Chapter 17: Buck "Shot" Gunderson
(Abalone, Kansas, July 1883)
With a little time at their disposal, Blendin shaved—"Mustache, too!" Mabel insisted.
"B-b-but I kind of l-like it."
"It's unsanitary," Mabel insisted. "And if you ever want to kiss a girl—"
With a sigh, Blendin lathered up and shaved it all off.
"When can we get some food?" Mabel asked.
Blendin looked at his watch. "The H-Horn Sp-Sp-Spoon should be opening any time now," he said. "It's down the s-street. There's an early-morning t-t-train that stops at the station, and the layover's ab-about half an hour, so they open to f-f-feed the passengers."
"Somebody has to stay here to make sure your past version doesn't wake up," Dipper said. "I'll do it. Mabel, how much chloroform do you use?"
"Just one half-glug on a handkerchief. But don't do it unless Blendin's waking up. And it puts them out fast, so don't overdo it!"
"OK," Dipper said. "Bring me something back." He went into the back room, drew up a chair, and listened to this Blendin peacefully snoring.
The sky was turning pale, and Mabel and Blendin could see their way down to the restaurant, which was already crowded. They went in, found a table, and a scrawny woman in a long dress and a bonnet came over to the table. "Why, Ben! I like to not've knowed you! You look right different without your soup-strainer!"
"I-I-I know, J-Janey. Uh, Janey, this here is m-my n-niece Mabel. M-Mabel, Missus Janey Choakem ow-owns the Horn Spoon."
"Howdy!" Mabel said. "Let's get down to brass tacks. Where's the menu?"
"The what?" Janey asked. "Oh, the grub? Well, you can have biscuits and eggs and steak, biscuits, steak, and eggs, biscuits, gravy, and steak, steak and biscuits and steak, eggs and ham, eggs and biscuits and ham—"
"Steak and eggs and biscuits!" Mabel said. "And an extra biscuit and hunk of steak! And coffee! You have any plastic dino—no, you wouldn't, forget it. Strong coffee, though!"
Blendin, whose stomach might have been a wee bit touchy on that particular day, asked for just scrambled eggs and a small biscuit. And milk.
The food came in a few minutes. "Woohoo!" Mabel said. "I've hit the mother lode!" The coffee was in a tin mug, pint-sized. The two steaks might together have totaled a pound and a half of meat, and it looked as if half a dozen eggs had been scrambled. All of that came to—
"Thirty cents?" Mabel asked, astounded. Dipper had produced some era-appropriate coins, and she gave Mrs. Choakem fifty cents. Blendin's more modest meal came to only twenty cents, and that, Mrs. Choakem said sorrowfully, was because milk was a little bit scarce this week.
Cowboys sat at the other tables, gobbling and belching. Some of them stared at Mabel when she got down to business with knife and fork, obviously impressed by her take-no-prisoners style. When she had finished, she sat back, gave a satisfied burp—some of the cowpokes applauded—and grinned. "Now for Dipper," she said.
The biscuits were amazing. Blendin said they were cat's-heads, but assured Mabel they didn't have any actual cat in them. They were almost the size of a coffee saucer, fluffy and tasty. Mabel slit one of these open and stuffed it with leftover steak, making a sandwich.
A cowboy at the next table said, "Missy, that's a interestin' way to eat a steak!"
"It's for my brother," Mabel explained. "It's take-out."
"What?"
"Take-out. I'm gonna take it out to him. Some day restaurants all over will be offering this kind of food."
"Sh-sh-sh!" Blendin said, stirring uncomfortably.
The cowboy laughed. "You know what? I think I'm a-gonna try that. Take one with me for the train. It's a long, hungry ride from here to Weskin!"
"Go for it!" Mabel said. "Anybody asks, tell 'em Miss Mabel recommends it!"
"Thankee, Mabel. Oh, my name's Macdonald, by the way. Proud to've met you."
The restaurant owner sold Mabel one of the tin cups and filled it with coffee and added a splash of milk, and then Mabel and Blendin headed back to the watch shop. They got there a little after nine. Mabel handed over Dipper's breakfast, paused, and muttered, "Macdonald, did he say? I wonder—no, couldn't be."
Shot Gunderson showed up right around ten A.M. Mabel was in the back room again, making sure that the past version of Blendin slept peacefully on. Dipper hid himself behind the desk, and Blendin sat at the work table.
Gunderson turned out to be a medium-tall man, brawny, with a broad chest and big arms—and a pistol hanging in a holster. His face was wide, red, and ugly, with a scruff of gray beard, bristly brown hair streaked with more gray, heavy bush eyebrows above mean little dark eyes, a broken nose, and a mouth that showed gappy yellow teeth when he talked.
His voice was harsh and angry from the start: "This here's my, uh, grandpappy's watch. It's stopped a-running. I want you to fix it fer me. I'll give you an hour. How much?"
"If-if it's just a cl-cleaning, twenty-five cents," Blendin said. "If I have to r-replace parts, could run half a dollar or six bits, depending."
"Don't go over the six bits," the man warned, and he left the watch and swaggered out.
Dipper came out from hiding as Blendin started to work. "This d-didn't b-belong to any grandpa," he muttered. "It's not b-but six y-years old. He s-stole it from some p-passenger on one of his stagecoach hold-ups."
