Straight ahead of her was the counter where the baker once cheerfully sold her products to the hard-working gold miners of Beacon. To the left of the counter was a staircase leading up to where she presumed to be the living quarters. She made her choice and hid behind the counter that faced the doorway. Drawing deep breaths, she began to reload her six-shooters while plagued with worry on how her other three sisters were making out amidst the twin threats of the bandits and the firestorm. Her fretting ceased when a taunting voice boomed from the wide doorway.
“I know you’re in here!” Darrow yelled.
He looked down at the floor bearing witness to the fact the earlier sandstorm that had assaulted the town had especially hit the building hard with the wide-open doorways depositing a copious amount of sand on the floor. Unfortunately, because of this, Cassie’s footprints had left a perfect trail to her hiding place behind the counter. Smugly, he strode into the shop with his pistol drawn, confident he would be the only one leaving there alive. To further ensure that, he removed the small back-up revolver he had jammed in his waistband and quickly glanced around the inside of the building as he stepped in.
“Oh, what a fitting end, a bakery shop. A perfect place to die for a sweet little tart like you,” he mocked.
He was ten feet from the counter when Cassandra snapped the barrels shut on her fully loaded weapons. The time had come to make them count as she had used up all her spare ammunition that ringed her twin holsters. For his part, Darrow was looking for some sort of cover between his position and the counter, but there was none. He wasn’t sure on how to approach the situation. In the end, the outlaw conceded he needed to draw the woman out. Slowly, he began retreating to the wide doorway.
“I think I know who you are!” he bellowed. “Heard a story a while back about a blonde bitch, packing a pair of pistols that made her think she was a match for any quick draw in the territory. That would be you, wouldn’t it, bitch?”
With every single word that left his lips, Darrow slowly stepped backwards until he was now back within the doorframe.
Cassie heard his footsteps moving away from her as opposed to drawing closer. Unknown to him, it only gave her an advantage.
“Cassandra Wilde at your service! So if you know me, then that must be why you’re walking away,” she bellowed back at him. “You know my two guns will rip you good. Your man, Tosh, was singing your praises, but you know what? Any prowess you got with a gun, friend, couldn’t hold a candle to mine any day of the week.”
Darrow’s angry response to her taunts was to let one round escape. Cassie jumped as the bullet went right above her and hit the back wall with a shelf that tumbled from its worn mounting and crashed, breaking in two, right at her feet. Jamming one of her guns in the holster, she grabbed the part of the broken shelf and flung it over the counter.
A startled Darrow jumped, swinging his gun in the direction where the shelf landed, near an old display case that had all its glass broken years ago. Then his peripheral vision caught sight of Cassie rising from behind the counter. Cursing, he quickly turned his gun and fired.
Cassie wasn’t expecting a quick reaction like that. She managed to get off a shot, but the man was already in motion and the bullet sailed harmlessly out the door to bury itself in the front wall of a derelict tailor’s shop across the street. His shot however grazed Cassie’s right arm, forcing her to quickly duck beneath the counter again as Darrow’s laughter filled her ears.
“Well, you ain’t as fast as you think you are, huh, sweetie?” she heard him heckle in a voice dripping with arrogance.
She grunted out of sight. Cassie didn’t like that remark and to his surprise, she stood up fast—with no sense of fear and both six shooters in her hand—blasting off a round from each pistol in unison. This got Darrow to duck out the front door as one of the fired bullets passed through the leather of his empty holster. He dipped out of the way and went to his left farther down the street, away from the fire.
Cassie took the time to look at the nearby stairs, a new plan flooding into her mind. She would run up them in hopes that he would follow in pursuit, thinking she was going to hide and she would blast him as he came up the stairway. As she ran up the stairs, though, upon reaching the top stair, her foot went right through the brittle wood as if it were a thin piece of ice and not the sturdy pine it had once been. She was stuck!
