopped the sweat from his eyes, he found it was mostly blood. He felt around and got his hands on a full quart bottle of whiskey. It would serve as a club, if he needed one. Then it dawned on him that the fight was over. Not only had the dirty sons of bitches destroyed the saloon, they’d left him and Arlo to the mercy of the flames. Where was Arlo?

  “Arlo!” he shouted.

  There was no answer. Dallas knew Arlo wouldn’t have deserted him. His friend and partner must still be somewhere in the burning saloon. He suddenly remembered that the money—what little they had—was in the upstairs office! Could Arlo be up there, overcome by smoke? On hands and knees, Dallas began crawling toward the stairs, keeping low to the floor, where the smoke wasn’t as dense.

  “Dallas?”

  “Over here, Arlo.”

  “I ain’t run out on you, pard,” said Arlo from the stairs. “The Gila’s a goner, but I didn’t aim for us to lose our last dollar along with it.”

  Dallas got shakily to his feet, and the two men headed for the back door. Just as they reached it, part of the ceiling caved in. The gaping hole created an updraft and the flames roared to new life. Dallas and Arlo made their way around to the front of the saloon, to what passed for a main street. A crowd—as much of one as Tortilla Flat could muster—had gathered to watch the fire.

  “Look at ’em,” growled Dallas. “Like a flock of damn buzzards, all waitin’ for somethin’ to die.”

  Tortilla Flat couldn’t claim more than fifty souls within riding distance, but twice that number now gathered before the burning saloon. In the light from the fire, the partners saw that the now dead gambler and the miner he had shot had been dragged from the burning building.

  “Mighty considerate of you folks,” said Arlo, “draggin’ them dead hombres out, but leavin’ me and Dallas in there to roast like Christmas geese.”

  “Them as lives by the sword dies by it,” said Old Lady Snippet, who despised drinking, gambling, fighting, and men in general.

  Somebody laughed, and she took that for encouragement.

  “The Lord works in mysterious ways,” she said, loudly jubilant, as though the Almighty had wrought the very vengeance she had called down.

  Arlo and Dallas had kept their horses and saddles at Jubal Larkin’s livery during the two years they’d owned the saloon.

  “We might as well go out to your spread and settle up,” said Arlo to Jubal, who now stood beside the partners, looking at the wreckage sadly. “I reckon we got two hundred dollars.”

  “Just call it even,” Jubal said. “It’s my way of helpin’ a little. Hell, we might as well fire the rest of old Tortilla Flat too. With the Gila gone, there won’t be enough business to sneeze at.”

  “Jubal,” said Dallas, “thanks to them two dead hombres, Sheriff Wheaton will be looking for us to answer some tough questions. We’ll be out at Hoss Logan’s cabin for a while till we can scratch up some money for wagons and mules.”

  “Back to the freightin’ business, then?” Jubal asked.

  “Hell of a lot more secure than runnin’ a saloon,” replied Arlo. “Nobody’s ever burnt our wagons down.”

  The partners saddled up and rode out, Dallas astride a black stallion and Arlo on a sturdy gray. They had taken their gun rigs out of their saddlebags, and each of them now wore a tied-down Colt on his right hip. Arlo stood six four without hat or boots, and weighed near two hundred pounds, none of it fat. Dallas matched him so nearly the difference wasn’t worth arguing. Dallas’s broad-brimmed, flat-crowned gray Stetson was tilted low over his smoke-gray eyes. His hair was crow-black, curling down to his ears. Arlo’s Stetson was the deep tan of desert sand, its three-cornered brim roll pointed to the front, with a pinch crease in the high crown. His hair was mahogany, and his dark brown eyes were flecked with green. Both men wore brown Levi’s, flannel shirts, and scuffed rough-out high-heeled boots. Arlo would be twenty-three his next birthday, while Dallas was a year younger.

  Henry Logan, known far and wide as “Hoss,” had a cabin near Saguaro Lake, a few miles north of Tortilla Flat. For twenty years Logan, accompanied by a mute Indian called Paiute, had prospected the Superstitions, confident that one day he would find the gold for which the Spanish had searched in vain. He was often away for weeks or months at a time, returning only when starvation nipped at his heels. When Arlo and Dallas had first ridden into the territory, they had stopped at Hoss Logan’s cook fire for a meal. A friendship developed, and the old prospector invited Arlo and Dallas to bunk at his cabin whenever their travels took them through his land. Once Arlo and Dallas had begun to earn a little money, they had often grubstaked the old man in his futile search for gold.

  “Hoss has been out since before Christmas,” said Dallas. “I hope nothing’s happened to him.”

  “He’s spent so many years in the Superstitions,” Arlo replied, “I don’t believe even the Apaches would bother him.”

  They found the three-room cabin neat and undisturbed. There was wood for a fire and a tin half-full of coffee beans, but little else.

  “My God, it’s quiet out here,” said Arlo. “It’s somethin’ a man don’t appreciate until he’s killed two years listenin’ to drunks cussin’ one another, bottles and shot glasses rattlin’ and cards slappin’ on the table.”

  “You talk like an hombre whose gamblin’ days are behind him,” Dallas said.

  “We rode out of Texas five years ago,” Arlo reminded him, “and we been livin’ hand to mouth ever since. Don’t you ever hanker for somethin’ better?”


  “Yeah,” Dallas replied, “but what choices have we got? Fence-ridin’ cowboys at thirty and found? Our own ten-cow rawhide spread, sixteen-hour days, and not even enough money to buy a sack of Durham? We been starved out of the freight business and burnt out of the saloon business. Pard, there ain’t a hell of a lot left.”

  “Maybe old Hoss has the right idea,” said Arlo. “You look for gold, and even if you never find it, there’s always that hope. We don’t even have that.”

  Arlo and Dallas rose at dawn, had their coffee, and by midmorning were thoroughly bored. But it didn’t last long. Shortly before noon, to the surprise of neither of them, Gila County sheriff Harley Wheaton rode in.

  “Step down, Harley,” said Dallas, “and come in.”

  Clearly, Harley Wheaton didn’t relish the times when duty demanded he straddle a horse. A big man, he weighed more than he could comfortably carry. He was gruff and outspoken, but friendly enough, for a lawman. He followed Dallas into the cabin, and eased himself down on a three-legged stool with a sigh. Dallas and Arlo sat on the bunks.

  “I reckon you gents know why I’m here,” said Wheaton. “I got nineteen different versions of what happened last night, and I got to add yours to the pile.”

  “It ain’t complicated,” Arlo said. “Gambler shot a man, the dead man’s pards bashed in the gambler’s head, and then the varmints burnt down our saloon. End of story.”

  “I don’t reckon you knowed the gambler, then?” asked the sheriff.

  “If you’re suggesting he might have been a house dealer,” Arlo said, “the answer is a definite no.”

  “Me and Arlo dealt for the house,” said Dallas, “and in all the months we had the Gila, nobody ever caught us slick-dealing.”

  Arlo cast him a warning look, and the sheriff laughed.

  “I reckon,” said Wheaton, with a sigh that might have been regret, “you ain’t plannin’ to rebuild the Gila.”

  “With what?” Arlo asked. “We put everything we had back into the place. You ain’t aimin’ to make it hard on us because of the killings, are you?”