Cut to the Quick

by Tony Masero

  ‘Grouchy as ever,’ smiled Belle.

  Lomas fixed his eyes on her again, he shook his head slowly, ‘And you, my word, you are as beautiful as ever, Belle.’

  ‘And still a Southern gent, I see.’

  Lomas swept his hat of in an exaggerated salute, ‘At your service, ma’am.’

  ‘Good to see you, Lomas,’ Kirby said and he meant it as he took Lomas’s hand.

  ‘What the hell you two doing way out here in Hicksville? I thought you was still riding hot and heavy with old man Pinkerton.’

  ‘Oh, we are that,’ said Kirby. ‘And that’s why we’re here. Have a favor to ask.’

  ‘Well, ride with me and tell as we go. I just have some misdemeanor to sort out down the road.’

  They turned their ponies and continued up the track, the trio riding side by side with Lomas between them.

  ‘What kind of dire crime is it that gets you into the saddle?’ Kirby asked, his curiosity roused.

  ‘Just some old ass of a farmer been sticking pins in wild animals.’

  ‘What?’ laughed Kirby. ‘You got witches out here in Nebraska?’

  ‘That’s about what it comes down to these days,’ grumbled Lomas. ‘Civilization, they call it. Ain’t seen a real decent badhat in a coon’s age.’

  ‘Well, we’ve got one of those for you, if you’ve a mind.’

  ‘Oh, indeed. And who might that be?’

  ‘Jesse Woodford James.’

  ‘Ah,’ sighed Lomas. ‘That one! Now that is one decent sized badhat.’

  ‘We aim to bring him in,’ Belle added. ‘But we need a situation to bait the trap and it came to us that you might be amenable if we set things up in Roosterville.’

  ‘But this ain’t nothing but a farm town, what’s to attract someone the caliber of Jesse James to this poke hole?’

  ‘We aim to get the word out that an eighty thousand dollar army payroll will be stationed here overnight on its way to Fort Miles.’

  ‘I still don’t get it. Why would such a payroll go overland and not by rail?’

  ‘Because it has to be secret. Everybody expects a load like that to go by train, but this one aims to be a backdoor operation. So, there’ll be minimal guards to keep it low profile. Just a stores wagon and a few outriders as if it were nothing but a regular quartermaster’s supply delivery. It’ll be a haul no self respecting outlaw could resist.’

  ‘Well, if I was him I’d be a tad suspicious of such a thing.’

  ‘There’s a bonus,’ grinned Kirby.

  ‘And this’ll be the catcher,’ Belle added.

  ‘Plates. Printing plates for the Federal Mint. They’re dummies, of course, but the rumors will be spread about the transport and a little casual sighting of them placed before the right eyes.’

  Lomas stroked his mustache between two fingers his chin thoughtfully. ‘He’ll bring the whole gang with him for that kind of thing.’

  ‘That’s the idea. We’ll have a good few agents waiting for him.’

  Lomas was doubtful, ‘Well, I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Could be the town will end up being a battlefield.’

  ‘We don’t anticipate that,’ breathed Kirby. ‘We aim to take them by surprise, surround the beggars with enough firepower to scare the hell out of them and bring down the whole gang.’

  ‘Oh, you do, do you?’ sneered Lomas dismissively. ‘I’ve heard all that kind of fine talk before during the war. Just before the whole ville went up in smoke.’

  Kirby shrugged dismissively, ‘Well, we just thought we’d ask. Of course if you don’t want it, then that’s fine. It was only that we needed a place were we could trust the people and for it to be out of the way enough to make things appear innocent.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know,’ sighed Lomas. ‘I’ll have to ask Carl Quintain, he’s town sheriff here.’

  ‘I remember,’ said Kirby. ‘Didn’t you know his pa?’

  ‘I did, we rode together a while. He saved my neck a time or two, that’s how come I took on his boy.’

  ‘You is getting cautious in your old age, ain’t you?’ jibed Kirby. ‘Why, I remember a time when Lomas Bell was someone to be reckoned with and wouldn’t balk at no challenge whatever the cost.’

  ‘Now don’t go down that road,’ grumbled Lomas. ‘Don’t you go trying to appeal to my vanity, it just don’t work no more.’

  But of course it did and as they crested a rise and as the farmhouse came into sight a subtle gleam of anticipation was coming into Lomas’s eyes. And it was nothing to do with the farmer he was about to confront.

