To Reap and to Sow

by J. R. Roberts

  “What?!” he hollered.

  After a brief pause, a meek voice came from the other side of the door. “You said you wanted to know when breakfast was being served,” the voice said. “It’s being served right now.”

  Mark grunted a few times and waved off the young woman as if she could see him. When he pulled open the door, he saw a slender woman with short black hair walking away from the door. Once she got a look at him, she hustled even more quickly away from his door.

  Still grunting to himself, Mark slammed the door shut and pulled on some clothes. From there, he stepped outside and stomped down the stairs as if he was trying to punish each and every one of them. When he got to the little dining room on the first floor, Mark had to look twice to make sure he was seeing things properly.

  “Howdy,” Joey said as he waved at him from one of the tables. He wore a sloppy grin on his face and had to break away from one of the three women who were tending to him.

  The women might not have been pretty as pictures, but they were all good enough to spark some jealousy when Mark saw how they fluttered attentively around Joey. Jealousy hit even harder when he saw the smiles on the women’s faces disappear once they got a look at him.

  “I’ve been up for a while,” Joey announced. “You should try the bacon and eggs. They’re great.”

  The shorter of the three women must have also been the cook, because she looked flattered by Joey’s words. She even blushed a bit as she reached out to pinch one of his cheeks.

  “In case you forgot,” Mark grunted as he plopped down onto a chair at Joey’s table, “we’ve got work to do. Or did one of your new lady friends help you out with that too?”

  “Not as such, but Katie did tell me which saloon we should stay away from if we wanted to avoid trouble. I think we should try that one first.”

  “You think so, huh?”

  Since Joey was too chipper to pick up on sarcasm, Mark stopped piling it on and turned his glare toward the table. “What the fuck do I need to do to get some breakfast?”

  The short woman who before had been so flattered now looked as if she was about to faint dead away. She’d been standing at Mark’s left and was just about to introduce herself when he’d let that obscenity fly. After steeling herself with a deep breath, she asked, “What can I get for you?”

  “Whatever he’s having,” Mark grunted. “And be quick about it.”

  The woman mumbled to herself as she walked away. Although she was careful to keep her voice low, a few choice words managed to drift through the air. If Mark had been listening to her in the slightest, he might have been upset to hear what she had to say. As it was, he was too busy stealing a dirty cup from another table and filling it from the pot of coffee sitting in the middle of his own table.

  “Where’s that saloon?” Mark asked.

  “On the other side of town. It’s called the Triple Diamond. If we don’t find someone there to suit our needs, we might be out of luck. This is a pretty quiet town.”

  Mark let out something that was part chuckle and part snort. “I’ll say it is. Any place with women who like the looks of you must be backward as all hell.”

  Joey started to get annoyed, but caught the other two women looking his way. That cheered him up quickly enough and he dug back into his breakfast.

  A few minutes later, the short woman came out with the plate holding Mark’s breakfast. When she saw him dive right in and start devouring the eggs, the woman smirked and walked away.

  “I don’t know what the hell you’re thinking,” Mark said through a mouthful of food. “This tastes like someone wiped the floor with it.”

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Clint had been up since the first of the sun’s rays had poked over the horizon. According to Wes, he was allowed to sleep late due to all the commotion from the night before. Oddly enough, Clint didn’t feel as if he’d had so much rest.

  The first thing Clint thought he’d do was get a look at the gold and try to figure out a better spot to hide it. It was either that, he figured, or try to hatch a good plan for what should come next regarding the windfall. But Wes had other ideas.

  Clint’s feet had barely touched the floor when he was dragged out by the farmer.

  “There’s work to be done,” Wes had announced.

  “I know. If those men decide to come back, we should—”

  “Not that kind of work,” the farmer interrupted. “Real work. Or have you spent too much time in saloons to remember what that is?”

  When he’d pulled in a breath, Clint caught the strong scents of ham, coffee and potatoes. “Smells like breakfast’s about ready.”

  “And it’ll be even better once we’ve worked up an appetite.”

  Before Clint could let the farmer know that his appetite was just fine, he was catching the clothes thrown at him and being pulled outside.

  “Are you serious?” Clint asked. “Those men might not be crack shots, but they could be coming back.”

  Wes nodded and kept walking. “Yep.”

  “They might get some help.”

  “Could be. They also might be long gone,” the farmer pointed out.

  “You want to take that chance?”

  Wes stopped and turned around with his hands propped on his hips. “Look here, Clint. If I’ve learned anything, it’s that there’s a time to reap and a time to sow. If those killers come back, it’ll be time to reap. Until then, it won’t do nobody any good us just waiting around twiddling our thumbs. Now’s the time to sow. That needs doing too, you know.”

  Within seconds, Clint had an ax in his hand and was chopping firewood. That was fine. He’d done that plenty of times before.

  Next, he had to milk the cows. That wasn’t too bad. Clint was vaguely familiar with the basics.

  Then, there were chicken coops to be mended, more wood to be cut, a fence that needed patching and a plow blade that needed sharpening. None of these things were out of Clint’s range, but it had been awhile since he’d had so much thrown at him at such an early hour.

