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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Silver Moon" data-source="post: 3257589" data-attributes="member: 8530">Chapter One-hundred-twenty-five, “Hiring Finnegan“, Sunday June 11th, 1882, 9:30 A.M. Once the sounds of gunfire had stopped Emily went away from the windows and sat back down. The sounds of the fire wagon and the smells of burning wood were too familiar. She wanted to get out of this claustrophobic room but she didn't know anything about this town or where she could go. Instead she sat alone on the pew and waited for her Uncle to come back.A mile away the three deputies manage to find the trail that the outlaws rode, which begins to the northeast then merges with the main road. That makes it harder to follow given all of the other tracks on the road but with Chester's skill they manage. They continue on a mile further as the road then curves westward. A mile later it is at the stagecoach bridge over the Pine Creek and the tracks end. The deputies conclude that they rode in the creek itself from that point to hide their tracks. The deputies have no way of knowing if from here they went northeast up into the Dos Cabezas Mountains or southwest. Neil points out that the southern path has a major fork in another two-thirds mile, as the leg of the river that flows through town merges with it there and then continues westward for several miles to the ranches. He says, "It'll be faster to ride on the banks of the creek than through it, so if they aren't to that fork yet we might be able to head them off." Helen says, "Good idea, assuming they went southward. What do you think Chet?"Chester checks his shotgun and borrowed revolver again. He looks up and says, "If they're local, their base is near town. Let's go south. How hard are we going to try to take them alive? Who knows how many people they killed with the dynamite. I won't be sad if these riders get what's coming to them." He pauses. "We better hurry if we're going to catch them."They soon reach the point where the creek forks, finding no evidence of the riders. Helen says, "Damn, they must have gone the other way, up into the mountains." Neil says, "It would be foolish for us to try to follow them that way, they've got a good lead on us and also the high ground, we could walk into an ambush. Let's just follow the creek back to town." They get around 200 yards when they notice a spot where it appears that two horses recently stepped out of the water. Chester checks for tracks and concludes that a wagon with two horses was recently there, with evidence of footprints of a man having waited with the wagon and the riders of the two horses having climbed off. The horse tracks then return to the water with slightly less impression in the sand, indicating they were carrying less weight on return. The wagon tracks proceed along the creek in the direction of town.Chester says, "Well, well, well. What do we have here?" He looks up from the tracks. "Looks like our riders split up. Two of them came this way and met up with a two-horse wagon. Then at least one of them dismounted and probably boarded the wagon. They all went back towards town. Are we ready?"  Jake arrives back at the Lucky Lady and he inspects the place for damage. He also instructs Maria to get Thom and have the two of them bring some water around for the firefighters. Let them know you will be bringing them some food courtesy of the Lucky Lady as soon as they would like some, or they can just stop in.  When Maria is gone, Jake helps himself to a whiskey, "Purely for medicinal purposes," and waits for the big fighter Finnegan to wake.The firefighters continue for another hour, being grateful will Maria brings them some food and beverages. Chumbley is running around interviewing people and Kate hears Jeff Mills tell him, "This would have been another Tombstone fire if it wasn't for Pine Creek. Having a large amount of available water makes all the difference. The canvas and rubber hoses cost quite a bit but are worth every penny, I'm glad that we bought as many as we did." Once the fires are out Mitchell Berg, Bob Scull, Deacon McCoy and undertaker Dick Lester tour the Palace together looking for casualties. The very burnt body on the first floor belongs to bartender Dave Carleen, with a quick check indicating that it was multiple gunshot wounds that he died of rather than the fire.   The only other casualty was the harlot named Sara MacBridger whose body had been out on the street and long since removed to Lester's Funeral Parlor. Her room had been on the second floor directly above the place on the north wall where the dynamited had gone off, with that section of floor above also having collapsed downward. Kate arrives at the place just as Finnegan is regaining consciousness in a room up on the second floor. The tall bald with red eyebrows and a few freckles on his face exclaims loud enough for Kate and Jake to hear "Huh...where am I? How did I get here?"  Kate poured a glass of water and walked over to the bed. "You're in the Lucky Lady, there was a fire at the Palace this morning. We had the men who brought you out bring you here to rest, you swallowed a lot of smoke. Can you drink this?" she asked, holding out the glass.He drinks the glass down in one gulp. He then sits up and says, "Thanks. I'd better be heading back to the Palace, the boss will be looking for me."  Jake looks to Katherine, shrugs and points a quick finger at her.  "There really isn't any Palace left to go back to," Kate said gently. "Mr. Adair is aware that you are here, and I don't believe he expects to see you again soon. The Bishop tended to you outside, and he mentioned that had you been fully human rather than half-ogre you would not have survived. Mr. Adair then, ah, terminated your employment. I told the men to bring you here and we would care for you. Your lungs will need time to recuperate and pushing yourself will just put you back in bed for longer. I suggest you stay and rest for a while. We can have breakfast brought up if you like.""Yes, take your time Mr. Finnegan," Jake adds smoothly, "you had a very close call. You were a lucky fellow today to make it out alive. If you find that you are unexpectedly in need of employment, there are those in town who do not give a rats tail about a person's parents. I can only speak for myself, but I judge on deeds not appearances." Jake strokes his beard and feigns to be contemplating, "Now that I think about it, we could use a stout fellow for the poker tournament and the preparations leading up to it. That would certainly solve one of my problems and prevent you from having to listen to Mr. Adair tell you in person that he no longer desires you as an employee."Finnegan lets out a long stream of explicative, apparently not concerned about the presence of a woman. He then exclaims. "Lowsy no-good Priests sticking their noses in where they don't belong" followed by a few choice words about the priest's parentage.   He then seems to calm a bit and looks back up to Jake, "I'm no half-ogre, only a quarter, there hasn't ever been a half-ogre with skin this fair plus the red hair and freckles, all I got from my maternal grandparent was the physique and strength. My dad was a noted Irishman boxer in New York City, he always kept my mixed heritage a secret. Worked well financially for us up until now."Jake exclaims, "Whole, half, quarter, makes no difference to me. Ah, but it is a tough break for your livelihood, sir, that I will grant you. What will you do now? Go back to Adair and attempt to convince him to take you back? For a while he is without a saloon and may have no need of you in any case. Perhaps you can move on where they do not know you, and start up the boxing bit again? If you decide to stay on in Promise City, either because you like it here or just need to raise the money to travel, we should talk. If we can determine that there is trust between us, I could use an imposing figure like you." Jake then adds, "Oh, and I would not mention that you and I spoke about employment to Adair if you decide to beg him for your job back. For some reason that fellow does not like me and that would not improve your chances."Finnegan replies, "I've got several hundred saved up in the bank so I could move on if I wanted. But word will spread fast about my mixed blood, that's how things like that work. No way that Adair would ever hire me back, he'll see this whole thing as me making him look foolish. As for trust, that never seemed to be much of an issue with you before. You trust and keep that Tony Lucky on your payroll and he and Adair are good buddies. He's over at the Palace once a week getting a free roll-in-the-hay in exchange for telling Adair about the goings on around here."Kate shot a glance over at Jake. "I don't know why I'm surprised.   Jake exclaims, "No, Mr. Finnegan, I do not trust Tony Lucky. Though I believed he had more sense than that." Jake grits his teeth, not sure if he is angrier at Tony Lucky or himself for not leaving the two bit gambler to rot in jail. "Since you have already provided me some value I am ready to offer you a job, let me make one thing clear. I will trust and respect you as long as you do the same, and I expect that you will keep our confidences better than that Tony Lucky does. I in turn, will keep yours. If you need a place to stay, you can have a room here. To start with you will join the staff as door security, making the same as the others. You rest up. Maria will bring you up something to eat a little later on. Tonight, I will introduce you to the others. All that is left to do for now is to tell me that you would like to join the family that is the Lucky Lady."Finnegan says, "Well, thank you Sir Mr. Cook, I accept your generous offer." He looks around the sparsely furnished room he is in and says, "As for a place to stay, this room will work fine. If the Palace is as destroyed as you indicated I'll have to buy all new things anyway so it's not like I have a lot of things to store."  She turned to Finnegan and said, "I'm not sure how much of the Palace the firefighter's managed to spare, you could have a few things that aren't ruined."Kate says, “Well, unless Tony has been sneaking around and listening at doorways Tony Lucky doesn't know anything worth passing on anyway."   Finnegan replies, "He knows more than you realize. Lately he's been telling Adair about the big fight that you had Mr. Cook with Miss. West, which caused her to walk out on you and go back to her family in Ohio. And Lucky also knows about you conspiring with Al Brower to put Austin Blake out of business, plus you blackmailing Darla Peacock into selling her place and playing here instead. Lucky is a very observant person." Kate broke out laughing. "Jake, I think we'd better keep Mr. Lucky on the payroll, much as I'd like to see him out on the street. Either he really is just that big an imbecile, or he's talking you up for some reason of his own. I think he's just an imbecile." Jake waits until after Katherine and the big boxer finish speaking and then says, "It is Jake, if you are going to be one of us get used to calling me Jake. What do you like being called besides 'Iron Fist'?" He replies, "Adair just called me Finnegan. My first name is actually Timothy, my Pa called me Tim." Jake nods, "Well, I am not your Pa, but I will call you Tim, Alright? Now rest up." He leaves Katherine to finish speaking with him if she cares to. Going down the stairs Jake hold his hand on his painful rib to minimized the motion. He moves the hand clear before he is in view of the main room down stairs. Picking up his half finished glass of medicinal whiskey, he takes a seat in the far corner of the room.  