Tim Pratt - Sympathy for the Devil

He snapped the latch closed on Ned’s grip and hoisted their bags off the bed. He turned, only to find old Fallen Star sitting cross-legged in the doorway.

The bags thudded to the floor. “How the hell’d you get in here!”

“I walked.” He took a puff from the pipe he carried.

“They’d never let a Red in here!” McGregor took a step back, hand reaching for his revolver.

“No one saw me.” Fallen Star blew a cloud of smoke at the ceiling.

“Then how’d you get across the lobby?”

“I walked.”

McGregor set his jaw. “Then you can walk on out of here. You’re in my way.”

“McGregor.”

For the second time that day, the sound of his own name paralysed him. “Running away will do you no good,” the old man said. “You must fight your Devil or he will plague you forever.”

“He’s not my Devil!” snapped Bill.

“Then whose is he?” Unbending one joint at a time, Fallen Star stood. “Gambler, you want to save your friend. I want to save my son, Standing-in-the-West. You call your Devil here and work against him with the White Man’s understanding. I will strengthen you with the Red Man’s medicine. Maybe together we can beat him.”

McGregor remembered the Devil’s eyes and found the nerve to move again. He pulled his gun out of its holster. “Get out of my way or I’ll blow a hole clear through you.”

Fallen Star shook his head heavily and took a long drag on his pipe. “That you may see the truth.” He blew a rank cloud of smoke into McGregor’s face.

By the time Bill quit coughing, the old man was gone. McGregor didn’t stop to ask himself where or how. He just gathered up the bags and toted them down the stairs.

He was passing his money across the pigeon-hole desk to the hotel owner’s beefy hands when the first shot split the air.

McGregor dove for the floor. The hotel owner was already down behind the desk. On hands and knees, the gambler crawled to the door and eased it open.

Men spilled out of the Royale, guns in their hands. The thunder and lightning of revolver shots rang through the air. A stranger sprawled face-down in the mud. Another hollered wordlessly and took his own shot. The crowd spread out. So did the gunfire.

All at once, the storm hit the Denver House. McGregor scrambled sideways as somebody kicked the door in. Men shoved and stumbled inside, yelling over the top of each other until McGregor couldn’t understand any of them. Somebody shattered a pane of glass with the butt of his revolver. Some fool waved his gun towards the owner. A shot and the stench of gunpowder exploded from behind Bill and blood burst across the fool’s chest. All heads turned to see the Summner House’s owner with his Winchester raised. He couldn’t keep them all covered though, and the fool had a friend. Another gun barked and the landlord hit the back wall on top of most of his brains.

McGregor eased his revolver into his hand and slid out the door. Wood smoke and a roaring on the wind competed with the smell and noise of gunfire. The heat hit him a second later and Bill looked up. More heat seared his face. The Royale was on fire. Men and women leapt shrieking from the windows.

In the middle of the chaos stood the Devil, thumbs tucked into his waistcoat pockets and a grin spread across his face. No one payed him any heed. A naked woman jumped from the Royale’s second storey and landed in the street, her body bent and broken. No one stopped to help her. A hunk of burning wood landed on the roof of the assayer’s. Flames and sparks wriggled to the sky. A few folk turned out with water buckets, but most scattered, trying to get out of the way. Men with rifles appeared on rooftops. A couple of blue coated soldiers galloped in on horseback, raising clouds of dust and shouting orders to no one at all.

The Devil laughed.

Something in McGregor snapped. Without thinking, he was running to the spot where Nick Scratch stood.

“Stop this!” he hollered, grabbing Scratch by the shoulder.

The Devil turned and looked at him with eyes more red than black. “I’m going to forgive you this, McGregor, because you don’t know what you’re doing.” Pain bit hard into the gambler’s hand. Bill jerked backwards.

The screams got louder. Fire laid its claim to The Nugget with DeArmant still shooting through the window. McGregor thought about Ned and saw the woman lying dead in the dirt.

“What’ll it take to get you to stop this!” he cried.

“Go away, Bill.”

All McGregor’s desperation melted into panic. Before he had time to realize it must be Scratch working on him again, he backed up two steps, turned, and ran for his life.

Bent almost double, Bill raced up the street. Bullets and screams whizzed past him. He hugged board walls and dove through open spaces, returning fire when he needed to clear his way and didn’t stop to see if he hit anything or not.

At last, from the shelter of a clapboard shack, McGregor could spy the open-frame building that housed the forge. Horses reared and hauled on the reins that tethered them to the rail beside it. McGregor ducked his head from side to side, trying to see Ned between the thrashing animals.

A man’s shadow crept around the forge. With a quick knife, he slit the horse’s reins, setting them free to gallop out of town. Then the shadow climbed to the roof of the forge as easily as a cat. He pulled a rifle from a sling on his back and took aim.

The Shadow fired. McGregor saw DeArmant knocked off his feet. The shadow fired again and a nameless man on another rooftop toppled over.

“Standing-in-the-West!”

Bill blinked and knuckled his eyes. Fallen Star stood beside the forge, right in the shadow man’s line of fire. His gnarled arms were raised towards the heavens. The pipe still burned in his hand.

Standing-in-the-West held his fire. “Out of my way!”

“You will not win the war with the White Men this way!” Fallen Star’s voice carried clearly over the rage of men and gunshot and fire. Bill shook his head hard. He knew the old man spoke Cheyenne, but he could understand him clearly. “You only make a slave of yourself to your anger and their Devil! Will you fight and die as a slave or a free man?”

Standing-in-the-West aimed his gun at the old man. “Is your medicine strong enough to stop my bullet, Fallen Star? Or do you use too much to keep the riot away from you? The White Men will leave our land!”

“Our land!” retorted Fallen Star. “We do not own this place! It is not a dog or a slave! You talk like the White Men!”

“And I will kill you with their gun if you do not leave me now!”

Fallen Star dropped his hands. “I would have wished another kind of trail for you, my son.” He said. And despite the noise of fire and riot, Bill heard Standing-in-the-West cock the rifle’s hammer.

Fallen Star walked away towards the edge of town. Standing-in-the-West took fresh aim towards the center of the riot and fired again. Another man fell. Shots buzzed towards the Cheyenne. None found the mark.

McGregor’s stomach knotted itself up. He dropped his gaze to search the forge. Ned was nowhere in sight. Bill turned to run back the way he came.

Reality became a blur of noise and fading color as he stumbled towards the Summner House. Something heavy caught the toes of his boots and Bill measured his length in the dust. He came up, spitting and swearing, looked at what tripped him up and saw Ned.

What was left of Ned’s blood oozed out of the bullet hole in his back. McGregor’s strength gave out and he sat down hard next to his friend’s body, unable to think, let alone move. Vaguely, slowly, he noticed that Ned’s money belt was still around his waist and that his hand clutched some leather strips. McGregor touched them. Horses’ reins. He thought of Standing-in-the-West’s knife and his fist bunched up and pressed against his forehead.