Last Chance Saloon

by Cole Shelton

  ‘Wildcat Camp?’

  ‘That mud hole!’ Jessie laughed.

  Brett asked, ‘Why do you call it that?’

  ‘Big storm, river overflowed – coupla weeks ago,’ Jessie said, taking another swallow of her champagne. ‘Streets flooded, the whole town turned into a mud hole.’

  He thought about that Conestoga with the moccasin on the floor, the torn canvas, the smell of whiskey – and wheels and sides caked with dry mud. Those Cheyenne maidens had to be in Wildcat Camp.

  ‘Tell me about Wildcat Camp,’ he urged.

  ‘Not much – to – tell,’ Jessie said, her frock falling away from her shoulders. ‘Just a two-bit mining town. Mr De Heus looks – after Garth’s interests there.’ She shivered, ‘Don’t like De Heus. He’s real – mean. Ugly too.’ She reached for him with her free hand, fingers linking with his. ‘I’m sure Garth won’t send you there. Dutchie De Heus looks after – Wildcat Camp.’ She squeezed his hand. ‘Now, Brett, honey, let me look after you . . .’

  ‘Been looking forward to that,’ Brett Cassidy said. ‘I’m all yours after one more glass of champagne.’

  ‘I’ll drink to that,’ Jessie said, raising her half-empty glass.

  He opened a second bottle of champagne and filled her glass to the brim.

  Sitting next to her on the bed, he took a couple of sips from his own glass. Five minutes later she had her eyes closed while she guzzled more champagne. Another ten minutes and her words of seduction were so slurred no man would understand them. Brett wasn’t listening anyway. He pulled her to him and she rested her head on his shoulder. Her alcoholic stench was overpowering. She dropped her glass, spilling the remaining contents over her dress. She was dead to the world, lost in her alcoholic numbness. He reached past her and pulled back the top satin sheet. He picked her up and she purred like a contented kitten as he laid her on the bed and pulled the sheet over her fully-dressed body.

  Brett headed to the door and listened.

  He heard the sounds of saloon patrons drinking and talking. The Last Chance Saloon was still packed.

  He used Jessie’s big brass key to lock the door.

  Next he turned down the lamp until the room was in darkness.

  Jessie was fast asleep as he walked past the bed and parted the lace curtains.

  He unhooked the catch and gently opened the window. It was a tight squeeze, but Brett Cassidy managed to worm his slim body through the frame. His boots touched the dirt of the saloon’s back courtyard. All the other windows had their curtains drawn across. There was no light on in Delaney’s office. Either he’d gone home or he was in the saloon with Malloy and Jorgenson. There was only one window lit up and he heard the ribald sounds of Josephine entertaining a customer.

  Brett walked quietly across the courtyard into Corporal Alley. There were a couple of drunken cowpokes slumped against the freight line office side wall. They were the two Lazy F hands still continuing their argument. Brett was a mere shadow in the night as he slipped silently further down the alley.

  Brett opened the gate slowly, noiselessly.

  Swiftly he wove his way between the wagons and made the livery stable. Once inside, he strode to where his roan was waiting patiently. It took him less than two minutes to saddle his horse and tighten the cinch. He mounted the roan and rode through the wagons to the gate. The Lazy F hands were now trading insults, neither looking his way as he turned his horse’s head down-alley.

  He rode swiftly out of town, past darkened homes and empty sale yards until he came across the trail that led due south.

  According to Delaney, Wildcat Camp was four hours ride.

  He aimed to be there soon after midnight.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Leaving the lights of Red Butte behind, Brett Cassidy let his roan have his head. The big-hearted horse broke into a long, easy lope and then a steady gallop along the lonely trail that stretched south over long, flat sagebrush plains. Ahead, there was a rugged pass between two mountains, both capped with moonlit snow. He passed a couple of cabins, then a small ranch where the bunkhouse was wreathed in darkness. He forded a bubbling creek and kept on the trail that followed a new fence line holding in two more cattle spreads.

  After an hour’s hard riding, he rested his horse.

  Within minutes, Brett was in the saddle again.

