Reaper's Fee
Marcus Galloway
Undertaker Nick Graves has buried folks for pay...and killed some for free. Now settled in Ocean, California, with a good woman he loves, he'd like to forget the wild young man he once was—a man who buried a fortune in stolen jewels in the Badlands...in the grave of the former friend he dispatched to Hell.
Barrett Cobb deserved to die and Nick doesn't regret having done the deed. But now a bunch of two-bit outlaws have heard the tale and they're dead set on looting Cobb's final resting place—which the mourner cannot and will not abide. But if Nick Graves leaves his new life behind to seek justice he might never get back again. And digging up the past could prove fatal, since madmen, killers, and a very patient bounty hunter are waiting for Graves to do just that.
The Man from Boot Hill: Reaper’s Fee Marcus Galloway
In memory of my Uncle Bert
ONE
Middle Cross, Oregon
1885
Lester Peterson was a wanted man.
Although he’d gotten into his fair share of fights, Lester hadn’t used his gun for anything more than doling out flesh wounds and killing a few horses. Then again, one of those horses was the cause for some of Lester’s biggest headaches.
Back in eighty-one, Lester had needed to get out of Texas faster than his feet could carry him, and a horse was his only means of transportation into greener, northern pastures. Because of his lack of funds, Lester needed to be a little more creative when it came to getting his hands on a horse, so he stole one from a saloon outside of San Antonio. That horse had belonged to a wealthy rancher who, Lester figured, would easily see his way past the loss.
Lester was not only wrong about the rancher’s forgiving nature, but he also underestimated the rancher’s memory. A price was put on Lester’s head, which only grew every month that he wasn’t found. No matter how many other horses or how much money he would steal, Lester found himself running from that one mistake he’d made in Texas those years ago.
Some of the heat had died down since he’d made his way into Oregon. Even so, Lester figured that letting his guard down, even for a second, would be his undoing.
He was right.
A second ago, Lester had been strolling along the quiet street while savoring the cigar he’d just purchased after an overcooked steak. Before he knew what was happening to him, the cigar was being forced down his throat by a fist slamming into his face.
Lester staggered back until his shoulders bumped against the side of a building. His senses reeled from the shock of getting punched in the mouth. Red haze crept into the edges of Lester’s vision and he felt as if the ground were tilting under his boots.
When he tried to breathe, Lester choked on his cigar.
When he reached up to dig the cigar from his mouth, Lester’s fingers found a mess of blood.
“Howdy,” someone said from just out of Lester’s sight.
Even though Lester couldn’t see the other man, he didn’t have to guess the man’s intentions. The loosened teeth in his jaw told him all he needed to know in that regard.
“You shon of a bidge!” Lester grunted through his aching jaw and mouthful of blood.
The other man laughed as if he’d just heard an amusing little joke. A second later, his hand clamped around Lester’s neck so he could hold the newly bloodied face directly in front of him.
Now, the other man was all Lester could see. He might have only been an inch or two taller than Lester’s five feet, ten inches, but the man seemed to loom over him like a mountain coated in battered denim. His face was narrow and his features were like shallow etchings scraped into the surface of a rock wall. His cheeks were all but flat, making his eyes look like deep gouges dug out of that same wall of stone. There was something glinting deep within them, and it wasn’t anything Lester wanted to think about.
Holding Lester out a few inches away from him, the man nodded and looked him over the way a fisherman examined whatever hung at the end of his line. “Don’t bother giving me any bullshit names, either. I know it’s you, Peterson.”
Realizing his mouth was hanging open, Lester closed it and swallowed the salty mix of blood and spit that had pooled on his tongue. When he tried to scowl, it hurt. When he tried to speak, it hurt even more. “Who the fug are you?”
The other man grinned and replied, “I’m the fellow that’s going to be hauling your ass back to Texas.” He waited for a few seconds and then nodded again when he saw the look of panic spread across Lester’s face. “That’s right. You know exactly where you’re going and why you’re headed there.”
“All this trouble for that goddamn horse?”
The man shrugged. “I guess he really cared for that horse.”
“The vugging thing is dead, for Christ’s sake!”
“Oh, now I wouldn’t mention that when we get into Texas.” He thought for a moment as he adjusted his grip so he had a hold of Lester’s collar. “On second thought, maybe you should bring it up. It might just bump up the reward that’s being offered for you.”
Suddenly, Lester’s eyes lit up. He was being hauled away from the wall, but there wasn’t anything he could do about that. “I know something you might want to hear.”
“You got a gun on you?” the man asked as he flipped open Lester’s jacket. “Ah, there it is.”
Lester reached for the pistol tucked under his belt, which caused the other man to respond.
In the blink of an eye, the man shoved Lester back with one hand, while drawing his own gun with the other. He stooped slightly with his pistol tucked in close to his body. His other arm was still outstretched to keep Lester at a distance.
Looking as if he didn’t know what was going on, Lester shook his head and sputtered, “I was gonna give you my gun. Honest!”
“You’d better do that and be quick about it. I doubt that rancher would have much of a problem paying to see your corpse.”
