Wilde-Fire: Wonder Women 0f The Old West (Half Breed Haven Book 1)

by A. M. Van Dorn

  As they crept against the walls of the buildings, everything seemed just as it had been during the day—completely dead. There were no sounds and not a single light shining anywhere in the buildings they could see. When they approached the old saloon again, Lijuan was heartened to see Mister Muffins milling about, walking over the bat wing doors that lay on the ground. Earlier, Honor had protested how hard it was going to be to search for openings to the mine in the dark, when Lijuan had come up with a plan that had delighted Cassie. The sisters knew it was a long shot depending on an animal, but they were going to try it first before undertaking any arduous search. Now was the time for Lijuan to put her plan into motion.

  She made a clicking noise to get the tabby’s attention, and when he saw her, he excitedly began to run in her direction. Lijuan hated doing it, but she suddenly seized her hammer and threw it so it struck the dirt an inch before Mister Muffins. The scared cat stopped abruptly and began to run towards the opposite direction, sending a stab of guilt through her heart.

  “Now we see where he runs off to!” Catalina whispered excitedly, momentarily forgetting Cassandra’s ban on speaking unless absolutely necessary.

  Honor Elizabeth brought her finger to her lips to silence her and they all followed the cat as it ran into the bar. They snuck around carefully, hiding behind the bar and watched as Mister Muffins stopped dead center in the room and began scratching the floor and meowing. Catalina’s mouth fell open in delight, as accompanied by a creaking sound, a trap door in the floor suddenly opened and bright light shone upward as a hand was flipping it open. Cassandra also grinned in satisfaction.

  A man came out, his plain brown hair and narrow, long face being his first feature that they saw. He was lanky and his hairy chest showed through his half-unbuttoned shirt. As the cat bolted down whatever stairs he had climbed out of, his back was to the bar. Catalina, the youngest and strongest of the Wilde sisters slipped around, and in one deft move, yanked his six-shooter out of his holster and cupped her hand over his mouth. She firmly held his arms as the other three sisters stepped before him with their guns drawn.

  The man struggled to make sense of the women standing in a pool of moonlight. Not only was he being held by women, but even more bewilderingly one was white, the other colored, and one was even an Oriental! If he could have seen behind him, his astonishment would have been complete to find he was being held by a Mexican woman. If it weren’t for the pain the fourth unseen woman behind him was exerting on his arms that she had twisted behind him, he would have thought he was in some sort of bizarre dream.

  “Not a sound, skinny,” Lijuan said, poking her gun into the side of his nose.

  Just then, a voice from below called up.

  “Tosh! Why did that damn fool cat you been lookin’ after scurry down here like that?”

  “Tell him you don’t know what spooked him. Maybe a coyote or something, but everything is fine but you’re going to have a look around,” Cassandra instructed him immediately, warning him with a serious look of the danger he was to face if he did differently.

  Sweat began to drip from the man’s brow, but repeated what he was told. Honor gently lowered the trap door back immediately, closing it.

  “Honor, Cattie … you keep watch of that door. We’ll see to our new friend here.” Cassandra whispered.

  The pair nodded while Cassandra and Lijuan quickly hustled the man away through the entrance way and into the nearby shed beneath the water tower.

  Inside, Cassandra took out a small folding knife and began to cut a length of rope off from the one used to raise and lower the water bucket. She used the cut piece to tie the man.

  “We got nearly a dozen men and women below. Every one of them handy with a gun. You four bitches haven’t got a chance. Guaranteed you’ll be stopping lead before the night is through. You’re done! You got that? D.o.n.e.!” He ranted at them.

  “Got it … and I’ll be sure they inscribe D.O.N.E. on your tombstone because, friend, if this goes bottoms up, it’s you that’s going to Boot Hill,” Lijuan smirked.

  “If you want to increase your chances of getting out of this alive, then you best give us a little information,” Cassandra added.

  “Nothin’ to say to you,” he said, turning his face from them.

