As the end of a steel rod (three feet long and an inch thick) cooked in the open air forge, Kate leaned against a nearby wooden post. Sweat waxed the wisps of auburn hair loose from the braid coiled on top of her head and it beaded in the nooks of her nostrils (which were about the size of the halves of walnut shells). She wiped her grimy hands on her leather apron and folded her arms. Over the crackling flames, she watched a horse and rider trot the road running parallel to the front of her shop, right from left, then cross the bridge (which was within thirty yards of where she worked) into town. Hooves clip-clopped on the wooden beams and soon they were gone behind the cottonwoods on either side of the road. The afternoon sun bleached the green leaves.
She stoked the fire. The coal crunched and embers sprayed like the bloom of an exploding firework. One of the embers stuck to the tip of her long nose. It burned, but Kate didn’t even wince, brushing it off with the sooty knuckles of her left fist. A charcoal streak trailed behind on her schnoz.
Emerging from the cottonwoods, coming from town, four Easterners sauntered over the bridge. Two bowler hat gentlemen and their parasol spinning lady friends paused to look over the rail at the river. The gentleman wrapped their arms around their respective lady and they all laughed. Only the high pitched giddy melody of the ladies pierced through the rush of the river and the forge fire. Big Nose Kate rolled her golden eyes and glanced at the clock hanging on the wall behind her. After her eyes adjusted to the shade in the shop, she could read the hands.
4:17.
She focused back on the forge.
“Next train won’t be leaving until 5 o’clock,” she said, groaning as the Easterners traversed the last few feet of the bridge, but then they stopped. Their attention focused back toward town. All four of them standing on the bridge, as if they were straining to hear something. Kate couldn’t hear anything beyond the river or the forge, but the Easterners reacted as though they did finally hear what they hoped to hear. They nodded at each other, talking rapidly, and then finally the two ladies grabbed their men by the hands and hurried across the bridge, back in the direction from which they came, and all four were lost to Kate’s sight behind the bleached leaves of the cottonwoods.
She leaned against the post. Silent. Thinking about Mr. Doolin and his gold. If he ever found it. And she wondered what would happen if he had. Would he come back for her? Or would he go? Surely, he’d stay. Run the mine. Rake in as much gold as he was able. But, where would that leave her? It wasn’t like she was kin or anything. A mere apprentice. Hopefully more than that after three years. But, who knows the fickle way of men?
Would she end up lost again? Gold would bring more folks to Esau town. More blacksmiths. She’d have competition. It could be all over. She could lose it all. The shop. Her home. Her identity. It was possible that she wouldn’t be a blacksmith anymore. She might be able to apprentice with another, but it might not work out. Then she’d be jobless. Homeless even.
Feral.
Feral, just like when Mr. Doolin found her. Naked. Hiding ‘midst the carriages in the livery yard.
She pressed her lips against the base of her septum and hummed. It started out with a song she heard in the saloon, but, note by note, the giddy tune morphed into something somber, something that was a memory from before Mr. Doolin first met her. She knew it was a memory buried deep in her locked mind, a tune from her forgotten history. There were words to be sung. She knew that too. Words to be sung when someone went away. She tried to sing those as the steel rod cooked in the forge fire. She opened her lips and hoped her tongue would at least remember. But when they didn’t come, she closed her mouth, and kept humming that somber tune.
She checked the steel, pulling the eye hook out from under the mound of flaming coals. The unclosed ring was a brilliant orange. A blinding glow. Kate squinted, dragging the hitching rod out of the forge. A few coals fell, skittering on the dirt. Her blue sleeves were rolled up past her elbow. Muscles of her wiry forearms knotted and flexed as she laid the rod on the anvil. Blazing red laying on cool blue. On a nearby table, she dipped a ladle into a small cardboard box, scooping spoonfuls of borax, then sprinkling the white powder on the hot areas of the eye hook, where she wanted to weld the curved end back to the rod proper, sealing the ring. The borax baked on the hot steel. Crystallizing. Blackening. Kate thrust the eye hook beneath the burning coals of the furnace.
Sparrows flitted about the branches of the cottonwoods when the thunder of gunshots echoed from over the bridge.
