Same Old Song

Nathan's eyes narrowed as he watched the two rough looking men escorting Lou away from the theater. He set his jaw in determination and took a long step forward, with every intention of pursuing the outlaws and rescuing the strange, yet beautiful young girl.

Suddenly a hand grasped his arm and pulled him to an abrupt halt. He swung around quickly, fists clenched, ready to face his attacker. He was startled to find instead a pair of lovely blue gray eyes staring back into his intensely.

"You can't go after her!" Alana demanded.

"Who are you?" Nathan asked, lifting an eyebrow in surprise and casting nervous glances over his shoulder to see which way Louise had gone.

"Someone that is here to tell you that if you go after her, she'll die. But if you want to help her, this is what you can do…"

Lou was the picture of tranquility as Pete and Tobias pushed her up the stairs to the shack. A single lantern glowed inside, illuminating the ugly, surly faces of men Lou would have rather not seen.

Tobias pushed her into a back room, causing Lou to trip over the loose board of the threshold and stumble into the wall. With all the dignity she could muster, Lou glared at the man with the lazy eye and raised her chin.

"If you ain't here in the morning, your friends will be dead. Don't push me on this. I ain't somebody to mess with, if you ain't figured that out yet."

With that, he slammed the door, and Lou fought off the childish urge to stick out her tongue after he was gone.

Lou paced the room until the raucous laughter of the men inside had silenced and heavy footsteps had passed from the main room into the smaller nooks where they would sleep. Her heart beat in her ears as she grasped the door knob and edged the door open a crack so that she could peer into the room. By the light of the dying lantern, she surveyed the situation. One guard remained at the rickety table, but he was slumped forward in a drunken stupor, and Lou realized that it was now or never.

She crept across the floor at a turtle's pace, carefully letting her weight fall on each board, flinching as it creaked. It seemed to take hours, but finally she stood in front of the hostages' prison. The door screeched on its hinges, and Lou cast a nervous glance toward the guard who didn't stir. She tiptoed into the moonlit the room, finding all three hostages leaning against the back wall, seemingly lost in peaceful slumber.

Her eyes focused on Kid, and she made her way to stand in front of him. She leaned down to lay her hand on his shoulder, when with a raging flash of silver and a furious squeal, she was attacked from the side.

Jimmy's eyes opened with instant clarity, and seeing an intruder standing over his best friend, now under assault by Layla he reflexively struck out with both feet, catching the skirted stranger in the back of the knees and sweeping her off balance.

Lou blinked and tried to understand what was happening as Layla began ripping at her hair with both fists, and she heard Jimmy's low growl from behind her seconds before her knees crumpled into Kid's stomach. Her hands flailed for balance as tumbled onto him, her fist finding his nose with incredible force.

"Ow!" Kid yelped at the rude awakening, bringing both hands to his face to cover his now bleeding nose.

"Kid!" Lou cried out.

"Lou?" Kid asked in a nasal, muffled tone. His eyes watering as he gave her a confused look.

Lou reached a gloved hand to gently pry Kid's hands away from his wound, and brought her own hand to stanch to flow of blood. "Kid, I'm so sor---"

She was unable to finish her sentence, because suddenly two arms locked around her middle and she was heaved upwards and tossed onto the floor, seconds before the same mad flash of silver leapt on her and resumed its attack. Lou raised her hands to defend herself just as Layla's closed on her throat. With a snarl, Lou wrenched herself to the side, knocking Layla off balance and sending her tumbling backwards. Layla's hands grasped at the material of the dress Lou had borrowed from Alana, and suddenly a cold rush of air bathed Lou's collarbone and throat as the cloth gave way.

Kid, still holding one hand over his throbbing nose, reached the other toward Lou, trying to pull the torn pieces of her bodice together.

Jimmy, now seeing his mistake, quickly scrambled to his hands and knees and trampled Kid in the process of getting to Layla before she could attack again.

And then all was still.

Kid, from his same position leaning against the wall surveyed the tangle of people on top of him, and in the midst of the catastrophe was relieved no one had been killed in the struggle.

