ROMANCE: His Reluctant Heart (Historical Western Victorian Romance) (Historical Mail Order Bride Romance Fantasy Short Stories) (7 page)

              Jerry heard Dillard cock the hammer on his Winchester repeating rifle, the newest that had come out yet. It held a good handful of bullets in the magazine and was lever action. That made Jerry feel a whole lot better because Dillard was a crack shot with a rifle, one of the best that Jerry had ever seen. And Jerry himself wasn't a bad shot, but with a pistol. He was also one of the fastest draws on the front range. It had been up in the air who was faster, him or Slick Tony, but after they had a walk down not but a month ago that left Not so Slick Tony dead the mattered had been settled. So Jerry wasn't all that worried, even if it did seem like things were headed toward violence. It wouldn't be the first time, and it probably wouldn't be the last the way things seemed to be going. The government needed to do something about all of the crime that crossed state lines. So far it didn't seem to have an answer, so criminals that were wanted in Wyoming were free to ride down to Colorado with little chance of pursuit or capture once they arrived since states only talked to each other about the most wanted criminals.

              Dillard and Jerry had almost hightailed it out of Denver and headed west when things had really heated up the last summer. That's when they'd kept having run in with the locals bandits. Jerry couldn't believe they were going to have another. He just knew it. It was one of those times where he could feel something was going to happen as sure as if the sun was cresting the horizon and he could see the bandits mounting their steeds off on the distant prairie. Of course they wouldn't be out in the open and Jerry knew that, he knew that they would most likely be laying low in an arroyo, waiting to ride out and ambush them somewhere along this stretch of lonely road. While he thought about it Jerry slowly reached behind him grasped the stock of his double-barreled sawed off shotgun. In the dark it would be hard to see, and he'd specially loaded the two cartridges that were currently ready to go with nail heads and pieces of barbwire so the pattern would be wide and erratic. It was a trick Jerry had picked up while he was still a young man, from an old man who'd fought the Confederacy for the Union. That old man had been his grandad, and he'd said that at night there wasn't anything like a bunch of nail heads to scatter shot about the dark—if you weren't going to hit intentionally then why not increase the chances of an accidental strike? Jerry had found the special loads to be useful in situations where he only intended to let off both barrels at once, then drop the shotgun for his pistol.

              “They'll probably ride out of some gulch and surprise us,” Jerry said in a low voice. “When they get close enough to throw a rock at I'll let loose with the nail heads. That should put enough of the little metal buggers in their horses that most of them rear and bolt. Whoever is left we'll need to finish off quick with small arms fire.”
              Dillard didn't say anything, just put the butt of his rifle in the crook of his shoulder and settled into a waiting position familiar to shooters who have to sit for long periods of time at the ready. Dillard would be good to go, and Jerry knew that. It wasn't the first time they'd ridden out on some fools errand to find a group of people waiting to do them in. And every time that happened they managed to either get away or scare enough of them off that they could finish off the rest.

              “I've got one of them explosive things the miners gave us after that one job,” Dillard said, then spit tobacco off the side of the stagecoach.

              Jerry chuckled.

              “You mean the metal balls filled with gun powder? I didn't think those worked very well the last time we tried them,” Jerry said.

              Dillard spit again before continuing.

              “Well I had them etch a deep pattern onto the ball so that when it pops it should break into chunks, unlike the other ones that just shot off in one direction like a rocket.”

              Jerry chuckled again.

              “Yeah, those other ones sure didn't work that great that one time we threw them into the downtown Denver saloon to kill the McKinley brothers. All they did was shoot into the church across the street and start the damn thing on fire!”

              Both of the men were laughing as the remembered. They were being too loud, and they both knew it, but neither cared. The could hear the stamp of impatient horses waiting around the bend in the road. They'd learned to listen for little things that most of the bandit folk just didn't think about. Like the jingling of spurs if they were close, or the strike of a match. But a horses stamp could be heard at a distance if you knew what to listen for and if it was the dead of night and there wasn't anything else going on.

              “They'll be on us,” Jerry said.

              He pointed the gun down the road in front of them and sure enough a posse of bandits thundered out from around the bend, about ten abreast, as if at of nowhere. It was an old trick meant to scare and intimidate. Jerry muttered to Dillard to hold his fire until he let loose with the shotgun. The bandits slowed their horses to a slow trot and kept approaching them. Right when they were within a stone's throw Jerry let loose with the shotgun. The nail heads and wire must have dug into a few of the horses, and they whinnied and took off. The remaining men shot wildly toward the flash that had just blinded them and scared their steads, but were quickly put down by the combined fire of Jerry and Dillard. It took less than a minute and there was no one left but them and a few riderless horses milling about the road.

              “Didn't even have to let off the popper!” Dillard said. “These boys might be softer then we make them out to be.”

              “Might be,” Jerry said. “Or might not be. Maybe that was just the skirmishers, sent out to draw fire and see what the rest of the posse would be up against.”

              Dillard thought about it for a minute before spitting again.

              “They'd have to be the God damned stupidest sons of bitches if they actually knew that was what the posse was using them for.”

              Jerry grunted an acknowledgment and then leaned back and told Bell to be still back in the stagecoach, that she didn't have to worry. Bell didn't answer. When Dillard checked on her the tremor in his voice told Jerry something was really wrong.

              “She's asleep,” Dillard said. “But not in a natural way. Someone must have slipped something into her drink at the saloon. But that means that they knew she was in Boulder.”

              “And that means that they know we are here now,” Jerry said.

              Jerry checked Bell's pulse and found it to be going pretty strong. It didn't seem like she was in any kind of emergency medical state, so they let her be. Jerry and Dillard climbed back into the driver’s seat and got the horses going at a pace that would have them to Denver in no time.

