FORTUNE TELLER

Copyright (c) 2019 by Randall R. Peterson ALL RIGHTS RESERVED This is a work of fiction. All persons, locations and actions are from the author's imagination or have been used in a fictitious manner.

FORTUNE TELLER

By R. Peterson

Sixteen year old Parley Descombey gripped the reins with both hands as the gypsy wagon lurched and bumped down what a hand-lettered sign declared was Main Street. His ancient mother, Jesska, gripped his arm as she bounced on the plank seat and his five year old sister Melania had her nose pressed against a glass window. They all stared at the most white-people they had seen in over a month. Parley brought the tired draft horse to a stop in front of a large wooden building in a sea of tents when a gun discharged and a dozen dogs began to howl. Bat wing doors banged open and a mustached man wearing a dirty apron glared as two brawling men, followed by a dozen spectators, spilled into the street. “You want to kill each other?” He yelled over a lively piano playing inside as he re-loaded a double barrel shotgun. “Do it outside! … Just pay for your suds first!”

A bearded man watching the fight squinted at the fancy words painted on the side of the wagon. “You sell patent medicine?”

“That we do,” Parley told him. “What seems to be your ailment?”

“I done been snake bit,” the man said tossing Parley a silver dollar.

Parley put the coin in his pocket and then watched the miner bite the cork from a bottle of Doctor Todd’s Poison Extractor. “That was ten years ago,” the miner confessed as the last of the flavored alcohol spilled down his shirt. “And I still get the shivers thinking about it!”

Parley shook his head. It was going to be a challenge starting a medical practice in this town.

The two men rolling in the street had both pulled knives and the crowd moved back as blood began to spatter the dust. “Why doesn’t someone call for the sheriff?” Parley asked a lanky cowboy standing next to the wagon.

            “I am the sheriff!” The man turned and tipped his hat. “Thomas Lang at your service.”

            Parley recognized the man who had helped them pull their wagon from a river only a few days before. Jesska had told his fortune using bullets from the man’s gun. It wasn’t entirely a happily ever after reading.  “Ain’t you going to do something?” Parley asked.

            “I’ve only had this job for …” He lifted a watch attached to his pocket by a gold chain and opened it, “an hour,” Sheriff Lang smiled. “We ain’t got a jail yet. I’d rope and tie both of these pancakes to a tree … but we got us a hungry-bear prowling the camp at night.”

One man ended up on top of the other and when a knife slashed toward the cataleptic man’s head Lang kicked it away. “You want to start cutting hair. You’ll need a license,” he said.

            “You got no business!” The disarmed man’s eyes glowed like wind-stirred campfire coals. He lunged toward the sheriff and Lang’s boot said hello to his head.

            “You’re right,” the sheriff drawled over the unconscious pile. “I ain’t got any business … but I got this badge.” He opened his coat to show a silver star pinned to his shirt as he addressed the crowd. “Now drag these two varmints down to the river … and wash the ornery out of ‘em.”

The sheriff turned toward Parley and Mrs. Descombey and took off his hat. He smiled as he extended his hand. “Welcome to South Fork,” he said.

-------2-------

            Parley had the gypsy wagon parked in the shade of a cottonwood tree next to a stream and was starting a morning fire when Sheriff Lang strolled into camp. Lang noticed the two young women he’d met on a previous encounter snapping wood for kindling. “I see you moved a ways out,” he said. “Good call! Half the men in this town would come down sick if they knew what you was packing in that wagon!”

            “You people have a tavern,” Parley said. “No need to misuse medicine.”

            “Our saloon keep, Amos Charles, brews what he calls beer in a big old laundry tub,” Lang drawled. “I think he adds a little soap whenever his ranky socks needs a good washing … least ways that explains the foam taste. Good whiskey is hard to come by. You peel them labels off your medicine bottles and you got big-city trouble that can make a man run on four legs. You’ll have this whole town howling at the moon … if you ain’t careful.”

The door to the house-on-wheels opened and Jesska Descombey staggered slowly down the steps carrying a rusty percolator in her wrinkled hands. “The coffee will be ready in ten minutes,” she said, “and we’ve got the crème and sugar you like.” She pointed to a scrawny milk-cow grazing nearby. Five-year old Melania followed her out of the wagon with four ceramic cups balanced on a ten pound Lee Sugar Co. bag.

            “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you folks was expecting me,” Lang said as he took the heavy load from the young girl.

“Mama knew you were coming,” Melania said taking the cups. “She knows everything.”

Redonici smiled and batted her eyes as she bent over the pile of sticks exposing her abundant cleavage. A scowling Lakasera dropped her wood and then bumped into Tom as she moved past and climbed into the wagon. “You still smell like a cow,” she said.

            “Are you folks fixing to stay?” Tom noticed an open copy of Dr. C L Hempels’ Materia Medica Book  and a pair of eyeglasses resting on a tree-stump.

            “I’m studying to be a doctor,” Parley explained, “a real one.” He pointed to the colorful sign on the wagon. “Me and my mother both want to help people, but we have different ideas about how to go about it.”

Jesska returned from the stream. “The Ombré says this is where we were meant to be,” she said. She set the percolator on several flat rocks surrounded by hot coals then wiped her hands on her apron as she gazed toward the horizon. “Those who wage war with fate are seldom vincitore. (victors)”

            “You believe our days are all known and numbered?” Tom asked.

            “Not all … solo i più importanti.”(only the important) She smiled. “Visions are like far away birds crossing the sky. Those who look can see them.” Jesska carefully added a few sticks to the fire and the smoke rising began to form moving images. Tom was entranced. “I see an entire valley filled with white buffalo running in a circle,” he gasped. “And they turn into white Indians when soldiers appear!”

