— The Devil Rode Beside Her

Trail Of Fire

Part 1- The Tracker And The Devil

Dawn broke mean and sharp, cutting across the plains like a razor. The sky burned a bruised red—the kind of color the old folks always said meant blood would be spilled before sundown. She’d never been one for superstition, but the world had a way of making its own predictions. And this sky? It wasn’t asking. It was promising.

Rudy stumbled around camp, jittery from a night spent staring into darkness that occasionally stared back.

“You sleep?” she asked, adjusting the cinch on her saddle.

Rudy snorted. “About as well as a man can with… with that thing prowlin’ around.”

“That thing kept you alive.”

He shuddered. “Didn’t feel alive.”

“Then you ain’t used to livin’.”

He stared at her like he couldn’t decide whether she was fearless or insane.

She swung into the saddle. Rudy climbed onto a half-lame mule he’d found wandering the ridge. The mule looked about as thrilled as Rudy did.

They headed north.

Boot prints appeared beside her again—methodical, even. The shadow walking the line between seen and unseen.

Rudy tried not to look at them, but his eyes kept drifting, wide and terrified.

“You don’t have to stare,” she said quietly.

“I ain’t—”

“You are.”

“Well, it’s kind of hard not to when footsteps show up beside a woman who rides alone,” Rudy snapped. Then immediately shrank. “Sorry. Didn’t sleep.”

She grunted. “You’ll sleep when the Shepherd’s dead.”

Rudy gulped. “Is… is that your aim?”

“No,” she said. “Aim is too gentle a word.”

The plains rolled out ahead—endless, empty, waiting.

But not for long.

Around noon, they reached the old riverbed—Drywater’s beginning. The ground cracked like ancient skin. Dust devils spun across the flats, hissing and whispering in ways that didn’t sound natural.

Rudy tugged his mule’s reins nervously. “Folks say the preacher’s got scouts out this way.”

“Scouts I can handle.”

“What about the… other things?”

She looked at the boot prints beside her. “They’re your best protection.”

“That ain’t comfortin’.”

“Ain’t supposed to be.”

They kept riding.

By midafternoon, the air changed—heavier, darker—like the sun was struggling to shine through something thick and wrong. Even her horse felt it, ears flattened, hooves dragging.

Then they smelled it.

Smoke.

Human smoke.

Rudy gagged. “God… what is that?”

She didn’t answer. She already knew.

They crested a slope—and saw the camp.

Six wagons burned to skeletons. Tents ripped open. Bodies scattered like discarded dolls—men, women, a child’s shoe beside a pile of ash.

Rudy slid off his mule, stumbling forward. “This… this was my camp. Oh God. Oh God.”

She dismounted slowly.

Her shadow stretched long and dark behind her—then moved ahead of her, crossing the sand like a hunting hound catching a scent.

She scanned the scene.

No tracks.

No wagon ruts.

No hoofprints.

Nothing.

Like the ground had swallowed the Shepherd’s men whole.

Rudy choked. “My brother—he’s—he—”

“Don’t look for him.”

Rudy spun. “Why not?!”

“Because he ain’t here.”

“What do you mean he ain’t here? He was right here! He—”

“There’s no blood,” she said.

Rudy froze mid-sob.

“There’s ash,” she continued. “There’s scorch. There’s bone. But no blood.”

Rudy’s face twisted with horror. “They took him?”

“They took all of ‘em.”

“Alive?”

“Alive enough.”

Behind her, the shadow pulsed—one slow, deep heartbeat in the dirt.

Rudy dropped to his knees. “Why? Why take my brother instead of killin’ him?”

“Because the Shepherd don’t kill unless he wants somethin’ raised,” she said. “And livin’ flesh burns better than dead.”

Rudy doubled over, sobbing.

She let him.

She’d done her own sobbing years ago—and learned tears only softened the soil for graves.

She walked deeper into the ruins.

Bones lay scattered—but they weren’t old. Fresh. Bleached by fire, not time. Some had strange markings—cut deep, shaped like symbols she’d hoped she’d never see again.

Her stomach dropped.

The Shepherd wasn’t just calling up the dead.

He was feeding them.

Her shadow halted beside a wagon wheel.

Its form twisted—elongating, sharpening.

Then shrank back again.

A warning.

Rudy looked up, face pale and streaked. “Are they… are they coming back?”

“No,” she said.

“Then what’re you afraid of?”

She stared at the scorched ground, where the sand itself seemed to tremble beneath the weight of something buried, restless.

“I ain’t afraid,” she murmured. “I’m expectin’.”

And right on cue—

The ground cracked.

A thin, skeletal hand burst from the dirt, grasping blindly at the air.

Rudy screamed.

She drew her revolver with one smooth motion.

But the shadow moved faster.

It lunged across the sand, slamming into the rising corpse with crushing force. The creature shrieked—soundless yet deafening—before collapsing in on itself, turning to ash and bone dust.

Rudy scrambled backward. “WHAT—WAS—THAT—?!”

She holstered her gun, eyes dark.

“Trail’s fresh,” she said. “The Shepherd ain’t far.”

Rudy stared at the crushed remains. “What’s he raisin’, lady?”

“An army.”

“Of the dead?!”

“No.”

She mounted her horse.

“Of the wronged.”

Boot prints appeared beside her once more.

And with the devil pacing her stride, she rode into the burning horizon—following a trail only hell itself could leave behind.

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If you're ready, say “Continue” and I’ll unleash Chapter Six — Bones in the Prairie Grass.