Wildfire

by Ralph Cotton

  Gilley felt the horses settle almost immediately.

  “Thank goodness that’s over with,” she said. She patted the nose of one of the horses as it blew and chuffed and calmed itself down. “These fellows were getting hard to handle, knowing they were on somebody’s menu.”

  “They knew the mama cat wasn’t out hunting them for food,” Sam said, “else you would have had a much harder time holding them.” He let the rifle hang in his hand and turned and patted the barb’s muzzle.

  “How do they know that?” Gilley asked.

  “I don’t know,” said Sam, “but they know the difference.” He turned and looked off farther along the trail they had traveled throughout the day.

  “What is it, Ranger?” Gilley asked, sensing something was troubling him.

  “Something about the cat and her cub,” Sam said. “When I came across her and her two cubs, they were heading the same direction as we are, to get farther away from the fire.” He considered it, then said, “She would have gotten her cubs in a safe lair somewhere quick as she could.”

  “So?” Gilley said, trying to understand.

  Sam looked at her; there was no hiding the concerned look in his eyes.

  “So, what happened to her other cub?” he asked. “And why is this one back out on the move with her?”

  Gilley only stared at him; she didn’t get it for a moment. Then it came to her. She whispered under her breath, “Oh my God, the fire has moved in front of us?”

  “I’m afraid so,” Sam said, attempting to minimize the grimness of the situation as much as possible until he saw how she was going to react.

  “How can we be sure?” she asked.

  Sam gestured with his eyes toward the sky above the trail lying north of them.

  “There it is,” he said.

  She gasped, looking up, seeing the ominous black cloud looming above the purple sky, an orange glow flashing on and off, flickering deep inside it.

  “Holy Mother of God,” Gilley whispered in terror and awe. She turned and stared at Sam, her eyes widened, the campfire light flickering in them. “When—when did you see it?” she asked, as if it made any difference.

  “Only a moment ago,” he replied. He attempted a smile. “But don’t worry, there’s lots of trails and game paths on and off these hillsides.”

  She gave him a critical look.

  “And the fire knows which trails to cover and which ones not to?” she asked.

  “Sorry,” Sam said. “I didn’t want to make it sound worse than it is.”

  “All right, then,” Gilley said. “How bad is it, honestly?”

  “It’s bad, honestly,” Sam said. He turned and walked back to the campfire.

  “Okay, I’ve got that,” Gilley said, hurrying alongside him. “What about turning back?”

  “Can’t do it,” Sam said, staring down into the low flames of the campfire.

  “Catching Cheyenne and his gang means so much that you’d risk your life . . . my life too?”

  “That’s not it,” Sam said quietly. He nodded toward their back trail. “For all we know the fire back there has crossed the rock land by now. If it has, we get there with this fire dogging us from behind, we’re all out of places to run to.”

  “I—I don’t believe you,” she said haltingly. “I think you just don’t want to give up the chase. How can you risk my life like this? You don’t even know if I’m guilty of anything, except delivering horses to the wrong man. It’s not fair. I should have some say in it.”

  “Fair?” Sam said. “How’s this for fair? You’re free to go, if that’s what suits you.”

  “You mean it?” she said, staring at him intently.

  “Get the two horses and go,” he said. He let out a breath and said, “I don’t know if I’m taking the right direction or not. But you’re right, I’ve got no right to take you this way—I might be wrong.”

  She stood staring at him, weighing her chances alone against her chance with him leading the way.

  “Why do you think our best chance is going on toward the trading post?”

  “The wind is down,” Sam said. “It’s been down all night. If it stays down ’til morning, we should get through. The trail runs up along the higher ridges for a ways. Then it runs down and levels off the rest of the way to Bagley’s. With no wind, the fire will stay above the trail.”

  Gilley thought about it and said, “So, the wind stays down, you take the trail right around the edge of the fire?”

  “That’s right,” Sam said. “At least that’s how I’m going to play it.”

  “What if the wind comes back before dawn?” she asked.

