Chapter 7

I quickly reloaded my Navy Colt and handed a fistful of cartridges to Fiona. She quickly reloaded as well. We walked out from behind the wagon and towards the group of men coming out of the barn. I was listening for the sound of horses leaving the area in case there were still members of the gang trying to escape. There was no sound but that of a few men moaning in pain and the slight distant sound of girls in the barn crying.

The whole exchange had lasted about five minutes. All of the gang were down. I approached the nearest of the survivors and he raised his gun so I shot him in the face.

“If you’re still alive drop your gun and raise an arm. We’ll come and help you. If you raise your gun, you’re dead. Do it now!”

Two hands went up and the men in the crowd ran to them making sure they were disarmed. The doc came out of the barn when the coast was clear and began to look to the two men. More men came out of the barn with torches and began to look after the other men. Only the two the doc was looking at were alive.

I looked to the nearest townsman and asked, “Where is the Sheriff?”

“George is inside. He got shot. The doc did everything he could but it looks bad.”

I looked at Fiona and we both took to running to the barn. Inside the girls were in the arms of their family members or their fellas. One of the tables that had been holding food had been cleared off and Sheriff George Fellows was lying on it. Fiona ran to him and put an arm under his head.

“George, what happened?”

“They came in and the first thing they did was shoot me. What happened out there?”

“They came after Mick and me and we killed four of them, then we came back here and found that they were going to kill some girls if the town didn’t turn Mick over to them. Mick stepped up and the shooting stated. The entire gang is dead but for two men. Mick and I are OK. I don’t know if anyone else has been hurt.”

“Red?” a man said as he approached. “When they shot George the local men had enough and there was a rush to get our guns. We should have stood up to those men a long time ago.”

“Yes you should have. Where is the doc?” Fiona turned and ran for the front door to find the doctor.

I looked at George and said, “George this is what I was trying to avoid. You are like a father to Fiona.”

“I know and now you are there for her. Take care of her, Mick. She is all woman and all good.”

George shuddered a few times and then went still as he could be and he died. Fiona came back dragging the doctor who was complaining that she’d taken him away from his other patient. When she got to George and saw he was dead she screamed and ran out of the barn. A few seconds later I heard two gunshots.

The doc ran outside to find the wounded men had been shot in the head by the distraught former sportin girl. I took the gun from her and held her in my arms as she cried. She was almost calmed down when suddenly she spun in my arms and began to scream at the people that had gathered around.

“You should have stood up to those men! George wasn’t a gunfighter. He wasn’t prepared to defend himself. He was a gentle man. You should have been there to help him. I can’t wait to get away from you people!”

She pushed me away and she ran down the street towards the hotel. Jeremy Willis grabbed me as I was starting to follow her.

“Mick, she’s gonna be a wreck. Calm her down and bring her by the church in the morning. We three need to talk before you leave town. It’s important. Now go!”

I ran down the street and jumped onto the boardwalk towards the saloon and hotel. The men and girls from the hotel were standing in the street wondering what was going on. I ran up to one of the girls.

“Where’s Fiona?”

She just pointed to the saloon doors and I ran in. Fiona was in the middle of the room with her gun drawn. She was cursing everyone and no one as she turned in circles. The bank guard was carefully aiming his shotgun at her and was ready to kill her at the first sign that she was going to shoot someone.

I ran to her and wrapped her in my arms and took the pistol from her. I looked at the guard and he just nodded and lowered his gun.

“They let him be killed. They didn’t do anything until it was too late. The damned cowards. They should all die!”

“No Fiona, they shouldn’t. Please calm down.”

I led her to the bar and looked at the bartender.

“Two whiskeys.”

“The good stuff?”

“No the rotgut. She needs to be drunk fast.”

He poured two shots and slid them to me. I handed one to Fiona and said, “Here drink this.”

She took it and swallowed it fast. I handed her the second and said, “This one too.”

She swallowed it down and I looked at the bartender and held up two fingers. He poured two more. She quickly downed both of those.

I held up two more fingers to the bartender as Fiona began to lean over the bar on her elbows, her head down a bit.

“Here drink this.”

She swallowed down the next two glasses and soon was beginning to weave where she stood.

She looked at me and with tears in her eyes said, “I love you Mick. You aren’t going to leave me too, are you?”

“Of course not. I just married you. Come on let’s get you to bed so we can get an early start in the morning.”

“Yeah. Let’s get out of this God damned town,” her words were slowing down and her eyelids were half closed.

