“My what?”
“Quint likes to play with molasses. I’m not sure everywhere he poured it.”
“Where’s Dacee June?”
“She went home to change.”
A crash and a tinkle sent both of them scurrying to the parlor.
“Uh, oh!” Quintin gulped.
“What happened?” Rebekah called out.
“He hit the glass dove with the spoon,” Amber reported.
“Uh, oh!” Quintin repeated as if it was sufficient to explain why the dove’s left wing was now separated from its body.
“It’s OK. Come on, you three, let’s wait out on the porch for Aunt Rebekah to finish cleaning my boots,” Todd insisted.
“What are you going to do with them out there?” she asked.
“I’ll tell them a story, or something,” Todd snatched up Fern and plucked the wooden spoon from Quintin. “Did you ever hear the story of when Stuart Brannon captured the train robbers using nothing but a barrel of molasses and a wooden spoon?”
Amber shook her head.
“Todd Fortune, don’t you fill their heads with lies!” Rebekah called out.
“Certainly, dear,” he hollered back. “Why don’t you come entertain the orphanage, and I’ll get ready for the Raspberry Festival.”
“On second thought,” she called out, “that Stuart Brannon molasses story would be delightful.”
“I thought so.”
The dining hall at the church at the base of McGovern Hill was built to hold seventy-five. Well over a hundred were now packed into it. Dacee June sat at the pump organ and played a tune that was somewhere between “Soldier’s Joy” and “Goodbye at the Door.” Amber Gordon sat beside her on the small wooden bench, watching Dacee June’s every motion.
Fern was content to rest in her father’s arm as he toted her through the crowd. Quint looked permanently attached to Quiet Jim’s pant leg. Todd squeezed his way through the crowd to check on Rebekah in the kitchen.
He was greeted at the door by Thelma Speaker.
“Todd Fortune, your Rebekah is simply a marvelous hostess. Why, I wish my sister Louise was here to see this.”
Mrs. Speaker clutched his arm and towed him by three ladies who were slicing pie. “Look at this display. Your Rebekah called it a Cascade of Fruitful Delight. Isn’t that poetic?”
Todd caught a glimpse of his wife rolling her eyes to the ceiling. “She’s an amazing lady. I think I’ll step out for a little air. It’s a tad crowded in here.”
“You’ll come back for pie, won’t you?” Mrs. Speaker insisted.
“I wouldn’t miss it for anything.”
Several men loitered at the back door of the church. The conversation was light, the pipe smoke thick. In the evening shadows, Todd recognized most by their hats. The round hat and pointed crown of Seth Bullock caught his attention.
“Evenin’ Sheriff.”
“Todd, you get chased out?”
“It’s a might bit crowded. But that’s a good sign for a fund raiser.”
A rider galloped up to the front of the church. Todd and Sheriff Bullock moseyed around to Sherman Street.
“Sheriff Bullock?” The man called from the horse. “You got to come down to the Piedmont Saloon. Nevada Jack done shot himself dead!” the man called out.
“Committed suicide?” Bullock questioned.
“Yes sir.”
“Then you don’t need me; you need an undertaker.”
“But there’s going to be some more dead if you don’t come down. We was playin’ a big poker game, and Jack bet the Piedmont Saloon on his cards. But after he drew a final card, he whipped out his pocket gun and blew his brains out. When that happened some of the cards spilt across the table. Well, some is declarin’ a misdeal, and others sayin’ the pot belongs to them. They’re about ready to shoot each other.”
The sheriff glanced across the street. “I’ll borrow one of these carriages and be right down. What did they do with Nevada Jack?”
“He’s still layin’ there in his chair. At least, what’s left of him.”
“Fetch an undertaker.” The sheriff turned back toward the church. “I’d better take someone with me. Maybe Quiet Jim would . . .”
Todd reached out and took hold of the sheriff’s shoulder. “Quiet Jim’s got family chores. I’ll go with you.”
“Appreciate it, Todd. I don’t realize how much I count on those old cronies until they ain’t around.”