  “Then I expect I’ll be dead,” Sam replied. “But that’s the hand, either way. This is how I’m playing it.” He nodded toward the horses. “Notice they still haven’t settled all the way down? Their noses are pointed north. They’re smelling fire.”

  “But you’re still not sure this is the best thing?” she asked.

  “No,” Sam said. He rubbed the campfire out with the sole of his boot and turned toward the horses. “That’s why you’re free to go.”

  She stood watching him walk away in the shadowy purple darkness.

  “Damn it!” she cursed to herself. “I get in trouble every damn time I follow a man—every time I listen to one—every time I even look in one’s direction!” Then she shook her head and hurried along toward the horses.

  * * *

  Carlos Bagley stared out from the rear door of his log and stone trading post along the trail winding southwest across the badlands hill country. Five days ago he’d told himself the wildfires were not going to get close enough for him to worry about. But now he wasn’t so sure, judging by the smoke drifting high up on the wind across the rock chasm. He’d seen his share of wildfire in the past ten years he’d owned his business here on the untamed frontier.

  But nothing like this. . . .

  This hateful, unruly fire didn’t appear to follow any rhyme or reason in the way it moved. Fire was supposed to ride the wind, but not this one. Huh-uh. These fires—because it was more than one now, he reminded himself—seemed to have a mind and will all their own. It was almost eerie. Even in mixed wind, wildfires did as the elements demanded of them. Yet this one appeared to disregard the wind. Its offshoots popped up whenever, wherever it suited them. These fires not only traveled the wind; they traveled cross-wind, and in some cases, it appeared, even against the wind?

  That made no sense, he chastised himself. Yet he wasn’t going to say it wasn’t true, not from what he’d seen these past few days.

  He’d always been able to rely on the wide, barren chasm of rock and sand to keep the wildfires contained. This time it wouldn’t surprise him a bit if the fire managed to find its way across the wide buffer and come knocking on his door. For a silent moment he stood staring blindly, picturing in his wandering mind a large flame walking up in the night, making a fiery fist and rapping insistently on his door.

  That was some picture all right.

  Blinking, bringing himself back into focus, he saw Cheyenne and his men ride into sight. Two rode in front of an open wagon; two rode behind. Their horses moved at an easy pace along the trail that would run a mile past him, then switchback up and head right to his trading post.

  A wagon? Bagley thought to himself, eyeing the procession closely until they rode out of sight behind a wall of land-stuck boulders.

  “Here they come, Dewey,” he called back over his shoulder inside the darkening building.

  “Cheyenne and his gang?” Dewey Fritz called out in reply from behind a bar—a series of long, thick planks laid between beer barrels. Across the bar from him, two dusty horseback travelers gave each other a look and sipped their whiskey. Their rifles lay up on the plank bar top near their gun hands.


  “None other,” said Bagley. “How much goat’s left?”

  “Half or more,” said Dewey. “These men chewed a good hole in it. But there’s enough still for four more hungry souls. Plenty of beans to boot,” he added.

  Bagley chuffed to himself.

  “I wouldn’t accuse Cheyenne and his men of having souls, unless they managed to steal one somewhere.” As soon as he said it, he caught himself and realized he should have kept his mouth shut with strangers standing at the bar.

  One of the two drinkers turned to Bagley and looked him up and down.

  “Did you say the Cheyenne Kid?” he asked in a quiet voice.

  Bagley just looked at him and the other man, eyeing their rifles atop the bar.

  “Who are you two fellows?” he asked, shooting a glance at Dewey Fritz. The bartender caught the subtle signal and reached below the bar for a double-barreled shotgun. He cocked both hammers.

  “Easy, mister,” said the first drinker, hearing the shotgun cock, noting the change in the air. “I’m Lou Elkins. This is Tanner Riggs.” He jerked a thumb toward the other man. Then, instead of placing his hand back down close to his rifle, he rested it on the walnut grip of a holstered Colt.

  “Bounty hunters, are yas?” Bagley asked warily.

  “No,” said Elkins. “But we are looking for the Cheyenne Kid and his men.”