The bad whiskey must have been really strong because Fiona had drunk as much of the good stuff as I had and never blinked. I helped her to the doors to the hotel and up the stairs to our room. I propped her against the door to the room that had been Bear’s and quickly unlocked the new door to our room before she fell over. I picked her up in my arms and carried her to the bed, setting her down gently.

Not exactly the way I’d thought my wedding night would go. I carefully undid her wedding dress and when I removed it I was taken aback by what I found underneath. The underthings she wore were the same color as the dress I’d just removed. The top showed off her teats but the thing that got my attention was that the bottoms were open to show her curly red hair and what was under it.

Had Fiona been awake I would have been attacking her with all the strength I had. I stood next to the bed and thought about my previous marriage and how it ended in violence and how my new marriage had started off that way. Maybe this meant a turnaround of my fortune. I certainly felt strongly for this woman. I would have taken every bullet fired tonight to keep her safe.

I carefully moved her back and forth to remove the blanket and sheets from under her and pulled them up over her unconscious body. I sat in the chair next to the bed and began to plan our departure from this town. In the morning, we would pack up and load the wagon. We would have breakfast at the cafe and give our farewells to Thelma and Otto.

Preacher Jeremy needed to be on the list of farewells also. I would need to stop at the barber shop, especially since one of them had covered my back tonight with a cannon. That saved my life as the fella had the drop on me and my pistol was empty. Yes, I owed them a lot. I mean they did warn me about redheads.

I was about to wash up in the tub when there was a knock on the door. I got up to answer and thought to check that my gun was loaded before I went to the door. I stood to the side and slowly opened the door a crack and peered out into the hall. Arly stood there with a look of concern on his face. I opened the door and stepped out.

“What’s up Arly?”

“There are some men downstairs that want to talk to you, Mick.”

“Men? What men? Are they a part of Bears gang?”

“No, they are not part of that bunch but I don’t know that I would trust them.”

“What?”

“I was told to come get you. I told them it was your wedding night and they said they didn’t care.”

“Well I’ll be damned if I’m going to be ordered around by anyone who wouldn’t be willing to honor my wedding night. Let them know that I have declined their invitation.”

“They may not take that answer in a kindly fashion.”

“Arly, what the hell is the deal?”

“They are the men who own the cattle ranches and mines around here. They hired George as Sheriff. They figured that he wouldn’t get in their way too much.”

“And it got him killed.”

“Yeah ... and I think they want to talk to you about that.”

“Tell them I’m with my wife and I’ll talk to them in the morning. If they have a problem with that tell them to come up here in person and I’ll shoot them in person.”

“Mick, if I tell them that at least one of them may shoot me!”

“Seriously?”

“Yes. I’m sorry.”

“OK, my friend, let’s go.”

I drew my pistol, rechecked the loads, then checked the loads on my back up and put it in behind me in my waistband, and headed for the stairs. Who the hell did they think they were? If they had done this when Fiona was awake and making love to me, she might have shot them herself.

Of course had they not hired a nice guy like George as Sheriff he would still be alive and Fiona wouldn’t have to be knocked out drunk and I could be having a great wedding night and now I wanted to shoot somebody!

I headed for the stairs in a rush with Arly rushing behind me.

“Mick! Mick! Calm down!”

“I am calm,” I said angrily.

“No you are not! You have that same look on your face that you had when you took me outside the cafe.”

“And did I kill you?”

“No.”

“Did I shoot you?”

“No, but I don’t think I pissed you off as much as these guys already have or are going to.”

“We’ll see. Where are they?”

“In the saloon. In the back by the door.”

I hit the bottom of the stairs and turned a sharp right and headed to the saloon. I’d say that I pushed through the bat-wing doors but it was more like I exploded through the doors. My entrance was loud and violent enough that all activity in the saloon stopped. The people that had been outside to find out about the fight at the social came back inside.

In the back of the saloon, near the back door sat six men at the last table. My sudden appearance caused two of them to jump to their feet and lean towards the back door. The other four turned in their chairs and looked at me with what looked like contempt.

I looked at the guard in his chair with his ever-present shotgun raising from his lap as he saw me walk in with my pistol in hand. He acknowledged me with a nod and I returned it, touching the barrel of my Colt Navy to my hat brim. I went to the bar.

“Give me a glass of the good stuff, please.”

“Yessir,” he said in a bit of a rush, the drawn pistol making him nervous.

He got a glass and reached into a cabinet under the back bar and came up with a bottle. He filled the glass and I put a dollar on the bar. I turned to look at the six men and slowly swallowed half of the good stuff. I took my time to see how impatient they would get.

Two of them seemed to be shifting in their seats and the two that had stood and move towards the back door returned to their seats. I slowly finished the bourbon and walked to the back table.

