Sunk into the cushions of a sofa, Balum and Joe took in the show. On each stage was something worth watching. Women wove between the tables with drinks balanced on trays. The pianoman hammered at the keys, the banjo picker beside him barely able to keep time. Drunkenness all around them. The miners rid themselves of their money like they were allergic to it, and the women stuffed the notes and coins into their bras and panties and hand purses, smiling and giggling and falling over the googly-eyed men.
Any one of the couple dozen girls measured up for Balum. But the look on Joe’s face showed he had no interest. He sat next to Balum scanning the room, his back tensed, eyes serious. A girl with an upturned nose and curly hair sauntered up. She put her hand on her knees and bent to Joe’s level.
“Why so serious?” she said. She gave her shoulders a wiggle that sent her breasts jiggling. “Maybe these can cheer you up.”
Joe made to shoo her off, but Balum took her by the hand and pulled her down next to him on the sofa. Along with the upturned nose, she had dimples in each cheek and a mouth that never quite closed. Her teeth were small and straight, her chin falling away to her neck. She looked like a picture somebody would draw. She gave a little grunt when she landed beside Balum. The sound of it made him want to hear more.
“My friend’s looking for someone in particular,” he said in her ear.
“How about me? My name’s Kiki. I can make you forget all about this other girl.”
“Maybe me, but not him. The girl hie’s looking for goes by the name Valeria.”
“Oh,” was all Kiki said.
“You know her?”
“She doesn’t work the floor anymore. That’s Big Tom’s girl.”
“Who’s Big Tom? I’m tired of hearing his name already.”
“Are you serious? Everybody knows Big Tom. He owns this place. In fact, he owns half the town. He’s got everybody under his thumb.”
“Joe,” Balum prodded his buddy’s arm. “You listening to this?”
“I heard,” said Joe. “What’s Valeria have to say about Big Tom?”
The girl shook her head. “I shouldn’t be talking about this. I’ll get in trouble.”
“Sounds like trouble is what Valeria’s in,” said Joe.
The girl glanced around as if someone might be listening through all the racket. “If Big Tom says she’s his girl, then she’s his girl. Nobody’s going to argue with him.”
“Where is she?” said Joe.
“Upstairs.”
Joe stood up.
“Hey,” Kiki reached out a hand, but Joe was already out of reach. “You can’t go up there.”
Balum wrapped an arm around her and pulled her close. “Joe can handle himself. Now going back to what you said earlier, just what did you have in mind to cheer a man up?”
She smiled and threw a leg over Balum’s waist, her arms around his neck and her little upturned nose inches from his own. Balum’s gripped her waist in his hands. Her skin was smooth. The thin strings of her panties were like nothing against his fingers. He sunk his nose into her neck and took a long breath, intoxicating himself with her smell, when suddenly two hands clamped down on his shoulders and pulled him back.
Kiki jumped up, frightened, and dashed away. The hands remained on Balum’s shoulders. Two men came around in front of him. Each wore black suit jackets, guns on their hips. They measured over six feet tall, a type of meanness on their faces that was hard-earned, and they looked Balum over like he was a bug that needed squishing. One had a droopy eye, and this one did the talking.
“Time for you to leave.”
“Those Big Tom’s orders?” said Balum.
“That’s right. You made trouble last time you was here, and Big Tom don’t like trouble. Now where’s that injun friend of yours?”
“He’s around here somewhere,” answered Balum.
Droopy Eye snorted. “We’ll find him. Now do you want to leave on your feet or get dragged out?”
Balum kept his hands away from his gun. He moved slowly. There were times to fight and times to get along, and he knew which was which. With two men in front of him and at least one behind, he wasn’t about to buck the deck. Getting Buford to San Antonio was his objective, not starting fights in girlie shows.
He stood up and walked through the tables to the curtain. The men accompanied him tight as a flock of chickens. They gave him a shove on the shoulder and he stepped through the hanging fabric and into the bar room on the other side.