Six shots barked in rapid succession. Folks screamed. Kate could only hear as all the action was happening beyond the bridge and behind a wall of trees. But, not a moment later, folks fled over the bridge along the road toward her shop. Their pale faces emerged from behind the cottonwoods leaves, pale and contorted as thespian masks.
Mr. Ike Brocius was one of them. The man whose order she was currently working to fill. He was a fat man squeezed into a three piece suit, guiding an old lady along by the elbow.
Townsfolk and Easterners alike, nudged their way past Mr. Brocius and the old lady, besieging Kate’s humble shop, swarming around her like an infestation of mice, desperate to duck behind the cover of the forge and anvil. Kate raised her hands and shouted for order, but folks panicked and whimpered. Tools rattled. Jangled. Clattered on the dirt. The baking hitching rod was knocked out of the forge, casting hot coals on to the dress of one of those parasol spinning ladies that Kate had spied earlier on the bridge, whereupon little flames ignited on the fabric only adding to the hysteria. Kate flipped the box of borax on the burning skirt, the powder immediately suffocating the flames. She then pushed her way through all the folks to the connecting door to her and Mr. Doolin’s home, flung it open, and waved everyone inside. And when her two bedrooms and kitchen area filled up, she herded the rest out back, toward the livery stable.
When she returned to the shop, Mr. Brocius and the old lady (Kate now recognized that it was Mrs. Horn) were both gasping and sweating, finally stumbling their way into the shade of her shop. She sat them down on a bench.
It was all calm now. The hum of the forge fire, a couple dozen feet away. Wheezing breaths of an overweight man. The whistling gasps of an elderly woman. Kate fetched them water, gave them a drink, and dampened two bandanas with which Mr. Brocius and Mrs. Horn dabbed their faces.
“What happened?” Kate asked.
“Someone shot up the jail!” Mrs. Horn croaked.
“A rescue attempt gone awry,” Mr. Brocius said, wiping the back of his neck. “Three cowboys, fancying themselves gunslingers, tried to besiege the Sheriff’s Office, but… it was clear these boys ain’t ever seen action. Not any real fighting.”
“They were dumb,” Mrs. Horn said, rubbing her glasses clean. “Overall just plain dumb. They crossed right in front of the dern windows.”
“Hate to say that we weren’t much wiser,” Mr. Brocius said, his buttons straining as he chortled . “We were standing in the middle of the street. It was the excitement of it all. Ensnaring my wits. I haven’t felt like that since Gettysburg.”
Mrs. Horn sipped water from a ladle. “And then those greenhorns clammed up. Soon as that dern stranger fired on them, bullets shattering the windows, they dropped to the porch boards. Yellowbellies.”
“Well, don’t forget that we ran away, Mrs. Horn,” he said, a wry grin flickered on his face, as his eyes shifted to a long stare at the ground. “I ran.”
“I reckon the Sheriff’s still pursuing Mr. Magnus, so who’s in his office?” Kate asked. “And who needed rescuing?”
Mr. Brocius and Mrs. Horn stared up at Kate. A glint of realization ran over their eyes. They glanced at each other.
“Mr. Brocius?” Kate asked.
The fat man gawked.
It was Mrs. Horn who spoke. “Mr. Doolin’s in there, Kate. Somebody’s holding him hostage. Somebody wanting that snake oil salesman, Cornelius Magnus.”
Kate sprang to her feet and rushed inside her home. The hubbub of frightened folks trickled out of the open door there alongside the same wall where Mr. Brocius and Mrs. Horn rested. Kate came back out with a shotgun.
“Where are you going?” Mr. Brocius demanded, rising to his feet.
“To get Mr. Doolin.” As she marched by, Mr. Brocius snatched her wrist.
“Don’t be foolish.”
“I aim to get Mr. Doolin,” she struggled, but the fat man’s grip was like iron. She waited.
Mr. Brocius shook his head. “We don’t know the ruffian that’s holding him. Charging in on an unknown enemy is a deathwish, Kate. Trust me. I’ve seen it. Noble intentions ain’t enough to yield victory. And besides, our actions could lead to Mr. Doolin’s demise. We must be shrewd. I say we wait for the Sheriff to return.”
“And when will that be?” She asked.
He remained silent.
