The Incident at Last Home

They were all there outside Last Home, hitching up their horses, when Riley heard a creak behind them. A young man, perhaps a bit older than she was, paused in the door of the general store with a curious expression. Tector, Hugo, and Black Rob all had their hands on their pistols immediately, and the young man retreated into the building.

"Now ya'll 'gone let me do the speakin' inside," Walt said, repeating himself for the third time. Everyone nodded. He gave Trigger a meaningful look and pointed to a spot on the porch next to the door. Riley held her carbine in her arms, and patted the two pockets of her shirt where the cartridge tubes sat. Seven rounds in each. It was hard to stop herself from shaking. "We ain't here to kill. We're here to get what's ours."

The others nodded, and followed Walt as he stepped in through the doors again.

"Well hey, Walt," Jesse Tatum said, though his initial happily-surprised expression flattened as, one by one, the rest of Walt's crew filed in with their hands on their hips. Riley came through last, with the killing end of her carbine carefully aimed slightly downward like she'd been taught. Another man Riley didn't recognize came out of the back to stand next to Jesse.

"Jesse," Walt said tersely. "Harl." The second man had a strong resemblance to Jesse, especially in the jaw, and they nodded in turns. "Where's yer brother Emit?"

"In back," Jesse said, his brow furrowing gradually. "What's this all about?"

Walt looked past the bar, down the long hallway that lead to the main rooms and living quarters. "We've had a spot of trouble, and we'd like a word is all."

Jesse nodded over his shoulder, and Harl disappeared around the corner. Walt tucked his thumbs into his belt and settled into his stance. The eldest Tatum looked increasingly irritated as time stretched on.

After nearly a minute, Harl returned with another man and a flat expression. The fourth Tatum brother was by far the largest, easily rivaling Little Hugo, with sandy blond hair and shoulders broad enough to hitch a wagon to. He reminded Riley of several men back home, men whom she'd count herself lucky to never see again. Harl shook his head, and Jesse grunted.

"What's this about, Walt?"

"Some of our property gone missing, and your brother was seen sneakin' around it."

Jesse folded his arms across his chest, expression hardening. "This is our property here, and we're like to move about it however we see fit."

"Now," Walt said, putting his hands out, "We ain't accusin' nobody a' nuthin', but I gotta tell you it don't look good him not comin' out here to d'fend hisself."

"Where is he?" Jesse hissed.

"I don't know," Harl replied.

"Go. Look. Again."

Harl disappeared into the building again, and Walt stood his ground as the big one, whom Riley was pretty sure was named Daniel by process of elimination, came around to stand in front of the bar. After a minute, Jesse did, too. The two of them stood side by side in front of Walt, and they did not look pleased.

"Can't find him," Harl said, as he came around the corner again.

"I'll vouch for Emit," Jesse said, raising his chin. "My brother ain't no thief."

"We're short quite a bit of money since riding out of here," Walt said. "Now I known you since you was a colt, Jesse. I never thought for a second that this was on you, but yer brother always struck me as a queer sort."

"My brother ain't no thief," Jesse repeated. Chin inching forward.

"I'll find 'im," Riley said. She started for the stairs, and when Daniel moved to stop her, Hugo immediately blocked his path. The two big men stood eye to eye, puffing up like bulls. Walt nodded to her and she skipped up the stairs. The talking continued behind her, quickly descending into bluster and bravado.

Riley took the hallway slowly, trying to find some calm to still her shaking fingers. No curious heads peeked out so she made for Virginia Alice's room, and prayed the girl was still there.

"Virginia?" Riley whispered, as she cracked opened the second door on the right. The little blonde poked her head out from behind the door, and Riley slipped inside as quietly and carefully as she could.

"You came back!" Virginia Alice said, eyes wide as she bounced on her toes. "I can't believe you came back!"

"You need to listen to me and listen good," Riley said. "Get in that tub, and-"

Floorboards in the hallway. The unmistakable creak of someone moving slowly. Riley pushed Virginia Alice behind her and raised her rifle as the door slid open noiselessly. The first thing through was the end of a pistol and Riley immediately kicked the door hard, slamming the hand between the frame and the door. The pistol clattered to the floor and a man howled.