  ‘This the place?’ asked Belle.

  ‘Sure looks a wreck,’ observed Kirby.

  It did indeed. Rickety, fallen down split-pole fencing and a barn with the door hanging by one hinge. Loose boards on the farmhouse and hogs and chickens running free in a scruffy, unkempt yard with empty buckets and farm implements lying around, rusting and untended in the mud from a leaking trough.

  ‘Boy,’ said Belle in disgust. ‘Reminds me of home.’

  ‘Some old hermit character lives out here with his kin,’ said Lomas. ‘Name of Claus Bennerheim. He keeps to himself most of the time but he’s a crazy old coot and someone’s been nailing up dead animals to people’s doors, so I reckon we have to check him out.’

  They left the road and headed down the hill and over the intervening fields towards the ramble of buildings below.

  The smell of the place reached them as they approached and it appeared the outhouse needed moving or there was a problem with drainage somewhere and the three wrinkled their noses in disgust as the stink wafted up to them.

  ‘Hell,’ gasped Kirby. ‘That’s some kind of reek.’

  ‘How many’s he got in there with him?’ Belle asked.

  ‘Carl reckons he has a woman, a wife of sorts, she’s a loony old gal as weird as he is and there’s some kind of offspring. Simpleminded young man. Built like an ox, so Carl says, casts a wide shadow but no daylight gets in.’

  ‘Sounds about right for the fixtures here,’ Kirby said, casting a rueful eye over the rundown place.

  They were five hundred yards out when the snap of a passing bullet was followed by the boom of an old muzzleloader.

  ‘Hellfire!’ gasped Lomas. ‘The dang fool’s shooting at us. Spread out.’

  As they separated a raucous call came from the farmhouse standing beside the tumbledown barn.

  ‘What you want? No trespassing allowed, this here is private property.’

  ‘You Mister Claus Bennerheim?’ Lomas answered.

  ‘I am he, the right and lawful owner of this place. And who are you? Are you of the ungodly?’

  ‘No, sir. I’m Marshal Lomas Bell out from Roosterville and I’d like a word.’

  ‘There is only one Word, mister. And that is the Word of the Lord God Jehovah.’

  ‘They’re demons!’ came a screeching woman’s voice. ‘See that, Claus? Demon’s disguised as regular folk.’

  ‘I see it, woman. Get my Bible and bring the ammunition.’

  Lomas groaned internally at the recognized rabid tones of overzealous religious fanaticism, ‘No, sir. We ain’t demons nor any kind of angels from hell. I’m just a man with a badge that needs to ask you a few questions. Now, if you’ll lay aside that gun before anyone gets hurt, I’d be obliged.’

  Kirby had his Winchester out and Belle her pistol as they both slowly walked their ponies wide away on each side to flank the farmhouse.

  ‘You creatures better stand still,’ bellowed Bennerheim. ‘I got the good book and hot lead here, you come any closer.’

  ‘You been nailing up folk’s animals, Mister Bennerheim?’ Lomas asked. ‘Crucifying them?’

  ‘We are of the chosen,’ Bennerheim answered obliquely. ‘We here are the elite and stand at the right hand.’

  ‘I dare say, sir. But I have to ask if its been you doing the deed.’

  A thickset, mumbling giant of a person stumbled out from the barn before Belle. He wore ragged
work dungarees and a scruff of hair as a topknot, the rest of his head-hair having been shaven off high above the ears. The fellow was reminiscent of a turnip with his small head set on wide and looming shoulders. The tight shirt he wore was bursting at the seams from the press of muscle underneath and his small head appeared to sprout directly from the shoulders, there being no evidence of a neck between. He was an ugly looking creature, with rolling eyes and a drooling mouth. He stood slack jawed and gaped at them.

  ‘Ma?’ he cried in a high-pitched childlike voice. ‘Who is they? I scared, ma.’

  Belle turned her pony to face him directly.

  ‘Stay where you are, mister,’ she advised.

  The monster smiled slowly, ‘Pretty lady,’ he slobbered.

  ‘So they say,’ Belle agreed coolly.

  ‘I like you,’ the boy leered, his head wobbling from side to side as he offered a crooked grin and displayed teeth the size of gravestones.

  ‘Don’t you fear, Abner,’ called his father from the house. ‘I am a strong staff and a fiery sword, I vouchsafe the righteous and strike down the unworthy.’

  ‘What is this?’ Kirby asked Lomas quietly. ‘Some kind of religious nut.’

