Chapter 9 – Dancing in the Dark

Turned out everyone was pretty much done for the night. I understood that; it had been a long, difficult day. Especially for the men still sitting at that poker table. I'd lost an acquaintance, a man I'd just met and hadn't had time to get to know yet. They'd lost a friend and neighbor.

I was done, too, but for a different reason. There was something not quite right going on here, and I needed to think about it. Only trouble was it was too cold to do any walking, and I was sharing a hotel room with my brother. I had no desire to drag Bret into my troubles after what he'd just been through with Althea. Little did I know at the time that he had complications of his own and was feeling the same way.

So I went to Minnie's anyway, ordering what else? Coffee. I took a table in the very back, where I could see everything going on around me but was fairly obscured from anyone just entering the café. And I started running over the odd things going on around me that weren't adding up. The feeling that I was being watched. The strange whistling noise I'd heard after leaving Maggie Sawyer's house. The odd behavior of Rally Simmons, both when it came to his attitude about Maggie and his overall demeanor. And in the back of my mind I was still worried about Dickie and Jed. What if they had made it into Sioux Falls before the snow closed the road in? Where were they now? Were they just waiting for the right time to either make my life hell or try and kill me?

I'd been there about half an hour when who should come in but Rally Simmons. Not only that, he wasn't alone. With him was Bret's new friend and employer, Constance Morgan. They took a table at the front of the café and Rally sat with his back to me; Constance didn't seem to be paying any attention to anything other than Simmons. Whatever he was explaining to her or telling her had her totally enraptured. I watched her for a few minutes and saw a change in her countenance; whatever he told her wasn't sitting well with her. The longer the discussion went on, the more upset Constance became. Finally she slammed something down on the table and jumped to her feet, grabbing her coat and rushing out by herself.

Simmons sat there for another five or ten minutes, then dropped some coins on the table and left without turning around. I saw him head in the direction of Pete's and followed suit, paying for my coffee and grabbing my coat. I needed to find out if whatever just happened was going to affect my brother in any way.

I was still getting into my coat as I exited Minnie's and didn't see whoever was standing in the alley between the café and the next building. Someday I guess I'll learn to keep my eyes open and pay attention to things like that all the time; maybe I'd just gotten careless or was distracted by my need to see Bret while the meeting between Rally and Constance was fresh in my mind. Whichever it was, I didn't see, hear or feel anyone there, and it cost me another lump on the head and several lost hours. Real happy it didn't cost me any more than that.

When I started to wake up everything was foggy at first; then I realized everything really was foggy, and I wasn't where I'd gone down. Whoever had hit me pulled me down into the alley so that passerby wouldn't see me lying there. I grabbed for my wallet and found it still inside my coat, full of my poker winnings. Robbery sure wasn't the motive, so they must have been after me. But why? Maybe they were afraid I was following Rally, but that hadn't been my entire intent.

I rubbed the back of my head gingerly and came away with a warm and sticky feeling. One thing I'm real good at is bleeding. I tried sitting up and had to lean back against the building; it sure felt like a concussion. I wanted to get up and get out of there. My entire body was frozen from lying in the cold for who knows how long, but my head said 'slow down boy, you're not goin' anywhere.' My head won that round and I sat still until the world did, too. Then I got up slowly and carefully, holding onto the side of the building just to be sure I could remain upright. Finally I felt like I could walk away without falling down and pulled my coat tight around me.

I went straight back to the hotel and was still a little too unsteady to be real quiet. By the time I got inside the room, I found my brother sitting in bed with his Colt aimed at me. "Sorry, I needed to . . . . " and that was as far as I got before my knees gave out. I'm not sure who caught me, the bed or Bret. When I came to the second time I had a terrible headache and a concerned brother bent over me.

"Just haven't learned to lie still for a while, have you?" he pulled the damp cloth away from my head and there was just a small streak of red on it. "Any idea who it was?"

"No," was about the most I could say at that exact moment. Bret started to move away from me and I caught his wrist; I wanted to know just what he'd gotten into. "Your new boss," I said, and got his attention.

"Constance? She's not the one that – "

"No," I said for the second straight time. "But she was there." I had to wait a minute to finish. When I could start again, I did. "With Rally Simmons, the investment speculator. And she was none too happy with him." I took the cloth out of his hand and applied it to the back of my head, then sat up but stayed in the bed. "Poker broke up early, and I went to Minnie's and nursed a cup a coffee. Rally and Constance came in and sat down but never ordered anything. He was givin' her quite a talkin' to when she got mad at him and left. She threw somethin' that looked like paperwork on the table when she first stood up."

"You try to follow her?" he asked me, and from the tone of his voice I could tell he wasn't surprised by what I was telling him.

"Nope, I waited for Rally to leave, and then I tried to follow him. Somebody didn't want me to. There's somethin' goin' on that you haven't told me about, isn't there?"

Slowly he nodded his head. "Yes, there is."

I waited for the explanation that never came. "You know I'm not gonna back off, right?"

He nodded his head again.

"Gonna let me walk into this blind, huh?"

"Nothin' I can do, son. I gave my word."

"You're not just runnin' the saloon, are ya?" I watched his eyes, and he didn't have to answer me. It was all there; whatever the secret was, and he couldn't or wouldn't tell me. "Just answer me this – we're not workin' against each other, are we?" I wouldn't delve into whatever this was any further if his answer was 'yes.'

Instead, I got the answer I was hoping for. "No, we're not. I wouldn't do that."

"Good," I answered back. "Neither would I."

Still, I must admit it bothered me. To be working in the dark alongside, but not with, my brother. There was something off about this whole sojourn in Sioux Falls, and I had no idea what it was.

I really wanted to do nothing but go to sleep, but I thought I better stay up for a while, particularly since my head was still doing a slight amount of spinning. I took off my coat, vest, and gun belt and went to sit in the chair by the window so that Bret could go back to sleep. In a few minutes I heard him softly snoring.

I sat there in the dark and watched the snow fall again, much lighter this time, just adding to the misery that already existed for everyone outside. I wondered if Constance Morgan was somehow involved with Rally Simmons and wanted out. Was she included in the deal that was 'falling apart'? Had what she thrown back at Rally been a contract of some sort? And how was Bret involved? Something had piqued his curiosity or he'd never have taken a job in her saloon. Were any others of the poker group involved? Was Tom Miller's death connected to everything else, or was it just a coincidence? And who didn't want me following Rally to see where he was going and what he was up to?

I kept running the questions over in my mind. Nothing was adding up and sometime during my trip through the battlefield going on in my head my senses gave up and went to sleep. Sitting up. In the chair. Oh well, it wasn't the first time.