“All right, what do you want that’s more important than my wedding night?”

“You know as well as we do,” one of the men said. “That you’ve been fucking Red just like I have, so a wedding night is just another night with just another cock.”

I stepped to the speaker quickly and slapped him upside his head with my pistol. His head snapped to the side and he collapsed forward, face first onto the table.

“Hey!” One of the men said immediately. “There’s no call for that!”

“Anybody else want to speak poorly of my wife? Whose name, by the way, is Fiona.”

“Just relax!” The same man commanded.

“How much do you want to bet that I can put a bullet in each of you before you know what is happening? Now, first you pissed me off by sending Arly up to interrupt my wedding night. Second, you interrupted my wedding night. Third, you disrespected my wife on my wedding night. Fourth, you interrupted my wedding night! Now tell me why I shouldn’t just shoot the mess of you.”

That got their attention. Three of the six raised their hands in surrender. Two of the other three sat their looking me over. The sixth man just sat there, unconscious, face on the table, bleeding from the gash on his head.

“BARKEEP!” one of the men yelled, “get a towel over here to stop this bleeding and clean up the mess. And you young fella, just calm down a damned minute.”

“I don’t want to waste a minute on you on my wedding night. Now talk or I’m going back upstairs.”

The man who’d begun giving commands spoke up. I figured that meant that he was the leader of this group. I looked at him with my pistol sort of lazily pointing in his direction.

“Could you point that elsewhere?”

“No.”

“It’s difficult to have a discussion with a gun pointed at me.”

“So this is a discussion? I was told that I had to come down here. So I’m here. START TALKING!”

“OK!” he raised his voice in return and I raised my pistol.

“We wanted to talk to you about our situation. As you know our Sheriff has been killed. We hired him because he was a good peaceful man and in this town, at the time, that was what was needed. Then a group of men came into the area and started causing trouble. They raided our mines and rustled our cattle. The Sheriff couldn’t stop them. They became more and more violent until the other day when you shot Bear Nilsson and tonight when his men came to even the score. Now our sheriff is dead and we’re not sure if the rest of the gang is active or gone.”

I yawned.

“I’m sorry. Am I boring you?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I’m sorry.”

“Yes you are. Why don’t you hurry and get to the point? I’m having to get up early and start back home with my new wife ... Who is upstairs waiting for me.”

“And that is what we want to talk to you about.”

“Finally!”

“We want you to stay here and be our Sheriff.”

“No.”

“No? Just like that? Don’t you want to know the details? The pay? The advantages?”

“Unless it is something I can do from Wisconsin, I’m not interested. Anything else?”

“Yes!” he said firmly. “You don’t understand. We want you to be the Sheriff. We will do anything to get our way.”

“Well, I don’t see anything you can do to keep me here and if there was and you did it, I’d hunt you down and kill you.”

“Are you threatening us?”

“No. I’m promising YOU. I’ve noticed that none of you have said your names. You’re thinking that will somehow stop me from getting to you. I have a small ranch in Wisconsin and a new wife. My first wife and two children were killed by indians and white renegades. It took me two years but I hunted every one of them down and their scalps are nailed to the posts around the gate to my home. You want your hair to join them?”

“I think we’re done here,” the leader said as he stood.

The four men stood with him and left their sixth member unconscious and bleeding on the table. I watched them walk out the front door of the saloon and when they were gone, I returned to my hotel room. I took off my clothes and climbed into the bed and settled in behind my passed out Fiona. I gently put my arm around her and closed my eyes.

I woke when Fiona stirred and got out of bed. I was about half asleep when I heard her using the tub to piss. She finished and crawled back into bed and put her back to me.

“How do you feel, Fiona?”

“Like you tried to poison me.”

“Well after you shot those wounded men and wanted to shoot all the people who stood by over the years and got George killed. You came storming into the saloon I had to do something so you didn’t get killed by the guard and his shotgun. So I figured to get you drunk.”

“Mick, I was a sportin girl. I don’t get drunk.”

“Well you passed out and I brought you up here.”

“What did I drink?”

“I don’t know. I told the bartender to give me the rot gut.”

“The rot gut! No one sane drinks that shit! How much did I have?”

“Six shots.”

“SIX!? I’ve seen men go blind from three!”

“I didn’t know! You were still fired up after two and not too bad off after four. After six you needed help up the stairs and into the room. You were passed out when I put you in bed and took off your dress.”

“Did you like my underthings?”

“I did, but not as much as I should have. I have to piss and then we can wash up and load up the wagon.”