Chapter 14 – Through the Barrel

August 8th, 1865,

Wichita, KS

When they first arrived at Wichita, the town was bustling. People were riding and walking all around. Wichita was no one horse-town. It had at least two roads at the time, and in the West that might've well been a budding metropolis. On one hand, they would not be noticed or called out, on the other hand, it would be almost impossible to find and catch Will's abductors.

"Blackheart Quade!" yelled a man from behind, "What're you doin' back here?"

"Just lookin' for someone, Rango. Don't want any trouble…"

"Well then you came to the wrong place!" screamed the man as he pulled his gun on Peyton’s back. Before Peyton could draw, Kid Colt shot the coward through the chest.

"Thanks, kid" Peyton tipped his hat.

A crazed woman, dragging a staff with a dented golden cross on it, broke through the crowd and singled them out. “Know this!” she screamed at the top of her lungs.

“What in tarnation is this now?” Wild Card snarled.

“The book of Daniel tells us of a coming apocalypse!”

“Quiet down now, ya old hag!” persisted Wild Card as they all tried to walk away from her.

But she did not relent, “Chapter eight, verse twenty-three… ‘And at the latter end of their kingdom, when rebels have become completely wicked, a king of bold face, one who understands riddles, shall arise. His power shall be great— but not by his own power; and he shall cause fearful destruction and shall succeed in what he does, and destroy mighty men and the people who are the saints.”

“What’s she talking about?” Emma whispered to Ira.

“Pay no mind to it, sweetheart, just some disillusioned spinster,” Wild Card rationalized.

“That’s old testament she’s quoting,” Marshall let on.

“You recognize it, Slick?” Ira investigated.

“The book of Daniel…that’s apocalyptic scripture,” Marshall explained.

“Oh no,” Peyton sighed, “Here she goes again…”

“By his cunning he shall make deceit prosper under his hand, and in his own mind he shall become great. Without warning he shall destroy many. And he shall even rise up against the Prince of princes, and he shall be broken—but by no human hand.’”

"We gotta get outta here" suggested Kid Colt.

They could not escape her sadistic preaching’s out on the streets.

The crowd around them was starting to stare. "I know a bar," Peyton led them into the alleyways of the city.

The old beggar did not follow them. She stood at the edge of the alleyway, staring them down. “Ye be warned…”

Peyton brought them to an underground saloon. They all dismounted and walked in, one by one. Lastly, Ira entered hand in hand with Emma, who was still a little shaken up. They surveyed the place…nothing but outlaws, and cut-throats.

"Looks like we came to the right place," muttered Marshall.

Ira and Emma sat in a booth. Wild Card Cass visited the bar and brought three mugs of beer over to the table for them. Kid Colt sat down at the poker table, and Marshall and Peyton took up a spot near him on the bar. The bartender put a bottle of bourbon next to Peyton without saying a word. He brought two glasses over and filled them without asking for any money.

Marshall picked up his shot, "Is this your place?"

"…Use to be. Not anymore though...isn't that right Gallows?"

Marshall took his shot along with Peyton and looked over at the dreary bartender.

"Why do you call him Gallows?" he said, trying not to choke.

"Cause for drunkards and outlaws in Wichita, he's usually the last thing you see ‘fore you die."

Kid Colt lifted the corners of his two cards. Pocket aces. The dealer flipped the river card. It was the ace of spades. Kid Colt called his raise. The man sitting across from him was the only one still in. He met his raise and the Kid's stare. Kid Colt did not flinch but analyzed all his features. He was not put together right. His hair was all different shades of red. His beard was ravaged and braided into three points. And yet his skin was tan like a native, riddled with white blotches and freckles. His auburn hair almost completely covered his devious eyes.

A man walked up beside him, "Savage," the man called him, "Red Savage."

Kid Colt glanced at the man intruding on their game. It was the Iroquois from the Boathouse, Ticonderoga. Kid Colt laughed. Every damn time he picked up a good hand of cards on this or that side of the Mississippi, this Iroquois has been on the other side of it causing trouble. He held the urge to jump up and kill him for what he did to those hostages. The dimwitted Iroquois had not yet noticed the kid, who was trying to signal Marshall or Peyton over at the bar. The corner of Ira's eye caught Kid Colt’s signal. From the booth behind Ticonderoga, Ira got up and told Cass to, “stay here with Emma. And if anything happens, get her out." Ira left and retrieved his hat and rifle.

