THE BOUNTY: Twentieth in a Series of Jess Williams Westerns (A Jess Williams Western Book 20)

by Robert J. Thomas

  “Mister, she’s with me,” implied Jess. The man turned to Jess and grinned, exposing his yellow teeth.

  “Why don’t we let the woman decide that?”

  “I’m with him,” snapped Jane quickly. The man looked at her and then looked back at Jess.

  “What are you doin’ bringing a woman into a saloon anyway?” the man asked resentfully. Jess hesitated for a moment and then he smiled.

  “She’s my prisoner,” he explained. The man frowned.

  “You a law dog?” the man inquired. Jess pulled the U.S. Marshal’s badge out of his front pocket and showed it to him. Jane was just as surprised as the man was.

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” the man said staring at the badge and seeing the dent in it. “How come she ain’t in handcuffs then?”

  “I lost them.”

  “Why does she have a rifle?” the man pushed. Jess glanced at her and then back to the man.

  “Because I told her to shoot the ball sack off any man who tried to bother her,” implied Jess bluntly.

  The man looked at the rifle and unconsciously touched his privates and turned around and walked back to his table and sat back down. Jess put the badge back into his pocket and Jane gave him a perplexed look. He turned around just as a door opened upstairs and a large sturdy looking man walked out holding his forehead and mumbling something.

  Bucktooth shuffled down the steps as gingerly as he could, his right hand still holding his head and moaning in pain from the rotgut he had consumed last night. His eyes were bloodshot and he had some dried snot hanging from his left nostril. He gently picked it off his nose and examined it thoroughly and then threw it on the steps. When he got down to the last step, his vision blurred slightly and he miss-judged the last step and when his feet hit the saloon floor, he stumbled and almost fell. He righted himself and shook his head and stood there for a whole minute waiting for his vision to clear up again. When it did, he slowly walked toward the batwings and he saw an attractive woman sitting at a table, he stopped and looked at her with a confused look on his face.

  “You ain’t dressed like no whore,” observed Bucktooth, exposing his two extra-long front teeth in the top of his mouth that covered the bottom teeth more like a beaver’s.

  “That’s because I’m not a whore,” snapped Jane smartly.

  “Hey,” said Jess from behind him. He didn’t respond; he simply waved his hand in the air.

  “Then what the hell you doin’ in here?” Bucktooth asked her, belching loudly. Jane could smell the rotten whiskey breath and she scrunched up her face.

  “I’m with him,” she implied, nodding at Jess, who was standing about ten feet behind him.

  “Hey,” said Jess, a little louder. He still didn’t respond; he just waved his hand in the air again and lifted one leg slightly and farted.

  “Well, I’ll still take you up to my room anyway,” sneered Bucktooth, exposing his large teeth again and Jane couldn’t help herself and she smiled a slight smile.

  “Like I said, I’m with him,” she said, now pointing at Jess directly with her left index finger.

  “Hey Bucky!” hollered Jess loudly.

  Bucktooth flung his hammer strap off his pistol and spun around to see who had called him Bucky, which was a name that always enraged him. The saloon went totally silent and Bucktooth looked around the room.

  “Which one of you sons of bitches called me Bucky?” he demanded angrily. All the men in the place pointed directly at Jess. Bucktooth glared at Jess and noticed all the guns.

  “You the one who called me Bucky?” he growled, exposing his two front beaver-like teeth. Jess looked at the dozen or so fingers pointing directly at him and smiled.

  “It sure looks like it,” replied Jess.

  “You look like another one of them bounty hunters.”

  “What was your first clue?”

  “You ain’t taking old Bucktooth in.”

  “You’re worth two thousand dollars, dead or alive.”

  “You’ll have to kill me to get it.”

  “That’s kind of what I had in mind.”

  “I can yank this hog leg like lightning,” bragged Bucktooth.

  “Then do it,” pushed Jess.

