Trial by fire | Previous Challenge Entry

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TITLE: Trial by fire | Previous Challenge Entry
By Dena Fellows
11/18/09
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Trial by fire

Ephraim’s knees seemed to be planted in the scorched ground where he knelt as the wind (bearer of the fiery trial) tugged at his soot covered jacket. The land, once rich with lush green grass, now lay before him as only chard remains.
His mind tried to understand what had just taken place. Ephraim had smelled the smoke early that morning but thought nothing of it for the wind could have carried the smell of a campfire for miles. With the blazing yellow noon day sun came the first warning.
The horizon to the east had turned orange and black and the smell of smoke intensified. There was only one place safe from a prairie fire and the river was fifty miles away. There was no need to push his horse on towards the water for the beast knew exactly what was in the wind.
So they ran.
Ephraim knew it was folly to try and outrun the fire but what else was there?
With ten miles to go and the fire at their heels, Ephraim knew that they wouldn’t make it together, but the horse rider less might. So he freed the stallion of his load, let the horse go, and turned to face his fiery end.
The roar of a thousand steam engines filled his ears and the black smoke overtook the earth blocking out the sun.
It was in those seconds between life and death that his life finally made sense. Ephraim had lived by the gun and assumed that he would die the same way. He never had regrets, all he ever needed was his horse and his pistol.
It was the way of hard men like him. No place to call home, no one to claim as your own.
Annora’s voice echoed in his mind, her last words to him. “God can save anyone, a thief on the cross, even a gunslinger.”
Ephraim had turned angrily towards the school teacher who was intent on saving his immortal soul. “I’d like to see him try.”

That was the last picture he would see in his mind. Annora’s beautiful face looking back at him with such a hurt in those deep blue eyes.
A great rush of wind and then it was all over.
The fire had passed by leaving not a hair singed nor a piece of cloth scorched. As Annora’s word hit him again like a stampede of cattle, he raised his eyes heavenward. The whole world seemed to echo his reply. I’d like to see him try.
It was with the clarity of a man who just faced death that Ephraim picked himself up from the ground and walked the ten miles to the river where he found his horse still waiting. Had it been another day he would have been surprised to find the stallion but not that day.
He turned his horse south, riding three days across the chard prairie and finally back into town. Ephraim passed the cantina where before he would have stopped, he went on by the gambling hall though his pockets held money itching to be played, and he came to stop in front of a little building in which he never had been in before.
The first time since a lad Ephraim Cayne was scared, not of men, not of death, but of life. Slowly he made his way past the crude benches and to the small table at the front. With trembling hands he upholstered his gun and laid it in front of the old wooden cross which stood there. He looked up never saying a word and walked out into the bright yellow sunshine.
Ephraim somehow ended up at the schoolhouse, Annora was still teaching her class. He stepped through the door and simply said, “God can save anyone, a thief on a cross, even a gunslinger.”

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