Redemption, Kansas

by James Reasoner

  “You’re not telling me anything I don’t already know, Miss Monroe,” Porter said with a grim heaviness in his voice. “I’ve trying to find out who’s responsible for those killin’s. Give me time, and I will; you can count on that.”

  “But how many more men will die first?”

  Porter grunted angrily and clapped his hat on his head. “I’m gonna pretend I didn’t hear you say that, miss.”

  He turned and walked out of the storeroom.

  Bill cocked an eyebrow. “Sounds like the marshal’s a mite touchy.”

  “I suppose I shouldn’t have said what I did,” Eden replied with a shake of her head. “I’m sure Marshal Porter’s trying to find the killer. I’m just not certain he’s looking in the right places.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “Nothing,” she said. “Are you finished with breakfast?”

  Bill looked at his plate, which still had food on it. “Uh, no, but I will be soon.”

  “Just set the tray on the crate next to the lamp when you’re done. I’ll come back and get it later.”

  She left the room, too. Bill ate the rest of his breakfast, but it didn’t taste quite as good now.

  The air of tension that gripped the settlement eased a little as the next few days went by, but it didn’t go away completely. From the storeroom, Bill could hear some of the talk that went on between Eden, her father, and the customers who came into the mercantile. On the first day after Abner Williams’s murder, that was all folks could talk about. Each day, the subject was less on their minds, but many of them still brought it up.

  Eden refused to talk about it or the other killings, though, whenever Bill mentioned them. She claimed she had better things to occupy her mind, but he suspected she was still brooding about the murders.

  Each day she unwrapped the bandages from Bill’s leg to clean the wound and put fresh dressings on it. Bill couldn’t see the injury all that well, since it was on the side of his leg, but Eden assured him it was healing nicely, with no sign of festering. Once again he told himself just how lucky he was.

  On the morning of the fourth day, as he finished his breakfast, he told Eden, “I want to get up.”

  She shook her head. “No, it’s too soon.”

  “You didn’t even think about it.”

  “That’s because I know it’s too soon. The wound on your leg is nowhere near healed. You’ll pull the stitches loose.”

  Bill smiled. “I’m not talking about running a footrace. I just want to get up and move around a little. If I keep lying on this cot all the time, my muscles are gonna be so weak I won’t be able to get around.”

  “You haven’t been laid up that long yet,” argued Eden.

  “It’s my leg.”

  “That I worked on to save.”

  “Does your pa have any crutches for sale in his store?” She didn’t answer. He had to ask the question again, and when he did, she replied in open exasperation, “I think there’s a set of them around here somewhere.”

  “Well, then, find them. I’ll buy them.”

  “With what? There was no money in those trousers of yours when Mr. Sanders brought you into town.”

  “Listen, Hob’ll pay you when he comes back to pick me up. However much your pa’s been out on me, Hob can take it out of the wages I’ve got coming. I don’t care if I don’t have any money left to take back to Texas with me.”

  “You were going to take your wages back with you? From what I’ve heard, you Texans like to spend all your money on debauchery in Dodge City when you get paid off at the end of a drive.”

  “I reckon a lot of the boys do that, all right,” said Bill, “but I was planning on saving up to buy a spread of my own in a few years. I might not ever be able to afford anything except some little greasy-sack outfit, but at least it’d be mine.”

  She looked at him. “You’ve never had a place of your own?”

  “Not really. I told you, my folks died when I was a kid. Their farm went back to the county for taxes. I went to live with my aunt and uncle and a whole passel of cousins. None of ’em liked me much, so I sure never felt like that was home.”

  “Where was that?”

  “Down in South Texas, between Victoria and Hallettsville. As soon as I got old enough, I took out on my own and drifted over into the Nueces country. That’s where I met up with Hob. I cowboyed for him and some of the other ranchers around there, and when he put together that consolidated herd to drive to the railhead, I asked if I could come along. He said I could.” Bill shrugged. “That’s the story of my life.”

