The dock slipped behind him, the steady thrum of the paddlewheel fading into the wider hum of Vicksburg at night. The city pressed close, its streets narrow, half-paved and half-dirt, lined with sagging buildings that leaned into one another like drunks. Light leaked from crooked shutters and swinging lanterns, throwing gold strips across mud and cobble. Somewhere a dog barked, sharp and quick, and was answered by another farther off.

Eli kept to the shadows, Colt loose in his hand, saddlebag snug across his shoulder. Every step was measured, boots soft on the uneven ground. The echoes of the fight still clung to him—the smoke, the shouts, the mule’s scream. He could feel it in his bones the way a man feels a storm that hasn’t passed yet. The air smelled of gunpowder and tar, but underneath ran the sharper current of pursuit.

They hadn’t broken. They’d pulled back, regrouped. He could hear them now—the scuff of boots, the low hiss of voices, the short whistle of a signal. Men hunting, not running. Burke’s men.

He ducked into a side street where the lanterns didn’t reach, the dark broken only by the pale wash of moonlight over rooftops. The houses here leaned closer still, their porches sagging, their clapboards gray with river damp. Laundry lines sagged overhead, sheets hanging like pale ghosts in the night breeze. Eli paused, listening.

Bootsteps. Two sets, steady, coming up the lane behind him. Another pair cutting crosswise, moving quick. They were working to box him, close the street ahead. He could almost see the pattern in his mind—men pushing in like dogs driving a deer into the open.

He slid along the wall of a boardinghouse, his shoulder brushing rough wood, and stopped at the corner where the street bent toward the riverfront. He risked a glance.

Two men waited at the far end, rifles low at their sides. Their hats pulled down, faces in shadow, but their posture gave them away. They weren’t dockhands. They were waiting on him.

Eli’s breath came steady. No hurry. He eased back into the dark, listening as the boots behind him drew closer. He weighed the street, the walls, the laundry lines. His eyes caught the outline of a narrow stair climbing to a balcony above—a rickety flight, half-rotten, but it was there.

The first of the men rounded the corner, revolver already half-raised. Eli didn’t give him time. One shot cracked loud in the night, the muzzle flash spilling light across the alley. The man went down hard, gun clattering on the cobble.

The second cursed and ducked back. Eli was already moving, boots pounding up the stair, taking them two at a time. The wood groaned, but it held, and he swung himself onto the balcony. Below, the street came alive—men shouting, boots striking, a whistle shrill enough to rattle glass in the windows.

He ran the length of the balcony, ducking low as shots sparked from the street. Splinters leapt from the rail, plaster chipped from the wall at his side. He dropped flat, fired once blind, and heard a curse and a crash as one of them hit the ground.

From the far end of the balcony, another figure stepped out. Not a random lodger—this one was waiting. A knife caught the moonlight in his fist, the edge gleaming as he rushed.

Eli didn’t waste a bullet. He let the man come close, too close, then swung the Colt hard, the barrel catching him across the jaw with a crack. The knife skittered across the planks. The man staggered, grabbed for Eli’s coat, but Eli twisted and drove a boot into his chest. The man toppled backward over the rail, his shout cut short by the thud below.

The shouts grew louder. More were coming. Eli holstered quick, vaulted the next rail, and dropped into a narrow alley between two buildings. He hit hard, rolled, and came up running. His shoulder ached where the saddlebag dug in, but he didn’t slow.

The alley spilled him onto another crooked lane, this one opening toward the glow of lanterns near the riverfront warehouses. He slowed just enough to listen.

Voices again. Three, maybe four. Closing fast. One called his name—not loud, but sharp, a hiss meant to cut the dark.

Eli’s jaw set. Burke might be gone, but his reach was still here. And these men weren’t playing for coin anymore.

He stepped into the cover of a wagon, Colt back in hand, his eyes on the shadows stretching long across the street. He let the night close around him, his breathing steady, waiting for the next man to step into the open.

The hunt was still on.

—•—

Eli Warren — The Alleys Tighten

—•—

He let the wagon’s shadow hold him a breath longer, Colt steady, eyes on the slice of street where lantern light met dark. The city had a pulse of its own—mules clopping, a far-off bell, a door slamming down some lane—and under it the thinner, truer beat of men closing in. A short whistle answered by two clicks. A cough cut short. Leather creaked.

