The Ghost of Blue-Eyed Mountain
A Short Tale of Survival and Self-Sacrifice
In the midst of the bitterness of winter, a man can be assured a few simple truths. The ruthlessness of the chill. The solemnity of death. And the pleasant warmth of fire being but a fleeting embrace.
Nestled snugly within the craggy hold of azurite peaks, a remote town of rugged dwellers had become blighted with a terrible disease. An eruption of diphtheria slammed the community of Lingering Strength with a decisive swiftness and a brute ferocity. Many of the residents, despite all of them possessing the qualities of hardiness and resilience, were utterly crippled by the suffocating illness. The disease showed no partiality. From every stratum, man, woman, and child alike were afflicted.
There was no physician who resided in Lingering Strength. The nearest doctor was a man by the name of Bernard Langer who lived not very far from the town if measured by a straight line or traveled by the wings of a bird. Reaching him would take a couple days by horseback along a safe valley trail, or, a half days trek up through a dangerous pass fraught with rough trail, icy boulders, and plunging cliffs.
Word had reached Lingering Strength of a shipment of crucial antitoxin that had made its way to the doctor’s clinic. Just in time for an unexpected blizzard to swath the hills and the deep valleys therein with a punishing blanket of ice and snow. And the storm was hardly finished with its wintry onslaught.
Living in the distant outskirts of Lingering Strength was the Mitchell family, tucked within a clearing surrounded by a thick forest robed in the white of falling snow and ice. They were father Benjamin, mother Rebecca, and their only child, a daughter. Susanna, aged four. The girl was in the clutches of sickness. Her mother despaired at her labored breathing and choking coughs. The girl writhed feverishly in her dreams and drenched her cotton nightclothes in sweat. And as Rebecca remained steadfast at her daughter’s bedside, she stained her apron with tears until she could cry no more. As a fire crackled in the potbelly stove of their small, yet stout cabin, Rebecca mopped Susanna’s forehead with a rag soaked in cool water.
“She’s been burnin' up fer days,” Rebecca said weakly. “Like the devil’s breathin' right on ‘er. Ain’t the doc comin' ‘round?”
“Snow’s gotta have the pass plugged up tight,” said Benjamin, who was peering out of a frosted window.
“The town’s been ailin' fer nearly a week. He don’t live but two days ride from here,” she complained.
“Marshal Hommel came ‘round the other day. When I was splittin' wood. Gave notice of bandits prowlin' the valley. O’Donnell Gang,” he said as he reached for his coat.
“You ain’t goin' out there, are ya?” Rebecca asked. “You’ll catch yer death and I’ll be all by my lonesome. I ain’t got no other family, Ben.”
“The doc ain’t comin' our way. And I mean to fetch him,” he grumbled as he heaved the warm coat over his shoulders.
Benjamin Mitchell was a logger by trade. His hands were weathered and his body sinewy. He was no stranger to the cold, feared not hard work, and had a large, warm heart beneath his leathery exterior.
“An' why’s that gotta be you? This whole town’s full o' men who know these parts better than you by a mile.”
“The men around here are sick an' scared. We ain’t strangers to what ails ‘em, but as to what’s got ‘em spooked? They’re just yella, that’s my reckonin',” Benjamin said as he donned a ratty brown slouch hat and leather gloves.
“Maybe the fever will break on its own, Ben. Please, darlin'. What if folks are right to be spooked? If you go out there you’ll be shot, or worse,” Rebecca pleaded, placing her hand lovingly in the crease of his elbow.
“What kinda man would I be if I let my little girl die while I sat around and did nothin'? I reckon not a man you should want to be married to, Becky,” said Benjamin.
“What’re you gonna do?”
“I done told ya. I mean to fetch the doc so he can mend ‘er,” he said
“An' what if you die along the way?” Rebecca whimpered.
Benjamin faltered. He did not readily have an answer prepared for his wife to such a question. He pondered for a few moments, staring at the licking flames through the creases around the iron stove door.
“Marry a man better than me,” he said quickly, slipping out of the door hastily as to not give her a chance to answer.
Benjamin saddled his American Quarter mare named Sage—a horse with a light gray coat and a dark brown mane and tail—and began to ride away. He had taken with him provisions and a meager means of defense: a half pound of bacon, some cornmeal, coffee, and a flask of whiskey to keep warm. A forty-four caliber rifle and a hatchet were both secured in their own scabbards to the saddle, and a ten-inch bowie knife with an elk-boned handle was at his side. He was as prepared as one could be and had no other reason to tarry.
The trail that led to Lingering Strength cut through a thick alpine forest and down into a shallow valley where the town’s foundation had been laid. As the horse trudged through the nearly foot-deep snow, the softness of the silence around them clung eerily to Benjamin’s ears. The muted snowfall fell from above in feathery clusters, and before long, Sage and her rider were covered in a considerable frosting of the bitter flakes.
The town’s buildings were cloaked in a white veil that swirled around the air, and the roofs were burdened with the blizzard’s fury. Many of the windows were cold with a gray deadness, and even those that were alive with a familiar orange glow were muffled by the furious winter flurry.
Benjamin made his way to the general store. He typically had no use for a firestriker while in the wilderness, as his preferred method of firemaking was grinding two sticks together until they were nice and hot and smoking. But these were cold times and this day was especially frigid and wet. He feared that there would be no dry tinder to be found and that his hands would not survive being exposed to the cold for as long as was necessary to spark a fire with simple friction. The windows of the general store were misty with frost, but a warm light from within filtered through them. Benjamin found but one soul inside the shop. To his surprise, it was not a person that he expected.
“Reverend Whitting? Did ya trade in your bible for a ledger?” Benjamin asked half-jokingly.
