Sunday, April 28, 2019

THE STAIRS part 2

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.



THE STAIRS
Part 2
By R. Peterson

Collier Jagger climbed out of bed and crossed the room looking for the source of the strange sounds. He could tell the noise was someone or something ascending the stairs in the basement far below but how was he able to her it so clearly from his suite on the fourth floor? The answer came from the ventilation pipes installed for the indoor plumbing. He put his ear next to the cold pipe and listened. The metal apparently acted as a conduit for the supernatural sounds he was hearing. He listened carefully and then heard the back exit-door next to the hotel manager’s small apartment open; whatever had climbed the stairs was going outside.
Jagger’s first thought was the phantom Indian; if only the workers hadn’t put a metal door in the tiny prison-room they sealed the bawling savage in! He used the elevator and found the basement door open as well as the one going outside. The last thing he wanted was to go into the basement at 4:30 AM but he did, ascending the ironwood stairs dressed only in a robe and holding a flickering oil lamp. The stairs burned his bare feet in places and when he looked closely he could see the super hard-wood treads glowing slightly like the fire-box on a steam locomotive. Whatever had come up the stairs had left fiery footprint images from the depths of hell. There was no turning back; he had to know. The metal door hadn’t been opened since the basement was finished. Collier took several deep breaths and then held them. The hinges creaked as he slowly pulled on the handle. The ancient Indian sat on the dirt floor the song he sang growing louder as the door opened …. “Na ya hay hay na hay hay … a hay na!”
Collier Jagger closed and latched the door then closed the outside door once he’d ascended the stairs. If it wasn’t the Indian spirit that had gone outside then who or what had slipped out of his hotel? Back in his fourth floor suite he crept back to bed and rammed his eyes shut but sleep was elusive. Two hours after the sun was up he washed and dressed.

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

Sheriff Thomas Lang was returning from a three day pursuit of rustlers when he spotted the vultures circling low over the desert east of South Fork. Something was dead or dying. Not dead yet, he thought, and clamped his heels into Comanche’s flanks. The high spirited mare surged into an easy gallop. The simple fact that the giant birds still spiraled in the air made him think something was alive … he was wrong.
A wagon sat just off the trail and the horses were gone. Barrels of flour, sugar and salt had been broke open and scattered to the wind. A rank smell like rotting cabbage led the sheriff about a hundred yards through sage and behind a large pile of rocks. What was left of a man lay stretched and staked-out naked over a huge red-ant nest. The man’s tongue had been cut away and attacked to his nose with a nail. Flies buzzed angrily when Tom brushed them away from the man’s face. There, carved into his forehead, was a single word: Meurtre. Tom had been to Louisiana and knew the word was French for murder.
At least a dozen of the big birds had been fighting over the strips of flesh that still hung on the desecrated corpse. It hadn’t rained for over a week and the sheriff examined the area around the torture-site carefully. It wasn’t Indians! There wasn’t so much as a moccasin print anywhere. Oddly, the only tracks he found were bare footprints and small, so either a child’s or a woman’s. The desert sand was too hot for any sane person to walk on without shoes. It looked like whoever left the tracks had walked in circles around the dying man numerous times … possibly for hours. He followed the tracks when they left to the top of a small hill where they disappeared. “You must have sprouted wings like your friends,” Tom muttered as he glanced back at the vultures that were once again landing.
The sheriff gathered clothing that had been scattered by the wind and varmints in all directions. Inside a torn, black coat-pocket, the kind preachers favored for Sunday show and tell, Tom found a tiny Bible and a supply-bill made out to The Church of the Devine Blood, Grace, Montana … it was signed by Rex Morton.
“Looks like you woke up the Devil, Mr. Morton!” Tom said as he removed a shovel from his horse pack. “I can’t give you a proper funeral but I can keep the buzzards from carting off all your bones until whoever cares can claim what’s left!”
The sheriff worked fast, throwing up clouds of sand, because he couldn’t leave this place fast enough. It was an all-night ride to Grace.

