The Third Western Megapack. Johnston McCulley

you’re playing the Chinaman for a fool.” He kept eying the emerald sleeping potion. “Where the hell does Lee get absinthe? I can’t even get a bottle for my private stock.”

      “It’s not what you think it is.”

      There was a thud and a few sputtered expletives from the adjacent storeroom. Greig wasn’t going down without a struggle.

      “You clumsy ox!” I called out. “You break something, your boss pays for it.”

      Longstreet wasn’t paying attention. He was transfixed by the enticing green potion…so like liquid emeralds…so like rare absinthe…a man of indulgence, unable to resist temptation. He picked up the sparkling crystal glass and downed the contents in a single swallow. The taste wasn’t what he expected, and he grimaced. My nerves were beginning to fray. Why were the men taking so long? How long before the green stuff kicked in?

      “Now you can tell me what you did with Rolf’s gun.”

      “What does it matter? You’re through in this town. Your customers liked Izzie. They liked Lupita more than they like you. They finally know you for what you are.”

      “I might be through, but I’m not through with you.”

      Longstreet reached out and grabbed my hair close to the scalp. I gave a yelp of pain. He forced a bitter-tasting kiss on my lips and started ripping at the buttons of my dress. I jerked my head to the side and bit him sharply on the cheek. He let go of my hair and cocked a fist. I closed my eyes and flinched, but nothing happened.

      I looked into his face. The angry light in his eyes had lost focus. Strength wilted from his fist, then his arm, then his entire frame.

      “What’s in that…?” he said.

      “It’s called Sleep Like Death,” I said.

      His tongue thickened. He struggled to catch his breath, but failed. He was allergic to the medication and it was putting him into anaphylactic shock. His eyes rolled back into his head until only the whites were visible. He folded at the knee, hitting his head on the safe as he went down.

      Lee burst into the room. He looked at Longstreet lying in a heap on the floor.

      “What happened?”

      “Sleep Like Death,” I said. “He drank it.”

      “What do you mean? It’s only a sedative. Are you okay?”

      “I am now.”

      Jasper and Alvie dragged Greig’s bloody corpse into the room.

      “He put up one hell of a struggle. Even after we got him down, he took a long time to die.”

      The men scooped Greig off the floor and struggled him into the piano crate.

      “The bastard must have swallowed an anvil,” says Alvie. “I heard something pop in my back.”

      He moved aside while Lee and Jasper dumped Longstreet on top of his henchman. A moan was heard as they nailed the lid down tight and loaded the crate beneath the canopy of Jasper’s freight wagon. Alvie jumped on the seat next to Jasper and Lee, and I watched them disappear into the darkness.

      Back inside the store, Lee picked up a broom and tapped on the ceiling with the handle. I heard a door open at the top of the interior staircase. Light footfalls descended the stairs. Before my eyes was the most exquisite little creature I’d ever seen, her eyes demurely downcast, long black hair tumbling over her shoulders. She was dressed in white, silk brocade, tiny beaded slippers on her bound feet.

      “Susan, I’d like you to meet my thirteen year old niece, White Jade. She was kidnapped from the house of my elder brother in Shantou, China and will be living in the household of Woo Dock and his wife.

      * * * *

      The next morning, Lee and the Chinese boys delivered the piano to the Last Chance, where Alvie hired an old black piano man who’d panned out on Lost Horse Creek. The Chinese girls were freed and sent off to San Francisco to find suitable husbands. The other girls decided to stay, now that order had been restored.

      As soon as Lee and I had a moment to ourselves, we tracked down the preacher and tied the knot. A month later, we were married again in a traditional Chinese ceremony. I had no idea what was being said, but I got the general drift.

      * * * *

      At high noon, Jasper French pulled his team up next to a 200-foot drop in the badlands of Apache country. Longstreet had been a disruptive pain in the ass, cursing, begging, and kicking the inside of the crate for the last twenty miles, his silver spurs jangling against the wooden interior. Jasper couldn’t really blame him, being stuffed in a hot box with a dead man. He only wished he had the foresight to remove those fancy, Spanish spurs before they nailed down the lid.

      Jasper backed the wagon to the edge of the gorge and considered pumping a few bullets into the crate before he sent it cartwheeling into space. It would certainly be the civilized thing to do. Then again, Longstreet wasn’t a civilized man, and this wasn’t a civilized country. He fingered the arrowhead imbedded beneath his skin and decided he might just need his ammunition for a more worthy cause, like saving his own hide.

      Jasper climbed into the back of the wagon. It took all of his wiry strength to inch the crate along until gravity finished the job. He watched the crate somersault end over end until it was the size of a die and disappeared into the chaparral at the bottom of the gorge.

      Of course, someone would stumble onto it…eventually…an Indian looking for a lost colt or a bandit running from the law. It could happen tomorrow. Then again, it might not happen for a hundred years.

      In time he’d forget Longstreet’s face. He’d even forget his name, but he’d never forget leaving behind them fancy silver spurs.

      LADY SHERIFF SEES RED! by Barbara L. Bonham

      Stephanie Lawson shifted the big gun which lay across her knees and took a firmer grip on the driver’s seat atop the stagecoach. Her movement caught the attention of Andy, the grizzled old driver, and she flushed, feeling his eyes upon her.

      Thinks I’ve gone in over my head this time, she thought angrily. I’ll show him. I’ll show them all that I can do as good a job as sheriff as any man. They won’t be sorry they let me take over when Uncle Mort died. He was the best sheriff Red Rock ever had, and I’ll finish out his term if it kills me! She started. And it might do just that if I’m not careful. This job is by far the biggest I’ve come up against yet. I’ve got to stop these stagecoach robberies. The railroad has lost its pay-roll gold three times already, always when it’s being shipped from Ben Walters’ bank to the railroad office in Pine Junction.

      She ran the toe of her boot over the top of the iron chest which lay at her feet and smiled. Ben didn’t have to worry about the railroad getting its gold shipment this time. She’d see that the gold arrived safely at the railroad station or know the reason why. The smile erased the tense lines that had pulled at her attractive face, and her full mouth softened. Eyes that matched the summer sky above her blond head examined the surrounding countryside carefully.

      Nothing. This was too good to be true. The sunlight gleamed on the sheriff’s badge which was pinned to her shirt as she turned to look back over the road the stagecoach had already traveled. The heavy metal star-shaped badge looked strange on such an unmistakably feminine breast.

      The gleam of sunlight reflected by the badge flashed squarely in the driver’s eyes, and he smiled. “Steve,” he shouted above the din of coach wheels and horse’s hooves, “what do you think you could do if those two bandits held up this here stage again?”

      Steve turned around and looked up at Andy. Her eyes flashed angrily and her voice was stern with determination. “You can bet your boots I’d do a whole lot more than that lily-livered deputy who rode gun with you last time.”

      “Now there, gal, don’t be too hard on Jed. He didn’t have a chance to fire a single shot. They were too fast for us. He tried and got a bullet