  ‘I reckon,’ murmured Lomas.

  ‘You leave us be, you vile demons,’ screamed the woman. ‘Get back to whatever level of Hades you come from.’

  ‘Mister Bennerheim,’ roared Lomas. ‘I ain’t got time for this, you been nailing up critters, yes or no?’

  ‘They shall suffer to come unto Him,’ came the agitated answer from the farmhouse.

  ‘Get out here, mister,’ snarled Lomas. ‘I had enough of this tomfoolery.’

  Off to one side, Abner was continuing his interest.

  ‘You want to come play?’ he asked Belle, lumbering towards her.

  ‘Hold off, fellow,’ said Belle, side stepping her pony away from him.

  ‘I’ll pull your hair, little girl,’ Abner teased playfully, his lower lip running with dribble as he came on, his arms spread wide. Belle could see he had a pair of grubby paws the size of dinner plates and she didn’t like the look in his eager eyes.

  ‘Stand off,’ she warned sharply.

  ‘Abner!’ called his mother, who never seemed to utter a single word without it being an ear-piercing screech. ‘Leave that hussy alone. They only carry disease and heartache.’

  ‘But I like her, ma,’ mumbled Abner.

  ‘You stand your ground, mister. Or I’ll put one in you,’ snapped Belle.

  The farmhouse door burst open and Claus Bennerheim strode out onto the covered porch, his long rifle raised.

  ‘I see you,’ he roared. ‘You temptress of Satan. Leave my child alone. You will not lead him down the path of unrighteousness with your wanton ways, you hear me?’

  He was a heavily built man, with a thick curling beard like a rug that reached to his chest and he stared at them with wild, staring eyes, one of which had a cast and gave him a lopsided look.

  ‘You can’t go putting up bodies on people’s doors,’ Lomas admonished patiently.

  ‘They offended the Lord,’ Bennerheim growled. ‘Came and offended against sacred ground. Them and the beasts of the air that foul the soil.’

  ‘Be hard to offend anything around here,’ observed Kirby calmly. ‘You got enough stink in this place to raise hell itself.’

  Bennerheim swung the rifle to point at him, ‘Out of the mouths of the unclean shall vileness and corruption come.’

  ‘You’ve got that right,’ Kirby observed cynically.

  The wife blustered out behind Bennerheim, a hefty, florid creature with pasty, flour-white skin and dressed in a raggedy long dress and moth-eaten woolen shawl. In her hands she held a heavy double-barreled shotgun.

  ‘Lord A’Mighty!’ spat Lomas in despair as he drew his revolver.

  ‘Thou shalt not take the Lord’s name in vain,’ burst out Bennerheim, swinging back to face Lomas.

  ‘No offense intended,’ Lomas said apologetically. ‘Now lay down your weapons afore there’s bloodshed.’

  ‘The blood of the lamb shall be spilt in sacrifice,’ hollered Bennerheim wildly, as he lifted the rifle and aimed at Lomas.

  Who promptly shot him high in the waist.

  Bennerheim spun around sideways as the bullet struck, his long rifle going off as he did so.

  Belle who had backed away as far as she cared to, watched the errant bullet wing past her and strike Abner, who frowned as he looked down at his thigh where a spring of blood was pumping from the rip in his dungarees.

  ‘Ma!’ he complained, his face suddenly crinkling tearfully. ‘It hurts.’

  Kirby had the woman in his sights when thankfully her natural sense of motherhood took over and with a loud shriek she threw aside the shotgun and ran over to her son. Watching the woman trying to cradle the giant figure in her arms would have been somewhat ridiculous if the scene had not been so pathetic.

  ‘My boy, my baby boy,’ she wailed. ‘Oh, my poor honeybun.’

  Abner looked accusingly at Belle, his lower lip crinkling as he blubbered.

  ‘You hurt me,’ he said.

  ‘Not me,’ said Belle, holding up her pistol innocently. ‘Never fired a shot.’

  ‘No!’ spat his mother, patting her son’s tear stained cheek. ‘If was your fool Pa, he done it.’

  With that she turned on heel and releasing her son, who promptly fell to the ground in a weeping heap, she strode over to the figure of her husband writhing on the porch. Picking up one of the empty wooden buckets in the yard, she began to belabor the wounded man about the head and shoulders.

  ‘Leave off, woman,’ Bennerheim hollered. ‘Thou shalt cleave to a man as if he were the rib of thy body.’

