by Tony Masero
Mars swung out and backhanded him. It was a good blow with a calloused fist that had seen many years of hard work with whip and rein and it caught Aloysius full on the face and knocked him over backwards.
‘You’ll not talk to me like that,’ bellowed Mars, kicking back his chair and getting to his feet.
At the sound of the ruckus, the rest of the saloon turned to see what was happening and all went suddenly quiet. Belle was pouring beer behind the bar when she heard the smack and saw Aloysius tumble from his chair. She uttered a small cry and laying aside the half full glass began to make her concerned way to the end of the bar.
‘Get up!’ cried Mars angrily. ‘Stand up and face me. I’ll beat you down like the dog you are.’
Aloysius thrust back the fallen chair from beneath him and scrabbled to his feet. His nose was bloody and he rubbed the back of his hand across, looking at the stain in anger.
‘Damn you!’ he said, dragging a hide-away two-shot derringer from his vest pocket.
The two men were no more that three feet apart and at sight of the gun, Mars drew his own strapped down Colt.
The blast of gunfire was fast and rapid, and both men were sheathed in a pluming cloud of gun smoke. Mars staggered back still firing as Aloysius twisted, a bullet striking him in the side. He brought up his derringer to fire again and Mars, still firing steadily through his entire cylinder shot him in the face at point blank range.
Aloysius’s pistol arm flew sideways and his second shot zoomed out into the body of the barroom before he fell over heavily. Mars tottered back a few paces and with a groan dropped as his legs gave way under him.
‘Goddamn you, Barrett Browning,’ he growled, firing the last shell of the chamber into Aloysius’s prone figure before he flopped back, shot through and dying.
‘Oh, dear,’ muttered the terrified Boggs, who had not moved from his chair.
The assayer though was swaying in his seat, his left shoulder was blown open where a wild bullet had struck and blood was staining his white suit. Pale and blank faced he stared accusingly at the banker.
Belle had rounded the bar fast and was running over. ‘No!’ she screamed. ‘No, no.’
She pulled to a sliding halt as Aloysius’s body came into view. The face was no more, a huge black hole had been torn below the left eye by the heavy slug and only half a mustache and a portion of chin remained. It was an awful sight and for minutes Belle could not place it as having any relationship with her lover.
She stood there frozen, the image and a cataclysm of thoughts clashing in her mind.
Men bustled forward, pushing her aside as they helped the wounded assayer from his seat.
‘I didn’t mean it like that,’ Boggs babbled. ‘There was no insult intended.’ But no one paid him any attention as they crowded around the two dead men.
‘There’s another one over here,’ called a voice and they all turned to see that Aloysius’s stray bullet had nailed a mining man between the eyes and taken off the back of his head and he lay slumped face down in the bloody pool of his supper of fried chicken.
‘Lord almighty!’ cried Tim, hurrying forward. ‘One of you get the doctor.’
‘Best get the sheriff too,’ someone else cried.
Belle was forgotten, she backed away in a daze from the crowd until she could only see Aloysius’s legs. His boot was twitching and she thrust her bunched fingers into her mouth. ‘He lives,’ she cried. ‘See he lives yet.’
Ma Leatherbetter was at her elbow, ‘No, girl,’ she said quietly. ‘It is just his last throes you see there. Now come away, Belle. There’s nothing more for you here.’
‘But…. But we are…. He is….’ she mumbled.
‘Now then,’ said Ma Leatherbetter, enfolding her in her arm. ‘Come then. Come on,’ she murmured as she pulled Belle away.
There was a hush as Jimmy Lee appeared at the doorway. He stood a moment, his cold eyes grazing the room.
‘What’s going on here?’ he asked.
‘A shootout, Sheriff,’ Tim explained, coming forward. ‘They shot each other down and that poor soul over there as well.’ He jerked a thumb at the miner being lifted from the remains his of supper.
‘And this one?’ Jesse Lee nodded at the sagging assayer held propped up between two men.
‘A bystander wounded in the affray.’
