FORTUNE TELLER 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.

FORTUNE TELLER

Part 2

By R. Peterson

“You can’t force yourself on a woman!” Jesska screamed at the man twisting the arm of her niece. “The sheriff will see justice done!”

“Both these gals are for sale!” Ben McCoy sneered as he held Lakasera’s arms. She broke free of his grip and scratched his face. He hit her hard with the back of his hand and she staggered barely able to stay on her feet. “Laying with a whore ain’t no crime in Montana!” He laughed. Even if this damn tent-town had the law!”

“Ravaging any Montana woman against her will is rape.”  Redonici screamed at the filthy man standing by the fire. “Our new sheriff, Thomas Lang, is six-foot four inches tall with both his boots off!  He rides a snorting West Texas mare named Comanche that the army swears was stolen from Chief Nokoni!  Tom can track a snowflake through a week-long blizzard. He’s lightning fast with a gun and can shoot both the eyes out of a rattlesnake at one-hundred yards. You’ll be dancing on the end of a slack rope even before he goes looking for someone  to play the fiddle for an hour!”

            “That sounds like the man that broke up your mail-order bride plan …”

            “Shut your mouth, Carl!” McCoy glared at his partner then released his hold on Lakasera and allowed her to slide to the ground. His face was suddenly all smiles. “Looks like we got ourselves off to a bad start. He laughed as he reached in his pocket and tossed three silver dollars at Jesska. The old gypsy woman allowed the coins to fall in the dust at her feet.

            “Voi uomini siete entrambi sporco,” she said. “A hot-bath is two dollars more. You both clean up … or you ride out”.

Brown started to object but McCoy held a finger to his mouth. “Give the woman five dollars,” he said and then added with a whisper. “Don’t worry about your dern poke  … we’re leaving with everything!”

Ben McCoy stared at the sign painted on the side of the wagon as his partner undressed and Redonici poured buckets of hot water from the fire into a large round tub. “How much to have my fortune told?”

            “We have a few minutes … this one is free,” Jesska said.

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

Jesska opened a window when the man sat across from her at the table inside the wagon. He smelled like a skunk trapped in a latrine half full of alcohol. “Maybe you should have taken the first bath” From outside, the off-key sound of the naked man in the tub singing “now don't you remember sweet Betsy from Pike …” fouled the air as Redonci added lye-soap to create bubbles.

            “I like to keep my shootin’ iron handy until I know things is on the up and up!” McCoy winked then patted the Colt 45 strapped to his waist. “Even if this is a free fortune  it’s still gonna be a good one ain’t it?”

            “What do you mean?” Jesska said as she took the ancient cards from the Ombré box.

            “Like I’m gonna strike it rich the next time I wash-out my biscuit pan in Grasshopper Creek and I’ll end up living in a hundred room mansion when I’m elected Governor of California!”

            “Fate is not in my hands,” Jesska told him. “I only deal the cards.”

Jesska lay three cards on the table face up: the Five of Pentacles, The Tower and The Moon.

            “This is the now,” Jesska said. “I see two men on a desperate journey filled with danger … and they’re afraid.”

            “That’s Carl!” McCoy slammed his fist so hard on the table the cards bounced. “I ain’t afraid of nothing!”

Jesska waited while the man outside yelled and asked McCoy if everything was alright and McCoy yelled back and told him that it was!”

She laid three cards face down on the table. “These are the things that are hidden,” she said. “Two from the past and one from the future.”

            “Don’t just sit there gawking … turn them over!” McCoy demanded.

            “Most things are hidden for a reason,” Jesska said. “Truth can bring about great pain.”

McCoy laughed. “I already know I’m going to hang,’ he said. I want to know when … so I can be good and drunk!”

Jesska turned over the first card. “I see a starving woman crying as a fat, bearded man with a wooden-leg and wearing a Confederate Sergeant’s coat steals food from her and his two babies to buy whiskey!”

            “That’s old Toby!” McCoy thundered. “We used to throw rocks at the drunk old buzzard when we was growing up … I didn’t know he was our pappy!”

Jesska turned over the second card. “I see a bleeding man burying a metal box in the desert then riding toward a campfire at night.”

            “That was Carl!” McCoy fumed. “He said he lost the strong-box after we robbed the Kansas City stage and then got ourselves separated!”

McCoy was on his feet and banging out the door before Jesska could speak. She could hear shouts and denials as she turned over the last card. “I see a respected lawman dying by your hand,” she gasped, “and the ghost of a woman who lingers forever.”

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

            Sheriff Thomas Lang looked at his watch as he strolled past the livery stable. It was three AM … the town was beginning to quiet down for the night. His boots made a clomping noise as he stepped from the street onto the covered boardwalk running in front of the new hotel. The two story wood and stone structure had taken just three weeks for an army of hungry men to build. “It’s amazing what you can get for two wagonloads of sugar, some bacon and some flour,” he muttered.

There was a space about ten feet wide between the hotel and the general store. The store owner used the vacant area to store empty barrels and the wooden crates that merchandise was shipped in. Sheriff Lang was almost past the dark alley when he heard what sounded like a man sobbing near the back. He pushed his way past assorted litter and a broken wagon wheel and found a terrified Amos Wilkes trying to crawl under a large pile of empty flour sacks. “Amos you got a tent down by the creek and a couple of partners to keep a fire going … what are you doing hiding under these bags?”

“Don’t let ‘em hang me, Tom,” Amos bawled.

“Who you figure is going to do that?” The sheriff had never seen the pudgy miner’s eyes bulge out like a cow’s.