  Lijuan nodded, indicating her will to not argue with him. She, however, took out her hammer and knelt in front of him. “I’ll tell you what I’m going to do,” she said. “Because you were nice to the kitty cat, I’m only going to pulverize one of your feet.”

  She didn’t wait to see his eyes go wide with fright. She raised her hammer above her head, preparing to bring it down on his left foot. Tosh’s eyes shot to Cassie for help but she merely shrugged in indifference.

  “Stop, you Chinese bitch!” She heard him cry out. “Shit, I’ll tell you whatever you want to know. It ain’t gonna help you up against Fox Darrow!”

  “This Darrow? He’s your leader?” Cassandra asked, stepping towards him.

  “That’s right,” he said, spitting at her.

  “Why the Boxhall banks? Why did he pick them?” Cassandra asked.

  “Years ago, his ma and pa couldn’t get a loan from them. Lost the farm, everything. Darrow grew up poor and bitter, listenin’ to his pa badmouth the Boxhalls.”

  “Awwww … so his solution is to become a petty bank robber?” Lijuan hissed.

  “Ain't nothin’ petty about Darrow. Look what he’s pulled off. We got horses down below, with their saddlebags stuffed with cash from those banks. In the morning, we’re pullin’ up stakes. Headin’ out of Beacon for good.”

  “To spend your ill-gotten gains,” Lijuan hissed again.

  “No way, Lijuan. People like this are made of greed. You’re simply moving your operation somewhere else, aren’t you? You’d never quit when you are ahead, correct?” Cassandra asked pointedly.

  “A looker with big tits mixed with some brains,” their prisoner whistled admiringly. “Rare combination for a woman.

  With no warning, Lijuan shoved him and used her left forearm across his chest to pin him against the wall began pressing the side of her hammer hard against his throat with extreme force. Immediately he began gasping for breath and for a second time, he cast his eyes wildly towards Cassandra for help only to be met by a disinterested look. However, after a moment or two, Cassie laid her hand on Lijuan’s shoulder and she gently eased off, removing the hammer as he fought to catch his breath. When he could at last breathe again, he looked at the women, knowing it was in his best interest to answer.

  “Yeah, one of our crew, Ned Beck and his wife just got back from Nevada earlier, just before the storm. They found another ghost town with a great location within a cluster of banks in Nevada. Lucky bastard. Darrow is givin’ him and his missus an extra cut for locating it.”

  “Like we give a damn,” Lijuan said. “None of you are going to spend it.”

  “Enough of this!” Cassandra screeched, moving close to the outlaw. “If you’ve managed to get horses underground, I want to know where the main entrance is!”

  He looked like he was going to go silent again, but Lijuan menacingly raised her hammer again and his lips began to move once more. He told them everything, fearing for his life. Once Cassandra learned what she needed, she turned to Lijuan and told her they would go and fill the others in on her plan. Before they left, however, Lijuan snatched an old dirty rag hanging on the wall that she had noticed earlier in the day when Catalina had lit the match. With satisfaction, she shoved it in the outlaw’s mouth as a gag.

  “Don’t even move an inch,” she warned him with a scowl.

  ***

  After filling Honor and Catalina in, they all stood behind the general store a few minutes later. In the moonlight, they could see just what their captive had described. There were two large doors built into an embankment that resembled a typical entrance to a storm cellar, but they were far larger. Cassandra knelt and began to clear away some of the sand on the ground until
she felt the metal that she was searching for.

  Clearing some more of it away, she looked up at her trio of sisters with a grin. Hidden underneath the sands was a piece of railroad track leading right up to the twin doors. During the boom years in Beacon, apparently, the townsfolk had installed it to help convey the excavated rock along the back of the buildings to be dumped into what had grown into the immense pile of rocks where their horses were now tied near.

  Catalina walked a short way away from Cassandra and pointed to a rusting metal object lying on its side as further evidence. It was one of the ore carts the gold miners of Beacon used to push the debris along to the pile.