‘’Pears there’s a mess here,’ said Jimmy Lee coldly. ‘You running a lowdown dive are you, Leatherbetter? Shootings and all, innocent people hurt. Speaks poorly of the place.’
Tim withered under the harsh eye of the gunslinger. ‘Not at all,’ he said. ‘It sprung over argument at the card table.’
Jesse Lee stood silent for a long minute. He was savoring the effect his entrance made and enjoying the silence and air of fear prevalent in the evaporating smoke of the gunfight.
‘Well, you watch your step, Leatherbetter. I have you under my eye, so be warned.’
With a last look around he turned and at a leisurely pace slowly left the saloon.
Chapter Five
Belle was heartbroken.
It did something to her that loss. At the very moment she had discovered love for the first time and a whole new avenue to her life opened, to have it swept away in such a manner would break anyone’s heart. But for Belle it was if a steel shutter had been drawn down. She went about the daily motions of her job as if in a dream and it was plain for everyone to see by the lack of attention she paid herself how low she felt.
She appeared a hollow woman; her un-brushed hair was left hanging down and tangled. The once lively face that had promised so much was pallid and spotted with dark rings lying under her eyes. Her bright candle had darkened and the indifference she showed to the saloon’s trade was echoed by the customers who, whilst they sympathized felt uncomfortable in the presence of such grief.
Ma Leatherbetter tried her best to encourage the girl but to little avail and it saddened the old lady to see the effect the disaster had brought about. Tim felt only frustration. A gloom had descended on the whole place and he noted the disappearance of some of his regulars at its advent. It was a worrying result that was only compounded by the veiled and ominous threat offered by the Sheriff.
From nowhere, Kirby Langstrom appeared.
One night he was there leaning against the bar, occupying the diminishing space created by the absence of so many old occupants.
‘Hey, girl!’ he said, as Belle brushed past barely noticing him.
She turned and with glazed eyes looked at him, ‘Yes? What can I get you?’
‘How about a little smile?’
She looked down at her feet and sighed deeply. So many had tried to cheer her up it appeared as if this was yet another attempt to call at her sad door with meaningless words. ‘I don’t feel much like smiling. You want a drink?’
‘Sure, I’ll take a beer.’
She poured him a glass with a bored look at the wall in front of her and brought it over.
‘You know what I do when I’m depressed?’ asked Kirby as she placed the glass in front of him.
Belle looked at him then, her tired face showing only exasperation.
‘No, and I don’t really want to know.’
‘I lost a love like that one time,’ Kirby confessed, sipping his beer.
‘You did? Well, I’m sorry for your loss.’
Belle turned about to go.
‘She was about your age. A swell little lady. Not much by most folks lights, just an ordinary sweetheart from off the farm, but to me she was everything.’
The strangeness of it caught Belle’s attention, for any man to make confession of affection was unusual but to address all and sundry in a saloon bar was unusual in the extreme.
She turned back to him. ‘And why are you telling me this?’ she asked. ‘You think it means something to me? Like it will bring me back to life or something?’
Her voice took on an irritable tone and her face twisted from its normal benign appearance in
to a look of bitterness.
‘Sure,’ said Kirby. ‘You ain’t the only one. You ain’t alone in suffering. That’s all I’m saying.’
‘Ach!’ spat Belle. ‘Get away from me. What the hell do you know about it?’
‘I see you Belle Slaughter. I see how you lost your heart to a gambling man. He ended up like so many of them do, face down on a barroom floor. It’s the nature of the game. But you don’t have to go down with him, honey. That ain’t on the cards and I won’t allow it.’
‘You won’t allow it?’ she laughed with a tinge of hysteria. ‘And what the devil do you have to say about this?’
‘Come here,’ he said, leaning across the bar. Tentatively she came forward and leant nearer to hear his quiet words. She looked quickly around at the other customers along the bar length, most of whom were pretending not to listen but where in fact all ears.
‘You got a light in you,’ Kirby went on, speaking only for her. ‘I seen it the first time I saw you. A special light, it shines out of you like a beacon. Right now it’s dimmed but its still in there and all you got to do is reconnect. You’re something special, Belle Slaughter and this time now,’ he prodded the bar top with his index finger in emphasis. ‘This is make or break time for you. Let it pass and you’ll spend the rest of your life in misery over this business, but you hang on in there and you’ll rise like a bird, free and clear.’