  Bucktooth stood in front of the table where Jane sat and Jess motioned for her to move. She slowly stood up and moved about five feet from the table and leaned against the wall. Bucktooth hawked up some spit and spat it out onto the saloon floor and leered at Jess. He moved his hand down by his Colt Peacemaker and when his palm touched the butt of his pistol the right side of his mouth twitched as he jerked iron.

  Jess’ two slugs found Bucktooth’s chest, knocking him backward and onto the table that Jane had been sitting at only moments ago. Bucktooth’s slug tore up some splinters in the saloon floor about five feet from Jess. Bucktooth slammed into the table smashing it into pieces and when he hit the floor, he let out a loud grunt followed by his last breathe a few moments after that.

  Jess quickly looked around the saloon, but every man was stone still. He replaced the spent shells in his pistol and walked over to where Bucktooth was and holstered his pistol. He bent down and removed Bucktooth’s holster and picked up his pistol off the floor and stuck in back in the holster. He rolled it up and walked over and handed it to the barkeep.

  “That should be worth enough to cover his bill,” implied Jess.

  Jess paid two men in the saloon to carry Bucktooth’s body down to the livery and told the men to inform the man at the livery to tie his dead corpse to his horse. Jane sat back down in a chair saying nothing. Jess walked back to the bar and took another sip of his whiskey. He noticed the boiled eggs on the bar and he picked one up and threw it to Jane and then picked one up for himself. He waved at the barkeep, who was standing behind the bar looking nervously at him.

  “You got anything to eat back there?” asked Jess, pointing to the back kitchen.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  After eating what Jess figured might have been horsemeat stew, he and Jane walked back down to the livery to get their horses. Jane hadn’t said a word since watching him kill Bucktooth in such a casual manner. She finally got up the nerve to talk and when she did, she didn’t look at him, she just looked straight up the street toward the livery.

  “So that’s what you do for a living?” she asked. “You hunt people down and force them into a gunfight and just kill them.”

  “I guess that about sums it up. Although, most of the time, I don’t need to force them into it. Violence just comes naturally to the type of men I hunt.”

  “And what type of men do you hunt?”

  “I only hunt the worst of the lot. I hunt the men who commit murder or rape just to satisfy their evil needs. I leave the horse thieves and bank robbers to the law and other bounty hunters.”

  “You don’t think they deserve to be brought to justice?”

  “Sure I do, just not by me.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because most of those men have a bounty on them, but they’re wanted alive, and I ain’t in the business of arresting a man and dragging his ass to the nearest town that has a badge in it.”

  “Why not?”

  Jess stopped walking and turned to look Jane straight in the eyes.

  “Well, first you have to feed them and protect them from other men who might want to kill them for what they did while they’re in your custody. Then they’re always looking for a way to escape or they try to shoot you in your sleep. It just ain’t worth it when there are far worse men out there to hunt. Men who deserve killing like Bucktooth Brown. Hell, he’s raped a dozen women and killed four men that I know of, and if I hadn’t have ended his miserable life today, he would have kept raping women and killing men until someone finally put an end to it. That’s where I come in. And just for the record, Bucktooth won’t be causing us one bit of trouble before we turn his corpse in for the money.” Jess started walking again and she quickly caught up.

  “So, you’re like a nec
essary evil?” asked Jane skeptically. Jess frowned at her.

  “I’ve never thought about myself in that way, but I do get your meaning,” answered Jess.

  “And why do you have a U.S. Marshal’s badge in your front pocket?”

  “It’s a long story and you don’t need to know it.”

  They reached the livery and Jess threw the livery man another ten dollar gold piece and the man snatched it and smiled. The two of them climbed up in the saddle and they rode out of Ranklin about two hours before dark. Jess wanted to make camp far enough away from town in case someone had recognized Jane and might try to collect on the money on her. They finally came to a wooded area and they rode deep enough into the woods so that their small fire wouldn’t be seen from the trail. They made a quick meal and turned in for the night after Jess placed his cans with strings around the perimeter of their camp.