The attendee dressed in formal wear hadn’t moved from his position by the curtain. He gave his shoulders a little bounce and flipped his thumbs up. “Sorry,” he said. “Big Tom’s orders.”
Balum kept walking. He crossed the length of the bar and stepped out the batwing doors, his boots landing with purpose.
In front of the saloon Caleb waited by the stage. “Back so soon?” he said. “The way you was talking about this place, I figured you’d be in there all night. Where’s Joe?”
“Better mount up,” said Balum. “We might have to leave in a hurry.”
“Oh, shit. What you boys done now?”
Balum hopped onto the driving bench. He released the brake lever and gathered up the driving reins. Above him were two second story windows. He nudged the horses forward two feet, stopped them, and looked up.
“Oh shit,” Caleb said again. “We in trouble.”
“What the hell are you fools doing?” grumbled Buford from inside the stage.
Balum didn’t say anything. He kept his eyes on the windows, and sure enough, just as he’d figured, Joe came crashing through.
Glass shattered. It rained in a crystal downpour, Joe flying through it with his long black hair hurling around his head. He landed directly on the stage roof, rolled, and caught the top railing.
Balum raised his arms and brought the reins down in a sharp snap over the team. He shouted them forward and the four horses bolted down the street in a cloud of dust and creaking harnesses, the stage bouncing, Joe clinging to the top rail. Caleb spurred his horse forward, and when the shots banged out behind them Balum ducked his head and gave the team another slap of the reins.
The stage flew out of town like a chariot gone wild in some medieval race, and from its interior came Buford’s angry shouts as he was hurled from side to side. Balum took one look behind as the stage careened out of town. The sight of Joe still gripping the top rail was all he needed. He hollered again at the horses and they galloped into the empty desert after Caleb.
Not until they’d put a couple miles behind them did Balum whoa the team to a stop. It took a minute for the dust to settle, but when it did he could see there was no one in pursuit. Joe climbed off the stage top. When Caleb rode his horse over the story was laid out. There wasn’t much to it. Joe had found his girl. The reception she gave him had been more welcoming that even Joe had hoped for, but with it came a problem. Big Tom ran the town, and Valeria was locked up like Rapunzel in her tower.
“What do you want to do about it?” said Balum.
“She needs my help,” said Joe.
Balum and Caleb shared a look. Inside the stage, Buford was still cussing about the knocking around he’d just received.
“But so do you,” said Joe. “It’s one job at a time. We’re a week out from San Antonio. I signed on for this, and I aim to finish what I started. So let’s get it done. Soon as we turn over Buford though, I’m coming back.”
The three men shared a moment of quiet in the settling dust. The sun sagged in the sky and the ground beneath them had turned a reddish orange, with long blue shadows stretching from the few ragged patches of ricegrass scattered around.
“Well,” said Caleb. “I was worried I’d have to listen to some broken-hearted crooning all the way to San Antonio. Instead it’ll be war songs.” He smiled his big smile. “I’m okay with that. Now let’s get going. I got me a woman needs getting back to same as Joe.”
28
The moment Connor laid eyes on Sara Sande
rson, any fears he had about his plan not working vanished. She was beyond beautiful; she was captivating. It was no wonder Balum took the risk of traveling a thousand miles through miserable country with Buford in back of the stage. The little trollop was worth it. Shane Carly had been right. The woman oozed sexuality. The dress that could hide such a body had not yet been invented, and the way she carried herself-- sashaying her hips, her pert breasts shoved out before her, and the way she stared at a man with that longing look in her eyes-- it made a man feel like a custard pie inside. The trade would be simple enough; Balum would hand over Buford like a drunk hands over money. Hell, anybody would.
There were only two problems. First, six days had already passed. Connor guessed his lead over the stage was four days, which meant any moment now Balum might ride in and hand Buford over to the law.