  ‘And - thou - hurt - the - fruit - of - my - womb,’ she screamed, interspacing each word with a blow from the bucket.

  Between the wailing idiot child and the rampaging parents, Lomas decided he had seen more than enough. He turned his pony and with a warning over his shoulder rode back up the hill, ‘No more, Mister Bennerheim. You hear me? No more crucifying or I’ll come back here and nail your sorry ass to the barn door.’

  ‘Shouldn’t we do something for them?’ asked Belle as she came up alongside Lomas and looked back at the brawling couple.

  Calmly, Lomas glanced across at her, ‘I think we done enough already, don’t you?’

  ‘Hell, Lomas,’ said Kirby, riding up cheerfully. ‘You is as fast as ever.’

  ‘I only winged him,’ sniffed Lomas.

  ‘As you meant to,’ Kirby allowed, with a smile.

  ‘Well, actually I was aiming a mite off from where I got him, at his foot as it happens.’

  ‘Go on,’ laughed Kirby. ‘I don’t believe you.’

  Trouble was, it was true.

  ‘Okay,’ Lomas said, accepting the inevitable. ‘Tell me more about this owlhoot ambush you have planned.’

  Chapter Six

  A week later twenty-five Pinkerton agents were successfully introduced into the town and its environs. Lookouts were stationed in surrounding hills disguised as railroad surveyors mapping out possible routes and the added influx of personnel was dispersed amongst the townsfolk under the pretext of a new warehouse and farm supply depot being constructed. Belle and Kirby who operated out of Lomas’ house on the outskirts of town masterminded the fabrication and they hoped the ruse successfully camouflaged the advent of all the Pinkerton men and dissuaded any excess and undue curiosity by the population.

  At night, when all was in place, Belle lay in bed alongside Kirby, sitting propped by plump, lace-fringed pillows, a deep frown creasing her forehead. Kirby watched her in the dim glow from the oil lamp on the bedside table.

  ‘Penny for them?’ he asked.

  ‘What…. oh?’ she started abruptly. ‘It’s nothing.’

  He stroked her bare arm with his forefinger, ‘Come on, girl. I been watching you fretting and frowning for days. I know it ain’t just the payroll setup, so what’s
troubling you?’

  Lomas had insisted they take the master bedroom whilst he used the guest bedroom, so Belle and Kirby occupied his monster double bed with its dark, heavily polished wooden headboard and patchwork coverlet.

  ‘You think he had a woman in here?’ Belle whispered looking around at the furniture and rose-patterned drapes, fancy china trinkets and lace doilies which all held a distinctly un-masculine look to them.

  Kirby cast a rueful look at all the feminine decoration, ‘I sure hope so, for his sake.’

  ‘You remember he hinted at someone a long while back.’

  ‘I guess he’s entitled,’ shrugged Kirby, running hot kissing lips enticingly down her arm.

  ‘Just that he’s been looking at me real strange all week.’

  Kirby laid off his attempt at seduction for a moment, ‘How so?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t know. It’s odd. Like he doesn’t want to be out of my company. Always there and keeping me in sight.’

  ‘Oh, come on. Lomas has a paternal outlook, that’s all.’

  ‘No, no,’ she shook her head, her unpinned blond hair flashing gold in the lamplight. ‘It’s more than that. There’s something playing on his mind.’

  Kirby sniggered, ‘Maybe he’s got a thing for you. You know some kind of old man’s romantic crisis.’

  ‘Get away, not Lomas,’ Belle shrugged him off. ‘It’s not like that. It’s something else.’

  Kirby’s hand slid in and cupped her breast under the bed sheets, ‘Well, you are a true beauty, honey,’ he whispered throatily, his fingers straying across her smooth skin. ‘Any man would have eyes for you.’

  She writhed under his teasing touch as he grazed her erect nipple and sparked a response. Her electric blue eyes darkened as she squirmed nearer to her husband. ‘You’ve sure got a way of distracting my thoughts, Kirby Langstrom.’

  ‘I damn well hope so.’

  ‘But I tell you,’ she said as their lips met softly. ‘There’s something going on there.’

  ‘There’s something going on here too,’ Kirby said, guiding her hand downwards under the sheets.

  ‘Oh, Mister Langstrom,’ Belle squeaked in fake coquettishness, once her fingers touched base. ‘I do believe you are primed and cocked and ready for action.’