Chapter 4

“I am not a gunfighter!” I said rather strongly. “I’m not!”

I took a breath and closed my eyes to allow the sudden anger to pass.

“If I have to use a gun, I can, but it’s never something I enjoy and I never look for situations to use a gun.”

Thelma stepped back a little, just looking at me. I guess the strength of my answer took her aback. Same thing with Fiona.

“Now then,” I asked calmly, trying to change the subject. “Can I please get some pancakes, eggs and potatoes and some of that hot sauce?”

“Sure, Mick,” Thelma said quietly. “What would you like Fiona?”

“Pancakes please,” Fiona replied just as quietly.

The two of us sat quietly as Thelma hurried off. We sipped our coffee in silence, Fiona looking all around the room and out the window, me just looking at Fiona’s face. There was nothing harsh or masculine about her face. The skin was smooth and the freckles made her look like maybe she was part fawn. Her bright red hair was pulled back into a ponytail with a ribbon holding the hair together near her head and another holding the end together as it reach halfway down her back.

Folks came in and left, all glanced or took a good look at our table. I wasn’t sure if it was because of me from the previous morning, or from being with Fiona last night, or her manner of dress this morning.

Finally, Fiona could not take the silence between us any longer.

“Mick, who are you?”

“I’m Mick Llewellyn. I’m a farmer and small time cattle man from northern Wisconsin.”

She paused for a second and asked, “Then who is The Phlox Kid?”

I paused, drinking a little more coffee, still looking at her face.

“Fiona, he was a known man in the Black Hills area. He was a Sheriff. He rode shotgun on some of the northern stage lines. He was known as a fair man and one very slow to anger. He was a husband and a father.”

“Mick, you’re saying the word ‘was’ an awful lot.”

“That’s because he was all of those things. He isn’t anymore.”

“What is he now?”

I took another long drink of coffee, looked Fiona in the eyes and said, “Apparently he’s your man.”

“My m...”

She froze in mid-sentence. Her eyes opened wide. Her hands moved swiftly to her face, almost knocking her coffee cup off the table. She quickly leaned forward to stop the coffee mug from falling to the floor when the window she was next to broke and the sound of gunfire filled the room.

I jumped out of my chair, lifted and tipped over the table to put it between Fiona and the window. At the same time, I drew my gun and aimed at a figure outside with a pistol pointed at the window. I fired two shots and heard a scream and then it was all quiet.

Otto came running out from the kitchen with a shotgun in hand. Thelma was right behind him. She ran around the room checking if everyone was OK. Then she came to the area around my table and checked the folks around us. A man at a table next to us had been shot in the leg and was on the floor. His wife was in a panic.

Otto ran out the door and turned to the left where a crowd was gathering outside the broken window. He parted the crowd with the barrel of the shotgun and when people moved away he saw the body of a woman on the boardwalk. She had a pistol in her hand and two bullet holes in her. One in the stomach and one in the chest. He didn’t recognize her.

I put my pistol back in the holster and lifted the table off of Fiona. She was dazed and more than a little shaken up. I picked up her chair and took her hand to help her stand. Turning her to sit in her chair, she almost jumped out of her skin when she saw the broken glass of the window next to her.

She began to breath fast and shallow and I had to calm her down before she passed out. I placed her hands on the table and put my own hands on top of them.

“Relax, Fiona. It’s OK.”

She made a few incoherent sounds before she could form words.

“What ... what...?”

“Someone took a shot at you. I suspect it was the woman from the hotel but I haven’t been outside to look.”

“Why?”

“Cause I’ve been here worried about you.”

“No! Why did someone shoot at me?”

“Don’t know. Maybe she wanted to get back at you for the beating you gave her. Maybe she figured since I shot her man that she was going to shoot my woman. Maybe she was going to shoot both of us. I don’t rightly know.”

“Your...”

“Mick, would you come outside please?” The Sheriff asked from the doorway, interrupting Fiona’s words.

“Excuse me, Fiona,” I asked calmly before standing and moving towards the café’s front door.

The Sheriff led me to the body on the boardwalk. Otto was keeping the crowd back and off the boardwalk. I looked down and sure enough it was the woman from the hotel. I’d killed her.

“What happened Mick?”

“I don’t know much, Charlie. Fiona and I were sitting at that table. Fiona almost knocked her coffee off the table and as she leaned forward and a bullet came through the window. I drew my Colt and saw the pistol so I shot where I thought the other end of the shooter’s arm would be. That’s all I know. I mean other than seeing her now and seeing that she’s the woman from the hotel.”

