“That's it?” asked Gideon.
Stoudenmire turned and gave Gideon a sleepy, unimpressed glance as he shrugged. “Yes. People get shot pretty often around here. He's unknown. He's got no kin around these parts. No reason to much worry about this. And besides, I just got back into town and I'm exhausted. I'll deal with this in the morning.” Stoudenmire tipped his hat to them all. “Good night.” The trio and the doctor nodded. Stoudenmire than clomped down the hallway and down the stairs.
“Jackass,” Cassidy said.
“Yeah. Not a terribly professional law man, is he?' said Gideon.
“He's rough around the edges, certainly, but he's brought law to this town where everyone else failed,” the doctor said, soaking a small towel in a bowl on the dresser. “I may not like him too much, but he has almost single-handedly civilized El Paso.” The doctor gave the towel to Cassidy. “Here, hold this against your head. You're going to want to take this time to bathe. Clean out your wounds. When you come out, I'll bandage them up best I can.”
Cassidy nodded. “Good. That's good. Thank you. You two may as well go back to bed. I'm alive. We'll be out of here tomorrow. All's well, I think.”
Jebediah nodded. “Yes. Seems that way. I took the liberty of having the hotel manager prepare you a replacement room. It is directly across the hall. No windows.”
Cassidy smiled. “So you do care, afterall.”
“Goodnight, Cassidy,” Jebediah said, leaving the room.
“And... yes. I will leave too,” said Gideon. “See you in the morning.” Cassidy smiled and patted him on the shoulder. She then turned to the doctor. They smiled at each other.
---
The young maid from the hotel walked down the dark alley, streams of lamp light coming from windows as she passed by them.
“Is she dead?” came a voice from the shadows.
“Yes,” said the woman.
From the shadow emerged Mr. Caesar, his face sharply lit in the moonlight. “Are you sure?”
“Rather sure, sir,” the young woman answered. “Her friend said she was dead. She was lying in a large pool of blood on the ground when I found her. The other one was dead, too. Not moving at all. A hole straight in his heart. And when I came outside, the hotel manager was calling for a carriage for two bodies.”
Mr. Caesar looked off toward the hotel across the street, a large black carriage pulling up. “Good,” he said. He then turned back to the young woman and from the shadows produced a pouch, giving it to her.
“Thank you muchly,” the young woman said, nodding.
“Thank you,” Mr. Caesar responded. The woman walked off, back toward the hotel.
Another man, young but weathered and beaten, emerged from the shadows and speaking with a thick Irish accent. “Why don't we go see?”
“No. Ames would recognize any of us. Best to stay away tonight,” replied Mr. Caesar.
“It's done then,” the man said.
Mr. Caesar scoffed. “Conviction, they said. I didn't even have to try.”
The two men then melted back into the shadows.
---
The morning sun beamed brightly over the town. The bright light shot dusty beams through shadows of buildings, carriages, and people on the dry streets. The verdant, sandy, low-lying landscape rolled along outside of town, covered in the yellows and oranges of golden poppy flowers, culminating in the towering Mount Franklin. Reaching over two-thousand feet into the sky, the mountain and its sister prominences were covered in the greens of spring and the reds of its iron-rich soil as the shadows of sparse, dark clouds rolled over the town, with more on the horizon.
The doors to the elevator opened and Cassidy stepped out into the lobby, cleaned, bright, and ready for the day.
Gideon and Jebediah stood there, dressed in their freshly-pressed clothing. “You feeling ok?” asked Gideon.
“Yes, why?” replied Cassidy.
“Oh, well it's just somewhat uncharacteristic of you to take the elevator. I was wondering if you're still in pain.”
“No. Not really. My head is tender, but the bruise feels surprisingly good. Once I get some more of that pain medicine into me, I'll be feeling ship-shape.”
“Well you're going to want to go get some now,” said Jebediah. “We've been informed that the train will be leaving later than anticipated. We're still scheduled for today, but late-afternoon is a better estimate.”
“Bah. Forget the pain medicine, then. Let's just get a drink,” Cassidy replied.
