Cole was amazed by Horace’s reaction, but he knew he might have been unrealistic in thinking no one would add two and two together and come up with him as the answer. He might have considered it a serious setback, but he was confident that Horace would keep tonight’s conspiracy to himself.
Cole decided to take him up on his offer. It would help him a great deal if, in fact, there were some clothes in Horace’s closet that would fit the bill. “I’ll take you up on that. I knew it would be best to get rid of the buckskins, but I thought I was gonna have to wait till mornin’ when Douglas Green’s store was open.”
“No, sir-ree,” Horace insisted. “No need to spend your money on something I’ve probably got right here. Besides, if you go walking around town wearing brand-new clothes, you’re gonna stand out even more. Come on, we’ll go up front to the barbershop and I’ll cut your hair for you.” He paused to cast a critical eye on the project. “Probably wouldn’t hurt to wash it while we’re at it.”
Cole couldn’t disagree and realized his good fortune to have found Horace in his shop so late.
After his haircut, Cole was escorted back to the mortuary part of the building to shop the closet. They found a shirt and some trousers that fit fairly well and a heavy wool coat that was made distinctive by a bullet hole over the left side pocket. Footwear presented the only problem. The boots Horace had were all too small for Cole to wear comfortably, so the single concession they made to the Crow Nation was for Cole to continue wearing his moccasins. It was not an unusual habit, for many white men preferred the comfort of deerskin footwear.
When the shopping was done and Cole was outfitted in typical ranch-style clothes, Horace asked a question. “Where’s your hat?”
“I don’t have a hat,” Cole answered. He had discarded his hat when Womack put a hole in it while he was pinned under his horse.
“What do you do when it rains?”
“I pull a deer-hide blanket over my head,” Cole said.
“You need a hat, like everybody else,” Horace insisted. “On the shelf.” He pointed back to the closet.
Cole found one that wasn’t too bad, even though it had seen more than a couple of hard seasons. He pulled it down squarely on his head and turned to get Horace’s approval.
“It suits you,” Horace said.
Cole was ready to go, all decked out in dead men’s clothes. He really thought nothing could be more fitting, considering the task he had undertaken. “How much I owe you?” he asked when Horace walked him to the door.
“Not a red cent,” Horace replied. “I’m just proud to give a hand to somebody who’s not afraid to do something about the lawless gang of murderers that came to take our town. I’m not handy with a gun, so I wouldn’t be much use in an attempt to arrest that bunch. I’m glad I was able to help you a little bit.” He reached out to shake Cole’s hand. “And don’t worry none about this,” he nodded toward the body lying in the back of his wagon. “I know how to keep my mouth shut.” He held the door open for Cole. “If I can do anything else to help you, just let me know.”
“You’ve already made my job a helluva lot easier,” Cole said. He couldn’t help being impressed by Horace’s enthusiasm for helping him out. It reinforced his notion that there were other people in this town who had everything they owned invested here. And they were at grave risk of losing it all.
He thought at once of Maggie and Mary Lou. What would become of them if someone wasn’t there to maintain law and order? And not in this one incident. What about after Yarborough, Womack, and the other one were finished? Cole decided then and there that if Yarborough could declare himself sheriff, then so could he. He reached up and settled his new hat firmly on his head.
“I’ll be seein’ you, Horace,” he said and disappeared into the darkness.
* * *
“You want the rest of this coffee?” Maggie Whitehouse asked. “There might be a full cup left in the pot.”
“No,” Mary Lou replied. “You drink it. I don’t think I could swallow another gulp of that coffee. Maybe Beulah will drink it, if she ever gets back from the outhouse. I’m surprised we haven’t already used up all we brought out here with us.”
Both women were sick of sitting around Beulah’s tiny cabin doing nothing but drinking coffee and going to the outhouse. The first day they were there, they scoured the entire cabin, walls, floors, even ceilings. They cleaned all the dishes, pots, pans, and every surface they could get a scrub brush or a rag on. The cabin was not unusually dirty, for Beulah was not a lazy housekeeper. They did it as payment for Ralph and Beulah inviting them into their home.
