Creation Ranch 8

Chapter 8:  Back in Ghalb

 

Fancy Hapner left the children, as she called them, in New Ulm for the good life, a life with an honest brewer from Wisconsin and Hap took to forcing Lois to live with him, and that winding up in a shack in the woods a ways north of Creation Ranch where neither of them had ever been as far as Hap knew when he showed up at Ghalb looking for his runaway bride.

Briana and Hap sat at the bar.  The young girl thought to be Eli’s sister unlike her brother was confident that Hey was a good man, having no idea he had once been Ewodo’s right hand man, but thought that since Hap was begrudgingly welcome at Hey’s Inn by her father, she had nothing to fear from the young man.

“Where is your brother these days?” he asked her as they played poker for toothpicks, the girl sprawled over a chair at the table next to Hap that was much too big for her, and Hap absentmindedly chewing on the profits of the only hand he had one.

Briana shouted, “Full house!” and raked in her winnings one more time, “You’re not much at poker are you, Hap?” she finished with a giggle.

Hey looked up from cleaning behind the bar but never smiled.

“The way I see it,” Hap said, “if I get in deep enough debt to you I’ll be stuck with you for life, and I can’t think of a better goal for me right now since my wife run off with some guy I never even saw.”

“I don’t know whether that makes me or you the luckiest, Hap, but I wouldn’t mind being stuck with you … a while … but I have better things to do with my life than to spend them taking care of broken down swindlers.”

“Hey!  You little ...?” Hap tried to steal a look at her cards as he chased her from table to table, the girl laughing and Hap only seeming to be very serious.

The door burst open and in stepped Lora first, then Tom, and finally Lois’ mom.

The girl stopped her play immediately and when Hap realized it he looked at the new potential patrons, hoping for some real entertainment.  He smiled at Lora, who smiled back.  He quickly shot a look at Tom and continued on to Lois’ mother wondering what in the world could be going down.

“That’s my mother,” Briana whispered so softly Hap could barely hear her.  “She doesn’t want me around when she’s working.”

“Is she working, you suppose?” Hap said as the girl looked at him with an impish smile and ran toward the trio.

“Mama!” she yelled and moved to the prostitute and hugged her, barely able to reach the woman’s shoulders, not because she was so young but so little.

Lois’ mother was put off by the unexpected show of emotion.

Briana backed off and as if pouting said, “What’s the matter, Mama?  You aren’t working again are you?”  Then as if deciding she was of course Briana continued the façade by saying, “You are always working,” seeming about to burst into tears, “When can I ever get to see you if you are always working?”

Hey stepped around the bar and extended his hand to the Havolls.  He hated Havolls but their money did not leave a bitter taste like some people’s money did he might have been thinking as he shot a look at Hap, who sensed money immediately also. 

“Well Mr. Havoll, and is it missus?” Hey said extending his hand to Lora, who shook her head to indicate it definitely was not.  “And, how nice of you to bring your friends to my abode, two what do I owe the pleasure, my dear?”

“Cut the crap, Hey.  We need rooms.  At least two …?” Lois’ mother said.

“I’ll handle this,” Tom said.

“Oh; no; you don’t …! I know what you have in mind,” Lora said, nearly shouting, “We need two rooms, one for Tom here, and the other for me and our guest?  Is that okay?” she asked Lois’s mother, who enthusiastically agreed, with her actions only.

“Well, have it your way by all means, Madam Havoll?” Hey said, “That is of course so long as everything remains above board?  Your, um, guest is not, uh, working, is she?”

“Heaven’s no!” Lora said as she walked to the bar to get the key for hers and Lois’ mother’s room.

Everyone but Lora laughed including Briana, who continued to cling to Lois’ and her mother.

“Might I suggest then?” Hey began and then stopped himself abruptly even though the entire room looked at him to see what he might indeed suggest.  Understanding one of them was likely to ask what his suggestion was anyway he said, “Might I suggest Mama here stay in her room until you leave in the morning?”

Lois and Briana’s mother shot a look of cold surprise at Hey.

“Just to limit the likelihood someone might get the idea I was running a brothel and hired the …”

“We get it, Hey.  I’ll stay incognito.  Is that fair enough?”

