Jimmy watched as the campfire seemed to dance in the stranger's eyes.

   The man had appeared out of nowhere from the desert, having wandered into Jimmy's camp from somewhere out in the darkness.

   "You mind if I warm these old bones of mine by your fire?" the man asked.

   The voice was old, dry and seemed to croak like the crackle of the kindling being charged in the flames of the campfire.

   Jimmy eased off the hammer of his revolver and clicked it back into place.

   "Come on in," he said as he got a closer look at the old man and re-sheathed the Colt in his worn holster.

   The old man stepped near the fire and crouched down on his haunches, his bones groaning and cracking as he bent. The man was ancient and wore dusty, tattered clothes, his face darkened by the hot desert sun.

   "Thanks for the fire," the old man said, the flames still reflecting from the surface of his eyes. "The name's Jeremiah."

   "I'm Jim," Jimmy said to him as he reached over and shook the man's hand; his touch was ice cold.

   The old man looked awfully thin, his ruined clothes seeming to just hang off of his body. Jimmy hadn't seen anyone so thin since he saw his grandfather's body laid out in the front parlor of the ranch when he was nine. He judged that this old man had been wandering for some time.

   "You hungry?" Jimmy asked as he pointed to the small kettle of beans bubbling on a rock in the campfire. "I've got plenty to share."

   "I am," said the old man "But no thanks, son."

   "You sure?" Jimmy asked again. "I got plenty."

   "Nah. I'm sure," the man repeated. "But I could sure use a drink if you got one. It's mighty cold out tonight and I ain't had a drink for what seems like an age."

   The old man was shivering despite the fact that the fire was raging in between them. His bony arms were clutched around his chest, and his grey teeth chattered against one another.

   Jimmy reached for his saddlebags at the head of his bed roll and pulled out a bottle of rum. He stood up and handed the bottle to the old man.

   "That's mighty kind of you, son," the old man said as he pulled the cork from the bottle and raised the neck to his parched lips. He took a big gulp as Jimmy watched him swallow, his bony Adam's apple rising up and down.

   "Ah!" the old man exclaimed. "That warms these old bones! I'm much obliged to you for the drink, Jim."

   "So what brings you out here to these parts, Jeremiah?" Jimmy asked. The truth be told, he couldn't understand why anyone else would be out here in this wasteland. For three days, he hadn't seen a sign of another soul apart from him and Chance, who was now tethered to a large bit of sage brush some feet away, munching at the few silver leaves on its twig-like branches. Jimmy had made good time across the desert from Burns; he'd shot a man there, and the Three Sisters peaks in the Cascades were now only a day's ride away, then he would be in a new town.

   "I'm headed for a town called Jacksonville on the other side of those mountains," the old man answered. "I hear they hit gold over there, so I figure I might try my luck. Maybe then I can trade these old rags in."

   It sounded strange to Jimmy. He'd heard that the gold in the Illinois River had dried up back in '49, over fifteen years earlier and although the town was still there, it had fallen into a lonely disrepair. The miners had long since packed their mules and headed to California.

   "I hate to tell you this, but I heard the gold dried up over there," Jimmy remarked. "Dried up a long time ago."

   "Nah," said the old man. "I just read about it in the paper a few weeks ago."

   "Well, I reckon maybe the found more then," Jimmy said.

   The old man was shivering again, even though the heat from the fire was intense.

   "You still cold?"

   "Afraid so," the old man said as he scooted closer to the fire trying to get warm.

  "You want one of my blankets?" Jimmy took pity on the old man.

   "I wouldn't want to put you out or nuthin', but I'd be mighty thankful for a blanket and another swig of that rum to warm me up."

   "You go it," Jimmy said as he pulled the thickest blanket off his bed roll and tossed it to the old man. The old man wrapped himself in the blanket and took another drink out of the bottle.

   "I'm gonna turn in," Jimmy said. "Daylight comes early out here; I'd advise you to do the same. After some breakfast, I'll take you the rest of the way to Jacksonville - you can ride old Chance, save your energy to find that gold when we get there."

   "That's mighty kind of you, son. I'll turn in in a wee while."

   "G'night," Jimmy said as he lay down on his bed roll and shut his eyes, the stars slipping away as his eyes closed.

