Redemption, Kansas

by James Reasoner

His fists hammered against Porter’s face and body. Bill had been in several bare-knuckle, no-holds-barred brawls, but his recuperation had weakened him, and the blows didn’t land with as much power as they would have otherwise. Porter was an experienced fighter as well, and his fist shot up and smashed into Bill’s cheek with enough force to send him rolling across the rug on the parlor floor.

  Bill came up against the legs of a small table that sat against the wall. He grabbed the table, lifted it, and swung it down across Porter’s back, where it landed with shattering force. Porter’s face hit the floor. Bill still had one of the broken table legs in his hand. He swung it like a club, intending to bash Porter’s brains out.

  Porter rolled aside at the last second. The table leg slammed into the floor instead, sending pain shivering up Bill’s arm. Bill managed to hang on to the table leg and slashed at Porter with it, forcing the lawman to keep rolling. Porter came up on his knees and dove at Bill while the Texan was off balance from the missed swing with the table leg.

  The two of them sprawled on the rug. Porter was on top now, hooking vicious punches into Bill’s midsection. He aimed a knee at Bill’s groin. Instinct made Bill twist aside just in time to take the blow on his thigh, but unfortunately, it was his bad leg. Pain exploded through him.

  The agony he felt made his vision blurry, but he could still see well enough to see Eden attack Porter from behind, wrapping her arms around his neck and trying to drag him away from Bill. Brutally, Porter drove an elbow back into her body and knocked her away from him.

  But even though the respite had lasted only a second, that was long enough for Bill to suppress the pain. He reached up and closed both hands around Porter’s neck. He hung on tightly as he pulled Porter’s head down, while at the same time lowering his head and driving it upward. The top of his head crashed into Porter’s face and flattened his nose with a crunch of cartilage and a spurt of blood. Porter howled in pain. He tried to pull away, but Bill wouldn’t let go. Harder and harder, he dug his fingers into Porter’s throat. He was going to squeeze the very life out of the man.

  Porter wasn’t finished, though. He slammed his fist twice into Bill’s leg, and the fresh bursts of agony that resulted were bad enough to make his grip on Porter’s neck loosen. Porter tore free. Blood bubbled and streamed down his face from his ruined nose.

  He went for the shotgun again, and this time he got it. Gritting his teeth against the pain, Bill pulled himself to a sitting position to look for another weapon, and Porter was still on his hands and knees when Zach Norris suddenly appeared at the entrance to the parlor. The deputy had a gun in his hand. As the revolver swung toward Bill, Norris yelled, “I’ll get him, Frank!”

  Norris pulled the trigger.

  Porter lurched upright at the same instant, the shotgun gripped in his hands, and the bullet from Norris’s gun punched into his back. Porter jerked under the impact. His eyes widened with shock and pain. He stood there for a second, blocking Norris’s line of fire, before his mouth opened and more blood welled out to join the crimson flood from his nose. The shotgun slipped from nerveless fingers, and he pitched forward.

  Bill caught the shotgun as it fell. Porter’s body sprawled across his legs. Bill pointed the Greener toward the door. Norris leaped for cover as the twin muzzles loomed at him. Bill fired the right-hand barrel and sent a charge of buckshot slamming through the entrance and into the wall on the other side of the hallway. The shotgun’s boom was deafening.

  Porter moved a little, raising his head. His eyes rolled and bulged in their sockets as his mouth worked but no sound came out. Then his eyes rolled back even more, and his head fell forward as death claimed him.

  Bill kept the shotgun pointing toward the door with one hand while he used the other to take hold of Porter’s collar and haul the lawman’s corpse off his legs. He fought his way to his feet, stiffening his throbbing left leg under him to keep it from collapsing. He watched the parlor entrance. At the first sign of movement, he intended to fire the shotgun’s other barrel. Awkwardly, he made his way toward the hall.

  Eden was crumpled not far from her father’s motionless body. Bill wanted desperately to check on both of them, but Zach Norris was still a threat. In the brief glimpse Bill had had of the deputy, he had seen blood on Norris’s shirt. Bill already knew he had wounded Norris during their fight on the cattle trail, but obviously the wound hadn’t been a fatal one. Norris had circled back to town and come to the Monroe house, figuring he would find Bill there.

