Chapter 6. Forum

1888 Kalgoorlie Goldfields, Australia

"Fuck you George." Innis said, "I thought I was done with all this shit."

He wiped the blood off his knife on the dying mans' shirt.

"Doesn't seem that you are." Eurides said.

George lay sprawled face down in a growing pool of blood

that spilled from where Innis had stabbed him.

"I gave him, and that idiot oversized brother of his a job,

and this is how they repay me."

"The fault lies not in the stars dear Brutus." Eurides said.

"Point taken." Innis replied." but then I never thought it did."

He picked up the gun George had dropped and walked back

toward the mine office.

Standing outside office, Innis could hear two men laughing

and through the window he could see them both drinking

at a table. Georges’ brother Arvi was the larger of the pair.

Innis opened the door and shot him in the face. The bottle

the big man was drinking from, exploded into glass shards.

The second man - who Innis didn't know - fell backwards

in his chair in fright.

Innis stood over him with his gun in hand and looked

around the room. "What is your name?"

"Jonas. My name is Jonas."

"Well Jonas," Innis said, "this is your one and only chance,

who hired you?"

Jonas balked.

Arvi was still sitting upright in his chair, he groaned and

fell forward onto the table. Innis placed the gun against the big

mans temple and pulled the trigger. Blood and brain flecked

across Jonas’s face.

"It was Mr. Fields, your partner." he spluttered.

"He paid us half up front and said he’d pay the rest when

the job was done."

"When the job was done." Innis repeated slowly.

"Is that your bag by the door Jonas?"

"Wait!" Jonas said in fright, holding a hand in front of his face.

"What for? " Innis said and shot him in the chest.

"What for indeed." Eurides said.

Innis finished a drink on the table. "Tomorrow, my business

partner Mr. Maurice Fields, will be joining his hired help at the

bottom of the mineshaft - where an unfortunate mishap with

explosives is going to bring the roof down on all of them."

"What about you?" Eurides asked.

"Me?" Innis thought for a moment.

"After the dust settles, I'm going to sell up. There's always

plenty of buyers for a successful mine - even a collapsed one."

"That’s not what I meant." Eurides said.

She wet a cloth with whiskey from an upturned bottle

and gently wiped blood from his face.

"You're still floating along wherever the current takes you.

If you really have had of enough of all of this. Find a home and

put down some roots."

"Home." Innis said the word aloud.

He'd almost forgotten what it meant.

*