Now Playing: The Songbird of the West
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Episode Seventeen concluded with:
As he walked down
the hallway, Carrie stepped out of her room. “What happened?”
“Patten sent a man to beat me up. He wanted revenge for what I did to him earlier
this evening. I think you may have a point about the fatal flaw. Bruce Patten
isn’t fit for the West.”
“I’m very glad that you are fit for the West, Mr. Dehner.” Carrie slowly
retreated back into her room.
Dehner found himself back in his hotel room listening to Carrie Whiting, who
was singing as she got ready for bed. The young woman was singing a love song
and for a few moments Rance Dehner wondered if the song wasn’t for him.
The detective laughed at himself. A beautiful woman can give a man some crazy
notions.
Rance Dehner didn’t sleep much that night, but when sleep did come, it brought
some very interesting dreams.
Episode eighteen
***
The killer stood across from the
Silver Crown saloon and watched carefully. All through the day, people had
talked of nothing except Carrie Whiting’s upcoming performance that night. The
performance was now about thirty minutes away and every man in town was
crowding into the saloon. Several extra tables had been set up in the saloon to
accommodate the large crowd. The killer tensed up as Doc Erickson entered the
Silver Crown.
The killer didn’t run. A man running
might create some attention. But he moved quickly to the house where the doctor
both lived and conducted his practice. That was where he would hit next: the
house where a wounded outlaw lay on a cot, fighting for his life. The outlaw
had been wounded when Carrie Whiting was rescued from her kidnappers; he was the
one who was still unable to talk, and must never be allowed to talk.
The
killer needed to move fast. People would expect him to be at the Silver Crown
tonight. Questions might be asked if he wasn’t there. He stood in the darkness
looking about carefully. This was one of the most dangerous parts of his
mission. If anyone was around they would see him step onto the large porch that
fronted doc’s house.
A large grey cat slowly crept along the
bannister that ran across the porch of Doc Erickson’s house. The cat’s eyes cast
yellow lights in the darkness: lights that focused directly on the intruder.
Four steps led to the porch. The
first one creaked when a boot pressed on it. The cat hissed and crouched as if
ready for an attack. The intruder moved cautiously upward.
Doc Erickson’s front door was
unlocked. It always was. The killer entered and headed directly for the room
the doctor provided for patients who couldn’t be moved. As he opened the door,
he could see by the moonlight streaming in from the window that only one of the
four cots was occupied. Good. He would only have to kill one man tonight.
As he stepped inside and drew the
knife from his belt, the figure mused that he wouldn’t really have minded if
there had been others to murder. Killing gets easier the more you do it.
He would first wake up the injured
owlhoot, whose name he couldn’t remember. The killer wanted to enjoy the
expression on his victim’s face before he sent him to perdition.
Tomorrow: Episode Nineteen of The
Songbird of the West