              “Think they'll be at the hotel when we get there?” Dillard asked.

              “Sure as shit you know they will,” Jerry said. “But I'd rather fight in a hotel, or from a hotel, then have a bunch of those assholes ride down on us like that again. Bunch of fucking bushwhacking scum is what they are. I bet they work for the Mexican Army or gangsters when they aren't out here trying to scare and intimidate people into giving up without a fight.”

              Jerry heard Dillard take a long pull from the flask he always had with him.

              “Yeah,” Dillard said. “But I don't know, man. One of these days we aren't going to be lucky. One of these days these motherless whores will ride down on us and lay us out dead like we done to so many others. And I know in the end every man has to be killed, or die, which is much the same. But I don't know if I've got the taste for all this like I used to. It just isn't as fun and it's always the same.”

              “I hear you,” Jerry said. “And I'm hoping that after this gig we can get on at the bank as full time security. Can you imagine that? Just working eight to five every day? Because I hear at night they take all the money and put it in a big vault and just lock it up. Locked up money don't need no one to watch over it. Or at least that's what I suspect the thinking is. So we would have the nights and weekends to ourselves. It could be a pretty good deal.”

              Dillard spat again, then took another long pull. Jerry always wondered how some people could keep a plug of chew in their mouth and drink whiskey at the same time. It wasn't something he could do himself.

              “Well, in any event, up ahead is the hotel,” Dillard said.

              They had to wake up the clerk to check them in. Jerry took it as a good sign since the clerk would be up already if the gang was in cahoots with the hotel. Dillard didn't seem to care one way or the other. He kept his popper handy and threw Bell over his shoulder like she didn't say anything at all. The clerk looked at the three of them strange, but when Jerry's eyes flashed a warning the clerk slunk back into his room and closed the door.

              The room they'd rented was one story above the ground—high enough people would need a ladder to get in, low enough they could jump out without injury. Unless they were unlucky, then they'd jump out and break an ankle and be as good as dead. Neither of them wanted to jump, but they always thought about what might happen if the place they were in was set ablaze after a job not too long ago where that very such thing happened.

              “What's . . . going on?” Bell said as she stirred on the bed.

              “We made it to the outskirts of Denver,” Jerry said. “Someone must have put something in your drink at the saloon in Boulder. Sunrise is in about an hour.”

              “I had the most horrible dream,” she said in a voice that sounded very weak. “There were explosions and mean screaming as they died.”

              For a second Jerry froze. Had there been men screaming? He thought back to it. Now he heard the screams, echoing in his head. It was happening again, he was detaching from some of the reality that he didn't like. While Dillard worried about getting killed Jerry was much more worried about losing his mind, because it seemed like it was happening. He couldn't sleep most nights, kept having dreams where he'd see the cattle thieves he'd caught being led up the gallows. Or maybe it would a dream where he was running through the desert, pursued by a faceless man as swift as a thoroughbred horse. During his waking hours Jerry would see thing sometimes. He'd read it was called Soldier's Heart by some doctors, that it might have to do with all the terrible shit that he'd done and seen. Jerry was sure that it was affecting Dillard as well, wearing on his soul. They saw and dealt so much death, and somehow neither of them had ever been touched.

              “JERRY.”

              It was Dillard's voice.

              “Snap out of it, they're surrounding the hotel,” Dillard said.

              Jerry was back and in action, just as suddenly as he had slipped away into his own head. Bell looked at him strangely as he moved back to life, like a slipping gear in his head had suddenly caught.

              “Start shooting,” Jerry said. “It's almost morning. If we even so much as wing a few of them then they'll lay low and by the time they get the balls to try something else the sun will be up and they'll have to fall back or get shot to pieces.”

              So both of them moved from window to window, firing out into the night at any shadow they deemed to look enough like a man to warrant some kind of violence. Then they went room to room, scanning out into the night. Most of the hotel was vacant, so that worked in their favor. The clerk got jumpy, though, and Dillard had to put a gun to his head and tell him to calm down to get him to lower his voice a little bit. After doing one round of room to room shooting into the night around the hotel the two men did another, then a third. By the time morning rose both men were low on ammunition. But alive, and thankful for that.

              “So it turns out the clerk has a telegram machine down there,” Dillard said.

              They were back in the room discussing what they should do.

              “Well, I think Bell here should wire the bank opening and tell them it'll be delayed for a day. And then wire our friends in the mountains and see if they can't come down here with some moon shine and ammunition.”

              Jerry and Dillard had made fast friends with some of the mountain peoples that lived in the foothills. And although sometimes they weren't the best kept or well-mannered people, they would come down and help if they could. The mountain people hated the law men and the bandits, which made them easy allies for Jerry and Dillard. Dillard went down to tell the clerk to send out the two telegrams, and then to telegram everyone he knew to let them know they needed to send a posse up to take care of the bandits.

              “What do you think will happen?” Bell asked.

              She looked scared. She was lying in bed but nothing but her lacy underwear with the sheet pulled up over her. She looked like the shooting had really frayed her nerves. Which it should have.

              “Now, we wait. I don't think anything bad will happen, though, if that's what you're asking me. If they were going to storm the place they would have done it already. Now they have to wait until night fall, and by then we'll have already left, or we'll have been resupplied. I'm hoping to have already left, but not on our own. With an escort. If can get a couple of the mountain folk to come down here and ride with us into Denver no one will touch us, I can guarantee you that much. Not after what they did to the last bandit bunch they caught up in that pass in the winter, after the bandits had raided their food stores.”