I'll See You Outside - extended
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ONE
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Hoss Cartwright frowned and sighed a deep sigh.
The big man ran his finger around the lip of his beer glass, clearin' it of sweat, and glanced at the door to the saloon, considerin' whether or not he should step out into the street and head for Piper's Opera House. He and Adam had come to the saloon together and ended up partin' after tradin' words on what to do about little brother. Adam laughed when he told him what Joe said about it takin' 'a red-blooded man' to persuade a woman like Adah Menken and thinkin' that man was him.
Truth to tell, he thought Adam was just plain old green-eyed. Older brother'dtried to have his way with the actress and she'd turned him down flat. Little brother was a darned good-lookin' man, 'specially wearin' that there brown city slicker suit he had. And he seemed to have a way with older women. There'd been Lota Crabtree who'd been paid right handsome to trap him, and who turned it down 'cause she didn't want him hurt. And then there'd been Julia Bulette. At first he'd thought little brother was just courtin' her to make their Pa mad, but when he saw the look in Joe's eyes when he heard she'd been knifed and robbed, well, it was clear Joe'd learned the meaning of lovin' a woman.
Hoss raised an eyebrow as he took another sip of his beer. He hadn't thought about it before. Miss Menken made three older women baby brother 'd sparked in about twice as many weeks. With a shake of his head, Hoss leaned in and wrapped his fingers around his beer.
He'd have to caution him to slow down.
All of a sudden there was a tap on his shoulder. Hoss turned to find Little Joe behind him. He'd been thinkin' so much he'd missed his brother comin' in.
With a grin he said, "Little Joe, how'd you make – "
The big man didn't see the fist flyin' at him until it took him on the chin. While his head was still reelin', baby brother snarled, "Now don't say anything else about Adah Menken."
He blinked. "Joe, I ain't even opened my mouth!"
Joe scowled. He had a funny look on his face, like maybe he was mad at himself. "Yeah, well, just don't," he said as he shook his fingers. "Go on and finish your beer. I'll see you outside."
Hoss watched him go, a smile on his lips.
Dag-burn it, if Joe wasn't the cutest darn thing!
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Joseph Francis Cartwright was one preoccupied man. He felt like an idiot. First of all for what he'd tried with Miss Menken, and secondly, for the reason he'd tried it. First and foremost it was pride, and like Pa had taught them, pride went before destruction. He was so sure he could best older brother Adam in the wooing department that he'd forgotten the woman he'd be trying to woo was a person – a real person with a real life and real problems of her own.
Secondly?
He felt like an idiot for acting just like his pa.
Joe snorted. Now, he loved his Pa – loved him more than anything – and respected him. That love was the reason he'd gotten himself into this mess to begin with, and why he'd tried to get Miss Menken to 'show her colors'. He – along with Adam and Hoss – was trying to prove that the actress was playing their father for a fool and was only interested in his money. He should have known better. Pa wasn't stupid or vain. No woman, no matter how beautiful, was gonna fool him. And as to Adah? Pshaw, any woman worth her salt – could you say that about a woman, Joe wondered? – wouldn't be able to help herself where Ben Cartwright was concerned. She'd just have to fall in love with him! After all, Pa was the best man in the territory – the smartest, the surest, and the most honorable. The young man grinned as he stepped off the boardwalk and into the street. Still, there was one thing Pa wasn't, and that was someone who kept his opinions to himself. Pa was always butting in, telling him what girl he should date and deciding who was and wasn't good enough for him….
Just like he'd tried to do to his pa.
Joe halted in his progress. He chuckled as he turned back toward the hotel and glanced up at the balcony he'd just vacated. From everything Adam and Hoss had told him about his own Mama – about her tempestuous nature and quick temper – it seemed to him that Miss Menken would make a right fine match for Pa. The curly-headed teenager continued to stare at the French doors he had escaped through until a shadow passed by. Well, two shadows.
Joe winced as his hand went involuntarily to his back side. He'd better skedaddle quick before his pa looked out that window if he knew what was good for him.
As he started on his way, Joe's thoughts flew back some five minutes or so to the scene in the saloon. He wasn't quite sure why he'd taken his own humiliation out on Hoss except that he knew middle brother would understand. There was something in him that was always fightin' to get out; something deep inside that was like a burning fire that living just kept heaping kerosene on. Everywhere he looked there was injustice, and if there was one thing a Cartwright couldn't abide, it was something being unfair. It made him furious. Joe glanced over his shoulder again at the hotel. And then, what did he up and do? Something unfair. Accusing a beautiful and intelligent woman like Adah Menken of being…well…the wrong kind of woman. He'd have used that uppercut on himself if he could have…but he couldn't…and so he'd delivered it to Hoss' chin and…
He was gonna be dead by morning. Middle brother would see to it.