The man behind the counter beamed at him amicably. He was dressed in black and wore a white clerical collar around his neck. He was balding, somewhat portly, and perched upon the bridge of his nose were wire-rimmed spectacles with tiny round lenses. He, of course, had a copy of the Holy Bible splayed out on the desk in front of him.
“Brother Mitchell! At least, I hope I can call you brother. I haven’t yet seen you in church since your family moved here. It’s been nearly two months,” said Whitting, to which Benjamin could only offer an uncomfortable grunt. “But due to the novelty of your residency here in Lingering Strength, I suppose I can give you the benefit of the doubt not knowing certain things. My sister and her husband own this shop, but they’ve fallen ill. I’m running it in their stead. There’s no one else to man the counter or stock the shelves while they’re in bed.”
“Just strange to see a man o' the cloth dealin' with money changin' and goods, is all,” Benjamin said.
“I try to be of service wherever I can. Remember: as indeed the Son of man did not come to be served, but to serve,” recited the reverend.
“That from the good book?”
“Indeed. Matthew chapter twenty-eight. Do you read it regularly? We should all strive to be in God’s word daily.”
“Can’t say I’ve cracked open a book since my schoolin' days,” Benjamin said. “I ain’t had much use for readin'.”
“A pity. Another important passage to remember: This book of the law shall not depart from thy mouth; and thou shalt meditate upon it day and night, that thou mayest take heed to do according to all that is written therein; for then shalt thou have good success in thy ways, and then shalt thou prosper.”
“Thank you, kindly, Reverend. But I’ve made my own way just fine without it,” Benjamin said.
Whitting knew the stubborn heart of men better than most, and so he ceased his evangelizing to move on to more presently relevant topics. He would try his hand at saving the soul of Benjamin Mitchell another time.
“So, what brings you to this humble establishment?” he asked Benjamin.
“I need a firestartin' kit.”
Whitting procured a bundle of goods consisting of a carbon steel firestriker, a chunk of flint, and a box of dry tinder, all packed snugly within a small plywood box.
“It’s important to keep warm in storms like this,” Whitting smiled.
“No truer thing has been spoken,” Benjamin agreed. “‘Specially up in them mountains,” he said, motioning in the direction of the pass around Blue-Eyed Mountain that led into the sprawling valley beyond.
The reverend’s eyes and face grew cold, and his warm smile nearly fell from his face and straight onto the floor.
“The pass,” Whitting said with a low, foreboding tone. “You’re going up through there?”
“Don’t worry yourself, Reverend. I won’t be long. Hopefully not more than a day,” Benjamin answered him.
“Night is nearly upon us and this storm is showing no signs of relenting. Surely whatever lies beyond the cleft of those crags can wait till morning?”
“As a matter o' fact, Reverend, it ain’t somethin' I think can wait another second. You know as well as anyone why I’d be going up through that pass. Doc Langer lives past them mountains. And as far as I’ve been told, he’s the only doc around these parts.”
“And you mean to bring him here to Lingering Strength.”
“As far as I can see, there ain’t much strength left to linger. Not in the bones of these men,” Benjamin said of the townsfolk. “Now how much do I owe ya?”
“That pass is dangerous in weather like this,” Whitting said, the tone of his voice growing more concerned by what seemed like every syllable.
“I ain’t a stranger to the cold. Not danger, neither,” Benjamin assured the clergyman as he fingered a few jingling coins in his pocket. “Now I’ll kindly ask again, what do I owe ya?”
The expression on the reverend’s face remained cold and pale. A thin mist of sweat collected on his brow and reflected the orange light from the lantern in the window. A strange fear brewed within his eyes.
“Ya feelin' alright, Reverend?” Benjamin asked.
The balding pastor swallowed and patted his forehead with a white cloth that he had plucked from one of his coat pockets.
“Seventy cents,” he said with quivering lips.
“Well ain’t that convenient? I got thirty cents on my tab,” Benjamin said as he flipped a silver Morgan dollar coin on the counter and retrieved his goods. “That should square us all up.”
“Y-yes. That should do it,” Reverend Whitting stammered at almost a whisper as he fumbled with the silver coin.
Benjamin turned to exit the general store, but his conscience got the better of him. He turned to face Whitting, who hadn’t moved an inch. The holy man stood there like a statue, as if he had been turned to solid stone for seeing God with this naked eyes and inevitably failing to withstand his creator’s glory.
“You sure you ain’t feelin' ill, Reverend? You look a sight all of a sudden. If you don’t mind me sayin' so.”
“May the Lord be with you, Benjamin Mitchell,” he answered, barely moving his lips.
“Reverend,” Benjamin began, pausing, not knowing what else to think or say except for, “uh…thanks.”
The logger was bewildered by Whitting’s strange behavior. It was like the preacher had been possessed by a melancholy spirit right there in front of him, by a phantom that had changed the clergyman’s cheerful demeanor into utter despair. For a moment, Benjamin had a mind to tell someone about the reverend’s perplexing state, but then realized that it would be a fool’s errand. There was no doctor to examine him, nor another preacher to exorcise any legion of stubborn malcontents from his body. And so, upon Sage he mounted himself, patted her gently, and continued on.
The typically muddy streets of Lingering Strength were frozen, preserving every track made by wagon wheel, animal hoof, and footprint. But none of these tracks could be seen, buried beneath a thick layer of wintry covering. The pristine blanket of snow muted the sounds of everything, save for the crunch of Sage’s hooves and the subtle whisper of the wind. As Benjamin made it past the silent buildings and their gloomy windows, he thought he might make it through the entire town without encountering another soul until another soul was just who made themselves known with a peculiar grinding sound.
The undertaker and his assistant were loading coffins two-by-two into an open oxen-drawn wagon, and they aimed to stack them three high. But there was a seventh coffin leaned up against the funeral home wall and no longer any room on the wagon.
“So many,” muttered Benjamin lamentably, who had stopped his horse and removed his hat as a sign of respect as the undertaker’s assistant retreated back into the warmth of the funeral home for a spell.
