The Third Western Megapack. Johnston McCulley

When the smallest girl among them began to wail, Squarehead backhanded her in the face and the others went silent. He rushed them up the back stairs to the cribs, and the night once again went quiet. I wondered if White Jade was among them.

      As I turned back toward the tent, a wavering candle flame appeared in Lee’s upstairs window. A shadow moved across the shade, then two shadows met in an embrace. I dropped my gaze, a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach.

      I realized with a jolt that Lee had come to mean more to me than just the man who ran the general store. I had sensed a connection between us, a subtle visceral tug…at least I thought I had. I took a deep, centering breath. I’d been indulging myself in a fantasy born of loneliness and misdirected longing. It wasn’t Lee’s fault. He’d made me a cup of tea, not a promise, and I’d been foolish to read more into it than was intended. A chill gust of wind lifted the hair from my shoulders and ruffled the hem of my nightgown. I slipped quietly back into the tent.

      * * * *

      The next morning, I tucked my feelings away, unwilling to admit that a heart can be as fragile as one of Miss Penny’s eggs. I put on a smile, my blue calico dress, and arranged my hair in one long braid down my back. There was a big brown egg in the straw beneath Miss Penny, and I sold the last two in my basket to the preacher’s wife. She and the preacher had a rough row to hoe if they thought they were going to Christianize the heathens in this town. As she walked away, the eagerly awaited freight wagon pulled in front of the saloon. For the inhabitants of Dry Rock, it was better than the circus coming to town.

      Jasper French jumped down from the high wagon seat and commenced watering his six sweaty mules. Longstreet stepped out of the saloon with some kind of document in his hand, and I moved closer to the boardwalk to get a better view of what was going on. Jasper examined the Bill of Lading, and soon the men were engaged in a heated conversation. Jasper, a crusty character not easily intimid-ated, held his ground, and Longstreet stomped back into the saloon.

      A feisty black terrier began nipping at the heels of the mules. After a kick sent him rolling in the dust, he changed tactics and chased a cat up a pole. I picked up Miss Penny, placed her in her box inside the tent, and tied down the flap.

      After Jasper finished watering the mules, he pulled the wagon in front of the general store. Lee waved me over, and the three of us went inside. We settled in chairs around the barrel, and Lee passed out bottles of sarsaparilla.

      Jasper was as done in as his team. He took his hat off and rolled a cigarette. He was a tough sun-pickled mule skinner who delivered goods to the far-flung outposts of the west. He had been shot by bandits, porcupined with Apache arrows, but never lost a shipment, To the delight of local youngsters, he’d display his multitude of scars and let them feel the arrowhead still embedded somewhere north of his liver. Of course, a harrowing story went with every battle wound.

      “So, what’s going on at the Last Chance?” said Jasper. “I’ll be damned if I’m going to turn Izzie’s piano over to Sheriff Longstreet. It’s been bought and paid for, and if it goes to anyone, I figure his son is next in line.”

      Lee proceeded to tell the story that he heard Longstreet repeating all over town.

      “That’s a crock,” said Jasper, scraping a match to life on the sole of his boot and firing up his cigarette. “The only place Izzie is headed is Boot Hill. I found him lying in a gully twenty miles east of town with two bullets at the base of his skull. Indian’s don’t kill folks that way. This was an assassination, plain and simple. His son Alvie and the undertaker are on their way out there now.”

      “This comes as no surprise,” says Lee. “What was the paper Longstreet was waving in your face?”

      “The Bill of Lading for the piano and the Bill of Sale to the saloon.”

      “Did the Bill of Sale look genuine?” asked Lee, leaning forward in his chair.

      “Yes and no,” said Jasper. “It was signed by Dunne all right, but instead of Isadore Markham Dunne, he signed it, I. M. Done.”

      Lee and I look at one another in disbelief.

      “That would never hold up in court,” I said. “Dunne was trying to tell us the document was coerced.”

      “What court?” said Jasper. “The Circuit Judge won’t be back in Dry Rock for another six months.”

      “Then we’ll need to come up with a plan of our own,” said Lee. “If you can get a hold of Alvie, we can meet back here tonight.”

      “Sounds like a good plan,” says Jasper. “In the meantime, there’s a great big piano blocking access to your delivery.”

      The piano came in a sturdy wooden crate, and I got out of the way while the men wrestled it into one of the two back rooms of the store. Jasper helped unload the wagon, and after he left to bed down the mules at the livery stable, I stayed to help stock the shelves with the new merchandise. There was coffee, flour, sugar, tobacco, whiskey, patent medicine, hard candy, bolts of calico, prospector’s tools, guns, ammunition, lanterns, tents, boots, slickers, and toys. It was all very exciting.

      Lee opened the door, and customers piled inside. I soon found myself measuring cloth, bagging vegetables, and weighing gold dust. By the time we closed at the end of the day, I was in high spirits and wearily brushing dust from my sleeves.

      “That was fun,” I said, tucking a stray lock of hair behind my ear.

      “Here comes your reward,” said Lee, opening the door for the boy from the Chinese restaurant who arrived with steaming bowls of vegetables, rice, noodles, and deliciously seasoned beef with mushrooms, all in cartons and packed in a woven basket. Lee paid the boy, and we feasted around the pickle barrel. Afterward, we settled back and finished the meal with green tea and fortune cookies.

      “I couldn’t have managed without you today, Miss…”

      “For heaven’s sake, Lee, we’re friends. Please, call me Susan.”

      “Susan then. Did you know I was married when I was just a boy?”

      “No, I didn’t know that.”

      “It was a long time ago. We were only together a year when she died giving birth to a stillborn child.”

      “How very sad. You must have been heartbroken.”

      “I’ve long been resigned to one day dying an old bachelor. Then a pretty green-eyed girl came to town with an old mule and a pet chicken and I began to hope that in time…”

      A shrill scream cut him off mid-sentence. It was a shocking, terrified scream, followed by the sound of feet clattering down the boardwalk. We dashed outside, expecting to see a child run down by a wagon or gunfighters squared off in the street. Instead, we found a crowd gathered in front of the vacant lot. Every eye was focused on the side wall of the Last Chance Saloon. A girl was hanging by the neck from the second story window.

      I heard a man say: “It’s that Mexican whore used to be so popular. Look! Someone’s cut off all her long hair.”

      “Oh my God, it’s Lupita,” I said. Lupita’s left foot twitched, and her shoe fell downward into the dust.

      “Come inside,” said Lee. “There’s nothing we can do.”

      I looked over at my tent. Something wasn’t right. The tent flap was wide open and some of my things were lying in the dust. I rushed over with Lee behind me.

      My clothes were scattered around inside the tent. Miss Penny lay motionless in her box. I knelt down beside her nest. Someone had broken her neck and a shattered egg lay in the straw. A bolt of fear shot through my body.

      “Old Tom!” I cried, gathering Miss Penny in my arms and running from the tent. When I saw the mule nibbling nonchalantly on a clump of sage at the back of the lot, I let out a cry of relief. I started to cry and my knees began to tremble.

      Lee waved over three Chinese boys who had gathered at the edge of the crowd. He barked something