A Hero in the Making. Laurie Kingery

      It was evening when Nate awoke. He saw that Salali was already stirring around, his turban back in place, his clothes brushed. Hope rose in Nate that his employer had seen the sense of what he’d said, and decided to accompany him to supper—if it wasn’t already too late, he thought, wondering what time the petite pretty woman closed her establishment.

      “You going to Ella’s café with me?” Nate asked. “I’ll bet it’ll be the best supper we’ve had in a long time.” He stepped up to the cabinet on the side of the wagon and used the comb and mirror that he kept there to spruce up a little. Maybe he ought to give himself a quick shave, he thought, after glancing at his beard-shadowed face, and pulled out his razor and a bowl, which he’d fill with water from the burbling creek just a few feet away.

      “No,” Salali said, a challenging note in his voice. “I’m going to go play faro and drink as much whiskey as I please, and don’t think you’re going to tell me different.”

      Nate shrugged, trying to tamp down the anger that boiled within him. There was no arguing with Salali when he got this way, but he didn’t have to make it easy. Surely if he remained firm, his employer would thank him one day. “I don’t know how you’re going to do that,” he said, taking the bowl and striding toward the creek. “You don’t know where the money we made today is, and I’m not about to tell you.”

      He heard Salali following him, and figured he was going to try to wheedle him into changing his mind. He never saw the other man raise his arm, but a second later, he felt a crushing blow to the back of his head and felt himself falling. The fading light of dusk went black.

      * * *

      Ella had just dressed and was heading out the back steps of the boardinghouse the next morning with a basket full of eggs to scramble and a covered dish of bacon to fry for her café’s breakfast offering when she saw Detwiler trudging across the street toward her, looking as if he’d lost his last friend. His normally hound dog–droopy features were saggier than usual, and his eyes red-rimmed, as if he’d just been weeping.

      Unease gripped her. While not of an overly cheerful nature, he was normally an even-tempered man. She hurried forward, alarm clenching her insides. “George, what’s wrong?”

      “They wrecked the place, Miss Ella, that d— ’scuse me, Miss Ella, them awful snake-oil salesmen.”

      Ella froze. “W-wrecked it? What are you saying?”

      “Tore it up. Ever’thing inside is all smashed, ’cludin’ your café. Sheriff noticed a broken front window, and found it all smashed up inside. He came out to the house and notified me, and I just came from seein’ the damage. I’m ruined, Miss Ella. We’re both ruined.”

      Ella felt a coldness wash over her despite the early warmth of the morning. She set the covered dish down on the doorstep, afraid her trembling hands would drop it in the next second. What Detwiler was saying didn’t make sense.

      “You’re saying they wrecked it, but the sheriff didn’t find it till this morning? How do you know both of those men did it?” And why am I already trying to protect them? she wondered, even as she began to run down the alley past the hotel toward the saloon. No, this couldn’t have happened. Not my café!

      Detwiler followed her. “That medicine-show man, the one in the outlandish clothes, came into the saloon last night, set down at the faro table and proceeded to get booze-blind drunk. He got mad when he lost his money an’ I told him he had to leave. He told me he was gonna lay a Cherokee curse on me, mumbled some a’ that foreign gibberish an’ left.”

      “He left? So why do you think he and the other man did the damage? Was the other man with him when he was gambling?” She looked behind her, and saw Detwiler shake his head.

      “Nope, I didn’t see that other fella, but it had to have been both of ’em. Wait’ll you see it, Miss Ella. That Salali character couldn’t’ve done that much by hisself.”

      They’d emerged onto Main Street, and Ella picked up her skirt hem and ran the rest of the way.

      From outside the batwing doors, nothing looked amiss, but inside it was another story.

      Everything had been destroyed. Chairs and tables were splintered and lay on their sides at odd angles. The huge mirror behind the bar bore a crazy quilt of cracks radiating out from a hole in the middle. The painting of a scantily clad reclining woman that hung above it had been gashed so that the canvas now hung in pathetic strips from the gilt frame. The once-magnificent mahogany bar had deep scrapes furrowing it, as if someone had gouged it with a Bowie knife. The two girls who served whiskey in the saloon huddled along the side of the bar, their faces a study in misery, their garish-colored costumes pathetic in this scene of destruction. In the middle of the floor lay the feather of a golden eagle—just like the one that had been stuck in Robert Salali’s turban.

      All this Ella took in at a horrified glance as she dashed to the back door of the saloon and into her café. She hoped desperately that George had been exaggerating about her café, at least. Maybe the drunken medicine-show man had only broken into the pie safe and found the half loaf of bread and the cookies she’d had left from yesterday.

      But George hadn’t overstated the situation at all. The pecan countertop was cracked in half, and the three tables and half a dozen chairs lay in splintered pieces, as if a mad bull had been let loose in this small room. Her crockery lay in shards. The empty pie safe gaped open, its decorative tinwork door hanging by one hinge.

      “Why?” It was a cry ripped from her heart. How could the Lord have allowed this to happen, knowing how hard she’d worked to achieve this much, all on her own, and how much more she wanted to accomplish? How could she go on now? Her pitiful savings couldn’t replace what she had lost.

      “I’m sorry about this, Miss Ella,” Detwiler said behind her.

      She whirled around, even as stinging tears began to cascade down her cheeks. “What about those women out there?” she demanded, pointing an accusatory arm at the saloon behind Detwiler. “Wouldn’t they have heard something going on from upstairs and gone to get the sheriff?”

      “They weren’t here,” he told her. “They’ve got a room over on Lee Street,” he said. “They don’t always sleep here, unless...”

      Ella knew what he wasn’t saying, and appreciated his discretion. But now she couldn’t think of what to do. She felt frozen in place.

      “Sheriff Bishop’s gone to get his deputy,” he told her. “Somebody saw them two swindlers campin’ t’other side a’ the creek yesterday. Bishop’s going out there with the deputy to see if they’re still there.”

      “Well, I’m going with them,” she said as fury swamped the grief and fear within her. “And when I see that—that scoundrel Bohannan, I’m gonna punch him right in the nose. The medicine man, too.”

      Chapter Three

      A horsefly buzzing around Nate Bohannan’s left ear woke him. Instantly he regretted returning to awareness, for it felt like an anvil had been dropped on his head and was still bouncing on it. Opening a cautious eye, he saw that it was early morning, and he was lying in the open meadow. Strange. He usually slept under the wagon. The ground at his fingertips dropped away, and he heard a gurgling splash below. Gingerly, he raised himself up on his elbows, and was rewarded with rocketing pain that left him retching onto the grass beside him.

      Once the spasm passed, he felt a tad better and was able to cast a bleary look around him. Had Salali been attacked, too? Was his partner lying somewhere nearby, beaten insensible or worse?

      He was alone in the meadow. The horses and the medicine wagon were gone. There was no sign of Salali. Where was he?

      Then he caught sight of the tin bowl that he used for shaving, lying in the grass a few feet to his right, next to the skillet. It all came back to him then. He’d been about to fill the bowl with water and shave before walking into town to eat at the café, and