  But caught up in the heat of battle, Porter hadn’t realized what was going on and had lunged up right in the path of the bullet Norris intended for Bill. That was justice, thought Bill, the backshooter being gunned down from behind, but it didn’t end matters.

  Norris was still loose, still a deadly threat.

  Bill reached the entrance and turned the corner, thrusting the shotgun ahead of him. The hall was empty, and at the far end of it, through the kitchen, the rear door stood open. It looked like Norris had fled again, rather than face the shotgun’s second barrel.

  But Bill couldn’t be sure of that. He advanced slowly along the hall until he could see into the kitchen. He worried the shotgun blast in the parlor had damaged his hearing enough that he couldn’t hear Norris, even if the deputy was moving around. Bill lurched into the kitchen, quickly swinging the scattergun from side to side.

  No sign of Norris. Bill closed the door with his foot. He didn’t have the key to lock it, but he shoved a table in front of it. That would slow down anybody who tried to get in that way and maybe give him some warning.

  He turned and hurried back to the parlor. Eden was kneeling beside her father now, shaking him. “Dad! Dad!” she said. She looked around at Bill. “He won’t wake up!”

  Bill tried to kneel, but he lost his balance. He sat down on the floor next to Perry Monroe. “Let me take a look,” he muttered as he set the shotgun down. He took hold of Monroe’s shoulders, rolled the man onto his back, and placed a hand on his chest. After a second, he felt the steady beat of Monroe’s heart.

  “Is . . . is he dead?” asked Eden.

  Bill shook his head. His long brown hair hung in his face. He tossed his head to get it out of his eyes and said, “No, he’s alive, Eden. He’s alive.” He took hold of her hand and placed it over Monroe’s heart. “You can feel for yourself.”

  “Oh, thank God!” Eden exclaimed with a gusty sigh of relief.

  “Porter walloped him pretty hard, but I reckon he’ll come around in a little while. Are you all right?”

  Her face was wet with tears. She nodded and said, “Yes, I . . . I’m fine. It hurt when Porter hit me, and I couldn’t breathe for a minute. But I’m all right now.” She glanced at the dead lawman. “What . . . what happened to him? Did you kill him?”

  Bill realized she hadn’t seen Norris. The shooting had happened quickly, while she was in pain and trying to catch her breath.

  “No, Norris did.”

  “Norris? I thought Porter said he sent Norris after you.”

  “He did,” said Bill. “He ambushed me on the trail. But I wounded him, and he took off. He said Porter was coming after you, so I lit a shuck back here and made it to town first. Norris showed up and tried to shoot me, but Porter got in the way of the bullet.”

  A laugh edged with hysteria came from Eden’s mouth as she rocked back and forth. “Norris shot Porter? In the back?”

  Bill nodded. “Yeah.”

  Eden kept laughing, and Bill had started to wonder if he was going to have to slap her to try to bring her out of it when Monroe suddenly moaned and started moving around a little. Instantly, Eden forgot all about the ironic circumstances of Porter’s death and leaned anxiously over her father.

  “E-Eden . . .” rasped Monroe as his eyes fluttered open. “Eden?”

  “I’m here, Dad,” she said as she caught hold of his right hand in both of hers. “I’m all right, and you will be, too.”

  Bill picked up the shotgun and used
it to help him climb to his feet. His leg hurt like hell, but when he looked down at it, he didn’t see any bloodstains on his jeans. The wound caused by that brindle steer hadn’t broken open again, and the leg still worked so he knew the bone wasn’t busted, either. It just hurt.

  As he took a step toward the hall, Eden looked up from her father and asked, “Where are you going?”

  “Norris is still out there somewhere,” Bill said, “and there’s no telling what he might do. I got to find him and stop him.”

  “You can’t! You’re hurt.”

  Bill shook his head. “I set off this whole ruckus by convincing Porter and Norris they had to get rid of me and tighten the screws on the town even more. That’s why Porter came here tonight to . . . to . . . Well, he wanted to send a message to everybody in Redemption that they’d better go along with whatever he and Norris wanted, or things would get even worse.”

  “That’s not your fault,” Eden argued. “That was them, all them. They were pure evil.”

  “Norris still is,” said Bill.

