Chapter 10

The two older French women attacked the house with a vengeance, while the two Irish women trained the French girls on how to ride a western saddle and to do other 'manly' things. The girls needed to harden up. There were no servants to do their bidding, as there had been in Paris. Plus it would be a long time, if ever, before the girls would be in polite society again. For better or worse they were on the frontier now.

Jean arranged for carpenters to do the needed repairs on the house, and made arrangements for enough firewood to last the winter. This was no mean feat as it was late in the season. He also made arrangements with the livery stable for long-term storage of their wagon, carriage and animals.

At this point, you might wonder how the liveryman could be trusted with all of the stores in the Irish women's wagon. Rest assured. The women had unloaded their stores into the storage shed attached to the back of their new house.

Madame Dupuis made the owner of the General store very happy during this period. She bought all the needed furnishings for the house from him: bedroom suites, parlor furniture, and so on. Everything was finally finished just as the first snow began to fly.

During this time, more of the Mercer gang arrived by ones and twos. The gang totaled twenty by the time the snow began to fall. The rough men drove out all of the normal people from the hotel and quite quickly the quality of the town deteriorated.

Even though it was now full winter people began to flee the town by whatever means possible, being driven from their homes by the gang's intimidation. The citizens of the town now had to pay the gang members for protection ... from the gang. If the money was not forthcoming the citizens were beaten. If they still didn't pay a killing would be a very visible warning to the survivors.

For some unknown reason those in the protection racket never approached those in the big house. That is until the Mercer brothers decided that they wanted to move out of the hotel and into that house. The problem was that Shaylee, Maeve and the French party, occupied that particular house.

By this time the Mercers were so confident, that is to say cocky, that they went to the house alone. The two men walked right in without even knocking and tried to push the two old women around. All of the others were out at the time.

However, since there was a language problem, the men were not able to make their demands clear and became frustrated. When Madame Dupuis took umbrage with the two interlopers, chastising them soundly in her language, all the while trying to get them out of her house with the use of her broom.

Ace Mercer, a brutal and volatile man, pulled out his Army Colt .44 and struck Madame Dupuis on the side of the head. She staggered back dazed. Unfortunately for Madame, Ace liked the feeling of the heavy weapon impacting the scull of the old woman and so kept on hitting her until he beat her to death!

During the brutal, crazed attack on her Mistress, Edmee managed to pull one of her pins and stab Ace's younger brother, Boyd. The pin slid easily between his ribs and entered his heart; Boyd instantly went into shock and then collapsed without making a sound.

Because Ace was so engrossed in the beating of the defenseless old woman, it took him some minutes to realize that Edmee was missing and that his brother was lying dead on the floor next to the open back door. Ace rushed to his brother, but there was nothing that could be done for the young man.

With an animalistic roar of anger Ace went through the house breaking anything that he could. He spent a good fifteen minutes destroying the possessions of the people that he considered responsible for the death of his brother. After all, it wasn't HIS fault. It never was.

During that time Edmee had manage to get to the General store. She crashed through the front door, and staggered to Jean weeping and screaming curses on the evil thug that was beating her Mistress. By the time Jean had calmed Edmee down enough to tell him the sad story, Maeve, Belle and the others had gathered around the distraught woman.

Upon hearing the story, they rushed out of the store as one, only to be confronted by Ace Mercer. He was covered in Madame Dupuis' blood, standing threateningly in the snow-covered street with nine of his men.

"That foreign bitch kilt my brother, and I aim to get some of mine back! Now give her to me or we'll open fire!"

"I warn you. If you try anything, you will die!" said Shaylee.

"Ha, ha, ha, ha! You people think you can win against us? We out number you! Those boys of your'n ain't no threat to us. Ha, ha, ha, ha!"

"Be that as it may, if you or anyone of your men makes a move, I will kill you first, Mercer."

The coldness of Shaylee's voice gave Mercer pause. He looked closer at Shaylee.

He then asked, "You the one they call the Spanish Kid?"

"I don't use that name, but others have called me that."

The big man thought for a minute, then he went for his gun! Shaylee drew and fired three times, before Ace's gun cleared his holster!

Shaylee's first shot took Ace between the eyes, blasting what few brains the man had out onto the white snow-covered street behind him, leaving a red splotch of gore in the snow. Before Mercer's body hit the ground, Shaylee killed the two men the stood on either side of their boss. At the same time Jean and the others drew and fired. The two men at the left end of the gunmen's line were hit in the center mass by Jean, his bullets hit slightly low but surely ripped through their diaphragms, killing both.

The two girls, this being their first face-to-face shoot out, shot just a bit wild. Cecile hit her man in his gun shoulder while Belle gut shot her target. However, before the miscreants could return fire, the girls corrected their error with a second kill shot each. At the same time, Maeve killed two men with heart shots.

The last man standing tried to run, but was cut down by a shotgun blast from Edmee. She had retrieved the storekeeper's shotgun from behind the store counter, and returned outside in time to see the man just begin to run down the alley next to the store. Edmee had led the shot just a bit too much. She caught the side of the man's face as he ran past. She completely removed his face!

The unfortunate man, thrown to the side by the force of the blast, lay in the opening of the alley twitching and making horrible gurgling sounds as he drowned in his own blood.

