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Short Stories & Tall Tales
The Ladies of Hatchet Falls
Tom Sheehan
They were as diverse as flowers on a spring prairie, the ladies of Hatchet Falls, and they had been whisked there by gentlemen friends who otherwise were not so gentle but earned their living as hired gunmen. The ladies came in all sizes, shapes and personalities, as may be evident here, but they did manage to rule the hearth in their new homes … or else there’d be murder to pay.
Their appearance here in this episode of Hatchet Falls may be treated merely as a litany of the ladies as they are introduced, but life we all know exacts much from the living regardless of one’s start on Mother Earth, or how it’s finished up. The ladies had as much impact upon the town, and the whole region, as did the men they lived with, in half a dozen homesteads that sprang up directly from murder money, assassination money, death-for-hire money. The more jobs one of the killers had, the better came his home, an accurate reflection of his aim, his quickness, and his assignment target.
Betty Lu Kline, Pawnee Gal, Lady Mary-Lillian, Mary-as-Ever, Red Dotty and Katreen, the Brood Mother, Scotland’s gift to "the association", were their names, and in a number of cases, four to be exact, their surnames did not match the names of the men they lived with. Their names, as so given here, were the only names they were known by, to one and all in Hatchet Falls, from the first day to the last day.
For all such couplings have a breaking point, as their bounden trade promised.
Betty Lu Kline was a stand-in for Wanza of Warsaw for one of the guns-for-hire, tiny, demure-looking, but deadly Edjo Wozny, the smallest gun-for-hire in Hatchet Falls, measuring five feet and all of nothing else. He kept alive the dream of bringing Wanza here from the homeland, but let other attentions have their way with him. Betty Lu Kline, called The Broomer by the other ladies of “the association,” would sweep tiny Edjo Wozny out of her kitchen any time of the day, and did it often, exclaiming that she was not brought up to harbor any dirt, which most of Hatchet Falls laughed at when they heard her reason (considering what “dirt” Wozny was to begin with). But none of them ever said it in front of Wozny, even though they all knew the guns-for-hire gang had never fired a gun in the town. And most likely they would hold to their long-held promise, like “honor among thieves” or, to be more exact, “honor among hired killers.”
But odd chance said there’d always be a first time for everything.
Betty Lu, one day on the way back to the lovely little cabin she shared with Wozny, and a barn twice the size of the cabin, in which Wozny stabled his collection of horses, saw a man whipping a horse with a length of wire while the horse was hobbled to a large stone. Anger mounted in her instantly and she whipped the man with her own carriage whip. The large man beating the horse, probably twice the size of Edjo Wozny in the first place, grabbed the whip from Betty Lu and drove her off with it. When she told Wozny, he returned to the site, kidnapped the man at gunpoint, had him lie down in his own wagon, covered him with a canvas, and drove clear out of the Hatchet Falls area and shot the man as he stepped down out of the wagon, at the edge of a cliff.
In a final word as he pushed the man over the edge, Wozny said, “Horses and ladies don’t get whipped in my town.”
The little man saluted the falling man and chuckled when he thought how he’d tell the rest of the hires what and how he had performed his latest assassination … outside the bounds of the hometown, and holding to the code. He believed the act would surprise the others, but No-Thumbs Callahan held a greater surprise for Wozny and the others as they sat in the corner of the saloon that same night.
“That ain’t nothin’ to be ashamed of, Edjo, ‘cause I did somethin’ none of youse know about. ‘Member when the livery man Salza went missin’ that time?” He had the beaming smile of a know-it-all spread across his face, which his ageless beard could not hide.
“Salza was more animal than the critters themselves, and I found him puttin’ old nail heads under some shoes on a horse belongin’ to a lady at the hotel he ain’t had no likin’ for since an incident happened and hopin’ it would come up a surprise on the lady when she most needed her horse, and he was laughin’ out loud doin’ it. That drove me crazy a bit more than usual, as you kin imagine, bein’ as I don’t like no truck with horses or ladies too.”