  From the floor, Monroe whispered, “Let the boy . . . go, Eden. He’s the closest thing we’ve got . . . to real law . . . in Redemption now.”

  Bill hadn’t thought about it like that. Porter and Norris were still the town’s only duly sworn lawmen. Norris had killed Porter, but if Bill tracked down Norris and killed him, would that make him a murderer in the eyes of the law?

  He would just have to take his chances, he decided. Somebody had to go after Norris, and he was the only one who could do it. With Eden calling out to him to stop, to come back, he limped out of the parlor, through the foyer and the front door, and onto the porch. His step might not be firm, but his determination was.

  A lot more lights were showing in windows now, he noted as he moved through the yard and opened the gate. People had heard all the shooting from the Monroe house and had gotten up to ask themselves what was going on. They hadn’t come to investigate, though. They were still safely behind closed doors.

  He wished he had found some shotgun shells, reloaded the chamber he had emptied, and brought some spares with him. But he still had one barrel of the Greener ready to go, as well as the rounds in the Colt on his hip. That would have to be enough.

  But how was he going to find Norris? The deputy could have gone anywhere.

  A sudden burst of gunfire sounded from Main Street, and Bill knew he had the answer to that question.

  Chapter 18

  Bill hurried toward the sound of the shooting as best he could. He might not be able to get around very well for a while after this. Might even have to lay up at the Monroe house and recuperate for a few days, he thought. He could afford to do that . . . if he lived through this night of violence.

  The shots stopped as he reached Main Street. He peered along it, looking for Norris, but he didn’t see anybody moving around. The saloon was still the only building that was lit up. Bill looked at the yellow rectangle falling into the street from the saloon door, and his eyes narrowed as he saw what appeared to be a cloud of smoke or fog drifting through the light.

  It was smoke, he thought.

  Powder smoke.

  Grim lines were etched in Bill’s face as he started toward the saloon. That was where he would find Zach Norris. He was convinced of that.

  As he passed the livery stable, a voice called softly to him. “Harvey! Bill Harvey! Is that you?”

  As tightly wound as his nerves were at that moment, Bill had to make an effort not to turn and fire at the sound. Instead he controlled the impulse and said, “Yeah. Who’s that?”

  One of the double doors in front of the stable was open slightly. It swung back more and the burly figure of graybearded Josiah Hartnett appeared. He stepped out and asked in a whisper, “What’re you doin’ here? Perry said you were going to Dodge to get us some help.”

  Bill’s reply was curt. “Those plans got changed. What do you want?”

  “Deputy Norris rode by here a few minutes ago. He looked crazy, like some sort of wild animal. He went to the saloon and charged in there, and then there was a bunch of shooting.”

  Bill nodded. “I heard. Porter’s dead, and Norris knows he’s not gonna be able to run roughshod over this town anymore.”

  “Porter’s dead?” repeated Hartnett, sounding like he couldn’t believe it. “What happened? Did you kill him?”

  “No. Norris did, by accident when he was shooting at me. Norris is wounded. He tried to kill me out on the trail north of town earlier tonight.”

  “Then what’s he doing in the saloon?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe he’s planning on taking off for the tall and uncut, and he wants a stake first. The saloon is the only place open he could rob at this time of night.”

  Hartnett nodded. “Yeah, there might be quite a bit of cash in the till. Plus he could hold up all the customers, as well. You might be onto something there, Harvey.” He nodded at the Greener in Bill’s hands. “Are you goin’ after him?”

  “Yeah,” said Bill. “Somebody’s got to end this.”

  He waited a moment, thinking Hartnett might volunteer to come along with him, but the liveryman didn’t. Stifling a snort of disgust, Bill turned away.

  At that moment, a man’s body came flying through one of the saloon’s front windows with a huge crash of shattering glass.

  Bill’s hands tightened on the shotgun, but nothing else happened. The man lay on the boardwalk in front of the saloon, moaning for about a minute before he climbed laboriously to his feet and started stumbling toward Bill and Hartnett. His face and hands were covered with dark splotches of blood from cuts inflicted by the broken glass.

  The man wasn’t Norris. Bill could see him well enough to know that, although he didn’t recognize the man. As he came closer, Bill called, “Hold it.”

