“Hold on,” Bill said. “Do you even remember what you did last night?”
“Damn right I remember. I didn’t kill anybody.”
“Not for lack of tryin’.”
The man got a cunning look on his narrow face.
“I remember you said you was a Texan, too,” he went on. “You know good and well that down in Texas a man can let off a little steam without gettin’ hisself locked up.”
“This isn’t Texas,” Bill pointed out, “and firing off a gun inside a crowded saloon isn’t quite the same as lettin’ off a little steam. You’re gonna have to sit there until the justice of the peace comes by. It’ll be up to him to decide what we’re gonna do with you.”
The cowboy held his hands to his head and groaned.
“Aw, hell! Can I at least get some coffee?”
“That we can do,” Bill said. “Mordecai?”
“I got the pot boilin’ already. How about some breakfast, mister? You want a big plate full o’ greasy eggs?”
The prisoner groaned again, closed his eyes, and let himself fall over onto his side on the bunk.
Bill grinned and told his deputy, “Now you’re just bein’ cruel to a poor, hungover hombre.”
“He’s got it comin’,” Mordecai said. “I’ll get that coffee.”
Bill’s bad leg was starting to get tired and he wanted to sit down. But before he did, he asked, “What’s your name, mister?”
The man cracked an eye open at Bill and said, “It’s Overstreet. Jesse Overstreet.”
“Well, Jesse, in a little while I’ll go let the judge know he’s got a legal matter to deal with this morning. Until then you just take it easy.”
“I’m not goin’ anywhere, am I?” Overstreet muttered.
“No, sir,” Bill said. “You’re sure not.”
Chapter 5
Thomas Gentry let fly with the lasso and watched with satisfaction as it settled over the horse’s head. The big gray stallion reared and slashed angrily at the air with its hooves. When the horse came down, Tom quickly took up all the slack in the rope and snubbed it around a sturdy post buried in the ground. The gray stood there glaring at him.
“You’ll learn,” Tom muttered as he returned the glare. “By God, you’ll learn. Or you’ll be sorry. It’s up to you.”
His father, Burkhart Gentry, leaned on the fence around the horse pen and watched with a keen, critical eye. Burk Gentry was a heavyset, bulky man with a mostly bald head under his hat and a tuft of white beard on his chin. Some days Tom felt a grudging affection for him. Other days he hated his father with a deep and abiding passion. It had been that way for as far back as Tom could remember.
“Don’t mollycoddle that horse today,” Burk rasped. “It ain’t a pet.”
“I don’t intend to,” Tom said. He got the saddle that was hanging on the fence and approached the horse carefully. He knew how the gray liked to twist around suddenly and kick with no warning.
“You shoulda been at this sooner,” Burk said.
“I’ve been busy with other things.”
“No, I mean half the mornin’s gone. You could get started on chores like this earlier if you didn’t have to ride out here from town ever’ damn day. Don’t know why you have to live in town, anyway.”
“Because Virgie likes living in town,” Tom said. “She wanted to be closer to her folks.”
Burk snorted in obvious disgust.
“No offense to that gal you married, but I wouldn’t give you two cents for those folks of hers. I don’t care how much money he’s got, Walt Shelton’s the biggest bag o’ hot air I ever did see.”
Talk about the ol’ pot calling the kettle black, Tom thought. He didn’t know why his father bothered saying things like “no offense” when Burk Gentry didn’t give a damn whether he offended anybody and never had.
Certainly he had never hesitated when it came to telling Tom that he shouldn’t marry Virginia Shelton. She was weak and pampered and not a fit wife for a Gentry, according to Burk, and Tom would be a fool to get hitched to her.
As much as he disliked his father most of the time, Tom had to admit that sometimes Burk had a point.
He got the saddle on the gray, which stood calmly at first and then exploded into frenzied motion when Tom started to tighten the cinches. He had to jump back to get out of the horse’s way. The saddle slipped and then fell off. The stallion started kicking at it and raising a cloud of dust.
