by David Boop
“Waitin’ on a man.”
“You gonna kill this man?”
“I would prefer not to. But I don’t think he’s going to leave me much leeway in that regard.”
“You huntin’ him for bounty?”
“Nope.”
“Then what you want him for?”
“That’s between him and me, Mr. Conroy. And I’d be obliged if’n you just leave it at that.”
Conroy nodded. “Your business is your own. Go on and see to your horse and then come on in for a drink. I do so hate drinkin’ alone and somethin’ tells me that you got a lot of interesting stories to tell, Mr. Red.”
* * *
The slumgullion was better than most Sebastian had in the past. This was a rich, full-bodied stew with plenty of flavor thanks to the herbs and spices Conroy grew out back in his own little garden. The Finches ate two bowls of stew apiece with little of the high-falutin’ easterner’s table manners Sebastian expected them to demonstrate. The Finches ate like folks who were hungry and not ashamed of it.
Sebastian set aside his own bowl, burped long and loudly to show his appreciation for the meal which brought a wide grin of appreciation to Conroy’s lips. “Where’s that jug of yours, Mr. Conroy? Good meal like that deserves a good drink.”
“Be right back.” Conroy pushed his chair back and walked across the room to the left and went through a door. Sebastian reckoned his sleeping quarters were behind the door.
Finch sat back in his chair and patted his full stomach with both hands. “Have to admit, that tasted a lot better than I thought it would have just by looking at it. Who would have guessed the old guy is such a good cook?”
Sebastian took out a long, thin black cigar from a pouch hanging from the belt holding up his pants. His other belt, the one with his weapons, hung on the back of his chair. “Out here a man learns to be his own cook.”
“Which do you prefer, Mr. Red?” Mrs. Finch wanted to know. “A man’s cooking or a woman’s?”
“Depends on the man. Or the woman, ma’am.” Sebastian lit his cigar and gave her an amiable smile.
Conroy returned with a large brown jug he placed on the table between himself and Sebastian. “You won’t find better corn liquor for fifty miles around. Mainly because it’s the only corn liquor you’re gonna find for fifty miles around!” Conroy cackled gleefully at his own joke as he hunted up a pair of glasses.
“When will the stage be arriving, Mr. Conroy?” Finch asked.
“It’ll arrive sometime after the moon comes up, Mr. Finch. It’ll be here, that’s all I know for certain. As to an exact time…well, the driver of the stagecoach has his own schedule he follows, and he ain’t never took me into his confidence on that score. You best make yourself comfortable and resign yourself to waitin’.”
“Is there someplace I could lie down for a bit?” Mrs. Finch stood up. “I’m so frightfully weary.”
Conroy paused in lifting his full glass to his bushy lips. “I don’t have cots and such since them that come here only come to meet the stage. But I can offer you the use of me own bed. Go right on through that door. I beg your pardon in advance for the appearance and the odor.”
“I’m sure it will be just fine. I just need to stretch out for a few minutes. Come along, Harry.”
Finch offered his wife his arm and walked with her to Conroy’s quarters. The door softly closed behind them.
Sebastian and Conroy exchanged knowing looks. “How long you reckon it’ll be before he’s back out here?” Conroy cackled.
“Judgin’ by the way he was eyein’ that jug, about two minutes after his wife’s head hits the pillow. She’s about all done in. She almost fell asleep twice while eatin’ your slumgullion. She’ll be asleep in no time.” Sebastian drained his glass, reached for the jug. “Fine stuff you got here, Mr. Conroy. Whereabouts you get your liquor from?”
“Make it myself. Got a still in the storage shed. Don’t got nothing worth storing, so I built me a still in there. The manager before me wasn’t a drinking man, I suppose. Beats the tar outta me how a man can be manager of this station without liquor or a woman to pass the time.”
“How do you pass the time?”