  The trail began a steady climb off the windswept plain and one hour before midnight he reached the crest of a long rise. Looking down, he saw the distant lamps of Wildcat Camp. Even at this late hour, the town was ablaze with shimmering lights that cast a yellow glow over a wide river brimming against its banks. This river was like a glittering snake, twisting around the town before booming through the pass into pitch darkness.

  The two mountains towered high into the starlit sky as Brett kept to the narrow trail that now slewed down towards the mining town. Approaching Wildcat Camp and the pass, he heard the dull thunder of the plunging river punctured by the sudden snarl of a gun echoing over the town. A shaft of moonlight showed gaping holes in the western escarpment. He saw thin tracks made by miners that clung to the mountain side.

  The trail into Wildcat Camp dropped to the river bank.

  Riding by the swollen river, Brett passed hastily-erected cabins and clusters of tents where miners had staked their claims, hoping to ride away rich one day.

  He saw where the river had spilled over its banks in the recent storm and from there the trail he rode was a muddy quagmire. The roan’s hoofs squelched in deep mud, which as Jessie had told him, looked to flow right into the town itself.

  He heard distant music from a tuneless piano as he rode by a bullet-pocked sign announcing WILDCAT CAMP. There were two more signs. One pointed to the western mountain and announced DELANEY’S COPPER COMPANY. Another told all and sundry there was gold along the river. Right now it would be difficult to fossick there, so he figured those prospectors smitten by ‘yellow fever’ would be spending time in town making traders richer than they themselves would ever become.

  It was certainly Delaney’s kind of town.

  Brett slowed his mount as he reached town limits. So far he hadn’t come across a living soul since leaving Red Butte, but he finally saw movement as he reached the head of Wildcat Camp’s one and only street, a ribbon of black mud spawning a dozen very thin alleys. There was a dark ridge under the eastern mountain where wooden homes had been built behind the main street. Mostly those homes were in darkness as they presided over the town’s swaying lamps.

  It might be close to midnight but Wildcat Camp was very much alive.

  Brett had been in many frontier outposts in his time, but few as wide-open as Wildcat Camp. The boardwalks were littered with drunks who’d passed out after imbibing too much cheap, redeye whiskey. In fact, he could smell how cheap and rancid the rotgut was as he rode by the first saloon. He drifted past two hairy prospectors having a fist fight watched by bleary-eyed onlookers from the Two Jacks Card House. Three general stores were still open for business, as was Delaney’s Firearms, the town’s prominent gun shop. Even the undertaker’s parlour had a light burning and its front door open wide. Maybe death was a common occurrence at any hour here. He glanced down the alleys as he passed by. Some were mere unlit black holes; others held more saloons and card houses. There was once a sheriff here but now the law office was all boarded-up, its cracked windows and bullet-holed door silted with dry mud. No one had worn a tin star in Wildcat Camp for a long time.

  Brett kept riding.

  A woman who’d be well into her fifties stood waiting in the doorway of an obvious brothel that had the words ‘Kate’s Cats’ scrawled over its wall. A smaller plaque informed customers this was a ‘Delaney Enterprise’. She beckoned to Brett as he rode by, screeching an obscenity because he paid no notice. Just past her was a rickety wagon with ‘Delaney’s Freight’ painted in blue on its side. It was on this wagon that another of Kate’s Cats, even older than the one in the doorway, sat swinging her legs trying to entice a custo
mer. A young mule, shivering in the cold wind, stood in harness, ready to pull the wagon away when the old saloon whore decided she’d had enough and it was finally time for some shuteye.

  It was just after riding by the whore on the wagon that Brett Cassidy saw a crude, red-lettered sign hanging from a rope strung across the head of Lode Alley.

  INJUN GALS $10 for 10 MINUTES

  He looked past the sign and saw another, nailed above a mud-crusted window. This announced the ‘Painted Woman Shebang Never Closes’. Brett ducked his head as he rode his horse under the hanging sign. He came across a dozen horses secured to a hitching rail that blocked the alley. Two of them, a flashy chestnut and a black gelding, wore Delaney’s Lazy F brand.

  The stench of stale cigarettes, whiskey and unwashed men assailed him as he slipped from the saddle and tethered his roan. The Painted Woman Shebang had no windows, no batwings, just an open doorway that looked like it had been hacked out of the log wall.

  After tethering the roan, he walked to the crude opening.

