“Me, too,” Bill said.
He went up the steps to the high porch in front of the mercantile and started toward the door, but he hadn’t gotten there when it opened and Eden stepped out. She wasn’t alone. There was a man right behind her, and he had the barrel of a gun pressed into her side.
“You killed my woman, Marshal,” he said, “and now you’re gonna watch while I kill yours, before I cut you down.”
Eden was pale with fear, but in that moment when time seemed to stop, Bill saw something else on her face. Anger burned in her eyes, and he knew she was going to do something. He opened his mouth to tell her to wait, but the words never came out. She twisted in the man’s grip and the gun went off. She cried out in pain, but that didn’t stop her elbow from digging into his throat and knocking him back a step. Bill’s Colt came out of its holster in a smooth, instinctive draw. The barrel tipped up, and as Eden fell to the side, the gun roared, then roared again. The man staggered as both slugs drove into his chest. He tried to raise his gun but couldn’t seem to manage it. As he fell to his knees, the revolver slipped from his fingers. He pitched forward on his face and lay still.
Bill rushed forward, pausing only long enough to kick the fallen gun into the street before he grabbed Eden and pulled her up into his arms.
“I’m all right, I’m all right,” she babbled. “I’m not hit, Bill.”
He looked down at her side, saw the scorched mark on her dress from the muzzle flash. She had come that close.
But there was no blood, thank God. He held her tightly against him, vaguely aware that people were shouting and running toward them, but none of that was important now.
He was holding on to the only thing that mattered.
“So that was Caleb Tatum, the boss of those owlhoots,” Jesse Overstreet said as he strolled along the darkened street beside Bill. Overstreet had come out of the Prairie Queen while Bill was making his evening rounds and offered to join him, and Bill hadn’t turned him down. “We must’ve missed him while we were roundin’ up those varmints.”
“Yeah, and then he followed us back here to settle the score for that redheaded woman, Hannah. He told Eden that much after he slipped in the back of the store and knocked out her pa.”
“Is Mr. Monroe gonna be all right?”
Bill grinned and said, “Oh, yeah, he’s got a hard head. He’s been through a lot, though, so I hope life takes it a mite easier on him for a while.”
“How about you?” Overstreet asked.
“You mean, do I have a hard head?”
“No, I’m sayin’ is it time for life to take it a mite easier on you?”
“Well, that’d be all right, I suppose. I’m not gonna hold my breath waitin’ for it, though. It seems like there’s always some sort of hell poppin’ in Redemption.” They walked on in silence for a moment, and then Bill asked, “Are you really the Palo Pinto Kid?”
“I never said that I was. I just asked that hombre if he’d heard of the Palo Pinto Kid.”
“But…you’re not sayin’ that you’re not him.”
“I’m just sayin’ it’s a beautiful night,” Overstreet replied with a grin, “and you’d better enjoy it before that hell you were talkin’ about starts to pop again.”
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