   "Goodnight," said the old voice, "And thanks, Jim."

#############

   When Jimmy awoke to the sound of chirping Goldfinches flitting about the sage brush and the hues of the gold-red sun peeking over the Steens mountains in the east, he found himself alone in the camp. The old man was gone.

   "Son of a bitch!" Jimmy bolted out of bed; his first thought was that the old man had stolen his horse and slipped away during the night. But as he looked around, he saw Chance tethered to the same bush, his big tongue licking off what little dew was on the leaves of the sage brush. The animal raised his head as if to look at him and then quickly went back to his business of collecting the precious moisture from the silver-tinged leaves.

   Jimmy looked around, squinting his eyes to try and see as far off on the horizon as possible. There was nothing out there but brush and volcanic dirt for as far as the eye could see.

   In the center of the camp, the last embers of the fire had nearly died out, leaving only a few bits of crumbling white ash and black charcoal still remaining in the rock circle. The bottle of rum sat upright where the man had been sitting, its cork jammed into the neck. Jimmy's thick blanket lay neatly folded by its side. A trail of foot prints led off from where the man had been sitting and stretched out into the landscape of sage brush, towards the snow-capped Three Sisters to the west.

   Jimmy called for the man at the top of his voice, but the only replies that came back were the echoes of his own words.

   Fearing that the old man had wandered off and met with some accident in the brush, Jimmy quickly broke camp, packed his gear and climbed atop Chance's back to begin a search for the old man.

   The foot prints, although fresh, were only light impressions and meandered away from the camp into the brush. Besides their light imprint, there was nothing strange about them. The prints were evenly spaced and close to each other, indicating a casual stride.

   Jimmy followed the prints on horseback; his eyes fixed a few feet ahead as the prints trailed off through the brush. Finally, some ten feet ahead, the prints came to an abrupt end in the volcanic soil. Jimmy stepped off of Chance, took the reins in his left hand and walked slowly to the last two prints, leading the horse behind him. The foot prints simply ended. Duplicates of the others, they came to a dead stop. It was as if the old man had vanished into thin air.

   "Damn," Jimmy said as he scratched his head in confusion and looked around him, trying to figure out just what in the hell had happened. The only thing that came to mind was that the old man didn't want to be found and had covered his tracks by dragging a piece of sage brush behind him. Still, it made no sense.

   That was when Jimmy saw the old man's boot peeking out from a clump of sage brush just a few feet away.

   Jimmy's pulse quickened.

   "Jeremiah?"

   He waited for a reply but there wasn't one.

   "You OK, old man?"

   Again, there was no reply, save the light desert breeze whispering among the sage leaves.

   Jimmy dropped the reins from his hand, leaving Chance behind and slowly crept towards the boot.

   The boot was on its side, a bit of old trouser-leg showing, until it vanished behind the bush. The old man must have fallen, Jimmy thought.

   Jimmy rounded the bush and stopped abruptly as his eyes came to rest on an unexpected sight.

   A sun-bleached human skeleton, partially shrouded in tattered clothes lay on the ground behind the bush. It was Jeremiah, only the flesh of his body had been picked clean, leaving only the hard, white frame of his bones behind where the wind blew through his collapsed rib cage. A rotting leather back-pack lay at his side, a rusted gold-pan sticking through the festering fabric.

   He'd been lying there for years, the wind and dust leaving behind only a polished skeleton and grinning skull.

   "You old fool," Jimmy scolded him quietly. "I guess you'll never find your gold now."

   Jimmy went back to Chance and pulled his bed roll and saddlebags off the horse and went back to the bones.

   He covered the skeleton with his heavy blanket, tucking the old man into his earthen bed, like only a mother would normally do. Jimmy crouched down next to the bones and pulled the cork from the bottle of rum. He took a swig from it, replaced the cork and stood the bottle next to the old man's skeletal hand.

   "To keep you warm at night."

Kailleaugh Andersson was born in Oregon and presently resides in Scotland. He is married to erotic horror writer Alex Severin. He has over 250 fiction publishing credits since 1989, despite a six year hiatus of not submitting his work.   'Happy Fun Ball & Other Stories to Read While Institutionalized' is his most recent collection of short stories due for publication in late 2003.