“You don’t know her?”

“Until this morning, I’d never seen her in my life.”

“Why do you think she shot at Fiona instead of you?”

“I don’t know. Maybe I was at a bad angle for her. Maybe she wanted back at Fiona for beating her in the saloon. Maybe she figured that since I shot her man that she would shoot my woman. Hard to tell.”

“OK. Come back inside.”

Charlie headed for the door and I looked at Otto as I walked past him.

“I’m sorry for the trouble, Otto.”

He just looked at me and shrugged. I followed Charlie back into the café and saw the man on the floor. A few men were around him trying to stop the bleeding from his leg. It wasn’t real bad so I knew the bullet hadn’t hit an artery. Fiona was still sitting at the table. She’d picked the mugs off the floor and had them set where they should be if we were both sitting in our normal manner.

“Fiona? Are you all right?”

“I think I’ve lost my appetite. Can we go?”

“Nope. We’re going for a ride, remember? And you need something to eat. Stay here.”

I got up and went to the big stove Thelma used to keep the coffee hot. I grabbed a cloth off the rack next to the stove and with it the handle of the pot. Returning to the table I poured hot coffee into Fiona’s mug and then mine. I returned the pot to the stove and came back to my seat.

Some men the Sheriff had deputized were taking care of business outside and Otto was sent back inside. He looked around, saw that Thelma was safe and moving around the room checking on folks. He went back into the kitchen. Fiona jumped a little when I pulled out my pistol and emptied the two spent cartridges before replacing them with new ones from my belt.

“Calm down, Fiona. Everything is going to be fine.”

Otto came out of the kitchen with two plates of pancakes.

“Mick, I figured you and Fiona were going to need something to eat right away.”

He turned and picked up a jar of preserves and one of molasses from an empty table and set them on ours.

“Thelma will get the rest of your order in a little while,” he said before looking around at what was now a bit of a chaotic scene. “Maybe you should eat slow.”

That made me chuckle.

A couple of men lifted the wounded man and carried him out the door towards the doctor. Thelma rearranged tables to where they were before they’d been scattered by people falling to the floor when the shooting started.

“Mick, Fiona,” Thelma said coming to our table. “I don’t know what to say. We never have trouble like this.”

“What about what you said to Arly?” I asked.

“That’s just fighting. We never have gunplay.”

“Well, I’ll be leaving soon and that should calm things down.”

“You haven’t done anything to start trouble, Mick.”

“No but it does seem to have followed me here.”

“Do either of you want anything more than the pancakes?”

“I’d like that bowl of the eggs and potatoes and some more of that red sauce,” I replied.

“And you, Fiona? What would you like?”

“I ... I don’t know.”

“Thelma, let us work on these pancakes and see how she feels.”

“OK, Mick.”

Thelma walked away and I turned my attention back to Fiona. Her hands were on the table but she wasn’t eating. I reached over and picked up her fork and knife and cut the stack of pancakes into smaller stacks.

“There, just add the preservatives or molasses and eat up.”

Fiona had been watching me cut up the food on her plate. When I was done she looked up and into my eyes again.

“How do you do that?” she asked.

“I just stick the fork in and cut across...”

“NO!” she cried out, her eyes misting over. “How do you just shoot someone and then go on like nothing happened? You did it with Bear at the hotel and now with the woman. It’s like it doesn’t bother you at all.”

I took a breath and picked up my coffee, taking a slow sip before answering.

“Of course it bothers me. But I didn’t start it. They chose their path. They carried out their own actions. I didn’t even know them. Now they’re dead and I won’t ever know them. No feelings that I have are going to bring them back or make them not potential murderers. They didn’t matter to me before and they don’t matter to me now.”

Fiona took a drink of coffee and picked up her fork. She used it to scoop out some preserves and smear them on the pancakes before stabbing a couple of layers and eating them. As she chewed, her eyes were darting around the room. She was looking at me, the ceiling, me, the broken window, me, the floor, me.

“As soon as you’re done eating, I’ll either take you back to the saloon or I’ll saddle up our horses and you can go riding with me.”

She chewed a little more, still not being able to focus on any single thing. I finished chewing my mouthful, took a drink of coffee, and furrowed my brow at the potential of the moment. I took another mouthful of pancakes and thought. Fiona didn’t say any more. The expression on my face seemed to tell her to be quiet and wait.