  “I’d like to hear some more.”

  He shook his head. “No, you wouldn’t. You’re just trying to use your feminine wiles to distract me from wanting to get up and walk around a little. Next thing you know, you’ll be battin’ those blue eyes at me.”

  “You noticed I have blue eyes?”

  “How could I miss that?”

  He didn’t tell her that he had noticed her eyes first thing, along with everything else that made her so pretty.

  “Now, how about those crutches?” he went on.

  She blew out her breath and said, “You’re the stubbornest Texan I’ve ever seen.”

  Bill grinned. “You haven’t seen all that many Texans. I’m downright changeable compared to some.”

  “All right. I’ll get the crutches for you. But if you fall and tear that wound open again, don’t expect me to patch you up. You can go find somebody else to do your doctoring for you.”

  “I’ll be careful,” he promised her, although he didn’t really believe her threat. He was sure she would still take care of him, even if he reinjured himself.

  She left the room and came back a few minutes later carrying a pair of crutches. She leaned them against the wall and said, “All right, let’s get you sitting on the edge of the cot first. Carefully, now.”

  He was already sitting up. He was wearing a pair of jeans she had done some cutting on so the left leg fit over the bandages. He moved his right leg off the cot and let it sink to the floor. Eden leaned over, took hold of his splinted and bandaged leg, and picked it up, swinging it around so it stuck out straight in front of him as he sat on the cot.

  “All right, now you’re going to stand up on your right leg,” she said. “I’ll help you.”

  She moved close in front of him and bent down to slide her arms under his arms. That put her face right in front of his, and for a crazy moment he was tempted to lean forward just a little. That was all it would take for him to kiss her.

  But he had promised Eden’s father that he wouldn’t do anything improper.

  “Put your hands on my shoulders,” she said. He did so as she tightened her arms around him. She was surprisingly strong, he discovered as she lifted him.

  His right leg threatened to fold up under him when his weight came down on it. He was a mite light-headed, too. He had to clutch at her shoulders to keep from falling as he sagged against her.

  This was the closest he had been to a woman in quite a while. He hoped desperately he wouldn’t have any sort of reaction that might prove embarrassing. Being this close to her, he already felt bad enough about smelling like an old boar hog. He needed a nice cold creek to jump into and wash off. That might have the added effect of cooling off some of the feelings coursing through him, too.

  “Sorry,” he muttered, not sure what he was apologizing for. Eden could take her pick, he supposed.

  “That’s all right. Let me know when you feel steadier.”

  He stiffened his right leg under him. “I’m fine now,” he told her.

  “Hang on to me anyway.” She had put the crutches where she could reach them. She got one of them and slid the curved wooden handle under his left arm. “Rest some of your weight on that.”

  Bill did so. It felt awkward, and having the crutch pushing up under his arm was uncomfortable. But it wasn’t as bad as being confined to the cot, he told himself.

  “All right, ar
e you braced like that?” asked Eden.

  He nodded. “Yeah. Hand me the other one.”

  She took the other crutch and placed it under his right arm. He reached down and wrapped his fingers around the hand grips on both of the crutches.

  “Well, you won’t fall over, at least not to the side, as long as you hold on to them,” she said as she stepped back. “Now it’s just a matter of not falling on your face or back.” She cocked her head to the side. “How does that feel?”

  “Not too bad,” he lied. It was uncomfortable as all get-out, and he wasn’t the least bit confident he could get around using these blasted things. But he wasn’t going to let her see that.

  His left leg felt heavy and useless as it hung beside the right one. “How do I walk?” he went on.

  “You have to stay balanced on your right leg while you put the crutches in front of you,” she said. “Then you put your weight on them and sort of swing yourself forward.”

  “Like this?” He did as she said. He felt a little disoriented again, and his left leg twinged as that foot bumped the floor, but he managed to move toward the door of the storeroom.

  “That’s good,” said Eden. “You seem to have some natural balance and grace.”