“I likes to read. Sometimes one or more of the passengers that get off the stage will have a book they’ll leave with me. When I was younger and better lookin’ occasionally a woman would stay with me for a bit until she got enough gumption to go on out into the world and see what it had to offer her.” Conroy took another drink. “That ain’t been for a while, though. Still, it ain’t bad out there. Folks will come along to take the stagecoach, and they’ll tell me about what’s goin’ on out there in the world, and I figger I’m better off here.”
Sebastian poured himself another drink, sipped half of it. He rested his forearm on the table, slowly twirling the shot glass in his long fingers. “How long you been here, Mr. Conroy? Really?”
Conroy’s lips pressed together tightly. He poured himself another drink, tossed it down. He looked squarely into Sebastian’s eyes, opened his lips—
The bedroom door opened and Finch slipped back into the main room, slowly and quietly closed the door shut. He turned around, grinned at the two men, rubbed his palms together. “I certainly hope you gentlemen haven’t finished off that jug.”
“If’n we do, I got two more, young feller. C’mon over and getcherself a snort.”
He didn’t have to tell Finch twice. He sat down and accepted the shot glass Conroy seemingly produced out of thin air. He reached for the jug, but Sebastian’s hand intercepted him. “Looked to me like your missus didn’t want you drinkin’, Mr. Finch. You wouldn’t be the type that cain’t hold his liquor, are you? You the type that gets cantankerous and wanting to fight once you got some liquid courage in you?”
“Me? No. I can hold my liquor just as well as you can, I warrant. It’s just that Melody’s right religious. Don’t hold with drinking or gambling or dancing. Got even more so when we lost the baby.”
Sebastian Red removed his hand, satisfied. Finch poured himself a drink, raised it in salute to the two men and downed it like a professional.
“You say you an’ your missus lost a baby, Mr. Finch?” Conroy asked. “I’m sure sorry to hear that.”
Finch shrugged. “Thank you. It happened two years ago. Melody and I…we’ve become kind of numb to it by now. Funny how for the first six months or so we couldn’t stop crying and just wanted to hold onto each other and not let go. Then one day we woke up and…we just went on with our lives.”
“What brings you out here to meet the stagecoach?” Sebastian asked.
“One of Melody’s friends heard stories about this station and the stagecoach. Both of us are well off. Our parents left us with enough finances so that I only had to work when I wanted to. I’m a lawyer by trade. We were able to hire people to investigate these stories and, once we were satisfied as to the truth of them, we sold our house, all we had to come out here and meet the stagecoach.”
“And where is it that you expect the stagecoach to take you?”
Before Finch could answer, there was a loud hullabaloo outside; “Hello the station! Can a man come in and enjoy the fire and a bite of food?”
Conroy laboriously got up out of his seat. Twilight had come on fast, but there was still enough light to see the man standing outside. Sebastian and Finch couldn’t see him from where they sat, but Conroy obviously was satisfied. “Put your rig in the corral over there and come on in.” Conroy left the door open. “Busy night.”
Sebastian didn’t pay attention to him. He looked at Finch. More accurately, at the expression on Finch’s face. “What ails you?”
“That voice. I could swear I’ve heard that voice before. Recently, in fact. It—”
“Everybody just stay where you are, and this won’t have to go off and kill somebody.”
A stocky, wide-shouldered man filled the doorway. His fat lips curled in a malicious smile. The gun in his hand punctuated his demand.
“You son of a bitch!” Finch slowly stood up.
“You know him?” Conroy asked.
“Of course I know him! This is the man we hired to guide us out here! He robbed us and left us to die!”
“Now, now, that ain’t quite so, Mr. Finch. I left you and your missus food and water, didn’t I? I knowed you warn’t far from this station, and you made it here, didn’t you?”
“No thanks to you! If Mr. Red hadn’t found us and helped us here—”
The man’s eyes shifted to Sebastian. Eyes full of caution and maybe just a little bit of fear. “Mr. Red? Sebastian Red? You be Sebastian Red?”
“I be.”
“Looky here, Mr. Red…I got no quarrel with you. You got no quarrel with me. Let’s keep it that way. Deal?”
“Way I see it, long as you got that gun pointed in my general direction then that qualifies as us having a quarrel, mister…?”