Behind her, Darrow re-entered the building and saw fresh tracks leading to the staircase. He laughed at the thought that she was trying to take desperate refuge upstairs, and he bolted to the foot of the stairs. As his hand landed on the banister, he gasped in shock as he looked up and saw Cassie struggling to get her foot out. This was going to be fun. Laughing, he fired twice, hitting the walls on both sides of her. She fired back an errant shot over her shoulder that had little chance of hitting Darrow, but he momentarily stepped back for cover.
With a mighty pull, though, and some serious scratches as reward, Cassandra yanked her foot free and dashed into the hallway intent on finding the closest room available, ready to formulate a new plan. Her ambush had been foiled by the decaying staircase, she thought angrily to herself as she quickly got up and ran to the first room she saw.
Close on her tail with both of his guns at the ready, Darrow slowly walked up the stairs.
“Let’s stop all this running, Wilde! Let’s get this over with! I got a fortune to round up and need to be on my way to Nevada,” he yelled.
The room Cassie had sought harbor in was to no surprise empty. Nellie and her family no doubt had long packed up their belongings when Beacon was giving up its ghost. There was no cover, just a huge window that was illuminated by the ever-approaching inferno.
“You’re talking my language, friend!” Cassandra managed to yell back at her adversary. “You got a lot to answer for, so get ready!”
Darrow, grinning and certain that he had her exactly where he could deal with her, entered the room and came face to face with a figure that looked as if she was a devil at the gates of hell. The woman’s hair was matted with sweat, blood seeping from different wounds on her body, but her teeth were gritted and her gaze as steely as any he had ever seen on the hardened criminals that were his companions of choice. It was almost a shame he was going to have to kill such a remarkable woman. In the empty room that had become their playground of death, both of them slowly began to circle each other with their guns drawn.
“You know your friends are probably dead,” Darrow teased her. “There were too many of us, and my Jeanne Marie is well just about the handiest of a killer as I’ve ever seen. Don’t matter she a woman. She went after the darkie and no doubt made short work of her.”
“They’re not my friends!” Cassandra gnashed her teeth. “They’re my sisters and you have no idea what you are talking about. I’ll see them shortly after I kill you and your body is growing cold.”
“How you want to do this, then?” Darrow asked, a comical expression on his face. He obviously didn’t believe that she was sure of what she spoke of. He circled along, as Cassandra held her guns firmly too and their eyes locked on each other.
“Let’s put our guns back into our holsters and draw,” she suggested boldly. “See who the best really is between you and me, Darrow.”
An evil smile crossed Darrow’s face then. He bent backward and with a lick of his lips and pointed his gun at Cassandra. “Ladies first” he said.
Their circling slowed and Cassie twirled one of her guns and smoothly inserted it into her holster. A half second later, without a twirl, Darrow followed suit.
“Your turn to go first,” Cassie challenged her eyes twinkling with more boldness.
“As you wish, sweetie,” Darrow said, his laughter reeling through the weakened walls of the room.
As Cassie watched Darrow placed his revolver in his waistband, she dropped her remaining pistol into its holster. “Let’s just use one pistol each. I want this to be fair and my two six-shooters compared to your one pistol and th
at revolver wouldn’t be.”
“Honorable to the end, I see. Thank you,” Darrow ‘s laugh rang with hollowness.
Silence swept over the room as they came to a halt. The light from the fire that lit the room made it hard for Cassie to clearly see Darrow. He had stopped directly in front of the window and was more of a silhouette than a man.
“We’ll do this on three,” she said, as the calmness flowed over as it always did whenever she had engaged in this type of duel.
“Agreed. You can start the count when you are ready, Blondie.”
“I’m always rea— “
In a move as quick as lightening, Darrow cleared leather as he yanked his pistol free.
Cheater!
Darrow, intending to impress himself with his prowess had elected to shoot her between the eyes. Cassie, however, a split second behind, dodged to the side and with all bets off—due to his duplicity—drew BOTH her weapons even as she felt the breeze from his round whizz by her ear. He may have fired first, but Cassie matched the speed and twin blasts rocked the air. The silhouette before her stumbled back with a cry of anguish.
