Redemption, Kansas

by James Reasoner

  “You won’t try to fight Norris?” When Bill hesitated in answering, she said, “You have to give me your word.”

  He nodded. “All right. I won’t try to fight Norris.”

  “Then I’ll go.”

  They went down the steps at the end of the porch and started along the regular boardwalk in front of several darkened businesses. With each step, the ball of self-disgust in Bill’s stomach grew. He couldn’t believe he had left Perry Monroe back there to face the trouble with Norris alone. It wasn’t in Bill’s nature to run away from a fight, and he sure as hell wasn’t in the habit of abandoning his friends. That was the way he thought of Monroe, whether the storekeeper returned the feeling or not.

  As they walked, with Eden holding back a little to accommodate Bill’s limping pace, Bill said, “You didn’t want me to go find the marshal because you think Porter knows what Norris is doing.”

  “How could he not know? Norris is his deputy.”

  “And you’ve known all along that Norris is collecting bribes from the business owners in town.”

  “I’ve heard rumors.” There was a bitter edge to Eden’s voice. “We’ve all heard rumors. But everybody is scared to come right out and talk about it. My father wouldn’t even tell me what was going on. I had to find out by going through his books and seeing that he’s not clearing as much profit as he ought to be. I asked him to tell me where the money was going. At first he wouldn’t do it, but finally he admitted he’s been paying off Norris to leave him alone.”

  Bill asked the question that had been dogging his brain. “What about those men who were killed?”

  “Again, it’s just rumors, but . . . there was talk that they tried to stand up to Norris. I heard that Abner Williams even threatened him with a pitchfork.”

  “I’ll bet everybody went along with whatever Norris wanted for a while after each of those murders,” muttered Bill.

  “Well, of course they did. Can you blame them?” The two of them turned a corner. Bill let Eden lead the way, since she knew where she was going. She asked, “What was going on in there tonight? Why was Norris there?”

  “To ask for more money.” Quickly, Bill told her everything he had overheard from the storeroom.

  She said, “When I came in and saw . . . saw Norris threatening my father, I knew it had to be something like that. He’s getting greedier and greedier. He’s going to bleed the whole town dry before he’s through.”

  “Folks have got to stand up to varmints like that,” said Bill. “If the whole town told Norris to go to hell, he couldn’t do a thing about it.”

  “Except start killing people. You don’t know how fast and deadly with a gun he is, or how utterly ruthless. That’s why I can’t let you fight him. He’d kill you. I don’t doubt it for a second.”

  Neither did Bill, but the feeling that he should have fought back anyway still gnawed at him.

  Hob wouldn’t have walked off and left him with Norris, the way he had walked off and left Perry Monroe. If Norris killed the old man, Bill was going to have to live with that guilt for the rest of his days, and that would be the end of any hope he might have of making a life with Eden. Love couldn’t exist side by side with such guilt. She would come to hate him, just as he would hate himself.

  “Here’s the house,” said Eden, motioning toward the neat, whitewashed structure. It was bigger than a cottage but wasn’t exactly imposing. Just the sort of place where a moderately successful businessman in a small Kansas town would live with his daughter.

  “All right, go on inside,” Bill told her. “I’ll be back in a little bit.”

  “You gave me your word you won’t try to fight with Norris,” Eden reminded him.

  “Yeah, I know.” That didn’t mean he was going to keep the promise, thought Bill. Eden might be angry with him for breaking his word, but he might just have to live with that.

  Or die with it.

  The place even had a picket fence around the front yard. Eden opened the gate but didn’t go in. She stood there watching Bill as he turned and limped back toward Main Street. He could feel her eyes on him.

  His leg ached, not too bad but more than enough to remind him that he’d been badly injured and had been laid up for a while. He had been on his feet quite a bit today, too, first looking unsuccessfully for work and then helping out in the mercantile as much as he could. His gait was slow and awkward.

  A humorless grin tugged at his mouth. Sure, he was in fine shape to be taking on a gunfighting deputy who was probably also a cold-blooded, back-shooting murderer. But there was only one way to stop the bile filling his throat, and that was to face up to the challenge awaiting him.

