A Hope for Rauri Ch. 02

He'd heard a little talk of the queen of the steamboat seductresses; women who made their living by acting as beautiful and witty escorts on the river trade. With many communities passing anti-gambling ordinances, it had been only a natural thing to move the gaming to the large steam craft which plied the river out of the reach of those laws.

By that time, Wes had gotten some experience at gambling professionally. He wasn't necessarily the best, but he knew when to keep his hands in his pockets and his mouth shut. He'd begun conservatively, taking his lumps occasionally if he bet poorly, usually from not noticing something or someone in the form of the better gamblers on the river. By now, he made use of the dashing figure that he cut on the boats and he usually came away with his money and then some in his pockets and a lovely woman on his arm.

He made the perfect river gambler, too. At his apparent tender age in this business, he could charm the bustle off of any woman -- especially the rich, slightly older ones. He knew that he tended to attract the hustlers as well, but the long Army Colt at his side lent him a bit of a dangerous air to those who didn't know better.

The ones who did took it as the warning that it was meant to be and a lot of them left him alone. A long gun like that was either carried by an idiot or somebody who knew how to use it well, and one look if you knew what you were looking for and you'd see that the old piece wasn't just there for show. It was old, but it was well-looked after. Most especially, it also looked well-used.

As far as most of the hustlers, he knew who they were and what they were as well, so he usually didn't allow the charade to go on for long. He still remembered the young whore from long ago, the one who could have had him so easily, but hadn't laid out the hook for him. He knew that now.

He still couldn't decide whether he wanted to kiss her or shoot her, but he knew that he wanted to at least see her again.

If he got the chance of it, he'd like to take her to bed again too.

He'd probably shoot her after that.

If things had gone differently and she hadn't robbed him in his sleep, he'd have loved to take her out here and try to make a go of it.

He had no "Katie" in his life, and he wanted none of the usual kinds. He was prepared to work hard for the right woman. But he knew where that road led a lot of the time. He just thought that if she felt the same way, it might be worth a shot.

He snorted then and tossed his cigarillo into the small fire.

Sure, he thought, at least out here, there was nowhere to run with his money.

He kicked some sand on the fire and went to bed down.

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He didn't know why, but when he woke up the next day, Wes felt strangely different somehow, though there was no reason to it as far as he could tell. Then he remembered that he'd had a dream.

In it, he saw and finally spoke with the one woman who had captivated him completely long before. If it could be said that Wesley Valence was missing his heart, it was because it had been taken from him unknowingly by a sad young widow long ago and very far away. She hadn't known it and likely wouldn't have cared, having her own troubles, but Wes had fallen in an instant and as in many things about him, he hadn't ever been the same since.

As he struggled, trying to see a little sense in it, he'd been surprised to find a man at the entrance to his little enclave among the rocks.

"Took me a while, I'll give you that" the man smiled, "but I put it together; who you were and where you've been. You had a good run but it's done now. I guess I should have looked a little harder when we killed your rebel-assed family. If I'd known you were there hiding out in the scrubland out here, I'd have used one less bullet on the girl I shot."

The statement was designed to provoke Wes and he knew it.

He let it slide, trying to remember that face.

"Toss yer gun and I'll bring ya in. That way, you'll get a few more days to live and a coupla free meals, Reb."

The only thing that kept Wesley motionless now were the thoughts of the odd dream still there in his head.

So real.

So uncommonly visceral to him somehow. He suddenly remembered a woman with dark red hair and bright green eyes whenever he closed his eyes to blink.

He looked at the man, remembering him now.

"So you WERE a murderer and a thief, but NOW you're a sheriff, or a marshal? Really, just what the fuck are you, old man? Well besides a robbing, murdering, jawhawker gone to fat."

The loading lever on the Winchester pointed at him moved and he knew that a bullet was now in the chamber.

The man still sneered, "I'm a bounty hunter these days, you bastard, and I SAID --"

Wes's hand found his old Colt in less than the blink of an eye, because in the time that it took to blink, the long pistol was up and the hammer had been drawn back during the movement. The rocks rang with the roar of the pistol and then there was a new place in that sour face to attract flies.

