Nathan Burke glanced again at the large, railroad clock mounted on the front wall of his office, and paced the room. It was only a quarter to 1:00AM, but he had been nervously shuffling papers and doing other unnecessary tasks for the past hour, waiting for the Marshal to arrive before the 3:00AM gold shipment. "I don't know why I should be worried," he thought. "After all, no one but the Marshal and me know the exact arrival time." He had already forgotten how only Kitty's voice had stopped him from blurting out the secret time. Glancing at the tall, sturdy safe, he proudly thought about it soon holding so much gold. He sat down in his wooden chair and decided to rest his eyes for a few moments as he waited.
"Don't you move an eyelash, Burke! Not one eyelash!" The words were hissed in the freight manager's left ear as the hard muzzle of a pistol was pressed against his left temple. Smithy had crept inside after easily picking the lock on the side door, leaving nervous Mort outside as a lookout on the balcony of a nearby building across the street.
"Ta…take it easy, mister! I'm not even armed!" Burke's throat was dry as he froze in place and stared up at the tall, skinny man with the mean grin and squinty dark eyes. The faces of everyone in the Long Branch earlier in the evening whirled through his head, but this man's was unfamiliar. "He probably has no idea about the gold shipment," the perspiring man thought to himself. Daring to shift his eyes towards the wall clock, he saw that the Marshal wasn't due to appear for over an hour. "Just gotta keep this man calm until then," he thought, trying to swallow. Burke, anxiously waiting for Matt, had no idea that the man with the gun pressed to his temple was awaiting The Falcon.
Smithy pressed the gun barrel even harder against Burke's head and the sound of the hammer being cocked filled the quiet room. "What time is the gold due? You have three seconds to tell me, Mister Freight Man. And don't try to play dumb." The man's sour breath was hot on Burke's face as he leaned closer.
Burke dryly swallowed and closed his eyes in defeat. "3:00AM," he whispered. His ashamed relief was short-lived. As soon as the gun barrel pressure was gone from his temple, everything went black as the skinny man soundly whipped it against the back of his neck.
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Matt awoke with a start at 1:00AM. He was lying on his left side in the big brass bed in Kitty's room, his body curled around hers. "Something isn't right," was the nagging thought that had pulled him up from a deep sleep. Peering at the small, decorative alarm clock on the nightstand, he saw that Festus wasn't due with the gold shipment for another two hours, but he felt the need to go to the freight office immediately. "I need to be there. I need to be there NOW!" Carefully extricating himself from Kitty, the worried man stood, flexed his bad right knee, and quickly limped to his clothes on the chair, threw them on, strapped on his gun belt, and headed for his boots and Stetson by the door. "Well, Doc told me that bullet to my knee years ago would leave me with stiffness someday, but I'll not give him the satisfaction of being right!" With a swift glance over at his beautiful sleeping partner, he wished he had time to explain, but felt an overwhelming need to get to the freight office. If all was well there, he would get Buck from the stable and ride out to meet Festus and his wagon. The plan had been for Festus to meet the stage five miles outside of town, transfer the gold to a wagon, and then slowly drive into town as quietly and unobtrusively as possible.
As Matt was slowly pulling the door closed as quietly as possible, Kitty's long-lashed eyes opened wide and she propped herself up with an elbow to glance at the clock. "He's leaving too early. Something's got him worried." Sitting up quickly, the sheet slipped down to her waist, and the moonlight through the window was soft on the creamy skin of her face and bare breasts. "Matt! Be careful!" she called. He paused and silently admired her age-defying beauty before nodding, their eyes saying everything. Then he turned and hurried out into the hall, down the back stairs, and up the alley to Front Street.
Slipping a cream-colored nightgown over her head, Kitty thought of how frustrated Festus had been at not being able to find those two shady characters that had been staring at Matt the other night. Maybe they had left town, but now the thought of them added to her concern. Pushing her feet into her slippers, she stood up and went over to her outerwear closet, pulled the curtain aside and found what she needed. "Ah! This will be perfect for following him," she thought, putting on the black velvet, full-length hooded cape with the red lining. Without hesitation, she hurried out the door into the hallway, down the back stairs, pulled the hood up over her tousled curls, and headed up the alley. "Yes, he'll be angry at me if he sees me, but I don't care!" she thought, her full lips compressing into a determined line. Reaching Front Street, she slipped into the shadows close to the buildings and followed the tall, broad-shouldered man striding down the street a few blocks ahead of her.
