Feminine Partners

"One more thing," said Adam, "I don't want any of the gold or anything else that doesn't belong to me but Sutton has thirty thousand dollars in Yankee greenbacks that belongs to the Flying W and I want it." "Mike," continued Maria, "if you can get your gun slinging friends to raid Ben Sutton, you would be doing us a great favor, would be hurting Sutton, and you would be lining your friend's pockets with gold. I believe, that would put us in a position to confront him and his followers with more power than he has because all his professional fighters would be gone. The McDarkin brothers told us, a good portion of this camp would take the side of anyone who would oppose Sutton and his group if there was a very good chance of defeating him and not have the lives of their relations and loved ones put in danger. We would be in a position to forcibly confront Sutton and end his reign of terror, murder, extortion, slave labor, swindling, and blackmail. Then, the McDarkins can get on with their lives, we can get back to Webone, and the miners here in Sutton's Honeycomb can begin working for themselves and they will not have to pay a tyrant for the privilege of working their own mine." "Well I see a flaw in all this," put in Douglas, "when we were up in Sutton's office the first day we came into this camp, his safe looked to me like it is pretty strong and I don't believe any of us knows how to blow a safe open without destroying everything in it." "You won't have to blow it open," countered Mike, "if you just watch the time you go up into his office. Every Monday morning Sutton goes around to every business place and mine in this community to collect his blood money. Along about ten o'clock hegoes up to his office, opens up his safe, takes a little scale out of it, sits down at his desk, counts the money he has collected, and weighs the gold he has taken in for the week. Then he leans back in his chair and lights a cigar, takes the little wooden mallet he keeps on his desk, and hits his desk one time. One guard will come in and Sutton will tell him to go to Joe's and get him a cup of coffee. Then, he leans back to smoke his cigar, drink the cup of coffee, and gloat over the money and gold he has taken in for the week. When he is through with the coffee he will get up, put the gold in with the other gold in the safe, the greenbacks in with the other greenbacks, put his little scale in there, close the safe door, sit back at his desk, pull out a bottle of whiskey, and proceed to get pie-eyed. I think the best time to get Ben Sutton would be ten o'clock Monday morning when he is gloating over his money and gold." "This sounds good to me," agreed Douglas, "but how do we get up to his office without being seen by everyone in the saloon?" "It shouldn't be too hard," said Jim. "We'll just get a ladder and put it up to one of them windows in the back of Sutton House and climb up there around eight or nine o'clock and just stay down out of sight until Sutton comes up to his office. You'll know when he comes up because he always makes a lot of noise, hollering, yelling, acting high and mighty as if he were the King of the whole world, and his three guards always come up right behind him and go up to their spots behind the three doors leading into his office. They are usually bored. They are just sitting facing the door, not paying no attention to nobody or anything around them, and ifyou have on moccasins you can sneak up behind them easily and pistol whip em. When Sutton raps on his desk with the wooden mallet, we can all walk in through those doors and he won't be expecting nothin but you have to watch him because he wears two guns. He wears one out in plain sight and the other one is a hide-away. He ain't no gun fighter and if you got guns on him, he'll give up right away. He ain't got a fightin bone in his body unless it's whippin' up on some poor woman half his size, he's good at that. There's one woman he won't