            “It is the Lakota Ghost Dance you see,” Jesska said. “Two of God’s most enduring creations … coming to the end of their time.”

            “Am I dreaming?” Tom asked.

            “Probably,” Jesska said. “Here, have some coffee and wake up.”

-------3-------

“You don’t really believe in that hocus pocus stuff do you?” Sheriff Thomas Lang sat at a rough wooden table in the back of the Gold Dust Saloon with three other men. Two had already folded on the second raise. He drew one, hoping for an inside straight or a flush. He smiled before he answered sheep-rancher Bill Wawmack. “I’ve had my fortune told by a floating-in-the-air dead-woman reading a crystal ball at the Barnum and Bailey Circus in St. Louis,” Tom told him. “And I’ve had the wife of a dying Sioux War Chief tell my future with just the wind and a handful of chicken bones. But I ain’t never had things come so true like they have with Jesska Descombey and my own bullets!”

Bill hesitated for just a moment before he discarded three and drew the same number of cards from the deck. “So how could one of your own bullets save your life?”

            “There was a coiled rattler in the trail I was riding,” Tom told him. “I blasted his head off with my pistol, but the bullet struck the flat surface of a rock behind the snake and ricocheted back. I felt the lead burn right past my left ear before it went into the head of a knife-wielding Indian waiting to leap on my back from the top of an overhanging rock!”

            “Could have been just luck,” Bill said scowling at his cards.

            “I don’t think so,” Tom told him. “You play billiards. That lead had to strike flat granite at an almost perfect ninety-degree angle to fly back at me like that and to smack that blood-thirsty redskin right between the eyes makes two too-many miracles in less than a second.”

            “What about that second bullet that was supposed to bring you love?” Bill rolled three gold coins in his fingers before he hesitated and then tossed two of them into the pot.

Amos Porter spit a wad of chewing tobacco into an engraved spittoon resting at the base of the bar almost nine feet away. Several men gave him looks of admiration.

            “She says her name is Elisabeth Walker and she was a mail-order bride homesteading a claim about four miles north on Canyon Road.” The sheriff tapped his cards on the table.  “A murderous no-good, name of Ben McCoy,  sent for her for the extra land claim then was fixing to choke her and toss her body in the river before I showed up. I blasted the gun out of his hand when he drew on me and then lost the varmint when he dove in the river.”

            “And I suppose she offered to marry you instead?” Bill laughed and shook his head.

Two fancy dressed ladies with brightly painted faces were dancing and kissing the same drunk miner as the piano player pounded out a waltz. A torn bag halfway fallen out of the man's back overall pocket kept spilling gold dust onto the saloon floor. Both of the ladies took turns grinding it into the cracks between the loose boards with their high-heel shoes.

            “No, but she made me a fine cup of coffee at her house,” Tom said taking a deep breath through his nose before smiling then flipping two twenty-dollar gold coins into the pile in the center of the table. “And I knew I was in love … even before she added the sugar.”

            “I bet she did!” Bill laughed. “I take that for a call.”

            “That you do!” A beaming Tom laid down his cards … “A flush … all hearts!”

Tom reached for the pot when Bill laughed and slapped down his own hand. “I got a river-boat special,” he said. “Full house … nines over sixes!” Tom and the other two miners sitting at the table all groaned.

            “It’s two AM!” The saloon owner called from behind the bar. “Drink up and get the hell out!”

The sheriff pushed back his chair and stood as Bill began to count his winnings. “I don’t recall what miracle you said that third bullet was going to bring.” Wawmack bit his tongue in the silence that followed. He allowed his eyes drift toward to the holstered Colt forty-five strapped around the sheriff’s waist and then to his enormous winnings.  There was more than a hundred-dollars’ worth of gold and silver coins in the pile. That was three months’ wages for most folks.

            “The third bullet is supposed to bring enormous wealth,” The sheriff told him. The hands of all three of the other men at the table were shaking as they passed around an almost empty Red Eye Whiskey bottle. “But don’t worry, Bill,” Sheriff Lang said letting his fingers brush against the black walnut handle of the Colt Peacemaker. “I know you and I almost never cheat at cards … without a good reason.” Tom smiled before he added, “… and I dealt that dern blasted hand!”

-------3-------

Parley Descombey relaxed his arm from the shadow of the cottonwood tree as he watched the two miners ride away. All four females were in the wagon. The double barrel shotgun was heavy. It had been a busy night. Redonici and Lakasera had taken in more than forty dollars between them and his mother had made nearly double that selling medicine and telling fortunes. The campfire was almost burned out. Parley leaned the shotgun against the tree trunk and was reaching for a green log for the fire when the man grabbed him from behind. “Whoo there! Easy Boy! We don’t want no trouble!” A bearded man with a scar running down his left cheek said putting his filthy hand over the boy’s mouth and laughing softly. “We been waiting out here for two hours … we thought them dern panners would never leave!”

            “What do you want?” Parley’s muffled cry made both men laugh.

            “Everything you got!” The second man, going bald with a bowler hat covering his dome, poked a dirty finger into Parley’s chest before he knocked on the wagon door.

When Jesska opened the door the man thrust a gun into her face. “Come out ladies,” he said with his eyes bulging. “This here party is just getting started!”

            “What do you want?” Redonici asked as they filed out of the wagon.

            “First off we want you two ladies to take off them dresses,” he said licking his cracked lips and pointing to Redonici and her sister.

            “Now Carl! There’s no need to be rude!” the first man said with a laugh. He struck Parley over the head with the butt of his gun and the boy crumpled to the ground. “Not until after we get to know each other” He bent Lakasera’s arm behind her back and pushed her toward the fire. “I’m Ben McCoy and this is my partner Carl Brown. We is gonna have us a real fine time … a real fine time!”

TO BE CONTINUED …