  Cassandra proceeded to study the doors. It was as Tosh said, the way the bandits would lead their horses below ground and out of sight. She edged her sisters on with a wave of her hand, and together they went into the general store. Earlier, she had cautioned them to tread lightly lest any creaking of the floorboards above the men alert them that they were no longer alone. Her sisters had listened. They all moved cautiously, the only audible sound being the night’s soft breeze.

  The outlaw they had captured said that the main entrance to the shaft had been located beneath the store … two buildings down from the saloon where they had captured him. They were there now, and as the others watched, Cassie dropped to the floor and began probing until she at last found the seam in the flooring for the trap door. Wasting no time, she beckoned Lijuan over, asking for her help. Her Asian sister was the most petite of all of them and her small fingers would come in handy here. As expected, she easily fit them into the seam and began lifting it up a crack so Cassandra could have a look around. If luck was with them, no one would be looking towards the exit at that moment.

  Their luck did indeed hold and Cassie saw immediately they hadn’t needed to worry about being heard creeping about above. Below, more than enough feet from the exit, she spied six men and one woman gathered around a card table where a raucous game of five card stud was unfolding. Those who weren’t playing could be seen watching the game, some drinking, others smoking cigarettes, one of them even strummed a guitar. Not bad, could be better Cassandra unconsciously critiqued.

  The outlaws had done up the hideout nicely, she thought. Several kerosene lanterns had been affixed to cross beams in the large mine shaft and they had apparently been busy scavenging boards from the ghost town and had fashioned a nice floor to keep them off the damp rocky ground of the shaft. She could just make out some bunks. To her left, she heard the whinnying of horses, but she could not see them as they were corralled out of her line of sight.

  Having seen enough, she pulled back from looking and signaled Lijuan to let the trap door close again.

  “Well?” Honor asked behind them in a low voice.

  “Quite the set up they got down there,” Cassandra told her expectant sisters, equally in a low voice. “I imagine if they applied themselves toward honest business, they might do well for themselves … at least, this Darrow, if he’s responsible for their hideout.”

  “You can sing his praises to him directly once he’s on the other side of a set of bars or standing on a gallows. Are we going to take them now?” Lijuan asked.

  “Yeah, how many of those polecats are stinkin’ up the place down there?” Catalina chuckled, already eager to be done with the outlaws.

  “That’s what I don’t like. I could only see seven including one woman,” Cassandra noted, seeming thoughtful. “The bandits we know operated in teams of five. We’ve got one of them but a man and a woman are unaccounted for. It’s possible they were down there because I couldn’t see the whole shaft, but I don’t like it.”

  “Well, nothing’s ever perfect,” Lijuan opined. “We can handle whatever comes up. We always do, right?”

  “Indeed, we do! Once more into the breach, Cassie?” Honor grinned, eager as well.

  Smiling at their determination, Cassandra spent two seconds scanning each of their faces. “Let’s do this. It’s time to rain a little Wilde-fire!” she cheerfully called out, her hands impulsively reaching for her twin guns, unaware just how true her declaration was about to become.

  CHAPTER 3

  * * *

  They had always worked well as a team and this time was no different. Working together and quietly, they retrieved their ropes and secured the end of each one around their horses. The other ends, they spooled into the old store. Honor Elizabeth, always happy to use her book smarts from her days at an all-colored school she had attended in far off Manhattan, pointed out the best beams to fasten the ropes around inside the structure for maximum effect.

  Once they were tied off, Honor put her hands on her hips and shook her head in satisfaction. She also took a moment to be wistful at the thought of what was to come. This had once been someone’s thriving business and the rooms above had no doubt been the shopkeeper and his family’s home. If they were still out there somewhere, they surely would never have imagined the end that was about to come to their mercantile.

  For a moment, she considered sharing her thoughts with her siblings, but one look at Cassie and Lijuan told her they were firmly in their “all business mode”—something the pair seemed to share in equal amounts.

  “We good?” Cassandra asked no one in particular. When the others nodded their agreement, her eyes beamed with readiness and she squared her shoulders, “Okay, then! It’s time to open this ball!”

