Ralph Compton - Bluff City

“So you’re Stark,” Cavendish spat in contempt. “You have your gall. What are you doing back here? Come to rob me again?”

“We never left,” Jesse Stark said. “We’ve been in hiding, waiting for you to show yourself.”

Sam Cavendish could not hide his confusion. “Whatever for?”

Jesse Stark was gazing at Melanie. His thumbs hooked in his gun belt, he walked up to her mount. “What have we here? As I live and breathe, the prettiest gal I’ve set eyes on in a coon’s age.” He went to put his hand on her leg.

“Do that and I will kick your teeth in,” Melanie warned.

Jesse Stark laughed. “You’ve got spunk. I like that.” He glanced sharply at the guards. “What are you two waiting for?” Their rifles clattered to earth, and Stark moved to the next horse in the line. “Who is this, then?”

“He works at the Courier,” Melanie answered on Clay’s behalf, “the same as me. Lay a hand on either of us and my uncle will see to it that the governor calls out the militia to exterminate every last one of you.”

“My, my,” Stark said, still staring at Clay Adams. “Sounds to me, lady, like you have an awful high opinion of yourself.” He stepped closer to Clay. “What’s the matter, mister? Cat got your tongue?”

“No,” Clay said. He did not look directly at the outlaw leader but slightly off to one side, his chin low to his chest as if he were fearful of being struck.

“I reckon you just always let women do your talking, is that it?” Stark chortled and began to turn, then stopped. “Do I know you?”

“No,” Clay said.

“You sure? There’s something about you. I can’t say what.” Stark scratched his anvil jaw. “Where have you been of late?”

“Bluff City.”

“No. It was somewhere else.” Stark might have gone on asking questions but Sam Cavendish twisted in his saddle.

“Quit pestering him, you pip-squeak. It’s me you have to deal with. Let us go or my men will hunt you to the ends of the earth.”

“I have no doubt they would try,” Stark said, facing the mine owner. “But I’m afraid you are stuck with my company for a spell, old man.” He stabbed a finger at the two guards. “Lose the six-shooters, too. You’ve got until the count of three.” He didn’t pause. “One.”

Their revolvers landed near the rifles.

Stark puffed out his chest and nodded. “Yes, sir. This worked out better than I reckoned. Not only the old coot but the gal and the dandy, besides. They’re bound to pay up.”

“What are you babbling about, you sawed-off slug?” Cavendish demanded.

“Just this.” Jesse Stark moved so fast that he had hold of the older man’s leg before anyone could blink. With a brutal wrench, he heaved upward, spilling Cavendish from his saddle. Cavendish thudded on his shoulder and rolled onto his back, startled but otherwise unhurt. That changed when Stark took several swift steps and savagely kicked Cavendish in the ribs, not once but several times. Aglow with bloodlust, Stark drew back his boot to do it again.

“Amigo, no!” A stocky outlaw wearing a sombrero, a short jacket, flared pants and two black-handled pistols darted forward. “We need him alive. Without him there will be no money, eh?”

Jesse Stark slowly lowered his boot and the red drained from his face. “I’m obliged, Bantarro. Sometimes I forget myself.” Wheeling, he stalked over to Deputy Wiggins, who had sat as rigid as a board the entire time, his hands in the air. “You thought I’d forgotten about you, huh, pudgy? Think again.”

“You don’t want to kill a lawman,” Wiggins said.

“Why not? I’ve done it before,” Stark boasted. “But I will let you live on one condition.”

“What might that be?”

“I want you and the two guards to take a message to the mine for me. Tell whoever is in charge now that we have the old man, and if they ever want to see him again they are to fork over a hundred thousand dollars.”

Melanie blurted, “You’re holding Mr. Cavendish for ransom?”

“Him,” Stark said, “and you and your friend. Your being along was a lucky break for me. They won’t let a woman come to harm.”

“You are despicable.”

“So folks say,” Stark replied to her barb. “But I will also be a hundred thousand dollars richer.” He hastily amended, “Me and my boys, here.”

Deputy Wiggins did not try to talk the outlaw out of it. He did not protest, argue or debate. He simply lifted his reins and said, “Can we leave now? Or is there more?”

“Fan the breeze,” Stark said. “But once you give my message to the lunkheads at the mine, you’re to stay there with everyone else.”

Sam Cavendish had sat up and was holding his side. “You are the lunkhead, you little weasel!” he snapped, “if you think I keep a hundred thousand dollars in my office.”

Stark smiled. “Not at your office, no, but you have deposited every cent you made from your mine at the Greater Bank of Bluff City.”

“I have an account there, yes,” Cavendish admitted, “but there is barely thirty thousand in it.”

“You’re a liar, old man. You see, I slip into Bluff City any time I feel like it. And I overheard a gent who works at the Greater Bank say how much you have on deposit.”

Cavendish was flabbergasted. “Someone from the bank was talking about my private account in public?”

“He was drunk and bragging how the Greater Bank has more assets than the First Bank, or some such nonsense,” Jesse Stark imparted.

Livid with fury, Sam Cavendish declared, “I will gut them! I will roast them! I will bring their bank crashing down around their ears.”

“You sound like me,” Stark said, and laughed. To Deputy Wiggins he said, “Off you go.”

But Wiggins did not move. “Aren’t you forgetting something? If no one can leave the mine, who gets word to the bank?”

“The old buzzard, here, has a tub of lard working for him by the name of Teckler.”

“The bookkeeper,” Deputy Wiggins said.

“That’s the one. Have him go to the Greater Bank and bring the money. If he rides like a bat out of hell he can be back by midnight.”

“Where will you be?”

“Right here. Watching the trail so no one tries to slip off. Because if anyone does, Cavendish dies.”

“You have this all thought out.”

“Don’t I, though?” Stark said, and laughed.

Deputy Wiggins looked at Melanie. “I’m sorry, Miss Stanley. I don’t want to leave you in this man’s clutches, but if I don’t do as he says, you are liable to be harmed.”

Melanie was glaring at the outlaw leader. “Spread the word that he is holding me against my will. Every man in Bluff City will be out combing these mountains in no time.”

“No, they won’t,” Stark said. “Not if they want you to go on breathing.” He motioned at Wiggins and the guards. “Quit dawdling, gents. Remember. Do exactly as I say or these three become maggot fruit.”

Clay and Melanie and Sam Cavendish watched the deputy and the guards depart. Clay started to knee his horse closer to Melanie but stopped when Bantarro whipped out one of those black-handled pistols.

“No moving unless we tell you, gringo.”

Jesse Stark smiled at Melanie and bent in a mock bow. He indicated the trees. “Climb on down, lady. My camp isn’t far.”

“If I refuse?”

“Then I will have a couple of my men carry you, real gentle-like.” Stark chuckled. “I’m trying to be hospitable. The least you can do is cooperate.”

“You are a slug.”

“Calling me names is just plain childish,” Stark said. “I can gag you if you can’t think of anything nice to say.” He waited, and when she did not reply or move, he asked, “Which will it be?”