For a moment, no one moved. Lou lay sprawled on the rough floor where she'd fallen, wondering how such an innocent act of waking Kid could have turned so sour. She was only half interested in all the noise they must have made. Instead, she wondered when Jimmy, who had Layla pinned across her legs, might decide to get up.

Lou glanced down at the hand so kindly protecting her modesty by holding her dress, and gasped when she saw it was scarlet. Her eyes traveled up Kid's arm to his face, the lower half of which was smeared in blood, as was the front of his shirt. With a cry of compassion, Lou kicked her legs free of the two people laying on them and kneeled at Kid's side. She pinched the bridge of Kid's nose with one hand and tenderly reached the other to cradle the back of his neck, guiding his head up.

Layla's shrill voice bounced of the walls of the tiny room, "What is going on?"

"Shhh!" Lou snapped at her, none too pleased with the girl for mauling her, "I'm not exactly supposed to be here, you know."

"What are you doing here Lou, it's too dangerous," Kid began his predictable spill.

"Trying to save you!" Lou murmured, "remember yall are the hostages here. I'm your ticket out, you know."

Jimmy nodded, "Well let's go."

Lou shook her head, "We can't go now. They have guards posted outside the house, and they are well armed. I just came to make sure you boys were all right. Are you?"

Kid looked at Lou pointedly and leaned forward, "I was."

Lou firmly shoved Kid back against the wall, "Put your head back. You want to bleed to death?"

"No, but..." Kid began to argue his pointless point, and suddenly became aware that it would only succeed in further irritating all of the room's occupants.

Layla jerked herself free of Jimmy's grasp and huffed. How any man could possibly throw his full weight upon her in such a rude fashion was beyond her minuscule comprehension. "Good, then I hope you're getting us out of here. I've had just about enough of this!" she snapped while tossing her hair back and folding her arms.

Kid sneered at her with a cross between hate and vengeance, "At least she's doing something besides sitting around whining and fixing her nails!"

"Ugh," Layla snapped back with a defiant roll of her eyes. "And just WHO is she anyway? Some sort of goddess?"

Before Kid could stand up and take the woman down once and for all, Lou whipped her head around and barked at the girl in an angered voice not quite her own. "You just shut up!"

Lou made sure that Kid's nose was no longer bleeding before she cautiously lowered her hand. He gave her a look gratitude for silencing the woman as well as repairing his damaged nostril. She stood up and placed her fingers over the torn material that Kid had been holding together for her a few seconds before. He innately grabbed a hold of the back of her leg as if to prevent her from lunging after the little challenging female brat standing a few feet away.

"I'm working to get you boys (and girl) away from this place. But rescuing isn't as easy as it sounds you know. If you had any idea what I've been through..." Lou let her huffy voice trail off, knowing that by rambling on so, she was not helping solve the problem.

Jimmy raised his eyebrows with intense curiosity, wondering what adventures she might have been referring to. "Do tell," he prompted.

Opening her mouth to shoot back a response of the most frustrated kind, Lou was suddenly interrupted by the jostling of the door. Her eyes searched the room for any sort of refuge in which to hide. Kid leapt to his feet and Layla begrudgingly moved to his side, and Lou dove for cover.

Pete pushed his way into the room and his head darted from person to person. "What was that noise?"

"What noise?" they all echoed.

Kid was unable to resist urge to look over at Lou in the corner behind the door, and breathed a sigh of relief that she was not visible. "We haven't heard anything."

He sniffed his nose through the room like a dog and grunted. "If I hear the slightest sound of breathing..." Pete let the threat speak for itself, and spun around with the door slamming behind him.

After his brief departure, Lou let her head fall back against the wall and took a deep breath. Her hopes of saving Kid and Jimmy had almost been destroyed, and she shuddered to think what consequences might have befallen if Pete discovered her huddled in the corner of the room. "I've got to get out of here before he catches us," she whispered.

Jimmy and Kid agreed with her and she waited until she could no longer hear footsteps pacing down the short hallway. It pained her to part from the boys, but she knew that if they were to leave Denver and return to Rock Creek all in one piece, she would have to proceed with her original scheme and let the newspaper reporter proceed with his story.

