The Cost of Innocence

Calloused fingers caressed the journal ritualistically, sweat and dirt had long since blackened its leather hide cover. Flipping the journal open, revealed one single page, all others torn out. He had no need for the memories held on those pages. His past gone and buried. This final page was all that mattered to him.

Duncan Campbell

Elias Morgan

Kasper O’Donoghue

The list of names branded into his memory. Burned into his soul. Those names had torn his world apart. What had scrawled those names onto page was not the man, Jacob Byrne. It was the wraith left behind.

His skin crawled; gnats and maggots seeming to squirm through the very fibre of the bar. This place felt rotted to the core. Jacob had been drawn to this place on the word of whispers. Whispers of the names he hunted. Grey eyes drank in their surrounds. Drunkards and wastrels littered through the dank saloon, no more than a dozen men. Human refuse, Jacob spat; leeches clamped onto the underbelly of society. Against the corner sat a round table veiled in a thick cloud of cigarette smoke, accommodating the only group in the saloon. Jacob’s ears pricked up, glancing over from atop the chipped tankard he raised to his lips.

“So what do they be doing?” A deep voice drawled, one of the five from the table asked.

“Who put a quarter in the idjit?” A predatorial chuckle wheezed, an itch tickled the back of Jacob’s mind as that wolf-like laugh burrowed into his ear.

“I just mean, me brother an’ me…” The deep drawl muffled under the slurred babbling from the bar. A heavyset balding man hung off the counter; giggling as his beady eyes leered at the bargirl, before suddenly crumpling to the floor. Her eyes flicked to Jacob in exasperation before reaching to pocket the coins left on the bar.

“What does it matter what they’re doing? You want me to shout it to the sheriff? Eli and Kasper’ll do their job. You two do yours.”

Icy tendrils seizing his chest. His grip hard as iron around his revolver. ‘It’s them!’ His mind screaming.

Eyes darting around the bar. A gunfight here wouldn’t end without deaths of the innocents within. But were they innocent? People in a place like this; how innocent could they be? Searing heat swelled in his throat, choking him. Jacob found himself standing. Feet carrying him in pursuit.

A hand grasped his bicep. “Hey there hon… Big fella like you would surely help a lady out?”

Jacob glared down at the delicate fingers wound around his arm. Abigail stood before him. Her auburn hair burnished in the dim lamplight. No. Not Abigail… The barmaid. Reeling for an instant, Jacob felt the crushing weight of reality knock the air from him.

Those green eyes gazing up at him. He couldn’t draw his weapon. Not with her so close. So like Abigail; she was innocent. His grip loosened. Her head cocked toward the drunk at the foot of the bar. Frantic, Jacob hefted the body to his shoulder, glare unbroken on the men leaving.

“Best you take him ‘round back. Better without this oaf dozing out the front.” Beckoning him to the rear exit.

The creaking hinges of the saloon door grated his ears. Hackles raised, panic stirred within him; a wolf alert, the dread that his prey had eluded him. Sprinting around the bar to the hitching posts, the clean air soured in his mouth. The avenue barren, no trace to where they had gone.

Duncan felt the dull ache in his thighs, they had pushed hard for almost an hour since the saloon. Flanked by Eli and Kasper, he steered off the trail down the steep gorge underneath the trail’s bridge. Leaving the Leroy twins atop a hillock at the forked trail, eagerly cradling their rifles. Dumb as posts the pair of them, but a pair of posts all that was needed to raise a fence. An obstacle all they were, left to block the safe trail, forcing the carriages across the bridge. Unrepentant murderers; laughing about their kills. A man shouldn’t take pleasure in the kind of deeds they did... Duncan’s own hands were far from clean. Yet he held tight on the thought that no one was innocent. His own hands forced into this life. It was not what he had chosen for him; what he chose was taken from him. Once this was over, he would be done. With the gold from the safe, he would leave this life. With twenty thousand dollars, he would buy land. He would farm cattle. Alone, he could no longer hurt anyone. No longer could anyone hurt him. That hope drove him forward.

Snaking down the steep valley, he pulled the grey mare to a halt underneath the bridge high above.

“The Leroys know about the gatling?” Eli’s reedy voice cut through the eerie quiet.

“No…” Duncan paused. “They’ll do what they do. Rabid dogs only got two ways to go in this world. They’ll keep biting ‘til someone puts ‘em down.”

Eli nodded uncertainly. Satchel slung over shoulder, clambering up the bridge’s thick wooden supports.

“Why they only got the one gun anyways? Gold like this ya figger they’d bring the flamin’ army.” Kasper mumbled; his one good eye focussed on Eli’s climb, already some 15ft above them.

“These banks think they’re smarter than the lot of us combined. A lot of guards stink of something worth stealing. Two horse carts usually ain’t got a lick of worth stealing. Whole lot less when they got a machine gun hidden in the back one.” Duncan striding to grasp the detonation cord tossed down by Eli, linking the cable to detonator.