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

Collier Jagger paid three men from a blacksmith shop ten dollars to attach six heavy chains around the door of the special room in the basement and to put a heavy lock with three bolts on the door at the top of the stairs. He stood and watched for the entire four hours it took them to finish the job. “He must have his wife locked up down there,” one of the men muttered to his friends as they took the money, handed Collier the keys and then headed for the saloon.
Room 419 had been reserved for a whiskey drummer from Wichita, Kansas but Collier decided to spend another night and had the desk clerk switch rooms. Money wasn’t made by men who left things to chance. He had to make sure the troubles his new hotel had drawn from the frontier soil had been put to rest.
Jagger couldn’t sleep, even though he’d drank most of a bottle of Red Eye Whiskey. Just before midnight he re-lit the oil lamp and took a Gideon’s Bible from the table-drawer next to the bed. Religion was at odds with making money but Collier found himself drawn to a passage in Exodus 22:18 Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live! He read the verse at least a dozen times until finally the book fell out of his shaking hands and landed upside down on the floor. He stuffed the book back in the drawer and then finished the bottle.  The hands on the clock hung above the fireplace were almost on midnight when he closed his eyes.

-------4-------

The hands on the clock showed just before 4:20 AM. What had awakened him? Collier held his breath and listened. His own heartbeat sounded like a boy beating a drum at a Fourth of July parade. Snoring sounds came from the room just below him.   Minutes later, a toilet flushed at the end of the long hallway. Then he heard the outside door, four floors below, open. Someone had sneaked into the hotel. Collier was already dressed. He only took time to remove a Colt 45 from the small safe imbedded in a wall in every luxury suite. Jagger had taken great pains to see that nothing got out of the basement and now someone or something was coming into his hotel from the outside. The new elevators operated by steam from boilers in the basement on the opposite end from the room where the Indian was kept. It was summer and warm weather made certain there was no shortage of steam but Collier took the stairs anyway. Why risk it?
The rear exit door to the hotel stood gaping wide-open as did the thrice locked and bolted door to the basement stairs. Collier Jagger was furious. Where was the night clerk? How could he have allowed an intruder into his hotel? The clerk wasn’t in his room. Disheveled bed covers shown he had risen in a hurry. Jagger stopped long enough to light an oil lamp from the clerk’s room.
The flickering lamp light cast dancing shadows across the immaculate lobby. Both elevator doors stood open … inviting. A long shadow seemed out of place, swaying gently across the rich Persian carpeting. Collier lifted the lamp a second before he looked up. Joseph Wright the newly hired night-clerk swung by his neck from a crudely tied noose made from drapery cord. A crude sign hung around his neck.  Collier tried to scream but his throat was suddenly as dry as sand. A shot fired into the floor from the gun in his hand was followed by a second … awakened the guests.

-------5-------

Thomas Lang dozed in the saddle as Comanche plodded down the empty street. He glanced at the watch he kept in his front pocket. It was a little before six and the sun hadn’t risen but still there should be someone around. A bouncing tumble-weed crossed the street in front of him and stopped next to the town well. Good luck pulling up that bucket Tom thought. A yellow dog bared its teeth in a soundless growl and then slinked back into a darkened alley. Strange there were several stores … but no saloon.
All the buildings seemed cold and lifeless and Tom was tempted to turn around and ride out the way he’d come in when he heard singing. The voices came from a small church built on a hill. Strange, it was only Thursday. The metal looking spire in the shape of a barbed spear point seemed to touch the sky. Tom rode past thick fields of corn and several newly filled graves as he climbed the hill. No grass had yet sprouted above the departed. The cemetery that surrounded the place of worship had no fence … only a wooden sign hanging on a scarecrow that read …. Extraconjugal.

TO BE CONTINUED …..



Sunday, April 21, 2019

THE STAIRS

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.



THE STAIRS
By R. Peterson

It was nothing more than a cluster of nine ironwood trees grouped around an artesian spring that bubbled out of the ground. But to endless wagon trains crossing the plains on their way to Oregon Territory it was a welcome relief from the hot, dry journey. They named the watering place Shade. For a decade, during the eighteen fifties, Shade collected an assortment of leaking barrels, broken wagon wheels and cast-off furniture as weary and newly refreshed travelers struggled to lighten their heavy loads. Because it was the only source of water for forty miles in any direction, Shade was marked on all but the most careless maps.
The first permanent settlers were a group of sixty-nine secular moralists driven out of Borley, Essex, England whose wild-eyed prophet and revelator, Alistair David, opened his corrected version of the King James Bible and proclaimed with majestic reverence while preaching from a wagon seat, “This is the sacred coppice from which we shall wage war on the fiery demons from Hell and abolish all sin on Earth!”
Less than a year later, travelers found the only relief from the scorching sun at the strange oasis was the shadow of a stone and ironwood church. Its black steeple in the shape of a barbed spear seemed to pierce the sky. Fear drifted like a stench from shacks barns and stock-pens. Water from the spring was obtained at devilish prices and religious intolerance, of a severity never before seen on Earth, bid all wheels to keep rolling.
One thing that hadn’t changed was the habit of discarding weight on overloaded wagons. The outskirts of Shade were littered with a vast assortment of items no longer deemed of value.
Alistair David and his congregation were horrified one Sunday morning, after a train of more than thirty wagons from Louisiana rumbled past, to find a ragged haired woman with paint around her mouth and eyes. She spoke in tongues and a wooden sign hung about her neck declared her name Jane and that she was found extraconjugal. She wore a torn, black dress with red lace and sported a belly like a ripe watermelon as she sat on a broken wagon-tongue, rubbed her swollen belly and whispered the words to “Ah! May the red rose live always …”
The good, with growing faith, closed and bolted the doors to the black church once they were safely inside … and then prayed all day. The beggar woman, shoeless and in rags, was thereafter only glimpsed at night and by their holy grace … the wretch known as Jane became invisible in the light.