Riley leveled her carbine at him as the door swung open, but the man threw himself into the room, hands going for her throat. Before she could pull the trigger, he knocked her down and crushed her breath from her body. Virginia Alice screamed as the bigger man rose up, bloody fist raised high. Riley brought her gun up again, this time bringing the stock around in a wide arc and slamming the shoulder-rest into the man's neck.

Emit Tatum let out a gurgled wheeze and clutched at his throat as he tried to right himself. Riley didn't give him the time, turning the killing end of her rifle at him as soon as she had the room. The chamber emptied into the underside of his chin. Blood, brain, and bone painted the doorframe as the heavy body fell back. Virginia Alice screeched again, the sound echoing loudly in the metal tub she'd tumbled into.

"Emit!" Jesse screamed from downstairs. Voices rose, and without the benefit of their context the sounds blended into a rising crescendo of conflict.

Virginia Alice threw herself out of the bath and scrambled to Riley's side. "Oh my lord, oh my lord!" she said, her eyes riveted to the mangled body on the floor. Stomping footfalls at the bottom of the staircase and then, finally, the crack of a pistol. The room below them erupted, like a chain reaction of violence and screams.

Riley grabbed Virginia Alice and hauled her back into the tub, covering the girl's body with her own for a brief moment. "Stay low," she said straight into the blonde locks that covered Virginia Alice's ear.

Gunfire continued to be traded back and forth downstairs, though the cadence of it took on a call and response pattern. The little blonde stared up at her, eye wide and fearful as she stood slowly and backed away toward the wall. Riley grabbed the handles of the window and heaved, but it resisted her efforts. After another attempt, she saw the nails in the frame that blocked its path.

There was a low roof outside of the window, so Riley kicked out the glass with her boot and brushed the barrel of her carbine through the frame to clear out the jagged shards. She gave Virginia Alice a tight nod as she climbed out, followed the slope of it to the edge, and dropped down into the dusty ground on the side of the building.

She screamed when a bullet whizzed past her head and tore into the outer wall of the Last Home brothel. Riley only had time to dive behind a nearly-bare tree trunk.

"That's it, son!"

Riley chanced a glance around the tree to see the same young man she'd seen earlier in the general store advancing toward her, and another man who looked enough like him in every way but age.

"Circle him now! Circle around!"

The two of them spread apart as they crossed the street, each of them shakily wielding a long-barrel revolver. One bullet ripped into the tree, spewing chips of bark in Riley's face, and another one bullet buzzed behind her and into one of the outhouses beside the brothel. Riley brought her carbine up as she half-stepped forward. The older of the two seemed to realize, instantly, that he was completely without cover, and his face elongated as she fired true.

"Dad!"

The younger man screamed as his father lurched backwards and landed hard, legs knocked clean out from under him. His face contorted in rage as he turned back to Riley and aimed, but a bullet bit into the street at his feet and kicked up a plume of dust. He danced backwards, covering his face and eyes in instinctive defense. Riley wasted no time before reorienting herself and firing, and the son spun clear around onto his front to land face down. Neither of them moved again.

Riley's heart was pounding as she crept along the front of the brothel. Fingers slipped on her worn grip. She looked back over her shoulder at the other saloon with every step, fearful of being caught unawares again, but there were no signs of life that way. It took all of her focus, and all of her drive, to make her knees behave as she swung around through the door with her carbine at shoulder level and her ear to the stock.

Her eyes took a precious fraction of a second to adjust to the change in light, and Riley froze completely.

"Succumb!" Walt screamed, over and over, as he threw his fists down into the prone face of Jesse Tatum. "Succumb!" Beside him, Little Hugo was also standing, but that was it. Everyone else was on the ground. Blood everywhere. The walls were chewed to pieces. The bar, where it looked like at least one of the Tatum brothers had tried to hold out, was creaking under its own weight and looked on the verge of collapse. "Succumb!"

"Walt!" Riley cried, and the other two whirled with the fear of God in their eyes.

"Oh my heavens," Walt sighed, putting one blood-stained hand to his chest. "I thought fer sure."

Riley found it difficult to lower her rifle as she carefully moved through the room. Black Rob stared up at her from the floor, though his eyes did not follow her as she crept past him and the pool of blood beneath him was too large not to be a dark portent.

"Was Emit upstairs?" Hugo asked. It wasn't until Riley really looked at him that she saw how hard he was breathing. She nodded bleakly.