  Brett stood there for a long moment, letting his eyes rove over the makeshift saloon. Moths fluttered around the three wall lamps that provided dim light. One of the lamps spluttered. A moth smacked into its hot glass. Thick cigarette smoke clung to the roof. The Painted Woman Shebang was packed wall-to-wall with miners hunched over poker hands and whiskey glasses. Prospectors were three deep along the bar counter. He couldn’t see a single saloon girl, but scrawled in red paint over the mirror behind the bar were the words, ‘See Anton to book your Injun Gal’.

  He remembered what Harmony had told him. Anton De Heus was the crazy Dutchman who worked for Delaney. This had to be trail’s end.

  It was a town with a transient population, with men pouring in almost daily to stake claims and no one even afforded Brett Cassidy a second glance as he threaded his way to the bar. There was nothing unusual about a newcomer and to the men of Wildcat Camp, this tall man packing two guns was just another stranger. And Brett himself didn’t recognise a single face.

  Fronting the bar counter, the gunfighter waited his turn.

  The busy man hovering behind the bar was lean and gangling, eagerly pouring drinks and stashing cash into a wooden drawer. Unlike most in this saloon, he was clean-shaven and actually wore a well-tailored dark suit that would be more than passable in church. But this was no church. This was a den of sin. Brett wasn’t concerned about drinking and gambling; he’d enjoyed both in his time, but he drew the line at stolen Indian maidens being forced into prostitution.

  ‘I want to speak with Anton,’ Brett said.

  ‘That’s me, Anton De Heus.’ the man behind the bar told him. He had a definite Dutch accent. ‘What’s on your mind, Mister?’

  ‘Your Indian girls,’ Brett said simply.

  De Heus matched his grin. ‘It’s like the sign says, stranger. Ten bucks for ten minutes. Put your ten bucks on the bar and have yourself a good time with a real young Indian maiden.’

  Brett wanted to ram a fist right into the Dutchman’s mouth and shatter those gleaming white teeth, but he restrained himself. It was far more important to get those Cheyenne girls safely out of here. He didn’t want to cause a commotion here and now and in addition, he had no idea who worked for De Heus in this saloon. The Dutchman could have half a dozen cronies with loaded guns sitting at tables. Dealing with the Dutchman in full view of this crowded saloon could bring more trouble than he cared to handle right now. Accordingly, he counted out sixty dollars and slapped them down in front of the wide-eyed Dutchman.

  ‘I want a full hour and no interruptions,’ Brett demanded.

  ‘Yes, sir, indeed,’ De Heus said eagerly, raking in the money with his long, tapering fingers. Chuckling, he said, ‘A man like you deserves the best and that’s what you’ll get. Yes, the very best.’ He bellowed above the din. ‘Josh!’

  Anton De Heus drummed his fingers impatiently on the counter top as he waited for a bearded runt to squeeze past three poker games on his way to the bar. Meanwhile he appraised this stranger who hadn’t offered his name. Not that this was unusual in Wildcat Camp. His eyes drifted to the stranger’s twin holstered guns, slung lower than most. Here was no prospector! Not that it mattered, De Heus told himself. However, he was curious.

  Finally, the runt fronted the bar.

  ‘Josh, introduce this customer to our very best gal.’

  ‘Reckon that’d be Chameli?’

  ‘Yes, Chameli,’ De Heus confirmed. Smirking, he addressed the gunfighter. ‘Enjoy yourself. Josh will let you know when time’s up.’

  ‘Follow me, stranger,’ Josh said.

  The runt sneezed into the sawdust and threaded through the seething mass of tables, chairs and bodies to a thin door in the far corner alongside the bar counter. There was no handle. Josh just booted the door open and stumbled through with Brett right behind him. There was but one light in this crammed brothel. A solitary lamp hanging on a wall hook gave out a pallid glow, barely enough to show him a bunch of Indian girls huddled on cheap blankets strewn over the floor. Hanging curtains made six cubicles to give customers a semblance of privacy. There was no back door, no windows, not even a chair. Josh kicked the door shut with his heel.

  ‘Chameli!’ Josh summoned the tallest girl. ‘Come here, squaw!’