“I agree,” Mrs. Horn said, nodding toward the clock on the back wall. “It’s coming on 4:30. Only a couple more hours till evening. I’m sure the Sheriff and his deputies will be coming on back before dark.”
“And what if they don’t have the con man?” Kate asked.
“Sheriff Bull will figure something out, Kate,” Mr. Brocius said, lessening his grip on her wrist.
She relaxed her hold on the shotgun, lowering it from her chest, patiently waiting till, finally, Mr. Brocius let her go. As soon as his fingers released, Kate bolted out of the shop, sprinting for the bridge.
One cowboy laid face-down, motionless. His body, half in the road, half on the porch to the Sheriff’s Office. The windows were shattered. Her eyes were too accustomed to the sunshine to see inside the building. She ran from the bridge, bobbing like a three-legged coyote from cottonwood to cottonwood, till she stood on the porch of Mr. Brocius’ store directly across the street from the Sheriff’s Office. The bridge was to her left. On the right side of the Office, she spied another cowboy, he was crawling in the dirt, appearing from behind the Office. A third cowboy came running from behind a thicket of hackberry bushes, and dragged his wounded buddy out of range, hoisted him up on a horse, mounted himself, and the pair galloped along the windy road toward the main intersection of Esau town.
Kate pursed her lips, brushing them against the bottom of her wide septum. The shotgun lay heavy in her hands. She had never fired the thing. Even realized that she didn’t know if it was loaded. She pressed the switch on top and opened it. Only one barrel was filled. She closed it back. There were two triggers and she didn’t know which one to pull. But she reckoned that she would just squeeze both in unison when the time came.
But that was the next item to reckon. How was she going to get Mr. Doolin out of there? If three cowboys had a hard go, no doubt a blacksmith that hadn’t ever fired a shotgun before wasn’t fixing to have much better luck.
Who held Mr. Doolin against his will? She thought.
Whoever he was, he wanted Cornelius Magnus. He wasn’t simply here for killing. He had an aim. A goal. Killing would only be a means. Same as holding Mr. Doolin hostage. The crime was only a means. It was all just a deal. A bargain. A bit of bartering. The stranger had something she wanted, and she, well… she knew something about Cornelius Magnus and maybe, she hoped, that would be enough.
She took a long, deep breath. Her enormous nostrils flared. Clutching that shotgun, she stepped out into the empty street. It seemed a lengthy walk. Her boots grinding the hard sand. Her eyes fixed on the dead man on the stairs. His hat lay a couple yards ahead of him in the dust. His greasy, russet hair gleamed in the sunshine. She stood over him now. Glancing down. His eye was open wide. Spit pooled next to the boy’s mouth, congealing like worms in the mud.
He’s my age, she thought. Hardly any stubble on his smooth cheek. She gulped, twisting her grip on the barrel and stock. Then she stepped up onto the porch. Shattered glass crunched under her boots.
A gunshot blasted through the door. It was high though, right where a six foot tall man’s head would’ve been. Kate plastered herself to the boards. “Don’t shoot!”
“A woman?” The voice from within the Sheriff’s Office was suave.
“I’ve come to parley!” She slowly raised her head. Blood beaded from a thin cut on her forehead where a glass shard had sliced her.
“This couldn’t get better,” came the stranger’s voice. “But, would you be so kind as to grace me with your name before we begin with the proceedings of our parley?”
“Kate,” she said. “Is Mr. Doolin unharmed?”
“Kate! A peach of a name. And yes, Mr. Doolin is as fine as a frog’s hair.”
“I want to hear from him.”
She heard a muffled shout and the skittering of chair legs on the wood floor.
“It may be difficult to understand him being that there is a handkerchief stuffed into his mouth,” the stranger said. “But, he says Howdy. Do I sense a hint of familial relation?”
“I understand you desire information concerning Cornelius Magnus,” Kate stood up. Fragments of glass fell from her leather apron. Her knuckles were scraped. She moved to the left side of the door, leaning close to the wall.
Within the building, the gun barked. The wood of the wall on the right side of the door splintered as the bullet ripped through. Kate gasped, dropping the shotgun. Mr. Doolin muffled shouts reverberated from within.