At that moment, the doctor came walking down the stairs, still rather tussled and unkempt from the previous nights exploits and holding his coat. As he reached the bottom of the stairs, he looked at the trio. “Good morning,” he said. He smiled at Cassidy and made a lingering eye contact. Cassidy returned a smile and a gaze as he turned and walked out of the hotel.
Jebediah and Gideon turned a disbelieving but slightly bemused look at Cassidy. “Really?” asked Gideon.
“What? I take it when I can get it. And besides, I gave him the time of his life. Did you see him?”
“Well, not really that. Aren't you worried?” replied Gideon.
“Worried?” asked Cassidy as they walked from the lobby through the dark-wooden doorway into the bar, which was crowded with people arriving at and leaving the hotel, or perhaps just getting wasted. “Worried about what?”
“You know... getting...” Gideon made a large-belly motion with his hands.
“Oh. That. No. Not terribly. It's not like it's magic, you know. We women can time it pretty well. That's part of what I mean when I say I get it when I can. And even if I do, I've got the resources to take care of it.”
Gideon chuckled. “It.”
“What?” asked Cassidy.
“It's not an it. It's a baby.”
“Well, yes, but I don't know what it would be — a boy or a girl.”
Gideon smiled. “No. You don't need to defend yourself. I just find it funny that you refer to this living thing like some kind of alien object.”
Cassidy waved dismissively with her hand. “Meh... babies. Let's get drunk,” she said, sitting at a table.
“You are not getting drunk,” said Jebediah, sitting across from her.
“First words you say all morning and it's to be a killjoy. Jebediah, everybody loves you.” replied Cassidy.
“I just want to make sure that you don't do something stupid,” Jebediah said.
“It's alright. I have no intention of getting drunk. I swear, you must think me a giant child with no self control.”
“I don't know! You have proven yourself to be terribly impulsive. I have no way to tell when you're being serious or not.”
“Tell you what,” said Cassidy. “We have hours to waste and the hotel restaurant is right through those doors,” she pointed to the wall opposite the doorway into the lobby where a maitre d' waited by podium. “Let's go gorge ourselves until the train is ready to go, then we can pass out like bloated snakes all the way til Houston.”
“Now that is something I can get behind,” said Gideon. Cassidy raised an eyebrow and shot a knowing glance at him. He back-handed her hard on the shoulder with a look of only half-joking fury.
“That sounds good. We can go now unless you two would like to continue bickering,” said Jebediah, rising from his seat.
“No. Let's just go,” Gideon said, his brow creased in anger as he stared at Cassidy. She smiled back.
They all got up and turned to walk across the room. They had to work their way through a group of people and some luggage. As the crowd parted, Cassidy looked up toward the bar. Time slowed to a crawl as she watched the last person move out of view, revealing Mr. Caesar and two companions having drinks. Cassidy stopped in her tracks, wide-eyed. She breathed deeply as her heartbeat filled her ears. Mr. Caesar turned slowly and, looking up, made eye-contact with her. His face was flat at first, then it slowly transformed to shocked confusion as he looked at the woman he thought was dead. They stood there,
staring at one another, the world frozen around them. The drink in Mr. Caesar's hand fell from his grip like a drip of pitch. Cassidy's brow creased and she exhaled as she primed herself to act. But before she could, Jebediah slowly leapt into view, his eyes steeled and angry, his revolver drawn and aimed at Mr. Caesar. Just as Cassidy disappeared behind his visage, he bared his teeth and tensed his body. Pulling the trigger, he fired his gun.
7
Gunshots rang out everywhere. People piled behind tables and chairs for cover. Cassidy, Gideon, and Jebediah were behind a thick, conference-style table near the wall abutting the restaurant, the bar to their right. Across the carpet leading from the entrance to the bar was Mr. Caesar and his three associates, likewise huddled behind a table.
One of Mr. Caesar's associates, a young, lanky, hobbledehoy, knelt down with his revolver drawn. He looked at Mr. Caesar's shoulder and saw that he was bleeding.
“Mr. Caesar! You're hit!” he yelled in a thick, New York accent.
