“I ain’t never been kicked out of no store twice.”
“You have now.”
“I got me a big gun!” He waved the revolver. They were still twenty feet apart.
Dub Montgomery signaled from the doorway. “I’ll go get Daddy Brazos.”
“Nope,” Todd called back. “I’ll take care of this.” Why do all my clerks think I can’t get along without my father?
“Just leave the store and I won’t have you arrested.”
“I ain’t leavin’ without money.”
“You pull that trigger and you’ll miss me, injure your wrist even worse than it is, and get thrown in jail for attempted murder. That’s not what you want.”
Perspiration dirt streaked down the man’s flushed face. “Well, I cain’t back up. I told ’em at the Piedmont that I wouldn’t get shoved out again.” He lifted the gun and pointed it at Todd.
“Did you know that Walker Colt has mud in the barrel?”
Tidy Dumont turned the barrel around and peered in. “Well, I’ll be.”
“Did you steal it? Or do you own it?”
“It’s mine.”
“I’ll buy it from you for three cash dollars,” Todd offered.
“It’s worth five.”
“I can get a brand new centerfire Colt revolver for seven. Why would anyone pay five for an outdated cap and ball?” Todd reached in his pocket and pulled out three silver dollars. He held them out. “You can hike back down to the badlands, buy a round for your friends, and brag about how you made a good trade on an old worthless pistol. That’s a whole lot better than hurting yourself or getting arrested.”
The man didn’t lower his pistol, but Todd could tell by the man’s eyes the confrontation was over.
“Do I get my knife back?”
“Yep. Do you promise not to come in here unless you have a bath and cash?”
“Yep, I guess I do.”
Todd handed the coins over the shelves to the man and retrieved the heavy pistol, barrel first. “Mr. Toluca, get this man his knife, please.”
When the big man ambled out of the store, Carty mumbled, “That ain’t the way Daddy Brazos would’ve done it.”
Todd opened his mouth to reply, then shrugged. “Tell Mr. Montgomery I’ve gone to lunch.”
Rebekah Fortune tilted her head to the right and folded her arms across her chest. “Do you mean after being threatened with knife and gun on the same day you still won’t even consider the offer?” she seethed. Curls from her light brown bangs drooped across the corners of her forehead like an inverted V. Her long hair was carefully pinned and stacked neatly on the back of her head. Her thin lips drew tight into a straight line.
Her brown eyes narrowed. They hid nothing.
Disappointment.
Frustration.
Boredom.
Todd Fortune had seen it all before.
Often.
Too often.
The black silk scarf ribbon tied around the high, white-lace collar of her blouse gave her a schoolteacher’s scolding look. “Father says one day Rapid City will be the most prominent city in all the territory. Sure, there are only three hundred people there now, but the railroad is coming. He says it’s essential to open a bank there now.”
His stiff white, four-ply linen Garcia collar unfastened, his black tie hung loose, his suit coat neatly on the back of a chair, and his polished black boots by the door, Todd leaned back on the flower-print, cretonne-covered, hair-stuffed settee.
He closed his pale blue eyes and ran his fingers through his light- brown hair. In the background he could hear a familiar rumble, one that every seasoned citizen in Deadwood could sense and feel above the dull thunder of the stamp mills echoing down from Lead, four miles away. “I thought you hated the Black Hills because of the sparsity of population,” he countered. “At least up here in Deadwood, Lead, and Central City we have six or seven thousand folks. This is home. I built this house with my own hands when no one lived on Forest Hill but Ol’ Rocker Dan. This is where we belong.”
“This is your home, Todd.” Rebekah’s voice softened. “Even with my father’s furniture, it has never felt like mine. And now with him moving back to Chicago, I feel rather abandoned.”
