Fire Wind (4 page)

“There maybe that will clean your mouths out
and teach you to leave a man taking a bath alone!” I said with
satisfaction.

I turned to see the Chinaman, who ran the
place, looking upon the whole scene with shock.

“Sorry about the tub.” I said.

“No! No! It okay.” He said, as he dashed
forward and rifled through Doug Stryker’s pockets and came out with
several coins, which he held up triumphantly, “See!”

I nodded, even as I noted for future
reference not to leave loose change in my pockets when I came to
take a bath.

The Chinaman blabbered on excitedly as I
dressed and then abruptly sobered up at a sudden realization, “What
about when they wake up? Big trouble! They come for you!”

I shrugged and said, “They’re welcome to
come.”

Chinaman said pointing to my chest, “You
brave man! Make good Marshal Man, maybe I should…….” He trailed
off, as he made a gesture, as if wringing a chicken’s neck before
pointing to the three metal banded men.

“Wong that would be murder and I’d hate to
have to hang you.”

He shrugged and offered hopefully, “Less
trouble for all?”

Smiling I shook my head no. Adjusting my new
clothes, which fit me perfectly, I slid my feet into my new boots
and slung on my gun belt. “Behave yourself Wong.” I called out as I
left the wash house.

I walked on down the street to the jailhouse.
Looking around the town I wondered for the first time about the key
aspects of my job. Just what did a Marshal do?

Such as what was in my authority to do and
how far did my jurisdiction extend from the town?

A host of other questions suddenly plagued my
mind and troubled I headed on into the jail. I walked in only to
see Edgar packing his stuff up.

“All done with the funeral?” I asked.

Edgar looked up guiltily, but I didn’t overly
care now about how I had been fooled into accepting this job.

“Are there any books on law or the such in
the town?”

Edgar blinked in surprise and then gesturing
to the desk he said, “Yeah I think there’s a couple of books in one
of those drawers.”

“Thanks.” I said going to the desk.

Edgar went back to packing up, but after a
moment he went back to watching me as I cracked open one of the
dusty books from the bottom drawer. After a while he went back to
packing.

He was all but out the door with his stuff
when he came back to the desk and laid something on it. Breaking my
focus from the rather boring treatise on law I saw that it was a
badge that he had laid down.

There was still blood on it. Edgar backed
away silently and went out the door and closed it.

I looked from the badge to the boring book of
laws in my hand. I dropped the book back in the drawer and rooting
around I came out with a Bible that reminded me of the one that my
mother had read from.

Fingering its worn edges I snorted absently
in disgust. I hadn’t even been sworn into office as Marshal over a
Bible as the custom was to do. Such inattention to detail spoke a
great deal as to how long these people expected me to survive as
Marshal.

I cracked the Bible open and read for a
while. It had been a long time and I found myself absorbed into the
stories that I’d heard read to me by my mother.

It was evening when I stepped free of the
jail. Time to make my evening rounds. I smiled hollowly at the
reality of how I of all people had been elected to the position of
keeping the peace.

I made my way past people enjoying the cooler
air and received cordial hellos and introductions, which I
responded to in kind. I kept the conversations to a minimum and I
revealed as little about myself as possible.

If these people only knew half of what I’d
been caught up in. That didn’t matter in the here and now.

I needed a horse and some money and while I
was at it I would do my best to be the Marshal this town needed. My
life had no real direction or purpose to it so why not do something
meaningful and risk my life in the protection of others from the
rougher element of humanity such as myself.

A wolf guarding the flock from danger so to
speak. I’d never fit in with the pack anyway. I’d always been a
loner.

In the world of wolves they had a name for
such a loner, lobo. If a pack of wolves came across a lobo wolf
they would do their best to kill it, but lobo wolves didn’t go down
easy. There was always the chance that the lobo wolf might kill the
alpha male and take over the pack.

In the end it was usually best to just leave
the lobo wolf alone, but men like wolves were always challenged by
those few who didn’t adhere to the law of pack mentality that the
majority of individuals found themselves constantly bound up
in.

They should try being out on their own more,
I mused absentmindedly. They might take a liking to it.

The town was already shaping up for me into a
visual representation of hierarchy. There was at least one roving
pack on the fringes of the herd represented by Doug Stryker.

There were likely others, maybe even a few
lobos.

The herd in town was more complex. You had
those filling their faces over at the café content to be led
wherever the best grazing was to be had. Then you had the store
owner Angus that kept to himself like a lone bull content to let
another boss the herd, while possessing of all perhaps the best
attributes for leadership.

Thaddeus the blacksmith featured himself to
be the he-bull, but he lacked the mental capacity to lead the herd
well and the town as a herd seemed well led. So who was the unseen
hand directing the course of events?

Edgar? I doubted it instantly. He had
intelligence, but he was more interested in discovering the story
than writing it.

There were a lot of people I hadn’t met yet
and I had no doubt that the pieces of the puzzle would fill in with
time.

Stopping my walk I listened to the sounds of
music on the night breeze. Surprisingly it wasn’t coming from the
dance hall saloon just up the street from me. I turned down the
side street beside me and the source of the sound became clear as I
saw a small church, which had light streaming from all its
windows.

It was Wednesday. I turned back as I
acknowledged that the town had a significant element of faith to it
to be going at it like they were on a weeknight.

Reaching main street I noticed I was beside
the general store. It was closed, but the hours indicated that it
closed early on Wednesdays. Angus therefore no doubt was a part of
the church fellowship.

It only confirmed what I already thought of
the man. The preacher very well could be one of the leaders of the
community as was often the case in small towns.