“A shame,” the undertaker said from beneath a cloth bandana. “Two of ‘em succumbed to sickness. Three were done robbed and shot to death comin' into town. But it ain’t all so bad. The other two was part of who was doin' the robbin' and the shootin' and the hell raisin'. I tell ya, there’s some dangerous folk prowlin' nearby. As deadly as a pack o' wolves and twice as mean, I reckon.”
“About which way you’d say they’d be right about now?” Benjamin asked.
“They was out yonder in the valley to the east, but ya missed ‘em not by but a half day ago. Came chargin' in through here like hell on horseback, caterwaulin' and shootin' the damn place up with Hommel and a couple of his deputies hot on their heels. Chased ‘em clear up the pass ‘round Blue-Eyed Mountain. Right through here, on the very road on which you currently find yourself,” explained the undertaker.
“You don’t say,” Benjamin said, placing his hat back atop his already frosted head.
“Mr. Mitchell, is it?” the undertaker asked.
“That’s right.”
“A man don’t need to ask another man why he’s out in weather like this while the rest of the townsfolk are dyin' in their beds. He has but to look him right in the eyes and know all.”
“I don’t rightly know what you’re aimin' at Mr.—”
“Wright,” the undertaker answered.
“Right, uh, Mr. Wright. I reckon if you don’t have a good answer as to what you’re fixin' to say next, I don’t have much of a reason to loiter around and listen to it,” Benjamin said.
“That’s fine, go on ahead. But take these partin' words with ya. Death is all around us, Mr. Mitchell. All you have to do is take a gander and see it. It’s in the trees. The stone. Found along the paths less traveled and the ones trodden bare. It ain’t just on embalmin' tables and in pine boxes. And for some strange reason, there’s men out there who seem keen on lookin' for their very own. They thirst for it like a cold beer or a pretty woman’s kiss. Like an innate callin' of some primal desire to kill or be killed. And boy, if I don’t see that look all over your face, Mr. Mitchell.”
Benjamin couldn’t help but grin, but did his best to hide it. He didn’t want to admit that Mr. Wright was correct on all counts, that his present endeavors could very well bring him to his doom. That he was all too willing to run headlong into the proverbial fire. But it wasn’t about him. It was about Susanna. His baby darling daughter who hadn’t had much of a chance at living thus far.
“Well, I’ll say, Mr. Wright,” Benjamin said with the grin still clearly plastered all over his face, “you do have a flair for some flowery talkin', I’ll give you that. But I ain’t much surprised of it, given your chosen occupation. Even still, I don’t see what business it is of yours what I do ‘in weather like this while all the townsfolk are dyin' in their beds’, as you said it.”
Wright’s face remained stoic behind the cloth bandana. Not a wrinkle nor a twitch showed from behind the makeshift mask.
“I tried to be poetic, make ya see it my way. And yes, ya do get good at talkin' all pretty-like when ya have a job like mine, ‘specially when the reverend’s havin' an off day. I just can’t stand seein' folks cry, so I do my best to dry their eyes. But seein' as my speech didn’t have the desired effect, I’m gonna talk to ya with real plain words. The nose of your horse is pointed to certain destruction. You’re liable to lose your life up in them mountains, Mr. Mitchell. Just like them O’Donnell boys and the marshal and his. And I ain’t sayin' from the bite of the cold or the bear or the bullet. A specter lives up them rocks. A phantom from beyond, a spirit of old who shed his mortal husk when them yonder peaks were but a bit higher!” Wright said with as serious of a voice as Benjamin had ever heard another man speak.
“A ghost?” Benjamin asked incredulously. “You can’t be serious. All due respect, but shouldn’t a man in your position treat the dead with a bit more dignity? I’ve had about all I’m gonna have outta you, sir. I wasted enough time now as it is.”
Benjamin gently snapped the reins and gave Sage a swift and stern command.
“Come on now, let’s git!”
And so the horse began to move in the direction of the pass, upon the very road that Marshal Hommel and his deputies had chased two alleged members of the O’Donnell gang out of town.
“Next time we meet—whether that be in this life or the next—don’t say I didn’t warn ya!” Wright shouted after him.
Up they climbed, Benjamin and Sage, snaking around icy boulders along twisting ledges flanked with thick banks of alpine and sheer rock walls. In a stroke of luck, the deluge of snow had lightened to a flurry, but the harshness of the air and its ferocious bite remained. The blades of the wind seared and sliced the skin of his face. His eyes and ears were on fire.
The trail eventually gave way to a plateau dotted with bluish snow-capped boulders and clusters of unwavering firs. A lone horse without a rider stood about one hundred feet directly in front of Benjamin. It had its nose to the ground as if it were grazing or perhaps nuzzling something buried in the snow. As he and Sage slowly rode up on the horse, it was unnerved.
“Whoa, whoa. Easy,” Benjamin soothed the horse with a saccharine tone as he gently took hold of the beast’s reins.
He dismounted Sage and bent down to investigate what had the horse’s snout so preoccupied. It was the bloodied body of a man, face-down in the snow. Benjamin turned the man’s head to identify him, but he couldn’t place a name to the face. It wasn’t Hommel and he was almost sure it wasn’t one of his deputies, either. The man’s clothes were a bit ratty and his hands rough, his nails dirty. He lacked a badge pinned to his coat and hidden beyond his dead lips were an incomplete mouthful of yellowed teeth. The marshal took pride in his work and in his men. They had standards to uphold and Hommel meant to enforce those standards. Benjamin deduced that this fallen, unkempt, beggar-like figure must be one of the O’Donnell boys. Steam lifted from the body as the warmth leaving the corpse hit the frigid air. He hadn’t been dead for very long.