  When he turned the corner onto the boardwalk fronting Main Street, though, he saw a familiar figure coming toward him. Perry Monroe had put on his hat and coat, as he always did when he closed up the store and headed home. When Bill saw the storekeeper, he knew Monroe must have given in to Norris’s demands and paid the extra money to the crooked deputy. That was the smart thing to do, Bill supposed, and although he hated to admit it even to himself, he was relieved that he didn’t have to face off with Norris and try to avenge the old man.

  But what would Norris do next time? How much money would he demand when he came around again, as he inevitably would?

  Bill couldn’t answer those questions, but for tonight, at least, violence had been averted. Another killing had been prevented.

  His cane thumped against the planks as he hurried ahead to meet Monroe. He said, “Mr. Monroe, it’s me, Bill Harvey. Are you all right?”

  As if to answer the question, Monroe suddenly stumbled, let out a groan of pain, and pitched forward.

  Chapter 12

  Bill was close enough to reach out and grab Monroe’s arm as the storekeeper fell. Monroe’s weight sagged against him and threatened to knock him off his feet. Bill’s grip on the cane tightened as he braced himself. Monroe looked at him, and in the dim light filtering down the street from the windows of businesses that were still open, he saw dark blotches on Monroe’s face that had to be blood. Streaks of the stuff ran down into Monroe’s white beard.

  “Norris,” Monroe gasped. “He . . . he . . .”

  “How bad are you hurt?” asked Bill. “Are you wounded? Did he shoot you?”

  Bill hadn’t heard a shot, but maybe Norris had muffled the report somehow.

  Monroe shook his head. “Not . . . shot,” he managed to get out. “Just . . . beat up . . . Said he was gonna . . . teach me a lesson . . .”

  Monroe seemed to be a little steadier on his feet now. Bill shifted his grip so he had an arm around the older man’s waist and said, “Let’s get you home where Eden can take care of you.”

  “No!” protested Monroe. “Don’t want her . . . to see me . . . like this.”

  “I understand, but somebody needs to clean you up and make sure how bad you’re hurt. She’s the best one to do that.”

  Monroe didn’t argue. He stumbled along beside Bill with the Texan supporting him and making sure he didn’t fall.

  They made a fine pair, thought Bill. A half cripple and a beat-up old man. He hoped they wouldn’t run into any more trouble along the way, because they sure weren’t in any shape to handle it.

  Nothing happened as they slowly made their way to the Monroe house. Light showed in the windows, so Bill knew Eden had gone inside and lit the lamps. She must have pulled a curtain back and been watching for them, because as they reached the fence gate, she came out of the house and rushed toward them.

  “Dad!” she cried. “Oh, Dad, what happened?”

  “Norris,” Monroe said. “Our deputy marshal.”

  “Let’s get him in the house and get him cleaned up,” suggested Bill. “Then he can tell us about it.”

  Eden got on one side of her father and Bill on the other. Together, they helped Monroe onto the porch and into the house. In the lamplight, his face looked even worse. The bruises from the run-in with the bullwhacker Blaisdell had f
aded, but now he had new ones, plus a gash on his forehead and one on his cheek that had leaked blood down his face and into his beard.

  Bill and Eden lowered Monroe into an armchair in the parlor. Eden said, “I’ve got some hot water on the stove. I’ll go get it and a cloth. Can you watch him, Bill?”

  “Sure.” Bill nodded as he straightened.

  “No need to watch me,” muttered Monroe. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  Eden hustled off to the kitchen. When she was gone, Bill lowered his voice and asked, “Norris pistol-whipped you anyway, didn’t he?”

  “Yeah. He hit me twice. Said I’d know better than to argue next time he came to see me.”

  “He hit you even though you gave him the extra money?”

  “If I hadn’t done that, he wouldn’t have stopped with hitting me twice. He would have killed me.”

  Bill didn’t doubt it. He had seen the look in Norris’s eyes. The deputy had been primed to kill. He might have even been disappointed it hadn’t come to that.