If he was though he wasn’t favored by the
main headship, as he would’ve been involved in the hiring process
and I no doubt would’ve been sworn in over a Bible. I stopped as I
thought deeply for a moment, Angus hadn’t been involved either and
I felt very sure that Thaddeus hadn’t had the bright idea or the
clout to make such a big decision on his own.

I started walking again, maybe I was
overthinking it all. But the more I thought about it my hiring
seemed to originate from the darker element within the town.

No one knew anything about me. So who would
leap at the opportunity of hiring a recovering snakebitten
individual?

Someone who expected me to be an easy target
for execution if need be. I was also a man without money. Nodding
to myself I made a mental note to keep track of whoever was the
first to offer me money in order to look the other way.

I stopped, as I felt that I was the source of
someone’s focused gaze. Slowly I turned to face a shadowy form
alongside of some barrels.

“Glad to see that you made it!” The shadowy
figure said rather jovially.

“What is going on?” I asked roughly, as I
stepped up to the old indian from the desert.

I would’ve grabbed a hold of him, but well, I
wasn’t sure that was a good idea. He had after all disappeared on
me before and then there had been that freak thing with the lights
that floated on air. Then the freak sandstorm when I tried to go
south instead of west. Then…….”Did you sick that snake on me?” I
asked, as the question dawned brightly in my mind.

“No my friend.” The old man said completely
serious.

“You’re not my friend!” I affirmed
roughly.

“Perhaps I am not, but then again perhaps you
will find the need to have a friend. Taran things are not what they
seem.”

“How do you do that? How do you know my
name?”

“It has long been prophesied among the indian
people that you would come and now you have.” The old man said with
a smile before he turned and started to walk away.

“What did you mean that everything isn’t what
it seems?” I asked a little desperately.

“This place is a gateway Taran.”

“A gateway for what?” I asked puzzled, as to
me this was nothing but a backwater town of little importance to
anything.

“Not so Taran. You would do well to continue
looking for what lies hidden. That which is done in secret can’t
bear the light of day and things done in darkness bear no good deed
to mankind.”

“Evil? A gateway of evil?” I clarified and
smiling the old man nodded approvingly, as if rewarding me for
being a good student.

At a loss I asked, “What kind of evil?”

“All kinds Taran. You would do well to read 1
Timothy 6:10 in your Bible back at the jail.”

He began disappearing and stepping forward I
grasped a hold of nothing but air. I spun around, but nothing
moved. The old man was gone.

A Bible verse? What indian knew enough of the
white man’s Bible to reference Scripture? This one apparently.

Spooky. The whole disappearing thing, how he
set me up with helping a woman that didn’t even exist, and now this
town. What was he up to?

What did he have to gain in all of this? And
why was he pointing out Bible Scriptures to me and speaking of
great evil? A gateway of evil?

Shaking my head I headed toward the building
that I expected would be the source of most of my grief as a
marshal, the town’s dance hall saloon. Combine whiskey and women
and you had a recipe to turn the tamest of men into a bull on the
prod eager to tear down and destroy anything that got in his
way.

The sound of the laughter of women and the
notes of a terribly off key piano reached out to clamor against my
nerves. I had no love for saloons or the women they offered.

I preferred to do my drinking in private and
as for women……… it had been a long time.

*****

My hands closed over top of the batwing
doors, as I stared into the festive scene of the saloon beyond.
Thaddeus was there, but not Edgar. That was good to see. I didn’t
know why, but it just was.

Things were beginning to add up and the old
man, indian or not, had taken the high road with me. In fact I
didn’t think that I’d be alive right now if not for his
intervention at the cave.

Intervention from what I did not know, but
the fact remained that he’d been a friend to me. His appearance
just now out in the street surely couldn’t be coincidental, when in
fact, he had halted my approach to the den of wickedness inherent
to every city of man.

If God was behind all the strangeness that
had suddenly come to full bloom in my life then surely He’d made a
mistake this time in order to send a messed up case like me into a
situation that needed fixed. Funny how my mind leapt to the fact
that God must be involved somehow.

I pushed on into the bar and immediately
became the focus of all eyes. It was a new experience for me.

I was always looked on as a threat, but never
had I felt such instant hatred by so many. The silver star on my
chest carried a weight of its own.

I made my way off to the side and sat down at
an empty table and the barroom scene soon picked back up into the
usual ebb and flow of a night dedicated to the usual
debaucheries.

A barmaid came close to my shoulder and
leaning in close so that my cheek almost grazed her mostly exposed
chest she asked softly, “What can I be getting yuh handsome?”

Her overuse of perfume was on the verge of
choking me and I didn’t care for the much groped view she offered.
I raised my eyes to hers and all the false joviality fell from hers
as her face reflected the need to escape from the unknown that I
represented.

“Whiskey.” I said flatly.

She nodded and hurried off quickly.

Thaddeus sat down heavily at the table beside
me. His face was flushed from drinking and his demeanor was even
more jovial than earlier in the day. He was the happy drunk version
apparently.

“How did the funeral go?” I asked
casually.

He blinked at me before responding, “Ahhh
well…….well as you can expect for a funeral anyway.” He finished
with, as he floundered about with what to say.

I nodded.

I wanted him gone from my table. I didn’t
like him.

My whiskey was set down before me without the
view this time and I said, “Thank you.”

She nodded and hurried away.

Thaddeus was talking about what I wasn’t sure
as I was intentionally doing my best to ignore him. I had something
else occupying my attention. Someone was watching me.

Many people were looking at me off and on,
but this was different. I was being studied, even probed by some
unknown source within the room. I didn’t like the predatory feel of
it at all.

Every nerve within me felt alive and
throbbing with the alarm I felt at the presence of the unknown
watcher.

“Aren’t you going to drink that?” Thaddeus
asked blearily.

I glanced to him, “No. I don’t have any money
yet. Would you mind taking care of this for me?”