“It’s that time of the month when everything looks bitter to you, Darlin’,” he suggested, without glancing at what he knew would be an exasperated glare. “Give it more time.” He listened to the reverberation on Main Street. In his mind he could see Handsome Harry Hansen holding the ribbons of a six-up team of nickel-plated harnessed white horses as they thundered up the dusty street through China Town, through the badlands district, past the Gem Theater, and roar up to the front of the Merchant’s Hotel.
“More time?” Rebekah fumed as she strutted across the oval Turkish carpet. “We have been married four years. And, if you remember, I have felt like this most every day.”
How could I ever forget it? Todd let his breath out slowly, trying to relax his face. He rubbed his thick mustache and goatee. “Perhaps we should go for a ride next Sunday. Get out of town. Find some fresh air,” he suggested. Todd thought he heard Handsome Harry’s “Yip-yip-yip-yip-yi-yi-yi-yi!” as he brought the northeast stage to a halt. Handsome Harry. Big blue eyes. Thick drooping mustache. Rosy cheeks. Leather-tough skin. Deep booming voice. Hands as wide as a shovel.
Rebekah stopped by the head of the settee. Todd squinted his eyes open just enough to a spot a glimmer of hope in his wife’s eyes. Rebekah Jacobson, you have captured my heart with those dancing eyes from the first day we met.
She stooped over and began rubbing his vest-covered shoulders. “Why don’t we ride down to Rapid City? Just for fun. I want to look at it once more. Perhaps you’re right. Maybe it will never amount to anything more than a hay camp. But I want to see it again.”
“I’ll take you, but I’m not going to move there. And I do not want to manage a bank,” he asserted.
She bent over and placed her soft lips on his. “Thank you, Mr. Fortune.”
“Junior,” he added. “Folks seem to need to remind me that I’m not my father.”
She stood up and stepped back. “You aren’t Junior to me, Todd Fortune. Daddy Brazos has never been as captivating as his oldest son.”
“You lean down here and kiss me that way again, and I’ll definitely be captivating!” he chuckled.
“Do you want your pie now?”
“You know what I want now.”
“Your grouchy old wife?”
“In that case, I’ll have the pie.”
“I thought so. Lunch hour is about over. ‘Fortune and Son Hardware’ will be missing its co-owner.”
“They can get by without me.”
“That’s exactly what I’ve been saying!” she called back from the kitchen.
“But only for a few hours. You know that. Dad doesn’t want a business to run and Dacee June is only sixteen.” He could hear dishes rattle in the cupboard and didn’t know if she had heard him.
He closed his eyes again. His thoughts slipped down the steep stairs to Wall Street and down to Main Street where the stagecoach would be sitting. Fearless Handsome Harry. His white Stetson cocked to the side. Leather reins in one hand, swirling whip in the other. White horses prancing to catch their breath, and passengers doing the same.
“Would you like me to warm it up?” she asked.
Todd tilted his head back to the kitchen’s open doorway. “One look at sweet Rebekah’s smile ought to melt the cheese, the apple pie, and the china plate.”
“Oh, you are one smooth talker for a Texican,” she laughed. “I’ll warm it in the oven.”
Todd laced his fingers and slid them behind his head. She wants me to be a banker. I should have taken Mr. Lander’s offer and become a Wells Fargo stagecoac
h driver. They must be the most fearless men in the territory. No fear of wild animals. Nor of outlaws. Nor of Indians. No worry of narrow, rutted roads.
And no fear of a strong-willed wife with her mind made up. “In the shadow of thy wings will I make my refuge, until these calamities be overpast,” he muttered as he sat up.
“What did you say?” Rebekah asked. She entered the parlor toting a slice of apple pie in one hand and a fork in the other.
“I was just mumbling a Bible verse I’m trying to memorize.”
“I trust it wasn’t about a nagging wife being like dripping water . . .” She handed him the pie.
“Aren’t you going to have any?”
“No,” she insisted. “I need to lose some weight.”
Todd stared at her and shook his head. “You? You don’t weigh a hundred pounds now.”
“Dacee June and I stopped at the meat market today and weighed ourselves. I weigh 112 pounds. That’s four pounds more than I did when we married.”