"Take care of yourself," Jimmy ordered, trusting that she would be their only means of escape.

Kid stepped forward and wiped the blood from his hand. He pushed his way past the already protesting Layla and put a hand on her cheek. "You take care of yourself," he repeated.

She looked up at him and offered more confidence in her smile than she had in her heart, "I will."

Without another word or meaningful expression, she left the three of them together once again, and prepared to face another day of peril, alone.

The sun was still low in the eastern sky the next morning, turning the white marble of the Governor's mansion a pale pink when Alana was awakened and escorted to the drawing room. The guest of honor was already awake, pacing nervously back and forth across the parlor.

"I can't take this waiting any more!" Governor Jones exclaimed, driving his fist down hard on the table.

Alana, from where she was seated on the couch, holding her head in her hands, groaned at the governor's continuous rampage. She'd been out almost until dawn convincing Nathan not to go after Louise, and had just climbed into bed when Layla's father sent for her. Although she felt extremely sorry for the man, knowing what torture it must be to just sit and wait, she was growing tired of hearing his yelling.

"I've got to find her! That's my little girl out there, and there's no telling what those men will do to her! She's such a fragile flower, you know that Alana."

Alana sighed and bit her lip to avoid informing Layla's father how disillusioned he was to think his darling daughter was the slightest bit genteel. She just attempted a polite smile and nodded instead.

"I could get her out. I could reason with them, if I could just talk to them face to face." He suddenly said, striking his palm with his fist.

"No you couldn't. They would kill you. They have the area they are keeping Layla very well guarded. Louise will get them out. Just let her work. You promised her a week," Alana mumbled around a yawn, not meeting the governor's eyes.

Suddenly there was silence, and Alana looked up to see what caused it. Governor Jones was staring intently at her, his eyebrows drawn together in deep thought.

"What?" She finally asked cautiously.

"Am I correct in assuming that you've seen the compound where Layla is being kept?"

Alana shrugged, "I wouldn't exactly call it a compound. It's only a shack really."

The governor suddenly grabbed her by the shoulders, shaking her head back and looking into her eyes with wild purpose, "Alana, you have to take me there."

Alana was shaking her head before Governor Jones finished his sentence, "Sir, I can't do that. Those men would kill you and Layla."

"Alana! I am the Governor of New York! You will do what I tell you to!"

Alana stood up so that she might meet his eyes and shook her head, "No Sir. I won't do this!"

"Then I'm going to the marshal and telling him that they've taken Layla hostage!" Jones threatened.

When he started to leave the room, Alana grabbed his shirt and yanked hard, nearly ripping the fine material. "You'll do no such thing!" she yelled in her strongest voice.

"I will!" the governor bellowed, "You take me to see where they are holding my daughter, or I will get the law to help me."

Alana shook her head, "Mr. Jones, do you realize that by doing that you'd be killing your own daughter? Not to mention Louise and her two friends!"

Jones sighed and yielded somewhat, "Alana, I don't know if you can understand this, but I have to see it. What if I promised you not to do anything but look? Would that be okay?"

Alana shook her head, "No, it wouldn't be okay. But I have a feeling that if I don't say yes, then you really will be enough of a fool to go to the law. I'll show you where it is, but not until tonight. They will be coming and going during the day. We'll go while Louise is supposed to be performing. The top two men went last night, and it'll be less dangerous since one of them is the one who saw me."

Jones nodded, "Good."

Alana shook her head, "I wish you'd reconsider sir. I know you're used to getting what you want, but so are these men. And they have the upper hand now. I hope you won't forget that." With a curt nod to the older man, she lifted her skirts and swept out of the room, an uneasy feeling eating at her.

Lou sat on the floor in her fine dress, wishing more than anything that she could wipe the cosmetics still caked on her face away. It was warm in the tiny room, and dusty. She coughed as she inhaled a particularly large cloud of dust and tried to sit still to avoid stirring it up. She'd been in the room for hours. She tried to sleep after sneaking out of the hostages' room, remembering Kid and Jimmy's words of warning for her to take care. Lou thought it very odd that they hadn't even tried to tell her not to carry on with her plan. It was so strange to think of the men that had so often rescued her in the past being so helpless, with her as their only means of escape. She should have gloried in the knowledge that it was her chance to prove once and for all she was capable of pulling her own weight and taking care of herself and them too, but there was no sense of smugness.

