Free To Catch a Copperhead by Pro Se Press

 
-1-
The Usual Night’s Work
     
     
    New York City, NY, November
25, 1864
    Three years and seven months
since the outbreak of the War Between the States.
     
    The girl’s scream resonated
with the cold November winds that tore across the bay and wove
through the towers of Manhattan. Hers wasn’t any different than the
scores I heard every night, but still, my ears perked up and my
gaze fell to the street below. From my perch atop one of the
nameless structures, I saw her running for her life from four
would-be suitors. I bit my lip and pushed down the memories of my
time as the girl being chased by thugs such as these, experiencing
the terror of the pursuit and the horrors that came with being
caught. My rifle slipped from the leather case strapped to my back
and I pulled it up to my shoulder, nuzzling it in tight and resting
my cheek against its cold wooden stock. They would be in range
shortly at the rate they moved. Luckily, the gas lamps illuminated
the streets just enough to make sure that I could get them in my
sights before I let my bullets fly.
    The black and white dress
looked odd in the yellow glow of the gaslight. She looked like an
oddly shaped bumblebee but her attire spoke volumes about her
profession. With the sun down, most women on these streets sold
themselves to whoever could afford a bit of comfort. She wore the
uniform of a domestic, most likely working in one of the hotels on
the block. No woman deserves the unwanted attention of dogs like
these, but the whores that rule the night around here tend to ask
for it. Still, I don’t judge them for their choices. Like them, I
had had to resort to desperate measures to keep from starving in my
youth.
    I peered through the scope
and caught sight of them as they turned and chased her into an
alley across the street. I didn’t have a chance to react before
they moved out of view. There wasn’t a way to get the angle I
needed to take the shots from here. Cursing to myself, I sheathed
the rifle and slipped over the edge of the roof. A drainpipe for
rainwater made for an excellent ladder and I dropped to the street
in no time. After years of practice, I could scale any building in
New York. The rooftops had become a second home to me.
    The soft soles of my shoes
made no noise as I darted across the street and into the alley. The
dank passage didn’t go all the way through to another street,
causing the young woman to huddle in a corner, trapped by the
ruffians. The stench of sewage and rotting garbage sickened me as I
crept along the right wall, carefully avoiding the rats that
scurried from one busted crate to another.
    “ Youse shouldn’t be stickin’
your nose in our affairs.” The man’s Irish accent was so thick that
I wondered momentarily if he’d just gotten off a ship at Castle
Garden.
    “ I didn’t mean to hear
anything,” she said. The girl’s voice shook with fear and even from
the distance, I could clearly see her trembling.
    They stood with their backs
to me and their senses damped by the girl’s yelps and pleas. As
long as I didn’t make a stupid mistake, they wouldn’t stand a
chance when my attack began. I’d taken on six men at one time, so
these four middle-aged thugs shouldn’t be a challenge. They were
reasonably well dressed for this part of town and something about
their voices gnawed at me. The one was Irish, but the others all
had a foreign twang when they spoke, a southern twang.
    “ Grab her,” the Irishman
said.
    One man rushed the girl,
snatched her wrists and pinned them behind her. She struggled
valiantly but simply wasn’t a match for his size and strength. As
for her size, she stood about my height. While she had an
attractive form with lovely curves, strength was something she
dearly lacked. The girl wiggled helplessly in his grasp and had no
chance of hurting him. For me, hurting men had become a passion and
hunting dregs like these four who preyed on the weaker sex had
become a mission.
    My fingers tapped