Last Chance Saloon

by Cole Shelton

  The congregation were watching, but obviously no one knew the rider and he’d never met up with any of them before either. That suited Brett right now.

  Brett said, ‘From what I heard, you’re a man who speaks his mind. I’m impressed.’

  ‘Praise the Lord and thank you,’ O’Toole said, beaming at the compliment. It was always good to receive confirmation of his gospel ministry. He rubbed his hands together and announced, ‘My name’s . . .’

  ‘It’s on your signboard,’ Brett pointed out.

  ‘Oh yes, of course.’ O’Toole asked, grinning. ‘And you?’

  ‘Name’s Cassidy.’

  ‘Are you just passing through or staying in our fair town, Mr Cassidy?’

  Brett didn’t get to answer because right at that moment Tabitha O’Toole decided she should join her husband and welcome this stranger. She excused herself from the fervent conversations about the evils of the demon drink and started to walk across the street. She’d just reached the middle of First Street, when without warning, two riders came thundering out of the alley alongside the church. Tabitha was right in their path, meaning both men had to rein their horses hard to avoid crashing straight into her. In fact, one of the horses actually brushed her, knocking her off balance. O’Toole, running out of the juniper’s shade, caught her in his outstretched arms before she slipped over.

  While Tabitha clung to her husband, sobbing, the rider whose chestnut horse had sent her reeling, sat in his saddle glaring at her. He was young, barely into his twenties, with little curls of dark hair making an excuse for a beard over a sallow face that was dominated by thin eyes, bloodless lips and flared nostrils. He wore a single pearl-handled gun, slung low on his left side.

  ‘The street’s for men and horses,’ he upbraided the preacher’s wife, ‘not for day-dreaming fillies.’

  ‘Don’t you talk to my wife like that,’ O’Toole addressed him furiously.

  ‘I’ll talk to your wife any way I like, Preacher,’ the rider mocked him as his congregation looked on nervously. He raised his voice deliberately, so everyone could hear, ‘And you’ll do nothing about it.’

  ‘Why, you . . .’

  ‘Jason, for God’s sake, leave it,’ his wife whispered.

  But the rider heard it and laughed. ‘Yeah, sound advice, ma’am. You’re a smart lady!’ He grinned at O’Toole. ‘Do like your wife says, Preacher.’

  The rider’s companion, a beefy man well into his fifties, chuckled loudly at the preacher’s embarrassment.

  ‘Who the hell are you?’ Brett demanded.

  Both riders fixed their hostile eyes on the stranger in town as he nudged his horse out from the juniper’s shade. At the same time, Preacher O’Toole took advantage of this momentary diversion to rush his wife safely back across the street where his congregation stood in bewildered silence. Two Temperance Union ladies looked shocked and someone called for smelling salts. Being church day, none of the men wore guns. Not that any would be game to use them if they did.

  ‘Name’s Jorgenson,’ the younger rider stated. He smirked and asked arrogantly, ‘Heard of me, Mister?’

  Brett ignored the question. Instead, he said, ‘This is Sunday, day of rest and peace, Jorgenson. These folks have just come out of their church. Reckon they’ve a right to cross the street without getting knocked over.’

  Jorgenson stared at him. He wasn’t used to being challenged in Red Butte and he took an instant dislike to the stranger’s tone of voice and his attitude.

  ‘Wanna make something out of this?’ Jorgenson taunted.

  ‘I’m suggesting you slow down so no one gets hurt,’ Brett said in a quiet, reasonable voice.

  Jorgenson’s eyes narrowed to twin slits.

  Provocatively he sneered, ‘You goddamn interfering polecat . . .’

  ‘Kid,’ his beefy sidekick intervened, as one of the church ladies looked like she was about to faint, despite the smelling salts, ‘this isn’t the time or place for a ruckus.’

  ‘Stay out of this, Buff,’ Jorgenson snapped back at him.

  Buff reminded Jorgenson, ‘We’re wasting time. We’ve both got important work to do for Mr Delaney.’

  Jorgenson considered, finally agreeing, ‘Yeah, you’re right, Buff.’

  ‘Come on, let’s ride,’ Buff urged.

  Jorgenson couldn’t resist a parting shot as he gathered his reins. Looking straight at Brett, he warned, ‘I’ll give you a piece of advice, stranger – if you want to stay healthy, keep riding.’