Thelma returned with my eggs, potatoes, and red sauce. While Fiona finished her pancakes, I finished the bowl of eggs and potatoes. The sauce had little more attitude than the previous one and I used a napkin to wipe the sweat from my brow.

Thelma stopped at the table and said with a laugh, “I warned you that some of those jars might be a little stronger.”

I chuckled and paid Thelma. Then Fiona and I walked outside. Fiona paused to look back at the blood stained spot on the Boardwalk. She shook her head and turned us towards the livery stable.

We’d been riding in silence for over an hour when Fiona asked, “So where are we riding to?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know? But you said that you’d tell me where we were going after breakfast.”

“I’m not from around here, remember. I thought I’d just let you pick the destination.”

“And you were going to tell me that when?”

“When you figured that we’d gone far enough.”

Fiona let out a gruff noise and reigned back to stop under a huge old oak tree that was next to a stream. She dismounted and I joined her. She took her horse to water and I did the same. She removed the saddle from her horse and picketed the mare so it had good access to water and grass. I did all the same things with my stallion.

She quietly pulled her bedroll off her saddle and spread it under the oak. She removed her saddle and placed it at one end of the opened bedroll and lay down and patted the space next to her. I placed my saddle next to hers and joined her. She snuggled under my arm with her head resting part on my shoulder and part on her saddle.

After a very long time just listening to the stream, birds, and horses, she asked, “Mick, the Phlox Kid WAS a husband and a father?”

Of all the things that Fiona could have asked that took me aback.

“Yes.”

“Why is it that he WAS a husband and WAS a father?”

“I told you that my place is just outside the Menominee Reservation. One night a group of drunken Indians and white men came while I was gone. They raped my wife and scalped her and then in the tradition of the Sauk and Ojibwa they took my two daughters, only 1 and 3 years old and they held them by the legs and beat their heads against the rocks by the Wolf River.

“When I returned, I found what was left of them after the animals had at them. I found a totem in my wife’s hand. She must have ripped it off one of the indians during her rape. I used it to track the man down. I tortured him until he gave me the names of everyone he knew in the raiding party. Then I took his cock and sack and scalped him.

“I tracked each one of them down and got more names from them. As I found each man, I tortured them, removed their cocks and sacks, scalped them, and then crushed their heads in with a rock I carried with me from the site of my children’s deaths.

“I killed the women and children of the first two men I found before I realized that the women and children had nothing to do with the deaths of my family. I live with that horror every day. I killed a total of eight men that participated in the raid, and that made me a known man.

“For a long time I’d walk through an empty house and an empty farm and get reminded every day of my loss. It took a lot for me to do this drive but it helped a lot.”

Fiona looked at me like a thought had just dawned on her.

“Mick how long ago did this happen?”

“It’s been almost three years now.”

“Three years,” Fiona exclaimed quietly. “How have you survived, you poor, dear man?”

“I’ve done just that, Fiona. I survived. That is until I got here and I met you and you called me your man.”

“I did, didn’t I. You know that I mean it, right?”

“I hope that you do. I’d like to think that from now on you ain’t a sportin’ girl no more. And that maybe when I go home I won’t go alone; I’m hoping that you’ll come with me.”

She was quiet again for a long time.

“Mick, I have no idea of how many men have had me. I don’t think I could even venture a guess.”

“Does that mean that you don’t think that you could live with the idea of being only with one man?”

“I can if you’re my one man.”

She rolled on top of me and I took her in my arms and hugged her tight. She returned the force of the hug. We seemed frozen together for the longest time.

When she rolled off me, we still remained together. I had my arm around her shoulders with my hand gently caressing her right teat. She had her right arm on the hard lump that had grown down towards my pant leg.

“I think I’ve come to love the feel of this,” she said softly.

“More than when it’s inside you?”

“Oh of course not. But don’t be surprised if sometime I don’t just walk or ride out to where you are just to take a hold of it.”

That reminded me of a time and I must have tensed up.

“What’s wrong, Mick? Did I say something wrong?”

I took a breath and said, “No Fiona. It’s just that my wife used to do that. She’d walk out to the barn, take hold of it through my pants, kiss me and walk back to whatever she was doing.”

Fiona removed her hand from my cock.

“I’m sorry. If this brings back bad memories I’ll stop.”

I turned my head and kissed the top of hers as I took a firmer hold of her teat.