Todd marched across the street where several rigs were parked. “Must have been quite a lousy hand to want to kill yourself.”
“Nevada Jack didn’t commit suicide,” Bullock announced.
“How do you know?”
“No professional gambler ever killed himself over a poker game. Over a woman, maybe, but not on losin’ a poker game. That’s their business. They don’t expect to win every hand.”
Todd held the bridle of the lead horse. “What are you saying?”
Seth Bullock climbed up into the rig and Todd handed him the reins. “I’d say someone shot him, and they won’t say who until the fate of the pot is decided.”
Todd swung up into the carriage beside the sheriff who handed him a short-barreled shotgun.
“Did you know that ol’ boy who came ridin’ up with the news?” Sheriff Bullock asked.
“It’s dark, but he didn’t look familiar.”
“I’ve never seen him,” the sheriff reported.
“It’s soundin’ stranger by the minute.”
The trigger of the shotgun felt cold against Todd’s finger. “You think they are tryin’ to cover up something?”
“Maybe.” The sheriff slapped the reins of the rump of the lead horse. “Maybe the whole story is jist bait.”
CHAPTER SIX
The Piedmont Saloon and Gambling Emporium boasted it was the building most often burned down in all the Black Hills. No one contested that claim. In four years of notorious business, it had been leveled six times by fire and one time by a man named Slappy McMack. In a fit of revenge, he drove his ten-ox team and two freight wagons straight through the front door and out the back, to the shock of the raucous occupants.
The current owner was Nevada Jack, a slight man with a huge mustache that dwarfed his face. His greatest achievement was firing his six-foot one, black, lady bartender—Mabel MacQueen. She immediately hired on as the chief cook at the Hallelujah Gold Mine and gained a reputation overnight as the best cook in the Black Hills.
The saloon had a high-pitched roof with rafters of uneven lengths stretching past the walls and protruding halfway to the ground. No one bothered to saw them off at the eaves. This made the thirty-foot by seventy-foot building look partially finished in the daylight, and a dangerous maze at night.
Sheriff Bullock parked the rig alongside Whitewood Creek near where Main Street and Sherman Street joined. “Get around to the back,” he ordered. “As soon as you hear me talking, step up and block the door. I don’t want anyone running out.”
Todd inched his way by each protruding rafter along the west side of the building. At the open doorway at the base of the mountain behind the saloon, he heard the roar of a room full of drinking and gambling men. He crouched in the shadows to survey the crowd. Lanterns flickered. The top third of the room was engulfed in a cloud of cigar smoke. Several men looked familiar. Most did not.
I don’t see a body sprawled across the table. No one is too concerned about Nevada Jack’s demise.
Todd backed up and stumbled over something tossed out in the dirt. He caught himself, then looked down. Someone tossed the back door out into the yard? I don’t suppose they will need it until winter.
So, the sheriff’s stuck with ‘Young’ Fortune. He’s not the only one that wishes Daddy was her
e. This is not my type of predicament. It’s for men of another generation.
The noise inside the Piedmont lowered as Todd heard a man call out, “Sheriff, what are you doing down here?”
Todd stepped up, shotgun in hand, and blocked the door. An unshaven man in a torn buckskin shirt and a huge knife strapped to his waist darted toward the back. He halted midstride when he spied the shotgun.
“Let me out!” he snarled.
Todd turned the barrel toward the man. He could feel his sweaty fingers on the trigger. “Just wait until the sheriff does his work.”
“I cain’t wait.” The man glanced wildly back at the sheriff who hadn’t spotted him yet. “I need to go to the outhouse!”
“Not right now you don’t.” Todd cocked both hammers on the double-barreled shotgun.
For a minute Todd thought the man was going to pull the knife and charge at him. Lord, I don’t want to shoot a man on his way to the outhouse.
The man muttered a few words that Todd was sure had never been articulated in any of the homes on Forest Hill, then slunk back into the crowd near the rustic counter that served as a bar.
