‘There’s Justine,’ K. John reminded Flower, putting his arm around her shoulders. ‘We have to find Justine.’
‘Yes,’ she said more quietly, almost numbly. ‘We have to find Justine. We have to finish our job, don’t we, K. John—come hell or high water!’
Chapter Fourteen
Flower was in such a fury that K. John could not have controlled her even had he been so inclined. He understood her anger against events, men with their guns and the entire corrupt town of Crossroads, but he had never seen this side of Flower before. It seemed as if the shock had brought it on.
‘I’m appealing to you!’ Flower announced with a room-filling voice. ‘All you drunken bums and rowdies! The ones who liked to ogle me, and others like me, and turned your heads when you finally saw that we were little more than slaves held here for your dirty little pleasures—help me now! I need your help. There’s a missing girl and we have to find her. Spend a few minutes away from your whiskey glasses and your gambling to help us!’
Flower had strode across the room to stand next to the roulette table. Not a man had spoken or moved. They seemed to be hoping that she would just go away.
Now she spoke up as loudly as ever. ‘I can pay you! If that’s the only thing that will motivate you to finally do the right thing. Look!’ she said, angrily slapping down the fifty-dollar gold piece she had retained on the baize of the roulette table. ‘That must be enough to encourage some of you to do the right thing. Help me find Justine Masters!’
The silence in the room was heavy, disheartening. Men returned to their drinking and gambling. No one seemed to have paid the least bit of attention to Flower’s outburst. Someone laughed in the back of the room; the roulette wheel spun again, the men gathered around it intent on the whirling wheel, the bouncing ball.
Beside K. John a familiar shape appeared. It took him a moment to recognize Gloria.
‘Came back, did you?’ he muttered.
‘I’ve got Flower’s horse,’ the dark-eyed woman said. ‘What’s she doing?’
‘Waiting for hell to freeze over, it seems,’ K. John replied without humor.
A roar went up from the roulette table and a few men walked away cursing. Flower decided to try speaking to them again. ‘I’d better see what’s happening,’ Gloria said. But K. John wasn’t listening.
‘All of you men, what’s the matter with you? You each must have a sister somewhere, a daughter you wouldn’t want to see treated as the women in this saloon have been, held prisoner. All I ask now is that some of you spend a little time helping me find a poor lost girl who’s run away from Clyde Willit.’
Again, a roar went up from the men crowded two-deep around the roulette table, but they were not cheering Flower’s speech, that was certain. K. John saw Gloria push through the gathered men to reach Flower.
‘My Lord!’ Gloria said. Flower looked at her, perplexed. ‘Don’t spin that wheel again, Mort!’ Gloria shouted to the man operating it.
‘I couldn’t if I wanted to,’ was his answer. ‘What would I pay out with?’
‘What is it, Gloria?’ Flower asked as if returning to earth from the far reaches.
‘You won!’ Gloria told her.
‘Won what?’ Flower asked, still confused as K. John came to stand beside her, his arm around her small waist. Around them men were moaning, murmuring, laughing and cursing.
‘Honey,’ Gloria told her, ‘you walked over here and slapped down fifty dollars on Double O, and it came up on the wheel.’
‘I wasn’t intending to.’
‘Nevertheless, you did. For that the banker here has to pay you thirty-five dollars to one.’
‘That’s a tidy sum,’ Flower said, staring at the table, the money stacked on Double O.
‘I’d say “tidy”,’ Gloria, who was good with numbers, said. ‘Seventeen hundred and fifty dollars, to be exact. But you were too busy talking and you let it ride.’
‘What do you mean?’ Flower asked.
‘What do I mean? The banker was probably happy to see you so inattentive, but then the improbable—impossible—happened. Your number came up again. Double-nought twice in a row, with your money riding on the green number.’
‘Do you mean I won again?’ Flower asked.
‘Won?’ Gloria said, hugging Flower. ‘Honey, you broke the bank! Thirty-five to one on that seventeen hundred dollars’ wager. How much is that, Mort?’ she asked the man in charge of the roulette wheel.
Mort, a small, perspiring, balding man who had the concession in the Double O, was busy with a pencil. ‘Sixty-one thousand, two hundred and fifty dollars,’ he said, with an expression of utter desolation. ‘Of course, I can’t pay you off at the table. You’ll have to take this to Mr. Willit.’
‘Mr. Willit has taken a long journey,’ K. John said.
Mort nodded. ‘Then it will be up to Judge Baxter to find a way to pay. He purchased half of the saloon from Willit a few months back. For now,’ Mort said, untying the apron he wore, ‘I’ll give you my chit for your winnings. No more roulette tonight, boys!’ he said more loudly. ‘I don’t know if I’ll be seeing you again. For now, meet the new owner of the Double O Saloon.’