The second problem, and perhaps the greatest, was that he had no clue whatsoever on how to kidnap Sara. He spotted her one evening coming out of one of the finer restaurants in the city. Half the town knew who she was. A woman like that did not go unnoticed, and when Connor pointed her out and asked a passing gentleman who she was, his hunch was confirmed.
She had her arm linked through the arm of a young man. A rich man-- wealth was written all over him. Connor had been standing not thirty feet away, staring at her like a wolf, yet she didn’t bother to give him a passing glance.
It wasn’t that her attention was purely focused on her young beau, however. Her eyes wandered. They landed on men of high society. The finer their clothing, the longer Sara’s gaze would last. She had stepped into a carriage pulled by four black horses and driven by an aging coachman, and from the window she waved a gloved hand at a man in tailored coattails.
Connor and Floyd had chased after. They saw where she lived-- a three-story palace in front of a stone-floored courtyard in a section of the city that didn’t welcome men like Connor Bell. He had returned to the tent he’d rented on the outskirts of the city and sat in the dirt with his brothers to concoct a plan that might result in their possession of the woman.
“I still say club her,” said Delmar. He’d been left all day in the tent with the last of the whiskey. His wound was acting up and whiskey, he claimed, was the surest cure for pain. “Club her right over the head. You can use a stick or a hammer, whatever you like.”
“Club her where?” said Connor. “In the street? With the whole town watching?”
“I don’t know. My ass hurts. You think of something.”
But Connor had already tried. He’d thought of every possible scenario, including clubbing her down and dragging her off like Delmar suggested, but nothing seemed even remotely close to working. Instead he bent his head and moped in his misfortune.
“We need to get her while she’s alone,” said Floyd. “Maybe we can get her to follow us somewhere, then club her.”
“She’s never alone,” said Connor. “Always with some rich bastard. She won’t follow us anywhere-- we’re broke. She only follows money.”
“How you figure Balum ever got tangled up with her?”
“He had money. Isn’t that what Shane Carly said? Ten thousand dollars she stole off him.”
Floyd whistled. “Lot of money-- ten thousand. Say, why would Balum want to get tangled up with her again after what she done to him?”
“You’ve seen her,” said Connor.
“He wants to stick it in her,” Delmar said, and let out a long whiskey belch.
Connor drew a circle in the dirt and poked his finger in it. His head hurt from thinking so much. They were wasting time. Balum was already overdue-- he would arrive any day.
“Yeah,” agreed Floyd. “A woman like that, I’d still chase her. Even if she stole ten grand. I bet if we had that kind of money she’d take a second look.”
“Shit,” said Delmar. “From what Shane said, she’d suck up on you like a deer tick.”
“Well we don’t have no damn money,” said Connor. “So shut up about it and help me think up a better plan.”
“Why don’t you tell her you do?” said Delmar.
“Tell her?”
“Say ‘Hey, I got me a lot of money. It’s in my tent outside town. Maybe if you let me get my willy wet I’ll give you some.’” He clutched his wounded butt and fell to his side laughing.
“Goddamn it Delmar, this is serious.”
“Hey wait a minute,” said Floyd. “What if we make it look like you got money. Dress you up like one of them Eastern dudes.”
“We got no money for a getup like that.”
“That ain’t never stopped us. We’ll rob one of them rich fellers. Take his clothes.”
Connor stopped poking the circle of dirt. There was a nugget of an idea there. “Then what?”
“Then you let her come to you. Remember how Uncle Buck used to lead deer in with corn cobs? You lead this gold digging woman in with some flashy duds. It’ll work the same.”
“It might.”
Delmar leaned on an elbow. He plucked the whiskey bottle off the ground and sloshed the last few drops around the bottom. “Maybe you’ll get your willy wet, too,” he said, and fell back down laughing.
