The Legend of Shamus McGinty's Gold

by I. J. Parnham

  “You’ll have to breathe soon,” Fergal said.

  “I won’t,” Morgan said.

  Fergal thrust the spoon forward. Before Fergal jammed it into Morgan’s mouth, Morgan clamped his mouth tight again. The spoon slammed into Morgan’s chin and splashed the universal remedy over the sheets.

  With a grunt of annoyance, Fergal whipped a kerchief from his pocket. He mopped the liquid from the sheets, and thrust the kerchief back into his pocket. Randolph smiled. He noted the small stain on the sheets and wondered how long it’d be before the universal remedy worked its inevitable magic on the cloth.

  “This won’t do,” Fergal said. “This universal remedy is precious. I can’t waste it like this.”

  “Why?” Quinn snapped. “Have your ancient native tribe run out of their secret ingredients, because I’m sure you can buy more beans at the store?”

  Randolph bit his bottom lip to suppress a smile at the fact that Quinn had accidentally discovered the universal remedy’s bulkiest ingredient.

  “You wound me, and you’re not opening your mouth, are you?” Fergal said when Morgan clamped his mouth, etching his wrinkles prominently.

  Morgan noted the empty spoon. “Nope, I can hold my breath longer than you’d believe.”

  Fergal dribbled more of the universal remedy into the spoon.

  “Quinn, help would be in order.”

  Quinn nodded to Vance. “Hold him down. We’ve not got all night.”

  With Vance holding Morgan’s shoulders, Fergal gripped his chin. He opened his mouth and spooned the liquid inside. Morgan blew out his cheeks, fighting the need to swallow. Then with a gulp, he swallowed the universal remedy.

  Color rose on Morgan’s pale cheeks and his eyes widened. Randolph sympathized. If the recipe added the disgusting taste, this new, improved version of the universal remedy would defy description.

  Morgan threw back his blankets. With a bony hand he clasped a firm grip around the bottle.

  “What is this?” he roared.

  Fergal allowed Morgan to hold the bottle. “This is my universal remedy. Generations of an ancient native tribe guarded its secret before they handed it down to me.”

  “Forget that. This tastes good.”

  Morgan threw back his head and poured the universal remedy down his throat. The bottle glugged as the contents disappeared into his toothless maw. Fergal took hold of the bottle and pulled, but Morgan squirmed away with the bottle held to his mouth.

  Within seconds, he’d drunk all the universal remedy. When the last dregs of liquid disappeared, Morgan shook the empty bottle. With a questing tongue, he licked the rim, and then threw the bottle back to Fergal.

  Morgan smiled a toothless grin. “It sure has a funny taste. It’s strangely familiar, but I can’t place it.”

  Fergal shook the empty bottle. “You weren’t supposed to drink the whole bottle.”

  “Who says so? I bet your ancient tribe of natives had no trouble drinking a whole bottle.”

  “How do you feel?” Fergal said with his head on one side.

  “I’m fine,” Morgan said and sat up in the bed. More color spread across his cheeks, a deep red replacing his previous pallor. He stretched his arms to their full reach. “In fact, I feel more than fine. I feel great.”

  Fergal backed away from the bed and nodded to Quinn.

  “There you have it. He feels great. So, as your pa appears better, we need to discuss the subject of payment for this special service.”

  “Like I said, you can name your price.” Quinn said, rubbing his forehead.

  With his eyes glazed, Fergal grinned. He shook his head.

  “One hundred dollars would be appropriate.”

  Quinn waved an arm at Fergal vaguely. “Yeah, whatever you want.”

  Fergal stepped back a pace and bit his bottom lip.

  “Payment is for services rendered when the customer – that’s you – is happy. I pride myself on my professional ethics, so I’ll leave you. In the morning I’ll return and examine your pa. He may need a further dose. If so, that’ll cost you another one hundred dollars, but if not, the payment is still one hundred dollars.”

  Quinn narrowed his eyes. “I’m guessing that however well my pa is tomorrow, you’ll recommend a further treatment. Remember, I don’t take kindly to someone cheating me.”

