falcon and wolf 18 cliffie bonus

 

Chapter 18

 

The big man seized a handful of candy canes.

“Be a shame if anything happened to this shop,” he said. “But Big Freddy can stop anything happenin’ to you or it.”

“And what might happen to it?” asked Luke, mildly.

“Well, be a shame if anyone came in and peed on your candy,” said the mobster, stuffing his face full. “Or broke it up. Or burned you out. Now for a nominal fee, this can be avoided with a small weekly payment.”

“Meanwhile, you owe me two cents for the candy,” said Luke, evenly.

The big man began to laugh.

Luke put a hand over the hand holding the candy.

“Two cents,” said Luke.

“In your dreams,” scoffed the heavy.

“Have it your own way,” said Luke, and squeezed.

The hoodlum squealed in pain and tried to pry off Luke’s hand. He was unsuccessful.

Luke kept smiling, as the man began to roar, and then scream.

“It’s greed that does it,” said Luke, genially. “You have a handful of hard candy, so I have something to break your hand against. Without that, well, I could hurt you, but there wouldn’t be that satisfying sound of knuckles popping and bones breaking. Also, you left your thumb inside, which is a bad idea. See?” he let go, and the big man put his mangled hand into his armpit.

“You’ll pay for that!” he ground out.

“We shall see,” said Luke.

 

“They’ll be back by this evening,” said Luke. “They can’t pass up a challenge. Just hang this notice on the door, Tommy.”

Tommy read it.

“This premises reserves the right to exercise the second amendment if offered violence,” he said. “The second amendment – ‘You shall not infringe the right of the people to bear arms?’”

“Quite right,” said Luke. “And implicit within that, to protect his life and property with, at need, deadly force.”  He paused, and looked seriously at Tommy. “I want you to be upstairs with those school books I got after we got your gun,” he said. “Wolf and I work well together. If we have to worry about you, you might get one of us killed. I don’t want to scare you, but you’re old enough to understand the facts of life. When I’ve been training you a couple of months, you’ll be of real use.”

Tommy flushed, but nodded.

“I’d rather you told it like it was,” he said. “I’d not mind risking my life, for living under the same sky as my father’s killer does not suit me, but if I’d risk yours or Wolf’s, I understand that I’m a liability.”

Luke released the breath he had been holding.

“And I don’t want them taking you hostage, either,” he said. “Now, I’ll be plain here, if you were a prisoner, I’d back you to get loose far more readily than someone like the Sheriff, who’s as much good as a blancmange rifle, but then, if he got himself killed, it’s what he’s paid to do, and I wouldn’t lose much sleep over it so long as it wasn’t through my carelessness.”

Tommy sniggered. He felt better for being compared favourably to Sheriff Taylor.

“Mind, he’s still a better shot than you,” said Luke.

At least, one might hope that he was.

 

 

Tommy retired upstairs after visiting the outhouse on Wolf’s quiet suggestion. Wolf was busy rigging wires and ropes attached to bottles and cookware in the back yard. Luke had got a lamp and a stool to set it where it would heat up the back door handle. He grinned.

“I’ve done this sort of thing before,” he said.

He had cleared many of the sweets to one side of the room, so there was room for the massive whip he wore.

“Another weapon you’ll learn,” said Luke. “That, however, is a back-up. I think I’m going to kill them.”

“I hope you do,” said Tommy. “My daddy couldn’t get out of the house in the fire, and Mam wouldn’t leave him, and… and then the floor fell in and they fell with it. Mam screamed and dad was yelling, and… and sometimes I wake up hearing it.”

“Well, that ain’t hardly surprising,” said Luke.

“They whipped me at the orphan asylum for waking people up.”

“Didn’t they know you’d lost your folks in a fire?”

“Yes, but they told me to grow up and be a man. If I could have grown up and been a man, I’d have taken Annie-Beth to live by ourselves, and I’d have killed Freddy.”

“I don’t know if it will help when I’ve killed him, but I hope so,” said Luke. “Your father was a good man. I am not going to be gentle on Freddy and his men.”

“Good,” said Tommy.

“You have algebra waiting upstairs now,” said Luke.

“Yes, Luke,” said Tommy, with a sigh. “Does a bounty hunter need algebra?”

“Well, yes,” said Luke. “You need it to understand surveying and maps. And how many owlhoots have I caught using maps?”

Tommy brightened somewhat, and took himself upstairs to wrestle with the toils of mathematics.

 

The two who came into the sweet shop were familiar to Luke.

“We hear you’re making trouble, buster,” snarled the first. “We’re here to beat a few manners into you, see?”

“Well, if it isn’t Mary Lou, and Susiebelle,” Luke drawled. “I did warn you, if you let yourselves be bailed, I wouldn’t be gentle, next time. Unless you’ve come to apologise and tell me you left Freddy’s employ?”

“It’s him!” said ‘Mary Lou’ in lively horror, drawing a gun. ‘Susiebelle’ did likewise.

Luke beamed.

It sounded like a single shot as both his Smith and Wessons cleared their holsters and fired with  a harmony of simultaneous detonation. Both men went down, with identical looks of surprise and each with a hole in the precise centre of his forehead. 

Their guns were in their hands, and one bullet at least fired as the death throes of a hand tightened on the trigger.