A shape eased past the wagon’s tailboard, careful, hugging the light’s edge so he wouldn’t throw a long shadow. Eli watched the feet first—toe pointed, heel light, a gunman’s step. He let the man commit. When the head came even with the wheel rim, Eli rose, the Colt already up. One shot snapped the night. The man folded back into dark as if a string had been cut.

The whistle on the left turned to a shout. Two more came fast from the cross street, firing as they ran. Splinters leapt from the wagon spoke. Eli slid along the boards, dropped to a knee, and sent one round low at the running man’s legs. The fellow pitched forward and vanished behind a stack of cordwood. The second ducked, fired blind, and broke for cover.

The lane woke like a kicked nest. An answering crack hammered from behind Eli—another pair had swung wide to box him. He didn’t wait for the vice to close. He broke from the wagon and ran hard for the mouth of a narrow passage between two buildings. Shots chased him, hot and high. Plaster dust salted his hat brim as a slug smacked the corner brick.

He took the passage in three long strides and shouldered through hanging laundry that licked his face like wet flags. On the far side he cut right into a tighter lane, the stones dark with river damp. A single lantern burned at the far end over a back door, throwing a clean wedge of light across the ground—too clean. He knew a shooting lane when he saw one.

He stopped short of the light and looked up. The roofs were a ragged roofline of clapboard and tin, eaves close enough in places to jump. Somewhere above, a faint scuff. He shifted left as if to bolt and a muzzle sparked from a third-story window. The shot bit brick where his head had been. Rooftop.

Eli slid back into the deeper shadow, breath steady. Counting. He had burned more cartridges on the dock than he liked. The earlier sprint and the balcony scuffle had cost him two more. He reached to his belt without looking, fingers finding the next run of brass by habit. He worked smooth and blind, feeding his cylinder while his eyes kept the roofs.

The sniper came again—impatient now, the angle steeper. Eli didn’t answer the shot. He shot the lantern instead. The glass burst into glitter and darkness fell like a dropped curtain. In the sudden black, the window above framed its own betraying glow. A pale face, a rifle barrel—a ghost cut against lamplight. Eli lifted, timed the breath, and sent one clean round. The face vanished. A body thudded the floorboards inside. Silence took the window.

Boots hammered into the lane behind him. Men spilled from both mouths now, shouting to keep their nerve up. He moved before their courage settled. The laundry line still sagged across the narrow. He took it in his hand and yanked, walking backward as cloth ripped off the pins. Sheets fell like gray water. He dragged the makeshift curtain across the lane, then dropped to a crouch behind a low barrel and fired under the hanging cloth at the legs he saw coming. A man yelped and went down. Another charged and tangled in the wet linen, thrashing, his pistol throwing blind flashes into cotton. Eli rose, stepped left, and put him still.

“Back to the street!” a voice called from the dark—firm, older, not panicked. Not one of the boys who had rushed the dock. A cooler head. Orders snapped along the lane, and the push steadied. They weren’t breaking; they were reshaping.

He needed height again. The stair he’d used before was two lanes back—the wrong way—and the roofline here offered no obvious path. He crossed the lane in a low sprint and shouldered through a slatted gate into a yard where barrels of resin and tar leaned against a shed. The smell was thick and sharp. He filed that away. A stacked crate made a step. He took it, caught a gutter with his left hand, and hauled himself onto a shallow porch roof slick with dew.

Another shout—closer now. A muzzle flash blinked below and to the right; the ball scraped tin with a sound like a knife on a plate. He rolled flat and let the shooter fire again, marking the angle. When the second flash came he answered, quick and centered. The return shot cut off mid-curse.

From the yard’s far fence a figure rose slow, not firing. A derby hat, a neat coat, the pale glint of a watch chain. The man didn’t raise a gun. He pointed. Men shifted in the alleys like dogs tipped left by a shepherd’s hand. The neat one never looked up at Eli; he watched the lanes instead, moving pieces with short words. Lieutenant, Eli thought. 

