The Unexpected Partner

Chapter 11

The entire saloon got quiet as Shane walked slowly to their table. But before he reached it, two of the men started yelling at each other.

"You cheating bastard!" One of them yelled, getting out of his seat and pointing a finger at the other. What just happened? Claire thought. One minute everyone was laughing, now two men are fighting.

The other man also got up. "Don't call me no bastard, you son of a bitch!"

Claire looked at the scene unfolding in front of her. The entire saloon's attention was on the table now, the table that she and Billy were standing at.

The two men got closer to each other with angry looks on their faces. "I'm gonna beat you until you can't walk!" One of them yelled.

Billy and Old Man Jimmy who were not doing anything, just looking at the two men about to kill each other.
"What's going on?" Claire asked, looking around and seeing that even Shane was just looking at them. She turned to Billy and exclaimed, "Aren't you going to stop them?"

"No...," he responded under his breath. "You don't want to be caught in the crossfire."

"What!" Claire whisper yelled, hearing the immoral words come out of Billy's mouth. What does he even mean? They're going to kill each other if we don't stop them.

Out of nowhere, she heard a loud sound, one of the men punched the other straight in the nose.

"Oh my God," Claire cried, as she heard the man grunt.

"I am going to KILL you!" The man barked through his bleeding nose. He put his hand on his holster and seemed to be reaching for his pistol when Claire did something unexpected. She quickly rushed to the middle of the two men.

"Stop!" She yelled. "No pistols shall be used in this salo-," before she had a chance to finish her sentence, the man with the bloody nose shoved her aggressively, making her fall to the wooden floor in a loud thud. She landed on her arm, feeling the pain spread throughout her body.

Billy rushed to her. "Clark! Why did you do that?" He yelled at her as the other men continued to fight.

As she lay on the ground, not being able to get up from the hard fall, Claire heard loud footsteps coming near. She looked up to see that both the men fighting were still yelling and had pulled out their guns.

She also saw that it was Shane who came into view with his loud footsteps. He looked at the two men and yelled, "Get the hell out!"

The two men got angry as they started fighting with Shane now. "This bastard cheated on his game. He made me lose money!"

While the other man yelled, "You just ain't winning because of your bad luck!"

The two men pointed their guns at each other, feeling deep anger. But nothing on their face compared to the anger on Shane's, he looked furious. In the blink of an eye, he used both his hands to take the guns from the two men and point one at each of them.

"How did he do that?" Claire asked Billy, while still on the ground, not being able to move.

With the guns still pointed at the two men, Shane said in an angry voice, "Either get out of my saloon, or you will be dragged out...dead."

The two older gentlemen huffed and puffed as they marched, defeated, to the front door while Shane looked around the saloon at everyone prying eyes. "Get back to what y'all were doing." Everyone suddenly went from gaping at him to slowly trying to be normal.

Shane then turned his attention to Old Man Jimmy. "Give these back to them when they ain't drunk as a skunk," he said, leaving the guns next to the wise old man. Old Man Jimmy nodded at him and took the pistols.