  Eden’s footsteps returning to the parlor made both men fall silent. She bustled into the room carrying a basin of water with steam rising from it. A clean cloth was draped over her arm. She knelt beside Monroe’s chair, set the basin on the floor, and dipped the cloth in the water. Bill stepped back to give her some room. Monroe winced as Eden began to dab at the cut on his forehead.

  “Norris hit you with his gun, didn’t he?” she asked.

  “Yeah. The sight tore those gashes in my head.”

  “That son of a bitch.”

  Monroe frowned. “Here, now. There’s no call for you to use such language.”

  “I’m not a little girl,” she snapped. “Anyway, where do you think I learned that language? You raised me.”

  Even under the circumstances, that brought a wry chuckle from Perry Monroe. “True enough,” he said. “I sure did.”

  “And you can’t deny that the description is an apt one.”

  “Yeah, that’s true, too.”

  Eden cleaned the blood away from the wounds and frowned at the one on her father’s forehead. “That’s bad enough it ought to be stitched up by a real doctor.”

  “There’s not one closer than Dodge City.” Monroe glanced at Bill, who stood to the side watching. “If there was, Harvey wouldn’t be here.”

  Eden ignored that comment and said, “I’ll bandage it and sew it up so it’ll heal, but you know my stitching isn’t the neatest. You’ll have a bigger scar than you would have if it was tended to properly.”

  Monroe waved a hand. “Just do your best, girl. It’ll be fine. I’m too old and grizzled to care about anything like a scar.”

  Since Monroe was steadier and seemed to have his wits about him now, Bill decided it wouldn’t hurt anything to discuss the situation. He said, “Does anybody know whether Marshal Porter is part of this, or is it possible Norris might be doing it on his own?”

  “Porter’s never said anything to me about it. He always acts like he’s completely honest. And he’s been a good lawman as far as keeping order in the town and stopping those cattle drives from ruining us.”

  “But you remember what Mr. Hendrickson said,” Eden reminded him as she got out the needle and thread she had used on Bill. “He told several people he was going to complain to the marshal if Norris didn’t leave him alone.”

  “Hendrickson is one of the men who was killed, right?” asked Bill.

  Eden dropped the bloodstained cloth in the basin. “That’s right. He owned the bakery. He . . . he was the first one shot in the back.”

  “And you think Porter did it?”

  Monroe shook his head. “There’s no way of knowing. I don’t reckon it’d be a good idea to walk up to Marshal Porter and ask him if he’s a no-good backshooter. If he’s not, he’d be mighty insulted. And if he is . . .”

  Monroe didn’t have to finish that statement. Bill and Eden both knew what he was getting at.

  “Norris could be doing this on his own,” Eden went on,

  “but I don’t believe it. I think it’s both of them.”

  “So do I,” her father agreed.

  “What are we going to do about it?”

  They looked at Bill in surprise. “What can we do about it?” asked Monroe wincing as Eden started stitching up the cut.

  “Bill seems to think the citizens should stand up to Porter and Norris,” said Eden.

  Monroe started to shake his head again but stopped as Eden tugged the thread snug. “That’d be a good way to get dead in a hurry, just like those other fellas.”

  “Not if everybody acted together,” Bill insisted. “Get your guns and march down to the marshal’s office. Confront Porter with what Norris has been doing and see how he reacts. If he backs Norris, you’ll know he’s been crooked all along. If he’s innocent, he’ll arrest Norris, or at least run him out of town.”

  Monroe tugged at his bloodstained beard, keeping his head still this time as Eden put a knot in the final stitch. “It’s all well and good to talk about doing that, but folks’d be risking their lives if they really tried it.”

  “People risk their lives doing what’s right all the time.”

  “Not in Redemption. We’re peaceful folks here. Why do you think we hired Porter and Norris in the first place?”

  “To do your fighting for you,” said Bill, trying to keep the disgust out of his voice. He had no room for feeling superior to anybody, he told himself. Not after what had happened earlier tonight. Not after he had abandoned Monroe to whatever fate Norris had in mind for him. The fact that that hadn’t turned out to be fatal didn’t really change anything, nor did the argument that Bill had just been trying to make sure Eden was safe.