  “That sounds a lot like bounty men or lawmen of some kind to me,” Carlos Bagley pressed.

  “If we were bounty men, or lawmen of any kind, why would I ask you politely if that’s Cheyenne and his gang?” the man said, still calm and quiet. “Why wouldn’t I have already jerked iron and put a bullet in this fool’s head before he could swing that scattergun out of hiding.” He turned a cold stare to Dewey Fritz and added, “I can still do it, far as that goes.”

  “You sure as hell could, Lou Elkins!” said Bagley, a change coming over him as he suddenly recognized both men’s names from his days on the wild frontier. “I expect you or Tanner Riggs, either one, could.” He emphasized their names, hoping Dewey would also recognize them—both men carrying a wide and bloody reputation with a gun. “But I would sure consider it a kindness if you don’t do it. Ol’ Dewey here means no harm. He’s only doing his job. ’Sides, I just scrubbed down these walls less than a month ago.”

  “In that case, I’m going to suggest that you tell Ol’ Dewey here to raise his hands up into sight and stick his fingers in his ears,” said Elkins.

  “I can do that, sure enough,” Bagley said, eager to please now that he knew these two weren’t just ordinary saddle tramps passing by his establishment. He looked at Dewey and said, “You heard him, Dewey. Get your hands up where they can see them. These are good men—friends of Cheyenne and his men, I’ll wager?” He looked to Elkins with his question.

  Elkins only stared at him.

  Without another word on the matter, Dewey raised both hands and shoved a thick index finger into either ear.

  Tanner Riggs let out a short laugh, seeing the large, slick-headed man staring straight ahead with a blank look on his pale, doughy face.

  “Jesus, Dewey,” said Bagley, a little embarrassed, “he didn’t mean it, about sticking your fingers in your ears.”

  Elkins gave Riggs a bemused look; they both grinned.

  “How the hell was I supposed to know?” Dewey said, taking his fingers down and wiping them on his bartender’s apron.

  Bagley shook his head in disgust.

  “Go get some food ready for Cheyenne and his men, Dewey,” he said to the big bartender. “Try to keep your dirty fingers out of it.”

  Dewey walked away grumbling under his breath.

  “You’ll have to excuse my hired help, fellows,” Bagley said to the two gunmen. “All I get to choose from is rubes and lunatics up here.”

  The two looked at him stonily and sipped their whiskey. Outside, the four riders drew closer.

  “Now that I know you’re not bounty hunters,” Bagley said, “I’ll let you both in on something.” He continued in an almost secretive tone. “I’ve got some real fine clean tents for rent out there. Your price, two bits a night. They’ve got cots in them—neither of you has to sleep on the ground.”

  “Our price, huh?” said Elkins.

  “Yep,” Bagley said with a wide grin. “Anybody else, it would be four bits each.”

  “Real clean, huh?” said Tanner Riggs.

  “Fairly clean,” Bagley said, his smile fading. “I’ll guarantee there’s no lice—not enough to worry about anyway.”

  Elkins ignored his words and gestured out the window toward the smoke in the distance.

  “How long’s the fire been burning?” he asked.

  “It comes and goes, but off and on, it’s been burning nearly a month, I’d calculate,” Bagley said. “It was staying farther north along the higher ridgelines. But now it’s getting a little too close to suit me.” He gestured a hand around the shelves of goods and supplies. “I’ve got a big investment here.”

  “Investment . . . ,” Elkins said flatly.

  The two gunmen looked all around in distaste.

  “If the fire took this place to the ground, it’d be doing you a favor,” said Riggs.

  Bagley looked offended.

  “That’s a matter of opinion,” he said, trying to keep the growing anger out of his voice.

  “Yeah, like everything else,” said Riggs. He threw back his drink and set his shot glass down on the plank bar top as Cheyenne, his men and the couple in the wagon reined their horses up to the hitch rail out front.