“Jed and Cliff!” Amos sobbed. “They was both laughing while I swung from a cottonwood tree!”

“Jeddah Martin and Clifford Williams are both your friends. What makes you think they’d want to hang you?”

“I went to the gypsy wagon last night with two others…” Amos gripped the sheriff’s arm so tightly Tom had to pry his fingers off. “Cliff and Jed was too drunk so they went on to the camp.”

“That old witch woman ….”

“Jesska Descombey?”

“Yeah! She looked in a dern sugar bowl and sawed my future in three parts!”

“What did she see Amos?”

“She said I’d make me up a big breakfast … but a lupo affamato would eat it … and then the dark demon would eat me if I wasn’t careful!”

“I’ve met critters scared, mean and covered with dust,” the sheriff said. “I don’t recall ever meeting one that actually belonged to the devil!”

“I w-w-woke up l-l-like always,” Amos stuttered, “about an hour before daylight. Cliff and Jed had already gone to panning … somewhere upstream a ways. I carved up our last chunk of pork belly and sliced up two tiny taters that had gone soft into a pan with a clump of lard and left them on the fire. They was popping, sizzling and smoking when I went to the creek to get coffee-water.”

“Sounds like you boys eat good on your claim!”

“But we didn’t. None of us did!” Amos was gripping the sheriff’s arm again. “When I come back with the water, the fry-pan lay empty under a huckleberry bush. I was about to pick it up when I heard something thrashing just a ways off. It made a sound like to make my skin crawl. It was saying amooooouck amoooouck. Then I realized it was calling my name Amos! It was the affamato come to eat me!”

“You don’t look chewed-on, Amos,” Tom said. “Then what happened?”

“I hid in the tent,” Amos explained, “under Cliff’s buffalo hide … and when the sun come up I lit out for town!”

“You been holed up in this alley ever since?”

“No I needed me a drink,” Amos said. “The saloon-door was open so I went inside.”

“You start drinking before noon and you’ll roll down every hill my pappy used to say.” Tom shook his head.

“I was scared and I only snuck me one or two gulps from a bottle I found hid under the bar,” Amos told him. “I remembered the second part of my future.  That witch said I’d go blind as a bat and dance with the devil’s wife on the fiery floors of hell before I woke up in a coffin.”

Tom looked him over. “Your coat looks singed, like you was rolled through a campfire but your eyes look fine to me. I don’t see no body box!”

            “There!” Amos pointed to a large wooden crate that a dozen Sharps Model 1874 rifles had been shipped in. It leaned against the wall of the store with a splintered and broken lid swung open like a door. “The first man I ever saw hung was buried in a box just like this one!” Amos gasped. “When I got my sight back, I thought I was buried. It took more than an hour to break my way out!”

            “I’m sure there’s an answer to everything you saw,” Sheriff Lang said. “Why don’t I walk you back to your camp so your friends can look after you?”

            “I don’t want to hang under the light of the moon!” Amos moaned. “I’m sorry about Cliff’s bacon and the stolen whiskey!”

            “I ain’t gonna let nobody hang you over some food and a bottle of booze,” Tom told him.

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

Carl Brown stood up in the bathtub with his hands held above his head. A large clump of bubbles ran down his chest and covered his naked midsection like a loincloth. His legs were shaking. He looked like he was trying to dance. Redonici and Lakasera both laughed. “Now Ben you got no call to pull a gun on me!”

            “You lying no good skunk!” Ben McCoy pointed the gun at the fat man’s belly. His eyes were rabid and ready to see murder done. “You told me that strong-box fell off your horse while you was being chased by Indians. You said there was no way you could go back for it!”

            “It did fall off the horse,” Carl stammered. “Them Indians wasn’t that close, but I saw their smoke signals coming from the skyline. I knew it was only a matter of time afore I was scalped!”

            “So you took the time to bury our gold?”

            “I didn’t want it to fall off no more …” Carl’s eyes were flickering open and closed like the bat wing doors on a saloon on a Saturday night. “I knowed your Birthday was coming up … and I wanted to surprise you!”

            “When is my birthday Carl?” The hammer on the large caliber gun made a clicking sound.

            “I don’t recall … that’s why it’s taken so long to tell you,” Carl stammered. The bubbles between his legs began to disappear.

            “What’s going on here?” A staggering Parley Descombey was suddenly standing before the two men holding his head.

Ben McCoy turned and a flash of red-yellow fire leapt from the end of the gun a spit second before a tremendous boom shook the ground. Jesska, Redonici and Lakasera all screamed. From inside the wagon, five-year old Melania … began to cry.

           

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

Tom was careful to make plenty of noise as he and Amos walked toward the camp. It was late at night and even under the moonlight he and the miner could be mistaken for bush-whackers. The camp was in a clearing and they were still in the trees. It was always better to be safe.

            “Hello camp!” the sheriff called out. And then he waited.

Less than a minute later two men scrambled out of a tent. They had on only long-john underwear but both held pistols in their hands.

            “Is that you Amos?’ one of the men growled. “You dirty sidewinder! I ought to put a bullet in you for scaring the daylights out of us!”

            It’s me the sheriff,” Tom told him. “But your partner is with me …”

The sheriff turned but Amos was no longer behind him. The full-moon chose this moment to slide from behind a clump of cloud. It wasn’t daylight bright but it was close. The moon cast an eerie shadow on the ground beside Tom. Two booted legs swung easily in the breeze under the branches of a large cottonwood tree.

TO BE CONTINUED …