Monday, March 31, 2014

HOWL AT THE MOON — Chapter 2 THE BARBARY COAST

Terrible Ted was an ex-Union soldier now living in San Francisco. Terrible Ted started his career with the US Army in 1845 just before the Siege of Mexico City and left the US Army shortly after the Civil War ended because he had had enough of being told what to do and where to go by the Army. He thought he would be happier as a civilian. Unfortunately Ted bounced around from job to job never really feeling like he fit in as a civilian either. He seemed to always get let go after only a few weeks of working or he would quit because he and the Boss Man couldn't see eye to eye.

Jay Bird was another drifter who now found himself living in the City by the Bay. Jay Bird was the son of a businessman who had done well selling building supplies to the rapidly growing San Francisco Bay Area. Jay Bird felt he wanted to make his own way so he left his father's business and struck out to be his own man. Without the experience of his father, things had not gone well for Jay Bird and soon he found himself with no work and nearly broke.

Word of the gold had made it to San Francisco and as most stories of gold go, it had grown. The talk in San Francisco was that gold nuggets lay in plain sight in the bed of the creek that followed the main street in some town in Coyote Valley named Little Creek. Coyote Valley wasn't more than 70 miles south of San Francisco and seemed to be a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

Jay Bird and Terrible Ted met one night in a saloon on the Barbary Coast. At this point they were both unemployed and running low on cash and figured that gambling with the remainder of their money was the best bet to turn it all around. Jay Bird entered a saloon near the piers around nine pm and started his evening with a beer. Terrible Ted entered the same saloon about thirty minutes later and went straight to whiskey. Each man stayed at either end the bar building his nerve with alcohol for what felt like one last run. There were six tables with active poker games but no empty chairs in sight. The pots on each table were big. Big enough that if gambling didn't pay off, each man figured he could draw his gun, grab the money on the table and make a run for the door before anyone could react. The problem was there were no open tables.

Finally, at the table in the middle of the saloon two gamblers went all in on a hand of Texas Hold'em. This hand would have to open a chair at the table so Ted and Jay both threw back one more shot of whiskey each and prepared to lay it all on the line. As the final card was played, one man sank in his chair as the man across from him sat quietly with his hat pulled down so all that could be seen from under the brim was a slight grin. The grinning man had hair as white as clean bed sheets sticking out below his hat. He wore black britches and a black sack coat over a white shirt and a red vest. As he reached out and pulled the pot towards him the loser went from whimpering to yelling. He began to accuse the winner of cheating. The room grew quiet and the winner slowly reached down and slid one of his two nickel plated Colts out of its leather and laid it on the table pointing towards the hysterical loser. "I suggest you leave slowly and quietly, Friend. No one forced you to make that bet and I didn't cheat ya," said the gambler. With that, the loser slowly stood, turned and walked out without making another sound.

Jay Bird and Terrible Ted both arrived at the table at the same time. Neither man was interested in being polite and they each carried a Colt's Walker on his hip. The tension in the saloon was already high from the episode with the loser leaving and now there was one chair and two armed men who wanted it. Due to their general bad mood and the handful of shots of whiskey in each of their bellies' they palmed their Walker's. There were five men sitting at the table when Jay Bird and Terrible Ted approached but as the scene unfolded four of the men decided no card game was worth a gunfight and having seen those Walker's they didn't want to be close when they cleared leather. Before the guns were drawn, the table gained four additional empty chairs. There was one man left at the table now with a deck of cards in his hands, the winner from the previous hand. He looked the two men over and said, "Them Walker's are pretty big guns for shoot'n indoors. Why don't you men sit and play cards instead of shoot'n each other." With that he shuffled the cards and dealt out a hand of Texas Hold'em to the two men. Terrible Ted and Jay Bird sat down across from each other and ante'ed up. The dealer slid his Colt back off the table and returned it to its resting place on his right hip and said, "I sure hope I don't need this again tonight!" With that the piano started playing again and slowly the volume of the room returned to it prior level. The three men silently played the first hand of cards and let the tension fade. "Frisco Bob is my name, gentlemen," said the dealer as he won the first hand and passed the deck of cards to Jay Bird on his left.