That sour face still looked just as stupid; but the man fell backward missing some of the skull at the rear of his head.

Wes nodded to the corpse, "Heard ya."

He was still shaking his head as he mounted up an hour later to ride off toward St. Louis, wanting to book passage on one of the boats again.

He found it a little unsettling as he rode, thinking it over. He'd always been fast with that pistol, but he'd never been that quick before. He'd never felt the desire to tear chunks of meat from a human body and eat it raw before either, just from what the ass had said about 'his' adopted family.

He was a little thankful to have fought that urge down.

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She was the picture of perfect charm and grace as she stood next to the man that she'd set aside in her mind as her mark for this night. She also knew that he was feeling a lot of pride to have someone as lovely as her there with him.

She wanted to smirk, but she held it in.

If he was a tenth of the man that he thought himself to be, then she'd be here next to him if he was broke.

Well that was certainly never going to happen.

She saw a man walk past far across the crowded room and he drew her eye, following his progress with her gaze.

Shauna knew him at once and she wanted to curse.

She sipped at her drink and laughed along with something that the fool next to her had said. She didn't even have to listen, she told herself sadly; she just had to be quick enough to see the reactions of others to know what to do.

The fool brayed like a mule when he laughed. This was going to take a bit of concentration from her tonight; to allow someone like this to paw her a little until the powder in the drink that she'd serve him later in his room while she was naked took effect.

She thought about Wes, wondering about him a little. From the way that he was dressed, he must be doing alright, she decided, weighing her chances at dropping this sucker to try a run at the tall one.

But she knew that it likely wouldn't fly if she did that.

Then she thought about ditching the old pig anyway and just trying to get away.

The trouble was that being on a river steamboat while it was underway sort of narrowed down her escape options more than a little bit. She thought about the side-paddles and thought that at least she could jump over the stern railing if she really had to and likely almost drown from the weight of her clothing.

Though what she was would prevent her drowning, it would do little to stave off the unpleasantness of nearly getting there. She decided to make her move a little early and she whispered to the rich man, telling him of her desire for him.

Apparently, he was the sort of rich man who would take his 'conquest' to bed when he was good and dammed well ready to. She wondered how long that would take and decided that she didn't want to invest any more of her own time in the ox.

Her next thought was to leave as unobtrusively as possible and just lock herself into her room.

But she found a derringer pressing against her ribs very uncomfortably as the mark leaned over. The way that he held her arm tightly went past uncomfortable. After the briefest instant where she reminded herself why it wouldn't do to rip his face off, since she was very much stronger than he was - well, since she was a werewolf, after all, she went another way.

His attempt to hold her arm seemed to push her off-balance for a second and she had to reach to keep her new hat from falling off.

"Shauna Kavanaugh," he said with a self-important sneer, "I'm arres- OH!"

Shauna drew back the hatpin quickly from where she'd jabbed him under his armpit. When he reared back a bit from the pain, she reached for his face and dropped the pinch of powder that she'd grabbed along with the pin from her hat onto his tongue. She quickly jabbed his tongue once with the pin and it caused the man to gasp.

"Well I would have used a different word, Virgil, or whatever your name is," Shauna whispered, "Here, drink this, you'll feel better almost right away."

The hatpin was already in the glass of mint julep. The ground leaves in it had softened and he drank it down in one long gulp.

She stepped away then and walked as he went to his knees choking on what was in his throat. The already-dying Secret Service agent looked up at her and saw mostly blue halos around every oil lamp in his sight. He wavered for a second, looking in her direction.

Shauna looked back, appearing as though she didn't know him or why he'd been looking her way. As she pushed through the doors, she heard him fall and smiled a little, knowing that the convulsions were beginning.

She'd figured it out at only the last second and now stepped outside and walked to the rear of the boat. She kept her eyes open the whole way. These clowns never work alone, she thought as she reached into her bag.

There looked to be no one there at first, but she knew better. There might even be three of them with one waiting for her in her room.

"Been a long hunt for you, Miss Kavanaugh, " a voice said out of the shadows.