Darrow numbly looked at his chest and blood-soaked stomach, crimson colors bubbling from the fresh wounds. The bandit slowly looked back up at her as if in a daze. He raised his gun at the same time he was fumbling to draw the revolver from his waist, but Cassie’s weapons belched smoke and flame again and she kept firing until the chambers were empty.
The bullets riddled his torso, and the leader of the Boxhall bandits jerked about as if being manipulated by unseen strings under Cassie’s barrage before he flew back and hit the window. As it shattered and he fell away, his eyes stayed connected to the beautiful killer’s green eyes until she passed from view and oblivion opened its arms to welcome him.
Cassie heard him hit the ground, the loud thud ringing back up to her as his body became one with the earth. She took a deep breath before emptying her spent shell casings and holstering her side arms before checking her various wounds. The last thing she did was adjust her rounded flat brim hat until it was straight again and calmly walked back down the stairs, intent on finding her sisters.
***
Catalina leaned on her elbows on the rim of the well, looking down into the blackness. A smile lit up her face at the sound of frantic splashing in the waters below. A desperate plea also carried up to her ears.
“I can’t swim! Help me! Throw a rope!” Avery was screaming.
She shook her head at him. “I give you a rope and you’ll just be tradin’ it for the one that’s gonna go around your neck for the murders during the bank holdups! Wouldn’t you rather die by your own terms?”
“NO! Lemme out of here!” he disagreed.
“Adios, you sick bastard!” she mocked as she continued to peer down before deciding to leave him to his fate and began to walk away, deciding that it was high time that she found her gun and attempted to reunite with her sisters. At the threshold, however, the screams from Avery hit a nerve with her, causing her to halt her retreat. She wanted him to die the right way, for the crimes he committed. She turned and walked back to the well and leaned over it once more.
“Okay, keep yourself up, you creep, and I’ll go round me up a rope to get your sorry ass outta there!” she barked.
“OKAY! THANK YOU! Hurry. Please, hurry!”
She couldn’t resist shaking her head at him once more. Once outside, she began a search for a rope. After a bit, she was drawn to the whinnying of a horse. She went around behind one of the buildings on the side of the street that was untouched by fire and found it pacing back and forth nervously. Quickly, she calmed it with soothing words and gentle pats before tying it to the back of the house. Her eye caught sight of several bills sticking out of a bulging saddlebag.
Catalina paused to undo the strap holding it shut and gazed at the small fortune. So, this what these bandits were throwing their lives away over. Shaking her head, she cinched the bag shut and next she took off the coil of rope that one of the bandits had kept tied to the saddle it and headed back to the tower. She was already calculating how best to tie the rope and get Avery out when she paused in her step, her eyes settling on a figure in front of the crumbled tower.
It was Lijuan. The woman looked exhausted and Catalina ran up to her quickly, throwing her arms about her.
“You okay?” she asked her.
“A lot better than that skinny jasper that’s got a spike of wood sticking out of where his heart should be,” Lijuan grumbled. “I was stuck inside the tower, but finally got out and made my way down here.”
Catalina nodded and asked her, “You see the others?”
“Not yet, but don’t worry. We’ll find them,” Lijuan assured her.
Just then, Avery’s yell filled up the entire area.
“HURRY UP!” he cried out.
“Who the hell is that?” Lijuan asked.
“One of our prisoners,” Catalina chirped. “Gonna pull him up outta the well with this rope and then tie him up good with it.”
“I say leave him,” Lijuan disputed in a flat voice.
At the same time, she noticed Catalina’s ripped shirt and her eyes narrowed. Without conscious thought, her hand fell to her side, gripping the shaft of her hammer.
“What happened to you? Your shirt?” She demanded.
For a moment, Cattie nearly told her about the attack, but she knew if her sister learned about that, there would be nothing that would stop her from killing Avery on the spot.