It was a turkey shoot, but things weren't finished yet! The other ten gang members attacked. First, four men ran out of the saloon straight at the 'dirty' foreigners, at the people that had just killed their friends, shooting. Two more ran out of the restaurant and the final four ran, half dressed from the Hotel. All were firing wildly.

"GET DOWN!" yelled Shaylee.

"GET UNDER COVER!" yelled Maeve at the same time.

Everyone hit the wooden deck!

The gang members were terrible marksmen. They never practiced with their weapons, because they had always gotten what they wanted by brutality! They threw lead anywhere and everywhere except for where their targets were.

Jean lay beside the girls and instructed, "Remain calm my children. Remember what you have been taught. Pick your targets. One shot one kill."

Edmee accounted for one more man as he ran from the saloon across the street, with the remaining shot from her doubled barreled shotgun. After that, all she could do was lie flat and keep her head down.

Some of the gang members were smarter than others. The smart ones ducked for cover while the stupid, or drunk, ones ran firing.

Since Shaylee and Maeve killed the first three men that had run from the saloon and Edmee had killed the fourth, the battle shifted up the street toward the Hotel and restaurant. That group of bandits was well covered by ice filled horse troughs or the corner of the building.

"Cover me!" Shaylee said to her sister.

Maeve nodded and sent a barrage of lead toward the enemy.

Without another word Shaylee rolled off of the end of the boardwalk and into the alley. She ran behind the buildings until she was past the position of the remaining six men.

She stopped, rested, and reloaded both of her guns. She was truly thankful that she had switched over to the new cartridges, from the old cap and ball ammunition.

She centered herself then dashed across the street two blocks beyond her enemy. They didn't see her! Next she ran along the backs of those buildings until she came to the alley where the gang members were hunkered down and shooting at her people.

Quietly she came up behind the gang members, and fired with both guns. All six were dead before they could turn around and fire back at her!

Shaylee yelled out, "THEY'RE ALL DEAD! HOLD YOUR FIRE!"

She waited for two minutes and then walked out into the street, again reloading her guns.

Now that the shooting was over, the town's people started gathering on the boardwalks and in the street.

"Maeve. You and Belle gather the valuables from that lot," Shaylee said as she nodded at the bodies lying in the street.

"Cecile, you come with me. We'll search this lot, here."

She retraced her steps toward the bodies that were in the alley. As Cecile followed Shaylee stopped and looked sternly at the young woman.

She said firmly, "Always reload your weapon! Never walk around with an empty gun!"

Cecile blushed, and quickly began to reload.

In the meantime Maeve and Jean reloaded their guns. Just as Cecile had needed to be told to reload, so too did Belle, and Jean was not kind about it. He knew that such lax behavior could cost lives.

The undertaker, a greasy, greedy little man ran up to Shaylee and asked, "Whoa now, fellas. If'n y'all take all them there valuables, who's gonna pay fer the burials?"

Shaylee looked up from the body she was working on and stared at the undertaker for a couple of ticks. She then stood up and grabbed the man by the shirtfront.

She said in her dark cold voice, "No one is going to pay you for burying this garbage, because you're not going to bury any of them! I will pay you five dollars to get a wagon, and load this filth up. Take them a long way out of town, and dump them. Let the vermin and the vultures have them. GOT THAT?"

The man went white and nearly lost control of his bowels as he nodded vigorously. Shaylee gave the man such a vicious shove, that he stumbled backward a few steps, lost his footing, and then sat down hard onto the frozen street. Shaylee looked around at the people that were gawking at her.

She noticed the store keeper and yelled at him, "YOU! STOREKEEP! GET TWO WHEELBARROWS AND BRING THEM HERE."

He hesitated and she screamed at him, "NOW!"

The man jumped about a foot into the air, spun around, and went running. He and his son were back in less than five minutes. Shaylee sent the son with his barrow to Maeve and kept the other with her.

"Cecile, load all of the weapons, boots, unsoiled cloths and money belts, any good stuff, onto this barrow and leave the rest for that greedy undertaker. If he wants to wash all of that shit and piss out of what's left, he's more than welcome," said Shaylee.

As they were stripping the bodies Edmee returned to the house to find her Mistress dead. The old woman was unrecognizable from the vicious beating. Weeping Edmee went back to Jean and announced that Madame Dupuis was dead.

Shaylee was working on one of the bodies when she heard the news. She jumped to her feet and yelled, "YOU! UNDERTAKER! COME HERE!" The little man came but he was shaking like an Aspen tree in a windstorm. 'The Spanish Kid' terrified him.

"See that woman over there next to the store?"

When the little man nodded Shaylee went on, "Go with her, we need a coffin for Madame Dupuis."

"Yes! Yes! Right away, Kid."

"I never should have helped that bunch on the stage. Now I'm the shootist called 'the Spanish Kid'," she muttered to herself.

Seeing that all of the valuables from the bodies were loaded onto the wheelbarrows, she ordered, "Ok! Move those barrows to the hotel. Let's make a complete job of this!"

Cecile and Belle did as they were told as Maeve walked over to her sister.

Shaylee glared and hissed through her teeth, "I hate towns!"

"I'm not too fond of them myself, at the moment. I really liked that old woman. She reminded me of Grandmum."