As they finished up yet another pot of coffee, they could find nothing else to occupy their time. Mary Lou and Maggie were accustomed to being busy most of the time.
“I’m losin’ money settin’ around here on my behind,” Maggie complained. “I hope there ain’t none of that crowd messin’ around in my dinin’ room. The more I think about it, the more I wish I hadn’t let those bastards run me outta town.”
“I’ve been thinking the same thing,” Mary Lou confessed. “We’ve never let anybody else make us run.”
“I don’t know. It wouldn’t take much to make me say to hell with ’em—go on back and open my dinin’ room tomorrow.”
“Maybe one more cup of this coffee?”
“That’d do it,” Maggie responded with a giggle. “Whaddaya say? Are you up to it?”
“Hell, yes!”
Harley and Ralph came in the kitchen door after feeding Ralph’s stock to find Maggie and Mary Lou on their feet, looking as if they were going somewhere.
In a few seconds, Beulah came in behind them. She, too, noticed the look of urgency on the faces of the two women. “I told you I was gonna be there for a spell,” she said, thinking they were waiting to use the outhouse.
“We’re goin’ back to town,” Maggie said. “We ain’t lettin’ that Yarborough trash run us outta our own town.”
“Hot damn!” Beulah squealed. “I was wonderin’ how long it would take. When are we goin’?”
“Now, wait a minute,” Harley responded at once. “Cole sent me out here to make sure nothin’ happened to you ladies. I can’t let you go back into town without me bein’ sure them outlaws are gone.” He had never said as much before.
That caught Mary Lou’s attention. “Cole sent you out here? I thought you were just laying low because those gunmen thought you were the one that shot the Womack brothers.”
“No such a thing,” Harley replied, offended. “I wanted to stand with Cole, but he made me promise I’d take care of you.” He hesitated before thinking to add, “And Maggie and Beulah.”
Maggie and Mary Lou exchanged smug smiles.
“Anyway, if you’re goin’ back, I’m goin’ with you.”
“When are we goin’?” Beulah asked again.
“In the mornin’,” Maggie answered. “But I don’t know if you wanna go with us. I ain’t sure if we’ll even have any customers when we get back. I figure Mary Lou and I can handle it. Me and her ain’t got a man to take care of. You’d best stay here and take care of Ralph till those gunmen decide they’ve got all they’re gonna get and leave town.”
“I expect you’re right,” Ralph quickly agreed.
Harley shook his head, troubled. “I don’t know if Cole’s gonna be all right with this or not,” he mumbled. “I promised him.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Mary Lou teased. “I’ll tell him we sneaked away while you weren’t looking.” It had never occurred to her that Cole sent Harley to protect them.
CHAPTER 12
Harley looked right and left as he led the buckboard driven by Maggie Whitehouse through the back alley behind the hotel. Sitting uncomfortably in a beat-up old saddle that belonged to Sammy Hill, he was nevertheless considerably more at ease with his fancy Mexican saddle resting in Gordon’s barn. No sense in riding into town with a target painted on my back, he’d told himself. He had spent some time the night be
fore trying to talk Maggie and Mary Lou out of returning to town while Yarborough and his friends were still there, but to no avail. He should have known he was wasting his time, especially when two women as strong-minded as those two made up their minds to revolt. Cole’s going to skin me alive when he sees these two back in town.
It was with a great deal of relief that he passed behind the Cowboy’s Rest without anyone’s notice and pulled up behind the hotel. “I’ll help you tote your possibles inside first. Then I’ll put the horses away.”
Both women had rooms behind the kitchen, making it easy to carry the few pieces of luggage they had left with when fleeing town. After they had checked on their rooms and found they had not been entered, they put away their belongings and hurried to the kitchen to be sure nothing had been disturbed there.
