Horace Hamilton, face flushed with impotent rage, stood over
the high-priced, red-headed whore pressing a glinting knife to her lily-white
throat. She breathed through her nose in
ragged gasps, a blue bandanna stuffed in her mouth, arms futilely tugging
against the cruel bindings of her own silk stockings that tied her delicate wrists
to the bedposts. Kitty desperately
prayed that Matt would make good his promise to return to the Long Branch within
the hour, or else she was afraid this situation wasn’t going to turn out too well
for her.
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The saloon had emptied out pretty quickly after one in the
morning, drunken patrons singing and staggering out the swinging doors a few at
a time, saloon girls wearily trudging up the stairs to their rooms, some alone,
some accompanied by a lucky cowboy. Horace
had chosen that time to make his move on the exceptionally spirited, strikingly
beautiful redhead everyone called Kitty, and whom some said was for sale…for
the right price. Enraged at her rejection
of his overly generous offer of a hundred hard-earned dollars for her services,
his fury stoked by too much whiskey, he surreptitiously jabbed a wickedly sharp
knife in her side and forced her quietly upstairs when Sam went into the back
room, the few remaining inebriated customers also oblivious to her plight.
Once securely inside her bedroom, Horace Hamilton hissed menacingly
into her ear horrible threats of agonizing disfigurement, all the while forcing
her at knifepoint to undress down to her lacy undergarments. When he shoved her savagely onto the bed and
tried to remove her stockings himself, Kitty viciously kicked at his face,
knocking out his tooth and splitting his ugly lip to her very great
satisfaction. Unfortunately, that only
served to earn her a brutal punch to the jaw.
The blow nearly knocked her out, and Hamilton took the opportunity as
Kitty lay quietly moaning to roughly tear the silky garments from her limp form
and use them to tightly bind her wrists to the bed.
Marshal Matt Dillon walked into the nearly deserted saloon
and scanned the room. “Sam, have you
seen Kitty?”
“She was just here a few minutes ago, Marshal. She was talking with that Hamilton
fella’. I don’t think I like him any too
much…”
Matt climbed the stairs and strode to Kitty’s door, reaching
out a tentative hand to knock when he detected a distinctly male voice speaking
from inside. His heart quickly sank down
to the pit of his stomach. He let his
hand drop and used it to scrub wearily over his suddenly gloomy features. Why? Why did she have to do this? It wasn’t right for her to…
At that moment Matt heard a muffled cry from behind the
door. The hair on the back of his neck
stood on end as he recognized Kitty’s strangled voice crying out, obviously in
distress. Instinctively, he smashed the
door open with an explosive kick and rushed inside to find Horace Hamilton
straddling his beautiful Kitty, who lay half-naked and bound beneath him. The filthy bastard had laid aside his knife
to unbutton his pants while he pinned the kicking, struggling saloon girl with
the weight of his body.
Matt was across the room to the bed in three quick strides. He furiously threw a bone-crunching punch at
Hamilton’s jaw, enough to knock him off Kitty, crashing clear onto the floor. Hamilton staggered to his feet, shaking his
head and exclaiming incredulously, “Come on, Marshal, what’s all this fuss over
a cheap whore!?”
Matt’s enraged roar as he jumped on top of the man was heard
downstairs by Sam, who rushed off to find Chester. Matt saw red as he ferociously pummeled
Hamilton again and again. He was blind
with rage, senselessly trying to obliterate the man’s face and cruel words from
his mind. He suddenly became aware of a
voice shouting in his ear, “Mr. Dillon!
Stop! Please stop! You’re gonna’
kill him!”
Matt came to himself sitting on top of a beaten and bloodied
Horace Hamilton who had one eye nearly swollen shut and three teeth knocked out. Two young trail hands that had accompanied
Chester and Sam up the stairs, guns drawn, stared in astonishment at the scene
before them. Quickly replacing guns to
their holsters, they watched while Marshal Matt Dillon attempted to calm his ragged
breathing and slow the pounding of his heart.
He stood wearily and gestured to the moaning man on the floor. “You two boys take this piece of trash over
to Doc Adams. Chester, lock him up when
Doc’s through.”
“Yes, sir, Mr. Dillon,” Chester dutifully replied as he and
Sam hastily exited the room to give Miss Kitty some privacy.
“Yessir!” the trail hands chorused as each grabbed an end of
the unfortunate Horace Hamilton.
Matt caught them glancing quickly toward the still helpless form
of Kitty on the bed, and he hurried to cover her, growling at them angrily, “Go
on, both of you. Get movin’, on the
double!”
Matt rushed to cut the bindings from Kitty’s chafed wrists
and pull the gag from her mouth as the door closed soundlessly behind them. His heart squeezed painfully in his chest as
he gazed into her stricken blue eyes. Sitting
hesitantly beside her on the bed, he placed a large, gentle hand comfortingly on
her back; it was only then that she at last allowed hot tears to spill down her
cheeks. She slowly turned to him, tightly
wrapping her arms around his large frame, burying her face in his neck, and
wordlessly Matt pulled Kitty’s trembling body into his lap and allowed her to
weep.
To be continued...
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