Chapter 6

Beau decided to drop the bank robbery quest. By now, the trail was too cold to be worth following. If he ran across one of the men, all well and good, but he was not interested in a chase that was almost certainly doomed to failure. Therefore, Beau went back to his former routine of checking with bartenders and trying to be especially observant.

Two weeks after his delivery of the second robber to Higgins Run, Beau was riding east on the lookout for Jesse McFadden. A bartender had clued him in on this fugitive, and the lead looked good, so he decided to follow it up. McFadden was worth $150, so Beau could afford to spend several weeks actively chasing him. So far, the chase had led Beau in a great arc, first east, then south. It was as if McFadden was headed somewhere specific, but Beau couldn't decide where it was so that he could cut McFadden off before he got wherever he was going. The chase turned into a long one, and Beau was getting disgusted with the whole thing.

The next town Beau came to was Hell Hill Junction, so called because it was at the crest of a very long hill and a railroad ran up that damned grade for seven miles. It was the railroad workers who had named the place, and the name was very appropriate. This was the point where a branch line ran off to connect with the San Antonio and Northern RR. There was a small service facility located here because so many locomotives needed adjustments and/or repairs after the long struggle up Hell Hill. The service facility was a joint venture of the SAN RR and the Houston and Western RR.

Anyway, Hell Hill Junction was also appropriately named for the class of citizens it serviced. The place was full of saloons and brothels—the exact number varied as old places closed and new ones opened up. The word was that there was not a woman in town who was not for sale, at least the space between her legs. When trains passed through, which was three or four times a day, the conductor walked through the train advising the "decent" women not to get off, no matter how long was the wait. A restaurant in town offered a box lunch to the people stuck on the train so that the women would not have to get off.

It turned out that Jesse McFadden was due to meet six other men at a particular saloon because they planned to hold up one of the trains that stopped in Hell Hill Junction to change engines and crews. McFadden was in town when Beau rode in. Beau was making his routine walk through the saloons talking to the bartenders when he recognized McFadden from his picture on the wanted poster.

There was a small problem, McFadden was seated at a table with four other men, and they all seemed to be good friends. Shit! Five men were just too many to fight all at the same time. Beau decided to try the ploy he had used before of waiting for his man to visit the jakes and take him there. This seemed like a workable plan, so Beau bought a Mexican beer, he had developed a taste for it, and sat to one side of the saloon waiting for McFadden's bladder to start talking to him.

Dammit, three hours and McFadden had not shown any tendency to be affected by the four beers that he had already drunk. The man must have a bladder the size of demijohn! Finally, Beau's bladder could stand it no longer and forced him to the jakes.

Hardly had Beau relieved himself and walked out of the jakes when McFadden showed up to use the facility. After all, Beau was a gentleman, so he allowed McFadden to relieve himself before making the arrest. McFadden stepped out of the door, still adjusting his pants, when Beau pointed his revolver at the man and demanded that he surrender. McFadden raised his hands, and that's when all the shit went flying!

Beau was backing away to allow McFadden to walk ahead of him out to where the horses were tethered when a pistol shot rang out from the saloon door. Beau dodged one way and McFadden dodged the other way. Neither one had been hit, so it was simply a matter of regaining balance before either one could react to the shot. At this point, another shot rang out, obviously aimed at Beau, so he had no choice but to find shelter.

Fortunately, Beau was very close to the outhouse, so he jumped behind that so that he could no longer be seen from the saloon. Beau had seen a man standing in the doorway, but he had not been able to do more than glance at him. He did identify the man as one of those sitting with McFadden at the table in the saloon. Obviously, the man's intention was to lend aid to McFadden, whatever the reason might be.

By this time, McFadden had escaped to the corner of the saloon where he found a little shelter, but nothing that was really adequate. There was a wall at the other end of the little alley, so there was no way that McFadden was going to run much farther in that direction.

Meanwhile, the other three men from the table had also gathered at the saloon doorway, so the original problem of one against five had again reared its head. Beau was at a distinct disadvantage, even though he had in his two LeMat revolvers 16 bullets and two shotgun loads. He was going to have to reload while under fire, while an enemy could reload while his friends kept up a rain of fire. There seemed to be an impasse at the moment, so Beau took advantage of the situation to add two more cartridges to his guns. He now had 18 bullets, but he had the feeling that 18 bullets was not going to be enough. Such was the reputation of Hell Hill Junction that Beau knew that he would receive no help from the general public, though, in all probability, several would gather as close as they dared to watch the entertainment of the gunfight.

This was not getting the situation resolved, and Beau was afraid to let it get too dark for him to have good shooting conditions, so he decided that it was time to move things along. McFadden actually had the poorest protection of any of the antagonists, so Beau decided to concentrate on him, first. As insurance, he did lean out far enough to take a couple of shots at the doorway, but he was pretty sure that he did not hit anybody. Beau hoped those two shots would discourage anybody from the saloon from running out to try to flank him.

With almost no pause except to replace the two cartridges that he had fired, Beau switched his attention to McFadden and sent three bullets in his direction. Beau had switched his gun to his left hand to take these three shots. Beau had spent a lot of time in the Army perfecting his left handed shooting, so that he was nearly as good with his left hand as he was with his right. As a result, the shots at McFadden were not idle or wasted, but one actually scored a trivial wound. Mostly, this served to scare McFadden into slinking farther back into the cul de sac he was in. McFadden was no hero, and he exhibited that trait at Beau's first shots in his direction.

McFadden could no longer be seen, and his yelp of pain had told Beau that he had scored, though it probably was not a significant wound. Beau quickly replaced the three spent cartridges. He knew that this would surprise his foes, since they did not expect him to have a gun using metallic cartridges which could be reloaded so fast, nor did they expect him to have guns capable of nine shots before they were empty. These were a major and a minor advantage, but it was up to Beau to make maximum use of these two advantages.

As the saying went, "Time was awastin'!" Beau had to score a major coup very soon or the enemy might decide to do what they should be doing and all charge him at the same time. Beau switched his attention back to the doorway. He hoped to get a good angle by firing from the left hand side of the outhouse. He aimed as carefully as he could at the edge of the doorway. His idea was to catch somebody standing behind the left doorjamb for shelter, but not far enough to the side. He rested the gun barrel against the wall of the outhouse as he fired, expecting to get a little help from a steadier support. He fired off two shots as fast as he could cock and aim. Beau was rewarded by a scream of pain—there was nothing trivial about that wound!