"Stinkin' Tatums," Walt said, whipping his hands about to dislodge the viscera. Riley saw the steady shake in his fingers as he stood, his voice wavering. "You know Pa Tatum was the biggest thief I ever knew."

Hugo nodded, as was his custom when Walt spoke, but his eyes were distant. Riley stopped when she reached Trigger's body. He had made it deep into the room for a man who was supposed to be covering the front from the likes of them across the way. She bent down to pick up his pistol and held her rifle by the grip under the middle of the barrel with her other hand. She popped open the cylinder, rotated it a sixth, and slapped it back into place.

Walt rose to his feet, still staring down in a furor. "That man once-"

Rile raised the pistol, leveling it a few inches behind Walt's head, and pulled the trigger. The .45 cracked loudly, seeming even more so in the deathly silence, and Crazy Walt Higgins tumbled forward with his last lie still on his tongue. Hugo screamed as Riley turned and took aim at him.

"Sorry, Hugo," she said, as she pulled the trigger again. Hugo flinched, and then blinked when the expected gunshot did not follow. Riley looked down at the gun in fear, but Hugo caught her in the cheek with a backhanded swipe before she could bring the gun to bear a second time. She knew, in her mind's eye, that she had adjusted the cylinder wrong. There had only been two more bullets chambered and, in her inexperience with revolvers, she had forgotten which way it spun.

Riley twisted in the air, landing and rolling onto her back again. The two Hugo's standing over her melted together in an eye-wrenching blur, and Riley flinched when she finally saw the black end of the muzzle pointed square between her eyes.

"Why?" Hugo cried. "Why!?"

"Doesn't matter now," Riley tried to say, though her tongue was slow and her words garbled.

"Damnit!" Hugo rubbed the sleeve of his off hand across his eyes, and then roared at her as if denying the emotions themselves. The man wept and Riley lifted herself up onto her elbows. "No! No, Riley! Why?!"

"It's over." Riley turned and spit out a mouthful of blood, but it still came out slurred when she repeated herself. "I'm done."

Hugo pulled the hammer back on his pistol and shook his head. Riley closed her eyes.

BLAM!

Riley shook, her whole body twitching, at the ear-shattering report of a double barrel shotgun. The body that was once Hugo crashed into the wall next to Riley and slid down, leaving a red streak along its path. Riley blinked in shock as she looked to her left and saw Virginia Alice, sitting heavily in the middle of the room, her face chalk white with the long barrel of the shotgun resting between her legs.

It was only in seeing the diminutive girl sobbing that she recognized the mirror of it in herself. Riley crawled over the blood and acrid-smelling casings towards the stammering girl.

"It was-it was-it was behind the-the-the-the bar," she stammered. "A-a-always behind the b-bar." The blackened steel and wooden stock looked incongruous in her lap, next to her frills and lace. "Ever'body kn-kn-knows it's behind the b-b-b-bar. And-and-and loaded."

Riley knelt next to her, curled an arm around the shorter woman's shoulders, and pulled her tight.

"Always behind the bar," she repeated. "Always loaded. Always behind the bar."

A short eternity passed while the two of them stayed there, crying and shaking.

"Oh my god," shrieked a woman, as she peeked her head out from the hallway. Both Riley and Virginia Alice whirled. The woman took another step, her eyes wide as she stared down at the destruction and death. "Oh my God. Are they... Are they..."

Riley nodded, and the woman stumbled weakly back the way she'd come from.

"Oh no," Virginia Alice screamed abruptly, and she tore off behind the bar. "Oh no!"

Riley moved slowly after her, though she only made it as far as the bar. The bullet-riddled body of Harl Tatum turned her stomach fiercely, and she darted to the corner of the room as the upswell threatened to boil over. She stood there, with one hand planted against the wall, dry heaving, until the blonde came running back.

"Keys, keys, keys," she whined, as she knelt down next to Jesse Tatum. Lips twisted, head turned away. She rifled through pockets, voice becoming higher and shriller as she went. "Keys!"

"Wait," Riley moaned, wiping her forearm across her lips. "Emit."

Virginia Alice looked up at her, eyes wide, as the taller woman strode through the carnage and up the stairs. The body of Emit Tatum was still there, unmoved. Riley dropped into a squat next to it. Its face was still mostly intact and bloodless, given the gaping hole where the rest of the skull had been. Riley watched for a minute, waiting for any reason at all to run, before patting it down. There was a sharp, jangling protrusion in the pants pocket, and Riley was well relieved to have a ring of mismatched keys in her hand and take a step back. Distance made it easier to take, and she found that every step further away from that room and that body helped her put it from her mind.