Harley insisted on checking the kitchen and dining room. Satisfied there were no serious threats to the safety of his two charges, he then went back outside to unhitch Maggie’s horse and unsaddle his own, all the while keeping a cautious eye out. The hotel kept a small stable, strictly for the convenience of Arthur Campbell, his employees, and on rare occasions, some guests. Harley figured it was one of those rare occasions and corralled his horse with Maggie’s after taking advantage of a sack of oats he discovered in the stable. With the horses taken care of, he went back inside to assume his position as kitchen guard.
By the time Harley got back to the kitchen, Arthur Campbell and his son, Sonny, had discovered that the women had returned. Campbell interrupted his conversation with them long enough to greet Harley before continuing his update of all that had happened since they left.
Mary Lou turned to Harley and said, “There’s not but three of them now. Somebody killed one of them, the great big one.”
“Cole?” Harley asked at once.
“Don’t know,” Campbell said. “At first we thought it was an Indian. They found the brute in the alley with two arrows in him.”
“Cole,” Harley stated with a confident grin.
“Maybe,” Campbell allowed. “Nobody saw it. Anyway, the other three are still here and they don’t look like they’re plannin’ to leave anytime soon.”
“Where’s Cole?” Harley asked. “Have you seen him?”
“Nope,” Campbell answered.
“Don’t surprise me none,” Harley said. “But he’s here, all right.”
“Well, we didn’t come back to stand around and visit,” Maggie finally announced. “Me and Mary Lou have got to get to work and fix some breakfast. It might be a little bit late, but maybe some folks will come in, anyway. Looks like my pantry ain’t been raided, but I ain’t looked in the smokehouse yet. We’ll come up with something, won’t we, Mary Lou?”
“We always do,” Mary Lou replied.
“I’m damn glad to see you back,” Campbell said. “My wife will be tickled, too. She had to go back to cooking three meals a day.”
* * *
Arthur Campbell was not the only person who was pleased to see the dining room open again. Maggie’s regular customers were unhappy with the fare offered at the saloons, as were the town’s three unwelcome guests. When word got out that Maggie was back, and she and Mary Lou were preparing to reopen the dining room, the news was met with great anticipation. While still in the process of firing up Maggie’s big iron cookstove, the women were already turning hungry customers away to give them time to prepare something to serve.
“My oven ain’t near hot enough to put biscuits in the pan,” she told Harold Chestnut when he said he would like to sit down and wait for her to get breakfast ready.
“I ain’t had a decent meal since you left town,” the postmaster complained. “If you’ll just let me have a cup of coffee, I’ll wait for the food.”
“If you don’t let me get on with my work, there ain’t gonna be no breakfast,” Maggie complained. “We ain’t got Beulah here today to help out. Mary Lou, is that stove hot enough to make the coffee yet?”
“Won’t be long now,” Mary Lou answered. Since the stove had been idle for the past couple of days, there had been no warm ashes banked in the belly of it, as would usually be the case.
Several other men drifted into the dining room and promptly began filling the benches on either side of the long table in the center. At Maggie’s suggestion, Harley laid kindling in the dining room stove and soon had a fire started. It would take a while for that one stove at the end of the room to warm the place up to approach anything close to comfort. That didn’t seem to dampen the spirits of the mostly single men who regularly started their day with a substantial breakfast at the hotel dining room.
The air was light and cordial among the eager patrons at last warmed by the contents of the first pot of coffee. The big metal pot was charged up again with backup from a smaller pot that was sometimes called in to keep the pitch-black liquid flowing. A lot of good-natured banter floated back and forth between eager customers, most of it at the community table in the center.
That is, until the door opened and Red Swann and Troy Womack walked in.
Conversation ceased at the end of the table nearest the door, and the wave of silence rolled along the long table as the two outlaws proceeded to make their way to one of the smaller tables on the side of the room. Walking with a swagger, both men sneered at the suddenly silenced customers as they passed by.