Shauna spun to her right, but the agent had the drop on her, covering her with his pistol.

"What's the meaning of this?" another male voice said from almost beside her, "If you're thinking to rob my girl, you'd better think again, sir."

Shauna looked up and saw his face, about the last face that she'd have expected to see in these circumstances as the newcomer drew a long-barreled Colt and cocked the hammer.

"Step aside please sir," the agent said, "I'm placing this woman under arrest for espionage. She was a Confederate spy during the war. If she's your girlfriend -- "

"Well, since she is my girlfriend, then you're in pretty deep, I'd say" Wes smiled. "I used to ride with Quantrill's men, but we were under Bill Anderson then. I never liked hurting civilians if they'd done me no harm."

He leaned forward and grinned, "But I sure did like shooting down bluebellies -- especially if their officers were stupid enough to challenge us and then fight with muzzle-loaders on foot."

The statement was enough to cause the man to stare for a second and it was enough. There was a muffled gunshot and the man fell over the stern. He was out of sight in seconds.

Shauna looked back, but Wes was over ten feet away by that point and the pistol in his hand was pointing straight at her.

"Pull that pepperbox out of your bag, Shauna," he said just loudly enough for her to hear it.

She slowly drew out the small, multi-barreled pistol that she'd fired from inside of her bag.

"How did you know?" she asked.

"I didn't," he smiled, "I just wanted to be sure. You can put it back now. Were you really a spy, or is that something that I ought not to ask?"

She nodded, "Were you really, ..."

He laughed a little, "It was before you and I met.

I rode with them, but Captain Quantrill was gone by that time I rode with Anderson. If you want out of this and don't want to swim for it, then you'd better stick close to me until at least two stops from here down the river.

We're newlyweds, by the way, you and me, so we'll be spending a lot of time in my cabin. Just don't fix me a drink."

"Why are you doing this?" she asked.

He grinned a little in the darkness, "I figure you owe me for what you took a long time ago. If you've got that much with you then --"

"I don't, Wes," she said seriously, "I've been real sorry that I took it ever since. I didn't even want to take it then, but I needed the money."

He sighed, "I sort of guessed something like that. Everybody needs the money west of this fucking river. We'll work something out somehow. Let's go to my cabin and talk a little. You can have the bed. There's a chair I can sleep in."

"If we're gonna work something out, then I guess the bed's a good place to start talking it over," she smiled a little hopefully.

They walked along the dark deck to the front of the boat and entered there to go to his cabin.

"You poison the big guy?" he asked and she nodded.

"Yessir. I boiled a big pot of water and threw in chopped-up Monk's Hood, Deadly Nightshade, and Devil's Glove root. When I didn't think I'd get any more in, I boiled it for an hour more and spooned it all out and just boiled it down til it was thicker'n molasses. I put it on a couple of hat pins and set them aside. The rest I boiled again until it was solid and I ground it down to dust."

"That what you put in his mouth?"

"Yeah," she said, removing the last of her clothes, "it's an old family recipe.

You coming to bed or not?" she asked, "If I gotta work something out, well, I'd rather work it outta you for starters."

When he climbed into bed with her a few minutes later, Shauna kissed him and smiled.

"Wesley Valence, you are a brave man. How can I start to work off my debt? I mean, besides what we're about to do?"

He pulled her closer and sighed as he felt her breasts against him, "Don't worry about it for now and don't try to kill me. If you think you want to, just talk to me first. Don't poison me and please don't shoot me.

"If you can abide with all that, we'll moren' likely get along fine."

It took Shauna only a moment to skin that down as she put her leg over him and shifted, wondering what he'd do as he learned that he was in a bed with a werewolf.

What he did was to shift himself and they stared at each other and laughed until they cried.

She kissed him once and smiled, understanding everything at once, "You're just the same as me. You want a friend too, don'tcha?"

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Wes stood on the deck of the boat near the boarding plank as people of all manners and sorts embarked or disembarked. They'd be here at this stop for another hour. The covered body of the federal agent had already been taken off and was in the back of the wagon which would take it to a morgue. In the meantime, he kept an eye open as he watched Shauna work the crowd. She wasn't dressed as a beautiful young woman in finery today. The trick today was to look 'regular' as she'd told him.