And if Hoss didn't, then it would be Adam who'd be standin' on the porch, arms crossed and toe tapping when he got home, ready to lecture him to death on the right and wrong way to woo a woman.
The pair of them wouldn't give Pa a chance to take a shot.
Joe let out a sigh as he reached Cochise's side. His horse blew out a greeting as he tossed the strap up and over his saddle so he could tighten the cinch.
At least she still loved him.
Maybe he'd just sleep in the barn.
"Cartwright?"
For a second Joe thought there was an eclipse. There wasn't. When he turned, he found a six-foot-seven three-hundred-pound mountain of a man blocking the light. The slight young man swallowed and took a step back out of instinct.
When he became aware the next day, five-foot-nine one-hundred and thirty-five-pound Little Joe Cartwright would wish that instinct had told him to run.
"Yeah, that's right," he replied.
There wasn't much of a moon that night. What light there was, was a hazy sort of glow cast by the meager light spilling out of open doorways, and by the few streetlamps that had been lit. No one bothered to clean the glass in the lamps, so it was a hellish sort of light, all red and ugly. It struck the man's pugnacious nose, which twisted left like a sidewinder, and sparked in his beady eyes – though how it reached them Joe could never say since the stranger's eyes were little more than the split between a dead man's lips.
"The name's Regan," the man said. "John C. Regan."
Joe blinked. So? Did he know a 'John C. Regan'? He didn't think so. His pa had plenty of business partners and even more acquaintances in Virginia City, but he was pretty sure he would have remembered one who could have given Hoss a run for his money in fair fight.
Hmm. There was an idea. There was nothing the townsfolk loved more than a good fight. Five cents a head would be a good price for admission.
The man was staring at him.
Oops.
A thought formed on Joe's lips. Maybe he should apologize. But then the man spoke again.
"Remember that when your Pa asks."
"…sure…"
Okay. Obviously the guy had had a little too much to drink. Joe hadn't smelled it at first, but as the mountain of a man moved closer, it became clear as a mountain spring that he was pie-eyed as a Paiute medicine man smoking Devils' Weed. Joe resisted rolling his eyes and turned back to Cochise.
He'd just beat a hasty retreat….
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As a young man John C. Regan had learned that you went in fast and you went in hard. 'It ain't a man you're hitting, it's a punch bag', his Tipperary trainer told him. The moment you see your opponent as a man – a living, breathing man with just as much right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of whatever makes him happy as you – you're done.
In other words, you're dead.
He'd started life in Ireland and come to California at the ripe old age of seventeen. Even then he would have made two of the scrawny snot-nosed kid he was hammering. Prize-fighting had earned him a living, but it was the bar room fights John C. Regan relished – no rules, no regulations, and no law looking over your shoulder. He always won. Always. It was no tall tale that he could take down the biggest and best of them with one hand tied behind his back. That gave him some satisfaction, but nothing like the satisfaction he felt now. It wasn't because the Cartwright kid was scrawny as a school girl and twice as pretty, it was because of what Little Joe Cartwright represented.
Everything he represented.
The rabbit punch to the back of the neck was for being who he was – a Cartwright.
The sucker punch that drove the kid into the alley was for the champagne and roses.
The low blow, just below the level of Cartwright's waistline, that sent him sailing into a trio of barrels masked by darkness, was for Adah saying he was 'washed up'.
The feint, followed by a kidney punch that drove the kid to his knees was for her trying to buy him off.
The thug paused to crack his bleeding knuckles in preparation for the final blow.
He'd saved the best for last.
John C. Regan, who outweighed the semi-concious boy he was beating by nearly two hundred pounds, lifted his victim by the shirt collar and dangled him a few inches off the ground. The sneer that had curled his cruel lips as he meted out his own perverse kind of justice, warped into a devilish smile as he observed the damage he had done. And then, seeing not the boy but the man he wished to kill, the prize fighter raised his right hand and, with a twisting movement that was meant to tear flesh from bone, drove the corkscrew into Little Joe Cartwright's left eye.
Then he opened his fingers and let the once handsome boy drop to the filthy ground of the alley as if he were no more than a scrap of meat meant for the dogs.
John C. Regan stood where he was, staring down at his victim for several seconds before he stirred. As he raised his hand and regarded his bloody knuckles, he chuckled.
Chuckled.
"I told your old man I'd settle this my way," he said.
Just before he kicked the boy's near lifeless body with the weighted toe of his boot and walked away.
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