She looked away as he finished, a gloss of tears had filled her eyes and she didn’t want him to see them. His words had struck home. She found in them something of the things that Aloysius had said to her, lies they may have been but she did not know that. So Kirby’s words were redolent with Aloysius’s memory and in that companionship she found belief.
‘You think so?’ she managed to choke out.
‘Hey look,’ said Kirby. ‘I never made such a long speech in my life. Has to be worth more than a pitcher of beer, right?’
She laughed then, a burst of giggles through her tears. ‘So who was this lost love of yours?’
Kirby took on a serious tone, ‘It’s the truth. I had such a gal, one time back. We was wed and all, had us a boy child. Little fellow, smart as new silver dollar. I was sixteen year old, she was fifteen.’
Belle frowned, ‘You ain’t joshing me, are you?’
‘No, I ain’t.’
‘What happened then?’
Kirby shrugged. ‘An Indian, that’s what happened.’
Belle’s face fell, ‘They killed them?’
‘Why, hell no, not at all. The bitch ran off with an Indian man, took my boy and left. Said she’d rather live in a deerskin wigwam, tote firewood and cook for a red man than spend her time on a fool like me.’
Belle’s face twisted in confusion was he telling the truth or tale telling. ‘Come on, Kirby, you’re making this up.’
‘God’s own truth,’ Kirby promised with a straight face.
She smiled them, a slow smile that crept across her face as she fell into his trickery.
‘There, you see,’ said Kirby, winking as he pointed a finger at her. ‘I knew I’d get a smile out of you.’
Belle picked up a drying cloth and swiped it across Kirby’s face. ‘You damned huckster!’ she laughed, beating him about the head with the rag.
Kirby stepped back out of range; he flicked a coin on the bar and tipped his hat. ‘I’ll be seeing you,’ he said as he backed away and left.
Belle didn’t know it at the time but Ma Leatherbetter saw it and approved. It was a turning point for Belle, she still moped but something had shifted in her and slowly she began to take more care of herself. Washing and setting her hair and laying aside her drab clothes to put on a new dress. The old lady did not know what part the young cowboy was playing but she recognized that his presence brought back new life into the girl and for this she was grateful.
With Belle’s resurrection, things began to change for the better in The-Get-Up-and-Go. Trade returned and Tim smiled in pleasure as the dollar coins began to roll into his moneybox once more. With the shift though, Joe Bellows raised his ugly head again. He had sat quiet for a while, pleased with the success, if not going as he had planned, at least the gambler’s death had sucked life from The-Get-Up-and-Go for a while. Now though, with interest re-aroused, he fretted once more and decided to do something about it.
Tim had brought in entertainment. As the saloon’s gambling income had taken a dive with Aloysius’s death he decided some music might be an alternative and so he arranged a nightly show with a somewhat lewd attraction. Inspired by the billboard sign outside, Tim planned to live up to the promise it offered and he hired a guitarist and a couple of dancing girls. The guitarist was Mexican and a good musician whilst the girls were a pair of rather rough looking twins that looked as alike as two peas in a pod. The deal was that the guitarist played whilst the twin girl’s did a routine on the bar top. They wore black stockings in emulation of the sign outside, the only difference being, that whilst one of them wore pantaloons the other one didn’t.
The trick was that the two did their whooping and high kicking routine and whilst a glimpse of underwear was visible with the one the other showed a sight more than a smile and when the girls appeared later if a paying customer could guess which one was nicker-less she was his for the night.
Neither Belle nor Ma approved of the act and Belle would leave the bar at such time as the show took place. But Tim would not be dissuaded, he was a showman through and through and as it turned out, he was right. Before long, queues to enter The-Get-Up-and-Go were piled up and reaching down the whole length of the boardwalk outside.
The money rolled in and Tim grinned from ear to ear as he showed their bulging moneybox to Belle and Ma.