“What happened then, No-Thumbs?” Wozny said, figuring it to be his place to open things up further in the discussion.
No-Thumbs Callahan, big as he was, had a generally soft voice except when he was mad, and that anger began to creep into his voice, which was higher still, coming with shrillness not usual with him.
“You all know Pawnee Gal’s great in the kitchen and the garden among other things, and she caught Salza messin’ in her garden. Gardens is special to Pawnee ladies in their villages, and they have some gardens that make your mouth water and the crop ain’t even in yet. Lordy, you know how she makes my tongue and my whole mouth itself near cry for her specials. What she does with potatoes and turkey and squash and blueberries and cornbread and beans and all such from her garden or good old shootin’ is downright murderous to a hungry man, I swear.”
He stared at each one of them, not like he was telling them something new, but thinking it was a due yet to be done, this homage to his lady.
“She’s like a magician and now I know what keeps them Pawnee Injun braves on the run. It’s a gal like Pawnee Gal and no one can tell me different ‘cause that cookin’ magician keeps me runnin’ from here to the end of the territory … both ends of it. I already told you how she puts that pepper juice on her tomatoes and miner’s lettuce and makes me cry with goodness, and she won’t ever tell me how she makes that pepper juice and whatever goes in it she gets in her garden or from the banks of the river or even in the forest. She won’t’ ever tell ‘cause it’s Pawnee secret stuff and I don’t go near breakin’ her away from how she growed up and Salza was about goin’ to spoil some of her garden the way he was messin’ around.”
He caught his breath and made more of Pawnee Gal, knowing it was time to pay heed to that girl as best he could. “You’d oughtn’t to see what she gets them ugly artichokes to taste like with that pepper juice. Them ugly things with arrow heads on ‘em come up from L’usiana of the Frenchmen and I wouldn’t look at one ‘til she plopped a heart of one on my tongue, of course with that pepper juice of hers. Great glory of fires and kitchens, she’s a wonder, that gal.”
True-Fix Charlie Tempest, watching his pal carry on, said, “No-Thumbs, I ain’t heard you talk so much and so fast since they said Henry Hornbreaker broke out of Yuma and we all know he ain’t ever had a brain in his head to break out of there and was buried inside all the time by some jailer or lifer for reasons we can guess at. But all this time you’re talkin’ I’m wonderin’ what’d you do, No-Thumbs? You dump him dead over a cliff like Edjo did? I’m plain dead curious.” He held his head leaning in to hear the answer.
“I guess I got to thinkin’ ‘bout a special way, too, like Edjo did,” No-Thumbs said, “and got to it by usin’ my ‘magination, what of it I got.”
A smile went across his face as he continued, with a sudden softness in his voice that said revenge must have been sweet for the big man.
“I tied that man Salza up on his own Paint, that Lucifer he calls him. Tied him real good and then I found the biggest burr I could and stuck it under his saddle and whacked that Paint Lucifer as hard as I could and he run off like he’d been stuck with a knife and we know Salza ain’t come back yet. He’s scairt to come back or him and his Paint run into a hungry bear or a plain mad-house bear or a mountain lion and no way he’s comin’ back from such a meetin’, as you can all ‘magine it happenin’.”
True-Fix Charlie Tempest said, “That’s good stuff, No-Thumbs, and you didn’t have to use your gun. I like that part too, like bein’ home is good and the gun is put away and we get quiet and comfortable at the ranch.” His smile was deliberate and honest, and an appreciation for the good things in life moved around the table as each hired gunman sipped his drink and had his own vision, and the woman in each of their lives was appreciated wholly and beyond measure, being sure that no harm would come to any of them. That was also bound by the unwritten code they held to.
In that moment of silence a woman’s voice called from the door of the saloon. Lady Mary-Lillian looking like a princess in a home-made yellow dress fitting her as good as if she was the queen of the ball, said in a sincere voice, “Thor Lemonides, you should come back with us now. Red Dotty’s time approaches and you best be there with her.”
