Clockwork Cowboy

Chapter 46

Jese winced. "That looks painful!"

"Painful?" The aging gentleman called in indignation. "I think you will find it is life threatening!"

"This is all your fault," Harry whispered weakly to Jese.

"Not at all, my hands were nowhere near the thing!"

"I should have stayed to kill you, that night in the Saloon."

"But you saw one exploding bottle and ran like a child?" Jese asked.

"I'll send for the doctor now." The aging man called, frustrated that he could no longer hear the conversation. "Press something against the wound, or you'll bleed out."

Brandon leveled a gun at the spectator. "Get inside!"

With a loud "Oh!" the gentleman withdrew immediately.

"Now," Brandon said clearly. "Where were we?"

"He was just shooting off his family jewels...  This is why guns and alcohol don't mix."

"Tha's it!" Harry raised his gun, his hand wobbled as he tried to take aim. Then he began to slowly pull the trigger.

"JESE!" Nova screamed. "Duck!" Pressing her cold hands to her face to prevent her eyes from witnessing the bloodshed.

"DUCK?" She heard her mother holler. And in the moment before Harry's gun exploded there was a loud thud.

Nova heard Harry screaming as thud after thud landed on his head. "I've caught it, Diedre! We will be eating duck for dinner tonight!"

"What?" Nova asked weakly. Removing her fingers from her face, she peeked up to find her mother beating the man with a cast iron pot, as he writhed on the ground.

"Boil the water, Girl! We'll pluck him and eat him for dinner."

A shocked blasphemy fell from Nova's lips. She doubted there were many women that had ever witnessed their angelic mother beating a man to death. Each time the pot fell on his head he slipped further away.

"Yes, my love. This is a blessing from Jesus! He knew we were hungry and sent us this fowl." Her hair miskept, Helaku smiled at her daughter with a happy and delusional look playing about her eyes.

"Mama! No!"

"Don't worry child! He won't even feel a thing!"

The sinewy henchman pushed forward screaming, "Get off him! Get off him, you crazy old bitch!" He pushed Helaku off the man and crouched down at his side. "He's dead!" The man cried in shock. "She killed him!" Pulling his gun out of his holster he aimed it at Helaku's head. "I could kill you in a moment, but I'd much prefer you suffer first." The bang reverberated the air.

Helaku's screams spun Nova to life. The bullet - intended for her mother's leg - had grazed Helaku's thigh, ripping her skirt and skin simultaneously.

"Mama!" Rushing forward Nova caught the man with her shoulder to his back, just as he was taking aim at her mother's arm. He fell sideways, his elbow shooting out at the last minute to save his fall. As the gun fired he found himself falling onto the bullet. The gun fell aside as he grasped his ribs.

"If I wait here," she heard Jese ask. "Do you think my mother in law will kill you too?"

Her mother was angrily aiming a gun at Brandon's head.  "Nobody," she snarled. "Ruins a girls dress!"

"Stop it, Mama!"

Brandon swore loudly and kicked the gun from Helaku's reach just before she fainted. "I don't need them anyway. I just need the girl."

"You are out of luck there," Jese snarled.

"You are both the stubbornest folk I've ever had the misfortune to meet. You should have just sold me the ranch when you had the chance, then you could have escaped with your life. Instead, I had your hay ruined and your bulls shot, your pasture in flames - and then, when nothing else moved you - I had your wife's head posted on every wanted ad in town. And yet, here you both are.  Too stubborn to even die quietly."

"You did all of that to purchase Radcliffe Ranch?" Nova asked in shock. "But there is land all about the County."

Brandon laughed nastily. "That's true, but none quite like yours."

"How so?"

"Since you'll be dead shortly, I guess I can tell you. It's flooded with gold."

"Gold?"

"You know the problem with you, Nova Radcliffe? You are so pessimistic that you could stare at an emerald and tell yourself it is only a lowly rock."

"Please," Brandon continued. "Don't tell me that you thought I came to picnic with you every day that summer because I was so infatuated with your beauty? Those long walks I took, weren't to help the food settle in my stomach. Instead, I was actually getting increasingly rich at your expense."

"What?"

"Poor, Nova Radcliffe. Such a good looking wench, and yet the only men you are attracted to are more interested in your farm than in your charms."

The truth in his statement made her chest ache.

"Please, don't look so down in the mouth. I do regret not marrying you, it would have been so much easier. I had planned to gamble the land off your father - but then I was sent off to war. Had I known that he'd pass on and leave the place to you I would have been back in a flash... But I can still make that happen. Once the three of you are dead your property will inevitably go on the market, and I will be the highest bidder."

Nova glanced at her husband, his hand creeping to his hip so not to catch Brandon's attention.

"Over my dead body," Jese said.

"Precisely." Brandon lifted his gun level with Jese's heart. Nova could see that Jese wasn't going to get his gun from his holster in time.

She had to move, and move fast.