Benjamin eyed the butt of his repeater rifle that stuck out of its leather scabbard. His gaze moved down the contour of the brass lever handle. He hoped he wouldn’t have need of the weapon, but the telltale thumping of his heart foretold of an inevitability should he continue on that he did not want to face. His soldiering days were long behind him. His eyes weren’t what they used to be. The blazing fire of the snow—like a sea of white-hot sulfur—contended to blind him.
The horse of the fallen man was now calm. Its saddle was worn and fissured. Benjamin tied its reins to the horn of Sage’s saddle and pressed on, keeping one hand on the reins and another on the butt of his repeater.
Once through a narrow passage that cut through a gauntlet of low snow-burdened conifer boughs, Benjamin began to hear shouting. After passing by three more riderless horses, he dismounted Sage and withdrew his repeater, tying Sage and the other horse to a nearby adolescent cedar before carefully trudging through the shin-high snow in the direction of the commotion. He discovered Marshal Hommel and his duo of deputies huddled behind a hulking granite boulder, and further by about fifty feet, maybe more, was a ramshackle cabin heavy-laden with snow and a fallen tree. One of the deputies was resting on his haunches with his back against the boulder, holding a wound in his belly with one hand while his other arm was slumped by his side. He still clutched his revolver. His face was pallid and lifeless. Dead.
Upon noticing Benjamin’s approach, the living deputy hip fired a haphazard shot, and despite the lack of aim, it narrowly missed him. Benjamin dodged behind a bank of trees.
“Who goes there?!” the deputy bellowed.
“Benjamin Mitchell! I ain’t lookin' for trouble, just wantin' to pass through!”
“What you’re lookin' for is to get arrested! Or your head blown clean off!” Hommel shouted back.
“That you, Marshal?” Benjamin asked.
“Who else would it be? Get your ass over here behind this rock before you get killed!” the lawman ordered.
Benjamin ambled as quickly as his middle-aged legs could take him through the deep snow. His trousers were already beginning to soak with melt and his legs radiated with fiery pain that felt like thousands of prickling needles.
“What in the hell are you doin' up here?” Hommel asked angrily.
“I told you. Passin' through.”
“In a blizzard?” the deputy asked as he cast a prudent peek around the boulder. A shot rang out followed by sharp snap against the boulder.
“Peek out a little more, ya coward sonuva bitch!” a voice hollered in the not-to-far-off distance. It came from the dilapidated cabin.
“Come outta there before we set fire to that shack! With you in it!” Hommel shouted in return.
“Go to hell!” the voice snapped, followed by another shot and a subsequent snap off the face of the boulder.
“Mr. Wright told me you boys were chasin' some O’Donnells up this pass. But that ain’t why I’m here. I’m aimin' to fetch Doc Langer. My little girl’s sick and he’s gonna mend her,” Benjamin explained to them.
“That a fact? From where I’m sittin', you ain’t goin' to fetch nobody no time soon,” Hommel said. “We got us some real dangerous folks holed up in the shack just around this here rock. And in case you hadn’t noticed, they want us dead.”
“They? Wright said you chased two of ‘em up here. I found one of ‘em face down in the snow back a ways,” Benjamin said.
“We chased two of ‘em all right,” the deputy answered, “but there’s at least one more that’s moved in up here. Usin' the shack as a hideout.”
“So what’ll it be, Marshal?! You gonna give up, or are we gonna have to blow ya to kingdom come? Don’t think I’m gonna forget that you killed my brother back there! Tommy was a good boy. He didn’t deserve gettin' shot!” the voice said from the half-crumbling cabin. “Neither them two Yankee boys, God rest their souls!”
“Grady O’Donnell, you sonuva bitch, you killed one of my deputies! I’d say that makes us square, but I don’t intend to make no deals with a lyin', cheatin', stealin' bastard such as yourself!” Hommel hollered back.
“Ah, ya wound me deeply, Marshal! Ya left out murderin', too!” Grady yelled. “Which is exactly what I’m gonna do to you and your friends if ya don’t leave us be!”
“Goddamn Irish,” Hommel grumbled beneath his breath.
“What’re we gonna do, Marshal?” the deputy asked.
“We’re back to full strength in numbers now,” Hommel said with a nod towards Benjamin.
“I ain’t no lawman, Marshal,” Benjamin protested. “If I gotta cut around this mess, I’ll find a way to do it.”
“Didn’t figure you for a coward, Mitchell. And there ain’t no way ‘round except a two days ride through the valley. But you already knew that, or else you wouldn’t be climbin' a mountain,” he said before turning his attention to Grady. “You’re gonna come outta there, Grady O’Donnell! And whoever you got in there with ya! If ya don’t, we’re gonna burn it down with you inside. You don’t got nowhere to go!”
“Same could be said for you, Hommel! God may have planted that big rock there ages ago, but Grady O’Donnell’s fixin' to move it!” echoed Grady’s hoarse voice.
“What the hell’s he talkin' about?” the deputy wondered, his face contorted in perplexion. In a matter of seconds, his confusion turned to surprise as they all heard a fiery hissing noise from the other side of the rock. A sudden, deafening explosion shook the ground like an earthquake, sending a great mass of snow and earth into the sky which rained down on Hommel, Benjamin, and the deputy.
Benjamin could see the mouths of Hommel and the deputy moving, but could not hear any of their words. A constant ring permeated the air, coupled with an overwhelming muffle as if they had been buried alive. In a flash, both the deputy and Hommel whipped around the rock. Benjamin could hear the smothered sounds of gunshots and screaming. His heart danced violently in his chest and his mind harkened back to the days of war during which many men were killed before his very eyes, sometimes by his own hand.
He tightly gripped his rifle and made a determination. Hommel and the deputy needed him. They did not know how many men were holed up in the shack with Grady O’Donnell. And if he was going to reach Langer in time to save Susanna, it was going to have to be through these hellraisers. Another explosion, this time a bit further away, shook the ground terribly. The fight was still going on. There was still hope.