Ticonderoga saw Quade at the bar with Marshall and jumped back. Red Savage turned to have a look for himself. "Get'em to the hide-out!" ordered Savage. He turned back around and flipped the table on Kid Colt.

Colt sprang to his feet behind the fallen table and drew his guns. With his back against the table, he threw his arms over the top to find Red Savage and Ticonderoga dragging a man with a bag over his head out of the chaotic saloon. Kid Colt shot at them and launched the saloon into an uproar. Peyton and Marshall were pushed up against the bar as men fired their guns and fled for the exits. Ira got to the Kid, and they followed Ticonderoga and Red Savage out of the underground saloon.

They ran down the alleyway. Ira took a quick stance and fired his rifle. A shot of thunder echoed in the cloudy night sky covering the sound of Ira's shot. The outlaws turned the corner on Ira and his shot. Kid Colt had vanished. The shot had missed Ira's mark. He got around the corner and lightning flashed the scene. They were riding away on two horses. The sounds of thunder came again. But it was not thunder. Kid Colt rode in on his horse, along with Ira's, its reins in his hand. Ira quickly hopped on, and they continued their pursuit just paces behind Red Savage and Ticonderoga.

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Peyton and Marshall got out of the bar along with Wild Card Cass and Emma. The streets were running with the shadows of the degenerate.

"Stay close, darlin’" Wild Card warned.

"I think they went this way," called out Peyton.

Marshall looked down the street at him. He swung his head around the other way and the lightning caught the city in a glimpse. Marshall's foundation fell out from under him. The time had come. The clouds opened. Marshall stumbled back towards Peyton, as if he was facing a monster. He screamed running towards them waving his hands, "RUN!" he hollered over and over at them. Wild Card got Emma on their horse and Peyton stayed back with Marshall, asking, "What is it?"

Marshall yelled back. The rain came down and muffled his voice. Peyton listened carefully as Marshall yelled again, "FreeLander!"

The next sound Peyton heard was a bolt-action rifle firing a shot, which blazed past his head. Peyton grabbed Marshall who was frantically running towards him and they got to their horses. Together, they kicked the two horses as they mounted them. The three horses ran down Wichita City, through the pouring rain, away from the deadly bounty hunter. They quickly get to the outer limits.

"Wait here," ordered Marshall.

"Wait a second, who-" Cass got cut off by Peyton before he could finish inquiring.

"He's still following us!"

"And he won't quit until you're all dead, and I'm captured," confirmed Marshall. "That is why you must go now, as far away from me as possible."

Wild Card knew he could not argue with Marshall in his bewildered state, so he took Emma away under Marshall’s orders with no questions asked. Peyton looked back at the city. He was free. All he had to do was run again.

"You gotta go with them!" Marshall yelled, "Now!"

"Marshall, tell me you're not considering this," asked Peyton regretfully, for he knew Marshall and already knew his answer.

"I'm not going back to New York."

“I know.”

“No matter what it takes…”

"Then you're gonna need my help."

Marshall was relieved. Never one to ask for it, help was what he needed most right now. Peyton took a deep breath. For some reason he could not explain, he was going to risk everything. Maybe he just had a death wish. Peyton laughed to himself, he wasn't really sure if he could even die. But this was all nonsense to him. He kicked his horse, and they headed back into Wichita.

Meanwhile, Ira got around another corner to see the horses ahead of them coming to a stop. But before he could see which building they went in, the rain started pouring down on them. Kid Colt rode up behind him.

"Looks like their holed up in there," he screamed through the wicked rain.

Ira followed him over. The horses were hitched beside an old boarded up abandoned church.

Ira got off his horse and rammed his shoulder into the front door. It barely budged. Kid Colt joined him, and they tried again together. The door gave way and opened.

They rushed in with their guns drawn. Ira and Kid Colt had a good look around. They laid their guns down on the floor and slowly backed away with their hands above their heads.

September 1862,

Death Valley, CA

Ira

Ira tried to get away while masking the amulet's bluish glare. Finding grips in the stone could have been a lot harder on any other rock, on any other day, but luck seemed to be on his side this day. He pulled his arm over the ledge. Ira was atop a giant river ruin; a boulder with steep edges all around. His modified rifle only had one bullet left.

Addison Rey would be along on his trail shortly. No matter how wounded his former partner was, Ira knew he would never give up his pursuit. Addison always considered himself the better shooter, the better man, and the fact that Ira shot him twice after miraculously walking away from Addison’s kill-shot gave him every reason in the world to ignore his own wounds and finish what he set out to do. There was no way Addison Rey would let Ira Davis live. There was no way the South would let the North win.