There were four other women and girls in the main room when Riley reached the bottom of the steps. Virginia Alice took the keys and dashed off, leaving her with the others. They huddled together, grabbing each other.

"Are ya'll okay?" Riley asked.

The tallest one, red haired with a long, graceful neck, swallowed and licked her lips. "Regina took one... a... bullet. Through the wall. She's...." Another deep breath. "The rest of us are, though. Yes."

"No!" A shrill voice echoed from the hallway Virginia Alice had recently disappeared down.

"Look!" Virginia Alice cried, from deeper in the back of the building.

"No!"

A moment later, the little blonde came through hauling the fearful Avasa behind her. Avasa was a lean woman, with dark skin and hair like pitch, and she fought Virginia Alice every step of the way, yelling "No!"

"They're dead!" the shorter woman said, pointing. "Look! They're all dead!" Avasa finally stopped wincing and fighting as she came out around the bar, and stared. "Look! See?"

Her posture changed, straightening though it retained some of the fetal hunch, as she looked around. "Mester Eemit?" It pained Riley to see that her eye and lip were swollen; the wounds too fresh to have turned much more than dark red.

"Upstairs," Virginia Alice said, pointing. "Dead, too." She drew her finger across her throat. "All dead."

Avasa looked around, making eye contact with Riley and each of the other women, and then fled through the door without another word. Riley walked onto the porch after her, and caught just the faintest sight of her darting through the tree line further up the hill. Virginia Alice came to stand next to her, lip quivering.

A man and woman poked their heads out of the saloon across the road. Him first, and her peeking over his shoulder. Riley nodded to them, tipping her hat when she saw they were unarmed, and they came forward into the midday sun.

One of the other women from the brothel, a little older than Virginia Alice with golden curls, sprinted out into the street and turned, fists bunched in her dress to keep it up off the ground. "Earl!" she screamed. "Earl!!!"

A younger man came running out of the saloon and scooped her up, forearms locked around her waist, with her arms around his shoulders.

Virginia Alice cleared her throat. "Earl and Agatha been sweet on each other, but they couldn't tell nobody."

Riley nodded. She moved out into the road, too, Virginia Alice at her side, and the couple from the saloon came to meet her.

"Is it done?" the man asked. Riley nodded again. "Are they all..."

"Yeah," she said.

"What does this mean?"

Riley turned back around and stared. She knew what it meant for her, and for Virginia Alice, but that was as far as she'd thought it through.

"What are we gonna do when the miners show up?"

"I'm fixin' to burn that eyesore to the ground," Riley croaked. Her voice failed her almost completely, and she swallowed.

"They're gonna come up like a plague," the woman wailed.

"Get all the whiskey out," Riley said. "Get it out and put it on a cart. Leave it for em. Tell 'em... I don't care what you tell 'em, but tell 'em somethin rode up on there and then moved on. You'll wanna be burying bodies when they get here, too. Knee deep in the graves, you understand? Give 'em every reason to pity you." Riley pointed at the bodies of the father and son in the street, twenty yards further up.

"We could take over the store," Earl said, his arm still tight around Agatha. "I know we could." Little Agatha nodded, curls bobbing on her head.

The saloon owner stroked his moustache and stared at his son. "Never liked that place," he said, shaking his head. "Never liked the Tatums, neither."

The redhead with the graceful neck stepped forward in front of the others, squared off with the saloon owner and his wife. "Are ya'll..." She bit her lip and fussed one hand around against the palm of the other. "What I mean is..."

The saloon owner looked down at his wife, and the two of them grimaced. "We might could use some help."

"But no whorin'," the wife added quickly, sternly, and the three women nodded profusely. "I won't stand for it."

"Okay," the tall one said meekly.

"First time it happens, all three of ya are out on yer ear!"

"Mavis," the saloon owner said softly, and his wife pressed her lips together.

The redhead gestured at the youngest of the bunch, the little brunette Hugo had taken to. "Sally here just needs a place to stay 'til she can ride back to her family in Campbell."

The man nodded. "Gonna have t' report these here deaths at some point. Sheriff Jessup down in Campbell's as good a man as any."