“You worry about your weight too much.”
“And you worry about our future too little.”
“Our future is fairly well taken care of. We are partners in a successful business, own mining interests, and have one of the nicest homes on Forest Hill. What should I be worried about?”
“Me. Todd, I really do need to move,” she reasserted. “I am tired of being cooped up in this house every day.”
The pie tasted sweet in his mouth but hit his stomach like a lump. “Rebekah, tell me one advantage that Rapid City would have over Deadwood.”
“I’ll tell you two.” She folded her arms again as she paced the long, narrow room. “Sunrises and sunsets.”
“What?”
“There are no sunrises in Deadwood. We live in a hole in the ground. There is never a golden sunrise or a glowing sunset.” She paused by the front window and glanced down at Main Street. “I want to look out my window and see something besides Deadwood Gulch, pine trees, dirt, and the top of every building in the badlands.” She leaned closer to the window. “And your sister running up the steps.”
Todd stood and walked to the window, carrying his pie. “Is she going home, or coming here?”
“Here, apparently.”
He set his pie down and began pulling on his boots. “They must need me at the store.”
“She’s carrying a revolver in her belt. I really don’t know why Daddy Brazos doesn’t insist that she be more ladylike.”
“He figures she can’t compete with the likes of you and Jamie Sue . . . so why not let her be herself.”
“When she carries that revolver, she intimidates every teenage boy in town.”
“When she carries that gun, she intimidates all the men in town. Maybe that’s Daddy’s point.”
“Well, whatever the point, we have company.”
Dacee June burst through the front door without knocking, her tall, black lace-up boots banging out a sense of urgency. “They tried to hold up the stage, and Handsome Harry’s been shot!” Dacee gasped. She bent over at the waist to catch her breath.
Todd pulled his wool trouser leg over his boot and stood, fastening his starched white collar. “How’s Harry?”
“He’s not fumed, if that’s what you mean,” Dacee reported.
Todd buttoned his thin black tie and pulled on his suit coat. “Did they steal anything?”
“The treasure coach doesn’t go out until next week.” Dacee June was still gulping for air. “Besides, there isn’t anyone who could stop Handsome Harry’s stage.”
Rebekah stood at the window and looked down toward Main Street, fifty feet lower than their front door. “I trust Harry will recover.”
“Doc said he’d be okay. Harry worked the bullet out of his shoulder with his fingers as he drove into town!”
Rebekah’s face instantly lost all color. “He what?”
“Sit down, Darlin’,” Todd urged her. “I’ll go check it out. Dacee June, you sit with Rebekah for a spell. She might need some smelling salts.”
Rebekah plopped down on the settee and leaned over, putting her head between her knees.
“Did you see that freight train from Sidney pull up to the store?” Dacee June announced.
Todd peered down at Main Street but could only see what was revealed in front of Wall Street’s narrow opening. “He finally made it?”
“Daddy thinks we ought to inventory everything as it’s unloaded. You know how we had trouble with them last time.”
“Yes, well, that is my job.”
“I’ll come down and help you as soon as Rebekah can sit up.”
Her head still between her knees, Rebekah mumbled, “I’ll be alright. You two go on and help Daddy Brazos.”
“Daddy left with Sheriff Bullock and the others to go find the hold-up men.”
Todd jammed on his broad-billed hat and scooted toward the open door. “They have a posse already?”
“Daddy got mad about them shootin’ Handsome Harry, and figured the robbers ought to give account before Judge Bennett . . . or God Almighty.”
“I’ll go with them,” he announced.
“They already left.”
“I’ll catch up. Where was the hold-up attempt?”
“The other side of Montana City,” Dacee June reported. She pulled the revolver from her belt and waved it toward the east. “I’ll bet it was out there where that mudslide was last spring. If I was a hold-up man, that’s where I’d stop the stage.”
Todd tugged the Colt single-action .45 from her hand. “I’ll borrow this and go catch up with them.”
