CHAPTER FORTY
Shawn O’Brien saddled Wolfden’s white horse and hitched a grade mare to a spring wagon he’d discovered at the rear of the livery. He didn’t know who owned either and he didn’t much care.
Meantime, a cussing Ford Platt was still trying to convince his balky mule that a saddle was not an instrument of equine torture.
The rain had stopped and the clouds had parted. A rose-colored flush showed in the sky to the west, heralding the coming of evening. A south wind had risen and rustled around the stable like the swish of women’s dresses at a grand ball.
Shawn studied Platt’s struggles and said, “Why don’t you pick yourself out a horse?”
“And let this creature win? That’ll be the day.”
“She’s already won, I reckon.”
“Not a chance.” He raised a fist to the mule’s nose. “Cooperate, or I’ll punch your damned lights out.”
It seemed that the mule was intimidated. She stood foursquare and lowered her head in submission.
“See, all it takes with mules is a strong hand,” Platt said, grinning.
Then he jumped for his life as the animal aimed a vicious kick at his leg.
As Platt turned the air around him blue with curses, Shawn laughed.
It was the second time that afternoon and Shawn was pleased.
He’d thought he’d lost the habit of laughter and that it would never return. But just maybe he’d found it again.
After a struggle, Shawn helped Platt get the mule saddled and bridled.
“I’d better round up Hamp and Sally,” Shawn said. “It’s high time we were out of here.”
“I smell burning,” Platt said as he tied the sack of supplies he’d gathered onto his saddle. “Seems like wood.”
“It’s a damp day,” Shawn said. “Fires being lit, I guess.”
But that was not the case as Hamp Sedley made clear a few moments later.
He ran into the livery and yelled, “The church is on fire!”
“Where is Sally?” Shawn said.
“I don’t know. She’s not at the hotel.”
“Damn it, Hamp, find her!”
Sedley hesitated, uncertainty showing in his face.
Finally, he nodded and ran to the door. There he stopped, staring to his left, his jaw dropping.
“Hell, the fire’s spreading!” he yelled.
Like all western settlements on the edge of nowhere, Holy Rood’s buildings were tinder dry and fire was an ever-present danger.
Despite the day’s rain, the burning church showered sparks and embers onto roofs that readily caught fire, urged on by the strong south wind.
When Shawn ran out into the street, he knew in an instant that Holy Rood was in mortal danger.
Beside him, Ford Platt stared at the church and whispered, “Oh, my God.”
Then Shawn saw what Platt saw.
Sally stood in front of the church with her arms upraised. Her hair was undone and streamed wild in the firestorm and she yelled something over and over that Shawn could not hear.
Behind the girl the church was a scarlet and orange rectangle of soaring flame and a column of smoke rose into the air, only to be bent into a black bow by the rising wind.
“Sally!” Shawn shouted. “Get away from there!”
Then he was running toward the blaze.
Frantic people jostled past him in the street, fleeing toward open ground as building after building erupted in fire. A dry goods store burned, only a dress shop away from the rod and gun premises that was sure to have a supply of gunpowder and dynamite.
Shawn knew that if the sporting goods store went up, the town was doomed. But there was nothing to be done. Driven by the remorseless wind, fires on both sides of the street raged out of control. The inferno tinged the early evening sky blood red and the air was thick with acrid smoke and glowing cinders.
Shawn burst free of a panicked knot of people and sprinted faster in the direction of the church.
“Sally!” he yelled. “Sally!”
Then, above the roar of the firestorm, he heard her.
“Goddess of the eternal moon.
Let this town meet its doom. . . .”
“No, Sally!” Shawn yelled. “Get the hell out of there.”
The girl saw him, her face shimmering scarlet in the glow of the flames.
“I burned them out, Shawn!” she shouted, her mouth stretched on an O of glee. “They’ll never send another witch to the stake in this double-damned town.”
The heat was intense as billows of flame consumed the church like crimson waves breaking on a rock.
His arm raised to protect his face, Shawn stepped closer to Sally. Sparks scorched his hands and he smelled burning broadcloth as windblown cinders stuck to his coat.
But the girl stepped back when she saw Shawn get closer.
Her hair was on fire.
His eyes smarting from smoke, Shawn lunged, reaching out for her.
Too late. Too late by moments.
Shawn heard a tremendous craaack! Then the church roof caved in, erupting serpent tongues of flame and sparks. A moment later, the front of the building collapsed and instantly Sally was buried under a mass of blazing beams and timbers . . . her funeral pyre.
Shawn retreated, the heat now unbearable.
He stood at a distance and the only sounds he heard were the feral snarl of the fire and the crackle of burning wood.
“She’s gone, O’Brien. Sally is dead.”
Hamp Sedley stepped beside Shawn. His skin bunched around his eyes and he looked as though he’d aged a decade in just a few moments.
“Seems like,” Shawn said. He didn’t trust his emotions should he try to utter anything more.
“You look like a Georgia minstrel,” Sedley said. It was the kind of unthinking thing a man in deep shock says. “Your face is black.”
“I guess so,” Shawn said.
The street was streaked with smoke and flying embers and fire cartwheeled through the buildings on both sides of the street, like a foretaste of hell.
“I think she must have taken the oil lamp from her hotel room and snuck into the rear of the church,” Sedley said. “Doesn’t need much to start a fire.”
“No. No it doesn’t.”
“I can’t believe Sally’s gone, O’Brien,” Sedley said again. “But if we stand here much longer we’ll join her.”
A moment later the rod and gun shop exploded.