At night the distance between the living and the dead diminishes.
Daylight is for the living. The abodes of night are reserved for the dead.
~~
Call drained the last of his coffee and stirred up the campfire. It was going to be a cold one. He arranged his bedroll for the night. The smoke changed direction, and he coughed and cursed as he moved to the other side of the fire.
The horses whinnied softly and shifted their weight. Call felt guilty about leaving the body tied to the packhorse, but there was no other way. If it stiffened in the wrong position, he’d never get it loaded again.
Once again the scene played out in his mind. Such a young man -- but one gone so wrong. He’d killed seven men without batting an eye, and when Call showed up to take him in, he’s done his best to make him number eight. Call had tried to take him alive. But the young outlaw would have none of it.
Call pondered it. He hated killing. But it seemed to be his lot in life – killing those that needed killing. He guessed he ought to be used to it by now. He pushed the dark thoughts from his mind and pulled the saddle blanket tighter about him. He tossed and turned for a time before exhaustion took him.
As the hours passed, the rising crescent moon replaced the dying light of the campfire, and the wind ceased soughing in the branches. In the stillness something stirred, and Call was instantly awake, reaching for his weapon. “Who’s there?”
He heard the soft rustle again and jumped to his feet, his gun cocked and ready. “Best show yourself.”
To Call’s amazement, a soft chuckle reached his ears. A hand materialized out of the darkness and stirred up the fire with a stick. The sparks flew upward, and before his startled eyes a face appeared.
Call’s gun hand shook, and he steadied it with his left. “Who are you?”
The young man settled back on his elbows and regarded Call. “Don’t recognize me, huh?”
Call found the steady gaze unsettling. “I know who you look like, but you can’t be him. He’s dead.”
“That so?” the young man countered.
Call glanced at the pack horse. He could just make out the silhouette of the body still tied to the animal’s back. He leveled his gaze back at the man before him. “That’s so.”
The young man sighed. “Name’s Rory St. James,” he said. “At least that’s who I was before you shot me. Now I reckon I’m no one.”
The resemblance to his bounty was uncanny. Call barely kept the quaver out of his voice. “What do you want?”
The young man ignored the question. “It’s funny,” he went on. “Being dead is like being nowhere -- all cold and dark like this here prairie. Then I seen your campfire.” He poked the embers again with the stick, coaxing a little life back into them. “And it sort of brought me back, you know?”
Call lowered his weapon slowly.
“Got me rememberin’ my dad and the nights we spent sleepin’ out under the stars back in Missouri.” His pale eyes glistened. “I miss my dad. Those were good times.”
The young man glanced up at Call. “Say, you don’t talk much, do you? I been hungerin’ for some company. All these other folks here don’t talk neither.”
“What folks?” Call asked. “Where?” He raised his gun again and peered suspiciously into the darkness.
“Can’t you see them? They’re all around us,” the young man replied. “Death surrounds you, Newt. Did you kill all these people?"
To Call’s shock and horror, others did indeed appear. In the flickering firelight he saw their faces. He felt his blood run cold as he stared at them in disbelief. There must be were dozens of them. They stared back at him, hollow eyes smoldering in pale faces.
"Yep, it's quite a crowd," the young man commented.
The dead were all around Call now. He lowered his gun to his side as he looked about him. Some he recognized; others he did not.
There was a bounty he’d taken in Great Falls. The man had turned on his own gang, the murdering bastard. And there was the ex sheriff he’d gunned down in the Dakota badlands. There was no worse scum than a lawman gone bad.
“You all had it coming,” Call accused. “You knew what was gonna happen when you killed and you robbed. You broke the law.”
The night air seemed close as many spirits drifted near him. He noticed Bob McSween, and Prentice glared at him from the crowd. There were many others. Call swallowed hard. “There weren’t no other way,” he muttered under his breath.
Something brushed Call’s arm, and he turned and looked into the dark eyes of Fiona. She was holding something close to her bosom, stroking it and rubbing it with her cheek. Call strained to see what it was, and when she opened her hands, a black bird exploded into his face. He stumbled backward and fell.
“Caw. Caw. Crow bait. Crow bait,” the bird squawked as it disappeared into the night.
Faces closed in on him, arms reaching for him but passing right through him. Call shrank back from the clutching fingers.
Fiona threw back her head in silent mirth as she wrapped her red shawl about her lithe form and drifted away.
Call consciously slowed his breathing as he got to his feet. Someone was approaching him through the crowd, and Call recognized Silas. His former partner pulled the guns from his holster and laid them on the ground. He looked reproachfully at Call before turning away. The implications were clear.
Did they think he enjoyed killing? It was his job. Someone had to do it. “What do you want from me?” he cried out. He reached out for one of the specters, but it eluded his grasp. He reached for another and another, but it was always the same.
A cold mist swirled about him now, and Call felt chilled to the bone. As he moved among the dead, Call searched for one face. He longed to see her, but he was afraid. Would her eyes damn him too? “Hannah! Hannah, where are you?” She must be there; she had to be. But he could not find her.
As the mist deepened, the dead began to melt away, first singly and then by twos and threes until they had all vanished. Call turned this way and that, but he couldn’t find his way. For what seemed like hours he wandered, until at last he stumbled back into camp.
The fire had gone out. The young outlaw was nowhere to be seen. Call was alone.
~~
The next morning Call buried the young outlaw. As he stepped from the grave wiping the dirt from his hands, a sudden gust of breeze stirred the bushes in his path. He stopped still as he felt a soft touch on his cheek.
Hannah . . .
THE END
10/2006