Eli slid along the porch roof to its end and found a narrow jump to an eave across the gap. He took it, landing light, the tin groaning under his weight. Below, the lanes had turned. He had thought he was slipping them toward open streets. Instead, every turn drew him nearer the river again, toward the low blocks where the warehouses squatted with their doors barred and their windows black. They weren’t driving him away from anything. They were bringing him to something.

A dog lunged at the base of the building, chain rattling. The noise tore the night. Doors cracked open far off, faces peered and vanished. Vicksburg was awake enough to hear trouble but too wise to step into it.

He crossed another run of roofs and dropped into a narrow court that stank of sour mash and spilled molasses. The ground bore the marks of heavy wheels. A handbill tore off a post and skated past his boot. When he reached the court’s mouth the river wind hit his face, cool and clean, carrying the slap of water against hulls and the hollow thud of a loose board on a float.

The court opened onto a wider way. Lanterns burned low along the fronts of three warehouses, their signs faded by weather and smoke. Doors stood at half height on iron runners, half open like the mouths of sleeping animals. Between them, shadows thick as wool. On the roofs and in the alley mouths he counted motion—shoulders, hats, the flash of a metal ring on a belt. They had set the ground and waited until he had no better choice than to step onto it.

A shot cracked from behind him, too close. The ball tore a chip from the wall at his ear. He ducked, swung, and saw only a darkness deeper than the rest. He sent one round into it to make space and ran angled for the warehouse on the left where the open door offered shadow not glare.

The neat man in the derby stepped into the light then, twenty yards off, calm as a shopkeeper. The watch chain flashed once. He didn’t raise his weapon; he didn’t need to. Men lifted theirs for him, barrels finding their rests. “Hold,” he said, voice low. The gun muzzles stilled. He tipped his chin at Eli, measuring.

Eli slowed. He felt the river at his back, endless and black. He felt the city pressing at the edges, the way a hand presses the top of a jar. He could break for the open street and be cut down in the crossfire. He could double back and find only more men by now, set on their marks. Or he could go where they wanted him.

He aimed for the half-open door and let the darkness take him a step, then two. The air inside was cooler, heavy with cotton dust and old grain. The floorboards under his boot had a long, hollow note to them—a wide room with space for echo and ambush both. He paused just inside the threshold and listened with everything he had left. Rope creaked. A mouse skittered. Above that, a breath held and let out slow.

Behind him, the derby man’s voice came again, mild, almost pleased. “Lights.”

Lanterns bloomed inside the warehouse one by one—on a beam to the right, on a post at the center, in the loft where the rafters made a low forest. The glow chased shadows back but didn’t kill them. In the rising light, figures took shape—three on the floor behind crates, two on a catwalk, one on the stair with a rifle settled and ready.

They had him in the mouth of their box with the river to keep him from running and the city to keep him from calling help. Eli flexed his left hand once, felt the ache where the saddlebag’s strap had cut, and let his breath ease out. He drew a little deeper into the doorway’s dark so the lanterns would have to fight to see him.

They wanted him here. Fine. He was here.

—•—

The warehouse air was thick with cotton dust and the damp of river grain, the lanterns hanging high casting cones of yellow that barely reached the floor. Men shifted in the glow—faces half-seen, rifles braced on beams, pistols resting on crates. The building creaked as though it, too, waited.

Eli stood just inside the doorway, one boot in shadow, the other in light. The river’s cool breath slipped through the open gap behind him, tugging at his coat. He didn’t glance back. The river was no escape now; they had chosen this place too carefully.

The derby-hatted man stepped forward, neat coat buttoned, watch chain winking faintly as he moved. He carried a revolver in his right hand, muzzle low but ready. His voice was even, not raised, each word carrying in the hollow space.

“You played well, Warren. Better than Burke. Better than most. But games have winners and losers, and luck don’t make you immortal.”

He paced a few steps, boots quiet on the boards. Men in the rafters tracked Eli’s outline, their rifles following without being told. The lieutenant didn’t need to bark orders. His presence was order enough.

Eli let his Colt hang easy in his grip, barrel angled toward the floor. He studied the man’s stance, the spacing of his feet, the set of his shoulders. The kind of posture that belonged to someone who’d fought before, not just watched.

“Burke’s done,” Eli said, his tone flat. “River took him.”

