by Tony Masero
‘This is too smart for Joe alone,’ said Kirby. ‘He would never have the patience to skim over such a long period; he’s a man who wants to grab it all in one go. Look at him; he’s down on his uppers. He’s not showing any signs of sudden wealth. No, somebody else is holding the reins. My guess is, that Ward Hill is behind it, he’ll wait until the mines are played out and then retire with a small fortune in gold ready put by.’
‘And Joe gets his cut then,’ added Lomas. ‘It makes sense but how the hell does he manage to hold Joe in check?’
‘Because he’s got the means and the know-how to secretly refine and melt it down into the gold bars then make the difference disappear in the bookwork.’
Lomas nodded, ‘You know what? I’m beginning to wonder if this whole thing with The-Get-Up-and-Go was a diversion encouraging Joe to be busy in another direction. To keep him entertained whilst Hill stockpiled their cache.’
‘Could be,’ Kirby agreed. ‘That would be a smart move.’
Bee had been watching them the whole time, his head turning from one to the other as they worked through it.
‘So, guys,’ he pleaded. ‘Can I go now? You can see I ain’t got anything to do with this.’
Lomas chuckled, ‘I don’t think so, Bee. You must have made something out of this and your name’s on the haulage company paper. No, you’re staying with me until this is over. I just hope you like the company of a body like Cain Lemon, because you’re both going to be sharing a room together.’
‘Aw, no,’ whined Bee. ‘Look, I helped you out all I could. Least you can do is cut me some slack; I’ll get out of town. Do whatever you want.’
‘You’re a witness, Bee,’ said Lomas. ‘And it’ll all be in your favor when it comes down to a court case.’
‘Let’s get him up to his roommate, then we’ll go see Ward Hill?’ said Kirby.
Chapter Ten
Pushing a disconsolate Bee ahead the three made their way up the stairs heading towards Lomas’s room and the imprisoned Cain Lemon. As they reached the landing, Belle came out of her room in a rush.
‘Oh, Kirby. There you are, I want to talk with you,’ she called, seeing them at the end of the corridor.
‘Okay, Belle,’ he said turning to Lomas, whose room lay at the opposite end of the corridor. ‘You alright with this, Lomas?’
Lomas smirked, ‘I think I can handle it from hereon, you go say your piece with the lady.’
Leaving them Kirby went down to Belle and she showed him into her room and closed the door behind her, leaning back against it.
‘What is it, Belle?’
Belle looked at him her eyes vivid in their intensity, ‘About what Bee said,’ she began and then faltered to a stop.
‘You don’t believe it,’ Kirby said dismissively, standing facing her in the center of the room.
‘It’s not that,’ she answered awkwardly. ‘I just think there has to be something other than the awful plan he outlined. Aloysius was not like that, really Kirby, he was not. There must have been a reason.’
Kirby sighed, he felt too tired to get into this all over again. ‘Look, Belle,’ he said. ‘It don’t matter. Really, it don’t. You believe what you want. I just give you the facts, you don’t want to see them like they are, well that’s your affair. Now, if you’ll let me go, Lomas has need of me.’
‘Why?’ she frowned. ‘What’s going on?’
Swiftly he explained what they had discovered and how they believed that Ward Hill was the mastermind behind a scam to hike gold from the mines and the part Joe played in the scheme.
‘You mean to say The-Get-Up-and-Go was burned down just so they could hide some sneaky gold heist?’
‘That’s about it. Now, excuse me, Belle but I have to go.’ He walked over to where she still barred the door.
‘I’m going with you,’ Belle snapped determinedly.
‘You know you can’t do that,’ said Kirby reaching for the door handle.
‘I want to see Joe brought down. That’s the least you can allow me,’ she said, her eyes alive with anger.
They were close. Wrestling with door handle that she held it in a tight grip and forbade him passage.
‘Come on, Belle. Stop fooling around.’
Their bodies were touching as they struggled and Kirby was distracted by her close presence, he could feel the press of her breasts and smell the fresh scent of her newly washed hair.
