The Legend of Shamus McGinty's Gold

by I. J. Parnham

  Quinn rocked forward again. “Except you will be dead.”

  “If you kill me, your pa, or should I say Morgan Armstrong, dies. If that happens, you don’t get the gold. So, decide what’s worth more to you, killing me or getting your hands on that gold.”

  “I’m not saying there is gold.”

  “Maybe you’re not, but you’ve forgotten about demanding that I cure your pa, so let’s talk straight to each other. Perhaps then we can resolve this situation to our mutual satisfaction.”

  “I ought to rip you in two for that offer and feed fifty percent of you to the vultures,” Quinn said.

  “Be quiet,” Morgan said from the bed, while raising his head. “There’s enough gold for everybody. If you only get half of the gold, there’s still ten times more than any man could spend in a lifetime, even young ones like you boys. Stop arguing and offer him whatever he wants to make me better, or none of you will get anything.”

  After his long speech, Morgan fell back on the bed, wheezing.

  “Your pa talks a lot of sense,” Fergal said.

  Quinn turned to the wall. “The old fool’s not my pa.”

  “At last, honesty is always the best policy.”

  “What would a trickster like you know about honesty?”

  “A lot, although I know more about how to avoid it. See, I’m being honest with you. This truth game doesn’t hurt as much as I expected.”

  Quinn punched his fist into his palm with a resounding slap.

  “What I’ll do to you later will hurt more.”

  “That is as it may be, but putting threats aside, I presume Morgan bargained with you to save his life in return for the location of buried gold.”

  “It was something like that.”

  Fergal frowned. “Speaking as someone who knows several ways of parting innocent people from their money, the simplest method is to learn what someone wants. When you know that, you are in a position to get what you want. As you would like to have gold and Morgan would like to live, I ask, how do you know that the gold exists?”

  “It does,” Morgan said.

  Quinn tapped a finger against his chin. “I see what you mean, tonic seller, but I’ve thought about that and I don’t know. Either way, I’m not doing anything important. So I’m prepared to wait, but not for much longer.”

  “Where does Morgan claim the gold is?”

  “He says the gold is close to New Hope Town. It’s been hidden since the pioneers built the town.”

  “That sounds possible, and I assume he’ll only show you where it is when he’s better.”

  “Exactly, and if he doesn’t show me the gold then, he’ll get a whole lot worse afterward,” Quinn said. “So, tonic seller, will you fix him?”

  “Do I get fifty percent of whatever gold we find?”

  Quinn gritted his teeth, but then his shoulders slumped and he turned away.

  “Nope. You get a quarter. I’ve agreed to give half to Morgan.”

  “Ah, perhaps negotiation might be in order,” Fergal said.

  Standing at the back of the room, Randolph winced. For the first time, he felt sorry for Quinn.

  Chapter Eleven

  “WE HAVE A THIRD OF this hidden stash of gold, but only if we fix Morgan,” Fergal said to Randolph and Jed, once they’d returned to the wagon and moved it out of town. “Who has any ideas?”

  Randolph rubbed his face. The sun was setting, and tonight would be another long night. Worse, he was tired after listening to Fergal’s lengthy negotiations on the gold’s allocation.

  “Other than run, I assume?” he said.

  “Definitely. Anyway, Vance is guarding us, so we’re going nowhere.”

  “I reckon running is the best idea. We’ve seen no proof this buried gold exists and we’re no good at curing people.”

  Fergal raised a finger. “Yet we cured some people once.”

  Jed laughed. “We’ve run a lot more times.”

  “And we haven’t got a clue how we did the curing,” Randolph said.

  “On balance then, we know more about running than curing people,” Jed said, speaking slowly as if he was imparting a great truth. “So the way I see it, we should do what we’re best at.”

  “Shut up, Jed,” Fergal snapped. “We’re not running.”

  They sat in silence. Jed pouted while Fergal and Randolph frowned.

  Randolph coughed. “If we’re not running, what are we doing?”

  Fergal smiled. “We are having some logical, intelligent thinking. First, tell me what the ingredients of the universal remedy are.”

