Chapter 9
The saloon was loud until late in the evening, and Kyle was exhausted by the time he went to his room.
His ribs ached something fierce after all his hard work.
He fell into bed happily though, as he had had a wonderful time with Alice.
Working behind the bar with her had been fun, and to his surprise, they hadn’t gotten in each other’s way.
That was unusual. The last time he’d tended bar had been when he was still growing up and his uncle had his friends over.
They had been a rowdy bunch, and Kyle had learned a lot.
Maybe the idea of bringing a saloon to Unity wasn’t that bad.
It might turn out to be a good move. It would certainly give folks something to do.
And they had a church now, so it was only fair that the good folks had somewhere to go on Saturday evenings so they could be suitably repentant on Sunday mornings.
He fell asleep with an image of himself and Alice owning a saloon and stable. It was a peaceful picture in his mind and brought happy dreams.
The next morning, Kyle was up with the roosters despite going to bed so late. He found that Alice was up too, doing the rest of the cleaning that none of them had been able to stomach the night before.
“Well, good morning to you,” Kyle grinned.
“Morning,” Alice said with a frown. “You seem awfully chipper.”
“I slept surprisingly well, considering it wasn’t for long,” Kyle said with a laugh. “And how are you today? Did you sleep all right?”
Alice shook her head. “I can’t get Chrissie out of my mind.”
Kyle’s buoyant mood dipped. “I’m sorry,” he said sincerely. “I know it was tough seeing her like that, but don’t lose hope. We’re going to figure out how to get her out of there.”
“That we are,” Michael said with a decisive nod as he came down the stairs to meet them.
Warren was trailing behind him, still rubbing sleep from his eyes. “Morning.”
“And how do you plan to do that?” Alice asked.
“With the plan we came up with yesterday in the cart,” Kyle said. Didn’t she recall? He frowned. “You were right there.”
“I don’t recall an actual plan; more like a few ideas tossed about,” Alice said, leaning on the broom.
“We plan to go and speak to the sheriff this morning,” Michael said. “We’ll go as soon as he’s likely to have had coffee and breakfast. I don’t believe that approaching a man about matters like this before he’s had his morning cup is fair.”
“Oh, well, I don’t think I can come with you,” she sighed. “Taking time off yesterday was almost disastrous for the saloon. And now there’s all this cleaning to get through. I don’t think the Bensons will agree to allow me more time off.”
Kyle felt for her. Of course, she wanted to be involved with her sister’s rescue every step of the way, but she also needed to keep the job so she had a place to stay for as long as she was in town.
Once again, it occurred to him that she might decide to go back to Pennsylvania once Chrissie was rescued.
He didn’t like that idea at all and redirected his thoughts elsewhere.
“Well, maybe we can go on your behalf?” Kyle asked. “We can take this situation to the sheriff and maybe he’ll be receptive.”
Alice snorted a laugh. “Oh please. I’ve asked Sheriff Butler time and time again to help me and have had no luck whatsoever.”
Kyle didn’t want to say it, but there was every possibility that the reason the sheriff wasn’t taking this matter seriously was because Alice was a woman.
A rather fine and wonderful one, but a woman all the same.
And a few men—Kyle definitely not being one of them—might see determined women like Alice as pushy.
The sheriff also might have decided that since Chrissie didn’t live in Grunnersberg, she wasn’t his problem and he didn’t need to help.
No one had said anything in response to Alice’s comment. Kyle realized they had just stood there, looking at each other.
“Ah well, I guess this will be a good time to find out why he hasn’t taken you seriously,” Kyle said finally.
Alice gave him a look that wasn’t complimentary. “Well, I wish you luck,” she said. “If you want some coffee and breakfast, I can make it for you. Mrs. Benson is still asleep.”
“We can help,” Warren said. “I like to cook, believe it or not.”
“And I can make a mean cup of coffee,” Kyle said.
“Give me your broom, and I’ll be happy to do some sweeping,” Michael added.