“You two are close,” came the stranger’s voice, smooth as silk. “Ms. Kate, I think it would be rude at this point to carry on with our parley without seeing each other face to face. Why don’t you come in? But, do leave that weapon where it lies.”
Kate wrinkled her nose, still standing there on the porch against the wall. Emanating from within the building, she heard the stranger reloading. The tinkling slip of metal on metal, the bullets sliding into the chambers. The ratcheting of the cylinder spinning, snapping closed. Then, came the metallic click of the hammer levered into a firing position. “I’m afraid that I am experiencing a drought of patience at this moment, Ms. Kate.”
She opened the door and stepped in.
“Close it,” the stranger said. Her eyes were drawn to the back right corner of the dim room.
Beside the jail cell, Mr. Doolin was tied to a chair. His arms were bound behind his back and, indeed, there was a handkerchief balled up and crammed into his mouth. A corner of white cloth dangled over his chin. Behind him, a revolver, aimed at the back of his head, hovered in the dense shadows. Silver toed boots and a pair of red, watery eyes were the only identifiable markers that Kate could make of the stranger. That is, until he smiled. A very wide and toothy smile.
“It can’t be this easy,” he muttered.
Kate didn’t know what that meant, but it didn’t matter. Her concern was Mr. Doolin and she was ready to divulge any and all information she had concerning Cornelius Magnus, when the stranger raised the revolver, from Mr. Doolin’s head to her face.
Frozen.
She stared down the black hole of the barrel.
Left with only enough sense to raise her hands defensively and plead, “No!”
Mr. Doolin though, what with his legs left untethered to the chair, leapt straight up, knocking the stranger’s arm out of its desired position exactly as the trigger was squeezed.
It went high.
But before Mr. Doolin could throw his body into the stranger again, the revolver fired a second time.
The bullet struck Kate.
It tore through her shoulder, hurling her to the ground. The wound burned like a furnace fire, permeating her neck and chest, spreading to her torso, stinging every nerve ending in her body. Tears streamed as she screamed, writhing there on the floor.
Mr. Doolin continuously slammed his bound body, chair and all, into the stranger, fighting hard to keep him pinned in the corner. A shot fired, the bullet splintering the ceiling, as the stranger fended off Mr. Doolin.
The only thought that Kate could hold within that storm of pain was to get out of there. She started crawling, dragging herself along by her good arm, scrambling on her knees to the door, groaning as the wounded shoulder ignited with fresh agony when she braced herself to reach up to the knob. She opened the door and dragged herself out onto the porch. But, upon looking back, she witnessed the stranger throw Mr. Doolin to the floor. The blacksmith cried in muffled torment as his hands, tied behind his back, were crushed by his weight. He flopped and kicked his legs like a turtle stuck on its back. Through the dim office, out to the porch, his pleading eyes locked with Kate’s. The stranger took his time, wiping spittle from his lip, adjusting the hat on his clammy head so it covered that bullet hole above his brow. He stood over Mr. Doolin.
“If you insist on such foolish and unpredictable actions, then we can no longer work together,” the stranger said, aiming the revolver at the blacksmith’s head. “Besides, my search is over.”
As the hammer clicked, Mr. Doolin squeezed his eyes shut.
“Good day, sir,” the stranger said.
The gun fired.
And fired.
And fired.
Kate wailed, reaching for Mr. Doolin despite the pain, despite the danger. The stranger lifted the revolver toward her, cocked the hammer back, and squeezed the trigger.
Click.
He laughed. “I can be such a goose at times.” He fumbled in his pocket for more rounds. They clinked into the cylinder as he sauntered toward her.
Behind her, from out in the street, came galloping hooves. The whinny of a horse rearing up as the reins were snatched back. The sounds of feet on the hard dirt. Thumping hollow on the porch boards. The clatter of a shotgun being picked up. Cornelius Magnus, in his white suit, stood over the wounded Kate, shotgun in hand. He aimed at the stranger’s gut and yanked back on both triggers. The shells thundered and the stranger was punched off his feet, crashing through the table in the center of the room.
Magnus flung the shotgun aside. “Kate?”
She pointed with a bloody finger toward the limp body in the far corner. “Mr. Doolin.”
The rubble of the broken table clattered as the stranger sat up. The revolver went off in his hand, sending a bullet busting through the wall of the Sheriff’s Office. Dr. Magnus stared in stupid wonder.