Around the boulder Benjamin charged, a reminiscent fire in his bosom from warring days of old, rifle butt firmly against his shoulder. Two men he did not recognize—more like one man and one adolescent—were standing in the open with burgeoning snow showers falling around them. Benjamin was too focused on the strangers to notice that both the deputy and Hommel had been killed—the deputy shot twice in the heart and the marshal unraveled into a mess of bone and viscera. The youth immediately noticed Benjamin and pointed his revolver in his direction. Benjamin managed to let loose a shot at the youth before another explosion splashed a blinding heap of snow and earth into his face, flinging his body like a ragdoll. His vision went black.
Benjamin woke, sat in a crater with his back against the boulder and the two strangers standing over him and leering at him. The sky had grown a bit darker and the snow was falling fiercely once again.
“Good, he’s awake,” growled a boy who couldn’t have been older than fifteen.
“Calm yourself, boy-o,” the man said. The voice belonged to Grady O’Donnell. He brandished a revolver in one hand and an unlit stick of dynamite in the other. He wore a warm coat and a gray derby hat.
“The sonuva bitch shot me!”
“Quit yer belly-achin'! He barely grazed ya!” Grady chastised the youth before speaking directly to Benjamin. “You must be blinder than my gran! She could spit out her chaw and still miss the ground!”
“Lemme put a bullet in ‘im!” the boy hissed.
“Now, Joseph, ya shouldn’t be so quick to anger. Wrath is a cardinal sin, ya know,” said Grady.
“So’s murder,” Joseph spat back, which earned him a smack to the side of his head from Grady using the stick of dynamite as a cudgel.
“It ain’t a cardinal sin, ya nitwit,” he corrected the boy before speaking to Benjamin again. “O' course, I ain’t murdered Hommel and his deputies. Joseph here shot the one still hidin' behind that rock, Hommel gettin' blasted into bits was an accident—I swear it—” he said, crossing his heart, “and killin' the other deputy was in self-defense. He shot at me first, he did.”
“Just like he shot at me first!” Joseph shouted at Benjamin as the youth gingerly rubbed his jaw.
“He’s an angry one, that’s for sure,” Grady said to Benjamin, who still hadn’t uttered a syllable, “but a useful lad all the same. Go fetch me the horses, boy-o,” Grady ordered Joseph with a nod of his head in the direction of Sage and the other horses.
“Aw hell, why don’t you do it?” Joseph complained.
“‘Cause if I do it, I’m gonna string ya up by your guts when I get back,” Grady told him, strangely without a hint of anger in his voice, “but if you do it, I might give ya a nice present. How ‘bout that half-drunk bottle o' whiskey, lad? Hm?”
“Well sure, for that, I’ll do it,” the boy grinned and off he went, stamping through the snow, but not before awkwardly stuffing his revolver (most likely stolen) into the waist of his trousers.
“Ah, the joys of fatherhood,” Grady sighed. “Well, I ain’t his da, but I love the lad like a son. Ya have any children, mister?”
“No,” Benjamin lied, feebly shaking his head. It hadn’t been until he moved his neck that he discovered the pain that radiated from the back of his head and down into his trunk. It was painful to breathe.
“Really, now? Ya got some white whiskers comin' in. A shame a man your age wasn’t able to settle down and have a fam’ly.”
“Never came up,” Benjamin said through gritted teeth. While he was placating Grady with mindless conversation, he was also trying to determine the extent of his own injuries. If he could get up and walk. Grasp his knife. A nearby stone. Perhaps a fallen limb. Grapple with Grady, slug him, perhaps overtake him before the boy returned. Time was not on his side. The sun was just about to set beyond the mountain and cast the plateau in a pitch-darkness. The blizzard shrouded the celestial host above, one that on an otherwise clear night would be dazzling. On fire with a flood of wonderful twinkling colors.
“Oh, that’s too bad,” Grady said, striking a match which hissed to life, bathing the Irishman’s face in harsh orange light. He took a few puffs of a cigarette and gently exhaled white smoke that was wisped away by the winter wind. “I wonder what’s takin' that lad so long?" Hey boy-o!”
“It’s dark,” Benjamin said. “Snow’s deep.”
“You’re a kind soul,” Grady said as he took another drag, the gleaming cherry at the tip of his cigarette like the tip of a wand ignited by arcane magic, “I can tell.”
“How’s that?”
“You coulda shot that lad dead. Wasn’t a very far distance, that shot. And I never known a man to live in rough parts like these to not know his way around a rifle,” Grady said. His tone then went low and dour, “or maybe you are just blind.”
The outlaw extinguished his cigarette on the sole of his boot and placed the half-smoked butt into his breast pocket. He was growing impatient.
“What’s got that damned Yankee whelp so preoccupied?” he growled, moving off in the direction of where Joseph had gone. For some odd reason, Grady was content with letting Benjamin lay there. Perhaps one or both of his legs were broken and he didn’t know it yet. He hadn’t yet stood on his own to walk and didn’t even know if he could. Perhaps Grady was counting on that.
After only what seemed like a few moments, Benjamin heard a blood-chilling sound. A scream, a single shot, and then silence. He sat there against the rock, trying to hear more. But there was nothing but the hiss of the wind and the thump of his thrashing heart.
Before long, Benjamin summoned the strength to stand. He was glad to discover that his legs were intact, but he was badly bruised about his back and ribs. It was an unpleasant task to stand. Taking in the bitter winter air seared his lungs and only made each laboring breath that much more painful. After bracing himself against the rock, he did his best to gather his bearings. The darkness had grown deeper and he didn’t have a way to light his path. Before rounding the rock to fetch Sage, he aimed to arm himself. Luckily the barrel of his rifle was sticking out of the snow and he yanked the rest of the weapon out. He ejected the spent casing. Grady and Joseph hadn’t touched the repeater, nor the deputy’s weapon, which Benjamin spotted jutting out of the snow not far from his body. Hommel’s weapon, much like the majority of his body, was nowhere to be found.