  “I don’t take kindly to someone questioning my professional integrity. If your pa doesn’t need more treatment, I won’t give it to him.”

  “Until the morning,” Quinn said with a nod.

  Fergal slipped away from the bedside and took Randolph by the arm, leaving behind the bemused Quinn standing over his smiling pa. With their backs straight they walked from the room and down the corridor outside. At the top of the stairs, Fergal whistled through his pursed lips.

  “They’re not following us.”

  Randolph shrugged. “I don’t suppose that we’ll be here in the morning to pay Quinn’s pa any house calls?”

  While striding down the stairs, Fergal nodded. At the bottom of the stairs, Fergal took deep breaths and Randolph took the opportunity to enjoy the sight of the saloon. His mouth watered at the thought of spending a normal evening chatting in a saloon, instead of suffering the exploits that Fergal dragged him into.

  He nodded to a heavily bearded man leaning against the bottom of the stairs, and sighed, but Fergal took hold of his arm and dragged him to the door. When they stood on the boardwalk outside, breathing the crisp spring air, he turned to Randolph.

  “Run!” he said.

  Chapter Six

  RANDOLPH SAT AT THE front of the wagon with Jed. The prairies hurtled by. Headlong flights during the day were dangerous affairs, but at night, they were more reckless, especially on moonless nights.

  The stars provided scant light, leaving the trail to Redemption City appearing as a dark river slashed across the lighter prairies. Ahead, the first hints of dawn reddened the horizon.

  Randolph pointed. “It’ll be sunup soon. Should we stop and feed the horses?”

  “I don’t reckon so,” Jed said. “Fergal told us to keep going until dawn.”

  With his gaze fixed on the lightening horizon, Randolph prepared to wait until he could deem to have followed Fergal’s orders. After covering so much distance, their horses would need proper rest.

  Randolph hated that they had to push them so, even to save Fergal’s skin, again. Randolph winced as they trundled over another rock on the trail, reminding him of the more pressing danger from their flight through the darkness.

  He checked that the wheels were still intact. They were, but framed against the night sky behind them were the outlines of riders. The men’s outlines grew. Although they were impossible to recognize in the gloom, Randolph knew they would be Quinn’s men. He pulled back to sit facing the front.

  “We have company,” he said.

  “Do you reckon we can outrun them?” Jed said.

  Randolph shook his head. When Quinn had dealt with Fergal, Quinn hadn’t struck him as the kind of man who would relent, especially when someone had wronged him. With a crack of the reins, Jed urged the horses to gallop harder, but they were close to exhaustion.

  The possibility of outrunning free horses was limited, so Randolph checked his Colt. Then, with a hand on Jed’s shoulder, he turned and walked his hands up the side of the wagon until he was standing.

  From there, with luck he could provide enough gunfire to force the pursuing riders to fall back, but the riders weren’t behind the wagon. Randolph located them in the gloom. Instead of following them, the riders had split into two groups and had rode from the trail at sharp angles, presumably planning to outflank them.

  Faced with this tactic, their faint hope of escape receded. Only Randolph among the three of them had any skill with a gun, and he couldn’t use that skill on both sides of the wagon. Randolph slipped down again to sit beside Jed.

  Two riders galloped by fifty yards to his left, out of his gunfire range. The secon
d twosome galloped by fifty yards to his right. Based on the number of men Randolph had seen in the Lazy Dog Saloon, one other man would be following. Randolph expected the riders to close in when they were beside them, but they galloped by.

  “Perhaps they don’t want us,” Jed said.

  As the riders were too far away to recognize in the dark, Randolph felt a small flurry of hope that maybe he’d misunderstood the situation. The flurry of hope grew as the riders surged on by, moving away from them with every long stride. When Randolph smiled, Jed pulled back on the reins and slowed their speed.

  “It seems you were right,” Randolph said. “They don’t want to kill Fergal.”

  “You’re too pessimistic. You should look on the bright side.”

  “The problem with working for Fergal O’Brien is that you don’t get to meet many people who don’t want to kill him.”

