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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Silver Moon" data-source="post: 2072916" data-attributes="member: 8530">Chapter 97  “No Honor Among Thieves”, January 10th, 1882, 9:30 PMJake hears the boy stop. He cocks his pistol and looks over his shoulder ready to react quickly. Nanuet points his gun at the boy and makes a be silent motion. Then he nods his head out of the room, towards Jake. When Jake sees Nanuet's weapon come up he turns and points his at the boy too and comes into the room. "Easy son. You don't need to get hurt." A look of panic crosses the boy’s face. He glances from Jake to Nanuet. He then looks over in the direction of the horses. "Don't hurt me, I'm just the stable hand" he exclaims.Nanuet watches very carefully for any signs that the boy will pull his gun. If he does, she will shoot, as long as he won't hit Jake. "Ok then, sit over here," Nanuet points to the wall. "Jake, get him tied up," he says quietly. While Jake is tying him, "So how many more of you are there and where are they? Tell us or we find out on our own and they all die."Seeing that the boy doesn't immediately try to draw his pistol from his gunbelt Jake starts walking towards him slowly, leaving the shotgun leaning against the wall. "Now son very slowly put your hands in the air." As the boy gets them higher in the air, "Now turn half way around just as slow." Jake gets up close and removes the gun with his left hand. The boy says, "There were four more with me, but one of them is now dead."Jake checks him for other weapons after tying his hands with some leather straps from the pile.  "Four others? Who died and how?" He answers, "Reb Wiley died a short while back. He was shot up pretty bad. Two of the others are pretty bad hurt too."  Nanuet walks over to Jake and while watching the room, he whispers, "He is lying, I recognize his shirt. He is one of the riders from earlier today." "Boy, do you know who I am?" Jake asks him with a cold, icy stare.  He answers, "I don't know nothing mister, I'm just a stable hand. I take care of the horses for those guys." "You lie! I say we shoot him!" Nanuet says. "Then we worry no more about getting shot by him."Jake look at the boy's pistol smells it and checks it for signs of being fired recently. And for how well it is taken care of and how much it's been used. It hasn't been cleaned in a while but seems to have had quite a bit of usage. It has also been fired very recently. Jake holster's his weapon, puts the boy’s gun in his right hand and cocks it. "You don't lie very well. Was it worth the $20?" Jake points the pistol between his eyes. "Don't kill me mister!" he exclaims.Nanuet starts moving silently to check out the rest of the room. Jake says, "You shot at us this morning. You were on the hill tonight shooting again. I bet you have a brand new $20 note on you to pay for it all. You picked the wrong crowd to be with, and picked the wrong folks to shoot at. And all you can do is whine at me. You are a loser boy." Jake licks his lips. "Give me a reason not to."  He says, "I don't know what you're talking about with any hill. I've been here since this morning taking care of the horses and the wounded. You want my money? It's in my shirt pocket.""Heh" Jake snorts a little laugh. "I intend to get every one of those new $20 bills plus the man who handed them out. I wasn't looking for your permission." Jake moves the gun to his left hand, pulls his knife back out of his book. Cuts the shirt pocket with his knife, letting the bills fall to the floor. He uncocks the pistol and sticks it in his belt. He yanks the boy to a standing position and spins him half way around so he is facing away. "You aren't very clever either, you could have at least offered to tell me who was trying to have me killed.""Offer....what deal do you want to make?" he says. Jake notes that of the bills on the floor there are four new $ 20 bills rather than just one. "I could be wrong, but I'm betting you are a worse scum sucker than I first thought." Jake quickly thrusts the knife between those particular ribs and up that immediately kills a man. As he falls to the floor, "The offer, is tell me before my patience runs out..." Jake picks up the $20s off the floor. "No honor among thieves they say." He wipes his knife on the dead man's trouser leg. "I could be wrong though." Jake searches him.Nanuet says, "Mr. Jake, took you long enough. Let's go." They make their way over to the other side of the cave. Jake unties the leather straps and throws them back in the pile. "Bad image to leave behind." Nanuet laughs. "Why you care what gets left behind? We will take care of all of them right now. No more talking, let's take care of this problem once and for all. Keep the ladies safe, you know?" He says smiling.They head back to the T intersection and continue down the narrower corridor. It continues for another 120 feet. There are several side passageways but none of them show any fresh tracks. The trail of tracks reaches a point where they now follow a side corridor rather than continuing on the main one.   They reach a section where a wooden doorway has been constructed, the side of the hallway outside of the doorframe having been blocked with stones. The door is shut and there do not appear to be any locking mechanisms.Jake looks at Nanuet and shrugs. He listens a moment. Not hearing anything he starts to move stones away from the door. Nanuet helps him. Part way through he comments quietly to Nanuet, "Wish I brought along somebody to do this part."  