‘Not until you let me come with you,’ she said in a show of girlish tantrum.
He kissed her then. Gently at first and then more urgently. Her generous lips were soft and mobile under his and he felt the moment when her restraint broke and she answered his kiss. Full mouthed and deep, it was a kiss that Kirby had wanted for so long that he lingered in the heady whirl of it as long as he might. Her arms left the door and circled his neck, knocking his hat aside and pulling him closer. She pressed herself against him and he felt the curves of her body beneath the dress mold to his.
Panting, they separated, their faces still close and Kirby looked into the amazing deepness of the sea of her blue eyes. She was breathing heavily, her nostrils flexing with each pant of breath.
‘Well,’ she said in a gasp. ‘That was unexpected.’
Kirby encircled her waist and pulled her to him again, ‘Damn you, Belle,’ he murmured and they kissed again.
The sharp sound of two pistol shots fired close together were muffled and yet clear in the silent room. Kirby heard a door crash open and he quickly pulled Belle aside and opened the door.
‘Lomas!’ he called and looked down the hall.
He was in time to see Cain Lemon on the landing, a smoking gun in his hand. The gunman swung around at the call and crouching at the stair head fired at Kirby.
The bullet chewed a hole above Kirby’s head and he drew his pistol and snapped a shot in return. The wall next to Cain’s head burst in a cloud of plaster and the gunman disappeared and was away. Kirby could hear his pounding steps racing down the stairs to the hotel lobby.
‘Stay here,’ he ordered over his shoulder and raced along the corridor to Lomas’s room.
The door to the room was open and the first thing he saw was Bee’s ass, the pants stretched tight over the broad backside. Bee lay face down, spread across the rumpled sheets on the bed, a widening pool of blood at his head soaking into the material. Beside his legs and leaning up against the bed sat a slumped Lomas, his face pale and a hand pressed against a bloody wound in his side.
‘Bastard had a gun,’ he managed. ‘He pulled it when I un-cuffed him to put on Bee.’
‘How is it?’ Kirby asked, kneeling beside him.
‘I’ll manage. Go get him, Kirby.’
‘Shoot, man. I can’t leave you, that’s a bad one.’
‘Hell! Will you do as I say? Don’t let him get away. How’s Bee?’
Kirby glanced up at the still body. ‘He ain’t going nowhere.’
‘Damn it, there goes our witness.’
Kirby jumped up and called down the corridor, ‘Belle, get a doctor. Lomas is wounded.’
There was no answer and the hallway was empty. Kirby frowned and turned back to Lomas.
‘Don’t move, I’ll see you get help.’
Lomas chuckled wheezily, ‘I ain’t about to leap up anywhere. Now go fetch that villain.’
Kirby pounded down the stairs shouting at the startled desk clerk as he past him. ‘Go get a doctor we got a gunshot man up there.’
In the street, people were turning and gathering together at sound of the commotion. Most of them were late risers after a long night fighting the burning building and they stood grouped in front of the burnt out remains of the saloon.
‘That way,’ one man called pointing down the street.
Kirby snatched at the reins of the first horse lined up at the hitching rail, swinging himself into the saddle he whipped up the pony and raced down Main Street.
He knew where Cain would head, to the safe harbor of the man who
had in all probability managed to smuggle in the pistol. Joe Bellows.
Outside The Cakewalk, Kirby slid the pony to a halt and leapt from the saddle. He hit the ground and crouched, drawing his pistol as he dropped. With a slap he smacked the pony’s rump and drove it away then he faced the empty, dark hole of the wide-open saloon entrance.
‘You in there, Cain?’
Gun flash ignited the darkness inside and a spurt of dust flew up beside Kirby’s boot.
‘Come get me, Langstrom,’ Cain called from inside the saloon.
Kirby lunged for the boardwalk alongside the saloon entrance; he backed up to the plank wall and risked a peek inside.
Shots from the barroom began to pepper the thin walls of wood beside him; the planks so thin that the bullets passed clean through and out into the street. Kirby watched the splintered holes as they formed a random pattern around him and marveled than none touched him.
