“How’s it feel?” asked Monroe.
Bill nodded. “Good.” He drew the Colt a couple of times, not trying to be fast about it or anything like that, just smooth and easy.
“You use the cane with your right hand,” Monroe commented. “That’s your gun hand.”
“Yeah, I know. That’s why I’m gonna stop using the cane as soon as I can.”
“That’s going to be a while yet. Eden says you’ll need it for a couple of weeks, maybe longer.”
“We’ll see,” Bill said. He had beaten all of Eden’s predictions about his health so far. Maybe this one would be the same way.
It was a busy day in the store. Bill helped out from the start this time. It didn’t take him long to learn where everything was and how Monroe liked to have things done. He didn’t know the customers, of course, although some of them were starting to look familiar to him. He had been around Redemption long enough now that he was beginning to recognize faces, even if he couldn’t put names with them just yet.
Zach Norris didn’t come in, but Marshal Frank Porter showed up at the store that afternoon, strolling along the aisle toward the counter. He stopped, frowned in surprise as he looked at Monroe, and said, “Good God, Perry, what happened to you?”
Awkwardly, Monroe touched the bandage around his head that covered the gash above his eye. “Just an accident, Marshal.”
“You look like you’ve been pistol-whipped, man. You weren’t robbed, were you?”
“No, of course not,” Monroe replied with a shake of his head.
“Well, if anybody gives you trouble, you let me know. That’s what I’m here for, after all, to protect you good citizens of Redemption.”
Bill watched the lawman closely as Porter spoke, trying to detect any signs of either malice or sincerity. All he saw was the bland, unruffled calm with which Porter always carried himself. The marshal must have been a good poker player, because he didn’t give away a blasted thing.
Porter turned toward him. His somewhat bushy eyebrows rose in surprise as he looked at the gun belt strapped around Bill’s hips.
“Packing iron, Tex?” he asked. “Can’t say as I’m surprised. You Texans have always been a wild bunch.”
“A lot of Texas is still wild country,” said Bill. “A man needs to go armed to protect himself and those he cares about.”
Porter rested his hands on the counter. “You see, that’s the big difference between there and here. Kansas is a civilized place. Common, everyday folks don’t need to carry guns here in order to be safe. Trouble doesn’t crop up all that often, and when it does, they have lawmen like me and Deputy Norris to protect them. Why don’t you take that gun off and put it away? You’re liable to make folks nervous, wearing it out in the open like that.”
“There’s no ordinance against wearing a gun in town, is there?”
Porter pursed his lips and slowly shook his head.
“Or any state law against carrying weapons?”
“Nope,” said Porter.
“Well, then, I reckon I’ll keep it on, Marshal. I’ve carried a gun for a long time. Don’t really feel right without one.”
“Suit yourself.” Porter’s voice was curt. He turned his head and gave Monroe a nod. “See you, Perry. I hope you get to feeling better.”
“I’ll be fine, Marshal, don’t worry,” Monroe said.
Porter left the store. Bill moved closer to Monroe and said quietly, “It’s damned hard to figure that man out. I can’t decide if he’s in on the payoffs with Norris or not.”
“He didn’t like the idea of you wearing a gun, that’s for sure,” said Monroe.
Bill rubbed his chin. “Yeah, I know. And that’s a mite suspicious . . .”
Several days passed uneventfully. The walking Bill was doing, plus the work in the store, made his leg ache considerably at night, but he could also tell it was getting stronger. He had hopes of discarding the cane before too much longer.
There was still quite a bit of tension in Redemption, but the citizens seemed to have relaxed slightly. Bill figured they had been expecting another murder, and when one didn’t occur on the same schedule as the others, they allowed themselves to hope the killings were over. Of course, the merchants still had to deal with the fact they were being forced to pay off Zach Norris and perhaps the marshal, but they were getting used to that.