When the stones are clear enough to open the door Jake says in a whisper to Nanuet, "Your vision is better, you get where you can see." Nanuet positions his rifle and gets ready to look in. Jake draws his long barrel pistol and tries to open the door.On the opposite side of the door is an oval shaped chamber approximately twenty by thirty feet in size. A single candle atop a wooden chest in the middle of the room lights it, the candle almost burnt down to the stub. There are eight army cots set up in the room, three of which are currently occupied. None of the three men are awake and all appear to be rather wounded, too wounded to have been able to push open the door with the rocks in place. One has his arm dangling over the side of the cot with a pool of blood beneath and he may be dead. The other two appear to still be breathing. The men on the cots are wearing shirts and pants but no boots, belts, hats or other possessions."That is where he got the other three $20 bills I am guessing." Nanuet whispers to Jake. He points out the 3 men on the cots and then backs out so that he can speak to Jake. "How does that expression go, shoot first ask questions later? Or do we want to try and get some information from them first?" Nanuet checks the body of the one he suspects is dead, confirming that to be the case. The man appears to have bled to death from a chest wound. Nanuet takes a good look at all three men. He recognizes the dead one and one of the wounded as men who he had shot and Katherine had simultaneously hit with beams from her magical wand. The one of these who is still alive has a bullet wound his arm that does not appear to be a mortal one. The third man is wounded far more severely, apparently from a shotgun blast.   He looks back at the two who he had caused injury to. Both of these men were the ones who Katherine had spent this day agonizing over causing the deaths of. It is now apparent that both survived the attack and that the one who bled to death would probably still be alive if he had received proper medical attention."Looks like I guessed correctly about the other one." Jake says quietly to Nanuet. "I'd sure like to have some information. Should we give them a chance to redeem themselves? Even if we don't, just doesn't seem right to have them fester and suffer. Perhaps it would be better for you to help them to the happy hunting grounds." Jake steps back into the room and asks, "Anybody awake?"The one with the shoulder wound begins to move, groaning out "Who..who's there?"  The other one does not move at all. The shotgun wounds are really deep and have gone too long without proper medical attention. The wounds dig deep into the entire left side of his body. Jake thinks he recognizes the ripped up and bloody clothing that the man is wearing as one of the two men who he fired his final shotgun at from the morning’s stage.Nanuet walks into the room behind Jake. "Too many people have died today, let's take these guys in and let the authorities deal with them. We will have an easier time getting to the bottom of it if we can get some information from them."  Nanuet walks up to the waking man. "Be quiet or you will be forever silenced. Only speak when we ask you to. We are the men that you shot at today, and you will regret it, even more so if you don't cooperate now. I am going to look over your wounds and do what I can. Just stay quiet." Nanuet looks over the man with the shotgun wounds and attempts to determine how serious the wounds are.  "Jake, tie these men up so that we can ensure our safety before I heal them."  As Nanuet waits for Jake to tie up the seriously wounded man, he checks the severity of the wound on the man who is awake. Once Jake is done Nanuet takes one of the 3" stones from his necklace and heals the mans wounds. After that he goes back to the man with the arm wound and begins a chant in his native tongue. He does a short ritual dance and then places his hands over the wound and watches it heal.  Once this is done he will recheck the wounds and see that they are sufficiently healed. Nanuet says, "You men will come with us and will answer questions. The first question is how many of you were here in this cave.” The one who was near death is healed but appears to still be too weak to move much. The other one appears to be in much better condition and answers the question saying, "I haven't been outside of this room since we got here, I have no idea where any of the others are. Three of us were wounded and this was the closest hideout to where we fought."   He then looks at the remains of the candle stub and says "One of them was helping tend to us. He lit the candle before he left, so I guess that would have been a few hours ago." Nanuet’s second question is “How many companions do you have who are not here now and may come back?" He replies "I don't know. They may not come back at all. There were twenty-one of us this morning but you managed to kill six of us during the chase. We never saw what happened with the other six who rode off down the mountain when we split up near the top. After the battle there were nine of us left on the mountain top counting me and the other two wounded. Our leader assigned two of them to get us wounded to this cave to recover. I have no idea what happened to any of the others after that." While listening to the answers he mentally checks in with Maska and if everything is OK he calls her to his side. She communicates back that she is currently guarding the outside entrance to the cave that he and Jake entered but will come if that is his wish.   "I think we are going to regret this..." Jake says quietly to Nanuet.  He then speaks louder telling the man, "Seems like the guy who lit that candle had no intention of ever coming back, there was a pile of rocks in front of that door. He was just waiting for you to die." Jake stands in front of the man and looks down at him. "I'm not to happy that you took shots at me and my friends, but I want to know who paid you to do it and what they told you to do? Maybe you can transfer some of my anger.""They left us here to die? Bastards!" The man pauses for a few minutes and says.   "The leader was Pinto Joe Weems. He used to ride with the Koonz brothers but is now freelancing on his own. He rode into Galeyville last night around midnight with wad of money and offered twenty dollars to the first twenty men who would help him out. Didn't take him long to get the volunteers.  The job we were hired to do was guard the road next to this mountain and make sure that no miners working to the northeast made it to Promise City today. A few if the guys didn't take to the idea of killing. Weems convinced them that the miners would just be held hostage in this cave until tomorrow. Once you shooting instead of stopping the stage that changed everything."Jake asks, "How about you partner, how did you take to the idea of killing?"  