She beamed a huge smile. “Katreen and Mary-as-Ever are there with her and Red Dotty says you better be there too when her time comes, and it’s getting closer.”
The rapier-thin Thor Lemonides, deadly killer in his own right, came upright as if he’d been punched up from his chair. The long, lanky man of poor proportions, skinny as lightning and near as deadly, wore a grin on his face matching Lady Mary-Lillian’s grin and his grin appeared wider than the man himself.
“The house will be full tonight,” he said to his comrades in arms. “Come by later, gentlemen, if you will. Epaminondas will be born and we will call him Nonda, and we will toast his name and never teach that boy how to shoot.”
Lady Mary-Lillian put up her hand and said, “You gentlemen clean up before you come by, and each of you will bring a present for the new arrival and one for the mother. And that goes double for you, Sir Charles.”
Her smile was as wide as the one Thor Lemonides wore, for she carried her queen-ness every place with her and in every situation, which was especially true in her relations with True-Fix Charlie Tempest. She regarded him with highest esteem because he was king to her queen, both of them about as good looking as they could be; him handsome as a king without a throne and her his consort, of which she secretly had designs from their first meeting.
She added to her final words as she departed, “Katreen is at Red Dotty’s bedside to handle the delivery and Mary-as-Ever is her newest pupil to learn the trade of the mid-wife. It will prepare her for the next occasion, and that is sure to come as a surprise to one and all.”
She bowed gracefully at her exit, leaving five men of six stunned with the news of the unknown next-to-be father in their midst.
Epaminondas “Nonda” Lemonides, healthy as a rabbit, was born a few hours later and the celebration between all parties, except for the new mother, Red Dotty, moved into the early morning hours, until a knock came at the door. It was Quick’n’Dirty Harry Spillwater with four assignments, one of them especially for Thor Lemonides.
Red Dotty shivered with a sudden knowledge that life was in a significant change for all of them. She said to her man as he bid her goodbye late in the morning, “Give your son your best kiss, Thor. He will remember it.” It was the last person Thor Lemonides ever kissed, for the target sat ready and waiting for him, the trap set in place for him, as well as for the others, by none other than Quick’n’Dirty himself, trading it off for his own life.
Each of the other assignments went for aught as each one was caught in the vise of vices. The dissolution of the band of women and the band of men was quick, and near complete. Young Nonda Lemonides, only heir of the troupe, and his mother Red Dotty ended up in the mountains with No-Thumbs Callahan and Pawnee Gal, each one of them surviving their past, their connections.
There had been, history has revealed in many ways, retribution against guns-for-hire and their associates on a wholesale scale. But Katreen and Mary-as-Ever, in a pact of mid-wives and honor-bound, caught up with Quick’n’Dirty when information on the traps was made public and the three of them went down in a hail of bullets just outside Hatchet Falls. They were buried side by side on Boot Hill, not far from Betty Lu Kline who killed a mauler who had attacked her in her barn and she was convicted and hung on a Saturday morning.
The jury worried a long time about the whereabouts of pint-sized Edjo Wozny, but they eventually believed he was too small to worry about, and he was never seen again. Never seen again in all the west. Some people believed he had joined a carnival and lived out his life bound up in a simple disguise.
Townsfolk would say to this day that Red Dotty and Pawnee Gal made their escape because of an innate intelligence that gave them warning and a secret way out of Hatchet Falls.
In a continuing saga of the ladies of Hatchet Falls, after all but one of the other guns-for-hire had been killed or went missing, queenly Lady Mary-Lillian shot herself sitting alone in the outhouse of her lovely home, a small crown pinned to her once-lovely blonde hair. There was no note, but all had been said by the lady in other words.
It was assumed also that Pawnee Gal might have been the promised mother-to-be, but nobody’s seen her either since her departure. The mountains swallowed her and Red Dotty and Nonda Lemonides and No-Thumbs Callahan with no accounting whatsoever.
History, as some buffs have said, can lose itself in deep interest of rare characters once found in a special time.
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