Ira took off his pack and tried to flatten his body out, making sure there was no evidence of his climb. Addison looked around once the trail went cold. He knew something was off. He aimed his scope at several vantage points. Ira slowed his breathing and closed his eyes. He imagined hiding on the far side of the moon. He focused in on the still air with its calm lonely tide. The rival sniper moved on. Just before nightfall, Addison Rey returned only to back-track their original steps. Having not moved an inch in all that time, Ira fell asleep on that natural desert monument. He woke up in the morning alone with the dry earth and sand.

After looking around he found nothing but the sun. The sun panned the sky and revealed the shadowed dunes. There stood a four-legged beast out of place in the desert. It looked like a shaggy dog. The same one from the day he won the sharpshooter contest. Ira lowered himself down from the cliff. He could not help but follow the strange dog. It looked like it should be covered in dirt, but his mangy hair glowed pure white. Ira was utterly intrigued. It led him deep into what would later be known all across America as Death Valley. When Ira soon dehydrated and grew feverish he grabbed onto the dog's fur. It refreshed him and cooled him as the dog itself bled into the atmosphere; slowly fading into the desert sand and dry air.

Ira woke up. He was still walking. The dog was gone, and the sun now stood just over his head. The clouds were low and fast. They kicked up the sand and were evaporated by the hot desert sun. The tension from the storm twisted above Ira and pulled the amulet out from under his shirt. The stirring sands of the cyclone fused the sun with the clouds, and Ira conducted its blast. The strike hit the center of the medallion. What he thought to be crystal was unfrozen water. The light funneled and filtered through the storm and sand, phasing through the blue crystal center of the medallion, and into Ira's chest.

The blue beam surrounded Ira from the inside-out and covered his vision. The sensation crawled all over Ira’s body. It went up his head, saving his eyes and mouth for last. Ira screamed in fear of suffocating, but the sprawling light muffled the noise and wiped away the tear. The light stopped beating and Ira stopped breathing. When he woke up he was of another place entirely. The sand crushed under his foot, but he was not in the West. The light glowed under his shirt. Ira looked beneath his clothing, his heart was illuminated; a blue pulse emitting from his core.

The glow grew. It began to hurt. The beat extended through his chest, and it covered him again, launching him. The gravity shifted and Ira landed on a red surface. He could not breathe. The land was a vacuum of air. His gasps were of long empty takes. His lungs shriveled and his body failed.

The interstellar inhabitants watched with blue eyes and clogged nostrils, masks of industrial air over their mouths and tight goggles over their faces. Ira was about to die as they looked on mercilessly. Ira did not know what to think in his panic. The blue covered his wake and tracked his spine. It spanned his body again and finished around his outstretched, begging hand, transforming him through space and time.

Ira woke up, his lungs refreshed...sore, but functioning. He got up, but before he could find the will to speak he was looking down the line at a standoff in Dodge City: Marshall Troy and Peyton Quade looking forward down the street blocked by the alleyway he was standing in. Next to Peyton was a familiar face, a Union Sharpshooter with a modified rifle and worn down eyes. Ira saw himself staring right back at him. No… Can’t be… The blue shelled over him, and Ira screamed in silence again.

He was thrown back into the desert. This time when he got to his feet and to the top of the sand-hill he was looking upon the ancient Egyptian Pyramids. He fell on a ridge, lying on his back, facing the sun as it dropped behind the pyramids. Ira was exhausted, and the blue still infected his chest. The sun set just under the pyramid and its last ray was caught by the point of it. The ray of light shot horizontally at Ira and triggered his medallion.

The blue crystal turned pure white, as did the energy in his core. Along with the color-change came a relief in pressure. Ira braced his chest. He was beginning to figure this all out. He stood up and centered himself. Before the night fell, he pressed the crystal amulet against his chest and the blue glow clocked over the white and immersed him; sending Ira through time at will. As long as he remained in the daylight, he would be able to jump again.

Ira jumped into the future. Marshall was there waiting for him. He grabbed Ira and yelled, "Quickly, we don't have much time! Take these," he instructed as he handed over a bunch of papers, "If you don't do exactly what they say we are all dead!"

“Who the hell are you?” Ira was confused to say the least.

Marshall laughed and punched Ira's amulet and then the same identical amulet around his own neck. The light pulled over both of them and Ira was sent back through time.