The RECKONING: A Jess Williams Western

by Robert J. Thomas

  “Howdy, Sheriff,” he said as he entered the jail.

  The sheriff looked up and smiled at Jess. He had always liked him. He had always liked his mom, too. Everyone in town knew not to mess with Becky or they would have to answer to the sheriff.

  “Well, how’s my favorite young fellow?” asked Sheriff Diggs.

  “Just fine,” he replied “I heard you were having a bad day.”

  “I was, until you came through that door.”

  “How’s your pa, and how is my little Becky?”

  “They’re both just dandy, Sheriff.”

  “That’s good to hear, Jess.”

  “Oh, I think I’m just gonna puke or something listening to you two carry on,” Red Carter said, while propping himself up on the bunk in the jail cell. “My head hurts like hell, Sheriff.”

  “You’re lucky I didn’t take that empty head of yours clean off. I’ve about had it with you coming into town and always causing trouble,” barked Diggs angrily.

  “I’m warning you Sheriff, if you ever hit me with that shotgun again, I swear I’ll kill you!” threatened Red.

  “Shut your yap before it gets you into more trouble,” warned the sheriff. “As a matter of fact, you can stay in there for another day now just for getting smart with me.” Red grumbled something under his breath, but the sheriff wasn’t listening to him. He turned his attention back to Jess.

  “Is your pa cutting up some more steaks soon?” he asked.

  “Yes sir; he told me to ask you if you wanted some more.”

  “Tell your pa to cut me up a few extra this time,” smiled the sheriff.

  “Yes, sir, I sure will,” he agreed. “Sheriff, I ran into three men on the way into town this morning. I think they must have been the same men you chased out of town earlier.”

  “How’d you hear about them?”

  “Jim Smythe over at the general store told me about it.”

  “Well, you stay away from them if you run into them again, they’re nothing but trouble, I’m sure of that,” claimed Diggs. “I’ve been looking through my wanted posters to see if I have anything on them.”

  “Last I seen of them, they were headed down the road toward my pa’s ranch. I hope they don’t cause my pa any trouble,” he said with a worried look on his face.

  “They’ll probably just keep riding, heading for the next town,” replied Diggs. “I’ll tell you what though. After I finish up a few more things around here, I’ll ride out to your pa’s ranch and make sure that things are okay.”

  “Thanks Sheriff,” he replied gratefully.

  Jess felt a little better as he left the sheriff’s office and walked back to the general store. Mr. Smythe had everything in one pile and Jess made quick work of loading up the wagon. He went back in to get the bill to take to his pa. Jim smiled at him and darted his eyes over to the candy counter as he handed Jess the bill.

  “Well, are you going to pick out a few pieces of that candy?” asked Jim.

  “Yes, sir,” he said smiling, as he looked over the candy counter. Jess picked out three different flavors of sugar sticks. Two sticks for him and one for his sister. Jess climbed up in the wagon and headed back to the ranch, his thoughts on the three men he met on the trail. He had a bad feeling and he just couldn’t shake it off.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Jess rode back to the ranch and turned left onto the path going up to the house. The house sat about fifteen hundred feet back off the main trail. As he was riding up the path to the house, he looked over to the right to see if his pa was still plowing. He spotted the horse and plow sitting still in the middle of the field, but not his pa. He pulled the wagon up to the front of the house so he could unload the supplies. It seemed unusually quite around the house. He was hungry so he tied the paint to the front porch railing and quickly headed up the steps.

  He swung the screen door open and just as he was about to say how hungry he was, he was frozen in a complete state of horror. He stood there motionless, his eyes fixed to the grizzly scene before him. He couldn’t speak even though his mouth was stuck open. Tears began to well up in his eyes. His knees almost buckled, but somehow he caught himself. His muscles began to tremble and shake. The carnage before him was almost unbearable to look at, but he couldn’t turn his gaze away.