“You ruined my shirt,” the stranger growled, lifting the gun to fire, but the bullet strayed, splintering the door beside Dr. Magnus’ head. Dr. Magnus ducked and dragged Kate farther along the porch, out of the line of fire. But, the stranger shot blindly, hoping to hit them through the wall. Bullets ripped through the planks as Dr. Magnus gathered Kate up into his arms.
She screamed and moaned from the pain of moving the ripped muscles and shattered bones in her shoulder.
“Stay awake, Kate,” Dr. Magnus said, as he helped her onto the horse (Buttercup), who seemed to be keenly aware that rescuing Kate was a good thing. Buttercup remained perfectly still as the wounded girl struggled to mount.
Kate groaned. Spit flung from her lips. A cuss word slipped, as she finally sat up, positioning herself, sitting sideways on the bare back. Dr. Magnus swung up onto the back of Buttercup behind her. She collapsed on him, her good arm wrapping around his waist. Dr. Magnus cradled her and heeled the bay’s ribs as the stranger came staggering out of the door.
The stranger’s black shirt was ripped and tattered to ribbons. His body torn and shredded. There were pop marks on his chin and cheek from stray buckshot. He stood there in the street behind them, as if about to swoon, raised that pistol and fired once. The bullet missed wide. He stumbled after them, reloading his pistol.
But before they could turn the bend, Kate, wincing as she was jostled by the racing mare, watched as Sheriff Bull and his Deputies came galloping up behind the stranger who just finished reloading.
He spun and opened fire on the three lawmen.
They all drew iron and fired back. The stranger was riddled with lead, stumbling backwards in the hail of gunfire, but in the end it was the three lawmen who slumped and fell off the backs of their horses. She screamed in Dr. Magnus’ ear as she watched the stranger manage to wrangle one of the horses before it could flee with the other two.
The train hollered, whistle screeching. Dr. Magnus clapped his heels into Buttercup’s ribs. She snorted and huffed, as a wake of dust filled the air as they tore through the main intersection of Esau town. Behind them, the stranger emerged at a gallop through the brown cloud. They passed the Hotel. The stranger fired.
Dr. Magnus drove the horse toward the station, but the train was already rolling on the rail. A few men had gathered around the station, tucked behind piles of luggage and pallets of burlap sacks, rifles aimed and ready.
“Magnus!” One of the men shouted. The huckster’s white suit was unmistakable along with the slumped figure of Big Nose Kate. They all witnessed the stranger shooting at them. They waited till the stranger was closer, but he cut his horse behind the storehouse there between the Hotel and railroad as they fired their rifles.
Dr. Magnus galloped Buttercup through the line of train men, past the station house, and alongside the lumbering train. Steam billowed up from the steel wheels, clustering about Buttercup’s belly. A conductor leaned out where two train cars joined and shouted, but Dr. Magnus couldn’t apprehend what the man was saying. The conductor pointed behind them. A car door slid open and men hollered at Dr. Magnus.
A shot thundered, the bullet ricocheting off the side of the car. The men standing in the car leapt back behind the walls. Startled, Buttercup weaved away from the train, but Dr. Magnus guided her back.
Another shot.
Two men in the train car peeked from behind the edges of the wall on either side of the door and let loose a volley at the stranger, forcing him to steer his horse farther from the train and out of range of their pistols.
Buttercup galloped alongside the chugging train, Dr. Magnus guiding her closer and closer, till at last the men were able to hoist the wounded Kate into the car. The stranger howled, driving his horse faster and faster, closer now, revolver raised, desperate to plug Dr. Magnus with lead.
But the men in the car fired their pistols, shooting the horse out from under the stranger. The horse crumbled to the sand, throwing the rider head over heels into heaps of scrub bushes. He was left behind in an eruption of sand.
Dr. Magnus leapt into the train car, helped by the men within, releasing Buttercup from her burden, who ran white-eyed from the train, tossing her head and snorting. Dr. Magnus collapsed on the floor, watching the brush flash by and gasping to catch his breath, turning to look as other men laid Kate on a pile of loose hay, where she lay unconscious and bleeding, gently rocked by the motions of the creaking train.