For two days Connor and Floyd staked out Sara’s house while Delmar scouted for a rich mark. The blond beauty would wake at sunup and leave the house an hour later to take tea with a group of high-society ladies. The tea house was only a block away from her three-story mansion, and she’d generally walk unchaperoned. Afterward she would accompany one of the women shopping, stopping for lunch in one of the upscale restaurants on Lindacita Avenue. She was apparently hustling two men simultaneously, and one of these she would meet shortly after lunch. He worked in a bank not far from the main plaza. He would pick her up from the restaurant and together they would disappear into an office building not far away.
“He’s poking her in there,” mused Floyd. “Giving her the time. Ain’t no doubt about it.”
“You sound like Delmar.”
“Well, it’s true.”
After this rendezvous she would return home, pamper herself for several hours, and in the evening meet her second suitor. Their activities were varied but she would remain accompanied the entirety of the evening, leaving no opportunity to fall into whatever trap they concocted.
“It’s got to be in the morning,” said Floyd. “On her way to tea.”
“We need them clothes.”
Delmar, for all his hobbling around and whining about his sore ass, came through on his end. He’d found a man well into his seventies that lived on the old Spanish side of town. Not only did he dress like a stage actor, he also owned his own carriage, which he drove himself to the racetrack each evening to bet on the horses.
As to how to steal the carriage and divest the man of his wardrobe, the Bell brothers argued for over an hour until settling on the idea of simply jumping aboard the carriage as he drove home from the track. No need attempting to stop it, no conversation, no unnecessary complications. Simply jump aboard and bash his head in with a pistol butt. It would be dark, the route he took was not crowded.
It was Connor’s plan. For as poorly as his recent schemes had unfolded, he feared somehow this too would blow up in his face. When it didn’t, and in fact went more smoothly than anticipated, he felt a renewed confidence that in the morning he would be able to lure Sara Sanderson into an alleyway where his brothers would help gag and bind her.
After knocking him unconscious, the Bell brothers undressed the old man, then tied him tight as a rodeo hog and dropped him in a ravine far outside of town. Before dressing up, Connor cut his hair with a shoplifted pair of scissors and shaved the stubble from his face with a razor Delmar pocketed from a general store.
The clothes fit Connor well enough. The top hat was black and shiny, the cuff links sparkled. A walking stick came with the outfit. At the handle was fastened a solid silver lion head. The old man also owned a gold watch that sported an equally flashy chain, and when Connor tightened up the bowtie at his neck and
twirled around, Floyd and Delmar gave the appropriate oohs and aahs. Only the boots were a bit small for him. But Connor didn’t let it show. He only needed to walk a few blocks.
In the early hours of morning they drove the carriage up Lindacita Avenue, past the stone-floored courtyard, and stopped directly in front of Sara Sanderson’s residence. Quickly, without any wasted motions, Floyd and Delmar wrenched out the axle bolts and slid the wheel from the shaft. The carriage slumped sadly on the empty axle.
With the carriage clearly disabled, Connor shooed his brothers away and waited. The sun was coming up and people had begun to appear in the streets. He slipped a finger in his shirt collar and gave it a tug. The morning was cool, but he was sweating anyway. His confidence began to slip. He didn’t know how to talk like an Eastern dandy. He didn’t know the words.
Given more time, he might have reconsidered. He might have bailed on the plan. But just then he turned and saw Sara Sanderson step out of her house. She closed the door behind her and turned up her usual route to her tea party.
Connor twirled around and knocked her in the knees with the walking stick.
“Ow!” she bent and grabbed a knee.
“Oh, dear,” said Connor. “I’m awfully sorry. How clumsy of me.” The words felt thick and stupid in his mouth.
Sara let her knee go and straightened up. Her face was an angry spit of fire, but when she saw Connor standing in front of her in his fancy duds, it slowly dissipated. She studied his hat, then let her eyes drop to the gold watch at his vest pocket. Neither did she miss the silver-topped walking stick.
“You must accept my apology, ma’am,” said Connor. “You see, my carriage is broken down, and I need it real bad. I mean... I am very much in need of it.”
“Oh?” she said. Her eyes drifted to the cuff links.
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