Jess took a few sips of his beer and stared at Blake Taggert, remembering that day they first met. Jess wondered how any man could be as evil as Taggert. He was certain in his mind that Taggert was the one responsible for the grisly murders recently in Red Rock. Taggert said nothing for several minutes. He wasn’t really worried, but he wondered who this kid was who was gunning for him with a shotgun on the bar and a strange looking pistol and holster. Taggert knew he had committed many crimes. Maybe he had done something to this kid, and the only way to find out was to ask.
“I understand you’ve been waiting for me,” said Taggert. “Do I know you?”
Jess didn’t respond right away. He wasn’t sure if it was because he wanted to savor the moment now that he finally found the last of the three men who killed his family, or if he wanted Taggert to remember who he was. Here he was, his life changed forever in such a dramatic way, and Taggert couldn’t even remember him.
“You don’t remember me, do you?” asked Jess.
“I can’t say I do,” replied Taggert. “What’s your name?”
“Jess Williams.”
Taggert still had a puzzled look on his face. “Sorry, I don’t know any Jess Williams.”
“Maybe you remember a farm back in Black Creek, Kansas,” said Jess. Taggert’s body language changed slightly and Jess immediately picked up on it.
“Never been to Black Creek, Kansas,” replied Taggert, knowing he wasn’t telling the truth.
“Maybe you remember a woman hanging from a doorway, all cut up,” he pushed, his voice getting slightly louder.
“I still have no idea about what you’re talking about,” lied Taggert.
“Remember a man shot several times behind a plow out in a field…do you remember that?” he asked as the anger started to well up inside him. Winn Deets had not said a word up to now, but he was getting aggravated and it showed.
“Hey, kid,” snapped Deets. “I don’t know who you are and I don’t much give a shit. Why don’t you just haul your ass out of here while you’re still walking upright?”
“Mister, I’m not walking out of here until that man standing next to you is dead and if you want to die with him, that’s your decision. I don’t much care either way,” explained Jess. Jess knew Deets was pissed. He also knew Deets was ready to draw, just as soon as he felt Jess wasn’t watching him close enough. Jess turned his attention back to Taggert while keeping a close watch on Deets.
“Maybe you might remember a little seven-year-old girl who you raped and murdered by shooting her in the forehead,” Jess pushed further. “Do you remember her? Remember a young boy you met out on the road about an hour before you murdered an entire family? That boy was me and the family you murdered was my family. Surely any man who could commit such brutal acts would remember them. I know that I can still see it in my mind like it was yesterday.”
Taggert remembered very well what Jess was talking about. He just wasn’t going to admit to any of it. He especially remembered the little girl. He had enjoyed that. “You’ve got me mixed up with someone else,” refuted Taggert.
“You’re a damn liar, but I guess that shouldn’t surprise me,” he countered angrily. “I suppose you ain’t going to admit to murdering that family outside of town right here either. That was you, wasn’t it?”
“Maybe the man who murdered your family is the same man who murdered that family here in Red Rock,” replied Taggert, smiling to himself inside at the thought of the young girl he had so brutally raped and murdered.
“You’re finally getting it right,” said Jess. “And that same man is you.”
“I’m telling you, you’ve got it all wrong, kid,” contested Taggert. “I never murdered anyone, ever, especially in this town.” Taggert was getting a little nervous now as some of the men in the saloon started whispering between themselves about the murdered family.
“I’ve got a message from two friends of yours,” said Jess.
“Who might that be?” Taggert asked, quizzically.
“Your two friends Randy Hastings and Hank Beard.”
“What was the message?”
“That they’d see you in hell.”
“Hell?”
“Yeah, that’s where I sent them and that’s where you’re going next,” he replied bluntly.
“And who’s going to send me there?” asked Taggert, a contemptuous look washing across his face.
“You’re looking at him.”
“You?” he asked sarcastically.
“Do I have to repeat myself?”
“And you think you’re good enough?”
“You’re about to find out.”
“Kid, I’ve been drawing a pistol damn near as long as you’ve been breathing air,” spat Taggert. “What makes you think you can take me?”