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

The hamlet of Shade slowly incubated trepidation. Crusts of moldy bread saturated with broken egg shells and bacon lard were known to disappear from the feed troughs of several swine producers as well as discarded cobs from a number of corn cribs. A barn burned. Several cows began to fill only half their milk buckets! An infection of measles appeared on the face of a child and then ran screaming through the village. Alistair David’s wife, Rebecca, developed an enormous boil on the side of her nose and Alistair was stricken with palsy when he attempted to lance it. It snowed at the end of June and for three terrible days, storm clouds, dropping hailstones the size of eggs, blocked out the sun. A dog foamed at the mouth and chewed a dozen of Rex Morton’s chickens. Cloven hoof-prints danced around the outside of the church after each rain. Candles refused to light. Oil lamps began to speak … in the voice of snakes …
When blood-stains were found in Joseph Wright’s hayloft and the starving Jane was later discovered hiding in a ravaged corn field clutching a new-born infant, as black as the gates of Hell, the frightened and bewildered villagers once again took sanctuary in their holy church.
“Thou shalt suffer no witch to live!” Alistair thundered from his corrected Bible. The congregation stood and sang. They prayed until the pathway to justice was shown them by God’s word. The only thing that remained was choosing the method of ridding Christ’s kingdom of this Bride of Satin and the ever-screeching black Demon Offspring that suckled her scant breasts.
“Burn her!” The righteous cried.
“The witch can burn … but what of her imp?” Mary Wright, totally devoted to Alistair David’s new, corrected Bible, declared. “Would not the flames be soothing to a demon fresh from the fires of Hell?”
Justice consumed the righteous like a fever … and they planned long into the night.
“The witch shall burn and the spawn of the devil shall hang, both at the same time least one return from death to provide mercy to the other!”
“If this truly be God’s will, then he will demand a sacrifice!”
“Who shall pay the price for justice?”
“I shall not touch her!”
“Nor will I!”
After a long night of reason it was decided …
“The match must come from the child … and the rope from the mother!”

Before the first rooster began to crow, with torches they drove the terrified woman and her child into a storage cellar and then for three days the righteous tore down their sacred church for wood for the fire and to build a gallows. It was they without sin who would pay God’s price. The walls of their house of worship splintered and became kindling while the stone-hard black ironwood steeple became a set of thirteen dark and terrible stairs.

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

With a rope tied about her neck Rex dragged Jane up the platform and with the points of burning sticks several of the villagers persuaded her to finally slip a thick noose around the screaming infant’s neck. Once the begging and hysterical woman was lashed to a pole in the center of the wood-pile the congregation waited only for a signal from the Devil’s child.
The village of Shade was strangely silent. Each breath was like a gust of wind. After several minutes Alistair jabbed the infant with a hay-fork. A cry pierced the air. The fires were lit and the trap-door opened.
The rope was too thick and the tiny neck too small. The baby dangled without weight kicking and bawling as the struggling mother sputtered and became flames. Screams from the gallows were echoed from the fire … and after ageless and terrible minutes … they became as one.
Most eyes were closed, but all heard the infernal thumping. Those few who dared to look into the face of justice saw the embers of the glowing mother slowly ascend the stairs and free the kicking child. One word, screamed with a fury that crossed the boundaries of Hell, echoed across the plains … “Meurtre!
Smoke filled the air and day became as night. Unseen beasts not of this world large and small were heard moving through the darkness. Some things of great worth were taken … never to be returned. The fires of justice then proved insatiable to a hungry wind … and the entire village burned.
There was nothing of value left in Shade and Alistair and company, after much praying, joyful and with newborn faith, moved westward. Rain and snow eventually crumbled the charred timbers of Shade and a year later all that remained was a spring and thirteen dark ironwood stairs … rising from the ashes into destiny.