Lester’s hand trembled as he moved it closer to the grip of his pistol. Extending his thumb and forefinger, he pinched the handle and wrangled it from under his belt. “See? Nice and easy.”
The other man’s eyes remained focused on Lester and the gun dangling from his fingers. The man’s own hand snapped out to take the gun away from Lester so quickly that it took Lester a moment to realize that the gun was no longer in his possession. Now holding a gun in each hand, the other man let out the breath he’d been holding.
“There,” Lester said as he wiped the sweat from his brow. “That wasn’t so hard. Maybe we should get somewhere we can talk. There’s folks walking around, you know.”
“I know.” Looking over to one of those folks, the man touched the brim of his hat with the barrel of Lester’s pistol. “Afternoon, Mister Lowery.”
The old man on the other side of the street squinted and then tossed a wave in response. “Afternoon, Mister Kinman.”
Lester’s eyes opened even wider. “You’re Alan Kinman?”
“That’s me.”
Lester looked away from Kinman’s face to watch Mr. Lowery turn a corner without so much as glancing over his shoulder.
Kinman chuckled and spun Lester around to shove him face-first against the wall. “You don’t seem to have many friends around here.”
“If folks knew about you, they wouldn’t be too happy to have you around, either.”
“They know who I am. Who do you think told me where to find you? Seems your Thursday-night cigar is common knowledge. You see, honest folk like to keep an eye on a no-good horse thief like you.”
“And you don’t think they mind having a murderous bounty hunter in town?”
“I don’t give a shit if they do or don’t,” Kinman replied. “I’ll be leaving before long and that suits everyone
just fine.”
“Everyone but me,” Lester muttered.
“Nothing about you matters, asshole.”
Lester waited until the handcuffs were tightened around his wrists. The iron bracelets felt like weights keeping him at the bottom of a lake and jangled loudly as he was once again spun around, to face the street. “You may not be in for as much money as you think. The last notice I saw for a bounty on my head was almost a year old.”
“This one’s a month old,” Kinman said as he took a folded piece of paper from his coat and shoved it directly in front of Lester’s face.
The notice even smelled new. Although the likeness hadn’t been touched up any since Lester had stolen that horse, the wording made it sound as if he’d killed a dozen men to get that animal, and the reward had been bumped up accordingly.
“Damn,” Lester muttered. “I hadn’t seen that one yet.”
“You don’t still have that horse, by any chance, do you?” Kinman asked. “I may get some more reward money if you do.”
Spitting out some more blood along with a tooth, Lester said, “I told you, it’s dead. If I did have it still, why the hell would I tell you, anyway?”
Kinman paused so he could fix a glare onto Lester that felt like two drills being slowly twisted through his face. The smile that flickered across Kinman’s lips wavered slightly as he explained, “It’s a long way to Texas, and there’s plenty that could happen along the way. If you keep me happy, I may be in a better frame of mind.”
Lester shrugged and did a bad job of trying to appear comfortable as he said, “No. That horse is dead, just like I told you.”
“That’s a shame. It must have been a hell of an animal.”
“Not really. The damn thing could barely run. To be honest, I only stole it ’cause I figured the owner would be glad to get rid of it.”
Kinman laughed under his breath as he shoved Lester ahead of him and grabbed hold of the iron between Lester’s wrists. “Looks like you made a bad call on that one, my boy. I appreciate the honesty, though. I would have bet you were going to hand over any old horse in your possession just to clear the path for you a bit.”
Anger flashed across Lester’s face as he cursed the fact that he hadn’t thought of that trick on his own. He recovered fairly quickly by trying to turn around and get a look at Kinman. “I know something else that may be—”
“Just keep moving, asshole,” Kinman snarled as he grinned to another local who crossed his path.
Even though he couldn’t turn around, Lester kept fighting to look at Kinman over his shoulder. “I know something that may spark your interest,” he said quickly.
“Save it for the ride. I ain’t in the mood to hear your bullshit right now.”
“It’s not bullshit,” Lester said. “It could be worth a lot of money.”
“You got a horse or not?”
“Yeah, but—“
“Where is it?” Kinman snapped. “I want to get the hell out of this piss bucket of a town before nightfall.”
“In the stable, at the other end of this street.”
Glancing in that direction before taking one more step, Kinman didn’t move until he spotted the small barn on the far corner. “You ain’t got any friends in this town, you know. You try anything and everyone here will stand by and watch me put a bullet through your head.”
“I’m not trying anything,” Lester insisted. “Jesus Christ, will you just listen to me?”
“Fine. You got until we reach that stable. After that, I’m stuffing a gag in your mouth and not taking it out for another day.”
Lester sucked in a few breaths as he quickly gauged the distance between himself and the stable. Already, Kinman had started walking faster, so Lester simply unleashed what he’d wanted to say in a torrent of urgent words.
“There’s some money buried,” Lester spat out. “Lots of it. I heard even some jewels. Diamonds, maybe. It’s the haul from a big robbery a few years back, pulled by some known men who were all killed.”
“All killed, huh?” Kinman grunted. “Then who buried the jewels?”
“Well…almost all were killed. At least one man walked away. Maybe even just one man.”
“Boy, you sure do know your facts, Lester.”
