Chapter 5

The bloody shootout that managed to make headlines as far away as Saint Louis caused the Territorial authorities to send down a pair of U.S. Marshals to help restore order to the valley.

The pair of lawmen consisted of a pathetic shell of an over the hill shotgun-toting oldster with glasses and bad eyesight and a young reckless wannabe fast draw artist with no sense of accuracy. Still, the badges made all the difference and the place quieted down at least for the duration of their stay.

Sam was nursing a lingering mess of a hangover from the previous night's routine debauchery and drank the morning coffee down before it had cooled down enough to not scald his tongue. Now his headache was still with him and his tongue was smarting something fierce. He tried to distract his focus from his discomfort to the mundane chore of cleaning his guns and checking his ammo for defects. Sometimes the shells were slightly dented from their exposure to the constant riding in the saddle and the fixing of the fences that helped keep their stock from straying. He usually carried a spare box of cartridges in his saddle bag to bolster the rounds on his belt and in his six-shooters.

It was the sign of a hired gun and not a run of the mill cowboy more interested in the whores upstairs over the dusty barroom or the card game going on in the bunkhouse almost non-stop.

Sam's female boss Belinda was caught up in ordering some finery from the catalogues the men-folk liked to take with them to the outhouse for private reading material. Those copies were well worn in the undergarment and foundations section and the faces of the models were more familiar than the transient girls in the local house of pleasure. He had watched her turning the pages comfortably mounted on her flanks looking over her shoulder at the pictures and thinking they didn't hold a lamp to what he had sliding nicely between his legs. It didn't even bother him that she was more interested in getting the right numbers from the desired articles to write into her order form. She seemed to always have a package arriving on the train or the stagecoach from back east on a regular basis. It was a reminder that the frontier was becoming closer and closer to the civilized east every day and soon the dangers of the west would become a thing of the past and no longer a way of life.

Just the other day Sam had read in the Tucson newspaper that came out twice a week now that his old friends in Texas, the Turner brothers, had been dispatched in a shootout with the Texas Rangers down Abilene way and would not be joining him for any card games in this life. It was sort of an eye-opener for him because they were known to him as the most cautious of gunslingers and seldom willing to take a risk if it could be avoided.

The young hired guns these days were not only careless about risk-taking but they even seemed to invite confrontation for the slightest insult real or imagined. He did his best to stay far away from that new generation because it was dangerous just to be in their vicinity when the lead started flying in every direction endangering bystanders with no interest in the outcome.

The pain in his ventilated leg was beginning to distract him from his headache and scalded tongue so he figured it was a good time to limp over to the saloon and get a quick pick-me-up to push away his aches and pains. He knew it would be a little while before he would be riding anywhere so he made up his mind to take advantage of his limited mobility and stick close to Belinda for some soothing medicine of the feminine variety. If she was too busy with her many interests, he speculated that there were some fairly decent new females at the gentleman's club that would be more than satisfying in a recreational way providing they didn't get too rambunctious what with his bad leg and all.

He met Blackie inside the saloon and bought him a drink knowing he was like a bottomless pit when it came to whiskey. He liked having him at his side in a gunfight because he was about as accurate a gun that he had ever seen and in some ways even more proficient with a gun in his hand than he could ever hope to be. The grizzled oldster was also skilled in figuring out which opponent was the most dangerous in a gunfight and would always take him out first when they were facing a host of enemies. Blackie was not the sort to be twirling his gun or even pulling it unless he was committed to doing serious harm to the men in his sights without any sense of mercy. Mercy was a trait that the somber but seldom sober gunman despised as the worst weakness a man could ever be saddled with if he wanted to have a long life in the wild west of sudden justice.

Belinda had asked him to stop at the train station to see if her most recent order had arrived from Saint Louis on the noon train.

He was tempted to take up Blackie's offer of joining him upstairs for a two on two romp with a pair of dark-haired beauties just in from Denver where they had been used hard by miners with lots of money to spend and nothing to spend it on except whores and booze. They still seemed interesting to him because they retained that youthful nubile attitude that all males were drawn to like bees to flowers.

He decided to keep his promise because the chance of Belinda giving him some sympathy humping in the late afternoon was enough to chase away all his aches and pains and fill him with anticipation of joyful mattress pounding being careful of his bad leg.

The station platform was almost empty except for a sleeping dog that was so motionless that he suspected it might even be dead. It was ornery-looking enough for him to keep his distance because he certainly didn't want to add a dog-bite to his other ills for no other reason than curiosity.

The railroad attendant came out of the office and wheeled a long flat platform on wheels to the spot where the freight car door would open and disgorge the packages for delivery in the town. Usually, the recipients were all aware of the arrival and would make their way to the office to claim their goods in a prompt and expected manner. He knew that Belinda was a frequent visitor to the office and would have some employee carry her goods to the house unless it was small enough for her to carry alone.