-------4-------

The water coming from Shade’s precious spring had become horribly fouled, by what … no one knew. It was said the road on both sides of the damned village were littered with skulls. Vultures could be seen circling the area for miles. It didn’t take long for immigrants traveling to Oregon Territory to start using a different route.
It was pure chance then that Collier A. Jagger, a wealthy British immigrant whose map had blown away in the wind, happened upon the remains of Shade and discovered the intact stairs rising out of the ashes. He marveled at the hardness of the wood that kept the structure from being consumed like the rest of the village and being Scottish on his mother’s side, took some measurements. The thirteen stairs and the small landing would fit exactly, with minor alterations, a basement that had been excavated for a new hotel in Montana. He of course had heard the gossip concerning the village but scoffed at all superstitions and stories about ghosts. He was returning from a not completely successful furniture buying trip to St. Louis and had extra space on one of his eight wagons. He and six Chinese ex-railroad-workers tied the stairs to an empty buckboard … and off they went.
The town of South Fork had progressed from a tent city to a boom-town almost overnight. It was lucky he’d found the intact stairs. This saved at least another nine hours man-labor. The hotel construction was already two weeks behind schedule. The property had been acquired from the railroad for hardly more than a song but no sooner was the excavation complete than an old Indian appeared sitting on the dirt floor of the basement chanting death songs from dusk until dawn. The Indian, whether real or spectral as some insisted,  proved most difficult, even for a hired gunfighter from Salt Lake City, to remove. The problem was finally resolved when the area where the Indian sat was finally walled up. The troublesome singing stopped, but to Collier’s dismay, the workers had inserted a large iron door in the prison-like room and upon questioning they told him it was so he could ascertain whether the chanting-savage was still there. He could have cared less.

-------5-------

The hotel was finished in three months; not an easy task for a structure of such magnificence.  The hotel soared four stories above ground-level and was as richly furbished, including two elevators and indoor plumbing, as any lodge west of the Alleghenies. Collier A. Jagger himself occupied the top-floor Presidential Suite on Grand Opening night. Room 419 was a prime example of comfort and luxury. A well-stocked bar occupied one corner of the state room while a grand-piano manufactured in Spain occupied another. There were no less than three feather-down mattresses on the king-size bed in the center of the room and bell-hops and maids were only a jingle away.
All the rooms were booked for at least the first month and Collier went to sleep that night a very happy and soon to be much wealthier man.
Collier thought something was odd when he awakened during the night and stared at the clock hung above the fireplace. The fire had burned down to red-orange embers but the clock’s face could still be read. Superstition or not, something about the numbers bothered him. 4:19 AM and room 419 seemed too much of a coincidence. He listened carefully but the noisy hotel was in perhaps its quietest hours. Collier closed his eyes and was almost asleep again when a thumping noise sounded from far below. He looked for the bell on the table next to his bed but it was missing. The hair on the back of his neck stood erect … as something ascended the stairs in the basement.

TO BE CONTINUED ….