This seemed to win them back some goodwill with Alice and she nodded, handing Michael the broom before leading Warren to the kitchen.
Kyle set the coffee to brewing on the range. While he waited, he helped to clean, wiping down the bar counter and scrubbing some lingering sticky beer residue off it.
Then he and Michael set about cleaning the tables and chairs, and soon they had a place to eat their eggs, toast, and ham.
The conversation over breakfast inevitably turned to the situation at hand.
“I’ve been talking to folks around here,” Warren said as he ate. “It seems that Grunnersberg has a reputation for being a snooty town. Some of the folks that visit consider the locals to have their noses in the air, if you know what I mean.”
“They think they’re better than everyone?” Alice asked.
“Yes, something like that,” Warren said. “The train station seems to have given some folks a rather bloated opinion of themselves and the town’s importance.”
“I don’t see how that pertains to my sister,” Alice pointed out.
“I don’t either,” Warren said frankly. “It’s just that I always find it’s best to have all the pertinent facts in a case. Sometimes we have to admit that we don’t know what a pertinent fact is until later, so it’s best to file it all away under ‘possibly important’ until we know.”
“Right,” Michael said, his expression clearly indicating that he thought that Warren was a little crazy.
“We’ll speak to Sheriff Butler, and I’m sure we’ll get him to help,” Kyle said. “After all, he’s a lawman, and what is going on in Cherryville is very definitely not lawful.”
With that said, they finished their food and helped to clean up. Then they were on their way down the street to the sheriff’s office.
The sheriff was outside on the porch when they arrived. His badge gleamed in the morning sunlight as he stretched and then took a seat on the bench out front. He looked to be a man of around forty years with a full brown beard and warm green eyes.
“Well, you’re some of the folks from the train. Am I right?” he asked.
“Yes, we are,” Kyle said, stepping forward.
“And what brings you by my office?” Sheriff Butler asked. “I would have thought you would be in the post office waiting with bated breath for news of the new train.”
“We aren’t in that much of a hurry to leave,” Kyle said with his best winning smile.
“Is that so? Well, this little neck of the woods can take a person like that,” he said. “So, what can I do for you folks?”
“We were wondering if we could go inside and have a word with you about a matter,” Kyle said.
“Now that sounds ominous,” Sheriff Butler said with a chuckle. “Why not do it out here in the open air? I am a firm believer in fresh air.”
“And there certainly is plenty of it here,” Kyle said, taking a deep breath. “It is some real nice country around here.”
“Sure is,” the sheriff agreed.
Kyle stood on the porch with his back to the railing so that he could look the sheriff in the eye. The sheriff stayed on his bench, and Warren and Michael took up station on the porch too, but not so close as to crowd the sheriff.
For a couple of minutes, Kyle made some disarming small talk, complimenting the sheriff on his town and what wonderful folks lived there.
“Okay, so enough of that,” Sheriff Butler said eventually. “I think I’ve had all the smoke I can take. What is it you want from me? As if I don’t know.”
“Pardon?” Micheal asked. It was the first thing he’d said in a while.
“You’re the fellows who have been hanging around with that Alice Emmerson, aren’t you?” the sheriff asked. “See, I know what goes on in my town, and frankly, I am concerned. She’s been feeding you all some bunk about her sister being in trouble, hasn’t she?”
“It’s not bunk,” Kyle said hotly.
“Oh, isn’t it?” Sheriff Butler asked, eyebrow arching. “I’ve listened to her tale of woe, and all I heard was the unhappy rambling of a woman who made a mistake. She let her little sister go off when they were both angry and that has caused a family feud.”
“That’s not correct,” Warren said. “There is evidence of a problem. We have seen it ourselves. There is legitimate cause for concern.”
Sheriff Butler laughed. “She’s got you good and proper under her spell now, don’t she?
My goodness, and such fancy educated men like yourselves, being taken in by the lady.
Well, I must admit, she is lovely to look at.