Jay Bird shuffled and started dealing the second hand and offered up, "People call me Jay Bird."
"Pleased to meet you, Jay Bird," replied Frisco Bob. "And your name?" he directed at Terrible Ted.
Ted checked his cards and continued to size up his new companions. Ted didn't trust people easily and didn't like meeting new people. "Terrible Ted," he grumbled as he called the bet.
Frisco Bob kept the conversation going, "Are you two men willing to finish something with those Walker's or only willing to start something? If you can finish, I might have a job for ya." That got their attention.

"Jay Bird is my given name, most people I work with call me Jail Bird Jay." Jay Bird offered to keep the conversation moving in the direction it was heading.

"I've been kill'n since the Seige on Mexico City. Seems like kill'n is the only thing I am good at." Terrible Ted continued with.

The men continued to play cards. Even though there were three empty chairs at their table, no one in the saloon dared to sit with them. They were fine with that though, it gave them time to talk about jobs pulled off in the past and fortunes stolen and lost. Frisco Bob told them how he had fleeced the gold fields of Columbia and knocked off the Bank of Sonora on his way out of the Sierras.

"70 miles south of here is a small town known as Little Creek." Frisco Bob offered. "Yeah, I heard of it. It's in the Valley of the Coyotes and there's gold in the river." Jail Bird Jay replied.

"I've been to boom towns before. I don't believe that talk about gold just lying in the creek. There ain't nothing but a lot of damn hard work in a gold rush town." Ted snapped back.

"There's gold there alright, but it ain't lying in the creek, it's in the bank safe. In fact there is so much that General U.S. Grant is coming with his troops to deliver the gold to the San Francisco Mint next week." Frisco Bob said. "One mine has hit a big strike and they have been storing it up in the safe in the bank until General Grant can get there to move up here."

"You're damn crazy if you think the three of us can take on General Grant and his troops. I fought under that man in the war, he's a hell of an officer." Ted said. "Besides, his men wear the uniform of the US Army. I got no problem kill'n men for money, but I ain't about to shoot men who wear the same uniform as I did. It was bad enough shoot'n Confederate soldiers."

"I'm not talking about hitting General Grant and his men, I am talking about hitting the Bank before the gold leaves Little Creek. Grant arrives in Monterey with his men on Thursday. The Sheriff and his deputy are riding out to meet the General and plan to be back in Little Creek Saturday morning to take the gold to the San Francisco Mint. I figure Friday night is the time to make our move and hit the bank. With the Sheriff and his deputy gone, the gold will be easy pick'ns."

Terrible Ted and Jail Bird Jay looked at each other and thought for a minute. "Almost sounds too good to be true," Jail Bird questioned as he took a sip of his whiskey.

"I'm sure they'll have local folks guarding the bank but they oughta be pretty bored and maybe even drunk by Friday night and not much of a problem at all," Frisco Bob replied.

"Where did you learn all this from Frisco?" questioned Ted.

"If a man spends enough time in saloons near the Mint, he can pick a number of things up," Frisco answered.

The hour was late and the three men had been playing cards, drinking and talking for hours now. They decided to head south in the morning and discuss the details of the bank job on the trail. Frisco Bob covered the bar tab as the men were heading for door. Before they reached the door they heard yelling coming from the back of the saloon. The saloon was mostly empty by now and quieted noticeably since the peak. The yelling came from the rear. The voice was familiar but not placeable by any of the three men.

It was the gambler who lost all his money to Frisco Bob earlier in the evening. He had come in the back door now drunk with his Henry rifle and was in no mood to talk. Yelling and screaming about being cheated, he swung the rifle from side to side threatening to shoot Frisco Bob and his new compadres who were slowly making their way to the door.

Frisco Bob reached the door first. Before walking out, he turnaround and said, "I didn't cheat you!" The irate loser didn't want to hear it, he actioned the lever on his Henry and went to shoot, but Frisco was faster and drew his Colts and started shooting. The entire saloon erupted in gunfire. Jail Bird Jay and Terrible Ted each dove out the windows on either side of the door as Frisco Bob stood in the doorway with a Colt in each hand shooting the place up.

Terrible Ted rolled on the walk after diving through the window and stood up near his horse where he grabbed his rifle out of the scabbard and started firing into the saloon as his walked back towards the window. Jail Bird grabbed his side by side and did the same through the window to the left of the door. When the weapons were empty there was too much smoke in the saloon to see anything so the three men, now bonded by this gunfight, mounted their horses and headed hell bent for leather out of town using the heavy fog as cover.

To be continued. . .

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