  Brett made no reply, watching as the two Delaney men rode off in a swirl of dust. He’d heard all about Kid Jorgenson, first from Harmony and then from Quade as they rode together. He was every bit as hot-headed as they had described. The other was obviously Buff Malloy. Brett figured he would be meeting them both again but not in front of a church congregation.

  ‘Thanks for horning in, Mister,’ O’Toole said, coming back to him. ‘My good wife is particularly grateful and she wants me to invite you to our humble home for light refreshments. We live in the stone house next to the church.’

  ‘Sure, I’ll spend some time with you, but no preaching.’

  ‘Agreed,’ O’Toole said with a grin.

  Brett tied his horse to the picket fence.

  The preacher’s home was squeezed between the church and Venetta’s Hat Shop. It was indeed humble, just a parlour, bedroom and office. Tabitha was an artist and her paintings of mesquite and sagebrush hung on the parlour wall.

  There was something else hanging on this wall, too – a John Brown Sharps Carbine. Brett thought it was an unusual adornment in a preacher’s home, but it was none of his business.

  ‘You were most definitely sent by the Lord, Mr Cassidy,’ Tabitha insisted as she busied herself at the woodstove.

  ‘If you say so, ma’am,’ Brett said, taking off his Stetson.

  ‘Men like Kid Jorgenson and Buff Malloy are the scourge of our community,’ the preacher’s wife said bitterly. ‘They belong to Garth Delaney’s outfit. They’ve ruined this town. Red Butte was once a decent place to live in but now no man, woman or child is safe here.’

  ‘And no one dares to face up to Delaney’s crew,’ O’Toole lamented.

  Now Tabitha O’Toole might have given the appearance of being meek and mild but when it came to Delaney and his gang, she couldn’t help but raise her voice in anger. Much of what she then said Brett had already heard from Harmony and Will Quade and she backed up all their concerns. However, half way through her tirade she seemed to suddenly remember she was a preacher’s wife and needed to observe some decorum in the presence of their table guest.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mr Cassidy,’ she said, pouring tea for him. ‘You’re new in town. Probably just here for the day. I shouldn’t have burdened you with our troubles.’

  ‘No need to apologise on my account,’ Brett said.

  ‘So are you just passing through?’ Jason O’Toole wanted to know.

  ‘I’m here to make some enquiries.’

  Curious, Tabitha asked, ‘Are you one of those Pinkerton detectives?’

  ‘Fact is, I’m making enquiries about some missing persons.’ Brett took a quick sip of Tabitha’s tea while looking straight at her husband. ‘Actually, half a dozen Cheyenne maidens. I aim to track them down and return them to their people. Might prevent an Indian War.’

  Both the preacher and his wife exchanged glances and fell silent.

  Right then all the fire seemed to go out of Tabitha and she slipped a reassuring arm around her husband’s shoulder. Meanwhile, Preacher O’Toole’s face was turning chalk-white and he looked old and gaunt.

  ‘You’ve been talking to Will Quade?’ O’Toole guessed.

  ‘We rode together to Rattler Canyon,’ Brett informed him.

  ‘So he told you about my vision?’

  Tabitha explained, with a touch of pride, ‘The Good Lord often gives my husband visions, Mr Cassidy.’ She hesitated. ‘However, in this particular instance, I felt it was more th
an a vision. It was real life. My husband actually saw that wagon and he shared what he’d seen with Mr Quade.’

  ‘Will told me about it.’

  ‘However, at the time my head was banging like a drum,’ O’Toole confessed. ‘I was unwell so I couldn’t remember much.’

  Brett saw Tabitha involuntarily raise her eyebrows and in that moment he figured she knew of her husband’s embarrassing secret. Maybe she’d been protecting her preacher husband for years.

  ‘You could help me out by telling me what you do remember,’ Brett urged.

  The preacher went over the story he’d blurted out to the homesteader leader but Brett learned nothing new.

  ‘What sort of wagon was it?’ the gunfighter prodded.

  O’Toole thought about it. ‘Reckon it was one of those big Conestoga wagons that new westbound settlers use to cross the plains in. Very heavy, too heavy for the two horses so that’s why the whips were cracking.’ Frowning, the preacher recalled, ‘The canvas was torn in lots of places so I saw the Cheyenne women quite plainly, all huddled together, scared as . . .’

  ‘Scared as hell,’ Brett supplied.