The lieutenant’s mouth twitched—whether it was grief, disbelief, or simple disdain, Eli couldn’t tell. “Burke was a fool at the table, but he had a head for the river. He built something, and you think you can drown it in one night?” He raised the revolver an inch. “You’ve only bought yourself a longer debt.”

Eli’s eyes flicked upward—two rifles on the loft, one on the stair, three more spread on the floor. They were close enough to hit him, but they weren’t firing. Not yet. This was meant to be a killing men remembered, not one lost in a volley of smoke.

He took a slow breath. “If you’re here to settle it, then settle it. Otherwise, tell your men to stop wasting lantern oil.”

For the first time, the lieutenant smiled, thin as a knife. “Fair.” He lifted a hand. “Hold.”

The rifles steadied but didn’t fire. The warehouse’s silence swelled until even the river seemed hushed outside.

The lieutenant stepped further into the circle of lantern glow. “One hand left to play,” he said, cocking back the hammer with a click that echoed in the rafters. “Let’s see if the luck you claim is yours—or if Burke was right to call you a cheat.”

Eli eased further inside, giving himself the cover of a crate stacked with burlap. He didn’t rush. He didn’t blink. “Then it’s just you and me.”

For a heartbeat, neither moved. Then the lieutenant’s pistol snapped up, smooth and fast. Eli dove sideways as the shot roared, splinters biting his cheek. He rolled, came up on one knee, and fired back. The ball struck sparks from an iron band around a hogshead.

The room exploded. Men shouted, some shifting for a better view, others holding tight as ordered. The lieutenant moved with practiced precision, firing again from behind a crate, the flash lighting his sharp features. Eli ducked and answered with two quick shots, the recoil biting his wrist. One round drove chips from the man’s cover; the other smacked into the crate’s side with a dull thud.

The standoff became a deadly rhythm—step, fire, duck; breathe, aim, squeeze. Each shot carved echoes into the rafters. The smell of powder thickened, acrid and hot, layering over the dust.

A bullet grazed Eli’s coat sleeve, burning through fabric to skin. He hissed but held steady. The lieutenant pressed, circling, keeping him pinned between stacks of cotton and open space. His calm was terrifying—every move calculated, every shot measured.

Eli knew patience alone wouldn’t win this. He needed a break, something to turn the angle. His gaze snagged on the lantern overhead, swaying gently on its hook from the concussion of shots. Its flame licked at the wick, bright and hungry.

He shifted position, drew the lieutenant’s eye with a quick step into open light, and fired—not at the man, but at the lantern. The glass burst in a spray of fire and oil. Flame splashed across burlap and wood. Smoke leapt upward with a hiss.

Shouts rose from the rafters. Men scrambled. One fired wild in the confusion, the ball whining harmlessly into a beam. The lieutenant snarled, teeth bared now, and rushed the gap with his revolver raised high.

Eli dropped low, let him come close, and fired point-blank. The shot caught the man in the side, spinning him against a crate. His pistol clattered, his hand clawing at the wound. He tried to lift himself, his lips shaping Burke’s name, but his strength guttered like the lantern he had stood beneath.

For a moment, no one moved. Then the fire crackled louder, catching burlap and cotton. Smoke curled through the rafters. The rifles above shifted uneasily.

Eli stood, Colt leveled, his chest rising steady though his sleeve was dark with blood. “Anyone else want the pot?”

The silence held. One by one, rifles lowered. A man on the catwalk spat over the rail and turned away. Another cursed low but backed into shadow. The warehouse seemed to breathe out, the fight drained with their leader.

Eli kept the Colt out and up. He stooped only long enough to pull the saddlebag tight again. The lieutenant’s eyes were already glassing, his hand slack against the floorboards.

The fire was spreading. Eli walked toward the open door, his boots loud on the boards, each step measured. Outside, the river’s breath met him again, cool and endless. Dawn was just touching the horizon, bleeding pale light across the water.

Behind him, the warehouse hissed and crackled, lantern flames taking their due. Burke was gone, his lieutenant gone with him. But Eli knew the river carried more than driftwood and ash. Word would follow him, and enemies with it. For now, he was alive, his winnings intact, and the Mississippi rolled on.