Redemption, Kansas

by James Reasoner

  Bill slid the gun behind his belt and thought about Zach Norris. The deputy was known to be fast on the draw, and Bill was no pistoleer. He was a good shot and if he had a little time to aim he nearly always hit what he was shooting at, but if he got in a gunfight with Norris, he would almost certainly wind up dead.

  Still, the weight of the gun behind his belt made him feel better.

  At least, it did until he thought about what Eden was liable to say if she found out he was packing iron.

  Chapter 9

  By the next morning, Bill had convinced himself he’d been acting a little loco the night before. He was hobbling around on crutches, after all, and even at his best he’d never been a gunfighter, not by any stretch of the imagination. He had absolutely no need for a shiny new Colt .44.

  But for some reason, he didn’t unload it and put it back in the cabinet, although he could have before Monroe showed up to open the mercantile. The storekeeper didn’t even have to know what Bill had done.

  Instead he slipped the Peacemaker inside the waistband of his jeans when he dressed that morning, after Eden had changed the bandages on his leg, and he wore his shirt out so it draped over the gun butt.

  Even so, it didn’t take Eden long to notice, just as he suspected would happen. She caught a glimpse of the gun as he stumped out into the store’s main room on the crutches.

  “What in the world is that?” she demanded.

  “What?” asked Bill.

  She waved in the general direction of his waist. “That!” Bill put a smile on his face. “And here I thought you were this unshockable gal who’d seen all there was to see.”

  “I don’t mean—” She broke off with an exasperated glare and a shake of her head. “You know good and well what I mean, Bill Harvey. I’m talking about that gun.”

  Behind the counter, Perry Monroe looked up. “Gun?” he said. “What gun?”

  With a shrug, Bill surrendered. He pulled up his shirt a little so Monroe could see the Colt.

  “Is that some of my merchandise?” Monroe went along the counter and stepped behind the glass-topped cabinet. “By God, it is! I must say, I didn’t expect you to steal from me, Harvey, after everything we’ve done for you.”

  “I’m not stealing the gun,” Bill insisted. “I’ll see that you’re paid for it, once Hob gets back here with my wages. I took a box of ammunition, too.”

  “But why?” Eden wanted to know.

  Monroe frowned suddenly, pursed his lips, and gave a tiny shake of his head as if he didn’t want Bill to answer that question. He must have figured out that Bill had helped himself to the Colt after Zach Norris’s visit to the store the previous evening.

  Eden was looking at him with fierce determination, and Bill knew she wouldn’t let it go until he answered her. So he said, “You know what happened yesterday. You can still see the bruises on your pa’s face, Eden. Those bullwhackers might not have been so quick to start trouble if I’d been armed.”

  “Somebody might’ve been killed, that’s what you mean,” she snapped. “It might have even been you. Haven’t enough people died in Redemption lately?”

  “I don’t know anything about that,” said Bill. “I just know that where I come from, a man stands up for himself and for his friends.”

  “This isn’t Texas. That’s what we have the law for.”

  Bill wanted to tell her the law only went so far . . . and sometimes the law was even part of the problem, as it was with Zach Norris.

  But she wouldn’t understand that. She would think he was just some wild Texan, some unreconstructed Johnny Reb.

  “Anyway, you’re no gunslinger,” she went on. “You told me that yourself.”

  “Neither were those freighters. I’m not sure they were even packing iron. They just had those bullwhips.”

  “Which would have been enough to cut you to ribbons if they’d gone after you with them.” Eden shook her head stubbornly. “No, Bill, I’m going to have to insist that you give my father that gun. I don’t want you carrying it in this store.”

  “Wait just a minute.” The sharply voiced words came from behind the counter. Monroe went on, “I reckon I’ve got something to say about this. If Harvey wants to carry a gun, it’s all right with me. I might even start carrying one myself.”

  Eden stared at her father for several seconds before saying, “That’s crazy. You’re no more a gunman than he is.”