But she’s just a desperate old maid sitting on the shelf while her little sister is living the life she wanted.
We see it all the time around here. Jealousy is a real motive for hysterics.
The stories I could tell you. They would make you weep with laughter. ”
Kyle didn’t find this funny at all.
“Have you been in contact with the sheriff from Cherryville?” Michael asked.
“What? Wilkes? No, why would I want to speak to him?” Sheriff Butler asked, and there was clearly something amiss there. Kyle could hear the animosity dripping in his voice.
“If you had, you might know what’s going on just one town from your own,” Michael said. “They’ve got a bandit problem. A big one. Maybe you should get in touch with Sheriff Wilkes and see if he would like some help.”
Sheriff Butler laughed. “You haven’t met Emmit Wilkes.”
After that exchange, it was clear there would be no help from this quarter, so they left.
“Wow, I didn’t expect that,” Kyle said. “He was determined not to listen.”
“That he was,” Warren agreed. “A most disagreeable person.”
“Let’s take a walk,” Kyle said. “I need to think.”
They walked around for a couple of hours and then went back to the saloon, where they found that Alice had just opened the doors. There were only a couple of customers having lunch, and she was working at the bar on her own.
“Do you want some help?” Kyle asked.
Alice smiled. “Sure. I could use someone to fetch clean glasses from the kitchen.”
Kyle slipped behind the bar, and Michael and Warren took seats.
“So? Did you have any luck?” Alice asked.
Kyle reluctantly admitted that they hadn’t. “Why is the sheriff so stubborn about Cherryville?”
“Oh, that’s because, at one point, they were going to build the train station in Cherryville,” a customer who overheard said.
“There was a big hoo-ha about it. Cherryville was very high on the list, and Grunnersberg was below it. So, our mayor and their mayor got into a bidding war. They promised the earth to the railway company, and the sheriffs were very involved in that.”
“There were rallies and meetings and all sorts of things,” another patron said. “The mayor forced Butler to work all hours to make sure there were no bandits, no robberies, no nothing. That tipped the scales in our favor.”
“That’s just your opinion, Burt,” the other man said harshly. “There’s no proof of that.”
“Oh really?” Burt asked. “And you’re an expert, are you, Dave?”
“That at least explains some of it,” Alice said, refilling their glasses without them asking.
That was interesting information. Kyle and his friends exchanged looks.
So, there was something going on here that wasn’t entirely honest. This had caused a rift between the towns, just like when El Aguila and his men came between Unity and the farmers back home.
It had caused bad blood, and it had taken Kyle and his friends riding out to save the farmers to get them back on their side.
Would it take something similar to mend the rift here?
And what would happen to Chrissie and Jason while the sheriffs carried on their grudge?
“I think we will have to approach Sheriff Wilkes,” Warren said softly. He nodded as Kyle put a pint of beer in front of him. “I think it might be the only way.”
“Yes, we need to go to Cherryville again,” Michael agreed. “There has to be a way to get enough men together to save Chrissie and Jason.”
“We could always give Chrissie some poison to put in their food,” Alice said.
Kyle stared at her. “You’re not serious.”
“If that’s what it takes to save my sister.” Her eyes narrowed, although Kyle was certain she would never really suggest such a thing.
“Let’s save that for the absolute last resort,” Michael said, shaking his head.
“Trust a woman to turn to poison,” Warren mused. “It is traditionally a favorite female weapon, but one which has a high percentile chance of backfiring. Many times, the poisoner is poisoned themselves.”
“Forget I said anything,” Alice snapped. “Obviously, I’d never stoop so low. I’m a Christian woman! I’m just desperate. Let’s go in guns blazing and see how many people get out of that alive.”
“Alice,” Kyle said, taking her hand. “We’re going to get Chrissie back, and you’re coming with us to do it. Just tell us when we can go to Cherryville. When your work will allow it. Okay?”
She nodded and sniffed back a tear he suddenly wished he could kiss away. “Okay. Now, how about those clean glasses?”