  In the morning, after breakfast, they rode out of the woods, the two of them riding side by side, followed by Sharps, who led the horse with Bucktooth’s dead body draped across it. After a few hours, the wind shifted a little and Jane caught a whiff of the stench emanating from the dead corpse.

  “That smells just awful,” she exclaimed, pinching her nose.

  “It’ll only get worse in this heat, too,” observed Jess. “We’ll reach Sturgis tomorrow morning and hand him over to the law there.”

  The two of them rode into Sturgis in the morning. They rode along the main street in town and some of the townsfolk pointed to the dead body strapped across the big bay horse. He steered the horses straight for the jail and both of them climbed out of the saddle. He took a long cautious look around the town before walking up the two steps of the boardwalk. He rapped on the half open door. Jane followed him and stood to one side of the door.

  “Hells bells, I can smell that stinker from in here,” a voice said sourly from the inside. Jess heard a chair being pushed back and some footsteps inside. A man of average height and weight with a slight pot belly and a balding head came out twitching his nose back and forth at the smell. He recognized Jess right off.

  “Well if it ain’t Jess Williams in my little town,” exclaimed the man. “I’m Sheriff Cohen and I suppose that’s someone who’s got a bounty on his head that you’re here to collect on.”

  “You’d be right about that Sheriff,” said Jess, pulling the wanted poster out on Bucktooth Brown and showing it to him. Cohen grunted when he read the wanted poster.

  “You’ve got old Bucktooth?” asked Cohen.

  “Yep, caught up with him in Ranklin,” explained Jess. Cohen walked over and lifted up the head of Bucktooth and wrenched his nose up at the smell.

  “Yep, that’s old beaver tooth,” pronounced Cohen. “You can’t miss those choppers. Why don’t you grab some grub and I’ll take care of the body and go and get you your money.”

  “Where’s the best place we can get a meal?” asked Jess, still scanning the street nervously. Cohen looked a little surprised and then he took another look at the woman standing on the boardwalk holding a rifle in her right hand.

  “I’ve never known you to have a partner, much less a pretty women,” snickered Cohen.

  “She’s not really my partner. I’m helping her locate a man who might clear up an important matter,” offered Jess. Sheriff Cohen narrowed his eyes and looked at her closer.

  “You’re the woman in that sketch sitting on my desk,” explained Cohen slowly. “You’re the one what’s got that bounty on your head put up by that rich man, oh, what’s his name…Mercer,” he bleated out loudly waving his right hand about.

  “It’s not a legal bounty Sheriff,” explained Jess.

  “That won’t matter to most men,” he groused. “Twenty-five thousand dollars will make a man do things he’d usually never do.”

  “Just so you know, Sheriff, she’s under my protection and anyone coming after her will have to go through me first,” Jess said firmly.

  “That’s good enough for me. I know better than to mess with the likes of you, but I can’t speak for some of the other men in town.”

  “You let me worry about that Sheriff.”

  “Alright, the café over there has some pretty good grub if you’re hungry,” implied Cohen pointing over at a little eatery.

  Sheriff Cohen untied the horse with the dead body on it and headed for the undertaker’s parlor of death. Jess looked up at Jane on the boardwalk.

  “Might as well eat while we can,” he suggested. The two of them left their horses in front of the jail and walked across the street to the little café. When they walked in, there were several other people sitting at tables eating everything from eggs and bacon to flapjacks. They sat at a table in the back and Jane was about to remove her hat when Jess stopped her.

  “Leave the hat on,” Jess said quietly. She gave him a look, but she left the hat on.

  The two of them ordered a full breakfast and sat there eating quietly. Jess kept stealing glances at the door of the café. They were finishing up with some coffee when Sheriff Cohen walked into the café with an envelope, which he handed to Jess. He slipped it into the front of his shirt since his pockets were already quite full of money and bullets.

  “Thanks Sheriff.”

  “You’re welcome, but I’d suggest you ride back out before anyone finds out about your friend there,” implied Cohen.