“By God, that’s enough,” Tom said. He went over to the fence and picked up the long quirt he had left there. The gray was still capering around as Tom dashed in and laid the quirt across its nose in a vicious swipe.
“That’s it, boy!” Burk said. “Beat some sense into that jughead!”
The gray was far from a jughead. It was a fine animal, just too high-spirited. Tom wished sometimes there was another way to break it, but he didn’t know of any.
Anyway, when the anger welled up inside him like it was today, laying into the bastard with the quirt felt good, mighty good. He slashed at the gray again and again, leaving bloody stripes on the sleek hide, until the horse finally calmed down and stood there quivering slightly. The stallion’s nostrils flared wide, and Tom would have sworn he saw an almost human hatred in its eyes.
“That’s the way,” Burk said. “You got to make ’em afraid of you. That’s the only way to get what you want in this world. Make the varmints who’re in your way afraid of you.”
Tom wasn’t sure the horse was afraid of him. It was more like the animal had realized the best thing to do was just bide its time.
Tom was doing sort of the same thing where Virgie was concerned. The time was coming for him to let her know that he was aware of what she was up to. Then she’d be sorry.
But not yet.
Tom tossed the quirt aside and picked up the saddle and blanket. He got them on the gray again, and this time the horse stood for having the cinches tightened.
“There. You can stand there for a while and get used to it,” Tom told the horse. He turned toward the gate.
“You might break that horse one of these days, if you stay with it long enough,” Burk said as Tom left the corral. “If I was you, I’d handle that woman of yours the same way. Make her do what you want. There’s plenty of room in the house. Ain’t no reason you should live in town instead of out here.”
“It’s what Virgie wants,” Tom said dully.
Burk’s disgusted snort was all the response he needed to make.
The Gentry horse ranch was five miles southwest of Redemption. Burk and his sons Tom, Thurmond, and Tobias Gentry raised the finest horses in this part of the state. Thurm and his wife Sue lived here on the ranch, as did Toby, the unmarried youngest of the Gentry brothers. Tom was the only one who had left home, much to his father’s displeasure.
Six months earlier, when he was getting ready to marry Virginia Shelton, he had assumed that he would just move her into the sprawling Gentry ranch house as Thurm had done with Sue. As Burk said, there was plenty of room.
But Virgie had sprung a surprise on him, saying that there was a really nice little house in Redemption they could buy, and it was only a couple of blocks from her parents’ house. Her father, who had a bushel basket of money because of the successful furniture stores he owned in Topeka and Wichita, would help them buy the house, Virgie said.
Why somebody who was rich would want to live in a little town like Redemption, Tom didn’t know. Walter Shelton hadn’t grown up here or anything like that, nor had his wife Clarissa. But they built one of the biggest, fanciest houses in Redemption and moved in with their beautiful blond daughter, and from the first time Tom Gentry laid eyes on her, he knew he wanted to marry her.
It had taken a few months to get Virgie to feel the same way, but once Tom set his sights on something, he usually got it.
He and Burk climbed onto the porch and sat down in the shade. Tom took one of the cane-bottomed chairs, but Burk had a specially made rocker that woul
d support his weight.
Going after the gray with the quirt like that had caused Tom to work up a sweat. He took his hat off and ran his fingers through his thick, damp, wildly curling dark hair.
There was a time when Virgie had liked to run her fingers through his hair, Tom thought…before she had turned cold and hostile and stopped touching him at all.
And that was right after Ned Bassett came to town.
Tom shoved the thought of Bassett out of his mind. He had already let his temper get the best of him once this morning, and he didn’t want it to happen again. He told himself not to even think about how he had followed Virgie to Bassett’s house the night before, after she thought he was sound asleep in the spare bedroom where he’d taken to spending his nights. He had beaten her back to the house and was in bed pretending to be asleep when she slipped past the door of his room. She thought she was getting away with it.
She would find out differently…once he’d figured out what he wanted to do.
“Well, how’s things in town?” Burk asked.
“How the hell would I know?”
“You live there.”