  Jed laughed, the sound dying scant seconds after it started. Catching the hint, Randolph turned to the front. The riders had edged back to the trail. They joined one another and as one, they slowed.

  One hundred and fifty yards ahead, the riders cantered to a halt and turned their horses around to face back to the wagon. They sat evenly spaced and filled the trail.

  “What should we do?” Jed said.

  “Run them down,” Randolph said through clenched teeth.

  One hundred yards away.

  Jed gritted his teeth and cracked the reins. Ahead, the riders sat, showing no hint of moving from the trail when faced with the hurtling wagon.

  Eighty yards away.

  “We can’t go around them,” Jed said. “The muddy ground will suck us down.”

  “That doesn’t matter. Head straight for them.”

  Sixty yards away.

  “What if they don’t move?” Jed said.

  “They’ll move.”

  Jed pulled back on the reins. “Whoa, whoa.”

  “What are you doing? They’ll move!”

  With a shrieking of the wagon’s wheels and brake, and much whinnying from the horses, the wagon screeched to a halt, twenty yards from the riders. The reins fell from Jed’s grasp and he leaned forward.

  “I can’t run them down. We don’t know what they want.”

  The riders spread a little across the trail, their hunched forms framed against the lightening dawn glow.

  “I reckon they want to kill Fergal,” Randolph said. “You should have bluffed them.”

  “I don’t care what happens to Fergal,” Jed said. “I care what happens to my horses though. They’re worth ten of him.”

  In truth, Randolph agreed with Jed’s view, but he had a duty to perform, whatever the cost. He shrugged his gunbelt higher.

  “Care for the horses after these men have killed me and Fergal,” he said to Jed.

  Randolph leaped from the wagon and strode around their horses to stand with them at his back, facing the riders. Standing close to the riders, he recognized Vance sitting on the left. The other three riders were from the hotel room.

  “Where’s Quinn?” Randolph said to seize the initiative.

  Vance leaned forward over his horse. “He’s following on behind. He’ll be here soon.”

  Randolph strode a few paces toward Vance. “Why have you chased us down?”

  Vance nodded to the other three riders. He dismounted and strolled forward to stand ten yards from Randolph. With the men spread out, Randolph shuffled down, his shoulders hunched forward, waiting for Vance to make his move.

  “I’ve got a package for you,” Vance said.

  Vance reached into the inside of his buckskin jacket. Using his thumb and forefinger, he withdrew a small brown package and threw it to Randolph underhand. Randolph allowed the package to land by his feet and then ignored it. He’d encountered distracting maneuvers before.

  “What’s in the package?”

  “Open it and find out.”

  Randolph shrugged. Then he dropped to his haunches, his right hip pointed toward Vance. He stretched out his left arm and picked up the package. Randolph hefted the package and opened it with one hand.

  Paper was inside. Despite the poor light, he saw a collection of ten-dollar bills. In bemusement, he examined the bills and smiled. If this was a distraction, it’d worked, but as Vance hadn’t taken advantage, he might have misunderstood the situation. Randolph stood up.

  “This is money,” Randolph said.

  He covered his lame comment by peeling open the package, confirming that wads of ten-dollar bills were inside.

  “It’s what we agreed.”

  Randolph scratched his head. He riffled through the bills and counted a few, calculating that he held more than two hundred dollars. With a gulp, Randolph nodded.

  “Morgan got better.” Randolph’s voice was more incredulous than he wanted it to sound.

  “As Fergal O’Brien promised.”

  Randolph turned around, but Fergal was still hiding inside the wagon. Randolph pondered what Fergal would want him to say, but as he was on his own, he settled for his preferred honest response.

  “I thought we agreed on one hundred dollars for the treatment. There’s more than that in here.”

  “True, fifty ten-dollar bills are in the package. That’s one hundred dollars for last night’s treatment and four hundred dollars for the next four bottles of the universal remedy.”

  A rapid sinking feeling overcame Randolph. He gulped and turned back to the wagon.

  “Boss, you’d better get out here,” he shouted.

  “What’s wrong?” Fergal said from inside the wagon.

  “It’d take too long to explain. You’d better come out.”