“I don’t know why they left the money,” Lester explained. “All I know is where it’s at. I was gonna go after it myself as soon as I could make the ride without fear of being spotted somewhere along the way. I was also gonna round up some men to go along with me.”
“Men you can trust, I suppose?”
“Yeah! That’s right!”
“Bullshit,” Kinman grunted. “I changed my mind. I want you to shut up starting right now.”
Glancing toward the stable, which was only about twenty paces away, Lester planted his heels into the dirt and said, “The money was stolen by Barrett Cobb! You ever heard of him?”
Kinman stopped behind his prisoner just so he could take a look up and down the street. Since none of the few people looking back at him seemed interested in mounting a rescue, the bounty hunter replied, “Sure I heard of him. Any man in my line of work’s heard of Barrett Cobb.”
“Then you gotta know he stole that much and nobody ever caught him. His gang’s pulled more and bigger jobs than most anyone else. The one I’m talking about was in newspapers and everything!”
Stepping in front of Lester, Kinman stared into his eyes and said, “I also know something else. Cobb’s dead.”
“He’s the one holding onto that money,” Lester insisted. “I’d bet my life on it.”
“You may be doing just that if you don’t pick up your damn feet and get moving.”
Lester shook his head and kept talking before he could be threatened again. “I been hearing this same rumor from a whole bunch of people. Plenty of men were asking me to go along with them to find the money, but I couldn’t go because I knew I couldn’t stick my head out from where I been hiding.”
“At least that’s one thing you got right.”
“Now that I been found, there ain’t no reason why I shouldn’t go after that money. Since you’re the one that found me, you can go along. We’ll split whatever we find and both get real rich!”
Kinman smiled and began to slowly nod. After mulling it over for a few seconds, he smiled a bit wider and then drove his knee into Lester’s stomach. “You think I’m stupid? There ain’t no way I’m about to give you an inch so you can try and run a mile. You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. The only way you know a damn thing about Cobb is from whatever horse shit you picked up in a saloon. I tried to hunt Cobb down for years, and I know for a fact he ain’t been heard from for so long that he’s gotta be dead. Even those newspapers you talked about say that same thing. Besides, Cobb’s last robbery went so bad, there weren’t no survivors from his gang.”
“Nick Graves survived.”
Kinman was about to punch Lester in his mouth again just to shut him up. Pausing with his fist cocked back like a hammer, he asked, “What’s Graves got to do with any of this?”
Anticipating the punch he was about to receive, Lester cowered away from Kinman. Tentatively, he looked up. “Graves is the one that put Cobb in the ground.”
“How do you know?”
“Because he’s the only one of the men who pulled that robbery with Cobb who survived it. Plenty of men seen Graves in the Dakotas after Cobb was killed.”
Kinman’s eyes took on a faraway look as he slowly lowered the arm that had previously been set to deliver the next punch into Lester’s face. “That murderous son of a bitch may have even been the one to put Cobb down…Do you know that for certain?”
Seeing the frustration bubbling up behind Kinman’s eyes, Lester quickly answered, “Graves knows for sure where Cobb is buried, but there’s a few others who know as well.”
“Let me guess. Some of those men you were talking to?”
Lester nodded. “They got no reason to lie. We was going to go and
dig up that grave, on account of that’s where those jewels and all that money is buried.”
“Who started that rumor?”
“Men I can trust. They’re my kin, so it’s got a good chance of being true. Since them jewels was stolen, they ain’t never been found. That money’s buried right along with whatever’s left of Barrett Cobb. I know it.”
As much as Kinman wanted to knock out the rest of Lester’s teeth just so he wouldn’t have to listen to the man’s voice, there were too many words that stuck in the back of Kinman’s mind. He came to a complete stop a few paces away from the stable.
Lester may have been hurting, but he wasn’t blind. A thoughtful look had come into the bounty hunter’s eye, and Lester latched onto it like a tell from another man in a poker game. “If I’m right, we can both become rich.”
“And I suppose you’d want me to let you go in exchange?”
“Only if this pans out. If I’m wrong, you can still take me to Texas. That asshole rancher hasn’t forgotten about me by now, so he probably never will. That means I’m the only one with anything to lose here.”
“What about these other men who filled your head with this nonsense?” Kinman asked. “I suppose they’re going after this supposed stash of jewels, too.”
“Yep, but there’s a reason they came to me in the first place. I know a shortcut through the Badlands to get us in and out without catching much attention from the savages who frequent the area.”
“Indians shouldn’t be your biggest concern,” Kinman said. “If you think you can make me a fool, you’ll find yourself being dragged back to Texas by your balls.”
Lester didn’t even flinch. “When we find that treasure, you’ll be more’n happy to cut me loose.”
Rolling his eyes, Kinman shoved Lester toward the stable. “Let’s get moving.”
TWO
Ocean, California
Ever since a bar had been built into the back of the Tin Pan Restaurant, business had been good. It wasn’t a big enough bar to change the place into a saloon, but it was enough to attract a few more customers while giving the regulars an excuse to stick around a while longer after they were through with their meals. One drawback to the Tin Pan’s newest addition, however, was the fact that some customers overstayed their welcome.
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