Forecasting the other man’s next attack with learned efficiency, Whiteoak ducked low to avoid a calloused grasping hand. Before the big fellow could try again to get hold of him, Whiteoak drove his heel into the other man’s shin. The pain from that was enough to loosen the big fellow’s hold on his pistol, allowing Whiteoak to take it away from him before hurrying away.
The big man reeled back, off-balance for a few steps since he’d been unexpectedly released from the fingers that had ensnared his wrist. Veins stood out on his thick neck, tracing crooked lines all the way up to his sweaty bald scalp. Behind him, two others approached. They weren’t as quick to round the corner, however.
“Skinny little prick’s stronger than he looks,” the big fellow snarled.
“How would you know, Cord?” replied a man of average height with dark blond hair slicked down against his head. “You barely took a moment to look at him.”
“I’ve seen plenty,” said the third man in the group. He was stout with thick dark hair and a face covered in coarse whiskers. His dark eyes were pointed toward the far end of the alley and his hands brought a Sharps rifle up to one shoulder so he could take aim. Before he could squeeze his trigger, the blond man pushed the barrel of the rifle toward the ground.
“You may have seen enough, but I haven’t,” the blond said. “I want to get a closer look at that second fella.”
“He wasn’t no lawman,” Cord offered.
“Which means neither of you has to be gentle when you bring him to me. Just don’t kill him.” Seeing the expressions on the other men’s faces, the blond added, “Not yet, anyways.”
The blond man stood in the alley as the other two split off in opposite directions to circle around either side of the dark passage. There was barely enough light for him to make out the far end of the alley, but not enough to pick out much detail along the way. He walked slowly between the two buildings, listening for every sound that drifted through the air. His hands rested upon the pistols kept in the double-rig holster strapped around his waist, ready to draw either weapon. Several sets of footsteps could be heard, but only one of them grew louder as the other two faded away.
Midway down the length of the alley, he planted his feet and squared his shoulders to the far end. Although his palms pressed against the grips of his holstered pistols, the blond man still did not draw them. Instead, he watched with eyes that narrowed intently to pick out everything they could from the shadowy gloom in front of him.
For a few seconds, the sound of boots scraping against dirt was the blond man’s only company.
Soon, the two men making those sounds appeared in the alley. One was eager to rush all the way back to the street while the other blocked his path.
“What are you doing?” Byron asked frantically as he bumped against the arm that had been extended to impede his movement.
“Open your eyes,” Whiteoak snapped.
Once he took a moment to catch his breath and truly look at what lay in front of him, Byron was no longer so eager to keep running.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Placing the professor between him and the blond gunman, Byron asked, “What do we do now?”
“We deal with this problem.”
“Or we could go back,” Byron offered.
Scraping footsteps grew louder as the big man named Cord circled around behind Byron and Whiteoak. Looking back at the big fellow, Whiteoak said, “I would imagine the other one isn’t far away but sure, you can try to make a run for it if you insist.”
Byron kept his mouth locked shut and his feet rooted to his spot.
“You know what we’re after,” the blond man at the front of the alley called out. “Best give it to us before this gets messy.”
“Either you are extremely unlucky,” Whiteoak whispered to Byron, “or you are in possession of something extremely desirable.”
“Or,” the blond gunman said, “it’s a little of both. Where are those papers?”
Whiteoak let out a labored sigh. “How did I know it was going to be about the damn papers?”
“What do you know about them?” Byron asked.
“Just that they are turning out to be one of the largest inconveniences in my life since . . . well . . . other large inconveniences.”
Byron squinted at the man next to him. “That’s one of the few times you’ve seemed to be at a loss for words.”
“I’m flustered.”
“You’re about to be dead!” Cord bellowed as he stepped up to stand behind them.
“I can tell you where the papers are,” Whiteoak announced.
Slowly, the blond man stepped forward. “Go on.”
“They’re in that building Mister Keag here was just leaving not too long ago. Don’t ask me how I know, but I’m certain of it.”
“No,” Byron said shakily. “They’re not.”
Before Whiteoak could voice his surprise, the blond man said, “Go on.”
“I’ve still got them. I was supposed to deliver them here tomorrow, but wanted to be rid of them right now. I was getting anxious because of the robbery and all and thought I might be able to slip into the building and leave them there, but the place was locked up tight.”
“Who were you supposed to deliver them to?” the blond man asked.
“I don’t have any names, but . . .”
The blond man cut him off by slamming Byron against a wall and roughly searching his person. It didn’t take long for him to find the bundle of documents. “We already know that much,” the blond man replied.
Whiteoak’s turn came next when he was spun around by Cord and doubled over by a meaty fist driven into his gut. Cord’s other hand remained on Whiteoak’s shoulder, which was used to pull him back as if the professor was a wet shirt being peeled off a washboard. Whiteoak caught his breath. As he tried to straighten up, he was thumped in the stomach one more time. Despite his dandy appearance, the professor wasn’t a frail man. However, being punched so hard in exactly the same spot took its toll.