  ‘Uh, yes,’ O’Toole agreed.

  ‘What about the horses?’

  ‘Like I said, just two.’

  Brett asked, ‘Anything special about them?’

  ‘One was brown, very ordinary, the other a real big chestnut.’

  ‘Like the one Jorgenson was riding today?’

  Tabitha interrupted hastily, ‘My husband’s not saying, Mr Cassidy.’

  ‘What about the two wagon drivers? Who were they?’

  ‘Jason has told you enough,’ she said, sharply this time.

  This preacher knew who they were sure enough, and he must have confided in his wife, but Brett saw naked fear written plainly on their faces. These were good, God-fearing folks and, like most other decent citizens in the town, they were scared of crossing Delaney’s men.

  Brett Cassidy decided not to probe any further, apart from one last blunt question. ‘Have you seen these missing Cheyenne maidens here in Red Butte?’

  ‘Good gracious, no,’ Tabitha answered quickly and very definitely indeed. ‘We would have certainly heard if they were here.’

  ‘Thanks for the tea and cakes, Mrs O’Toole.’

  Leaving her husband at the table, Tabitha O’Toole accompanied Brett to the front door. As he stood in the doorway, the preacher’s wife let her eyes drop to the guns he wore. The holsters were made of polished leather and the gun handles were shiny-clean. He’d said he wasn’t a Pinkerton man. She couldn’t imagine he was a lawman, which left few other possibilities, one of which caused her to shudder.

  She couldn’t be sure and she certainly wasn’t going to ask him, but he possessed all the cold characteristics of a professional gunfighter. Tabitha hoped she was misjudging him. The very idea of a man who killed for a living made her sick in the pit of her stomach.

  And yet, she asked herself, would it take such a man to rid this town of its resident evil?

  Thinking about this, she watched him walk to his horse. She kept her eyes on him as he mounted up. Briefly, he just sat in the saddle looking out over the town, which was bathed in brilliant sunlight and late-afternoon shadows.

  As he gathered his reins, he glanced back at the distant slopes behind Rattler Canyon. That’s when he saw Cheyenne smoke, dark puffs drifting into the fading sky, a reminder that time was running out.

  Then, as Tabitha O’Toole closed the door, Brett Cassidy began to ride.

  The preacher’s wife returned to the parlour and drew in her breath sharply as she saw Jason holding the carbine he’d just taken down from its wall hooks.

  ‘Don’t even think about it!’ she warned.

  O’Toole muttered, ‘Who said I was thinking about anything?’

  Tabitha blazed, ‘I’ve been your good, faithful wife for almost fifteen years, Jason Micah O’Toole, and I know you through and through. You can’t hide anything from me.’ She spoke more softly now, ‘Not even your drinking.’

  ‘Fact is, I was just remembering,’ the preacher said, still nursing the lethal gun.

  ‘You need to forget those misspent years with John Brown,’ she admonished him. ‘He might have led an anti-slavery crusade, with the best of intentions but many men died in that battle of Harper’s Ferry.’

  ‘And this gun killed some of them.’

  ‘Some say the battle of Harper’s Ferry led to the Civil War,’ Tabitha reminded her husband. She added earnestly, ‘But, Jason, the past is the past. You’re a man of God now, a preacher of peace.’

  ‘Not easy to preach peace when the likes of Delaney, Jorgenson and Malloy are raising hell in your town,’ Jason O’Toole mused.

  ‘We have to leave it to the Lord,’ Tabitha insisted. Inexplicably, impulsively, she thought again about that tall stranger, Brett Cassidy, and how he’d just ridden into their town. There was something about him that moved her to say, very quietly now, ‘I’m sure the Good Lord has it all in hand.’

  ‘Yes, my dear, you’re probably right,’ her husband agreed.

  The Reverend Jason O’Toole lifted his old carbine back on to its wall hooks.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Brett Cassidy rode slowly down First Street.

  All was quiet, like a ghost town, as he passed by the Tabernacle Chapel and the Quaker Meeting House set back under some pines, but further into Red Butte a few shops were open and folks walked or lounged on the wooden-planked boardwalks. It was easy to see who owned this town. There were two bakeries, both with Delaney’s name painted on their signs. The boot shop was owned by Delaney, as was the gaudy-fronted ‘Black Deuce Card House’. Judged by the haze of cigarette smoke in the doorway and the line of horses outside, the card house was well-patronised. Brett slowed his roan as he rode by the general store and the Red Butte law office where the open door showed him a stout town sheriff with his boots planted on his desk, puffing away on a fat cigar and reading the Red Butte Herald. Beside him, a much younger deputy was drinking coffee.