Benjamin forced his freezing limbs to move. His joints were stiff and muscles tight with cold and pain. He did his best to shoulder the rifle and keep it steady, although he didn’t know why he bothered. He couldn’t see a thing through the darkness and the ceaseless downpour of snow. Along he crept, keeping his eyes as pried open as he possibly could against the burning wind. He went further than he ought to without seeing any sign of Grady or Joseph. Sage was just around the corner, so he kept his eyes peeled and finger ready on the trigger. The two outlaws had to be nearby.
What Benjamin found was astounding. Joseph, the boy of only around fifteen, was found laying face-up in the snow. His mouth and eyes were wide with terror. There were no wounds on his body that Benjamin could see in the failing light. Wisps of steam rose from his corpse. Turning ninety degrees to his right, the body of Grady O’Donnell rested against the trunk of a tree. The blade of a tomahawk was wedged in his chest. Blood that had poured from his lips was already frozen.
Benjamin untied Sage and the other horses as quickly as he could, taking one of them with him while allowing the others to go free. Back the way he came from town, he could see the gleam of blue eyes, like the hottest fire, watching him from behind a few trees. He locked with them and they stared back until a bluster of wind blew a cyclone of snow between them, and after it flew away, the eyes had gone. Unnerved, Benjamin aimed to escape from this place before he met the same fate as Grady and Joseph. Through quite a bit of discomfort, Benjamin mounted Sage and rode away, back in the direction of the boulder and the crumbling cabin.
In one corner of the cabin the roof had collapsed from a fallen tree. Three of the four walls of the building were still intact and aided in shielding Benjamin from the wind. Grady and Joseph had been the only two squatting in the broken building. There was a half-drunk bottle of whiskey sitting on a table dusted by snow and frost that had been blown in through the hole in the roof, the very bottle that Grady had promised Joseph as a reward for the youth’s obedience. After sparking a fire in the stove, Benjamin cracked the bottle and swigged on it slowly. The alcohol soothed his mind and his body. Soon the burning salve began to go down easier, and his swallows became larger and more frequent until there was no more. Then he moved on to his flask and drank it the same way. His head swam and his body burned with an enveloping warmth. An overwhelming sleep took him.
He was awoken by the panicked brays and snorts of the horses. Stumbling around in an inebriated stupor, Benjamin emerged from the wrecked cabin and stepped out into the snow, now up to his knees. Luckily, the snow had stopped falling and the air was clear. A break in the clouds revealed the bright disc of the moon overhead, casting a pale blue radiance over the white plateau. In the near distance, Benjamin heard the hungry yips and howls of wolves. Their noises came from the direction of the town, where the bodies of Grady and Joseph still laid. Benjamin shuddered to think that they were feasting on the outlaws. However, a part of him was grateful that their corpses had been found by the beasts so that their hunger would be satisfied, so that he and the horses might escape unscathed. But it was still dark and would be so for several more hours. It would be suicide to try to leave now, to navigate the remainder of the snowy ice-covered pass with unreliable moonlight.
Still, the horses snorted and stamped. They were uneasy. Their eyes were open wide and transfixed on something in the darkness. Benjamin thought it was the chorus of the wolves in the distance that had the horses nervous, and it may have partially been that, but something in his gut told him he was off. That something was still lurking. Perhaps a lone wolf had broken from the pack and followed his scent. And then he saw it. Coming into view under the pale moon, a lone black wolf with steaming breath. And then another, this time gray. And a few more, some black, some gray. And then finally a large, white alpha male.
Benjamin’s heart thumped in his chest at the sight of the pack. The alcohol still numbed his senses, but it had been long enough that its effects had worn thin, allowing him some of his faculties. Chief among them, his sense of survival.
Quickly, he bounded back into the cabin and swung open the door of the potbelly stove. With his hand gloved in thick leather, he grasped a gleaming, smoldering log alight with fire. Re-emerging, Benjamin discovered that the wolves had encroached further and had their eyes set on the horses. He got in between the wolves and their prey, swinging the fiery log and swiping at the beasts with his knife.
“Go on! Git! Get outta here ya mongrels!” he screamed at them, all the while wildly waving the hot log.
The smaller wolves, along with the more juvenile ones, were deterred by the fire. But the larger and more confident alpha, as white and pure as the snow, was not dissuaded from its hunt. After patiently waiting for the right time to strike, the white wolf lunged at him and clamped down on his arm. He dropped the log and fell onto his back, being half-buried in the deep snow with the large canine on top of him. A cocktail of adrenaline and whiskey numbed whatever pain he might have felt as the beast’s teeth sank into his flesh, which enabled Benjamin to swipe and stab at the animal with his knife. The white wolf did not relent. Through the fury of snow being kicked up by the struggle between man and beast, Benjamin thought he caught glimpses of red, but whether it was his blood or the wolf’s, he wasn’t sure. Even still, the jaws of the alpha were ironclad. He had the presence of mind to be thankful that the wolf had hold of his arm and not his throat.
Before long, Benjamin could hear a frenzied concert of growls, snarls, and yips. The flashes of a shadow whipped around the air, and at a few moments here and there, he thought he caught a glimpse of a pair of dazzling blue lights dancing together. The white wolf immediately relinquished its grip on his arm, and as it did, he could finally feel a wave of pain creep over the place where its teeth had been. Before he was able to sit up, try to run, escape, grab his gun, or do anything, the shadow floated over him, with eyes of azure flame. In an instant, the shadow pounced on him and his vision dissolved into oblivion.
