Blood Moon

Chapter 1 – Bart's Story: The Stage is Set

I'm not quite sure what we were doin' on that exact train on that exact day. My brother Bret and me were on our way to Denver; this was our third day of travel and we were somewhere in Colorado, just outside of Colorado Springs. Up to that point it had been a reasonably uneventful trip, but all that was about to change.

My name's Bart – Bartley Jamison Maverick, if you have to know the whole thing - there's only two people in the entire world that I let call me Bartley. And you are not number three. Anyway, Bart Maverick is what I go by, although I've been called a lot of other things in my life. Including things that even I wouldn't repeat in public. My traveling companion was my brother Bret – I know, I know, Breton Joseph Maverick. He's older than me – not by much, mind you, but enough that I can call him 'big brother.' Or what I usually call him, which is 'Pappy.'

Momma died when I was five and Bret practically raised me. Oh, we had a Pappy; still have him, as a matter of fact. But Pappy is a gambler, a poker player by trade, as we are, and Pappy worked most nights and slept most days. So it was up to Bret to make sure I got up and ate and went to school. It was a struggle to get me up in the mornings; my appetite has been almost non-existent my whole life, and I started tryin' to talk my way out of school when I was about ten.

Neither one of us is married or seriously entangled with any one woman, so we pretty much go where we feel like when we feel like it. Sometimes we're together, sometimes we're not. We've got two cousins out there in the world that we're close to – Beau, another Maverick gambler and more a third brother than anything, and Jody, who runs a gambling hall (first class, I'll have you know) that we all own a piece of in Silver Creek, Montana.

Beau is Uncle Bentley's son, named after his older brother and our father, Beauregard Jefferson Maverick. Junior's full name is Beauregard Jackson Maverick, but everyone just calls him Beau. We came by Jody the long way round, but she's the daughter of the late Jessalyn Bonnie Maverick, Beauregard and Bentley's wild sister who ran away from home at fifteen (to Montana). It's a complicated story, but we didn't know Jody was Jessie's daughter for a long, long time. Ah, I forget. Jody Belinda Maverick. And I didn't intentionally skip him – Bentley Jonathan Maverick – Uncle Ben.

You can put your pen down now, I won't throw any more names at you. I just thought you might wanna know that there's more than just two of us - we're kind of everywhere. Anyway, Bret and I were on our way to Denver and we were sick to death of riding the train – there's only so much poker you can play and only so much sleeping in your seat you can do. And we had no idea that all hell was about to break loose.

There's a little town outside of Colorado Springs called Pueblo City. It's about forty miles south and naturally, the train runs right through it. That's where we picked up the four men that settled in the car Bret and I were in. They looked like ranchers – dressed better than cowhands but not as well as bankers. Nothing unusual about any of them. Average height, average build, somewhere between twenty-five and forty years old. Two of them were smoking cigars, one carrying a tobacco pouch like he was ready to roll a cigarette. Two of them had on single right-handed holsters, one carried a rifle. I couldn't see any guns on the fourth. The cigar smokers were laughing like one of the other two had just told a joke. They settled into seats across from each other at the front of the car and talked low among themselves. If anybody else got on, they boarded a different part of the train.

Bret and I were playing poker and he was dealing, so I was concentrating on what he'd dealt himself. See, we're both pretty good poker players. That would kinda make sense since that's what we do for a living. So the standing rule between us (and Cousin Beau) is that whoever deals gets to cheat. The fun part of the game becomes can we figure out what kind of hand the dealer holds. I had a full house, Aces over eights (Bret has a peculiar sense of humor), so I was figuring he had four Kings. I was just about to call my dear old brother when I caught a flash of light on something I hadn't seen before - a knife big enough to gut a steer with. And it was in the right hand of the man that I hadn't spotted a gun on.

"Joseph," I warned. Whenever we use our middle names, it's a signal that something's wrong, or at least peculiar.

"I saw it, Jamison," he answered. I set my cards down on the table and Bret did the same, both of us beginning to reach for our guns. Just as my fingertips touched the top of the grip the back door of the car opened and in walked one of the most beautiful creatures God ever saw fit to create. I wasn't the only one that thought so. Bret's mouth fell open and all four of our fellow travelers turned to watch. She was tall, just a couple inches shorter than me, with long, flame-red hair and show-stopping blue eyes. The kind men talk about but you never actually see.

She had on a black Stetson hat with a blue and silver hatband and black gamblers clothes, with a long frock coat and a blue silk chemise cut down low that clung to her like a second skin The clothes fit her perfectly like they were made especially for her.

It was difficult not to stare, and I did just that. Beautiful women will always take precedence over potential trouble, particularly when the trouble is staring, just like you are. It gave me a chance to take a good look at our new friends, and I caught the gleam of a derringer under the coat of the hombre with the knife. And the man that had carried in the rifle wore a shoulder holster under his. I could see the outline clearly from the way he'd turned to look at the woman. It didn't take much to figure out that our ranchers were anything but.

"Joseph?" I asked again.

"Hmmmm?" was the response I got.

"Pappy?" That got his attention.

"I'm sorry. What?"

"We're all very well-armed."

"I see that. I don't suppose we're going to Colorado Springs to buy cattle?"

"Don't think so. Does this train carry a gold shipment or somethin'?"

"Maybe. Maybe payroll for the miners?"

"They're after somethin' bigger than what they can get off the passengers, that's for sure."

Bret looked like he was thinking, but he was really staring at our lady friend again. "Anybody on here goin' to the Federal Prison in Denver?"

Now that was a good question. I tried to remember if I'd seen anybody get on in handcuffs or leg irons, but if they had it was at the other end of the train. Out of sheer boredom I'd read a paper that morning, and I thought back to what I'd read; something I'd not paid any attention to at the time but might explain a lot now. Charlie Daggett had been tried and convicted in Kansas and was going to the prison outside of Denver. Was he on the train? Entirely possible.

And then it came to me. There was a payroll on this train, actually two payrolls. One for the miners still manning the last remnants of the gold fields on the north side of Denver; the other for the remaining railroad workers finishing up the spur lines in or near the city. Put that together with the possibility of Charlie Daggett on the train and we had more potential trouble than either of us wanted to think about. What if our 'ranchers' were after the payrolls? Or Charlie Daggett? Or both?

And just who was this mysterious creature that had ventured into our particular railroad car? No genteel, 'proper' little lady, I could guarantee that from the way she was dressed and the way she carried herself. She seemed to be the wild card, and I didn't know if this trip was gonna prove fascinating or fatal.