  Bill grinned. “I don’t know about the grace part, but the balance probably comes from spending more time on horseback than on my own two feet the past ten years. If you don’t have good balance, you’ll have a hard time staying in the saddle, especially on some half-wild mustang.”

  He took another step with the crutches. This was easier than the first one, and he felt his hopes rise.

  But suddenly all his strength seemed to desert him. He swayed precariously on the crutches and might have fallen if Eden hadn’t been there to spring forward and catch him.

  “I knew it,” she said as she steadied him. “I knew it was too soon.”

  “I’m all right,” said Bill. “Just sort of . . . played out. Might be a good idea to sit down.”

  She helped him back to the cot. When he was lying down again, resting, he said, “Leave the crutches.”

  She snorted. “I don’t think so. You’ll get some crazy notion about getting up and walking around by yourself.” Her voice softened. “But we’ll try again later today.”

  Bill nodded. “All right. Thanks, Eden. When a fella’s always done for himself, it’s sort of hard to have to have somebody else do everything for him.”

  “I’m sure it is. You just have to be patient.”

  He didn’t have time to be patient, he told himself. Hob and the boys would be coming back from Dodge before too much longer, on their way home to Texas. He had to start getting better, faster, if he wanted to be able to go with them.

  Problem was, he thought as he looked at Eden, he wasn’t sure he wanted to go anymore.

  Chapter 7

  By the time four more days had passed, Bill was getting around fairly well on the crutches. He had regained some of his strength, too. He could walk all the way to the front of the mercantile and back to the storeroom without getting too worn out. Eating Eden’s cooking had been good for him, and he made sure she knew he felt that way.

  It had been a little more than a week since the rustlers had hit the herd. Hob and the boys might’ve lost most of a day rounding up the strays that had scattered during the stampede and its aftermath, but even so, they should have reached Dodge City by now. That meant in another day or two, they would be showing up in Redemption looking for him.

  He spent a lot of time thinking about what he would do when that happened. He was a Texan, born and bred, and like most Texans, the thought of spending the rest of his life somewhere else hadn’t ever occurred to him. That just wasn’t something he was interested in doing.

  His plans were all laid out. Work as a cowboy, save as much of his money as he could, and buy some land of his own. Then, and only then, maybe he would start thinking about trying to find some gal who might want to share those plans with him.

  A lot of cowboys had that dream. Most of them never achieved it. Most wound up broke, stove up, and hanging on as a cook or a horse wrangler or just doing odd jobs around a ranch, subsisting on the pity of the owner. For some reason, being a cowboy and saving money never seemed to go together.

  Bill was determined to be different, and he had taken the first step by signing on with Hob for the drive. Now everything had gone to hell, and he didn’t know what he was going to do. Every time he looked at Eden, he got more confused.

  For one thing, he didn’t know for sure how he felt about her. Sure, she was as pretty as the sun coming up on a spring morning, and just being around her made him feel better. She was smart, too, and had enough grit and good humor to her nature to make her interesting.

  But for another thing, he didn’t know how she felt about him. She had taken good care of him, and she seemed to like to josh around with him, sometimes in a mighty fresh manner. That didn’t necessarily mean she liked him, though. Not enough to consider, well, marrying him or even letting him court her.

  And if he stayed in Redemption, what in blazes would he do with himself? He didn’t know how to work at anything but cowboying. He sat in the store and watched Eden and her father waiting on the customers, weighing out flour and sugar, cutting fabric, selling farm implements and tools, working their way through lists and filling up boxes with all sorts of things that folks wanted to buy. Bill watched them and thought, I could do that. Then he thought, And it’d bore the hell outta me, too.

  So when he divided his thoughts on the matter into two columns and toted them all up, the reasons for going back to Texas outweighed the reasons for staying here in Kansas.

  But if he knew how Eden really felt about him, that reason by itself might outweigh all the others put together.