  Randolph shrugged. “It’s your recipe, beans, and water.”

  “And with one drop of the recipe, we cured the townsfolk’s minor ailments and with four drops, we cured Morgan’s serious condition. Except on the second time, one drop had no effect on either the townsfolk or Morgan.”

  “Except to get us beaten up.”

  “Except that.”

  “Although you gave Morgan an old batch of universal remedy,” Randolph mused. ‘So perhaps it went rotten, like old food does,”

  Jed laughed. “If you fed Morgan that stuff I drank in Redemption City, going rotten wouldn’t make it taste worse.”

  “Either way, going rotten doesn’t explain why the universal remedy didn’t work on the townsfolk today,” Fergal said. “We used a fresh batch.”

  “Beans,” Randolph said as a thought drifted around his mind.

  “Yeah, beans, but beans is nearly all that’s in the universal remedy.”

  “It’s not always the same beans though. Three days ago, we made a batch from beans we purchased in New Hope Town. Last week, we made a batch from beans we purchased in Redemption City.”

  Fergal nodded. “Last week, the Redemption City batch didn’t work, but two days ago, the New Hope Town batch did.”

  Jed shook his head. “Before you get too excited, we made last night’s batch from beans we bought here, too, and they didn’t work.”

  “We might have made last night’s batch from different beans,” Randolph said. Having thought of a good idea, he was reluctant to abandon it. “Perhaps they came from a different farm . . . or something.”

  “That seems unlikely,” Fergal said. “The best plan is to be scientific. We’ll brew lots of bottles of universal remedy with every possible combination of recipe and bean strength, and see which one works.”

  Jed gulped and rubbed his stomach. “We did that last night.”

  Fergal waved an admonishing finger at Jed. “Except we didn’t complete the experiment, as you passed out and I was too willing to believe we’d found the right combination. If we put serious time into this, we can find an answer before dawn.”

  Randolph winced. When his boss thought of a plan, he was hard to shake from it. He jumped to his feet.

  “While you’re being scientific, I’ll go to the store and see if there’s anything different about those beans we bought yesterday.”

  “You do that.”

  Jed sat bolt upright. “I’ll come with you. You’re sure to need help.”

  “You’re staying,” Fergal said. “I need someone to taste the combinations.”

  With a sympathetic smile to the cringing Jed, Randolph headed to the door. He slipped outside, but as he strode from the wagon, Vance emerged from the shadows.

  “Where are you going?” he said as he set himself before Randolph.

  “I’m going to the store to get the things we need to fix Morgan.”

  Vance’s eyes narrowed. “You can go, but if you try to escape, I’ll come for you.’

  Randolph nodded as Jed and Fergal climbed down from the wagon.

  “Ah, Vance, would you like to be of service?” Fergal said.

  Vance moved on and as he passed by, Randolph patted him on the shoulder.

  “If you’ve got any sense, you’ll escape while you still can,” he said.

  Vance pushed Randolph’s hand away. “What do you mean by that?”

  R
andolph shrugged. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  “Come and sit, Vance,” Fergal said. “You look like a man who enjoys his beans.”

  Randolph strode from the camp and down the trail to New Hope Town. Once, Randolph used to enjoy beans, too, but after experiencing the horrors Fergal perpetrated on them, he doubted he’d ever rekindle that joy.

  When Randolph reached the store, deep shadows filled the dusty room and only a small oil lamp on the counter was alight. Around the room, the stacked bags of provisions reached to the ceiling.

  The storekeeper, Wiley Johnson, came out of a back room. He was a man who looked as if he lived in his off-white, floor-length apron. He waddled with his rounded stomach set forward, his ruddy face beaming with enthusiasm.

  “You’re back quick,” he said. “What can I sell you tonight?”

  “I want more beans,” Randolph said.

  Wiley laughed. “I only sold you a bag yesterday. There are enough beans in there to last a month, so you sure do like your beans.”