“Yeah, but I’m either out here, riding back and forth, or sleeping. Virgie runs the house. I don’t have much to do with the folks in town.” Tom paused. “Although there is a new saloon, just been open a couple of weeks. Owned by a woman.”
“A woman, you say?” Burk shook his head. “Mark my words, no good’ll ever come of lettin’ a woman own a business. It just ain’t proper.”
“Well, I guess it’s not too bad if it’s a saloon or a whorehouse.”
“Hmmph. What would you know about whorehouses?”
More than you think I do, old man, Tom thought. Since Virgie’d turned her back on him, he had visited Miss Alvera Stanley’s house a few times, when the need was too strong to ignore.
“Anyway, the place is called the Prairie Queen,” Tom said. “I’ve heard it’s nice, but I haven’t been there.”
“Good. Keep your mind on business, I always say.”
Tom would try, but more and more these days, his business was figuring out how he would take his revenge on Ned Bassett and his own cheating trollop of a wife.
Chapter 6
Judge Kermit Dunaway, Redemption’s justice of the peace, was a thick-bodied man in late middle age, with a beefy, jowly face and thinning, rust-colored hair. He wore a brown tweed suit and a brown vest that stretched tight over his ample belly, and an old-fashioned beaver hat perched on his head. He peered through the bars at Jesse Overstreet and asked, “What are the charges against this miscreant, Marshal?”
“Well, he fired off a couple of shots in the Prairie Queen Saloon, Your Honor,” Bill said.
“In self-defense?”
“Not unless you figure he was tryin’ to fight off the bellyful of whiskey he’d guzzled down.”
“Was anyone injured?”
Bill shook his head.
“He came close to Jed Abernathy, that teamster, and Glenn Morley, Miss Hudson’s bartender, but the only damage was to a bottle of whiskey that got broke by a bullet.”
Overstreet had been standing on the other side of the bars as Bill and Judge Dunaway discussed his case. His eyes were downcast, but they came up now as Bill spoke.
“Maybe I lost my head when I took a shot at the fella who spilled beer on me, but that damn bartender tried to stove in my head with a bungstarter, Judge,” he said. “If tryin’ to plug him before he could take another swipe at me ain’t self-defense, I don’t know what is.”
Dunaway frowned and asked, “Was the other shot fired first?”
Overstreet licked his lips. He still looked hungover and sick.
“Well, yeah,” he admitted.
“Then the bartender was simply trying to protect his employer’s customers and property, thus mitigating any claim of self-defense on your part because of your prior actions.”
Overstreet looked confused.
“Once you pulled the trigger the first time, whatever else happened was on your head,” Bill explained.
Looking at the floor again, Overstreet muttered, “That don’t hardly seem fair.”
“I’d advise you not to question my rulings, young man,” Judge Dunaway said. “I could find you guilty of contempt of court, as well as disturbing the peace.”
“Sorry, Judge.”
“Very well. Are there any more pertinent facts to add, Marshal?”
Bill shook his head and said, “Nope, that’s about the size of it.”
“Then I find the defendant guilty as charged and levy a fine in the amount of twenty dollars, his release pending the payment of said sum.”
“Twenty—” Overstreet looked stricken. “What if I can’t pay, Judge?”
“Then I’ll sentence you to thirty days in jail, the standard sentence for disturbing the peace.”
Overstreet put his hands to his head and groaned.
“I can’t sit in here for thirty days,” he said. “I’ll go loco!”
“I don’t want you sittin’ here, either,” Bill told him. “The town’s got to feed you as long as you’re locked up. If you’ve got the twenty dollars, I think you should pay it. And I happen to know you’ve got it, because we cleaned out your pockets and all your belongin’s are locked up in my desk.”
“All right, all right,” Overstreet said with a surly glare. “It don’t seem right, though. I didn’t even get a trial.”
“This was a fair and legal hearing, all that’s required for a misdemeanor charge,” Judge Dunaway said.
“If I say to take the twenty bucks outta my poke, I can get out of here?”
“Right away,” Bill said.