Bill was behind the counter one afternoon when he saw Eden at the front door. She had been about to come into the store, but she stopped and looked back, as if someone had called her name. Bill watched as she moved back out onto the porch, and he noticed when her back suddenly stiffened like something had happened to upset her. He moved around the counter and started toward the front of the store.
As he reached the door, Eden turned toward the building again with an angry look on her face. She was also blushing furiously. Bill looked past her and saw Zach Norris standing in the street, grinning up at the porch.
“Eden, what happened?” Bill asked her quietly.
“Nothing,” she replied without looking at him. “Just go on back inside, Bill.”
Norris laughed and said, “Aw, honey, I didn’t mean to embarrass you. I figured you’d be flattered.”
“What did he say?” Bill asked through clenched teeth.
“Nothing,” Eden repeated. “Please, let’s just go inside.”
Bill ignored the plea and stepped around her. “You better learn to show some respect when you’re talking to a lady, Deputy.”
“Why, I thought I was. All I said to Miss Monroe was that I’d sure like to find her waitin’ for me in my bed some night. That’s respectful, ain’t it?”
Bill switched the cane from his right hand to his left. Eden clutched at his arm and said in a low, urgent voice, “It’s all right, Bill. I don’t care. Really.”
“Well, I do,” he said. He shrugged off her hand and moved to the edge of the porch. “You’re supposed to be a lawman,” he snapped at Norris, “and yet you go around threatening folks and saying shameless things to young ladies. Where I come from, a man like you wouldn’t wear a badge. He’d be horsewhipped!”
Norris shifted his stance so his right hand was closer to his gun. The smirk on his face disappeared as he said, “Well, you ain’t in Texas anymore, you rebel trash. Up here, nobody cares what you think. And you better have a care how you talk to a peace officer. I can throw you in jail for disturbin’ the peace, you know.” The cocky grin flashed across his face again. “Or put a bullet in you for resistin’ arrest, if that’s the way you want it.”
“I’m not worried about you shooting me,” said Bill. “My back’s not to you.”
Norris’s face paled, making the scar stand out even more. “You son of a bitch,” he said. “You want to back that big mouth of yours?”
Bill didn’t answer the question directly. Instead he said, “Eden, get in the store.”
She tugged at his arm. “Forget it, Bill, please. Just come on with me.”
“I’ll be in directly. Go on.”
He didn’t take his eyes off Norris as he spoke, nor did he move his hand even the slightest fraction of an inch toward the Colt on his hip. He wasn’t going to give the deputy any excuse to slap leather as long as Eden was potentially in the line of fire.
Once she was out of the way, though, he figured he would draw. Norris would kill him, he didn’t have much doubt about that, but all he wanted right now was to stay alive long enough to get lead in the deputy, too. He had backed down before, and he wasn’t going to do it again.
But, damn, he was going to miss being alive. Being able to feel the warm sun on his face and wrap himself around a good meal and enjoy how it felt to stretch his muscles when he woke up in the morning. Feeling a good horse rocking along beneath him and the bite of a cold beer as it washed the dust out of his throat. Singing a hymn in church on a Sunday morning. Watching the sun go down in the evening.
Feeling Eden’s body under his hands and tasting her lips for the first
time.
All those things flashed through his mind in an instant, and he knew he was about to throw them away because of nothing more than his own stubborn pride.
But without his pride, those things and all the other good things in life would be just ashes and dust. A man who traded his honor for mere survival lost everything in the end, anyway.
A sob came from Eden. “Bill . . .” she said, her voice breaking.
“Go,” he whispered, still not taking his eyes off Norris.
He didn’t have to look around to know that this confrontation had drawn some attention. As if from far away, he heard people shouting. The prospect of somebody dying violently would always bring folks on the run. Redemption was no different from any other place in that respect.
“You sure you want to do this, Tex?” Norris goaded him.
“You’ve had folks around here buffaloed for too long, Norris.”
The deputy was about to make some other mocking comment, but at that moment a new voice demanded, “What the hell’s going on here?”