“Wasn’t nothin’,” she resorted to lying. “We tussled a bit before I tossed him down the well. He made a grab for me while he was fallin’ … ruined a good shirt, he did.”
Lijuan gave her a dubious look briefly, but she released her grip on the hammer. “Well, he can practice his swimming lessons in the middle of the desert until we get back,” she said. “Let’s find the girls first and if he is still breathing when we get back, we’ll pull him up.”
Catalina conceded with a sigh and they began their hunt. After a spell of fruitless searching, they looped back to the water tower where they saw Cassie and Honor Elizabeth just walking up to it. The two pairs had been searching for each other in opposite directions. They both looked as weak and as tired as she felt, Lijuan thought, as they ran up to each other.
The heat from the fully involved eastern side of the main street would force them to leave soon, but for the moment, they all came together in an embrace of love, thankful that they had all made it through yet another of their escapades … relatively unharmed. They loved each other, they were family and they knew that their ongoing battles in the name of what was good would always be uncertain and far from over. The one thing that would be forever sure in their lives was that they had each other.
It wasn’t the raging fire that ruined the moment. Avery did. He screamed loudly like a baby and began to curse stupidly. Catalina, hearing him first, looked at her sisters, while Cassandra and Honor Elizabeth looked at her inquisitively. Lijuan simply crossed her arms.
“Who, pray tell, is that with the impressive string of curses about a certain Mexican whore abandoning him to die?” Honor asked.
Catalina fell against Honor bumping her sister’s shoulder with hers, her eyes twinkling as she began to walk towards the well. “I’ll tell you after we him fetch out,” she said.
“Anyone seen my gun?” Lijuan asked, rubbing the back of her neck.
***
At first light, there still remained much for the sisters to do. Given Catalina’s skills at handling the steers at Cedar Ledge and Honor’s penchant when it came working with horses from her years indulging in her love for driving their father’s carriage, Cassandra had delegated them the responsibility of rounding up the horses that scattered in the night.
As the pair set out to corral them along with their precious cargo of Boxhall Banks’ purloined money, Cassandra tasked herself and Lijuan to go for another breed of animal, the two-legged kind. To the sisters, the outlaws we
re little more than animals. They had no problem killing innocent tellers and customers in their thieving ways. Cassandra had contrarily, at some point, thought to herself that perhaps, it was an insult to put Darrow’s gang in the same category.
In the end, after a few hours of searching, they found two of the outlaws hiding in one of the buildings on the opposite side of the street. Miraculously, despite the wind that blew throughout the night, the flames had not jumped to that side and despite all odds the entirety of Beacon had not burned to the ground.
They had also found three more heading out in different directions, trying to make their escape while handcuffed. Finally, they had to give up searching for the last two. If they were stupid enough to try and escape across a trackless desert with their hands bound and no water, then their bleached bones lying for years to come in the desolate Hell’s Kitchen would be the monument to their stupidity.
Honor Elizabeth and Catalina had fared better, managing to locate all ten of the horses with their saddlebags brimming with the ill-gotten gains. The Wilde sisters then inspected the wagon Catalina had hid under and decided that though somewhat decrepit, it could still be operational. They subsequently hitched up two of the outlaws’ horses to it. The decision was that Honor would drive it back to town with the injured Jeanne Marie in its bed, along with all the saddle bags of money while the outlaws were to ride the best they could with their hands cuffed on their own horses. Catalina would then tie Honor’s horse, Nina, behind hers and the others would do likewise with the horses left over from some of the now-dead bandits.
The group stocked up on as much water from the old well as they could for the two-day ride back to civilization. Sighing, Cassandra knew she wouldn’t relish one bit having to nursemaid the outlaws. She would give them water constantly, but they were going to be very hungry by the time they reached their new home—the local jail. They simply did not have enough food to feed themselves as well as their captives. Lijuan being Lijuan would feel zero sympathy for them, Cassandra thought, and truthfully, neither her nor the other two would either.
Wilde-Fire: Wonder Women 0f The Old West (Half Breed Haven Book 1) Page 8