“I'm fine,” replied Mr. Caesar.
“You're bleeding!”
“I'm fine.” Mr. Caesar turned his head to face the gawky man. “I'm going to give you cover. I want you to run out that door when I tell you to. Go get the machines. You understand?”
“Uh, yes, Mr. Caesar.”
Mr. Caesar turned to his other associate, an older, mulatto man with a thick beard. “Give me my bag,” he said. The older man nodded and handed it to Mr. Caesar. Pulling out a grenade, Mr. Caesar removed the pin and tossed it over near the bar entrance. He then shielded his head. His two men followed suit. The grenade detonated, blowing the door off its hinges and creating a vaguely door-shaped hole in the wall.
“Now go!” Mr. Caesar yelled, firing some shots over the table.
Across the carpet, Cassidy and crew huddled in cover. “Fuck!” Cassidy yelled. “They have grenades! Do they just carry this shit around with them?!” She then dropped her head in response to another hail of gunfire. Cassidy looked behind them to the door leading into the restaurant. “We can get out through the door that way!”
“No! We take them here! Now!” yelled Jebediah. “Do you have anything big in your bags? Any explosives?”
Cassidy looked at him with a disbelieving stare. “No... No I don't. All of my toys are back on the train. All I have is my St. Claire Revolver.”
“How many shots in that?” Jebediah continued.
“Six thirty-cal standard rounds with more in my bag and four seventy-cal explosive rounds in the secondary cylinder. I think I may have one or two more of those rounds in my bag, but not many.”
“How big of an explosion?”
“Jeb, what's going on here?”
“How big of an explosion?” he reiterated.
Cassidy maintained a look of concern. “Maybe a quarter of a grenade. Enough to punch a pretty big hole in some wood.”
“Use them!”
Cassidy nodded and glanced over the table. She then fired a single explosive round at the table in view. A large hole was blasted out of the table but another table was revealed through the hole. Mr. Caesar had stacked some tables in front of each other. Mr. Caesar responded with more gun shots. Cassidy, startled, accidentally fired another explosive round into the ceiling over the center carpet, blowing a large hole in it and causing a small chandelier to fall onto the floor. Both groups glanced over their respective covers at the newly created wreckage before dropping back behind.
“I didn't like that chandelier very much anyhow!” said Gideon.
“Me neither. It was utterly gaudy!” said Cassidy.
“Stop it! You're going to hit a gas line if you keep doing that!” Jebediah yelled.
“You're the one who wanted me to use the damn rounds in the first place!” Cassidy retorted angrily. At that moment, another grenade landed on the floor near them but bounced off the hard wood floor and rolled through the door into the restaurant, exploding, sending shrapnel into the bar area. While looking over there, Cassidy noticed that they were able to see over their protective table with the aid of large, dark-stained glass window, allowing them to see when Mr. Caesar and associate popped out from cover. She patted both Gideon and Jebediah on the arms and pointed at the reflection.
“Shit. They can see us,” said Jebediah.
“Yeah, but they can't do anything about it,” replied Cassidy. “Gideon, send a volley their way.” Gideon complied, popping over the table with both card-sharp guns out and fired off a number of rounds. Cassidy and Jebediah watched the reflection, and sure enough, they could clearly see arms come out from behind the table and return fire. Another grenade then popped out from behind the tables and bounced off of Cassidy's table, resting dead center between the two camps, blasting a giant hole in the floor and sending wood and carpet everywhere. A small group of people, hiding in the corner of the room, took this opportunity to run out the door and into the street.
As scraps of cloth continued to blow around in the air, they watched as the bearded man popped up to throw a grenade with Mr. Caesar providing cover. Gideon managed to fire over the table, hitting the bearded man in the shoulder. He yelled in pain as the grenade flew wild, straight up and into the hole in the ceiling that Cassidy had blasted. The bearded man fell back behind the table as everyone looked up at the ceiling with eyes that only the expectation of inevitable devastation can elicit.