“And you drew first,” said Luke.

The clatter in the back yard alerted him to more, and a man screamed as he set his hand on the hot handle.

He yelled out again.

“You little shit! I’m going to kill you!” there was wild firing. Luke was suddenly grim.

“Tommy!” he shouted.

“He missed!” called Tommy.

“Keep low,” said Luke, and went out of a window rather than wait for the handle of the door to cool. Wolf was engaged in a fire fight with a couple of men, and the one by the door stank of vomit. As he was covered in it, this smell was explained.

He turned his gun on Luke.

He died.

“You fired on a little kid, you shit,” said Luke.

Wolf had disposed of his two.

“What now?” he said.

“We take out the trash,” said Luke. He went back in to dismantle the lamp, and used a glove to open the door. Soon all five were propped up on the board sidewalk with a notice saying ‘property of Big Freddy.’

The sheriff arrived.

“Christ!” he said.

“The Lord is good,” said Luke. “The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away, Blessed be the name of the Lord.”

“Did you…”

“Two are Wolf’s,” said Luke. “That one fired on my ward. Take them away; they’re a health hazard.”

“Did they draw first?”

“Hell yes. But I fired first because I’m quicker. That’s the law of the West.”

“Can’t fault you on that,” said Taylor. “You’ll really have pissed off Freddy now.”

“Well, if he keeps sending people, sooner or later, he’ll run out,” said Luke. “Do you have any idea who he is?”

“Yes, his name is Frederick Muller, and he runs a bar and saloon on third street, with girls and card and dice games. Illegal, under the city ordinances, but he runs thirty or more thugs… well, five and twenty now.”

“Well, I plan to make it an unhealthy occupation,” said Luke. “I might drop in and see him.”

“Are you crazy?”

“Yes,” said Luke. “Next question?”

Taylor gave up.

 

“So, what were you up to, to get shot at?” Luke asked Tommy.

“I… I heard the gunshots, and I remembered them shooting daddy’s knees,” said Tommy. “And I threw up. Only there was that fellow at the back door, so I emptied the chamberpot out of the window on him.”

“Priceless!” said Luke. “Good man; definitely a Cossack in training. Everything’s a weapon, even vomit.  Tommy! You say you remember – surely they did not shoot your daddy’s knees in front of you?”

“Oh! They did not know I was there. I was on the half-landing, where the stairs turn, and I looked between the posts.  I would recognise who it was any time.”

“Well!  You describe them. I can draw villains pretty well from description,” said Luke.

He sat down, sketching in Luke’s work book, and soon had two pictures which would be easy to recognise, with Tommy nodding confirmation.

“Good man,” said Luke. “Now, you put on some pork and beans for our supper, and Wolf and I will reset various traps. I’m closing up shop, and don’t you go in there.”

“No, Luke,” said Tommy.

There were two rooms at the back, a kitchen and a parlour, and upstairs the two small rooms under the sloped roof behind the false front of the store.  A cellar provided food, and Luke and Wolf fetched in plenty of water, to prepare, if need be, for a siege.  The dirt in the back yard was readily dug into. A notice on the back gate said ‘trespassers will be dismembered.’

The holes in the dirt held the same makeshift mines Luke had set against the Weston family; a board with a nail through and buried below it a stick of dynamite with a .45 cartridge inserted in it. Anyone standing on the board caused the nail to hit the firing nipple. It should keep anyone at the rear of the property occupied.

 

They ate; and Luke sent Tommy to bed.

And went up to lie down beside him, and tell him funny stories of his childhood until Tommy fell asleep. Luke dozed, and then Wolf awoke him to take his turn on watch. Wolf slept downstairs in the parlour. Both sets of shutters were up and the lamp was back on the stool by the door.

“It’s times like this, I could wish we had the Gatling gun,” said Wolf.

“It’s in the livery stables, stored in a box marked ‘horse furniture’,” said Luke. “But it’s too indiscriminate for town work; we might hit passers- by.”

Both dozed in that semi-alert way those trained to combat may have.

Then there was a tinkle of broken glass as something came through the shop front.

“Now he breaks the glass by the handle… now he turns the handle having reached through the hole… wait for it…” said Luke.

The explosion was loud in the interior of the building, and reverberated around, almost drowning out the scream, and a whiff of acrid smoke wafted back.

The explosion had finished but the screaming continued.

“Bag of nails?” asked Wolf.

“That and a poke of lemon sherberts,” said Luke. “I thought it might sting.”

“I reckon the nails sting more,” said Wolf.

“You’re likely right,” said Luke. “And probably shards of glass. You keep an ear out here, I’m going to see if he has any friends in an unshredded condition.” 

“However much dynamite did you set?” asked Wolf.

“Only three sticks,” said Luke. “Only the others were set to set off by fuse with the first and I squished them a bit to direct the blast forwards. With more nails.”

“Are we likely to have a shop front?” asked Wolf.

“Of course! The other two were outside,” said Wolf. “I ran a fuse under the door and put them under the step to blast upwards.”

“They’ll probably make you pay for damage to the boardwalk,” said Wolf.

Luke opened the door into the shop, and sniggered.

Three distinct screaming mounds decorated the shattered shop front.