  Chapter 7

  The wind lay still along the jagged hillsides and ridges like some large sleeping animal as the Ranger and the women rode upward on the winding trail. Yet, as morning grew closer, even as sunlight began to wreath the eastern horizon, Sam felt the first gust of dry, heated wind sweep through the fire above them as if it had been seeking them out.

  “The winds come up quicker than I expected,” he said, looking up the hillside flanking them.

  “You said it would lie down until daylight,” Gilley said, a hint of panic in her tone.

  “I didn’t say it would,” Sam corrected her in a steady voice. “I said if it stays down ’til morning, we should make it through.” He nudged his barb forward, leading the extra horse beside him. “We’ve made it most of the way. There’s no turning back now.”

  “I’m sorry,” she replied, keeping her fear in check, “of course that is what you said.” Gilley settled herself, taking some comfort in the calmness of the Ranger’s voice. But she also read the seriousness in his tone, no matter how he tried to hide it.

  She nudged her horse forward reluctantly, the two of them looking all along the burning hillsides running above them. Orange flames revealed themselves through the looming, charcoal-colored smoke. Even without the winds pressing the fire down toward the trail, underbrush had spread the flames over the ground like a gray, fiery blanket. Ahead of them, they both saw how dangerously close the fire had reached down toward their trail and was moving closer still.

  “It’s getting so hot, Ranger,” Gilley said. “My horse is burning up.”

  Sam saw her press a hand to her horse’s withers.

  “Two more miles, we’ll be out from under it,” Sam said, realizing he was raising his voice to be heard above the roar of the encroaching fire. As he spoke, he reached for his canteen and shook it a little to remind himself it was full. He drew his barb and the spare horse back a step and rode beside Gilley between her and the intense heat. “Here, take this, use it when you have to, some on yourself, some on the horse.”

  “What about you?” she asked.

  “I have another canteen,” Sam said.

  They rode in silence for another ten minutes until they watched a ball of fire t
he size of a house spill off the hillside onto the trail twenty yards ahead. The large, fiery ball exploded in every direction in a spray of sparks, flames, burning brush and timber. The remainder of the mass bounced off the trail and lay strewn, flaming and glowing, down the hillside below them.

  Farther down the cliff, Sam saw part of the fire flash and turn suddenly black; gray smoke quickly rose in the purple darkness.

  “There’s water down there,” he said, quickly glancing behind them, the fire now burning in the middle of their trail. “Get down off your horse,” he said.

  “What? Why?” Gilley asked, even as she followed his order.

  “It’s been burning long enough that trees are starting to fall. It’ll soon be covering our trail,” Sam said, stepping down beside her. “We’ve got to get farther below it.”

  “My God, how’re we getting out of here?” Gilley asked, down from her saddle, her horse beginning to panic as she gripped its reins in both hands.

  “There’s water down there. We’ll follow it down as far as we can.”

  “What about the horses?” she yelled above the increasing roar of the fire.

  “We’ll lead them as far as we can,” Sam shouted in reply. “Follow me.”

  Gilley looked down at what appeared to be a hand-to-hand downward climb over boulder and brush relieved only here and there by a thin rocky path.

  “We can’t lead them down through there,” she said. “They’ll never make it.”

  “They’ve got to make it,” Sam said, leaving no room for debate on the matter. “They know what’s happening here the same as we do. If your horse won’t lead, turn him loose. He’ll go where there’s less heat.”

  “No,” she said, shaking her head. “If I turn him loose he’ll die!”

  Sam just looked at her, but his eyes said it all.

  “Let’s go,” he said firmly, “else I’ll turn him loose right here and carry you over my shoulder.”

  “All right, I’m coming,” she said quickly, jerking on the frightened horse’s reins. “I’m right behind you.”

  She followed the Ranger closely in the grainy predawn darkness as he stepped over the edge of the trail onto the steep, rocky hillside, leading his barb and the spare horse behind him. She was surprised at how the animals had not balked or hesitated to walk over into the dark nothingness that lay beneath them. Was it the firm direction she and the Ranger had taken, or their animal instincts telling them to get away from the fire?