  That afternoon he was sitting in a chair near the potbellied stove in one of the back corners of the store when several burly, roughly dressed, bearded men came in. Since it was summer the stove wasn’t lit, but Bill liked to sit there because it was out of the way and folks didn’t pay much attention to him. Perry Monroe still glared at him from time to time, and many of the customers who came in gave him wary looks from the corners of their eyes, as if they were afraid he might start hollering and go on a rampage without any warning. After all, a Texan was about as unpredictable as a wild Indian, wasn’t he? About as savage, in the minds of these Kansans, too.

  The three strangers glanced at him as they approached the counter at the rear of the store, but that was all. Bill had seen their type before. They were freighters, bullwhackers, westbound with a long wagon train full of goods headed for New Mexico Territory and points west along the Santa Fe Trail. They stopped in Redemption to wet their whistles and get their ashes hauled, because it was a long, dry stretch for both of those activities west of the settlement.

  As far as Bill could tell, in general bullwhackers were rougher, dirtier, and more profane than any of the cowboys he had ridden up with from Texas. There was no sign on the edge of town forbidding them entrance, though. He supposed that was because they visited Redemption in smaller numbers, and they didn’t have herds of half-wild longhorns with them to cause trouble, either.

  He wasn’t sure what these three were doing in the store. Maybe they had run short of some provisions. He watched them, only idly curious, as they waited for Perry Monroe to finish tending to another customer, a sun-bonneted farmer’s wife. Eden wasn’t around at the moment.

  “Mr. Monroe, did you hear that Helen Drake had a baby last night?” the middle-aged woman asked.

  “No, ma’am, I knew she was expecting, but I hadn’t heard that the blessed event had taken place,” said Monroe. “Boy or girl?”

  “A little boy. Pudge Drake rode over and told us this morning. The Drakes are our nearest neighbors, you know.

  I thought I’d tell Wilbur to hitch up the wagon, and this evening we’ll drive over there and see if there’s anything they need. Pudge was wearing the biggest grin when he rode up on
that old mule of his.” The woman leaned closer to the counter. “You know, not to gossip, but I think he was a wee bit soused.”

  Monroe chuckled. “I’m not a bit surprised.”

  A rumble like the thunder of a distant storm came from one of the bullwhackers. He stepped up to the counter and said, “If you two have caught up on all the news, you got some payin’ customers here, Gramps.”

  The white-bearded storekeeper glared at the stranger. “I’ll be with you in just a minute, friend. Can’t you see I’m helpin’ this lady here?”

  “I can see you’re standin’ around wastin’ my time,” snapped the man, “and I’m damn sick and tired of it.”

  The woman gasped, and Monroe lifted a hand and pointed a finger at the freighter. “I run a decent place here, mister,” he said, “and I’ll thank you to keep a respectful tongue in your head. Either that or get out.”

  “Come on, Blaisdell,” said one of the other bullwhackers. “There are other stores in this town.”

  “Yeah, but I like this one.” A leering grin stretched across the sunburned, whiskery face of the man called Blaisdell. “This is the one where that pretty little blonde works. I told her last time we come through Redemption that I’d stop and say hello to her again.”

  Monroe’s face flushed with anger. “I remember you now!” he said. “You’re the varmint who made my daughter cry because of the vile things you said to her when you came in while I wasn’t here.”

  Bill’s interest had perked up as soon as the bullwhacker mentioned Eden. Now anger welled up in him, too, when he heard Monroe say the man had made her cry.

  “You three get on out of here,” Monroe went. “I don’t need any business from trash like you.”

  “You better be careful, Gramps,” warned Blaisdell. “I don’t cotton to bein’ talked to like that.”

  “I’m not your grandfather, and I’m not scared of you. Get out, or I’ll give you a thrashing!” Monroe was so mad he was shaking a little.

  He was also a blasted fool, thought Bill. Blaisdell wasn’t overly tall, but his shoulders looked almost as wide as an ox yoke and his arms were long and thick with muscle under the homespun shirt he wore. On Perry Monroe’s best day, he couldn’t have given a man like Blaisdell a thrashing.