As Whiteoak dropped to his knees, Byron was too nervous to move. Even when he flicked his eyes from one gunman to another, he twitched in expectation of the consequences. “You’ve got what you wanted,” he said. “Leave.”
Breathing heavily, Cord reached behind him to pull a blackjack from where it had been tucked at the base of his spine. He slapped the blunt weapon onto the palm of the blond man’s hand and snapped Whiteoak’s chin to one side with a quick left cross.
A cruel smile slid onto the blond man’s face as he tightened his grip on the blackjack. Without another moment of hesitation, he pounded the blunt piece of hardened leather against Byron’s ribs. “Neither of you two get to order us to do a damn thing,” he growled before hitting Byron again.
“Stop it!” Whiteoak said, even as blows rained down on him as well. But as much as Cord struck him, Whiteoak didn’t buckle.
The blond man tattooed Byron with the blackjack, tenderizing him like a slab of beef.
“Enough,” Whiteoak gasped through a bloody mouth. His right hand drifted toward the gun in his holster and was immediately slapped away by Cord.
“I was wondering when you were gonna go for that smoke wagon,” the big man said. “Thought you had enough sense to let it be. Guess not.”
The pistol was taken from Whiteoak and tossed aside. It had barely touched the ground before Cord went about making Whiteoak regret he’d even tried to arm himself. After weathering a series of solid punches to his ribs, Whiteoak saw the other man pull back his fist in preparation for a straight punch to his face. In the space of time between preparation and execution, Whiteoak snapped his knee straight forward to slam into the side of Cord’s upper leg. The impact hit the nerve running through that portion of Cord’s anatomy, sending a jolt of pain through his entire body. It wasn’t enough to end the fight, but it bought Whiteoak a few precious seconds in which he could act.
Whiteoak slammed his knee into the same nerve again, causing Cord to bend to one side lik
e a plant wilting from lack of water. Whiteoak shifted his focus up a bit and pounded his knuckles three times in quick succession under Cord’s left arm. With each punch that landed, Cord staggered back another step.
Although the big man obviously felt the blows, he simply used them as fuel for his fire. “Gonna tear your head off,” he growled while lunging forward.
Whiteoak waited for the last moment before doing a quick sidestep to clear a path for the rampaging Cord. Before the big man could get past him, Whiteoak grabbed Cord’s collar and leaned back with all of his weight to steer the other man straight into a wall. Cord hit with a resounding thump, twisted around as if he was going to charge again and then slid to a seated position on the ground.
Only now did the blond man seem to notice that his partner had been tripped up. Saliva trickled from his mouth, sweat rolled down his face and blood dripped from the weapon in his hand. He looked at Whiteoak with wide, expectant eyes as the professor stooped down to retrieve his .38.
“What’re you gonna do with that, huh?” the blond man sneered.
Whiteoak thumbed back the pistol’s hammer and immediately shifted his aim upward to the set of rickety stairs leading to the second floor of the building to the blond man’s right. A third member of the blond man’s group stood mostly obscured by shadows, watching events in the alley over the top of his Sharps rifle.
Both men pulled their triggers, filling the night with a single thunderclap that brought the scent of burnt gunpowder to the air. Although it was impossible to say which of them had been the distraction to the other, neither man hit their target. The one on higher ground took a moment to take aim before firing a second time while Whiteoak used one hand to fan back the hammer of his pistol and his other to squeeze off several shots in a row. The bullets flew wild, but the rifleman wasn’t about to stand still for Whiteoak to steady his aim.
“All right!” the blond man said. “We’ll go.” Looking up to the top of the stairs, he jabbed a finger at the rifleman and added, “I said that’s enough, Shawn. We made our point. No need to bring the whole damn town into this conversation.”
Having found a new position so a good portion of his body was behind a handrail attached to the staircase, the rifleman grudgingly lowered his Sharps.
“How about you, fancy pants?” the blond man asked while staring at Whiteoak. “You wanna keep this up or should we part ways like gentlemen?”
“I’m always the gentleman,” Whiteoak said between measured breaths.
“Good.” The blond man offered a hand to Byron.
The offer was refused as Byron showed his attacker a bloody, defiant glare.
Chuckling under his breath, the blond man tossed the blackjack through the air to be caught by Cord who was climbing back to his feet.
“I’m glad we could resolve this without any further bloodshed,” Whiteoak said.
The blond man was on his way out of the alley and the rifleman above had already disappeared from sight after presumably ducking into the door at the top of the stairs. Both Cord and the blond man turned away from the alley and walked casually away.
When Whiteoak made the offer to help him up, Byron accepted it. “You should have shot them,” Byron grunted.
Whiteoak sighed and holstered his pistol. “I tried.”
“You could have tried again while that maniac was busy making threats.”
“Out of bullets, I’m afraid. I doubt he would have been so kind as to allow me to reload.”
The two of them walked a few steps, neither one willing to fully let their guard down. Even though the other three men were nowhere to be found, Byron and Whiteoak kept looking as if one or all of them might spring from a dark corner like a beast from a nightmare.
“Is that truly all you know about those documents?” White-oak asked.