Duncan soaked in these quiet moments of serenity. He had always loved the quiet, the gentle kiss of the breeze as it coursed through the winding gorge, the quiet babbling of the stream took him far from this place. With the scream of gunfire, he was dragged back. Horses squealed over the blasting rifles. The screeching whine of the gatling gun chilled his bones. If he was right, the carriages would flee over the bridge, leaving the Leroys behind to be gunned down by the turret.

The next few moments seemed an eternity. Eyes raised towards the bridge; thin rays of light arced down between the bridge beams. Dust motes shook from the bridge, dancing down in the beams of light; frozen in time until they vanished into darkness. Eclipsing the sun, the first carriage now directly overhead. Duncan held. He needed both carriages on the bridge. Knuckles white, coiled around the plunger. Blood pounding in his ears. No… not his heartbeat. Hooves. The second carriage’s shadow crossed overhead. Darkness swallowing the gorge once more. Duncan threw all his weight onto the detonator.

Jacob’s stallion whinnied as he pushed the steed uphill. Crossing across trails in search of any sign. The silence deafening, leaving his thoughts uninterrupted as they raged within him. He had lost them. Gone. Just as his family was. Abigail. Arthur. Sally. Never to be seen again. No. They were not like his family. He may never see his family again. But he would not rest until he looked upon the three faces of those responsible. One last time was all he needed. Forward was the only way. There was no way back. Not for him.

Plumes of smoke curled skyward to the east. Turning to put the setting sun behind him, he kicked his steed into a sprint. A bridge once crossing a gaping chasm lay in ruins. Smouldering wreckage wafting from the gorge like the pits of hell. The putrid stench of burnt flesh and blood and timber stung his nostrils. Edging down the gorge, he slowed to trot scanning the carnage. The bridge’s beams and rafters shattered. Two carriages overturned; ripped apart. His grey eyes lingered on the faces, frozen in their last moments of agony. He let his rage swallow him, the long-burning furnace that drove him on this path. None of these faces were of the men he sought.

Dusk had now given way to night. An apt reflection of Jacob’s dark mood. Grimly pushing down the trickling stream alongside the gorge. The sounds of laughter carried by a breeze from a grove further inland. Barely within eyesight, the faint glow of fire flickered between trees and underbrush. Like a moth to flame, Jacob was drawn to the beacon. His boots crunched against soil. His fingers ran along the grain of his revolver’s walnut grip. The glow growing with each step.

“Who the fuck are you!” Screamed a voice. Two figures sprang to their feet, rifles readied.

“Elias Morgan. Kasper O’Donoghue.” The names fell from his lips. Four words. So small were they. For what could one man say in four words.

Eyes widened. The momentary recognition clear on their faces awash in the campfire’s orange glow.

Two shots echoed in the darkness. An instant of silence held before the sounds of chirping crickets resumed.

Jacob waited, fire burning behind him.

Duncan sauntered back from the stream. Flasks now full, hand grasping the reins he led his grey mare back to camp. Her saddlebags laden with gold bars save for one. One he had pocketed into his coat. He had placed it there as soon as they pried the safe open amidst the burning carriage. Right hand curled around the cool ingot. As light as air, it felt like freedom. He was done. A new life for him. Nothing could replace what he had lost, but it was as close as he could afford. Now there was little he couldn’t. Lost in elation, he gave no care as he neared the camp. The fire’s warmth kissed his skin before he noticed what awaited him. Gunbarrel staring down at Duncan.

“Whoa now friend. Seems I’ve wandered into a bit of a predicament. I’ve just come seeking a fire to warm my bones. But it seems you and these gentlemen have had a bit of a… falling out.” Duncan eyed his gun-belt resting against Kasper’s pack, raising his hands slowly.

“Duncan Campbell”

Steeling himself, Duncan let no sign creep across his face. Staring into the eyes behind the barrel of the gun. “That your name friend? Bill Leroy is mine. Wish I could say it’s a pleasure but that steel you’re holding has got me mighty skittish.” Reaching behind him, he unclasped the saddlebag from his grey. The clamour of bullion rang out as the bag thudded to the ground. “Seems I’ve been walking into a bit recently. I’ve come into a bit of gold you see. You an’ me. We split it. You walk away. I walk away. Like the darkness at dawn… I’ll be gone. I don’t want none of this. Just an innocent who walked into the wrong camp.”

Jacob’s slow breath held the silence for a moment. “No one is innocent.” With those four words. Jacob squeezed the trigger.

The recoil flowed back through Jacob’s body. He had fired every ounce of hatred through his gun. Every fear. Every pain. Every foul little thing that had festered within him since that day. Shot through Duncan Campbell’s skull. Hand still raised, he let the gun drop. His body shaking, reflexively his hand dug through his pocket to grasp the black journal. The little stained book the sole source of direction he had held onto for as long as he chose to remember. The saddlebags contents gleamed, its’ golden glow brilliant in the firelight. The corpse beside it still clutching a single ingot. Prising the bar from its’ dead fingers, Jacob stood over the body. Gold in one hand. Journal in the other. For a moment he stared upon what his revenge had wrought, before dropping both upon the greying corpse.

A faint silhouette faded from the campfire’s light. The silhouette of a man freed. The silhouette of a man no longer innocent.