Espionage

“Shota!”

Gav shook me.

“Wake up! It’s almost noon.”

I jumped up and sat straight on my bed.

“Good morning.”, I said and looked surprised at Gav.

“What kind of sheriff would just sleep the whole day?”, he asked.

“Certainly not a good one.”, I replied, feeling guilty.

“Well then I better get up.”

“Did something happen?”

“No, nothing. But there is always a chance.”

“Of course you are right.”

I prepared to belatedly start my day. The people were busy with their usual tasks and nobody really seemed to have the time to notice my absence caused by oversleeping.

As the people went on with their lives, I casually greeted one or two of them to overplay the fact that I had just woken up.

The next hours went by without any special incidents. With all the weapons and ammunition that had been acquired in preparation for the fight locked up in one of the cells at the sheriff’s office, I decided to check them, clean them and count the available ammunition. We needed everybody to be able to fight. That made training inevitable. As one might imagine, shooting at cans for several hours a day, costs an awful amount of bullets and even more time to maintain the weapons before and after it.

Of course the people were trained to maintain and clean them as well, if needed even as quickly as possible, if things came to the worst, but it was still better to check the guns twice or even more often.

As I finished my examination, I wrote a note for Frank. If things went on the way they did we would be better off to get some more ammunition before the fight would begin.

The only thing that was left was to hope that todays mission would go smoothly. Otherwise there wouldn’t be any time left for additional errands.

Somebody knocked at the door and then entered. I left the cell to see who it was.

“Casey!”, I greeted her, “what are you doing here?”

“Hello! I just thought that maybe you need some help…”, she replied before stopping again like she lost confidence mid-sentence.

“Oh I was just done checking our inventory, but I am sure we can find a task for you, if you want to help.”

I didn’t expect her to leave the house today, let alone ask if she could help with the preparations for our encounter with Troef’s gang. There were a lot of tasks that still needed to be done but we were uncomfortably unprepared in case something went wrong tonight.

“I want you to go to the saloon and think about a way to turn it into a fortress. Gav will help you. We need to be able to protect the people in case they attack us before we can set our trap.”

She silently nodded and looked at me for another second before she left. There had been something in her gaze that made me think about the second she had let pass by. What had it been? Disappointment maybe? No. It was the most important task I had on my list and she could use her creativity during it. There was no way she could be disappointed about that.

But I didn’t have any time left to think about her reaction more deeply. I had to spread the word that everybody should gather in the saloon tonight, as a safety measure. Probably it would be enough to just tell five or more people and tell them to inform everybody they knew, but I felt more comfortable in doing so myself. There was always the chance somebody was skipped, especially if more people were involved.

The hours passed as I walked up and down, making sure that everybody would gather in the saloon as soon as the sun started to set.

By the time I was done, the saloon really looked like a fortress. They had taken out the window-frames, knowing Gav liked to protect the glass from damage, and replaced them with wooden planks. There were only a few small holes, large enough to aim and fire through but not so large that there was a high chance of getting hit.

The guns and ammunition had been transferred from their cell into the storage room of the saloon.

As the sun began to set, the people started to gather in the saloon. It was unusually full so some people had to sit on the floor. Arty had volunteered to work as Gav’s substitute tonight. In return for a payment of course.

Arty seemed to do quite well. While having such a young boy be the bartender for a night wouldn’t have been possible in a larger city than ours, people found a strange kind of amusement in being served by him.

It was time to leave. Gav, Archie and I announced that we would leave now and reminded everybody to stay alert in case our trip didn’t go as intended.

“If we didn’t return by dawn, expect the worst.”, Gav declared and then we left.

We prepared two horses. Due to the circumstances, it would most likely not be a good idea to rely on my improving but poor riding skills. I shared a horse with Gav, while Archie took two extra rifles and extra ammunition. Each of us was equipped with two revolvers and gunbelts filled with bullets, but it wouldn’t be bad to have something with a little more range as we decided. The main mission was to gather more information but in case we saw a chance or things came to the worst, guns would never be a bad idea.

The people watched us ride into the sunset. As I turned around for one last time I felt like somebody was trying to push his way forward through the crowd, but I might have been mistaken.

After we left town, the horses increased their speed. We had to use the remaining daylight as long as it was possible.

The sun sank and the following shades of different colors of grey turned darker and darker with every passing minute. But with every bit of daylight that strayed from us, there were more and more Stars visible. The moon was completely dark, meaning that the most significant source of light was gone. The remaining light from the other stars was enough to navigate through the night or maybe see our silhouettes against the horizon, but not enough to make out details or tell if somebody walking a few meters away was friend or foe.

“We will soon arrive.”, said Gav as he made our horse slow down.

“We should keep the horses out of sight.”, I whispered.

Technically there was no need to whisper. Just not screaming would have been enough to go undetected in this distance, but the tension I felt made me lower my voice automatically.

“Let’s keep them over there.”, offered Archie.

He pointed at the dead remains of a tree laying on the ground. There were a few stumps of broken branches pointing out of it, which we used to tie the horses.

We took position on a nearby hill, where we laid down to avoid being seen. The village was still in some distance, but this hill was the last cover we had until we would reach the city itself.

“I can’t see enough from here.”, I said.

“Good thing I brought this.”, Gav replied and handed me rather old looking binoculars.

I looked at him, surprised where he got such a thing from.

“Served my grandfather well during the war. It will be fine for our purposes as well.”

The city was illuminated like some kind of old west Las Vegas version. If there had been a large sign saying “Casino” or something of the sorts, I wouldn’t have been surprised at all.

“Ok… I see several people. Some of them in rags. That might be some of the villagers. But we shouldn’t trust on it in case they hid some of their own men among them. And three people in decent clothes. But they don’t look like normal bandits. Actually they don’t even seem to carry weapons.”

“Give that to me!”, said Archie and tore the binoculars out of my hands.

He looked through them, then looked over them like he would be able to see anything from our position and then looked through them again.

“Didn’t you say the government didn’t reply on our request for help?”

“Well, yes.”, I answered.

“This guy over there is our governor.”