The Third Western Megapack. Johnston McCulley

      Forgive me if I don’t wear black veils and widow’s weeds, but Rolf didn’t know I existed once he began his love affair with gold. Because I was stranded in a leaky tent on the banks of Lost Horse Creek at the tail end of summer, I dutifully cried a few tears and got on with the business at hand. Except for half an ounce of gold dust, a tired mule, a laying hen, and a handful of clothes and cooking utensils, I was flat busted.

      I’d never wanted to leave our homestead in the mid-west to strike it rich in the Wild West, but Rolf was a stubborn German, the kind who was always right.

      Now, he’s dead right.

      I packed up old Tom and headed for Dry Rock. It was just as dry and dusty as the name implies, but it was where we purchased supplies and made a few friends. Like most wives who were dragged west, only to be widowed or abandoned, I was left with three options. I could starve, sell my virtue for two bucks a pop or…well…I hadn’t figured out option number three. All I knew was that I wasn’t particularly crazy about choices one and two. I had a few things working in my favor. I was young, pretty, and determined to survive. If I was going to starve, I might as well have stayed in Ireland where I was born.

      Once I arrived in Dry Rock, I pitched tent in a vacant lot between the Last Chance Saloon and Quan Lee’s general store. Lee was a handsome young man who’d been born in San Francisco and spoke English more properly than most of the drifters and miners that walked through his door. Except for holidays when he wore red and gold embroidered silk, he wore traditional black pajamas with a shiny queue that fell to his waist. His store carried a little bit of everything, but he’d grown wealthy outfitting gold miners who were chasing their dreams.

      Lee was the closest thing Dry Rock had to a doctor. At the back of the store he kept bottles and jars of mysterious powders, potions, and elixirs labeled with Chinese characters. On occasion, a white person under the cover of darkness would leave through the back door with medication to cure his ills.

      “Good afternoon, Mrs. Krause,” said Lee, as I lay my purchases on the counter.

      “It’s just Susan Coyne, now that Rolf is gone.” With my long auburn hair and green eyes, the Germanic name never suited me any more than Rolf did.

      “Gone?” said Lee. “Gone how?”

      “Gone, like in shot dead for gold that was probably worth less than the bullet that killed him. He got more sand in his boots than gold in his pan.”

      “My deepest condolences, Miss Coyne. Perhaps he was born under an unfortunate placement of stars.”

      “Yes, he was not a lucky man.”

      Lee measured out a small sprinkling of gold dust and returned the remainder to me in its red velvet pouch.

      “I hope you don’t mind my setting up camp next door. I need a day or two to figure out my next move.”

      “A quiet neighbor would be nice for a change,” he said, gesturing toward the saloon. “There’s a rain barrel beside the store. You’re welcome to the water.”

      “Thank you, you’re very kind.”

      His eyes rested for a moment on my face, his expression unreadable. Perhaps he was wondering how long a woman with limited resources could last in a hell hole like this. I wondered the same.

      * * * *

      That evening, I watered Old Tom and placed Miss Penny in a box of straw in the tent. I bathed by lantern light, then lay awake listening to the rowdy uproar from the saloon, the shattering glass, the drunken laughter of bar girls, the scrape of boots as fights erupted onto the boardwalk out front. Sometime after midnight I drifted into restless sleep.

      The next morning I woke with an idea. Miss Penny wasn’t exactly the goose that laid the golden egg, but chickens and eggs were a rare commodity in frontier towns, and by noon I’d sold two lovely brown eggs for two dollars each to a lady who wanted to bake a cake for her daughter’s wedding. That left me with two eggs in my basket. Perhaps it was premature, but it gave me a guarded sense of optimism.

      Sheriff Longstreet stepped out of the saloon and strode my way. Despite the heat, he dressed in a black suit with a vest and tie. Silver spurs with Spanish rowels jangled with every stride, and he displayed a gun at his hip. My mother would have labeled him a real “show-offy” person, the kind you don’t want to get too close to.

      Longstreet had blown into Dry Rock the previous year, running unopposed for the position that had cost the last two sheriff’s their lives. When asked about his background, his story changed with every telling, but he got the job anyway because no one else would take it. When he purchased a high quality horse, whose price far exceeded that of a sheriff’s lowly salary, people started to buzz with speculation.

      I shaded my eyes from the sun that bounced off the silver conchos on his hat.

      “I heard about Rolf,” he said. “Tough break.”

      “News certainly travels fast.”

      “He was an idiot to leave Wisconsin with all that water and nice green grass. He was out of his element here.”

      “It’s a little late to impart that gem of wisdom, Sheriff.”

      Longstreet had dark eyes, but no matter how hard you looked, you could never tell if they were brown or deep blue. A trill of anxiety ran up my spine as he took me in from head to toe like a butcher trying to decide which cut was the juiciest.

      Lee was setting out crates of vegetables in front of the store, and when he glanced up and saw my distress, he dropped what he was doing and walked over.

      “Good afternoon, Miss Coyne. Sheriff.”

      Longstreet gave a stiff nod. “You’re just the person I want to see,” he said. “I’m looking for a girl called White Jade. I thought you might know her whereabouts.”

      “I haven’t seen her,” said Lee. “I don’t frequent that side of town.”

      “How noble of you. I’ve heard Woo Dock has been trying to buy out her contract.”

      “My brother does not traffic in human flash,” said Lee.

      “Certainly you’ve heard rumors. People talk.”

      “I’m a businessman with no time for idle gossip.”

      Faced with Lee’s impenetrable wall of non-information, Longstreet’s demeanor shifted. A bead of sweat ran from beneath his hat band and down his forehead. I could almost smell the bad blood between them. If the sheriff had been a bull, he’d have been pawing the ground and snorting fire.

      “You know,” said Longstreet, “there’s talk of moving all of you Chinamen to the far side of Dry Creek, in which case I might be willing to take the store off of your hands if, of course, the price is right.”

      Lee gave him a hard look. “That’s not going to happen, Mr. Longstreet. How about you stick to your side of the street and I’ll stick to mine.”

      “Now that we’ve had our little chat, I hope you’ll be so kind as to excuse us. I have a matter of importance to discuss with Mrs. Krause,” said Longstreet, dismissively.

      “I’d like Lee to stay,” I said. “And it’s Miss Coyne now that Rolf has been murdered.”

      “Murdered? It was more likely an accident. He was a bad aim with a bad gun.”

      “That may be true, but how he managed to shoot his mule after he was dead is something you might care to contemplate.”

      “Well, you got me there. The point is, I can’t see how you can make it on your own now that he’s gone.”

      “You presume a great deal for someone who barely knows me.”

      Longstreet snapped a match to life with his thumbnail and touched it to the end of his charoot, the smoke collecting beneath the brim of his hat.

      “You