  Slowly, reluctantly, a willowy Cheyenne maiden rose to her feet. She was bronze-skinned with long black hair that hung like string past a face that was once beautiful. Now, however, Chameli’s face was marred. Her left cheek bore scratch marks and the half-closed eye on that side of her face was surrounded by puffy redness. Despite what had happened to her, her right eye blazed defiance.

  ‘Broke in this Injun filly myself,’ Josh boasted proudly. ‘Mind you, took a bit of rough handling but it was worth it.’

  ‘So you beat her up?’

  The runt grinned. ‘Yeah, you could say that. Enjoyed every minute.’

  Brett cleared leather with a swoop of his hand. Josh gaped as the Peacemaker rose in the stranger’s clenched fist and he didn’t even have time to cry out before the steel barrel smashed into his face. Crumbling, the runt dropped to his knees, then blacked out when Brett’s gun hammered the back of his head. He pitched forward and lay still as a stone on the brothel floor.

  There was one cubicle in use and the shocked customer poked his head between the curtains.

  ‘Come out here,’ Brett commanded him. ‘Now!’

  The ancient prospector obeyed instantly, pulling the curtain from its rails as he stumbled away from his intended prey. She was the youngest of the Indian girls, retching violently as she sat on the floor hugging her knees.

  ‘Don’t shoot, Mister!’ the customer pleaded, looking down the barrel of Brett’s levelled gun. He lied, ‘I didn’t hurt her! I promise! I hardly touched her . . ,’

  ‘Get down on the floor, right beside this other maggot.’

  ‘Yes, yes! But don’t shoot!’

  Still pleading for his life, the old timer flopped like a whale beside Josh.

  Stooping, Brett relieved him of his six-shooter and took Josh’s derringer.

  Then Brett spoke slowly and clearly in the Cheyenne tongue.

  ‘I’m a friend of Leaning Bear. I’ve come to take you all home.’

  For a moment there was disbelief. They’d been so ill-treated, so degraded by their captors and then by many of their customers, that most of them had become resigned to their fate. But as they stared at the tall man they’d never seen before, their utter despair suddenly turned to hope. He might be a white man but he spoke their lingo and he knew one of their most revered warriors! And he was offering them freedom from this vile bondage.

  At Chameli’s prompting, the Indian maidens scrambled to their feet. Many of them were bruised, mostly their clothes hung in shreds. They were wild-eyed, the youngest two were weeping. One had cigarette burn marks on her cheek. Unlike the percentage girls in the Last Chance Saloon and most other watering holes Brett had known, these Indian maidens had b
een treated like dirt. There were eight of them, five had just arrived days ago, the other three, the ones Leaning Bear had told him were kidnapped by their fishing traps, had been here for some time. They all reeked of men’s sweat and the mice droppings on the floor.

  ‘Who knows how to use a gun?’ Brett silenced their excited talk.

  Chameli pushed her way to the front. ‘I, Chameli, can shoot.’

  Brett handed her the old prospector’s six-shooter. ‘Who else?’

  ‘Asha,’ Chameli nominated the youngest girl who’d been forced to service the ugly old prospector now prostrate on the floor.

  ‘You take this,’ Brett offered Asha the derringer.

  The young Indian maiden snatched the gun from him and immediately pointed it at her client. ‘Asha knows how to kill.’

  ‘No, Asha,’ Brett said firmly.

  Chameli cried out, ‘Asha, this white man has come to help us. Obey him!’

  Asha spat at the prospector who’d abused and hurt her.

  Brett addressed them. ‘I’m going to open this door and we’ll walk out of here. I’ll be in front. The rest of you follow in a line. Chameli and Asha, you’ll make up the end of the line. If you see any man going for his gun, shoot to kill.’ He directed, ‘Now follow me.’

  Brett Cassidy stepped to the door. The girls were bewildered, scared of the possible consequences of following this man out through a hostile saloon, but he claimed to know Leaning Bear, someone they trusted. That had to be good enough. And what was the alternative? A miserable life and possibly death from disease in this brothel? They held their breath as Brett eased the door open.

  With his loaded guns in both hands, he stepped into the saloon.

  At first no one noticed him. The miners were all engrossed in drinking and poker playing. It was so late some were even asleep on the floor.

  Brett fired one shot into the wooden bar counter, plunging the saloon into silence.