He answers, "Well I could lie to you and say I was one of those who objected, but after this Indian went and saved my life I think you deserve the truth. At the time I really didn't give it all that much thought either way. While I was lying here in this bed I regretted that I agreed so quickly. Risking my life sure wasn't worth a lousy twenty bucks. Heck, risking my horse's life wasn't worth that. As far as killing is concerned, I've done it before when I had to but I get no pleasure out of it. If we could have stopped you folks without any shooting that would have been fine by me. And I wouldn't have gone along at all with the plan if I'd known that there would be women on that stagecoach. We were told it was miners we were to stop, not ladies."  Jake asks, "So why would the two that locked you guys in here to die go up the hill tonight and shoot at the miners? Or maybe they were looking for somebody in particular to shoot?"He answers, "I couldn't tell you, but the agreement was to keep the miners from town today not just this morning. I've been in here since the morning and they haven't exactly shared any further information with us.  Look, we told you what you wanted. Are you going to let us go now? We're grateful for what you did so you won't have to worry about us bothering you ever again."Nanuet pulls Jake aside and whispers. "Don't know if that Pinto guy is dead. He is the only way we to get more information. How do we know we can trust them if we let them go? They did try to kill us."  Jake answers, "We don't know." Jake smiles a sly smile. "Life's a gamble." He tells the man, "I don't see how turning you over to the Marshall is going to do us or you any good. I'm not a vengeful man towards those that just make a mistake." Jake stares hard at the man who had the shoulder wound. "It seems to me you have been at least somewhat honest with us. Though I figure you still owe us. Let's just leave it as goodwill." Jake puts his hand on his gun. "But my goodwill only goes so far, and I don't accept two mistakes." He walks over towards Nanuet. "If you wanted to pay some of your debt to us, and perhaps earn some cash as well..." Jake pauses, "...I would pay for some proof of who put Weems up to it. You aren't a friend of his are you?"  He replies, "No, I just knew who he was. And I'm not thrilled about being set up. Don't know who gave him the money though and I don't really know Galeyville that well or Promise City at all." "Are you a friend of this one?" Jake points to the other outlaw Nanuet had cured. "Are you going to take care of him?   The man replies, "Never met him until last night. I wouldn't trust him if I were you though. The guy riding alongside him that got killed by the same shotgun blast that he was hit with was his brother. You might be better off bringing him to the Marshall."  Jake asks Nanuet, “What do you think Indian, we can leave him his horse? Though I wouldn't stay here long. Either Weems or the Marshall will be along any time I expect."  Nanuet answers, "Fine, we leave him his horse. But if we see him again we shoot on sight."   Jake tells the man, “Ok, we'll let you go. But stay put for a bit so we can make sure there are no others."  Nanuet and Jake go back and gather up what is valuable from the 'stables'. Jake examines the magic light source to see if it can be taken.  They get the horses ready and get them to the outside. They strap and tie the wounded man onto one of the horses to pull it along behind them. They leave the other man behind along with one of the horses. The ride back to town takes about an hour, with them arriving at the Marshall's office shortly after 11:00 PM. Marshall Wyatt Earp takes the prisoner in jail and appears to be almost elated when Jake says tells him that the man was one of the people responsible for shooting his brother, and that three of his friends are lying dead in a cave two miles away. Jake also mentions the name Pinto Joe Weems, who Earp has heard of but has never actually met. Jake takes Nanuet's hand and shakes it. "Well done Indian. Once again you were there when I needed you." He pats him on the back. "I'm headed to the Lone Star."  Nanuet replies, "I think actually that I may join you. We have earned a few drinks today. We managed to catch a few bad guys and stay alive ourselves. This was a long day, and I'm parched."At around 11:15 PM Tony Lucky's game wraps up and people begin to leave for the evening. Teddy and Alexsis head our to take a walk around the town together. Ruby continues to sit on the porch as patrons file out and exchanges pleasant greeting with her, especially Mr. Cassidy. Billy Comstock and his friends say goodnight to Chester and thank him for his company. Kate and Sonoma work together to clean up the table while Tom and William Whipple chat with the few remaining stragglers. With Teddy and Alexsis gone, the place feels more like the Lone Star she knows and Katherine and Sonoma had the place cleaned up in no time. She wondered about Maggie's night and hoped that the El Parador hadn't been too big a shock to her sensibilities. And that Dorita hadn't been troubled to the point where she was sorry she'd agreed.   "We'll be going back to the El Parador soon," Kate told Sonoma. "Then I'll walk Maggie back. Thank you so much for coming, I don't know what we would have done without you."  Kate then walked over to the piano and began to play some of the simple German folk songs she'd learned as a child, and tried not to worry that Jake and Nanuet had still not been heard from.Nanuet notices the people filing out of the Lone Star and walking about on the streets. "I hope Miss Ruby is glad to see you, and not upset that we spent the evening out and about." "I hope she's glad to see me too." Jake gives Nanuet a sidelong glance. "The thought had occurred to me that she might have expected us earlier. Live for the moment though, eh?"  Ruby is just about to head back inside for Tom's end-of-the-night employee wrap-up when she sees Jake and Nanuet turn the corner from Fremont Street onto Main Street heading in the direction of the Lone Star.</blockquote>

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