Sunday, April 14, 2019

FORTUNE TELLER part 4

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
Part 4
By R. Peterson

Clouds covered the moon and a hard rain fell just long enough for Sheriff Thomas Lang to lose the outlaw’s trail. But he knew where they were headed. The first rays of light were peering over the low mountains to the east when Tom loped his winded horse, Comanche, toward the tiny homestead on the banks of the Cottonmouth River. The air on the valley floor was stilled… as if holding its breath…waiting. A thick fog blanketed the wet ground and Tom couldn’t tell for sure if there was smoke rising from the single pipe on top of the two-room log-cabin. Elisabeth Walker was usually up before dawn, but not always. There had been times when he’d caught her still wearing a plush cotton robe but always smiling as she offered to make coffee. She never took no for an answer. He walked Comanche the last quarter-mile. As he drew near, Tom sighed with relief. He could see only one horse in the split-rail coral, the yellow gelding that the spirited young woman from Missouri rode. There was a faint scent of burning pine. Perhaps he was wrong. Maybe Ben McCoy and the other outlaw had ridden on.
The barn door was closed. Elisabeth kept the milk-cow inside at night. A hungry pack of wolves were roaming the area. A horse would jump the fence and run but a single cow would stand and bawl as it was eaten alive. The corn was about knee-high in the small garden she’d planted. There were several other leafy vegetables growing in the well-tended rows. “I won’t suffer a weed,” she’d smiled as she looked him up and down, “I’ve had too many in my life.”
Comanche sidestepped and jerked her head as he tied her to the hitching post in front of the cabin. “Easy now. You smell a coyote?”
Tom thought about drawing his gun but then how would that look? His horse needed a rest. Maybe after coffee and perhaps a bit of breakfast he’d try to pick up the trail. The ground to the north was rocky and not easily washed away. If the outlaws went that way, he’d find them. He knocked on the door and when there was no answer he knocked again. The door wasn’t locked but he didn’t open it. Just because a woman wasn’t home didn’t give a man the right to bust in uninvited. Her horse was in the corral but she might have ridden into town in a neighbor’s wagon.
Tom untied Comanche and was just about to swing into the saddle when he heard a nicker. That’s odd Tom thought. Sounds like it came from the barn. The barn was four times as large as the cabin with an upstairs loft for hay storage. Tom rolled back one of the two large doors and slipped inside. Even in the dim light he could see six horses tethered to a corn crib.
Tom drew his gun and started back toward the cabin. The first shot rang out at the same time he heard breaking glass. A bullet grazed his arm and two more burned past in less than a second with another lodging into his leg. Both windows of the cabin lit-up with gunpowder explosions.
Tom dove for the protection of a water trough next to the well then realized that other shots were coming from behind him. Two men were firing from the upstairs window of the barn. It was an ambush and he was caught in a cross-fire. He put two bullets into each of the cabin windows and then emptied his gun into the hay loft. Tom was reloading when shots once again surrounded him like a swarm of stinging bees. Something slammed into his head and the morning light faded for a few seconds then tried to come back. Something warm was running down his cheek … blood. That’s odd … I didn’t feel it he thought. The bullets were sliding into the Colt’s revolving chamber much too slow. Some appeared to be too small while others were too large. His hands were shaking. The ground was spinning. He heard voices and then laughter but couldn’t tell the direction they were coming from. The muddy ground felt surprisingly cool on his face as he fell forward. Then darkness came.

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

“Don’t kill him!” Ben McCoy ordered as he walked from the cabin. Three rough looking men followed behind. “I want my ex-wife to see him skinned alive when she gets back.”
What makes you think she’s coming back?” One of the two men from the upstairs of the barn asked as they walked outside. “We gots us a train to rob.”
“She left a note on the kitchen table for that Mex she hired to help her. She’s gone to town with a neighbor and will be back before noon.”
“What if he shows up?”
“He won’t. Not until we’re ready. All those south-of-the-border vaqueros are lazy. He’ll lay around eating tortillas and beans until mid-morning and then falls asleep on his donkey as it grazes its way over.”
“What we gonna do about him?” One of the outlaws kicked Tom.
“Bring him in the house,” McCoy ordered. “We’ll tie him to a chair and see how much of his skin we can peel off before my mail-order bride gets home.
The two men from the barn were lifting Tom from the ground when the hand crank on the well spun three times and then stopped. The rope went taunt. “What the …?” A pair of hands clutching metal appeared at the top of the rope and Elisabeth Walker came flying out like an eagle leaving a nest to guard endangered young. A gun roared in her right hand even as she reached for Tom’s gun lying in the mud. The man closest to Tom staggered back with two slugs in his chest with his fingers still inches from his gun. The other outlaw spun twice and then fell with a bullet-hole marking his forehead.
Ben McCoy and the other three had all brought their guns to level. Elisabeth shot three men dead center between the eyes before they could pull their triggers. She felt Ben McCoy’s bullet whiz past her ear as she aimed Tom’s gun. Click. It fired on an empty chamber. “Damn you!” McCoy screamed. He pointed and fired … his own gun was empty.
Elisabeth pulled the trigger two more times with only clicks. She fired again as the gun rose in his hand. Click.
 Come on Tom! You wouldn’t leave me with an empty gun!  McCoy’s gun barrel was pointing directly at her head.
Tom lay on the ground more than six feet away. The gun-belt with the bullet cartridge loops was still strapped to his waist. Elisabeth pulled the trigger again …. Another click. Ben McCoy had the cylinder of his gun open and was sliding in a shell.
Both guns roared at the same time!