  He had turned tail and run. No two ways about it. He was a coward.

  And from the sound of what Monroe was saying, so was everybody else in Redemption.

  “You’re right, that’s why we hired them. If we’d had the gumption to stand up to you Texans ourselves, maybe we wouldn’t be in this fix. But we didn’t, and so here we are.” Monroe sighed. “I reckon we’ll just have to keep on figuring out ways to pay off Norris and still get by.”

  “Couldn’t you at least send for the county sheriff?”

  “Porter’s got a good reputation as a lawman. Who do you think a fellow badge toter would believe, us or him?”

  Monroe seemed to have an answer for everything. That was because it was easier to give up than to fight.

  “All right,” Bill said. “This is your business, not mine.” Monroe nodded. “That’s right.”

  “Anyway, as soon as Hob shows up, I’ll be leaving town.”

  Or else I’ll be going to look for him, if he doesn’t show up, Bill added to himself.

  Eden looked up at him. “You’ve made up your mind? You’re leaving Redemption?”

  He nodded and said, “That’s right.”

  What he didn’t tell her was that when he left town, he intended to ask her to go with him.

  Chapter 13

  Once Eden had finished tending to her father’s injuries, she went to the kitchen to warm up what was left of their delayed supper. Monroe said to Bill, “There’s no point in you walking all the way back to the store to sleep. We have a spare room. Eden can make it up for you.”

  “I’m much obliged,” said Bill, “but I don’t want to be any bother.”

  “No bother,” Monroe told him. “I reckon you’ll conduct yourself like a gentleman and not a wild cowboy?”

  Bill felt a flush of irritation at the question and the way Monroe had phrased it, but he shrugged it off. “You don’t have any reason to worry,” he told the storekeeper. “Not about me, anyway.”

  “Good.” Monroe sighed. “I got plenty of other worries. There are bills coming due, and paying Norris what he asked for took some of the money I had set aside for them.”

  Bill didn’t say anything. He was done arguing about what the townspeople should do.

  Supper was a somber affair. Whil
e they were eating, Monroe told Eden he had asked Bill to stay there at the house. She nodded and said, “That’s a good idea. Our spare room isn’t very big, but it’ll be more comfortable than that storeroom, I’m sure. And the walk from here to the store every day will probably help strengthen your leg. It’s healed enough that some exercise will be good for it.”

  Bill thought so, too. And Eden was right about the bed in the tiny spare room being more comfortable than the cot. He slept better than he had since coming to Redemption.

  At least, he did until the face of Zach Norris began haunting his dreams and turned them into nightmares. He couldn’t get the deputy’s evil smirk out of his head and wound up staring at the darkened ceiling while his heart pounded in his chest.

  Everything that had happened didn’t affect Eden’s talent as a cook. After an excellent breakfast the next morning, Bill and Monroe headed for the mercantile. Monroe sported fresh bandages on his head and face, along with some colorful bruises.

  “Won’t people be curious about what happened to you?” asked Bill.

  Monroe grunted. “People in this town have learned not to be too curious about anything. It doesn’t pay.”

  When they reached the mercantile, Bill went into the storeroom and emerged a moment later carrying the Colt Peacemaker he had left there the previous evening.

  “Do you have a holster to fit this?” he asked Monroe.

  The storekeeper frowned. “I’m not sure it’s a good idea for you to be carrying a gun, Harvey. A man who packs iron is always tempted to use it.”

  “And sometimes it’s a good thing he does,” Bill said.

  Monroe shrugged and gestured toward a bin on the left-hand side of the store. “Got some holsters and other leather goods in there,” he said. “Take your pick, if you can find one that suits you.”

  “I’ll pay you back.”

  “No need.” Monroe gave a humorless laugh. “Making an actual profit on this place seems to be a thing of the past.”

  Balanced on his cane, Bill rooted through the bin full of holsters and belts. He found a plain brown gun rig that was made all together. When he buckled it on, it fit perfectly around his lean, horseman’s hips, and the revolver slid easily into the holster.