  “Don’t you fend for yerself when you’re out there riding?” Wes asked while tossing the ax into Clint’s hands for the third time.

  “Sure,” Clint replied.

  “And you seemed to be plenty able when it came to fighting. Put some of that gumption into honest work.”

  Clint found himself glaring at the old man. “It’s a whole lot easier to get moving when someone’s shooting at you. If you’d like to see what I mean, I’d be happy to oblige.”

  For a second, Wes stood there as if he was too shocked to move. Some anger flickered across his face, but it was soon replaced by plain old surprise. Then, he started to laugh.

  “Aw, hell, Clint. You’re funny. You want to go and have something to eat?”

  “That would be great.”

  “You wearing your pistol?”

  “No, sir,” Clint replied. The absence of that familiar weight at his side had been bothering him all morning.

  “Good,” Wes said. “Chop that wood first and then you can eat.”

  Once Clint had gotten some food in his belly, his spirits brightened considerably. Conversation around the table didn’t stray too far from the subject of breakfast itself. That, combined with the hard work he’d already done, had a soothing effect on Clint’s thoughts. The few words said were cordial. Apart from that, everyone was focused on what they were eating or what chores needed to be done immediately afterward.

  One foot in front of the other.

  All in all, it was a good way to live.

  Eventually, however, the rest of the world barged in and made short work of the peaceful respite they’d been enjoying.

  “Come on, Clint,” Wes said as he got to his feet. “Let’s do that work in the barn I was talking about.”

  “Did Mark shoot up the barn too?” Lynn asked.

  “That’s what we aim to find out,” Wes replied.

  Clint saw Lynn glance nervously at him, but he simply nodded and
walked toward the door. She obviously knew there was more to it than that. The anxiousness on her face made that much clear as day. Since there was other work to be done, Clint left her in the house and followed Wes out to the barn.

  A time to reap and a time to sow.

  Once he caught up to Wes, Clint was inside the barn. The old farmer had a way of moving with his back hunched and his knees buckled while still covering plenty of ground in a short amount of time. When he got a look at the back wall inside the barn, Wes moved even faster.

  “What the hell?” he muttered.

  “What’s wrong?” Clint asked.

  “Were you messing with these rags?”

  “I told you what I did. I nudged them with my boot, got a quick look underneath and then straightened them again. Why?”

  Wes was hunkered down over the pile and fussing with it without disturbing much of anything. “These ain’t the way I left ’em is why. They’re pushed to one side.”

  “Are you sure? They look the same to me.”

  “I know how I left ’em and this ain’t it. It’s not even close. Hell, you can see some of…” Reflexively looking around, Wes straightened the rags and lowered his voice. “I checked on ’em the night before last. Did you poke around here after that first time?”

  Clint shook his head. “No, sir.”

  “Then that means that fella that was in here got a look at this gold.”

  Recalling that Mark had bolted out of the barn through the back door, which was only a few paces from the rags, Clint felt his gut tighten. “If that’s so, then there could be a lot more trouble coming a lot sooner than we thought.”

  TWENTY-SIX

  Mark and Joey had been to some pretty filthy saloons. They’d been to some that had more blood than sawdust on the floor and enough teeth in the spittoons to fill several mouths.

  The Triple Diamond wasn’t one of those saloons.

  While it might have been dirty by Thickett standards, the place was actually quite nice. All of the tables were cleared off. The beer was poured into clean mugs. Even the dancing girls were easy on the eye. It was the only place in town that served whiskey and also hosted round-the-clock poker games, which is what earned it the reputation it had gotten from the more respectable of Thickett’s residents.

  Mark and Joey stepped into the place and walked up to a bar that might have been polished within the last month. When he saw the barkeep take notice of him, Mark leaned against the bar and glanced at the rest of the folks within the saloon.

  “What can I get for ya?” the bartender asked.

  “A beer for me and my friend,” Mark replied.

  After nodding once, the barkeep filled the order and placed the drinks in front of them. “Anything else?”

  “Yeah. I need to know where I can find someone to do some work for me.”

  “What kind of work?”

  Although Mark wasn’t a notorious bad man, he understood enough of that life to know when he was talking to someone who lived it as well. The bartender wasn’t one of those people.

  “Never mind,” Mark grunted.

  The barkeep gave them a friendly smile and stepped back. “You need anything else, just let me know.”

  “I think we could beat the hell out of the men in this place,” Joey grunted. “Where the hell are we supposed to find someone to help us get our hands on that gold you talked about?”

  Mark snapped his head around and spoke in a hissing whisper. “I told you not to flap your goddamn lips about that, didn’t I?”

  “Yeah,” Joey said with a nod. “I don’t think anyone heard. That is, anyone else but that man over there.”

  Mark looked in the direction Joey had nodded and found a lone figure sitting at a table. He was dressed in plain clothes that seemed just dirty enough to have covered a few miles of trail. The man’s face was calm and decorated with a well-kept mustache. Although he didn’t make much of a show of it, he was obviously watching Mark and Joey very closely. There was a confidence in his eyes that didn’t waver in the slightest once he’d been singled out by the two men. In fact, it was Joey and Mark who started to look away, when they found themselves under the man’s gaze too long.