‘See here?’ he said around the unlit cigar in his mouth. ‘Just look at this. Why we’re worth a fortune. Hell, Ma, this sure beats rolling the road and hawking bottles of harmless soda-pop to folks wouldn’t you say?’
‘I don’t know,’ Ma admitted. ‘This show of yours is like to rouse some unpleasantness, I fear.’
‘I agree,’ said Belle. ‘It’s kind of tasteless, Tim. Letting them ladies show their all like that.’
‘Oh, come on,’ said Tim dismissively. ‘We got three bar gals in there that oblige just the same. The only difference is that these ones advertise it a little more.’
‘Well, I don’t like it,’ said Belle decisively.
‘No,’ Ma cut in. ‘You’ll be getting up all sorts of folks noses with this one, son. Mark my words, the local high and mighty will come knocking on your door soon enough.’
‘Long as they pay before they come in, I don’t give a damn,’ Tim laughed.
‘The town’s getting prim,’ said Belle. ‘You know this will play right into Bellow’s hands. He’ll make the most of it with one of his pesky ordnances and get us shut down.’
‘Meanwhile, we’re making money hand over fist. Let ‘em come I say,’ said Tim confidently. ‘There’ll be such a row raised they’ll have to let us carry on. Them prospectors are hungry for such, they’re sitting out there on their stinking diggings, cold and living alone on nothing more than ham bone and water soup. They want a little fine time to jolly their sorry lives.’
Ma shook her head doubtfully. ‘I hope you’re right, boy, but best get ready for the worst.’
‘Oh, lay off the Jeremiah talk, will you? You’re like to bring a raincloud into every sunny day, Ma. It’ll be fine, you see if it ain’t.’
It took a while but Joe Bellows finally convinced the town council that the show affronted public dignity and represented an offense against the moral values and standards of any civilized society. His high tone was quickly taken on board by the council members, many of whom were secretly not above a visit to The-Get-Up-and-Go themselves on show night. They were swayed though by the ever-present Jesse Lee, who hovered behind Joe Bellows back on a constant basis. His appearance in the background, usually only visible by the glitter of his eyes in the dimly lit chamber, would c
hill the heart of any member and Joe’s proposed resolutions were passed swiftly and without query.
Joe also used the availability of a preacher newly arrived in town. The Reverent Emess Totter was a man of the fire and brimstone variety, he was not adverse to the breaking open of a bottle or two and Joe was very hospitable in that regard. The holy drunk could whip up a crowd with his fiery speeches fueled by Joe’s liquor and soon the preacher had a following that began to press for a regular house of church service in the town.
The town began to split. On a Saturday night, the prospectors and traders met up to divert themselves with wild activity in the saloons and bawdy houses and on Sundays they were called away by their wives and families to sober up and participate in the preacher’s volatile missives delivered on an open field outside the town limits. A temporary situation until such time as a regular place of worship could be completed.
It was the beginning of frontier civilization and many disapproved, preferring the old come-what-may style of existence. The fact that a lowlife like Joe Bellows engendered this for his own devious purposes made the whole affair doubly disingenuous, yet there was little that folks could do against the lightning-fast pistols of men like Jesse Lee and despite the new wave’s hypocritical nature everything went ahead as planned.
The ban was passed and sustained by Reverend Totter’s hell-raising condemnation of such displays of public nudity and wanton debauchery. In due course, Jesse Lee was sent forth to bring down Tim Leatherbetter once and for all with the full support of a dubious legal backing.
Jesse Lee made his appearance on show night accompanied by two deputies.
At sight of them a tangible shiver ran along the line of waiting customers queued up outside as the Sheriff and his crew passed, many at the rear of the line slipped quietly away. Both deputies were hard cases of Jesse Lee’s acquaintance and neither man was disposed to any kindness in his nature. They were coldhearted men totally indifferent to any pain or suffering they might cause and typical of enlisted civil servants in any time or age. Bolt Lemon the elder of the two carried a double-ought shotgun and his partner, a willowy looking fellow with a heavy beard called Cecil B. Clemence, bore a Springfield rifle and brace of handguns.