He leapt across the open doorway and away from the vicious barrage and tumbled to one knee as more shots followed him, their crash and whine close by his body. Quickly he lay full length on the boardwalk and allowed the frantic shooting to wing clear over his head.
There was a pause and Kirby knew that Cain must be reloading; he rolled over twice and came up flat on his stomach aiming through the door. He fired twice but it was dark after the bright sun outside and he could see little but gloomy shapes. There was nothing defined and he continued his roll to take him from sight.
‘Give it up, Cain. You ain’t getting out of there,’ Kirby called.
‘We’ll see on that,’ said Cain, firing again and shattering the glass panes in the open door.
Kirby knew he had to find another way in and he backed away still on his belly, intending to circle the building and see if there was a back entrance.
‘That Marshal of yours dead?’ Cain asked.
‘Not yet,’ answered Kirby. ‘He’ll live to see you hang.’
‘Damn!’ cursed Cain. ‘I was sure I put him down for good.’
‘The only one you got was the town mayor.’
‘Well, that ain’t a body no one will miss,’ said Cain cynically. ‘But I want you, Langstrom. I want you for Malachi and Bolt.’
‘You’re surely going to get what they did.’
Kirby hustled himself sideways as they spoke, scrabbling towards the corner of the building and the alleyway alongside. Once clear, he quietly got to his feet and loped down the alley. It was pretty filthy down there with dumped food leavings from the saloon and piles of empty bottle and as he made his way to the end, large rats leapt from the heaps of rubbish and scurried away.
A high fence blocked entrance to the rear of The Cakewalk and Kirby was about to leap up and grasp at the fence top when he heard the sound of running feet on wooden boards. He knew that Cain was making a break for it.
Racing back down the alley, he turned the corner as the thud of pounding hoof beats came to him. Cain had mounted the pony Kirby had left standing and he was racing off down Main Street, heading for the open countryside beyond the town.
Kirby stepped into the center of the street and raising his pistol, he steadied himself with his other hand and aimed at the galloping rider. He fired and with some chagrin, the minute he pulled the trigger he knew he had missed. Steadying himself, he aimed again.
Cain was low in the saddle, lashing at the pony with the reins and Kirby could hear him screaming at the beast, his voice carrying back down the road in the slipstream.
Kirby fired again; quickly he fired once more, knowing then that his gun was empty now. The rider kept going and Kirby guessed he had gone from range of his pistol and his bullets had been spent before they got there. Cain swung left at the end of the street and vanished from sight.
Chapter Eleven
On hearing Bee’s story, Belle had struggled with all the permutations until her brain had felt like an elastic twist of vine, curling into convolutions that gave her headache. She had sat in her room after Kirby and Bee’s departure, sometimes racked with sobs and the other with burning anger. Yet again moments of softness entered her thinking as she remembered Aloysius in his best winning way.
To think of him sharing their most intimate moments with a group of rowdies was a thing that jarred with the splendid image she still held in her mind. It split her thinking and her newly found steadfastness was thrown out of kilter.
To say she was confused would be putting it mildly and her confusion had coalesced when Kirby had kissed her. The moment had grown out of her temporary loss of clarity and she had thrown herself into the reckless instant with a wild abandon that hoped to forget her state of bewilderment.
His kisses had been fervent, she had to admit that. And not unpleasant either. The closeness of his body had felt strong and virile against her and she was forced to remember the passion aroused at such moments by Aloysius and how something in her still craved for such experiences again.
But she was young, not only in years but also in understanding her sexuality and all these sensations were still new to her, they had not yet been rationalized and Belle had no context for all her boiling desires and restless thoughts.
As the mind does at such moments, hers had sought to focus on one thing and leave the intangible elements of mental uproar to one side. She thought of Joe Bellows, the source of all her problems.
She had lost everything thanks to him. Tim Leatherbetter, her boss, had fallen to his hired killers. If Kirby were to be believed her heart had been broken by Joe’s encouragement of her gambler lover. The-Get-Up-and-Go, the place that had cost so much effort and ingenuity had been wantonly destroyed by his hand. It was a list of crimes that needed some restitution.