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

Time appeared to come to a halt as smoke drifted up from both gun barrels. The birds in the walnut trees next to the river who had been chattering so noisily only minutes before were suddenly silent. The ticking of a wind-up clock in the kitchen could be heard as well as water drops falling from the handle of the well-crank as they fell with soft plunks into the cool, dark, cistern below. Ben McCoy smiled. Elisabeth felt dizzy and the ground began to tilt. Odd, I didn’t feel a thing. Her words seemed to echo back to her … only in Tom’s voice.
McCoy took two steps forward and then his eyes froze. Red foamy spittle ran from his mouth into his tangled beard. A patch of blood appeared in his left chest just below his shoulder and spread outward. He tottered like a sawed-through tree-trunk trying to find its balance, then swayed again before falling forward and hitting the muddy ground with a loud thump.
“Tom!” Elisabeth ran to where the sheriff sprawled on the ground. Thomas Lang opened his eyes when the first hot tears began to wash his face. “Where am I?” Elisabeth tried to push him back as he tried to sit up … then reconsidered.
“We’ve got to get you in the house.” She helped the sheriff to stand. He was bleeding from a head wound but it looked like just a graze. He was also shot in the arm and in one leg. She supported at least half of his two-hundred twenty pounds as they staggered into the cabin. Tom stared at the bodies strewn about the ranch-yard. “Who killed those outlaws?” he mumbled.
“You did,” she shook her head. “I’ve never seen a man so fast with a gun in my life!”
“I don’t remember,” he said. “Everything after I left the barn seems like a mixed-up dream.”

-------4-------

The sheriff had a makeshift linen bandage on his grazed head and one on his arm and leg. Luckily the bullets had passed through without hitting any bones or arteries. “We’ll have to take you into see Doctor Descombey when José gets here,” Elisabeth said. Luckily, her own head-wound was only a scratch.
“Where were you?” he asked.
Elisabeth walked to a broken window and looked outside. Something in the sky at the horizon seemed to capture her attention. “It’s a new day,” she muttered.
            “What?” Tom leaned forward.
Elisabeth turned and placed both hands on his shoulders gently pushing him back into his chair. Her face brushed against his. His day-old stubble made her feel nervous and excited … in a good way. Her eyes were directed at a year-old calendar hanging on the wall behind him. 1874 in Missouri seemed a lifetime past.
“When the outlaws rode up I’d already written a fake note to throw them off and went out the back door.” Elisabeth’s eyes were fluttering. She was thankful Tom couldn’t see. “When they broke in my house I hid down the well … I was so frightened.”
“That was smart thinking,” Tom said. “I’ll need to show you how to use a gun sometime. But with the rain and all the fog this morning … how did you know they were coming?”
“I didn’t have to see Ben McCoy … I could smell him,” Elisabeth snorted. Her tongue came out and moved across a chipped front tooth. “If someone handed that two-legged skunk a bar of soap … he’d probably eat it.”
Tom’s memory was foggy, but he seemed to remember more gunshots as he lay in the mud. Must have been echoes.
“Would you like a cup of coffee while we wait?”
Tom knew better than to refuse.
Elisabeth had just placed a metal camp-pot filled with water on the wood stove when they heard horse hooves pounding away from the ranch. Tom flung the door open just in time to see Ben McCoy riding away at a dead run. He reached for his gun-belt hanging on a peg next to the door. Elisabeth slapped away his hand. “You’re in no condition to ride any horse … or to shoot,” she said.
Tom sat back in his chair. He knew better than to argue.

THE END???