“What about the freight wagon?”
“He can wait. We waited for two months for him to get here from Sidney . . . he can wait two hours to get unloaded.”
“Todd, be careful,” Rebekah called out as she cautiously sat up.
“With Daddy Brazos and gang already on their trail, the only ones that are going to get hurt are those would-be robbers.”
Todd started down the steep steps that led to Wall Street. He called back to Dacee June standing on the wooden front porch by the open doorway. “How many were there?”
“Four, but there’s only three left,” Dacee June reported. “Handsome Harry said one was fool enough to stand out in the road and try to stop the stage.”
“What happened?”
“Harry ran six white horses right over the top of the man. He said that he didn’t think there was enough left of him to scrape up and bury. I sure wish I could go see that!”
Even twenty steps down, Todd could hear Rebekah’s groan.
“Hey, Big Brother!” Dacee June called out. “Where did you say those smelling salts are?”
Todd Fortune rode northeast on Sherman Street to China Town, then along Whitewood Creek toward Elizabethtown. He kept the tall white horse at a canter. The stiff saddle leather slammed into his back side.
You been off the range too long, Todd Fortune. You’re getting soft. I’m not a businessman. Especially not a banker. I’m a rancher. That’s all I ever wanted to be. That’s all Daddy ever wanted to be. But we’re too successful to quit. That’s the one good thing about failure; you always get to try something new.
When Todd arrived at the base of Splittail Gulch, he found a Mexican boy sitting cross-legged alongside the road on a rolled-up, green canvas tarp.
“Timateo, did Sheriff Bullock and Daddy Brazos come by here?”
“They just left, Fortuna-hijo.”
Fortune Junior? Is that how I’m known? Thanks, Daddy. “Which direction did they go?”
The young boy waved his hand to the east. “Up the road, past the mudslide. Are you going to help them?”
“I thought I owed that much to Handsome Harry.”
“I vo
lunteered to help them, too,” the boy reported. “But the sheriff wanted me to stay here with the dead bandit until they return.”
“Where’s the bandit?”
The boy pointed to the rolled-up tarp he was sitting on. “In here . . . most of him, anyway.”
“Is there a shortcut I can take to catch up with them?”
“You could ride over the mountain.”
“It looks kind of steep.”
“Mi hermana can do it.”
“How old is your sister?”
“Doce años.”
“I’m a little older than twelve, but I’ll give it a try. If they ride back this way without me, tell Fortuna Padre where I’ve gone.”
A wide smile broke across the boy’s face and he nodded.
The main road swung to the north, but Todd cut east through the brush and soon found himself at the base of a steep mountainside. The draws were thick with small pine trees. Most of the rest of the mountain was littered with yellow pine stumps and abandoned test holes of long gone zealous gold seekers.
Todd zig-zagged the white gelding up the loose soil and rock of the mountain. He leaned forward and slid back against the five-inch dished candle of the Texas saddle. The horse responded with each touch of the spurs by lunging on up the embankment.
I trust the west slope is not quite so severe. Must be gradual enough for a twelve-year-old. ’Course, he didn’t say if she broke her neck or not. Anyway, it feels good to be riding the hills. Maybe Rebekah’s right. Maybe it’s time for a change. But not until Robert retires from the cavalry. He and Jamie Sue and little Frank can move to town and help Daddy and Dacee June with the store. Maybe then Rebekah and I will go to Texas and buy a ranch.
Todd reined up. “Take a breather, Boy . . .” A ranch in Texas? Talk about isolated. She’s a city girl, Lord. I knew that when I married her. I don’t know if she will ever feel comfortable anywhere west of Chicago.
He laid his large roweled spurs to the horse’s flanks and started back up the mountain.
I reckon it doesn’t matter. Especially when she throws those arms around me and holds me tight. Lord, I told you this before . . . but when you built Rebekah Jacobson Fortune, you did a fine job. A real fine job.
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