  Half way down the street now, he heard the tinkling of piano keys and the tune ‘Darling Nelly Gray’, then outbursts of raucous laughter greeting him as he came closer to the town’s one and only saloon.

  Originally the army outpost’s barracks, the Last Chance Saloon took up a whole block on First Street. Riding closer, Brett saw four dusty windows, two either side of bright blue batwings. A dozen lanterns hung over the boardwalk, ready to be lit at sundown, and the saloon was flanked by Corporal Alley and Sergeant Alley, two more reminders of the old bluecoat days. The town’s lodging house was right opposite the saloon. He noticed the carefully and artistically printed name ‘Ma Tully’ had been almost scraped off its door and hastily replaced with ‘Delaney’ scrawled untidily in vivid blue.

  The afternoon shadows were deepening as Brett crossed the street and dismounted at the tie rail. Tabitha O’Toole’s cup of tea, although appreciated, wasn’t really his style and besides, he’d always found a town saloon to be the best source of information. It was time to poke around inside this one, especially as it was owned by Garth Delaney.

  He let his roan drink from the water trough.

  Inside, the piano player was being applauded for ‘Darling Nelly Gray’.

  Someone yelled, ‘Give us Old Dan Tucker!’

  Brett glanced down-street. Most of the smaller businesses there seemed to have escaped Delaney’s greedy clutches, but the one on the other side of Corporal Alley was a freight line with DELANEY’S FREIGHT plastered in big blue lettering over a signboard. It looked to be closed today, but a freight line meant wagons so he’d take a look around there later.

  He tied the roan next to three other horses and mounted the boardwalk.

  Half-naked saloon girls painted crudely on the four dust-coated windows smiled seductively at him as he walked to the batwings. It might be the Sabbath and very early afternoon, but Delaney’s saloon was over half full. Three men stood drinking at
the bar counter. One had his left arm around a painted saloon girl’s shoulder. She wouldn’t even be sixteen, too young to be in here. Other painted cats, a little older, but mostly still in their teens, sat playfully on the laps of any men who could afford their company. There was a faro game in the far western corner, half a dozen poker games were being played and three men were talking earnestly over drinks at their table under the balcony.

  Two of those men were the riders he’d tangled with, Kid Jorgenson and Buff Malloy.

  From the description Harmony had given him, the third man, heavily-built, dressed in a pin-striped suit, had to be Garth Delaney. He had a high forehead, bushy black eyebrows and a long, thin nose. None of these three men were drinking redeye whiskey like most of the others in the saloon. Instead they were enjoying glasses of imported red wine.

  Brett let the batwings creak to a standstill behind him.

  For a long moment no one noticed him, then the saloon girl playing ‘Old Dan Tucker’ looked up from her music with her fingers frozen on the piano keys.

  ‘Well now! Look who we have here! Mr Brett Cassidy!’

  Jessie May Killen rose from her piano stool and smiled. It was a smile from long ago, many years in fact, all the way from Lincoln City. It was a smile that brought back certain memories. The years had been kind to her. She was well past her prime, but still looked vivacious, her eyes very beguiling and her lips full and inviting. She was wearing a red cotton saloon frock sewn together tight enough to accentuate and give a glimpse of the swell of her ample breasts.

  ‘Howdy, Jessie,’ Brett greeted simply.

  Brett was conscious that Delaney, Malloy and Jorgenson had ceased their conversation and were all looking his way. Watching the newcomer with narrowing eyes, Delaney raised his glass of wine slowly while his two men simply stared. Jorgenson’s lips were curled in a sneer and he was leaning forward over the table, crouching, like he was ready to leap out of his seat.

  ‘Welcome to Red Butte,’ Jessie proclaimed enthusiastically.

  She said it so loudly the whole saloon was plunged into silence. Men looked up from their drinks and the faro banker stopped shuffling his cards. Brett took half a dozen paces and she met him half way to the bar counter. He could smell her European perfume and now she was close to him, he saw how her powder and paint tried to cover the lines on her face. However, she was still a beautiful woman.