  His mother’s body was hanging in the doorway going to the sleeping quarters of the house. The ropes that were tied around her wrists were tied to nails at the top corners of the doorway. There was a huge pool of blood on the floor surrounding her feet. Within the pool of blood was her dress, which was torn and ripped. The dress was soaked in blood. Her body had been slashed and stabbed repeatedly, and her throat had been cut. Her face was black and blue and one eye was so full of blood you couldn’t tell if the eye was still there. Jess’ legs finally buckled and he dropped to his knees.

  It took him several attempts, but he finally got the strength to slowly stand up; but his legs were still trembling and he almost fell to his knees again. He knew he had to tear his eyes away from the grizzly scene in doorway. He finally found the will to turn away and go back out the front door. He looked out to where his pa had been plowing. The horse and plow was still there, but he still couldn’t see his pa anywhere. He started to walk in that direction. As he did, he saw something on the ground behind the plow.

  As he reached the horse and plow, he saw his pa’s body lying beside the plow. Jess knelt down next to his pa. John had been shot several times. One shot in the chest, one in the stomach and two in the head. After what seemed like an eternity, Jess gathered enough strength to stand back up. He stumbled backwards from his pa toward the house a few dozen steps and then he fell backward into the deep rich black soil. He looked up at the sky and the tears streamed down both sides of his head. He stayed that way for almost five minutes, wondering if there was anyone looking down on him right now. He finally got the strength to stand back up and he slowly turned around and walked toward the house. He stopped about two hundred feet from the house, not sure if he could summon the courage to go back in there. Then, all of a sudden, he realized that he had not found his sister Samantha yet.

  Jess took a few steps toward the house and then stopped as if he had hit an invisible wall. He swallowed hard and wiped the tears from his eyes. He knew he had to look for Samantha and that meant he had to go back into the house, but he couldn’t gather the courage to do it. He decided to go to the back of the house and look in the windows. He walked around to the back of the house and got within two feet of the first window. He leaned his back against the outside wall of the house and tried to gain the courage to look inside.

  He slowly stepped up to the window of his pa’s room and looked inside. There was no sign of Samantha. He made his way over to the other window and looked inside, but Samantha was not there. He turned toward the barn and stable and he walked over to the barn. The door was already open. He walked into the barn and called out his sister’s name. He looked around and was getting ready to climb the ladder to the top floor when he saw her arm sticking out of a pile of hay. Tears of fear filled his eyes again as he walked toward her. He knelt down and began to clear the hay from Samantha’s body. Her clothes were torn apart. Jess sobbed uncontrollably. She had been beaten to a pulp and shot; a single bullet hole in the middle of her forehead.

  He picked her up and carried her body out of the barn. As he stepped outside, he stopped for a moment and looked out toward his pa’s body. He went around to the front of the house and up the steps and laid his sister’s body gently down on the porch. Then, he sat down on the steps of the porch, laid his face on his arms, and sobbed for what seemed like an eternity. He couldn’t believe this was happening. He wondered if this was just a bad dream and he would wake up soon. How could anyone do something like this? This just can’t be happening, he thought to himself.

  He wasn’t sure if he had fallen asleep or was simply still in a daze when he began to hear the beating of hooves on the ground. He lifted his head as Sher
iff Diggs quickly reined up his horse in front of the house and dismounted. As soon as Sheriff Diggs hit the ground, he knew things were bad. He already saw Samantha’s body lying motionless on the porch. He ran up the steps of the front porch to get to Samantha’s body to see if there was any chance that she was alive. There wasn’t.

  “My God, Jess. What in the hell happened here?” asked Sheriff Diggs. Jess tried to mouth the words, but he couldn’t speak. He just sobbed more loudly.

  “Where is your father, Jess?” asked Sheriff Diggs.

  Jess lifted his head, tears still streaming from his eyes. He slowly pointed toward the field where he found his pa’s dead body earlier. The sheriff saw the horse with the plow just sitting still out in the middle of the field. He could just barely make out what looked like a body on the ground behind the horse and plow. He began to head down the steps to run out to check where Jess was pointing, but before he got to the bottom step, Jess grabbed the sheriff’s arm and stopped him in his tracks. The sheriff knelt down and put his hand on Jess’s shoulder.

  “I’ve got to go out there, Jess,” explained Diggs.