  “You don’t know everything there is to know about me, girl. When I was a young man back in Missouri, before the war, there were some pretty rough times in those hills. I’ll bet Harvey’s seen his share of troubles, too.”

  Bill shrugged as if to agree with the storekeeper’s point.

  Eden opened her mouth to say something else, but Monroe stopped her by extending his hand toward her with the palm out. “You just hold on there,” he said. “I’m still your father, and this is still my store. You’d do well to remember that.”

  “Fine,” Eden said, her voice as chilly as a blue norther raking across the plains. “But I may not be around here as much in the future if you’re going to insist on carrying guns. I don’t want to get caught in the middle of some shoot-out.”

  “That’s up to you,” said Monroe. “I always said you didn’t have to work here any more than you wanted to.”

  Bill didn’t like the sound of it, though. He had gotten used to Eden being around, and he knew if he went even a day without seeing her, he would really miss her.

  Then he asked himself what had happened to the footloose, reckless daredevil of a young cowboy he had been until that night on the trail he had run afoul of the brindle steer. Maybe he was becoming entirely too dependent on Miss Eden Monroe.

  So he didn’t try to stop her or even say anything as she turned and walked out of the mercantile with her back stiffened in anger.

  Monroe shook his head as he watched her go. “She’ll come around once she cools off, I reckon,” he said.

  “You’ve known her a lot longer than I have,” said Bill. “Ever known her to quit being stubborn?”

  For the first time, something he’d said drew a chuckle from the old man. “Well, come to think of it, not often,” Monroe admitted. He grew serious as he went on, “That trouble with those bullwhackers isn’t the real reason you’re carrying that gun, is it, Harvey? Leastways, not the only reason.”

  Bill shrugged. “I just thought it might be a good idea.”

  “If you’re thinkin’ about Zach Norris, you’d better get that idea out of your head right now. He’s snake-quick, boy.” Monroe paused. “Anyway, he was just seeing if he could get his hands on a little extra coin. Now that he’s made his pitch and been turned down, he probably won’t try it again.”

  “You really think that’s true?” A hunch struck Bill. “How do you know he hasn’t tried the same thing with some of the other businessmen here in town? That’d help explain why nobody seems to like him.”

  Monroe shook his head. “You’d better hush up that sort of talk. Norris is a lawman, for God’s sake.”

  “Been plenty of outlaws who pinned on a star at one time or another,” Bill pointed out. He tapped his chest. “It’s what’s behind the star that matters.”

  “Yeah . . . and I’ve heard a few things, just rumors, you understand—” Monroe broke off with an abrupt shake of his head. “Look at me, standing around spreading foolish gossip when there’s work to do. You better get off your feet, Harvey. Sooner you heal up, the sooner you can get out of my storeroom.”

  “And good riddance?”

  Monroe snorted. “You said it, not me. Anyway, that trail boss of yours will be showing up any day now, and when he does it’ll be just fine with me if you’re ready to ride!”

  But the days continued to pass, and there was no sign of Hob Sanders or any other members of the crew. Bill took to walking out onto the mercantile’s front porch and lowering himself onto a bench there, so he could watch the street and see Hob riding into Redemption to reclaim h
im like a stray calf that had wandered off from the herd.

  By the time another week had passed, the stitches had been removed and the wound on Bill’s leg had scarred over. Eden declared that he could put more weight on the leg, although it would still be weak. Bill discarded the crutches and started using a cane that also came from the store. He still hobbled around, not light on his feet yet by any means, but it was a big relief getting off the crutches. He could wear regular jeans again, too, since his leg wasn’t covered with bandages anymore.

  Eden was still acting cool toward him. During that week she took care of his bad leg as well as she ever had, but they didn’t talk as much as they did before, and they didn’t joke back and forth with each other, either.

