EITHER ORE (Going for the Gold 2)
released March 21, 2011 from Siren-Bookstrand, Inc.
Erotic Romance, Historical, Menage a Trois/Quatre, Western/Cowboys
“What in Sam Hill?” uttered Harrison. “Gage, keep these two here.”
As Gage signaled a waiting boatman with an expert piercing captain’s whistle, Harrison struggled up the sand dune as swiftly as he could. Three figures wrestled in a jumble on the ridge of the dune. It looked as though one figure wielded an oblong object and was beating someone who crouched. A woman shrieked and pounded the attacker on the back with fists.
“Stop!” Harrison bellowed. “I’ll run you all in!”
The attacker stood straight, dropped the implement with a dissonant mangled sound, and fled. Harrison let a ball fly after him, and it looked as though he nicked him in the upper arm, but he couldn’t be sure. He let loose with another ball just to make it look good, then holstered his weapon to discover the beaten man was none other than Ollie Denny.
Harrison and Lola helped the stricken man to his feet, and he clutched a battered guitar with three broken strings, moaning, “My guitar. My guitar. I can’t believe he broke my guitar.” “We’ll get you a new one, Ollie,” Harrison assured him. “May I ask how you came to be standing out on this dune? And who was that fellow who ran?”
Lola took charge. “That was Curly Billy, of Fowler’s gang.”
Harrison brushed off the front of Ollie’s elaborately embroidered waistcoat. “Curly? Weren’t you back-slapping pals with him at the fandango? Why was he beating you with your own guitar?”
Again, Lola answered. “We were in Ellis’ saloon when Phil and Lem came in and told us you were lying in wait down here. Suddenly Ollie” -and she shot him a distinctly suspicious glance - “took it into his head to come down here and see what was going on. I came because I am a journalist.” She looked about to spit on the misbegotten clown, and Harrison now saw she clutched in her grip a ladylike pocket pistol. “I have no idea why it was so imperative for him to come. Did you find out who was taking an axe to the wharf?”
“Yes, Gage’s down there, arrested Barney Ray and Red Davis. Leavenworth organized us into a police force and we acted as constables for the town. We’re putting them in prison on board the United States ship Euphemia.”
“You can do that?”
Harrison shrugged. “Certainly. Why not? Far as I’m concerned, we’re more lawful than those three, although I did notice Fowler made sure to keep himself out of it. My, my, what do we have here?”
In patting Ollie’s waistcoat, Harrison had discovered a bulky rectangular item, which was revealed to be a red brick. Harrison angled the brick in the moonlight to see the stamp. “A Chilean Espinoza brick, eh? Ollie. Maybe you can enlighten me to who has been stealing the bricks we need to build parts of the sidewalks.”
But Ollie was only interested in saying, “Does this mean Lem and Phil are constables too? Because if they are constables, I want to be a constable.”
Lola cut in. “Ollie. What are you doing with that brick?”
“I - I - I just used it to hold down my sheet music! Otherwise the music would have blown away!
I just picked it up off a street - Clay Street, where you were building sidewalks!”
Harrison rattled the fool by the sleeve. “I have half a mind to run you in for theft! I’ll stake my affidavit that you’re involved in this whole Hound business. Turning against your boss, and for what?” He shoved Ollie in the direction of Ellis’ saloon. “Go, go! I’ll inform Lassen about your frolics, and show him this brick. Come round and see if you still have a position in the morning. Go back to Ellis’ and play your asinine Artemus Felcher routine - I don’t care a damn!”
Sobbing in earnest now, Ollie clutched his mutilated guitar to his chest and stumbled forlornly across the crest of the dune. His smoky voice wailed as though wrenched by a ton of woes. “Phil and Lem get to be constables… and I don’t even have a guitar to play…”
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