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"Why do all of the babies lately have to be born around the same time, and why do they all stubbornly take so long and WHY do all of the mothers-to-be live so far out of town?!" the small, exhausted man muttered as he shuffled from the stable towards his office home. Shortly after Doc had drunk with Kitty in the Long Branch, young Tom Gebert had shoved into the saloon, panicked about his young, expectant wife. Doc now plodded along, head down, holding his battered old medical bag in one hand. Looking up, he saw his steep stairway ahead, stopped, and once again was grateful for having paid Thad and Festus to redo them, adding a second handrail, a few years ago. Thinking of young, tall, soft-spoken Thad Greenwood always made him smile. The good-looking, blond, blue-eyed man had decided to return to Oklahoma when offered a sheriff's job in a town much larger than his hometown. "I need to write to Thad and see how he's doing. It's been more than two months now since we've corresponded, and I…" The old doctor had caught a movement in the shadows across the street, and despite the dark, hooded cloak, immediately knew it was Kitty. "What in the name of Ulysses S. Grant is KITTY doing slinking down the street at !:15 in the morning?!" he wondered, peering closely at his large old silver pocket watch by the faint light of the nearby low flame of a streetlamp. His fatigue forgotten, the concerned man hurried towards the beautiful woman he held in his heart as dear as a daughter.
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Festus glanced up at the moon, and figured it was close to the time the stagecoach would be nearing the meadow where he sat on the bench of the wagon. The transfer of the $30,000 of gold made the deputy marshal as alert as possible, all of his ingrained Hagen senses a-tuned to every sound and sight around. A wide-open meadow had been chosen for that reason-no one could sneak up or ambush the stage or wagon. Even so, Festus had a rifle at the ready in his left hand, and along with his regular sidearm, had a loaded double-barreled shotgun on the seat beside him. "Ain't NO ONE, NO HOW gettin' this here gold! Matthew is awaitin' on it and atrustin' me, and I ain't about ta let him down!" As his head and eyes kept on a constant slow swivel of his surroundings, the deputy proudly polished the silver badge pinned to the left side of his vest with the cuff of his right sleeve.
"Here she comes!" Festus exclaimed as his sharp eyes and ears detected the stagecoach, still some distance away. After one more thorough survey of his surroundings, he jumped down and stood by the team of horses' heads, holding the harness of the nearest with one hand, and the rifle with the other.
"WHOA! WHOA, Rufus, Andy, Blue, Trotter, Bear, and Red!" The driver hauled back on the long reins while pushing on the brake with one foot. The shotgun messenger carefully studied the man waiting for them, as did the extra shotgun man inside the carriage with the gold.
"Yep! It's Festus!" exclaimed driver Sonny Brown with a relieved grin as he guided the team into the meadow. The two shotgun men sighed too, pent-up tension leaving their bodies after the long trip.
"Howdy Sonny! Good ta see ya!" Festus looked closer at the two men with the shotguns as they clambered from the stage. "Carnie! Turner! Let's git ta loading me up!" The deputy walked over and looked inside the passenger compartment, stacked high with canvas sacks, their tops tied shut. The other three men stretched and watched, grinning as their friend lifted one sack with a grunt. "That there gold sure weighs enuff!" Using both arms, he carried it to his wagon and hefted it into the empty bed.
In fifteen minutes, the four men had transferred the heavy sacks from the stage to the wagon, said their goodbyes, and resumed their journeys. The stage turned back the way it had come, and Festus headed east for Dodge. Sonny had a pocket watch, and had told the deputy that he was right on schedule to leisurely roll into town shortly before 3:00AM.
At the freight office in Dodge, Burke lay unconscious by his desk, now gagged and bound, and Smithy had gone to let the Falcon know about the gold's arrival time.
To Be Continued…