  It was almost enough to make him quit carrying the gun. Anyway, he wasn’t sure he actually needed the weapon. Zach Norris had been around the store some, but he hadn’t said anything else about collecting some extra money “for Marshal Porter.” Bill knew he hadn’t imagined the vaguely threatening tone of the deputy’s words that night, but maybe Norris had decided it wasn’t worth the trouble.

  Bill was sitting on the porch with the cane across his lap on a hot afternoon when the marshal came along the street and climbed the steps to the porch, which did double duty as the mercantile’s loading dock. He thumbed back his hat and gave Bill a friendly nod.

  “It’s starting to look like that trail boss of yours forgot about you, Tex,” he said.

  As proud as he was of being a Texan, Bill didn’t like being called Tex. Norris had picked up the habit, too, and both lawmen managed to invest the word with a certain note of scorn.

  “Hob will be back to get me,” Bill insisted. “He’s just been delayed, that’s all.”

  “Shouldn’t have taken much more than a week to get that herd to Dodge, sell it, and get back here,” said Porter. “It’s been two weeks. A day or two more’n that, actually.”

  “Like I said, he’s been delayed.”

  Porter took a pipe from his pocket and began toying with it. “Tell you what,” he said. “You’ve been livin’ off the Monroes’ charity for a while now—”

  “I’ll see to it they get paid back.” Bill’s voice was hard and angry.

  Porter grinned. “Don’t get proddy with me, Tex. I know that’s your nature, you boys who come from down there, but hear me out.”

  Bill didn’t say anything, and after a moment, Porter continued.

  “I was thinking that I could stake you. I’ll take care of what you owe Perry Monroe, and I’ll loan you enough money you can get yourself a horse. Your saddle’s still down at Hartnett’s.”

  “What’ll I do with a horse?”

  “Why, ride it back to Texas, of course,” said Porter. “Don’t you want to go home, son?”

  There was a part of him that did, of course. But to be honest, he didn’t have much waiting for him in Texas. Certainly nothing like Eden, who, even though she was peeved at him, was still the prettiest, nicest girl he had ever met.

  “If I was to take off down there on my own, then sure enough Hob would show up a day or two later, lookin’ for me.”

  Porter shrugged. “So? I’d tell him you already headed south. It probably wouldn’t take him long to catch up to you.”

  That was true enough, Bill supposed. But he had another objection.

  “If I did that, then I’d just wind up owing you instead of the Monroes.”

  “Yeah, but I wouldn’t be in any hurry for the money. You could just send it to me here in Redemption whenever you got a chance.”

  “What if you weren’t still here? I’ve heard that lawmen move around a lot.”

  Porter put the unlit pipe in his mouth, clamped his teeth on the stem, and said around it, “I’ll be here, you can count on that. My days as a drifting badge are over. I’m in Redemption to stay.”

  A harsh note in the lawman’s voice made Bill glance up at him. In a more normal tone, Porter added, “Well, you think about it, Tex. The offer’s good anytime if you want to take me up on it.”

  He gave Bill a nod and walked off, going lightly down the steps and crossing the broad, dusty street in the general direction of the marshal’s office and jail. Bill could see the squat stone building a couple of blocks away, on the other side of the street.

  Perry Monroe came out onto the porch. “Saw you talking to the marshal,” he said. “What did he want?”

  “Oh, he was just passing the time of day,” said Bill.

  But he had a feeling that wasn’t true. It was only a hunch. Maybe Porter’s offer had been genuine and he was just trying to be helpful.

  Something inside Bill told him that wasn’t the case.

  For some reason of his own, Marshal Frank Porter wanted him out of Redemption.

  Chapter 10

  With no way of knowing when or—although he didn’t want to admit it—if Hob Sanders would return to Redemption, Bill decided he couldn’t continue living on charity. He had to earn some money so he could start paying back Perry Monroe.

  That wasn’t going to be easy. He could get around pretty well, despite the weakness in his left leg that caused him to limp, but other than being a cowboy, he didn’t really know how to do any kind of job. He would have to be taught. But he was smart enough to pick up on almost anything, he told himself, if somebody would just give him a chance.