  On cue, the four sisters partially split up. Lijuan went to her horse and pulled her rifle out of its scabbard. Using its strap, she slung it over her shoulder, preparing herself for what may lie ahead. Though Cassie was the crack shot of the family, Lijuan had the best eyesight when it came to long distance shooting, so she drew the water tower duty. She had worked hard these last few years to overcome her fear of heights, so she only paused for a moment before scurrying up the wooden ladder to reach a circular platform that surrounded the old wooden tank.

  Up there, she found herself thankful for a sky ablaze with a full moon and no clouds for miles, as she noticed some of the planks had rotted away on the circular walkway and she had little doubt not many more were in any better shape. Carefully, she tested each plank until she found ones she felt secure standing on. Satisfied she was safe, she raised the rifle and trained it on the area just in front of the large doors behind the general store.

  In that area, Cassie and Honor were now standing. The moonlight glinted off Cassandra’s twin silver-plated double action Colt .45 six-shooters. Honor held a lone gun in her hand as well, while her other hand rested on the hilt of the knife forever strapped at her waist. When it came to throwing her knife, Honor Elizabeth preferred the use of her right hand, but she could easily do so with her left too. The one peculiar quirk that all six Wilde siblings shared was that they were all born ambidextrous, which had proved helpful on more than one occasion in their scrapes with the bad men of the West.

  Lijuan shifted her gaze to the front of the building and saw Catalina holding the reins of all four horses in her hands. She didn’t need to be able to see her sister’s face to know that she would have a grin of anticipation on it. Somehow, it seemed no matter how dire the situations they got themselves into, it was rare that Catalina’s exuberance ever waivered. Lijuan envied her for that.

  Lijuan became focused, though, when she saw Cassandra raising her hand with a gun in it and then lowered it just as quick. It was the signal. Lijuan mimicked the same motion for Catalina who had been looking up at the tower, waiting.

  The signal was all it took. “Heyahh!!!” Catalina whistled loud, urging the horses on.

  She yanked on the reins and each of the horses bolted forward, snapping the ropes trailing them taut. Louder Catalina screamed again, cajoling the horses. Cassie’s Lily, Honor’s Nina, Lijuan’s Kong, and her own horse, the palomino Pretty Feet, upon hearing her, dug in and strained with all their might. Inside the old store, the sudden cracking and sundering of the support beams were becoming music to Catalina’s ears.


  “Timber!!” She cackled.

  Beneath them, in the horizontal mine shaft turned bandits’ Shangri-La, pandemonium was already the order of the day. Cries of “cave in” and screams erupted and could be heard by the Wilde sisters standing behind the store. One voice louder than rest was shouting “Get the horses up the ramp!” while another replied “Forget the horses!”

  “They got all the goddamn money in their saddle bags!” a voice countermanded.

  Honor Elizabeth and Cassandra looked at each other and stepped to both sides of the doors, knowing that the two doors were going to be flung open at any moment. As predicted, the bandits from below pushed them open and a large orange tabby cat came flying out, followed by a mad stampede of ten horses with fully laden saddlebags. As soon as the last horse emerged from the bandits’ subterranean refuge, the pair of sisters stepped back in front of the opening with their guns drawn again just as the pack of men and one woman were about to come charging out.

  “Kindly freeze!!!” Honor yelled at them.

  Dumbfounded, the group came to a halt, piling into one and the other, cursing as they did so.

  “We know some of you got your shooting irons. The first person that draws on us is going to get a belly full of lead and we’ll shoot right through your friends to deliver it!” Cassandra warned.

  Out front, Catalina had just finished cutting the ropes that led into the collapsing building as the second story of the old structure collapsed down onto the first.

  “Talk about bringing down the house,” she slapped her knee, enjoying the spectacle. She dramatically took a bow, drew her gun and ran down the alley to get to the back of the store with the others.

  Angry shouts were already rising from the bandits clustered in the exit to the large trench that had served as their hideout. A blast of wind enveloped them as the first and second floors pile-drove into each other, collapsing into the hideout. Almost instantaneously, the old dry wood was set ablaze by the destroyed kerosene lanterns, igniting new cries of anger and terror.