He didn't know what that was as it applied in her present configuration. She'd said that they had to change the way that they looked and he'd supposed that for her, that meant wearing a drab, dark dress -- as plain as sack cloth, and her hair just in the usual sort of tight bun that women used to keep their hair off their necks.

But that hadn't been it at all. He was still amazed at her as he watched what looked to be a boy there in the crowd lifting money from the distracted and the unsuspecting.

She'd cut her long hair short with his help and she hadn't been satisfied until it was far too short to be the way that any woman would wear it. It was just over her collar and she wore a working man's cap pulled down low with a plain man's jacket and trousers of all things.

He hoped that the disguise was working for her, he thought, because he could spot her in the middle of any crowd -- but then he knew that he was unconsciously looking for her in any crowd, so that was no measuring stick. She still looked wonderful to him, now that they'd decided on their partnership.

Just before they met up, she waved him over and whispered something to a middle-aged woman who smiled to them both when he got there. He hadn't been ready for anything like what she told him then.

"Your friend Tommy here told me about the two of you wanting to have a place of your own.

I understand," she said, "My younger boy is the same way. It must be so hard to have to hide your kind of love in times like these."

Wes tried not to stare as she reached into her bag and pulled out a purse of coins, "Here," she said, "God bless you and keep you both safe. I hope that you find your place in the sun here."

"Thank you Ma'am," Wesley said as he ducked his head in a little attempt at a bow, doing what he could to cover his shock, "And God bless you as well."

"Oh, you both look so sweet," she smiled as she walked away.

They stood together and watched as the woman walked down the plank to look back at them with a soft smile before she turned away and began to look for a carriage. Wes and Shauna walked to the opposite side of the deck as she passed over what she'd gotten to him. He was astounded. There just had to be more than a few people howling out for the law over this much.

"What the hell did you tell that lady, uh, ... Tommy is it?"

Shauna smiled up at him, "Uh-huh, I started out poorer than dirt when I was just little before we moved to Louisiana. I learned that there are soft touches, and most of them are women just like her. If you find one, you gotta know how to work them, is all. This is the same thing I used to do to get money for a sweet now and then back where I was just a little bigger than a tyke. I just knew what she wanted to see in me, since I'm here as a boy."

Wes still couldn't believe it, "She thinks, ... Jesus, Shauna, she thinks we're a couple of -- "

She nodded, looking into the purse, "Uh-huh, I put on my little act, and for the price of what looks like enough to buy us a real good horse here, ... "

She smiled at him, "she gets to believe that she's seen and recognized something that's very special to her heart.

She misses her son -- wherever he is -- and she thinks that we're a couple of boys who love each other very much and have run off to find a place where we'll be left alone to farm a little and screw a lot.

Well it's not that far off, is it? Not when you think about it."

"You be careful there, 'Tommy'," he grinned a little as he looked out over the crowd, "I might just kiss you right here in front of God and everybody in another minute or so."

He looked down and chuckled then, "They'd run us right the hell out of town -- if they didn't string us up over it."

Twenty minutes later, a young pair of people walked off. Not many noticed them, other than perhaps a few of the womenfolk who might have been there to watch the crowd for a little idle entertainment. All that they saw was a couple of young men looking as lost as anyone else might who was traveling here with little between them but their friendship, because they sure couldn't have very much money between them.

Six blocks from the docks and they were buying horses and saddles. Their few things went into their saddlebags and eleven minutes later they were at the outskirts, a little food wrapped tightly and carried in a pack and the two were off, headed for a nondescript and weatherbeaten old farmhouse out in the middle of nowhere.

"Hey," Shauna called over, "what's the name of where it is that we're goin' anyway? You never told me."

"It doesn't have a name. The nearest town is called Peculiar, where I met you that time. It's most of an hour away at a good walk. There's nobody there. All along the borderlands between Missouri and Kansas, there's nobody until the people start coming back, but that won't happen for awhile yet, I'd say.