She supposed if she felt more confident that she would succeed, then she could enjoy the irony of the situation.

The day dragged on relentlessly, and Lou kept her ears open for any sound from the hostages' room. Except for a shrill from Layla now and again, all seemed quiet.

Finally, when the sun started to set, the door to her room creaked open. Pete stood in front of her and smiled, "Show time, darling. Let's go."

Lou was so relieved to get out of her dusty prison that she didn't even mind the thought of having to go up on stage again. She eagerly brushed the dirt from her skirts and stood up, following Pete out of the room and the shack. Tobias was waiting to escort her to the theatre, with another rough looking man she'd only seen once before guarding the door. She knew she must look peculiar as Tobias and his friend walked her through town, face smeared in dust and the front of her torn dress clutched together.

"What happened to your dress?" Tobias asked as he saw her in the sunlight.

Lou stammered for a moment, thinking desperately, not having considered trying to explain it. Then she sighed with relief and lied, "When you pushed me into the room last night, I tore it. Now I'll have to hope someone else has one I can borrow!" She did a good job of sounding haughty, and Tobias didn't question her further.

He led her to the performer's entrance and clutched her elbow hard, his raspy voice threatening in her ear, "You'd better start working on finding that singing girl that saw us! If you don't earn your keep, I'll just do away with you!"

Lou jerked her arm from his grasp defiantly and walked away from him, knowing there was nothing he could do short of causing a big scene. She smiled sweetly over her shoulder before letting the large door man open and close the door for her.

Once inside, Lou paced nervously in her dressing room. Alana was no where to be found. At first Lou excused it as tardiness, but as show time grew closer, so did the bad feeling eating at her. Alana knew how imperative it was that Lou uphold her disguise, and there was no way she could do it alone.

With trembling fingers, Lou looked through Alana's dressing closet and picked out a royal blue dress that was as gaudy as the one Layla had ripped. She then scrubbed her face until she wondered if it might not fall off, trying to remove the first layer of make up so that she might apply a new coat. She did her best to paint her face just like Alana had, but she had a feeling it was an art acquired over years, not minutes. She was still considerably less decorated than the night before, but it was as good as she could do.

With nothing else to do, Lou left her dressing room and climbed up the stairs, watching as the first girl went on stage to thunderous applause. Louise was near the end of the program, which meant there was still time for Alana to show up…if nothing had happened to her.

"For the hundredth time child, of course I promise!" Governor Jones told the fidgeting girl at his side, "I only want to see the place with my own two eyes!"

Alana cast a nervous glance down the street and toward the theater. The crowd was still filing in, and she knew Louise must be mad with worry, wondering where in the world she was. Governor Jones had waited all day, but there was no holding him any longer when the sun went down. Alana knew if she hadn't agreed to take him to the shack right at sunset, there would have been no stopping him from getting the marshal. She wasn't sure that seeing the shack would stop him either, but she owed it to Layla, Louise, and the two men Layla had caused to be taken hostage because of her foolishness to try. With any luck at all, she could just show Layla's father where his daughter was being held and still make it to the theater in plenty of time to sing for Louise.

Nathan Goodwin strolled along the streets of the quiet town, notepad in hand. His editor was on his back about a story, and although he had one that was sure to win him every prize there was, he was on his honor not to tell anyone until the end of the week. In the mean time he had to have a beat for tomorrow's paper.

His eyebrows shot up with interest as he noticed one of the town's most celebrated visitors for the week, Governor Jones, a good friend of Colorado's own Governor strolling through the town. His curiosity was piqued more by his company, a girl that looked young enough to be his daughter. An illicit love affair perhaps? Jones was a widower, but that didn't make the age of the girl at his side any less scandalous. Doing his best to blend into the shadows, he followed them at a distance as they started toward the bad part of town.

"There, it's right there," Alana finally sighed in relief, glad to see they'd made good time walking through town and knowing she'd make it to the show with time to spare, "Now let's go."