He briefly placed a hand on Flower’s shoulder, let it slide away, grabbed his black derby hat and shuffled toward the door, putting his coat on as he went.
Some men gathered closer, some drifted away. From behind the bar Charlie stared at them, his face expressionless.
‘Is the saloon really mine?’ Flower asked Gloria.
‘Until and unless Judge Baxter comes forward and pays you that sixty-one thousand dollars.’
‘I hope he does,’ Flower said. ‘I don’t want a saloon—especially this one.’ She turned sharply on her heel, and addressed the gathered men, hands on her hips. ‘I just want to tell all the men who were so willing to help me out with a minor matter of saving a girl’s life—this saloon is closed for the night, and I mean right now!’
The three of them lingered a while as the saloon cleared, letting Charlie finish up with his work, then decided to go to the hotel diner to discuss matters. They stepped out into the warm night and Flower, with the keys given her by Charlie, locked the doors to the Double O Saloon, perhaps for the last time.
~*~
‘Well, that solves a big share of your problems,’ Gloria was saying. The three of them were drinking coffee. Gloria had informed them that they had fresh hot donuts there at this time of night; however, K. John and Flower declined. Neither’s stomach was feeling quite right. That didn’t stop Gloria from ordering a pair of fat, risen donuts with maple frosting.
‘What are you talking about?’ Flower asked. She had been aimlessly stirring her coffee.
‘The Double O,’ Gloria said, waving a half-eaten donut in the air. ‘I plan on staying there until I can get organized. That gives all of the girls a place to be until their relatives can come; they can make plans to get themselves to where they want to be.’
‘I suppose so,’ Flower said, numbly. She still did not seem to grasp the idea that she actually owned the saloon.
‘And that money that was left on the roulette table—how much was that?’
‘Something like seventeen hundred dollars,’ K. John said.
‘Seventeen-fifty—now I remember,’ Gloria said. ‘That’s surely enough to help some of the girls out—if you’re feeling generous. Remember—all that I wanted was stagecoach fare east. Theresa—all she wanted was a horse.’
‘I suppose you’re right,’ Flower said. ‘The money was won by accident anyway. I can afford to share it. But as of now, K. John, what can be done about those men attacking Barbara Casey’s ranch?’
‘We don’t even know that that’s where they went,’ he reminded her. ‘That was our fear, our idea because we knew where the girls were probably headed.’
‘Whatever direction they went in,’ Gloria said, ‘they won’t be riding long—not once word reaches them that there’s no longer any pay in it, not with Clyd
e Willit gone.’
‘I suppose not,’ Flower said. She was still in low spirits. Behind them the door to the restaurant opened and closed again and a shaggy, big-nosed man stood looking around the room until his eyes fixed on them.
‘Who’s that?’ K. John asked.
‘I don’t know his name,’ Gloria said, ‘but I recognize him as a regular at the Double O.’
‘What’s he want?’ Flower asked, fearing still more trouble.
‘Let’s wait and see,’ K. John said, touching her hand across the table.
The man, holding his hat in both hands, inched their way. When he stopped beside their table, it was Flower who asked, ‘What is it you want?’
‘I was there tonight,’ he stammered, ‘at the Double O, that is. I heard what you were saying. All of the men there aren’t as bad as you painted them. Some are, maybe most are, but we ain’t all that bad.’
‘Is that what you came to tell me?’ Flower asked, now sounding weary.
‘Part of it. The other thing is that I know where that Miss Justine is.’
‘You do?’ Flower said, coming halfway to her feet in her excitement. ‘Where?’
‘There’s a shed out behind the blacksmith’s place where he keeps his bar iron and such. A friend of mine, a boy I know, told me that he had seen a woman with her clothes all disarranged, crying, go into this shed to hide.’
‘Would she still be there?’ Flower asked and the man answered:
‘Miss, I don’t know why she’d come out and risk walking around this town anymore.’
‘No,’ Flower agreed. As the man traipsed heavily away, Flower rose. ‘What do we do, K. John?’
‘Go get her and take her home. That’s the job, isn’t it? Then we can finally be done with this.’
Chapter Fifteen
‘The way I see it,’ Warren Tremaine was saying as they sat gathered around the kitchen table at the Oxhead Ranch in the morning, ‘is that with Olive living on the farm, we won’t have no need for Flower, and she’ll be free to go off and spend her fortune as she likes.’
‘That’s assuming a lot,’ Flower said.
Her father answered. ‘No, no it’s not. Olive and I now have what you might call an understanding. We reached it while she was nursing me back to health. We just have to wait until Masters can find a replacement for Olive. Justine tells me that it’s possible that the girl Sadie, who used to work at the Double O, might want the job. The girl seems to have a liking for kitchens.’