Sunday, April 7, 2019

FORTUNE TELLER part 3

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
Part 3
By R. Peterson

Ben McCoy slowly lowered the smoking pistol and glared at Parley. “Now look what you’ve made me do! Don’t you know better than to startle a man when his finger is on a trigger?”
Parley turned. Behind him, Jesska and Lakasera ran to where Redonici had crumpled to the ground. They carefully lay her on her back. A patch of crimson was spreading in the frilly white blouse from a bullet wound just above her left breast. “Red?” Parley forgot about McCoy and ran to his cousin. “Do something!” Jesska screeched.
Parley unbuttoned the blouse and pulled it back. Carl Brown, who had been standing up naked in the tub gawking, now turned his head at the sight of the blood. “You gonna shoot me too Ben?”
            “Shut up and get your clothes on,” McCoy growled. “She was just a damn whore.”
Carl wasted no time scrambling out of the tub and running for his pants and long johns piled on a tree-stump.
            “Is she going to die?” Melania had awakened to the gunshot and come from the wagon in her nightgown. All three women looked at Parley.
            “She’s hurt bad,” Parley said. “The bullet just missed her heart but there is possible damage to her left subclavian artery. I won’t know until we open her up!”
                “You’re going to operate on her here?” Jesska gasped.
            “I have no choice,” Parley said. “If I don’t repair the damaged vein in the next twenty minutes she’ll bleed to death.”
            “What can we do?” Lakasera asked.
            “Make sure we have plenty of boiling water,” Parley said, “and cover the table inside the wagon with three clean bed-sheets from my trunk. You’ll have to help me carry her. I have to keep pressure on the wound until we’re ready to repair the damage.”
Jesska and Lakasera carried Redonici into the wagon while Parley walked alongside. Melania ran to the fire and began to add kindling to the pot of hot water that was meant for McCoy’s bath.
 Carl Brown was already on horseback and was waiting while Ben McCoy rummaged through Lakasera and Redonici’s tent. He appeared holding a quart pickle jar filled with silver coins. “You’re a murderer … and a thief!” Melania screamed at him.
            “Your big sister ain’t dead yet … but you will be,” McCoy said as he stashed the bottle in his saddle bags. “It was just a darn accident but we’re apt to have the sheriff riding our tail just the same. Some folks place a value on whores that I don’t. I ain’t leaving this place empty handed … Hell! I didn’t even get a bath!”
Melania began to pelt both horses with pebbles as McCoy slipped into his saddle. “Wow! Ain’t you the feisty one,” he drew his gun and began to fire. Both horses were bucking and all five shots went wild.
            “She ain’t my sister … she’s my cousin,” Melania danced away from the bullets. You two are snake-in-the-grass outlaws … I hope the Indians catch you and stake you both out over red-ant piles!”
“Kill her!” Carl yelled.
            “Can’t … I’m out of bullets,” McCoy cursed as he tried to rein-in his horse.
            “Then use your knife!”
“We got no time to waste on a yapping girl.” McCoy argued. “We best light out afore the sheriff comes.” He smiled and touched the knife strapped to his belt. Broken teeth gleamed in the moonlight. “Besides I got me a recanting mail-order bride that needs her skin took!”
Melania began to make signs with her hands.
McCoy laughed but Carl stared wide-eyed. “You puttin’ some kind of gypsy-curse on us little girl?”
            “I can and I will,” Melania screeched as she threw more stones. She burst into tears as the two men rode away … and a cloud of dust blotted out the stars.
           

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

Sheriff Thomas Lang looked upward as Jeddah Martin and Clifford Williams both began to laugh. He thought he’d heard gunshots in the distance. What a night! Amos Wilkes dangled from a broken tree limb by the seat of his torn overalls. He began to kick his legs when he knew he’d been spotted. “What in tarnation are you doing?” the sheriff said.
            “I figured I’d hide up here until I found out how mad they was,” Amos looked at the ground instead of at his mining partners. The branch I was standing on broke while you was calling-camp, sheriff. I was hoping nobody heard.” Amos began to sob. “I don’t want to die!” Tears made tiny white-lines as they ran down his dirty face. “I’m sorry! I figure you boys know now it was me that ate-the-all of our bacon … yesterday … and the week before.” The tears were falling like rain now. “I traded Jed’s horse blanket to an Indian back in Dodge for some chewing tobacco.” Each time the sheriff thought he’d stop he went on.  “And it weren’t no critter broke Cliff’s whiskey. I poured that Tennessee sipping liquor down my gullet afore I smashed the bottle and then made them coyote tracks with a rock and a pointed stick!”
The two miners smiling faces were slowly becoming somber as Amos kept talking. Sheriff Lang hoisted himself into the tree and was trying to unhook Amos’s pants. “I think you’ve done enough confessing for one night, Amos” the sheriff whispered as he worked at the snag. ‘This ain’t any church … and neither one of your friends looks like a priest”. But Amos was like a broken dam … and the waters of repentance kept pouring out.
            “It was me told Jose Gonzales, back in Santa Fe, that Jed was upstairs in the hotel with his pretty young esposa! And I lied about being a king back in France … I ain’t never been to Louisiana! It was me put that snake in your boot Cliff … I didn’t know you’d be bit! I was sure I’d checked him over for rattles! I’ve been sifting white trail dust into both your flour bags every time I woke up with a hankering for flap-jacks … even when my own bag was full. It was me caught the tent on fire … smoking one of Jed’s cigars …”
            “Shut your mouth you lying, thieving, no good, skunk!” Both men still had guns in their hands. Cliff fired his. The branch holding Amos’ pants shattered and Amos fell to the ground. Sheriff Walker looked at the smoking gun and then upward at the moon. This was turning out to be a bad night!