“Marshal, you’ve got to stop them!” Eden said. “They’re going to kill each other over nothing!”
A chill went down Bill’s back. He didn’t know where Porter had come from, but the man was behind him now. He didn’t dare look away from Norris, but an even bigger threat might be lurking at his back.
“Zach, what is this?” asked Porter, his voice sharp with anger.
Norris nodded toward Bill. “Gonna teach this mouthy Texan a lesson, Marshal.”
“Like you taught Perry Monroe a lesson by pistolwhipping him?” By God, somebody was going to get that outrage out into the open, even if it had to be him, thought Bill.
Porter clucked his tongue. “That’s a mighty serious accusation, Harvey,” he said. “You have any proof of what you’re sayin’? Did you see my deputy attack Mr. Monroe?”
“No, I wasn’t there,” Bill began, “but Monroe told me—”
“Perry told me that nothing of the sort happened,” Porter cut in. “Don’t you think if what you’re sayin’ is true, he would have made an official complaint about Deputy Norris?”
Bill knew at that moment that despite what he had hoped, Frank Porter was just as crooked as his deputy. Porter had probably known all along that Norris was extorting money from Redemption’s businessmen. It might have even been his idea.
And Porter was just as likely as Norris to be responsible for some or all of those murders.
Bill kept his right hand in plain sight and rock steady. He knew if it wavered even a little, Norris or Porter or maybe both of them would pull their guns and kill him. They would claim he’d been trying to draw on them and say they were acting in self-defense, and nobody would dare to question them. A few moments earlier he had been willing to die in a showdown with Norris, but now he wasn’t.
Somebody had to do something about the crooked lawmen, and it looked like the job was falling to him. Nobody else in Redemption was going to act.
But in order to see justice done, he had to stay alive, had to bide his time.
Monroe gave him his chance. The storekeeper had emerged from the mercantile, and now he said, “Marshal, I don’t know what’s wrong with the boy. He’s crazy. Deputy Norris never attacked me. A, uh, crate fell off a high stack and hit me in the face. That’s all.”
Porter sounded satisfied with himself as he said, “Now, see, that’s a reasonable explantion. I appreciate you speakin’ up like that, Perry.” The marshal moved up on Bill’s left. “Are you drunk or something, Harvey? I know how you Texans like your whiskey.”
Bill swallowed hard. “Yeah,” he said, his voice tight from the effort he was making to control it. “Maybe I’m drunk.”
From the street, Norris put in, “I say we haul him to jail anyway, Marshal, for spreadin’ ugly rumors about a peace officer.”
Bill knew if he ever wound up in Frank Porter’s jail, he would never come out alive. If they tried to arrest him, he would have no choice but to fight.
“No, I don’t think that’s necessary,” Porter said easily.
“You’ve learned your lesson, haven’t you, Harvey? You won’t be spreadin’ any more lies?”
“That’s right,” Bill said.
Porter turned to the crowd and raised his voice. “You heard the man, folks. It was all just a misunderstanding. Let’s all go on about our business now.”
The group of townspeople began to disperse. Eden moved up on Bill’s right side and took hold of his arm.
“Come in the store with me,” she said. “Please.”
He nodded, his face stony and expressionless. “Sure.”
Porter went down the steps and said to Norris, “Come on, Deputy. We have things to do, too.”
Norris turned and fell in step beside the marshal. But as he walked away, he glanced back over his shoulder at Bill and gave him an ugly grin.
“Let’s go, Bill,” Eden said softly as she urged him toward the door. “It’s over.”
“Yeah,” he said.
But he knew it wasn’t over.
Not even close.
Chapter 14
“What were you thinking out there?” demanded Eden when they got inside the store. “Norris came within a hair of killing you.”
“Maybe I would’ve killed him,” said Bill. “You ever think of that?”
Her answer was blunt in its honesty. “No, I didn’t. You’re not a gunfighter, Bill. You’ve admitted that.”