‘None of that is what I meant,’ Flower said. ‘What I meant is that everyone is suddenly assuming that I have a fortune. No one has yet heard a word from Judge Baxter about his intentions.’
‘He’ll come around—the Double O is the biggest money-making business in Crossroads by far. He’s just trying to drive your price down. Besides, you’ve still got over seventeen hundred dollars in cash money. It wasn’t so long ago that you’d consider that a fortune.’
‘Oh, you’re right,’ Flower admitted. ‘The Double O is still almost paying its own way despite the restricted drinking hours. Charlie’s a good man; he’s handling all that for me.’
‘And the girls?’ Tremaine asked.
‘Except for Rebecca and Sylvia, they’ve all gone home. We did have one wedding.’
‘Yes?’ Tremaine lifted an eyebrow.
‘Yes, it seems that April and that red-headed young cowboy from Barbara’s ranch, Carl West, almost didn’t come back from their ride that night at all, but instead he returned to Barbara Casey’s, where the two got hitched.’
‘By Judge Baxter?’
‘Who else? The man will always find some way to get along.’
‘As will we all,’ Tremaine nodded. As Olive returned to the kitchen, K. John and Flower made their way outside, leaving the two to each other’s companionable conversation.
It was still early in the morning with the low sun angling prettily through the oak trees. Standing on the porch they saw Emerson Masters on his red roan and Justine on her pinto approaching them.
‘Father and I are going out to look the new property over,’ Justine said. ‘Would you like to come along?’
‘You really should see it,’ Masters said. ‘It’s going to make me a fortune.’
That property had been all that Masters wanted to talk about since returning from Albuquerque. He had traded a thousand acres of dry land for five hundred bottomland acres and gotten some cash on top of that. Masters’ belief was that the land company’s appraiser had only visited the property after the spring rains and made his determination by its appearance then. ‘Either that or some big land dealer was only looking at the numbers and figured a thousand was better than five hundred. People who work with their noses stuck in ledgers all day can’t seem to realize that the land’s usefulness changes with the season.’
During the same conversation the beaming ranch owner had asked almost as an afterthought, ‘Everything went well here while I was gone?’
‘Yes, Father.’ Justine had been quick to answer. ‘Fine, thanks to K. John and Flower.’
‘I’m happy to hear it. I had a few doubts at first as to whether I’d done the right thing hiring these two.’
‘I’m sure you couldn’t have done any better,’ Justine said.
On this new morning, Emerson Masters was still pleased with himself and the world in general. ‘Are you sure you don’t want to ride along and have a look?’ he asked K. John.
‘Not this morning, sir. There are a few odds and ends Flower and I have to take care of before we leave.’
‘You’re determined to leave, then?’ Masters asked.
‘Yes, sir. Sorry to put it this way, but I believe we’ve seen just about enough of the Oxhead Ranch.’
‘Restless sorts, huh? I can understand that, too.’ Before riding out he added, ‘Don’t leave without saying goodbye. By my calculations, I still owe you two a little money.’
They said they wouldn’t and then stood and waved goodbye as Masters and Justine rode away together, both smiling.
Warren Tremaine came out on to the porch just then, holding a fresh cup of coffee. He was a little stiff, but well on the way to mending, which Tremaine attributed to Olive’s fine cooking.
He hobbled up to K. John and said in a low voice, ‘You haven’t forgotten what I asked you a few days ago?’ His eyes flickered briefly to Flower, who was listening while trying to appear not to.
‘No, sir,’ K. John answered.
‘Well, I don’t think you ever gave me a real answer. Do you intend to?’
‘Yes, sir,’ K. John said.
‘Fine.’ Tremaine patted K. John’s shoulder and returned to the house.
‘What was that about?’ Flower asked after her father had gone.
‘Nothing—just man-talk.’
‘Man-talk, again? From what I know of man-talk, it generally involves a woman.’
‘Does it?’ K. John asked, with a vague expression. Squinting into the new sun he told Flower, ‘Think we should borrow the buggy? We can drive out to Judge Baxter’s. We still have some business to conclude with him.’
‘Do we?’ Flower asked with those dark-green eyes sparkling.
‘Of course—that is, if you haven’t changed your mind about selling him back the Double O?’
‘No, I haven’t changed my mind about that.’ She was thoughtful for a moment and then announced, ‘I think I’ll open up the saloon today.’
‘Really? Whatever for?’
‘Let the whole town join in and raise a toast to us,’ Flower said. The woman always was one step ahead of him, K. John thought.
The End
Of a Piccadilly Publishing Western
By Logan Winters
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