  The man stopped short and held up his bloody hands. “Don’t shoot! Whoever you are, don’t shoot! I’m lookin’ for that Texan. Have you seen him?”

  “That’s Benjy Cobb, the swamper,” said Hartnett. “Benjy, it’s me, Josiah Hartnett. Harvey’s right here with me.”

  The man took a couple of shaky steps closer. “You . . . you’re the Texan?” he said to Bill.

  “That’s right. Norris is in there, isn’t he?”

  Cobb groaned. “He came in and started shootin’, like he’d lost his mind. He was plumb kill-crazy. He gunned down poor Pete, the bartender, and Fred Smoot. There were some bullwhackers in there who had guns, and they tried to fight back, but Norris just shot ’em like dogs. Then he grabbed me, and I thought for sure he was gonna k-kill me, too.”

  Cobb was shaking so bad he could hardly talk. Hartnett said, “Come in the barn. I got a bottle of whiskey. That’ll settle your nerves.”

  “Wait a minute,” snapped Bill. “What did Norris do?”

  “He . . . he gave me a message.” Cobb swallowed. “A message for you. He said he wanted me to go find you and deliver it. Then he slung me through the front window.”

  “What message?”

  “That if you don’t come down there and . . . and have it out with him . . . he’s gonna burn the whole town to the ground!”

  Hartnett gasped in horror. Bill understood the feeling. Fire was the most feared disaster in frontier settlements like this, and with good reason. More than one town had been wiped off the face of the earth by an out-of-control blaze.

  Norris could do it, too. He was in a saloon, where there was plenty of fuel for a fire. All he had to do was bust a bunch of bottles of whiskey and set the rotgut ablaze. The building would burn so fiercely it couldn’t be put out, and it was right up against other buildings so the conflagration would spread without any trouble.

  “I figured he just wanted to rob the place, so he’d have some money to get away,” Bill said.

  “Oh, he emptied the till,” said Cobb. “But if you ask me, mister, what he really wants is to kill you.”

  “And if he does, he’ll take over and run things like Porter did, only
worse. Porter was bad enough, but Norris is loco.” Nobody would be safe in Redemption with Norris running rampant. Eden probably least of all. Bill took a deep breath and said to Cobb, “You go on in the barn with Mr. Hartnett. He can clean up those cuts and give you that drink of whiskey.”

  “Wha . . . what’re you gonna do?”

  “Norris is waiting for me. Reckon I’ll go see him.”

  “He’ll kill you!” said Hartnett. “He’s faster with a gun than anybody I’ve ever seen.”

  “He’s already tried to kill me twice tonight,” Bill pointed out with a faint smile. “Let’s hope the third time’s not the charm.”

  He started toward the saloon, leaving the two men gaping after him.

  All he wanted was to get close enough to Norris to put the shotgun’s remaining load of buckshot in him. Bill was no gunfighter, but a man armed with a Greener didn’t have to be.

  Norris would be expecting him to come up to the front of the saloon, and Bill didn’t plan to do that. When he came to the mouth of an alley, he ducked into it and hustled through the thick shadows to the rear of the buildings.

  He had never been in the saloon, but most businesses had a back door. He was counting on that being true here. If he could get behind Norris, he wouldn’t hesitate to blast him. That would make him a backshooter, he thought wryly, but he didn’t care. All that mattered was ending Norris’s threat, once and for all.

  The saloon was one of the few buildings in town that had an actual second story instead of just a false front. From what Bill had heard, Fred Smoot, the owner of the place, had a few girls working up there, providing a little competition for Miss Alvera Stanley’s young ladies. The second floor made it easy for Bill to tell from the back which building was the saloon.

  It had a rear door, all right, and the door was unlocked. Bill eased it open and stepped into a windowless room cloaked in stygian blackness. He felt around until his fingers brushed a stack of crates. This had to be the storeroom where Smoot kept his extra liquor.

  Carefully, so he wouldn’t knock anything over and warn Norris someone was back here, Bill made his way across the room and felt around for another door. After a moment, he found one. No light showed underneath it, so he thought it would be safe to open it. When he did so, he spotted yet another door at the end of a short hallway, on the right-hand wall. The glow of lamplight seeped around its edges and at its bottom.