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

            Melania held the oil lamp steady and wiped Parley’s forehead at the same time. It didn’t seem especially warm inside the gypsy wagon but her older brother was sweating profusely. All the metal parts of his medical instruments were emerged in scalding hot water and the tiny space smelled of ether “Hand me the forceps,” Parley spoke to Lakasera. “Careful! Only touch them by the handles.” He allowed them to cool slightly while his mother read aloud from a medical textbook titled Antiseptic Principles in the Practice of Surgery, Melania didn’t want to look at the bloody chest of her older cousin but she was forced to – to the keep the incision area lit. “Suction!” Parley stuck the medical pinchers deep inside the wound as Lakasera used a syringe with a rubber bulb on one end to suck excess blood from the cavity. “Got it,” he said. A piece of lead somewhat smaller than a marble plunked into a bowl filled with clean water. “Now to repair the vein.”
            This was the part that Melania found fascinating. The last time the Descombey family butchered a hog, Parley had kept numerous parts of the dead animal in sealed canning jars filled with a substance called formaldehyde. Lakasera removed a tiny piece of hollow bone from one of the bottles and then her brother trimmed and cut it to length with a surgeon’s knife. He inserted the tiny piece of bone into each end of the severed artery and then pulled the veins together. He used special magnifying glasses and a needle and cat-gut thread from the hot water to stitch the pieces together.
            “It’s like you’re making repairs to a pipe,” she said.
            “A pipe that must not leak and work like new,” Parley gasped.
            “Why do you use parts from a pig?” Melania asked.
            “Pigs have almost the same thoracic and abdominal organs as humans,” Parley said. “We can only hope her body won’t reject this stent and allows her vein to heal.
            “Will she die?”
            “Only God knows,” her brother said, “him and the Devil.”
Ten minutes later, Parley unclamped the arteries and then sewed-up the incision. An exhausted Melania stumbled outside to get air.
The six-year old was using tiny broken sticks to make patterns in the dirt when her mother found her. "Che cosa stanno facendo mio figlio?" Jesska frowned and then scuffed away the drawings with her boot.
            “I’m making a maledizio to punish those bad men that hurt Redonici!” Melania began to bawl.
Jesska took her daughter in her arms and held her tightly as the child sobbed. “We must have forgiveness,” she whispered. “Curses are like Australian boomerangs. They always come back to who throws them!”

-------4-------

Sheriff Lang shook his head. There seemed to be no end to Amos Wilkes’ confessions.
Amos was on his knees with his arms spread-wide, bawling like a preacher caught by his congregation spending their donations in a whore house.
            “It was me locked the skunk in the outhouse behind the restaurant in Kansas City. I marked them poker cards! It was me that dropped Jed’s pistol into that pickle barrel …”
            “Go ahead and hang him,” Tom said as he jumped out of the tree. “If you don’t … I think I will!”
            “Hang him?” Jeddah Martin and Clifford Williams looked at each other and holstered their guns. “We’re just having a little fun with our partner!” Jed laughed.
            “Amos is our good luck charm,” Cliff explained. “If it wasn’t for him we would have never found the mother-load!”
            “We both know he’s a sorry pile of wasted flesh and he lies at least twice with every word he speaks,” Jed said. “But he’s with us for a reason …”
            “We went looking for him down-stream this morning,” Cliff said. “We figured he got drunk and fell in the creek. We checked all around the back side of a big bend covered with rocks and black sand hoping we’d find his mangy corpse snagged on something!”
            “That’s when I plucked out these nuggets, some as big as chicken eggs, on my first pan,” Jed opened a bag and poured out a handful of gleaming gold ore. “He’s like a gunshot wound to both our backsides but we can’t do anything good without him!”
Ten minutes later when the sheriff walked back to town Amos was demanding to be served breakfast.

-------5-------

Lakasera was pounding on the door of the newly built jail and sheriff’s office. Tom looked at his watch he’d only been asleep for a little more than two hours. He groaned. After the gypsy woman explained what happened, the sheriff rode with her back to the camp.
            “My cousin is sleeping now … and with a little luck she might make it,” Parley explained.
            “You say one of these men had a scar running down the left side of his face?”
            “Yeah he had a thick beard … but it didn’t quite cover it! He said his name was McCoy … Ben McCoy!”
The sheriff was back in the saddle before Parley could ask him if he wanted breakfast. “You going to track them now? It’s still dark out!”
            The sheriff stared at the ground as the horse began to move. “The tracks head north … I ain’t got time to gab!”
The wild Texas mare named Comanche was at a dead run within seconds. The murdering outlaws had at least a two-hour head start. Tom knew where they were headed … to Elisabeth Walker’s ranch!

TO BE CONTINUED …