He mumbles to himself, "Damn that Tony Lucky." With a sigh he continues, "Never cry over spilled milk -- it could’ve been whiskey." He begins contemplating what he will do about the troublesome Mr. Lucky.Kate ran downstairs and gathered some odds and ends from the kitchen and carried a tray up to the boxer. She told him she'd be back in a little while to collect it and encouraged him to get some sleep. Minerva and Nakomo, make their way through the streets, Nakomo bandaging and Minerva praying over those who have died. When they are not longer needed Nakomo goes home. An exhausted Minerva makes her way over to the Lucky Lady. She walks in and sees Jake sitting in a corner nursing a glass of whisky. "Hola, Jake. You don't look very good.""Heh, thanks." He grimaces only slightly and contains his laugh. "I am never at my best when after only a pitiful amount of rest I am awoken by very loud noises." He sips at the whiskey. "That and Fly's photography building was so impolite as to explode onto us just as Katherine and I were standing next to it."  When Kate came back downstairs Minerva was sitting at a table with Jake. She went into the kitchen and got a few bits to nibble on for herself and joined them. "I'm just glad the school was polite enough not to follow suit."Minerva looks at him with a crooked grin. "Hmmm, Not a morning person, are you?" She notes his grimace. "Are you hurt?"  "Katherine here," Jake points his thumb towards her, "used her sewing skills to put my head back together. Outside of that, I am afraid I will be skipping dance contests for a little while, I am nursing a sore rib from being dashed to the ground in the explosion. I am doubly glad Mr. Finnegan is not the maudlin kind. I do not believe I would have survived an appreciative hug over offering him employment.""Mr. Who?" Oh, Never mind" she say shaking her head. "Stand up and let me see where it hurts." She pulls him from is chair and examines his ribs. She concentrates and he can feel a warmth emanating from her fingers.   Kate explains, "The star fighter from the Palace is upstairs recuperating. Adair found out he wasn't entirely human and fired him. We thought it might be good to get him in here. And since he told us Tony Lucky has been Adair's informant in exchange for female services it's already paid off." Kate chuckled again at that. "He got a long wrong and makes us sound a lot more vicious than we are."  Minerva chuckles.” That seems to happen quite a bit where Jake is concerned. I am sure that Senor Adair's star attraction will be treated much better here. "Jake says, "Our Mr. Lucky is indeed a troublesome sort. Whether he is intentionally giving Adair wrong information, making up information just to get his reward, or really believes he is providing the inside information on us, it is a problem. I am not the forgiving kind to those who betray me, especially when I have extended my help and trust. However, I do not wish Adair to know that his former employee is telling us anything. So for now I wait. Be careful what Tony hears. I will look for other clever ways of discovering that Tony is dealing with the enemy." A dark look crosses Jake's face. "Or even better, let Adair discover that Tony Lucky has been playing him." The look passes, "The biggest danger might be that Adair has more confidence than he ought. Who knows what actions that misinformation might give credence."Kate says, "He could be used to feed false information to Adair, although I'm not sure what we could want to feed him. If I'd known what he was up to, I would have told you about the little fight he and I had when he was in jail, not that it was important. Of course, if Adair were to discover Lucky's information is false he'd have to question almost every plan he has. But now that Adair doesn't even have a saloon, things should change quite a few things."   "Yes, we could send Adair false information that way. That works only once though." Jake lightly shifts his body back and forth and discovers that Minerva has made the pain in his ribs go away. "I suggest we leave that alone for now, keeping our options open." The deputies manage to follow the trail of the wheels all the way back to town and into Drover's Livery. The wooden floor of the barn makes it difficult to distinguish exactly which of the nine wagons inside the livery stable the tracks belong to. Nobody from the livery is around nor is there anybody to ask, as they are all down the street either fighting or watching the fire.Chester says, "That's a fine how do you do. We'll have to ask Mr. Blake about who these wagons belong to. Hopefully we can narrow it down that way. Looks like we can't do much more here. Let's meet up with Mitch and see if they caught any of the riders. I hope no one got hurt, but from the explosions we heard, that's not likely."   After Chester spoke with Marshall Berg, he went back to the Lucky Lady. He sees the others and asks, "Are you all OK? I'm glad they didn't hit this place."    Jake looks up as Chester enters the saloon.  "Hi Chet. None of us were hurt seriously, we were lucky. I am pleased as well that they did not make it this far. Did you learn anything?"Minerva turns to Chester and pulls out a seat for him, she rises and goes to the bar and orders food for all of them and brings back an empty glass which she fills with the bottle that Jake is drinking from. "Hair of the dog," she says to him.   "Hair of the Dog.." Minerva says and raises the amber glass to take a sip, but before the medicinal liquid reaches her lips she freezes causing the glass to slip from her fingers and shatter.</blockquote>

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