"My God! They are keeping my child in that hole? How dare they! It's probably crawling with vermin!"

Alana glared at the older man angrily, "If I were you I'd be a lot more worried about the men with guns than the rats and bugs! Now, let's get out of here before someone sees us."

Jones stood up, placing his fine derby hat more firmly on his head. Alana nodded and started to lead him away from the shack, more than ready to be on her way.

The governor started to reluctantly walk away with his daughter's friend when, from inside, Layla's high pitched scream split the air.

"No!" Alana screamed and grabbed at Jones' arm as he took off into the open, toward the shack. With a cry of desperation, she pulled her tiny derringer from her handbag and followed him.

"Dang it Layla! It's only a spider!" Jimmy growled, rubbing his shin at the spot Layla had just kicked in her effort to get away from her leggy visitor, "Why do you have to scream every time one crawls on you!"

"It's a vicious, poisonous beast!" Layla retorted, shivering and swatting at her clothes after stomping the spider in much the same fashion as the centipede.

"It takes one to know one," Kid mumbled through his swollen nose and blackening eyes.

Layla would have responded, but suddenly the deep voice they recognized as Huge Belly's cried from outside their room, "Someone's coming fast!"

"Layla! Layla! I'm coming sugar!"

"Daddy!" Layla screamed and instantly went to the door, fighting to open it but finding it locked.

"What in the…?" Jimmy started but was interrupted by an explosion of heavy footsteps on the boards outside. The door to the shack opened, and the sounds were suddenly on the street.

All three occupants of the tiny room rushed to the outer side, and tried to peer through the cracks in the wall and out onto the dim street.

"Daddy! I'm in here!" Layla screamed again, and as Kid and Jimmy watched a well dressed man charging toward the larger, better armed men now rushing him.

"What is he doing?" Kid demanded, "He'll get himself killed!"

A gunshot split the night from further behind Layla's father, and all three prisoners turned to see a skirted figure rushing down the street after them.

"Alana!" Layla cried out, and Kid and Jimmy realized it was her friend from the night they were captured, the one who got away.

Nathan arrived at the scene just in time to see the events unfolding too fast for anyone to control. The Governor was charging toward six armed men, and the girl he now recognized as Alana, who'd convinced him not to follow Louise the night before was right behind him.

Alana fired a shot into the air to try and stop the madness in front of her, but it was far too late. The Governor stopped dead in his tracks and seeing what he was doing, instantly ran in the other direction. Alana stopped in the middle of the street and looked directly into Pete's eyes across the distance. Instant recognition passed between them, and Alana screamed.

"No!" Nathan screamed as he watched the men level their guns toward the two attackers.

"Daddy! No!" Layla screamed, hysterically clawing at the paneling and trying to see what was happening.

Several gunshots split the air at once, and all three hostages heard a low moan of pain and the soft thud of a body falling on dirt. Kid and Jimmy both pressed their faces closer into the wood to try and see who'd been hit, but it was no use, the action had taken place beyond their field of vision.

Layla began wailing and sobbing in earnest, not those shrill wails demanding attention, but deep, wracking sobs that shook her entire frame with devastation and doubled her over.

Kid, unable to think of anything else to do, wordlessly went to the girl and wrapped her in a warm embrace. Layla, too distraught to give thought to the fact that this was what she wanted all along, hurled herself against him and willed him to take her pain from her.

Kid met Jimmy's eyes. It didn't matter if it had been the Governor, Alana, or both of them killed…any combination would be unbearable to Layla.

"Shhh, crying isn't going to help, Layla. Don't let them see you cry," Kid tried his best to quiet the girl, but he knew she had every right to cry.

Jimmy raised his eyebrows and shook his head dismally. Their stare exchanged the same thought…what had happened to Lou?

Nathan watched the whole scene in stunned silence after his initial cry, plastered against the side of a building. He'd been trained at Yale to write about events like this, not stop them. He'd been frozen in fear, unable to think clearly enough to stop the slaughter. With a cold panic gripping him, he finally did the only thing he could think of to do.

He ran away.

To be continued...Chapter XI