“Sheffield. Art Sheffield.”
“You can put that gun away. Neither Mr. Conroy nor Mr. Finch are armed. You act like you got some sense, now, and put that gun back in the holster.”
“Think maybe I’ll just get back in the wagon and keep on goin’. That—”
The bedroom door opened as Melody Finch burst into the main room. “You better not be out here drinking, Harry! I told you—”
Sheffield, startled, swung around and fired. Mrs. Finch screamed as the bullet smashed into the frame of the door next to her ear, showering her with slivers of wood and dust.
Sebastian’s right hand went out for his sword and drew it from the scabbard. He came up out of his chair, bringing the sword up in a flawless cut that sliced the barrel of Sheffield’s pistol clean off. It fell to the floor with a clank. And then Sheffield felt the edge of cold steel against his Adam’s apple. “Might as well drop the rest, partner.”
Sheffield complied. Finch ran over to see to his wife. She was frightened, shaken but unharmed.
“What do you intend to do with him?” Conroy asked.
Sebastian looked thoughtfully at Sheffield. “If it were upta me, I’d kill him like the weasel he is. But it warn’t me he abandoned. It was them.” He waggled his head in the direction of the Finches. “It’s up to them to have the say.” He plopped Sheffield down in the nearest chair.
Conroy went over to assist Finch with his wife. The two of them helped her to a chair by the window while Finch looked her over. “None of those wood chips seems to have done any damage, thank God.”
Conroy pressed a shot glass into Mrs. Finch’s hand. She shook her head, tried to give it back. “I don’t drink.”
“Go on and take it, ma’am. A shock like you just had, you need it.”
Mrs. Finch argued no further and tossed back the drink with an alacrity that matched her husband’s. Held out the glass in Conroy’s direction. “Another,” she said simply. With a wicked grin, Conroy obliged and Mrs. Finch downed the second drink as fast as the first one. Finch observed all this with quiet astonishment and Sebastian Red reckoned that the right religious Mrs. Finch had pulled a cork or two in her time. She handed the empty glass to Conroy and glared at Sheffield. “It’s him,” she hissed. “The animal that robbed us and left us to die.”
“That he be, ma’am.” Sebastian kicked the pieces of Sheffield’s gun out the door and closed it. He still held his sword in his hand. Five feet of shining single-edged death. The hilt banded with leather and the pommel crafted in the shape of an armored gauntlet holding a rose, wonderfully worked in silver and ivory. A breathtaking piece of craftsmanship. “What do you want to do with him?”
Mrs. Finch looked confused. “I don’t understand.”
“It was you he robbed and left out there to die. You get to decide what happens to him.”
Mrs. Finch’s eyes widened. “You can’t be suggesting that we kill him?”
Sebastian shrugged. He returned his sword to its scabbard where it locked in with a soft click. “I would.”
Mrs. Finch looked up at her husband. “Harry?”
Finch turned hard eyes on Sheffield. He contemplated the frightened man for a few long minutes before speaking. “Melody and I got here okay. Maybe a little tired, a little scared but we got here, and that’s what’s important. We gave up all our worldly possessions to be here to ride on the stagecoach. That’s all I care about. Melody’s not hurt, so I’m willing to call it square.”
Sebastian nodded, sat down next to Sheffield and poured himself another drink. “That’s a good man right there, Sheffield. Called him a fool, didn’t you?”
“Reckon I did.”
“World could use more fools like him and less fools like you.”
“One thing puzzles me,” Finch walked over to where Sheffield sat, stood glowering down at him, fists on hips. “Why’d you come here when you knew this is where Melody and I was heading?”
“I didn’t plan on coming here a’tall! I intended to be miles away from here by now. I can’t figure how I got turned around like that.”
Conroy chuckled. “Yeah…during the nights when the stage is due to come, the land around the relay station gets kinda strange, twisted around. Folks have been known to sorta lose their way.”
“I don’t wanna be here! I don’t wanna ride that stagecoach!”