Seth Bullock sauntered into the middle of the room. Most of the crowd migrated back to give him space. “Nevada Jack, it’s interesting that you are the one to ask me that. I came down here to bury you.” Todd noticed several men, including the one in buckskins, hunched and hidden along the wall.
Nevada Jack, in the back corner of the unpainted bare wood building, stood up. His chair set against the wall. He displayed no injuries. He brushed back his drooping mustache. Todd could see several men rest their hands on holstered revolvers.
Like the professional gambler that he was, Nevada Jack had his sleeves rolled up halfway to his elbows and kept his hands in front of him. Todd could see no gun, but he knew there were at least two tucked away somewhere.
Nevada Jack carefully laid face down five bluebacked poker cards. “Bury me? I’ve got to commit a crime if you’re going to bury me.”
Bullock scrutinized the crowd. “I didn’t say I was going to shoot you. I said, bury you. Word came uptown that you blew your brains out over a poker game. We just came down to drag off your body.”
Nevada Jack glanced at the back door. So did the other thirty men in the room.
The sheriff waved his revolver. “You boys know young Fortune, don’t you?”
Todd kept the shotgun pointed toward the center of the crowd.
Nevada Jack rested his thumbs in his vest pockets. “Ain’t nothin’ sillier than someone takin’ a poker game that serious. You should know me better than that.”
“That’s sort of the answer we was expectin’,” the sheriff replied. “But I thought maybe someone shot you in the back and was tryin’ to say it was suicide.”
Nevada Jack slowly grinned. His elbows gradually pulled against his sides. “That’s always a possibility. Wouldn’t put it past anyone in the room. That’s why I won’t turn my back on ’em. Appreciate you takin’ concern for me, but it looks like a false call.”
The sheriff pivoted toward the crowd at the bar. “Any of you know of someone so anxious to see me they’d send a messenger to lie to me at the church?”
There was no reply.
Nevada Jack pulled out a cigar. “I ain’t dead, that’s for sure.” He bit off the tip and spat it on the floor.
“The night’s still young, Jack!” one of the men at the bar hollered. The tension checked the laughter for a moment, then it burst loose.
“Sheriff, if you would like to stick around and see if I croak, you’re welcome. Just don’t block the doorway for my customers. As for me, I don’t intend to waste a good poker hand.” He plucked up his cards and plopped back down in the faded green wooden chair.
The man in the buckskin shirt slipped through the crowd again toward the back door, the large double-edged unsheathed knife by his side.
“I need to get out now,” he snarled at Todd.
“Fortune,” the sheriff called out, “we’ll head on back up town. Bring Dubois with you. I’ve got a wanted notice out on him from Sidney, Nebraska.”
Todd surveyed the crowd. “Who is that?”
When he turned his head, the man with the buckskin shirt and knife lunged at him. Todd jerked back and raised the barrel of the shotgun to the ceiling. The wooden stock swung across his midsection. The point of the large knife stuck into the walnut wood of the shotgun stock and jammed the stock into his stomach.
Todd leaped backwards through the doorway. The knife yanked out of the man’s hand and remained lodged in the gunstock. The man dove after the knife handle. Todd swung the stock out of the man’s grasp, and in doing so, the barrel of the shotgun slammed down into the top of the man’s head.
He sprawled, unconscious, across the doorway.
Todd took a deep breath, pushed his hat back, and scratched his neck. I’m not sure how this happened. “Which one’s Dubois?” he asked as he tugged the big knife out of his gunstock.
“Shoot, Fortune, why don’t you just cold-cock all of ’em? We’ll sort them out later,” the sheriff bellowed. He holstered his revolver, then loosened his black tie.
A roar of reaction flooded the room.
“Junior is as tough as his old man,” a gray-bearded man with an empty shot glass declared.
The sheriff drove the carriage up Main Street. Cigar Dubois slumped, still unconscious, in the back. “It’s like someone didn’t want me around the church,” Bullock mused. “Were they plannin’ on stealin’ a raspberry pie? I figured maybe someone wanted to bushwhack me down in the badlands . . . but nothin’ happened down there.”