Benjamin woke lying upon a warm animal skin within a tent also made of skins. His arm was bandaged and his head pounded like a drum in tandem with his heartbeat. A slit in the tent flap, like a radiant silver sword, let in the light from the day. He managed to gather himself on his knees and slowly opened the flap to reveal a small campsite. There was a fire hugged by a ring of smooth river rocks and various tanning racks planted almost everywhere he looked. A blackened iron pot, presumably of coffee because of the scent, was boiling above the flames. Sage and the riderless horse were nearby and were both nibbling at the ground.
As Benjamin emerged from the tent and stood, a wave of sickness rushed to the maw of his gullet and a pain radiated in the back of his skull as if his head were being pounded on by a hammer. The sunlight, although being filtered by the canopy of the alpine woods, stabbed his eyes. His first thoughts were of Susanna.
The owner of the camp was nowhere to be found. As Benjamin neared the fire to warm himself a bit, the aroma of coffee caressed his nostrils. With his mind on his daughter, he aimed to mount up and keep going. But the scent of the coffee was mesmerizing. He also recognized it as his own coffee. It wasn’t a stretch that someone bought the same beans from the Lingering Strength general store that he did, but his mind couldn’t help but think that to whomever the camp belonged had helped themselves to his pack. Benjamin drank a single cup as quickly as he could. He didn’t have time to cook any of his cornmeal or bacon. Every second was crucial. He could live through a day of hunger.
As thanks for saving him, he left the riderless horse at the camp. Everything was in his pack that he had left home with, plus a bit extra: a book of matches and a few sticks of dynamite with their wicks cut nice and short. His coffee pouch was indeed a bit lighter than he remembered. A pot of coffee and a free horse. A pittance for saving his life, he thought. There was still no sign of his savior, so he decided to ride out. On his way, Benjamin noticed a tomahawk planted in the stump of a sawn tree.
The storm had dumped a large amount of snow atop the mountain and the pass, making the trek even more dangerous than it had been when he first departed. The wind was stout, even sometimes furious. It blew away most of the softer powder, making the treacherous route only a bit safer by revealing where Benjamin could safely tread and where he couldn’t. But it made the ride slow and miserable. His face and eyes burned and the blowing snow nearly blinded him.
Benjamin managed to scale the ascent with little additional trouble. At the apex, he peered down into the valley where Doc Langer supposedly lived. The path down this side of the slope was spotted with boulders and twisted through a skirt of alpine forest before it gave way to the hibernating deciduous trees living in the valley below. Not far in the distance, a monolith of black smoke rose into the air, and near it, smaller tufts of wispy white smoke accompanied it. The distinct roar of a gunshot rang out in the direction of the smoke, echoing off the mountainside. If that was Doc Langer’s house, it could mean that the only person able to cure Susanna was in trouble.
Benjamin made his way down the trail and toward the smoke. Every so often another shot would ring out, and soon Benjamin began hearing shouting and raucous laughter. He tied up Sage a bit further back and crept up on the scene with rifle in hand and the dynamite and matches stuffed into his coat. The wound on his arm would make it difficult to charge the lever, but he would have to make do. He hid behind a bank of trees as he spied on the source of the shots.
There was a house with a stable, the latter of which was engulfed in flame in the background. Rising from the charred corpse of the stable, a swirling tower of black smoke twisted into the air. Two men wearing grimy clothes and smug grins were busy merrymaking, taking target practice with dinner plates and expensive glass baubles. The snow in the front yard was littered with fragments of glass, ceramic, and splintered wood. After one of the men obliterated a painted glass pitcher and basin with a shotgun, earning a loud guffaw from his friend, a third man angrily burst through the front door.
“Will you eejits keep it down?! The good doctor is wrist deep in poor Marty’s guts and here you all are breakin' his concentration!” he barked with a pronounced Irish accent. A sure giveaway as to who he was, or at the very least, to which faction he and his men belonged.
“Oy, Johnnie, will ya ever feck off? We’re doin' important work here!” the man with the scattergun shot back, which earned him a hard slap across the jaw and kick in the rear from the Irishman he called Johnnie. Johnnie then proceeded to flip the man over the railing of the porch. The man tumbled onto the ground face-first into the snow.
“It’s John to you, ya limey lover!” declared Johnnie, who clearly preferred to be called John.
The other man simply burst out laughing and egged them on.
“Ya gonna take that lyin' down, are ya, Kil? And ya fell right in the spot where I pissed earlier! Surely ya didn’t eat none o' that yella snow?!”
“Why’re ya even here? Ya ain’t no O’Donnell like the rest of us. Everybody knows Patterson’s are cowards anyway!” Killian spat back at his friend Patterson.
“Enough o' yer jawin' the both of ya! The doc is workin' on my kid brother in there, and if he dies, the doc ain’t the only one who’s gonna pay,” John snarled before retreating back into the house.
Killian dusted the snow off his hat and rubbed his shoulder, now sore from the fall. He leaned on the shotgun like a cane, shuffled himself up the porch steps and slumped back into his chair, defeated. Benjamin stayed behind the trees and only dared peek around them, fully intent on eavesdropping on the boisterous men whom he assumed were O’Donnell outlaws.
“Johnnie’s temper aside, I hope Marty pulls through,” said Patterson. “Or else we gotta start relyin' on Grady and that shifty brother o' his!”
“And the Yankee lad! The hothead tag-along they seem keen on bringin' with ‘em. Gonna get himself shot one o' these days. Or worse, one o' us!” Killian added. “And where is Grady anyway? Him an' Tommy was supposed to be fetchin' some dynamite from the mines up yonder, yeah?”
“Mighty difficult breakin' into the bank safe with no dynamite, that’s for damn sure,” Patterson remarked. “If they was a cousins on yer ma’s side, they’d be back by now with sacks fulla cash, havin' done the whole job by their lonesome! But no, they got yer da’s blood in ‘em. Nothin' but drunks and scuts, that lot.”