“Don’t you fret about that. You don’t want to ride the stage, you don’t have to. It only takes them what wants to be passengers.” Conroy pushed the jug over to Sheffield. “Have a drink, stay in that seat, stay quiet, and you’ll come out of this okay.”
Finch returned to his wife and Sebastian returned to his seat, eyeing Sheffield who plainly was delighted to find himself not under a sentence of death.
“How long you been robbin’ folks?” Conroy asked.
“Four, five years.”
“Couldn’t find honest work?”
“Don’t like honest work. Easier robbin’ folks like them.” Sheffield jerked his head in the direction of the Finches. “There’s a lot of greenhorns like them. But I always leave ’em food and water. I don’t gun down helpless folk.”
“I just bet you don’t,” Sebastian chuckled with grim humor. “You done some backshootin’ in your time. I can tell.”
Sheffield wisely said nothing. He poured himself another drink.
“Hello the station!”
Upon hearing this new voice from outside, Sebastian sat up straight in his seat. “About time,” he muttered. He finished off his drink, stood up and reached for the belt with his weapons, buckled it around his waist. “There’s the feller I been waitin’ on. You folks stay in here.”
Sebastian walked to the door, opened it and stepped out onto the porch, immediately went to the right so that he wasn’t illuminated in the light streaming from inside. Conroy followed Sebastian, lanterns held in each hand. “Told you to stay inside, Mr. Conroy.”
“Still got my job to do, Mr. Red. Stage will be coming in soon and lanterns got to be lit.”
“There’s liable to be some shooting.”
“I knows how to duck.” Conroy busied himself lighting the lanterns while Sebastian Red regarded the three men sat astride horses a few feet from the relay station. The man in the middle squinted as his eyes adjusted to the sudden light. “Hello the station!”
Sebastian spoke up. “Hello right back atcha, Farrell.”
Farrell didn’t seem surprised at all. He just reached up to scratch his cheek, let out a low laugh. “Y’know, I woulda been disappointed if you hadn’t been here, Red. You been doggin’ me for what, a month now? You come by your rep honestly, I give you that. You start out huntin’ an hombre, you don’t stop until you got him. How’d you know I was comin’ to the relay station?”
“You shouldn’t be so free telling your hopes and dreams to whores, Farrell. They ain’t got none, so why should they care about yours?”
Farrell laughed again. “Yeah, I been dreaming about riding this stagecoach ever since I heard about it when I was a boy. Thought about riding it a passel of time
s. But it warn’t till I killed me that lawman out in Wyoming that I bent a serious mind to it.”
“I know all about that lawman. He was a friend of mine. Left behind a wife and three young’uns.” Sebastian’s voice darkened. “You’re not gettin’ on that stage, Farrell.”
“I got two guns backin’ me up. Between them, they done kilt a dozen men. You countin’ on that old man and that dude to side you?”
Sebastian turned to see Finch and his wife crowding the doorway. Conroy hadn’t moved since lighting the lanterns.
Out of the corner of his eye, Sebastian saw Farrell’s hand go for his gun. And his men followed suit. Sebastian threw himself to the left, drawing his seven-shooter. The big gun boomed. The man on Farrell’s left flew backward out of his saddle as if he’d been hit in the chest with a cannonball.
Farrell’s first shot slammed into the wall of the station behind Sebastian as he dropped into a crouch. Sebastian fired again, this one taking the hired gun on Farrell’s right. He fell out of his saddle.
Farrell fired again, the bullet smashing into the porch not more than a few inches from Sebastian’s head. He rolled, got to his feet, fired but missed. Farrell unloaded his guns cursing, obviously unnerved by Sebastian’s speed and agility. He fought to keep his frightened horse under control while trying to get a bead on Sebastian.
The second man snapped off a shot from where he lay. Sebastian’s shot hadn’t killed him, just hit him in the shoulder. Sebastian made sure he killed him with his next shot. It hit the hired gun right in the middle of his forehead.
The other two horses fled in panic, and Farrell’s horse tried to do the same, but he kept the animal facing the relay station as he attempted to get a clear shot at Sebastian.