“They succeeded in getting both of us away from the church meeting,” Todd added.
“They weren’t after you. Nobody had any idea in the world that I’d bring you along. ’Course, they know better now. They all know you’re the one who sat down Mr. Cigar Dubois. You got a reputation now, Boy. Some will respect you for it . . . others will want to test your toughness.”
“It happened so quick. I didn’t think much about it. I was lucky to stop that knife.”
“Nothin’ lucky about it. You reacted quick. That’s just the way your daddy is. He don’t sit around contemplatin’ what to do. Must be something inherited.” The sheriff pulled up in front of the jail. He handed the reins to Todd and jumped down. “You drive this carriage back to the church. I’ll be up shortly.” He loaded Dubois over his shoulder, “soon as I lock up this ol’ boy and check around town a spell.”
The crowd at the church had begun to thin out by the time Todd returned. He slipped in the back door where Rebekah and Thelma Speaker divided the remains of the Cascade of Fruitful Delight into glass jars.
“Looks like I missed out on the auction.” Todd was surprised by a confidence that crept into his step and defied his tiredness.
Rebekah’s wide brown eyes lit up when she saw him and, as always, her smile was magnetic. “I understand you and Sheriff Bullock had some business in the badlands.” She tilted her eyebrows. His heart beat a little faster.
“It turned out to be a false report. I just went along with Seth for the ride.”
“Nothing happened?”
“Not much. The Piedmont rolls on as usual.”
“You went into that horrid hovel?”
“I just stood at the back door and watched, mainly.”
“You just looked around and left?”
“The sheriff spotted a man wanted down in Sidney, Nebraska. We hauled him in. That’s about all.”
Dacee June traipsed over, Amber Gordon at her side. The five-year-old sported a raspberry-colored smile.
“Well, Lil’ Sis, did anything exciting happen while I was gone?” Todd probed.
“I ate three pieces of pie,” Amber admitted. “And I haven’t even
throwed up yet.”
Dacee June’s hair had fallen out of its combs and lounged across her left ear down to her shoulder. “Did you hear that Mr. Olene showed up and bid twenty dollars for Mrs. Speaker’s raspberry cobbler?”
“Twenty dollars for a pie?” Todd glanced over at the older lady with the grayish-yellow hair. “I’d say you caught his eye, Mrs. Speaker.”
“Well,” Thelma blustered, “it was a little embarrassing.” A wistful smile broke across the smooth skin of her face. She looked ten years younger.
“Rumor has it Mr. Olene’s been negotiating on Ayres and Wardman’s Hardware,” Dacee June said.
“Where did you hear that rumor?” Todd asked.
“From Mr. Olene himself. Said if he couldn’t buy Fortune’s, he’d have to acquire second best and start from there.”
“He seems like a very nice man,” Thelma added. “But then, I don’t know very much about him. I don’t know where he lives, where he went to school, what his first name is . . . why, I don’t even know if he’s married.”
“He was the last time I was in Chicago.” Rebekah scanned a disappointed Thelma Speaker. “But that was several years ago. Besides, I thought you had made up your mind about your next husband.”
She tossed her head. “I am getting quite tired of waiting for a certain old Texan to get inspired.”
Todd slipped his arm around Thelma Speaker’s shoulder. “You know you have our blessing to capture him, if you can. But latching onto Daddy Brazos would be like roping an old grizzly bear. You might be better off if you never caught him.”
A wide, easy grin broke across Thelma’s face. “I’m beginning to agree with you. Your mama might have been the only woman on earth to tame him.”
“Half-tame him,” Todd said.
“Well, it didn’t seem quite right for him not to be here to crown the Raspberry Festival queen, like he normally does,” Thelma said. “Did you tell Todd about the festival queen voting?”
“I don’t want to talk about this,” Dacee June blurted out, brushing her hair behind her ear.
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