“I . . . I was paid to bring a package into town,” was Byron’s meek reply. “I’m just a courier. I’ve been working as a courier for some time. Like I already told that animal, I’m just the middleman. I accepted a courier job from a party who wished to remain anonymous and I was supposed to put that package into the hands of another anonymous party.”
“And that didn’t seem shady to you?”
Reluctantly, Byron said, “It did, but it paid well.”
Since he’d taken plenty of worse jobs for similar reasons, Whiteoak didn’t feel the need to climb onto a high horse at that moment. He simply nodded and kept walking.
“Thank you,” Byron said eventually.
“For what?” Whiteoak chuckled.
“You scared them off.”
“I fired blindly and got lucky.”
“Good enough.”
“Yes,” Whiteoak replied. “But for how long?”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Byron winced in pain, started to swat at the source of his discomfort, thought better of it, and sucked in another labored breath.
“Sit still, will you?” Lyssa said as she tended to him with a wet cloth.
“I’m all right.”
“You’re a bloody mess is what you are!”
“Allow him to collect himself,” Whiteoak said as he tossed the cigarette he’d been smoking and stepped into the house through the front door.
“You can keep out of this,” she snipped. “My brother has been a courier for years and never had the kind of problems he’s had since you arrived.”
“It’s not his fault, Lyssa,” Byron said.
Whiteoak walked across the room and into the kitchen where he busied himself by setting a teakettle on top of the stove. “Indeed,” he shouted into the next room. “In fact, I . . .”
“You saved his life,” Lyssa said. “So you keep mentioning.”
“It is true, you know,” Byron said in a harsh whisper. “If he hadn’t been there . . .”
“If he hadn’t been there, perhaps none of this trouble would have happened,” she snapped. “Did you ever think of that?”
Byron may not have been swayed by her argument, but he wasn’t about to refute it.
Having silenced both of the men in her house, Lyssa dabbed at the largest bloody welt on her brother’s chin. “Why were you out so late?” she asked.
“I was nervous,” Byron told her. “With everything that happened, I just wanted to get those papers away from here as quickly as possible. I thought that would divert any other problems away from here. At least I was right on that count.”
Lyssa wrung out the rag she’d been using into a basin on the table before dipping it into a smaller basin of clean water beside it. “If this is what it’s like when you’re right,” she said while cleaning some dried blood from his forehead, “then I think I prefer it when you’re wrong.”
“It seems I was wrong to accept this job in the first place.”
“Did you know what kind of men you’d be dealing with?”
“I rarely do,” Byron said. “Some of my duties are somewhat important, but a courier is never anything more than a tool.”
“Then why do you do it? You’re better than that.”
“It pays well and it’s easy, honest work. I’m hired through the company I’ve been working with for six and a half years. I got the assignment, a bundle was left on my desk and there was an envelope with instructions. Those instructions may have been a little more peculiar than normal, but . . .”
“Peculiar?” Lyssa said. “That’s what you’re calling it?”
“Well . . . more peculiar.”
The way she scowled at him left no room for misinterpretation.
Byron averted his eyes before lowering his head like a scolded child. “I see what you mean.”
“Of course you do,” she hissed. “Because you’re not stupid. Or, at least, I thought you weren’t stupid. Maybe I should reconsider that now that I know you’ve been taking jobs that could very well get you killed.”
Dropping his timid demeanor, Byron looked his sister in the eyes and said, “I am not stupid. I knew exactly what I was getting int
o.”
“Then perhaps you’re just crooked.”
“What?”
Busying herself by cleaning up the table and to keep her hands busy, Lyssa wiped at every little bit of water that had dripped onto the polished surface. “Arrangements like this obviously aren’t on the square and if you weren’t stupid then you would’ve known that.”
“Well, that’s . . .”
“And if you knew that and went through with the job anyway,” she continued, “then you must have been at peace with taking part in such a thing.”
“I don’t know about . . .”
“And if you were at peace with something like that,” she angrily concluded while picking up one of the basins and turning her back to him, “then you must be crooked yourself.”
Byron didn’t say anything, but he winced and gulped silently for air. Only when his sister was out of the room did he exhale and slump deeper into his chair.
Storming into the kitchen, Lyssa walked right past Whiteoak. Considering how small the room was and how much of its limited space was taken up by the stove and cupboard that was a fairly impressive feat. There was a small table wedged into a corner near the cupboard. That is where she placed the basin before snatching another rag hanging from a hook nearby.
“You’re still here?” she snapped in the professor’s general direction.
Whiteoak shifted on his feet. “There, uh, really wasn’t anywhere for me to go without interrupting your conversation with your brother.”
“Right. Because you are always the proper gentleman,” she said in words dripping with so much sarcasm that her basin could have been put to good use in catching the runoff.
“Well, that is the case insomuch as I . . .”
“You look like an outlaw.”
Furrowing his brow slightly, Whiteoak straightened the lapel of his rumpled jacket as though he was still wearing the finery in which he’d presented his tonics. “I beg your pardon?” he huffed.
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