“Do it, then.”
Bill and Dunaway left the cell block. Bill unlocked the desk drawer where he’d put Jesse Overstreet’s belongings, which included a gold double eagle, six dollar bills, a handful of smaller change, a Barlow knife, tobacco and papers, a dozen .45 cartridges, a turnip watch with a dented cover, and a woman’s gold ring attached to the other end of the watch chain. Bill wondered idly if the ring had belonged to Overstreet’s mother or sister or somebody else.
He picked up the double eagle and handed it to the judge.
“I’ll add this to the town coffers,” Dunaway said. “You can release the boy.”
Bill picked up the key ring from the desk and returned to the cell block as Dunaway left the office. Mordecai was off doing something else; Bill didn’t know exactly what. But the old-timer would be back to take a nice long siesta during the afternoon.
The key rattled in the lock as Bill turned it. He swung the cell door open and told Overstreet, “You’re free to go.”
The cowboy said, “You know, there was somethin’ else damaged in that ruckus that you didn’t say nothin’ about, Marshal.” He touched the bruise on his forehead. “You bounced my head off the bar pretty good. And my arm hurts where that bartender hit me with the bungstarter, too.”
“You could have it a lot worse, Jesse.” Bill used his thumb to point toward the office. “Let’s go get your stuff.”
Overstreet picked up his belongings from the desk and stowed them away in his pockets. He checked everything carefully as he handled it.
“Don’t worry, nobody stole anything,” Bill assured him. “I’m not that kind of lawman.”
“Can’t blame me for bein’ suspicious. Everybody knows most Kansas lawmen are crookeder’n a dog’s hind leg.”
That was the prevailing attitude among Texas cowboys, Bill knew, since he’d shared it for a long time. There was some justification for it, too, he supposed, recalling the two star packers who’d caused so much trouble in Redemption when he first came here.
“What about my gun?” Overstreet asked.
Bill opened another drawer in the desk and took out a coiled gun belt and holstered revolver.
“It’s unloaded,” he said as he set the gun on the desk. “Keep it that way as long as you’re here in town. I wouldn’t mind knowin’ h
ow long that’s gonna be.”
“Are you runnin’ me out of town?” Overstreet asked with narrowed eyes.
“Not officially, but I don’t reckon you have any friends in these parts, which means there’s not really any reason for you to stay, is there?”
“You came up from Texas and stayed here. Maybe I want to do that same. There are spreads around here where a good hand could get a ridin’ job. I can drive a wagon, too, or maybe ride shotgun on the stagecoach.”
Bill had a hunch that Overstreet was just being contrary, but he said, “If you’re really thinking about settlin’ down around here, you’d be smart not to get drunk again. You get too touchy and proddy when you’re drunk.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Overstreet sneered as he buckled on the gun belt. “You’re startin’ to make me ashamed of bein’ a Texan, Marshal. What the hell happened to you, anyway? You forget what it’s like to be a real hombre?”
Bill pointed at the door.
“Get out.”
“I’m goin’.”
Overstreet turned toward the door. Before he got there, it opened. Mordecai started to step inside the office but stopped and moved back so that Overstreet could go past him. The cowboy gave him a glare, too, then stalked off.
“Judge Dunaway fine him for disturbin’ the peace?” the deputy asked as he came into the office and closed the door behind him.
“Yep. A double eagle’s worth.”
“You tell him to light a shuck outta here?”
“Not in so many words,” Bill said, “but I strongly advised that he move on.”
“Huh. Hardheaded galoot like that, best advice mighta been a good swift kick in the butt. You think he’ll leave or hang around and cause trouble?”
“Only one way I know of to find out,” Bill said. “Wait and see.”
Chapter 7
Caleb Tatum rode into Redemption just past the middle of the morning, along with Dave Belton and Chico Flynn. They brought their horses to a stop in front of a big building with a sign on the front proclaiming it to be Monroe Mercantile. As the three men swung down from the saddles, Tatum glanced along the street and spotted a trio of familiar figures lounging in front of the hotel.
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