"I could go back a few days and bring you some of your watch oil," Dipper suggested.
"N-no, I've d-done this kind of thing b-before. It's b-best to stick to what happened as close as possible."
What happened was a replay. Blendin repaired the pocket watch, lubricated it with a smidge of butter, and a growling Gunderson picked it up, then returned in a fury. By then Dipper and Mabel were both hiding in the back room, eavesdropping. Three other customers had come into the shop, one buying a watch, one having one repaired, the other looking for a watch chain. When Gunderson roared that he would pound Blendin into a paste, one of them ran off and returned with the sheriff, a big man with a booming voice, and he sent Gunderson away with the warning.
A few minutes after that, the sleeping version of Blendin started to stir. Wary of overdoing the chloroform, the other Blendin—the one now without the mustache—and Dipper and Mabel slipped out the side door.
What happened next got a little bit intricate. They used the time tape to relocate themselves to late the next evening. Blendin led them on a long walk—five miles, easy—out into the countryside to a ramshackle ranch house. "Th-this is G-Gunderson's pl-place," Blendin said.
They spent an uncomfortable night hunched just out of sight of the house, two drowsing while the third kept watch. Then the next morning, with everyone uncomfortable, they heard Gunderson's growling voice: "You know what to do?"
"Yeah, boss," another voice said.
Blendin whispered, "Th-that's Jimmy M-Mook. He's the one who buh-brought the jacket in and said I'd—"
"Be sure you put some blood round the hole," Gunderson said. "Shoot one of them dang prairie dogs or a rat or somethin'. Then when they arrest the fat fool, you slip into the watch shop and leave the gun. Use that old Navy Colt from the war—it ain't no good at any distance nohow. You remember all that, now."
"I will. Where you gonna be?"
Gunderson gave a phlegmy chuckle. "Gonna ride over to Coldwater. The stage is s'posed to be carryin' payroll money for the bank tomorrow. I'll be back 'round sunset on the fourth, so make sure Fatty's hung on Independence Day morning."
"I'll take care of it."
The listeners hunkered down as someone rode off on a horse. A few minutes later, they flinched when a gunshot exploded not far away. And then after the second man, Mook, rode off, too, they came out of hiding.
"We gotta stop him!" Mabel said.
"No. We've got to make sure they get caught," Dipper said. "Come on. We have a train to catch."
That was touchy. The three of them lounged around in the alley across the street from Bland's Watch Shop until a deputy came and took the protesting and baffled past Blendin away. Dipper used the time-travel disk—over Blendin's objections—to disguise the three of them, Mabel as a red-headed flirtatious belle, himself as a bearded cowpoke, and Blendin as—well, as Mabel's Aunt Gertrude, in a gingham dress and bonnet.
They caught the afternoon train, rode it as far as the next settlement—Buzzard's Roost—and Dipper went straight to the telegraph office. He showed the telegraph operator a document (materialized by his pocket) affirming that he was an inspector for the Overland Stage Company and sent telegrams to the stage office in Coldwater and to Sheriff Dilton in Kansas City.
The first one read:
HAVE SOLID INFORMATION THAT COLDWATER STAGE WILL BE HELD UP ON JULY 3 STOP SUGGEST EXTRA GUARDS HIDE INSIDE STAGE POSING AS PASSENGERS STOP EXPECT ONE BANDIT STOP HE IS WANTED IN ABALONE CALL IN SHERIFF DILTON FROM THERE REACH HIM IN KANSAS CITY C O COURTHOUSE STOP SIGNED DANIEL HOUSTON ESQ ATTY AT LAW.
The second, addressed to Sheriff Mark Dilton, care of the Kansas City Courthouse, read:
URGENT YOUR DEPUTY SET TO HANG INNOCENT MAN MORNING JULY 4 STOP GET BACK TO ABALONE BEFORE 8 AM TO PREVENT STOP FALSE MURDER CASE SET UP BY BUCK GUNDERSON STOP EXPECT HEAR FROM COLDWATER STAGE COMPANY SOON REGARDING GUNDERSONS ARREST STOP ALSO INVOLVED HIS HIRED MAN MOOK AND COUSIN WHO IS JUSTICE OF PEACE MAYBE YOUR DEPUTY TOO STOP SIGNED DANIEL HOUSTON, ESQ ATTY AT LAW.
"Now what?" Mabel asked.
"Now we go back to the jail on the morning of July 4th and see if any of this works." He took out the disk. "Blendin, this can transport us straight there. We don't have to take a train back or anything."
"I-I-I'm going to disappear," Blendin warned.
"What?" Dipper asked.
"W-w-well, I c-came to this time p-period differently f-from you. When we get b-back to about f-four-th-thirty in the morning on July 4, I'll just b-blend in with that o-other m-me. It d-doesn't h-hurt, and I-I should have b-both s-sets of m-memories, b-but I m-may get my m-mustache b-back."
"Always complications," Dipper sighed.
"Brobo," Mabel said, "I think we might have to reconsider things. Just in case the sheriff is late or something. We can't go into this thing unarmed."
"We could stage a jailbreak," Dipper said. "I don't like the idea of toting guns, though."
"Pssh! Leave that to me. Mabel!"
It took a bit of doing, but, hey, it was coming up on the Fourth of July, a Wednesday, and they had a day to play with.
And a bag that held, like, anything.
And everything.