“Looks like ol’ Abe was right,” Red remarked. “Think I’ll have a look in the kitchen and tell ’em to get us some grub out here right away.” He left Troy to pick out a table and went through the kitchen door, almost colliding with Mary Lou on her way to the dining room with a stack of plates.
“Whoa! Hold up there, Honey-britches, before you drop all them dishes.”
Taking a couple of steps backward, Mary Lou steadied her stack before responding to the crude outlaw. “Customers stay in the dining room, and my name’s not Honey-britches. What do you want?”
“I want my breakfast, Honey-britches, and I don’t wanna wait all day to get it.”
“Breakfast isn’t ready yet,” Mary Lou replied. “And as you can see, there are quite a few folks ahead of you. Go sit down somewhere and we’ll get to you in time. Or if you don’t wanna wait, most of the saloons serve breakfast. You can go there.” Dangerous men or not, she was not of a nature to keep her thoughts to herself.
Her remarks were met with a wide sneer. “I remember you. You were the one that came up to Sheriff Black’s room carryin’ a shotgun. Well, I think I’d best set you straight on how things are gonna go around here. I reckon you ain’t heard, since you run off after ol’ John Henry Black kicked off.”
When Mary Lou tried to go around him, he stepped in front of her.
“If you don’t get outta my way, I’m not gonna get the food ready,” she said. “Then you might have to explain to that roomful of men waiting to eat why you’re holding me up.”
“You’re a right sassy little bitch, ain’t you?” He stepped up close, hovering over her, almost stifling her with the heavy stench of alcohol mixed with tobacco. “Those yellow-bellied jaspers settin’ around that table already know who’s runnin’ this town now. And the first one that forgets it is gonna find himself layin’ in the street out there. So you best learn to mind your manners pretty damn quick, or I’ll gut you like a fish.” A wicked grin replaced the sneer as he added, “After I’m through with you.” He took two cups from the tray of dishes she carried, walked over and helped himself to coffee from the backup pot on the stove.
Harley came in from outside, carrying an armload of wood for the stove, just in time to see him walk out of the kitchen. At once concerned, he dumped his wood by the stove and hurried to her to ask, “Is that one of them bastards?”
“No harm’s been done,” she quickly assured him, lest he thought to confront the belligerent bully. “He was just mouthing off, trying to get served before everybody else. He’s the one called Red and he ain’t nothing for you to get worried about. He knows better than to mess with me.”
She only wished that was true, but she was afraid Harley was going to try to stand up for her honor and get himself killed. “There ain’t anything else you can do right now. Why don’t you sit yourself down at this table by the kitchen door and I’ll have you something to eat pretty quick.” Late in coming, the thought occurred that it would be disastrous if one of the other men happened to call Harley by name. It would be better to have him sit at the small table by the kitchen door, away from the long table.
When he took her advice and sat down, Mary Lou hurried on out to distribute the plates on the tables, still trying to rid her nostrils of the foul odor of Red Swann when he had hovered over her.
He had obviously started his morning with a generous portion of whiskey. The man was half drunk at that early hour, which served to fuel her disgust for the lack of courage among the men of the town. Speaking softly so as not to be heard by the intimidating bullies at their table, she scolded her fellow citizens for sitting on their hands in the presence of the two gunmen. Her admonishment was met with heads down and eyes staring at the table in front of them.
When she got to Jim Low, she whispered, “Are you and the others going to do something? The big one is half drunk.” She was aware of the meeting he had held at his cabin supposedly to unite the men against the town’s occupation by the evil force. She paused, waiting for his answer.
He quickly shook her off with a rapid movement of his head, never daring to look up, lest he lock eyes with one of the two.
Mary Lou shook her head in disgust and moved on down the table, aware that Red’s eyes were following her every move. In spite of her fearless disposition, she could not repress the sudden chill that made her shiver under his gaze. Determined not to let him see it, she marched over to his table and placed two plates down in front of him and Womack. Avoiding direct eye contact with either of the outlaws, she promptly spun on her heel and went back to the kitchen.
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