  “You think he knows someone we could use?” Joey asked.

  Mark’s eyes dropped for a second, but that was just long enough to spot the gun at the stranger’s side. When he looked up again, Mark found an intense look on the stranger’s face that was more than enough to discourage him from looking any longer.

  “Yeah,” Mark replied. “I think he might be able to help.”

  “Then let’s go over there.”

  “We probably shouldn’t just—”

  Before Mark could finish what he was saying, the stranger pushed his chair away from the table and stood up.

  “Can I set you up with anything else?” the bartender asked, immediately seizing the opportunity to be of some use.

  “No,” the stranger replied curtly. He then headed for the door and flipped a silver dollar through the air. By the time the coin landed on the bar, the man who’d tossed it was halfway outside.

  Mark gritted his teeth and choked down the bad feeling that was creeping up into the back of his throat like a wad of bile. “Come on,” he said to Joey. “Let’s see where he’s headed.”

  The bartender chirped something at them as they stepped outside, but Mark didn’t pay him any mind. Instead, Mark searched for the stranger as his hands shot out to hold open the door that had been slammed in his face.

  Even though the door stopped short of cracking against the frame behind them, a loud bang echoed through the air.

  Mark and Joey reflexively twitched at the noise. When they heard the other bangs follow the first, they backed up until their shoulders knocked against the front of the saloon.

  The stranger was a few paces to the left of the door and stepping into the street when Mark spotted him. The stranger’s arm was also in motion as it bent at the elbow and raised a .38-caliber Smith & Wesson pistol to hip level. The stranger didn’t fire, but the pair of men who bolted into the street were doing more than enough firing of their own.

  “The bank’s been robbed!” someone shouted from nearby.

  Mark and Joey looked at each other, but didn’t know what to say. Before either of them could make a noise, the stranger and his two partners had met in the middle of the street.

  These two men wore their dusters buttoned up, with the collars flipped, so they were mostly covered from their noses all the way down to their shins. Each of them carried a burlap sack in one hand and a smoking pistol in the other. Turning as they fired, the two men in dusters shot again and again at the small building they left behind.

  As the three men met up, a few other men emerged from the bank. Judging by how they fired at the trio in the street, the men coming from the bank weren’t friends of the trio.

  “Those men robbed the bank!” a man from the bank’s doorway shouted. “Someone stop them!”

  Mark and Joey stood their ground as more and more hell spilled out around them. More shots were fired. More people were shouting. A few women were screaming. A few more men holding shotguns emerged from even the buildings around the bank and saloon.

  “Now’s our chance,” Mark said. “Just follow my lead.” With that, Mark drew his own pistol and took aim at one of the men closest to him.

  Even though Joey was clearly surprised by the move, he drew his own weapon all the same.

  The stranger from the saloon turned on his heels and took aim at Mark and Joey in as much time as it took to blink. When he saw Mark drop a shotgun-wielding local from a nearby general store, the stranger refrained from shooting Mark.

  The man Mark had shot was a potbellied fellow answering the frantic call from the bank. He hadn’t even gotten a chance to bring his shotgun up to his shoulder before a round from Mark’s pistol caught him in the chest. After that, it was a short fall to the boardwalk.

  “Much obliged, partner!” one man in
a duster said.

  Although a good portion of the outlaw’s face was covered by the collar of his duster, he could be seen smiling. He kept his smile even as he took advantage of the chaos surrounding the shotgunner’s fall by shooting through the head two of the men still in the bank’s doorway.

  The other outlaw wearing a duster had rounded up three horses and was bringing them around. He fired every so often, but his shots were randomly placed to just do a good job of keeping the locals away.

  “We’re coming along with you!” Mark shouted.

  The stranger from the saloon shifted a pair of cold eyes to them and asked, “What?”

  Mark stood his ground as Joey fired at a pair of men who’d been trying to creep up on the outlaws’ flank. Joey didn’t drop anyone, but he did manage to clip one in the shoulder.

  Climbing into his saddle, one outlaw holstered his pistol and drew another from under his coat. “You keep covering our backs like this and you’re more than welcome to tag along. Just be sure you can keep up!”

  When he snapped his reins, his two partners followed suit. As soon as their horses got moving, all three men dug their spurs into the animals’ sides until they were bolting out of town.

  “What do we do now?” Joey asked as he frantically shoved fresh rounds into his pistol.

  Mark sent the last of his own bullets flying over the head of the closest local he could find, who just so happened to be the bartender from the saloon he’d just left. “You heard the man,” Mark replied as he ran to the post where his and Joey’s horses were tied. “Let’s tag along!”

  As he raced down the street, Mark could see the men that Joey had fired at crawling for cover. The man he’d shot as well as a few lying in front of the bank were obviously never going to move again. All Mark had to do from there was fire a few more shots into the air and watch the other locals scatter as he raced after the bank robbers.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  The first thing Clint wanted to do was move the gold. Considering how big the chunk was that was hidden beneath all those rags, it wasn’t exactly an easy job.