Ralph Compton - Bluff City

Her shoulders slumping in defeat, Melanie dismounted. Clay followed suit. Cavendish had to be prodded by a rifle before he would budge.

Four members of the gang were left to watch the trail.

Stark was in marvelous spirits. He beamed like a cat about to eat a cage full of canaries. “Yes, sir. I’ll be famous after word of this gets out. It will be in all the newspapers.”

“That’s important to you, is it?” Melanie asked sarcastically.

“Being famous? It sure as hell is. It beats being a nobody. Look at Jesse James. Or Billy the Kid. Pretty soon folks everywhere will be talking about me, just like they talked about those two. Hell, if I play my cards right, I can be bigger than they ever were.”

“You have a twisted sense of values, Mr. Stark.”

“What’s that supposed to mean? Who doesn’t want to be famous? I sure wouldn’t amount to much if I was a no-account like your friend, there.” Stark turned and stared at Clay. “I still say I know you from somewhere, mister. Help me out. Where was it?”

“If we’ve met, I don’t remember it,” Clay said.

A small fire crackled in a clearing. Two outlaws were minding it and their horses, which were saddled and ready for a swift getaway.

Stark stopped at a log that had been placed near the fire. “Make yourself comfortable, lady,” he directed. “It’s going to be a long wait.”

“I’d rather stand.”

“You sure are one pigheaded female.” Stark squatted and began to fill a tin cup. “How about you gents? Do you have more sense than the filly?”

Clay sat at one end of the log. Cavendish sat on the ground. An outlaw handed them cups of coffee, which they accepted without comment. The outlaw held out a cup to Melanie but she shook her head.

Jesse Stark laughed. “I swear. Females! If you were any sillier, you would be five years old.”

“Quit riding her,” Cavendish said. “You have as little respect for womanhood as you do for human life.”

“I’ll admit I don’t put women on pedestals,” Stark said, and took a sip. “They’re nuisances, every blamed one. The moodiest cusses alive. They gripe all the time.” He bobbed his head at Melanie. “Look at this one. Pretty as a sunset on the outside but a bitch on the inside.”

Clay switched the tin cup he was holding from his right hand to his left. “I will thank you not to speak of Miss Stanley that way.”

“Will you now?” Stark rejoined, and he and some of the other outlaws chortled.

“Should we tie them, amigo?” Bantarro asked.

“No need,” Stark answered. “They wouldn’t get ten feet and they know it. They will behave like little lambs until the money is brought.”

“A hundred thousand dollars will break me,” Sam Cavendish said. “It’s nearly all the money I have.”

“You still have the mine,” Stark said. “You can make more.”

“Not fast enough to pay my debts and make the payroll,” Cavendish said. “I might stay afloat a month or two, but then all the people I owe money will come pounding on my door. I’ll have to sell out.”

Melanie abruptly took a seat on the log near Clay. From her handbag she took a tablet and pencil and placed the tablet on her knees.

“What in blazes do you think you’re doing?” Stark asked.

“I might as well make the best of this. As much as I hate to admit it, you are newsworthy.”

“Now you want to write about me in your newspaper?” Stark cackled. “Lady, you are as changeable as the weather. A minute ago you didn’t want anything to do with me.”

“The Courier’s readers will be interested in learning about you and your men,” Melanie said.

“I don’t know,” Stark said.

“You’re the one who wants to be famous,” Melanie reminded him. “Can you think of a better way?”

Some of the outlaws had sat down. Others were standing around talking, their rifles cradled in their arms. Bantarro had slid his revolver back into his holster.

Clay placed his right hand on his knee.

“Suppose you tell me a little bit about yourself,” Melanie said to Stark. “Where you were born. What it was like growing up. When and why you turned to a life of crime. Those sorts of things.”

“I grew up on a farm,” Stark said. “I left when I was eleven after I stabbed my pa with a pitchfork.”

As casually as could be, Clay slid his right hand under the edge of his jacket.

“You murdered your own father?”

“He was a bossy bastard. Always smacking and beating me when I didn’t measure up. One day he had me sweep out the barn and I didn’t do it good enough to suit him, so he hit me. Hit me so hard he knocked me down. Right next to the pitchfork. You should have heard him squeal when I stuck it in his belly.”

“Dear God.”

“He had it coming,” Jesse Stark said.

Clay started to raise the cup to his mouth. Suddenly lunging, he threw the coffee into Stark’s face while simultaneously streaking a short-barreled Smith and Wesson from under his jacket and jamming the muzzle against Stark’s head.

Chapter 12

The outlaws were too stunned to do anything. All except for Bantarro, who started to draw his revolvers but thought better of the notion at the click of the Smith and Wesson’s hammer.

“Don’t anyone move!” Clay warned.

Jesse Stark was curiously calm. Chuckling, he remarked, “When will I learn? This is what I get for being nice.”

Clay gouged the muzzle against his temple. “Not another word,” he warned. His hand shook as he said it, and his trigger finger curled and uncurled.

“Look at you,” Stark scoffed. “You’re so scared, you can’t hold your pistol steady. Shoot him, boys. He annoys me.” His eyes swiveled to Clay. “On second thought, if this dandy doesn’t drop his hardware, shoot the female. Shoot her in the head so it’s permanent.”

“You wouldn’t!” Sam Cavendish exclaimed.

Bantarro palmed a pistol and pointed it at Melanie. “I would, senor. A woman or a man, it is all the same to me. Dead is dead.”

Stark grinned up at Clay. “What’s it going to be? Kill me and she dies? Or hand me that six-gun and take your medicine?”

Clay Adams was a study in contrasts. His face was set in fierce lines of animal savagery, yet his hand and his arm shook as if with palsy. He looked at Melanie, then at the hard faces of the pack that surrounded them, then at Jesse Stark. “I reckon I’ll have to take my medicine.” With a deft twirl, he reversed his grip on the Smith and Wesson and held it for the other to take.

Jesse Stark’s brow knit. He accepted the revolver, hefted it, twirled it twice on his finger, and then, still seated, he rammed it into Clay’s groin.

Doubling over, Clay clutched himself and sank to his knees. The veins on his neck swelled. He clenched his teeth but made no sound.

Stark set down his tin cup and slowly rose. He twirled the Smith and Wesson a few more times, wedged it under his belt and contemplated the man at his feet. “Mighty slick of you to get the drop on me like that. It’s my own fault for not having you frisked.” Drawing back his right leg, he kicked Clay Adams in the ribs.

“Stop it!” Melanie cried, and leaped to her coworker’s defense, only to be grabbed by Bantarro and held by her wrists. “Quit hurting him, damn you!”

“Now, now,” Stark chided. “Try to remember you are a lady.”

Another outlaw, a rangy man with a shock of sandy hair poking from under his hat, stepped up to Clay and drew a revolver. “Want me to finish off this yack for you, Jesse?”

“I’m tempted, Gorman,” Stark said. “But it’s best if we keep them alive until we get the money. Tie him, though, hands and feet.”

Once that was done, Bantarro let go of Melanie and she immediately knelt beside Clay, her arm over his shoulder. “Is there anything I can do?”