  Jess looked at the sheriff and shook his head as if to say no. He tilted his head slightly back and to the right. “Inside,” he sobbed, so low that the sheriff didn’t catch what he had said for a second or two. “Ma,” added Jess weakly.

  The sheriff started back up the steps to look inside the house. As he opened the screen door, he gasped and froze. He stopped breathing for several seconds and then he slowly let the air out of his lungs. “Damn it,” he whispered under his breath.

  He glanced back out at Jess still sitting on the steps; his head back down on his arms that were crossed on his knees. The sheriff fought back tears that welled up in his eyes and his throat felt like he had tried to swallow an apple whole. Becky had been like a daughter to him. He walked toward her, but stopped abruptly. He noticed boot prints in the blood on the floor. There were four distinct sets of boot prints. Jess was one of the four sets of boot prints, but he noticed something odd about one of the other boot prints. Some of the prints were made from a boot with a missing heel; a left heel. He scanned the rest of the room and spotted the murder weapon. A large kitchen knife covered with blood lay on the floor of the kitchen area, about ten feet from the body. There were no boot prints in that area so the sheriff surmised that it had been thrown over there. He walked over to the body. Another wave of sadness along with sheer hatred for the people responsible for this pulsated through his body, stopping him in his tracks again. If he ever found them, he would just shoot them where they stood. No trial. Then he would drag their bodies out in the woods and let the buzzards and coyotes pick their bones clean. They deserved nothing less.

  He walked closer to Becky and squeezed past her to get around to the back of her body. When he got behind the body, he looked up at the nails and rope that tied her to the doorway. He decided to cut the body down. He went inside Becky’s sleeping room and got a large blanket. He wrapped it around the body as best he could and reached down and pulled out the knife he always kept in his right boot. He carefully cut down Becky’s body and placed it on her bed. He grabbed another blanket and made sure that she was completely covered. He grabbed another blanket to cover Samantha’s body outside.

  He walked back outside and Jess was still sitting on the steps. He gently placed the blanket on Samantha. Jess had stopped crying and had lifted his head up, looking out across the ranch toward the main road. The sheriff touched Jess’s shoulder as he went down the steps and headed out to the field where John’s body was. As he got close to the body he noticed one set of boot prints going in both directions. They were made from the same boots with the missing left heel. He looked over the body and surmised that whoever had done this had shot John with a rifle from a distance and then walked up and finished him with a few shots from a pistol. John’s body was behind the plow and there was no evidence that it had been dragged there. Surely if he had seen anyone coming up the ranch road he would have walked toward the house to see who it was. He probably never saw it coming. The sheriff walked back to front of the house and looked at the footprints. Near as he could tell, there had been three men. He found the prints from the boot with the missing heel again. He turned to walk over to the steps and when he looked up at Jess, he was startled by what he saw.

  Jess stared straight ahead with a look that the sheriff had seen more than once in his lifetime and it was not a look that should be on any man’s face, much less a boy’s. He walked back up the steps and sat next to Jess again putting his arm around him. He knew there was nothing he could say or do to comfort Jess in this moment, so he just sat there with his arm around him for a while. While the sheriff sat there, he thought about what he had to do next. He wanted to hit the trail and look for these murderers, but he would have to go into town and get some help. The blood on the floor was mostly dry except for the thick puddle that was around Becky’s feet, so they had a good head start. He decided he would load up the bodies in the wagon and take the bodies and Jess to town. He knew he had to break the blank stare that Jess still had on his face. The sheriff could only imagine what thoughts could be going through his head.

  “Jess?” asked Sheriff Diggs. Jess said nothing.

  “Jess?” asked Diggs, a little louder. Jess still didn’t respond. “Jess, I have to take the bodies into town, and you have to go with me.”

  Jess slowly turned his head to look at the sheriff. His voice was broken and quivering badly as he spoke. “Why would anyone want to kill my ma and pa, and little Samantha? Why? What sort of people would do something like this?” The sheriff knew there was no logical explanation he could give a fourteen-year old boy that would make any sense, and yet, he had to tell him something.