  “We just need to supply up and then we’ll be leaving town,” agreed Jess. Cohen sat down at another table and ordered something to eat and Jess threw a ten dollar gold piece on Cohen’s table.

  “That should cover all three of us Sheriff,” he told him, smiling.

  “What about the change?”

  “Keep it.”

  Jess and Jane walked out and down to the only general store in town. He told her to pick out another set of clothes from the men’s selection. He gave a list to the clerk behind the counter and the clerk quickly went about collecting up canned goods, flour, corn meal, hardtack, jerky, dried beans, fatback, bacon and several other items including some ammunition. The clerk was putting the supplies in a wooden box and Jess noticed three men standing across the street of the general store. The fact that each one of them was holding a rifle and looking straight at the store wasn’t lost on him. Jane noticed his apprehension and she followed his gaze outside and noticed the men across the street. She immediately picked up her rifle and the clerk got nervous straightaway.

  “There’ll be no shooting in my place,” the clerk said anxiously.

  “Tell that to them,” implied Jess as he pulled his large bore shotgun out and checked it.

  “Do you think they’re bounty hunters?” Jane asked worriedly.

  “No, they ain’t wearing enough guns,” he answered.

  The clerk pointed to the men across the street and said, “That’s Dudley Estep and his two idiot brothers. They live in an old shack outside of town and they’re nothing but trouble.”

  “You got a back door?”

  “Doesn’t everybody?” asked the clerk. Jess shot Jane a stern look.

  “You stay behind the counter and if any of them tries to come in here, you put at least two bullets into their sorry asses before they even get through the door.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Out there.”

  Jess quickly walked into the back room and pushed the screen door open to see if he drew any fire. He didn’t. He slowly walked out and along the side of the building until he reached the opening in the front. He stayed back a few feet and looked out and the three men were still standing there holding their rifles and staring at the front of the store where Jane was. Jess hollered out from between the two buildings.

  “You men might as well back off, because you’re not getting her!” he hollered out. Dudley Estep, the oldest of the three looked over to where he heard the voice.

  “Who says so?” spat Estep.

  “The man who’s holding a ten-gauge shotgun and the will to use it!” Jess barked back.

 
“We aim to collect that money!” snapped Estep.

  “You can’t spend money in hell!” Jess hollered back. “And that’s where you’re going if you try this!”

  “You first pilgrim!” Estep hollered as the three of them racked shells into their rifles and pointed them straight at the spot where Jess was. Jess crouched low and came out just enough to see them as they began to split up. Jess fired the first barrel just as three rifle slugs slammed into the buildings he was between, splintering off pieces of wood that went flying in every direction. The lead and buckshot from Jess’ ten-gauge knocked the one brother against the building he was standing in front of. His bullet riddled body slid down leaving several red streaks on the wood.

  Another bullet seared past Jess’ head as he aimed at the second man and fired the second barrel on the large bore shotgun. The slugs and buckshot slammed into the second brother, pushing him through the window he was standing in front of and he landed inside with his feet still sticking out of the window.

  Jess let the large bore shotgun fall from his fingers and he slicked his pistol out as another slug tore his hat from his head. Dudley Estep was crouched behind a water trough and racking another shell into his rifle when Jess quickly fanned all six shots from his pistol. Water flew up as the slugs slammed into the water trough, and three of the slugs found Dudley Estep. Estep flew backward, his arms flailing in the air, the rifle falling from his hands.

  Jess immediately holstered his pistol and pulled out his Colt Peacemaker and thumbed the hammer back, all the while walking in a very deliberate way straight toward Estep. Estep was straddled across the steps of the boardwalk holding his chest with both hands. One of the slugs had torn a hole through Estep’s left cheek knocking out several teeth. The other two slugs had found his chest. Jess glared at him.

  “I tried to warn you,” Jess told him flatly.

  “We just wanted the money is all,” coughed Estep, his words slurred because of the hole in his cheek. Sheriff Cohen came running up the street holding his pistol in his hand. He checked on the other two Estep brothers and then he walked over to where Jess was still standing over the dying Dudley Estep.