“Yes, my dear, madam,” Hey said and taking two keys began to walk up the stairs to the rooms followed by the women with Tom bringing up the rear, looking back at Hap, who sat quietly taking it all in.

Now in the lonely spirit of another night in a room he purchased at the inn Hap dug deep in his clothing and found the paper still there he had lifted from Eli one night when he was in Ghalb before.  He lit the candle by the bed and tried to read it again by candlelight as he had done many times before.  He could rehearse it in his mind it was so familiar, “This special accommodation is for ___” and Blaine Keycosa’s name had been signed by him above the line, a rare thing in these parts, “By Wallaby Ewodo the undersigned,” and Ewodo had signed it.  The center part gave details that proved it, Hap merely supposed because it was unreadable by him, being in Latin a dead language nobody knew how to pronounce any longer but which was often used by Ewodo for official documents.  Now he pulled it out and cradled it in his hand to allow the dancing light of the candle free rein upon the document.

It somehow had gotten damp … and it was empty!  There were no letters on the document at all!  It had gotten wet and now there were a few runny smears but no letters that anyone could make out.  It was almost a clean sheet of paper.  Hap felt Hey’s strong arms about his neck already in his fear.

Therefore I said, “Hap?”

He buried his head in his arms in dejection.

Then I repeated, “Hap?”

He said nothing and did not even groan.

“Hap, don’t do this thing.  If you do not do this thing you may be a very important person in Dacica.  The Havolls will look upon you with respect.  I have just realized this.  But you must not do this thing and Blaine will not harm you.”

He started to react but then said nothing, amazing me, for it seemed he knew who I was already.

Then Hap took a knife from under his jacket and taking it out, ran his finger along its sharp edge ever so lightly and I was amazed he did not cut himself, his hand had to be perfectly still or it would have drawn blood on his finger.  He put his finger to his throat testing where the large artery in his neck was.  Then he looked out into the darkness and …?

Then he took the document and held it over the candle and it soon lit the entire room with its flame.  His protection, all of his protection against this new private enemy, was no more than a black smudge on the carpet now, and not even ashes as he stomped the black ash into the floor.  But then he did something that surprised me.

He walked out into the hallway and then straight to the next room.  He could hear them inside talking but it was muffled for the doors to the old inn were so thick, but it seemed clear they were trying to force some one of them to accept something he didn’t understand.  But I understood as he began to pry the latch on the door apart, ever so slowly but ever so deliberately. 

He would not need the commendation papers, if he pulled this off.  Even if he did, Blaine Keycosa would not know they had been destroyed by accident.  And if he were able to kill both of the celebrities he would be a hero, and might even get a regular position in the hierarchy in Ghalb.  To mine and his surprise the latch suddenly broke, and he opened it ever so slowly then.  A quarter of an inch at a time for several seconds and then he swung it open and sprang upon his victims, gun in hand.

But, I manifested my own flesh in front of him, still not believing what I realized; he was doing it, he was not stopping he was about to shoot Tom in the back of the head and Lora would be next a moment later with no time to react.  Instead the hot bullet took me in the chest.  I felt the nearly molten lead penetrate my heart as I crumpled to the floor …?

Then … The black and white kitten fled the saucer Tom and Lora, and their guest were gathered about, blood splattering across the floor and even in the saucer one of my own crimson blood droplets slowly disappeared as it sunk in the white milk.

What they all saw was my lifeless flesh lying on the carpet in the Havoll’s room.  They could not know that I had managed to escape my flesh and stood outside of time watching … it … lie there completely still.  I was shaken but if you think I was scared you are not even beginning to understand the terror of Tom and Lora, and their guest, there in that room in the old inn in Ghalb.

Lora was in hysterics immediately, her mind being unable to grasp how it was possible for my body to be there on the floor, bloodied and lifeless.  Hap was just sitting there apparently in a catatonic state having dropped the gun, but sitting there expressionlessly staring at my corpse.  Tom held the six-shooter and just stared at it.  And the kitten mewed and rubbed itself on Hap’s leg timidly licking blood from his hand instead of the bloody milk in the saucer just beyond my body.