  “There are a lot of good men in this world, Jess,” he explained thoughtfully. “Unfortunately, there are some really bad men, too. There are men who kill just for the sake of killing and the pure pleasure it gives their cold black hearts. It never makes any sense, no matter how old you get or how many times you see it.” Jess looked away from the sheriff and looked straight out at nothing again.

  “Jess, why don’t you sit here while I go get the horse loose from the plow and stable him?” The sheriff suggested. Jess nodded affirmatively.

  The sheriff walked out into the field and unhitched the horse. When he was finished, he met Jess back at the front porch and told him to put the horse in the barn and feed the stock. He figured that would give him enough time to load the bodies into the wagon without him being around. He quickly unloaded the supplies from the wagon and loaded up Becky and Samantha. Then he drove the wagon out to John’s body. Jess was coming out from the stables when the sheriff got back to the front porch.

  “Time to go, Jess,” the sheriff said. He nodded as he looked in the back of wagon at the three bodies. He crawled up in the wagon and took his seat next to the sheriff. As he sat down, he looked at the boot prints in the soft dirt in front of the house. He noticed a left boot print; with a missing boot heel. He planted that picture deeply into his mind.

  It was a long ride back to town. Jess never said a word. He kept going over and over in his mind what had happened. He thought about the boot print with the missing left heel. He pictured the three men again in his mind. He never wanted to forget what they looked like. He would burn their images into his brain and remember everything he could about them. It was getting close to dusk when they pulled into town. The sheriff stopped the wagon in front of the general store. Jim had come out on the porch to see what the sheriff was doing driving a wagon back to town with Jess next to him in the front street. The sheriff explained what happened and Jim fought back the tears.

  “Jim,” the sheriff asked, “can you take their bodies over to the undertaker? I need to get Jess here set up for the night. Then I need to round up some men for a posse to head out at first light and hunt down the bastards that did this.”

  “Of course, Sheriff,” replied Jim, “whatever
you need. Are you going to put him up at the hotel?”

  “Yeah, just for a few days until I can sort all this out,” he replied.

  “Sheriff, I have a better idea,” said Jim. “Why don’t you take the bodies over to the undertaker and let Sara and me take care of Jess? We have an extra room upstairs. He shouldn’t be alone at a time like this. We can keep a close eye on him that way.”

  “That sounds fine to me, Jim,” replied Diggs. “I’m sure he would be better off here than at the hotel. You sure your wife won’t mind?”

  “Not to worry,” replied Jim. “Becky was like a daughter to us and Jess is like family. We’d be more than happy to look after him,” he replied firmly. Sheriff Diggs looked at Jess.

  “Jess,” asked the sheriff, “would you rather stay with Jim and Sara?”

  Jess shook his head affirming that it was okay with him. He, too, had always considered Jim and Sara as family. He looked in the back of the wagon as he stepped down from it. There was no sobbing, but you could see tears coming from his eyes.

  “I’m tired,” said Jess, barely audible.

  “You go on in and Sara will fix you some supper.”

  “I’m not hungry,” he said flatly. “I just want to go to sleep.”

  “That’s okay, Jess,” agreed Jim. “Whatever you need.”

  “Sara!” Jim called out to his wife.

  “I’m right here,” Sara said softly, tears streaming from her eyes. “I’ve been standing here all this time. Jess, you come on in and I’ll set up your bed right away, okay?”

  Jess nodded and followed Sara up the stairs.

  “You go ahead and get comfortable,” said Sara. “I’ll get you a glass of water just in case you get thirsty later.”

  “Thank you, ma’am,” he said politely. He got undressed and got into bed. The sheets felt clean and cool to him and yet they did not comfort him in the least. Sara brought him a glass of water and sat it down on a little table next to the bed. She put her hand on his head just for a moment as if to let him know that she would be right there if he needed anything. Sara closed the door most of the way leaving it open just enough so she could hear him in the night. Jess lay there thinking about all that happened. He slowly started to doze off. Just before he fell asleep, he imagined he was hunting down the killers who had murdered his family and that he would kill every last one of them. And he would make them suffer…