  Nobody seemed inclined to do that. People in Redemption remembered how much trouble Texans had caused in the past and they seemed to hold that against him, even though he hadn’t had anything to do with that.

  That wasn’t the only reason finding work was difficult, though.

  Since he’d been around horses all his life, Bill’s first stop was the livery stable. Josiah Hartnett was running the place mostly by himself since the still-unsolved murder of his partner, Abner Williams, a couple of weeks earlier. Bill thought that would be his best chance of getting work. He could spend the nights in the tack room to take care of latearriving customers, the way Williams had.

  But Hartnett, a burly, red-faced man with gray hair and beard, shook his head immediately when Bill introduced himself and broached the subject of a job.

  “I’m not hirin’,” said Hartnett as he forked some hay into one of the stalls. “Sorry.”

  “I wouldn’t ask for much in the way of wages,” Bill said. “You probably know I’ve been staying with the Monroes, and I’d like to start paying them back for being so generous.”

  “Yeah, I know. Eden Monroe took you in like you were a stray dog.” Hartnett’s voice made it clear he considered Bill to be on about the same social level as a stray dog, too. “But that’s her business and not mine. I’m not hirin’.”

  “I just thought you might need somebody to stay here nights, since Mr. Williams passed away.”

  Hartnett’s hands tightened on the pitchfork he held. He turned toward Bill with an angry look on his face. Bill eyed the sharp tines of the fork warily.

  “What do you know about what happened to Abner?”

  The harsh question took Bill by surprise. “Why, no more than anybody else around here, I reckon. I just know what I heard about it. Somebody shot him in the back one night.”

  Hartnett jerked his head toward the office. “That’s right. That’s where I found him, right in there. Him and me was good friends. Worst moment of my life when I saw him lyin’ there with that bloody hole in his back.”

  “Yes, sir, I expect it was.”

  Hartnett lowered the pitchfork. Bill was glad. For a second there he’d thought the liveryman was going to jab him with it.

  “Anyway, I’m not hirin’ anybody,” Hartnett went on in a leaden voice. “I got an old hostler who helps me out sometimes, and that’s enough. It’s hard makin’ ends meet these days, you know.”

  Bill didn’t really understand that. Most of the stalls in the barn were occupied, and there were other horses in the corral he could see through the open rear doors. Hartnett ought to be making decent money, especially since he
didn’t have to split the profits with a partner anymore.

  That thought made Bill’s forehead crease in a frown. He wondered if Marshal Porter or anybody else had considered the fact that Hartnett stood to gain from Williams’s death.

  But that was a loco idea, he told himself. Hartnett seemed genuinely upset by what had happened to Williams, and besides, he was a family man, Bill recalled. He had been at home when Williams was shot and doubtless his wife and kids could prove that.

  “Well, if you change your mind about the job, I’d appreciate it if you’d let me know,” Bill said.

  Hartnett grunted. “I won’t.”

  Bill limped out of the stable. His next stop was the blacksmith shop, but the smith was just as adamant as Hartnett about not hiring anybody.

  And like Hartnett, he claimed he couldn’t afford to take on any more help, despite the fact that he seemed to be backed up with his work.

  It was the same story everywhere else in Redemption. He visited every store and business except the ladies’ millinery shop . . . and he was tempted to stop there just to see if he could make it unanimous. Several merchants made thinly veiled comments about him being a Texan, but that wasn’t all of it. Without exception, they all claimed they couldn’t afford to hire more help than what they already had.

  That didn’t make any sense, thought Bill as he made his way back to the Monroe mercantile. From the looks of it, Redemption was a thriving town. Yet, to hear the citizens tell it, everybody was struggling to get by.

  Eden was behind the counter in the store. “Where have you been?” she asked as Bill came in.

  “Looking for a job,” he told her. “I’m tired of bein’ a charity case.”

  “It’s barely been two weeks since you suffered a major injury. You’re in no shape to be working.”