“Well, maybe not, but I’m not all that slow, either. I’ll bet I’d have ventilated him before I went down.”
“But you still would have died.”
Bill couldn’t argue with that conclusion.
Monroe shook his head wearily. “You should’ve kept your mouth shut,” he said. “Accusing Norris of attacking me like that, right out in the open where folks can hear it, won’t do any good.”
“Why not? It’s true, isn’t it?”
“Don’t you understand? What’s true doesn’t matter. The only important thing is what you can do about it, and in this town, nobody can do anything.”
“You people can’t,” said Bill, without bothering to keep the scorn out of his voice. “But a crew of Texas cowhands could stand up to Porter and Norris, you can bet a hat on that.”
“You’re asking us to put our future in the hands of a bunch of wild cowboys?” Monroe slapped a hand on the counter. “By God, it’s the likes of them that got us into this mess to start with! If not for you Texans, we never would’ve had to hire Porter and Norris in the first place!”
“Yeah, well, how much of a toll did your mayor demand when he went out to talk to those trail drivers? I’ve got a hunch it was highway robbery.”
“I never said anything about a toll—”
“But there was one, wasn’t there?” asked Bill. “The town wanted the drovers to ante up before any of the hands could come in and pay a visit to the saloon or to the Stanley woman’s whorehouse.”
Monroe glared at him. “I’ll thank you not to mention certain things in front of my daughter, sir.”
“Dad, I know whores exist,” said Eden. “They’re even in the Bible, for goodness’ sake.”
“Nothin’ good about those painted hussies,” muttered Monroe. “Anyway, all the mayor did was ask those Texans to drive the herd around the town. That’s all I know about, anyway.”
“You ask him sometime,” Bill said. “You ask him if he said anything to the trail boss about paying extra for the privilege of letting his punchers come into town. You might be surprised by the answer.”
“That doesn’t have anything to do with anything! You still played hell by challenging Porter and Norris like that. You think they won’t try to do something about it?”
“Like shooting me in the back?”
“That’s exactly what I mean.”
Bill shook his head. “I’m not gonna give ’em the chance. I’m getting out of here tonight.”
“Running out on us, are you?
” Monroe asked with a sneer.
“No. Going for help. Hob Sanders and the rest of the crew are somewhere between here and Dodge. I’m going to find them, and we’ll come back here and deal with those two crooked lawmen.”
“You’ll be fugitives if you do,” warned Monroe. “No matter what else they are, Porter and Norris have badges pinned to their shirts. Any man who guns them down will be guilty of murder in the eyes of the law.”
“The town council hired them, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Then the town council can fire them,” said Bill. “They can appoint somebody else marshal, somebody like Hob Sanders, and then he can deputize as many men as he wants.”
“Like the rest of that bunch of cowboys?”
“They won’t be afraid of Porter and Norris,” Bill said, well aware of the sting his words probably carried. At the moment, he didn’t particularly care about hurting the storekeeper’s feelings.
Monroe surprised him by tugging at the white beard and frowning in thought. “I don’t like the idea,” he said slowly, “but it might work.”
Eden said, “You’re talking about a war between those cowboys and Porter and Norris. And if the Texans win, then who’s going to control them? They might turn around and go on a rampage. They could loot the whole town!”
“You’ve got us all wrong, Eden,” Bill said. “I promise you, you’ll be a lot safer with Hob and his men than you ever will be with a couple of murdering owlhoots like Porter and Norris.”
She shook her head. “I don’t know . . . Anyway, there’s no guarantee you can even find them, and on top of that, you’re in no shape to make a long horseback ride. Not yet.”
“I was thinking I might take a wagon.” Bill played his hole card. “And I was hoping you might come with me, Eden.”
Both Eden and her father stared at him in shock. “Come with you?” she finally repeated. “What do you mean?”
“Just what I said. You’ll be better off out of Redemption until this is all over.”
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