As Kirby had answered the sound of shooting down the hall, in something of a daze Belle had gone down into the street and made her way to the General Store. There she had purchased, under the guidance of the owner, a short-barreled pocket Colt revolver. He recommended it for it lightness and ease of carrying for a lady. The owner assured her that the five shot cylinder carried a .35 caliber load that was adequate enough to cause serious damage to any attacker should the need arise.
Not that she was a practiced shot but she reckoned there was little more to it than pointing and pulling and she anticipated only the need to fire the weapon once. Just enough to place a coned bullet in the heart of Joe Bellows.
In something of a dream she left the store, the pistol cradled in her arm under the cover of a shawl she had put on. People were still in the street, engaged in watching the gun battle that had just ended between Kirby and Cain Lemon. They emerged from the cover of the sidewalk to watch the fleeing gunman and note where Kirby stood alone in the street amidst the settling dust of Cain’s departure.
Into this throng she saw Joe step out alongside Ward Hill, coming from inside the Assay Office as if they were intent on discovering what was going on. Both stood together watching the lone figure of Kirby. Belle pushed her way towards them through the crowd.
At four feet away, she called out.
‘Joseph Bellows! I have come for you.’
It did not come out quite as she intended, her voice sounding too high pitched and on edge.
Joe swung around as did Hill beside him.
‘What’s this?’ asked Joe, a frown furrowing his brow. ‘What to you want with me?’
Belle let her shawl fall away and she raised the pistol in both hands. She cocked the weapon with some difficulty, the hammer being a little stiff under her thumb.
‘You have cost me too much, you scoundrel,’ she said, her face tightening and lips compressing in determination.
‘Wait, Miss Slaughter!’ called Hill. ‘You cannot do this.’ He stepped in front of Joe, who willingly ducked behind him. ‘Not murder on the Main Street surrounded by these good people,’ Hill went on, holding his palms up. ‘I beg of you desist.’
‘Stand aside,’ Belle said through clenched teeth. ‘We know you two are in cahoots. Get out of my way so I can lay t
hat dog down.’
Other men in the crowd began to beg her to put the weapon aside and in exasperation, Belle fired the gun above Hill’s head.
‘Get out of the way!’ she screamed, seeing that Joe was making his escape under cover of the Assayer.
People spread out away at sound of the shot, with screams from the women and cries of distress from the men.
Belle had not expected the kick of the gun but she determinedly worked back the hammer again as Hill backed away, hands raised and his face a picture of terror. Joe was scurrying to a nearby siding and before he could get there, Belle fired again. But she was untutored and the bullet slammed uselessly into a porch support and did no more damage than blast a hole in the wood.
Hearing the gunfire, Kirby turned and took in the scene from the far end of the street and he quickly began running back towards Belle. She stood alone now, the townsfolk having fled. Levering back the hammer she fired again, even though Joe was safely out of sight. The bullet whined from a brick wall and ricocheted into the sky.
‘What the hell are you doing?’ Kirby cried, grabbing her gun hand. ‘You’ll kill someone, Belle.’
‘Just Joe Bellows, that’s all I want.’
‘Leave it,’ said Kirby, twisting the weapon from her hand.
Unnoticed, Ward Hill was watching them from the boardwalk outside his office, his features crossed by concern. He was thinking on Belle’s words, ‘We know you two are in cahoots.’ He understood then that their scheme had been uncovered and swiftly determined to make it away from Variable Breaks as quickly as possible and with that in mind he scurried into his office to pack away as much as he could.
‘Come along, Belle,’ urged Kirby, leading her back towards the hotel. ‘Lomas is hurt, we need to go see he’s alright, the rest of this can wait.’
Belle looked back bitterly over her shoulder at the place Joe had vanished, ‘He got away, damn him. I could not shoot straight enough.’
Kirby dragged her on, ‘Leave him to me, Belle. I’ll handle it.’