  When Randolph nodded, Wiley waddled to the corner of the room, where a towering pile of bags stood. He dragged a bag of beans from the top and dropped it beside Randolph, who nodded at the piles of identical bags.

  “Tell me something. I bought a bag of beans three days ago and another bag yesterday. Did those bags contain the same type of beans?”

  “Beans is beans.”

  “Yeah, but could there be a difference?”

  Wiley tapped a finger against his double chin. He smiled.

  “Which type of bean would you be interested in buying?”

  “The type we bought three days ago.” Randolph narrowed his eyes. “So, there is a difference?”

  “Yeah, there is a difference. I’ll get you the old beans.”

  Wiley headed into his back room. After a few minutes, he staggered out with a large bag and crashed it on the floor. With the toe of his boot, Randolph kicked at the new bag, which appeared identical to the other bag.

  “So this bag contains the old type of bean?”

  “It does.” Wiley snorted and rubbed his damp forehead. “But I hope you’re not here to cause trouble, because Sheriff Vermont doesn’t take kindly to troublemakers.”

  In the last few days, Randolph had seen no sign of the sheriff. Normally this was of no concern to him, but as the townsfolk had directed most of the trouble against him, he could have argued with Wiley. Instead, he shrugged.

  “I’m no troublemaker. I just want beans. So what’s different about them?”

  “These beans are a bit ripe. I’ve my reputation to think of so as soon as I discovered they weren’t fit for human consumption, I knocked down the price.”

  Randolph frowned as he couldn’t remember the price being lower. He thought about whether the universal remedy made from the rotten beans had a different taste to the universal remedy made from the fresh beans, but the difference in something that tasted so disgusting wasn’t worth considering.

  On the other hand, if they’d used rotten beans before, that might explain why the universal remedy had worked that one time. He couldn’t see how, but Fergal could worry about that.

  “I thank you kindly for your honesty,” Randolph said with a growing smile. “I’ll take the rotten beans.”

  “That’s great. It’ll save me having to destroy them.”

  Randolph rummaged in his pocket for loose change.

  “How much do you want for your rotten beans?”

  Wiley opened Randolph’s hand and picked out a nickel.

  “I want a lot more than this for a big bag of beans, even if they’re rotten.”

  Randolph sighed. Yesterday, he’d paid five dollars for a bag of fresh beans, but as it wasn’t his job to haggle, he didn’t see any reason to waste more time. More importantly, he had to rescue Jed and Vance from Fergal’s culinary experimentation.

  “How much do you want?”

  Wiley rocked his head from side to side. “Four, no five should do it.”

  Randolph withdrew five dollars from his pocket. “There you go. It was nice doing business with you.”

  With a grin spreading across his face, Wiley shook his head.

  “I reckon you misunderstood me. I don’t want five dollars for the bag of beans. I want five hundred dollars.”

  Randolph blinked hard. “You want five hundred dollars for a bag of beans? You can’t be serious.”

  “I’m serious,” Wiley said, his eyes wide and sparkling in the reflected light from his oil lamp. “You see, I wonder why a man would want to buy a bag of rotten beans when I have a fresh bag available. Except the man works for a tonic seller and that tonic seller now charges good money for a miracle cure. I’m also wondering if rotten beans might be an ingredient of that miracle cure.”

  “You wonder too much,” Randolph said with a wince.

  “Perhaps I do, but do we have a deal?”

  Randolph turned to the door. “I’ll be back.”

  “Don’t be long,” Wiley shouted as Randolph reached the door. “In an hour, the price will be one thousand dollars.”

  Chapter Twelve

  “HOW MUCH DOES HE WANT?” Fergal spluttered.

  “You heard right the first time,” Randolph said.

  Fergal sighed, but got no reaction from Jed, who sat on the ground holding his stomach. Close by, Vance was also pale, even by the light of the fire.

  “Demanding five hundred dollars for a bag of rotten beans is criminal.” Fergal grinned. “I like that storekeeper.”

  “We’d better hurry. The price is rising as we talk.”

  “I’ve no intention of hurrying.”

  “Why? We want the beans and the storekeeper is the only one with them.”