“Only one way to find out for sure,” he said threateningly. Deets had been listening to all of this and he was getting more and more agitated by the moment. He finally spoke up.
“You might think you can take Taggert, but you can’t take the both of us at the same time,” claimed Deets boldly. Jess glanced at Deets.
“You throwing in with him?” asked Jess.
“Damn right,” he threatened.
“Then you’ll die right next to him.”
“You gonna use that damn fire breather you got on the bar?” asked Deets, nervously looking at the double barreled shotgun on the bar. Jess smiled.
“Naw, I don’t need it,” advised Jess, cocking his head a little and grinning a somewhat evil grin.
Jess knew that Deets would draw first. He watched Deets moving his right hand closer to the butt of his pistol. Jess could see a bead of sweat dripping down Deets left temple. Taggert began to move his left hand down to the butt of his pistol and he was watching Deets, trying to time it so they both drew at the same time. As soon as Taggert knew Deets was moving, Taggert’s left hand went for his gun. Jess’s first shot hit Deets in the stomach. Jess fanned his second shot and hit Taggert in the right shoulder spinning him around a full turn, throwing him down on a table flat on his back, his gun flying across the room. Jess’s third shot hit Deets in the chest, punching a hole in his heart and putting him down for good. Jess wanted Deets down and out of the picture so that he could put his full attention toward killing Taggert; slowly. Jess watched the room to make sure no one else was throwing going to be involved. He saw Taggert still lying on the table, but on his side now holding his right shoulder with his left hand. Jess noticed two things simultaneously; a little dust falling from the upstairs railing, and a gunshot going off in the direction of the swinging doors of the saloon. He quickly looked over and saw Ted Watkins and he was holding Nevada Jackson’s still smoking pistol in his hand. He heard a thud against the floor upstairs and realized that Taggert had a third man hiding in a room upstairs to ambush Jess. He nodded to Ted.
“Figured I owed you as much,” said Ted. “Besides, I had to try it out.”
Jess looked at Taggert. He was now standing upright, his buttocks leaning against the edge of the table he had fallen on. He was bleeding, but he wasn’t dying, at least not yet. Jess put a slug into Taggert’s left kneecap. Taggert fell away from the table, hit the ground and rolled over holding himself up with his left hand and his right knee facing away from Jess.
“Damn it! I ain’t got no gun! You can’t shoot an unarmed man!” he hollered.
“Is that right? Let’s see about that.” Jess fired another round, this one ripping into Taggert’s right buttock, the force rolling him over onto his back. Taggert pushed and wiggled himself up against the wall.
“You bastard!” Taggert exclaimed. “You can’t just kill me in cold blood!”
“You and your dead friend both reached for iron before I did,” he barked.
“Yeah, but this ain’t right!” hollered Taggert.
“Maybe you should have been thinking that way when you were raping and killing my little sister,” refuted Jess. “Besides, who’s going to stop me?�
��
“I know a lot of people in this town,” spat Taggert, as he looked at some of the men in the saloon “You can’t just let him kill me! Stop him! Go get the sheriff!”
Surprisingly, no one moved. Maybe they were too afraid of Jess or maybe they were beginning to believe Taggert might be guilty of what Jess was accusing him of. Jess had one more round in his pistol. He put that round into Taggert’s left elbow tearing it up so bad that his left arm just dangled to the floor. He was bleeding profusely. Jess quickly reloaded his pistol and put it back in its holster. He reached behind and pulled out his knife. He flipped it in the air and grabbed it by the blade and threw it right at Taggert, hitting him in the groin, pinning his gonads to the floor of the saloon. Taggert let out another scream and had an excruciating look of pain contorted up on his face. “You ain’t supposed to hit a man in his privates!”
“Now, where have I heard that before?” asked Jess curiously. “Oh, yeah, your friend that helped you murder my family. Now you’ll have even more in common to talk about while you’re in hell together.”
“That one was for my mother,” Jess said, coldly. Jess walked over to where Taggert’s gun was. He picked it up.