“Then why ain’t the Pattersons done all the jobs we O’Donnells done, eh? Yer fulla hot air and a bit o' shite while we’re at it,” said Killian.
Benjamin could have sat there and listened to these two bicker all day and night, but time wasn’t something he had on his side. John O’Donnell had given him the information he needed without even knowing it. The doctor was inside and Benjamin, just as he set out to do the day before, intended on bringing him back to cure Susanna of her sickness. The fang wounds in his arm throbbed and sweat formed on his brow. Racking his brain for a way to get to the doctor and escape unscathed, and thinking of nothing, Benjamin was on the brink of despair. Until the right moment presented itself.
Only minutes later, the front door of the house burst open and out stumbled a man of about sixty with blood nearly up to his elbows and all over his clothes. He tumbled off the short porch and into the snow. A woman, perhaps in her forties, rushed to be by his side.
“Bernie!” she cried.
Both Killian and Patterson shot to their feet as John O’Donnell furiously trudged onto the porch.
“Ya good for nothin' snake oil peddler!” John roared. “First ya can’t save my cousin Bartholomew. And now I gotta write his ma about him dyin'. But she’s a strong woman with eight other children t' keep her heart content. And Bart was a sonuva bitch anyway, so not much to cry about. But then ya go and lose my dear brother Marty. I hate to admit it, but he was my ma’s favorite. And unlike most good Irish Catholic women, she didn’t have but me and him. This is gonna break her heart, Dr. Langer.”
“I told you! You brought them to me a day too late. They lost too much blood,” Langer argued.
“Speakin' o' blood, I have a mind to drain all o' yours all over this pretty white snow,” John said removing his pistol from its holster.
“No, please!” the woman pleaded.
“Face it, Mrs. Langer. Your husband failed at his job. The only thing he’s good for. What use do I have for him now?” John asked, cocking the hammer of his gun. “Now, Doc, stand and face your fate like a man.”
Langer rose to his feet. His wife stood between him and John.
“Evelyn, go,” he told his wife.
“I won’t let you kill him!” Evelyn said defiantly to John.
“We ain’t above killin' women,” Killian warned.
“Shut up, you,” John snapped.
“Evelyn, get out of the way, please,” Langer said with a slight tremble in his voice.
Benjamin couldn’t allow the doctor to be killed. And he didn’t have time to think of some grand plan to get him out of trouble. So he lit a stick of dynamite and heaved it. It flew over their heads and landed near the burning stable. Benjamin emerged from his hiding spot and took aim at the men on the porch. His first shot missed, and then the dynamite exploded, tossing a mass of snow and earth into the air.
The O’Donnell gang didn’t know what was going on, and so they frantically scrambled to find any cover they could. For Killian, this was into the house, but before he could even open the door an arrow hit him directly in the back. Another arrow flew from within the trees to Benjamin’s right, catching Patterson in the neck. John shot his revolver in that direction, but could not exactly tell from where the arrows were being flung. Benjamin fired another shot at John, nearly hitting the outlaw but instead shattering a glass kerosene lantern hanging on a wooden post. This got John’s attention and he swung towards Benjamin to return fire. But before he could pull the trigger, Benjamin tackled him to the ground, the poor shot having tossed his rifle aside in hopes of taking the O’Donnell leader on in a hand-to-hand fight. The impact of the fall dislodged the revolver from John’s hand, and so the two tussled in the snow, exchanging blows. The state of Benjamin’s injured arm left him at a severe disadvantage, and soon John had him on the ropes. The Irish outlaw slugged him in the face and in the gut until his vision went dizzy.
“I don’t know who ya are, stranger, but ya picked a fight with the wrong O’Donnell!” John declared as he kicked Benjamin to the ground. He picked up his revolver, pointed it at Benjamin, and right as he meant to squeeze the trigger, John grunted and grimaced. Blood trickled up into his mouth and down his chin. He slowly spun around and around, stumbling and struggling with his hands to grab at something behind him. As John showed his back to Benjamin, he revealed a tomahawk wedged in his back. John O’Donnell fell over dead.
Benjamin got to his feet and peered into the woods from where the arrows had been shot. He spotted a pair of blue eyes, bluer than a sea of early summer cornflowers, and even bluer still than the clearest of skies. They burned like fire, and then in a blink, were gone.
Langer and his wife had crawled away during the fight and were unharmed.
“Doc! Doc! Doc, where are ya?” Benjamin shouted.
“Here. H-here I am,” Langer reluctantly answered.
“The name’s Benjamin Mitchell. I ain’t here to hurt ya. I mean to bring ya to town. Lingering Strength. There’s people sick and need your help.”
“Yes, I meant to be there days ago. But these ruffians kept me,” he said. “And they killed my horse.”
“I gotta horse over yonder. We could probably double up…” Benjamin said.
“Not with a crate of antitoxin vials, we can’t,” Langer said. “Is that your horse there?”
Benjamin spun around and saw a riderless horse trot up to him. It wasn’t Sage, but the horse that Tom O’Donnell had ridden into the mountain pass before being shot by Hommel and his men. The very one that Benjamin had left in the camp as payment for saving his life.
“No, she’s tied up. Over that way. This one’s extra…” Benjamin trailed off. “Where in the hell did those arrows come from?”
“Are you saying that you came alone?” Langer asked.
“Yessir, I…I don’t have the damndest clue who that was,” Benjamin answered.
But he knew. The fleeting shadow with blue eyes, as blue as the mountain’s, had been his guardian spirit. The very spirit that he was warned would be his undoing. But his had been a noble journey, and perhaps, he thought, the spirit recognized that and decided to aid him. Whatever or whoever it was, Benjamin retained in his heart thanksgiving for the spirit of the mountain for the remainder of his days.