  “Randolph, you know nothing about negotiating, but I do. Firstly, I want to make him sweat.” Fergal frowned. “Secondly, I haven’t got five hundred dollars.”

  “I thought Quinn paid us five hundred dollars for the universal remedy?”

  “I’ve got the money now, after the universal remedy didn’t work,” Vance said while clutching his stomach.

  Fergal turned to Vance. “I must ask a question. We all want Morgan to recover, and I need those rotten beans to make a universal remedy that will cure him. As you have the five hundred dollars, a potential solution does present itself.”

  Vance withdrew the wad of dollars from his inside pocket.

  “I reckon your solution isn’t one that Quinn will like.”

  “HOW MUCH?” QUINN SPLUTTERED.

  Fergal sighed and turned to Morgan lying in the bed.

  “You heard right the first time,” he said.

  “Demanding five hundred dollars for a bag of rotten beans is criminal.” Quinn frowned. “I hate that storekeeper.”

  “I’m not getting any better,” Morgan said from the bed. “Pay the man.”

  “Unfortunately, there’s no way I’m paying five hundred dollars for a bag of beans,” Quinn said.

  “Make that a bag of rotten beans,” Fergal said.

  “You need to answer one question,” Morgan said. “Do you want one third of more gold than any man could ever want, or one third of nothing?”

  Fergal nodded. “That’s a good point. What do you say, Quinn?”

  Quinn gripped his hands into tight fists. The knuckles were white.

  “I say I hate that storekeeper. It’s time I told him how I feel.”

  QUINN STOOD IN FRONT of the store and took deep breaths. A small crowd had gathered, including a heavily bearded man and a few people who’d purchased the universal remedy before.

  “Storekeeper, get out here now or I’ll feed you to the vultures one piece at a time!” Quinn shouted with his face set in a scowl.

  Randolph and Fergal stood back, awaiting developments. Although Randolph supported anyone who was on the wrong side of Quinn, Wiley had pushed his luck too far. When Wiley shuffled into his doorway and poked his head outside, Quinn nodded to his men, who spread out across the main drag.
They set their legs wide apart and hunched forward, ready for trouble.

  “What do you want?” Wiley said, his voice high-pitched.

  “We’ve come for our beans,” Quinn snapped. “Either we get them, or you get to die.”

  Wiley shook his head. “There’s no way you’re having the beans unless you pay the price, which is five hundred dollars.”

  “No deal.”

  Wiley leaned back into his store and dragged his bag of beans closer to the doorway.

  “I thought you might say that, but I’m not coming out.”

  “That’s unfortunate. Then prepare to die.” Quinn flexed his hand.

  “If anybody takes one pace toward me, these beans don’t get to leave my store,” Wiley said with a hand raised.

  Quinn laughed. “What are you going to do, eat them?”

  “Nope,” Wiley said. He leaned back into his store and emerged brandishing an oil lamp. “But I’ll burn the beans to ashes sooner than let you have them.”

  When Quinn gritted his teeth, Fergal edged closer to him.

  “It seems this is a stand-off, Quinn,” he said. “As your method isn’t working, perhaps I should do the negotiating.”

  Quinn spat on the ground. “My methods get me what I want.”

  “Maybe they do, but at the moment, I can see an easier answer to our problems. You’ve got five hundred dollars. The storekeeper wants five hundred dollars.”

  Quinn widened his eyes. “Like I said before, there’s no way I’m paying five hundred dollars for a bag of beans.”

  “They’re pretty special beans.”

  “If they were made of solid gold, I doubt they’d be worth five hundred dollars.”

  “What do you suggest, then? You can’t force the storekeeper to give us the beans.”

  Quinn chewed his bottom lip and then sighed.

  “Negotiate then, but negotiate the price down.”

  “How much would you be prepared to pay?”

  “Ten dollars, or maybe twenty after tough talking,” Quinn said with a shrug.

  “I’ll see what I can do,” Fergal said, and with his hands held wide apart, he strolled toward Wiley. “Welcome, welcome, welcome, you and I need to talk.”