“I figure this is the pistol you used to put a bullet into my little sister’s head,” Jess said with disgust. “I think it’s only fair to finish you off with the same gun, don’t you?”
“Just do it, you bastard! I can’t take anymore! Finish me!” screamed Taggert writhing in pain.
“Oh, I’ll finish you; of that you can be sure,” he promised. “But you know all this gun fighting and excitement has made me a little thirsty. I think I need a nice sip of my beer.”
“You go to hell, you bastard!” Taggert yelled, as he watched Jess walk back up to the bar where Harry had set down a fresh glass of beer. Jess, keeping his eyes on Taggert, set Taggert’s gun on the bar and picked up the glass and took a nice long sip. He wanted Taggert to suffer as much as he could. Taggert tried to remove the knife that had his gonads pinned to the floor, but he was losing what little strength he had from the loss of blood. Jess walked back to Taggert and just looked at him moaning in pain. It would make most men feel a little bad, but Jess felt no pity for Taggert. Not after what he had done to his family.
“You ready to meet your friends, Beard and Hastings?”
“Kiss my ass, you son of a whore!” shrieked Taggert, bloody spittle flying from his lips.
“Just make sure that you give Beard and Hastings my regards,” whispered Jess, as he placed the barrel of Taggert’s gun about two inches from his forehead, just above the nose.
As Jess pulled the trigger, he closed his eyes and all the events leading up to this point flashed through his brain. When he opened his eyes, Taggert was laying against a fallen chair, his head half blown off. It’s over; Jess thought to himself, it’s finally over.
Jess hung his head and closed his eyes for what seemed an eternity, but in reality, it was only about ten seconds. He threw Taggert’s gun down on the floor in front of Taggert and retrieved his knife, wiping the blood off on Taggert’s pants. Then, he walked back over to the bar and picked up his shotgun and put it back in its sling over his shoulder and downed his beer. Harry refilled it quickly and Jess took a long pull from it. Ted Watkins walked over to him and ordered a beer and took a drink.
“Well, I guess you finished what you came here to do,” Ted remarked, looking at the dead body of Blake Taggert.
“I guess so. It seems strange though, as if it’s not really finished,” said Jess. “What do you think that means, Ted?”
“I don’t think you’re finished, Mr. Williams,” stated Ted.
“What do you mean?”
“There are a lot more Blake Taggerts out there.”
“Yeah, and someone has to deal with them,” he said realizing his calling. “I suppose it might as well be me.”
“I can’t think of anyone better suited for the job,” said Ted confidently.
Jess finished his beer and thanked Ted for his help. He told Ted to take the guns and holsters back to the stables and Jess checked both men for any money. To his surprise, he found over one thousand dollars between the two. He thought that odd. Most men were lucky to walk around with ten dollars in their pockets. He headed over to the sheriff’s office to check on any bounty that might be available on any of the men he had killed today. Five men, he thought to himself, I’ve killed five men today and it’s not even dark out yet. Sheriff Clancy was sitting outside his office. He had heard the shots and had already heard how Jess had killed Taggert and Deets. Word traveled fast in this town.
“I was hoping to see you again, Jess,” the sheriff said standing up.
“You had doubts?”
“No, not really,” he replied. “Come on in.” Jess followed Clancy into his office and the sheriff picked up a wanted poster he had on his desk.
“Seems like one of those three you killed over at Little’s had a bounty of two hundred dollars on his head.”
“Well, I’ll sure take it, Sheriff,” he said. “This bounty hunting business pays pretty well.”
“It does for the ones who stay alive, and not too many of them do,” cautioned Clancy.
“Sheriff, I found over a thousand dollars on Blake Taggert and that Deets fellow. It’s been a highly profitable day, that’s for sure.”
“A thousand dollars? Really?”
“Well, it was about fifty dollars more than a thousand, why?”
“I just got a wire from a small town about three days ride from here. It seems two brothers who ran a ranch together along with their wives were murdered last week. Both women were raped and killed. Luckily, their two children were staying with relatives and not home when it happened. The brothers kept their earnings at the ranch. One of the brother’s uncles says they had almost a thousand dollars saved up to buy some more cattle. I wonder if it was Taggert and Deets who took the money and killed those poor folks,” the sheriff stated.