  The wagon’s side door opened and Fergal poked his head out, and then darted back inside. Randolph understood his caution as, if this was a distraction, it was a clever one. One steady pace at a time Fergal slipped from the wagon to stand a few paces from Randolph, but close enough to the door to escape if necessary.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Vance wants to buy four more bottles of your universal remedy. He’s offering four hundred dollars to buy them.”

  Randolph smiled as Fergal, for the first time he remembered, failed to seamlessly take a revelation in his stride. With his mouth open, Fergal stumbled back a pace.

  “What?” he said. “Four more bottles, why?”

  Vance coughed and when Randolph turned to him, he pointed back over Randolph’s shoulder.

  “Perhaps, tonic seller, you should ask Quinn yourself,” Vance said.

  Randolph turned. Two more riders cantered toward them. At the front was Quinn, his tall form unmistakable, but Randolph didn’t recognize the other rider. With everybody in the hotel room accounted for, he doubted he’d know him.

  Then he recognized Morgan’s thin frame sitting astride the second horse, riding tall in the saddle. As they pulled up alongside, Morgan slapped his thigh and smiled at Fergal.

  “That sure was a fun ride,” he declared. “I’ve not ridden like that for years.”

  “I’m glad to be of service,” Fergal said, and scratched his head.

  “Did Vance tell you want I want?”

  “Four more bottles of the universal remedy,” Fergal said, his voice returning to its normal confident tones.

  “I sure do. That should be enough to see me through the rest of my life.”

  Quinn sidled his horse closer. “So, that’s all you want, Morgan, I mean, Pa? This’ll cost us everything we have.”

  “Yeah, my boy, but the gold’s not getting any warmer.”

  “In that case, get the bottles for us, tonic seller, and we’ll be going,” Quinn said.

  Fergal nodded and dashed back into the wagon. While they waited, everyone stood in bemused silence, nobody meeting anybody’s eye. After a few minutes, Fergal came out of the wagon clutching four bottles. With his hand shaking, Fergal handed the bottles to Morgan, who chuckled as he held them to the growing dawn light.

  “Thank you kindly. You are the finest
tonic seller on this side of the Mississippi. I bet you make your own pa proud.”

  “I do,” Fergal said.

  Morgan saluted and dragged his horse around. With a round of hollering, the riders grouped and sped back to New Hope Town in a cloud of dust. Once they were alone, Randolph slapped his thigh.

  “I sure didn’t think that would happen. Perhaps I have you all wrong, Fergal. You cured Morgan.”

  Fergal kicked at a nearby stone. “It wasn’t by design.”

  Randolph nodded at this rare piece of honesty. “I thought we’d sold all our bottles of universal remedy back in New Hope Town?”

  “I had some left over from a previous batch, but they’re all gone now.” Fergal rubbed his chin. “We’ll have to buy more beans from the store when we return to New Hope Town.”

  “We just left there. Why are we returning?”

  “Because Morgan said the four-letter word I like best in the world.”

  Randolph recalled the last few minutes of conversation, searching for the four-letter word Fergal referred to. He smiled.

  “Gold.”

  Fergal grinned, his smile shining red in the dawn light.

  “The word sounds good even when you say it.”

  Chapter Seven

  “WHAT DO YOU RECKON Morgan meant by the gold not getting any warmer?” Randolph asked as the wagon returned to New Hope Town.

  Now their speed was a lot slower than when they’d traveled away. Ahead were the first buildings on the outskirts of town.

  Fergal rubbed his chin. “I don’t know, but I intend to find out. I also get the feeling something isn’t right between Morgan and Quinn. If Morgan is Quinn’s pa, I’ll drink my own universal remedy.”

  “That’s a promise I’ll hold you to. What’s the plan when we return?”

  “I reckon we need to discover what Quinn is doing. After that, who knows?”

  Randolph guessed that the word ‘we’ meant him, but investigation would be preferable to the usual job of protecting Fergal from his customers.

  “You said that your pa is proud of you,” Randolph said to turn the conversation from business. “You don’t mention your family much. Is he proud of you?”