The blast shook the entire ceiling of the bar. A massive central hole was instantly created as loose bits of wood, dust, and plaster rained down over the entirety of the room. For a moment, there was silence as everyone tried to ascertain the situation. The building began to groan and creak in pain. Then, silence. Cassidy leaned in to Jebediah. “Maybe— ”
SMASH!
A bed, replete with a fat, mostly-naked, balding man and a flame-haired prostitute dressed in a French-maid-like outfit, crashed through the ceiling and into the bar, pulling wood, cloth, and water-spewing pipes down with it. The two sat there, huddled on the bed, shaking and startled as water sprayed and misted over them, briefly unable to move. They both gasped as the fat man got up and ran out the door. The prostitute tried getting off the other side of the bed but tripped on the carnage only to be pulled behind the table by Cassidy. “Stay down!” Cassidy yelled. Cassidy peered over the table again and was able to make out Mr. Caesar and his injured associate running out from the other side of the bed and out the door. “Jeb! They're making a run for it!” Jeb and Cassidy sprang from behind the table and ran to the hole that was previously the door. They both stopped in the threshold, looks of shock and fear on their faces.
Parked out front, with manned Gatling turrets rising out of the rears, were three half-track machines like the one from the train robbery. The three turrets locked into their upright positions with a chick sound, then turned to face the duo just as Gideon appeared behind them.
“Oh... my,” Gideon said. All three guns ratcheted on and started spinning at high speed.
“Cover!” Cassidy yelled as the three turned to run back into the bar.
“Back here! Back here!” Yelled the bartender, a blonde woman of about forty, dressed in plain clothes and her face lightly made up. All three leapt over the bar just as the hail of bullets began to rip the room apart. The deafening rain of destruction destroyed everything. Fabric and wood exploded into the air as bullets ripped through the bed. Glass and metal rained down behind the bar from the bottles and glasses. Everyone but Jebediah was screaming behind the bar as the seemingly endless assault finally ended, the tips of the Gatling guns glowing orange.
Cassidy was panting. “How the hell did we survive that?” she asked to everyone.
“The bar is reinforced,” replied the bartender.
“You have a bulletproof bar?” Gideon asked, surprised.
“You've never been to El Paso before, have you?”
Behind the bar was an elderly couple and the prostitute, who had been pulled back there by the bartender earlier. Cassidy looked over all of them. “Sorry to dra
g you into this, folks.”
“What's going on, here?!” asked the elderly man loudly.
“I don't know, actually. The man out there is a very bad man, I can tell you that much, but as to why we decided to get into a gunfight with him here, now, well, you'll have to ask him about that,” Cassidy said as she pointed to Jebediah.
Everyone looked to Jebediah.
“Why, Mr. Secretary? What's going on?” asked Gideon.
Jebediah breathed deeply. “He is more than merely a bad man. He is a dangerous man. Arguably the most dangerous man in the country. He has killed hundreds of people, and no one seems capable of stopping him.”
“So you decide to open fire at him in the middle of a crowded bar?!” replied the old man, angrily. Jebediah's eyes fell in penance.
“I understand that my approach may seem... irrational,” Jebediah began.
“You're damn right it seems irrational!” yelled the elderly man. His wife placed her hand on his shoulder.
“Let him finish,” she said sternly. “This is no time to let our anger get the better of us.”
Jebediah made eye contact with the woman, who smiled and nodded. “My logic was that if I could catch him off guard, I could finish this now. Just... done. Agents have spent years searching for him and come up empty. Then, suddenly, he simply... appears next to me in a bar. It was... an opportunity that I could not neglect. I had to try.”
“Agents? What's going on? Is this a war or something?” asked the bartender.
“No. He and I are with the U.S. State Department,” Jebediah replied, motioning to Gideon and himself. “But this stop was unexpected. We're not supposed to be here. We're supposed to be in Houston. How it escalated into this is... I don't know.”
“What are you talking about? It escalated into this when you tried to shoot someone!” replied the bartender.
“I'm talking about the preceding incidents. I'm talking about everything, such as the attempt on her life last night.”
Cassidy St. Claire and The Fountain of Youth Parts I, II, & III Page 38