“That would be my guess, Sheriff. I’ll make sure the money gets returned to the two children. I’ll have Ted Watkins take the money to them personally, along with a message that the men most likely responsible for it are dead,” he said pensively.
“That’s mighty generous of you, Mr. Williams,” said Clancy. “I don’t believe I’ve met a nicer fella who killed five men in one day.”
Jess thought about what Sheriff Clancy said. He didn’t know what to say in response so he just nodded to the sheriff and walked out. He walked to the livery and told Ted what to do with the thousand dollars. Ted promised to deliver the money right away. He sold the horses to Ted and sold the guns off to a local gunsmith that Ted knew. He shook Ted’s hand and said his goodbye. He climbed up in the saddle and nudged his horse into a walk. As he rode out of Red Rock, he thought about the men he had killed and how much money he collected in return. The way he figured it, he was a little over a thousand dollars richer and he had a pretty nice watch to boot. Not bad, he thought.
As he turned Gray’s head back toward Black Creek, Kansas his thoughts turned to the three men who had murdered his family. August of 1878 was coming to a close and it had been over two years since that horrible day. He could still remember all the details vividly, too vividly. He could also remember killing each one of the three men responsible just as vividly. His thoughts turned to Blake Taggert lying on the floor of Harry’s Place in a pool of blood, all shot up with Jess’s knife sticking out of his groin. If you looked real close at Jess, you would almost think you could see a slight hint of a smile on his lips.
***
The ride back to Black Creek, Kansas, was a long and somber one. Jess stopped only a few times in small towns to get supplies and his visits were short and for the most part uneventful. He finally arrived back at his family’s ranch about an hour before sundown. He sat down by the grave markers under the big oak tree and told his ma, pa, and his sister they could all rest in peace now because the men who had murdered them were all dead. H
e noticed someone had been putting flowers on the graves. Probably Sara and Jim Smythe, he thought. He would go into town to visit with them tomorrow. It would be nice to see them again. He couldn’t bring himself to sleep in the house, although he took a stroll through it. He peeked inside each of the bedrooms and tried to imagine his folks sleeping quietly. He glanced at the floor where his ma was hanging that day and could still see the fading dark spot from all the blood. He cried silently, tears running down his face. It was the first time he had cried since he had left home. He swore it would be his last time.
He bunked down next to the gravesites that night with the big oak tree at his back. There was a slight chill in the night air and he pulled a light blanket over himself. As he lay there, his thoughts turn to his brother, Tim Sloan. He needed to find him and ask him how he knew Blake Taggert. He needed to find out if his brother knew what Taggert had done. If his brother was a killer and a bad man like Taggert, Jess would deal with him in the same way he dealt with other bad men, brother or not. He decided that would be his next mission in life. Find his brother and talk with him. He would start out by talking some more with Sara and Jim. But that was for tomorrow. Tonight, he would again sleep with the family he loved so dearly and wished he could be with once more. He would lie here next to their graves and somehow he hoped that his dreams would take him to them so he could see them and talk to them once more.
As he fell off to sleep he imagined he was a sheriff in a small town and he was facing off with two bad guys and…
That night, Jess had good dreams.
***
Epilogue
It had been four years since Dave Walters’s new pistol and holster had mysteriously vanished from his locked gun safe. He had continued to compete in fast draw competition and he was finally in the high twenties, but he still hadn’t won the elusive title of fast draw champion. He had continued to use his old pistol and holster, not even thinking about saving up enough money to have Bob Graham build him another one. Truth be known, he was almost afraid to. He sometimes felt that it was some kind of omen having the gun vanish the way it did. It had scared the living hell out of him. The night it vanished he hardly slept. For months afterward, he just kept looking at the gun locker as if some evil spirit would come out of it and take him next. Of course, with the way his wife had been carrying on about how he lost a two thousand dollar gun and holster and she still hadn’t gotten any furniture, maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad thing.
The RECKONING: A Jess Williams Western Page 23