by Adam Brady
The barkeeper glanced anxiously toward the curtain at the end of the room. Halliday followed his glance and saw Rogan had paused in front of the covering.
“Who’s back there?” Halliday asked quietly. “Would it be Bob Rudder, by chance?”
The barkeeper’s mouth gaped open. He seemed reluctant to answer.
“All you have to say is yes or no,” Halliday told the man softly.
“I think so.”
“Then it might be a good time for you to step outside for a breath of fresh air.”
The barkeeper nodded and started for the door. He stopped twice on the way, apparently meaning to speak, but each time he thought better of it.
Rogan grabbed at the curtain and held it for a moment before he jerked it aside.
Melissa’s beautiful, shocked face was the first thing Halliday saw from across the room, but his eyes cut quickly to the three men with her.
“Come on out of there,” Rogan was saying to the girl. “Whatever you think of me, I just can’t let you ruin yourself this way.”
The three seated men scowled up at him, one of them starting to get out of his chair and another setting his glass down so quickly that the contents splashed over his hand.
Even at a distance, Halliday could see that the third man was the dangerous one, a man with an untroubled smirk on his bony face.
“What right have you to follow me like this?” Melissa snapped. “Get out of here before they kill you like you deserve.”
“You know him then?” asked the man who was obviously the gunman in the bunch.
He rested his hand lightly on the butt of his pistol, and he was leaning forward as if to cover his draw.
“Not by choice,” Melissa said. “I told you, Bob, I came alone. Mr. McPhee wants to see you. He wants to hire you to get the man that killed your brother.”
Rudder glanced at his friends, and then he set his eyes on Finch Rogan, and shifted slightly in his chair. The banker stood his ground and finally said;
“Melissa, I just want to talk to you—that’s all.”
The woman picked up her glass, elevated it in Rudder’s direction as if she was toasting him, and then threw the stinging contents into Rogan’s face.
When he stumbled back blindly, Rudder laughed and made a grab for him. He hit him twice before Rogan was able to raise his fists, but by then the man’s companions had him covered with their guns.
Rogan was as surprised as anybody when Halliday said behind him;
“Don’t get too hasty, gents.”
The three men turned to study him, and Melissa screamed;
“He’s the one, Bob! That’s the man who killed Wes!”
“Back off,” the killer said to his two friends. “This one’s mine.”
The only man to move was Finch Rogan, and he made a lunge for Bob Rudder. One of the other two jerked his gun up and fired before anyone knew what was happening.
The bullet took Rogan in the side. As he staggered back, Halliday knocked him to the floor for his own good and fired two shots with nothing more than a split-second between them.
The man who had fired on Rogan snapped back in his chair with blood spurting from the hole in his throat. His companion’s head bobbed sharply, his shattered jaw and broken teeth gleaming through the bloody wound in his cheek.
Melissa was screaming on one shrill, continuous note of terror and madness as she cringed and tried to shield herself from the spraying blood. As she threw herself sideways, she knocked Rudder off-balance.
Deliberate as a target-shooter, Halliday lined up his gunsights. The acrid gunsmoke was still thick in the curtained alcove, but Halliday’s shot was true, just nicking the lobe of the gunman’s right ear.
Rudder clapped his right hand instinctively to his ear, but his left hand shot down to his second six-gun and he fired up at Halliday through the holster, both shots going wide.
Halliday’s next bullet tore along the left side of Rudder’s face, drawing blood from the ragged gash.
Rudder was cursing as he struggled to get to his feet and draw, but this time Halliday’s bullet cut a bloody part in his hair.
Rudder’s head flopped back against the wall with a loud thud, the six-gun dropping from his hand.
Melissa had stopped screaming now, and she was looking down at Rudder in white-faced horror. Then she whirled, glaring at Halliday with a snarl of rage that distorted her pretty features.
“All right!” Melissa hissed. “If none of these fools is good enough to get you, I’ll do it myself!”
Halliday started walking slowly toward her. She backed away but caught her foot on the corpse of the throat-shot man who had slid to the floor as the blood pumped from his body. She hit the wall so hard that she let out a gasp and put her hand back to steady herself.
Flinging a chair out of his way, Halliday went to Rogan. When he got close to him, he could see that the man’s face was shining with a thin sheen of sweat. The banker looked up at Halliday and said;
“Can you take a look at this? I can’t turn around to see how bad it is ...”
“Maybe it’s not as bad as it feels,” Halliday told him gently.
“Maybe it’s worse,” Rogan said with a lopsided grin.
Halliday pulled back Rogan’s coat and shirt, mopping the welling blood away with the shirttail.
“I’m no doctor,” Halliday said, “but it looks to me like the bullet didn’t hit any vital organs, pard. If you just set still awhile and let the bleedin’ stop, I can get a closer examination.”
Rogan grinned up at him again. He was still holding his six-gun, but now he pressed the heel of his gun hand hard against his side, his hand and the butt of the gun slippery with his own blood.
Halliday tried to lift him into a sitting position. When Rogan’s gun bumped against his ribs, he reached down to take it from the wounded man’s grasp, but suddenly Rogan twisted and pushed him away with startling strength.
“No, Melissa!” Rogan croaked. “Don’t!”
Halliday turned and saw Melissa standing in her bloodstained clothes, holding a dead man’s gun in her shaking fingers.
“Now I’m going to give you something to really remember me by,” she said hoarsely.
Halliday hesitated for just a moment, watching the six-gun waver in her awkward grip.
Then a gun roared beside him, and Rogan groaned and dropped his gun.
At first, Halliday thought that Melissa had fired, but then he saw the young woman begin to fall. She grabbed the side of the table to steady herself for a moment, still clasping the heavy gun. Then she raised her head, and the face that confronted him was no longer the one every man coveted. The blue eyes blazed with madness, the pretty face was full of hate.
She did not have the strength to lift the gun again, but she triggered twice, driving the slugs straight into the tabletop.
Beyond her, Rudder stirred and groaned but did not regain full consciousness.
It was Rogan who dragged himself painfully to Melissa and caught her in his arms as she fell. Then he simply sat on the floor, cradling her body across his knees.
Halliday saw the misery in his eyes.
“Finch,” he said slowly, “you didn’t do it—she did.”
Rogan seemed too dazed to comprehend. While he sat there rocking back and forth, Halliday collected the six-guns that littered the alcove. When he had an armful, he stepped beyond the curtain to find the young barkeeper staring at him, paralyzed with fear.
“I’ll have that drink now,” Halliday said. “Pour one for yourself, too ...”
Halliday went behind the building, picking his way carefully in the dark until he found the privy. When he emerged seconds later, the only gun he had was the one on his hip.
When he returned to the bar, he saw that the man on the other side had taken his advice. He dropped some coins on the counter and threw his drink down his throat in one swallow.
“Not bad,” he smiled pleasantly. “Better than I thought you’d h
ave in a place like this.”
“G-glad you like it, stranger,” the barkeeper faltered.
“You think you could do somethin’ for me?” Halliday asked.
The barkeeper nodded dumbly.
“Good. There’s a feller in the back room there that’s out cold. When he comes to, tell him I’ve gone to Redemption. What he wants to do about it is up to him. Will you do that for me, friend?”
“S-sure I will, mister,” the barkeeper said huskily.
Halliday heard Rogan calling him then, and he walked back to the alcove behind the curtain. The cramped space smelled of fresh blood and death. He wrinkled his nose in distaste and said;
“Finch, you’ve gotta get out of here. It’s no good stayin’ here like this.”
“Dammit, Buck,” Rogan said in a voice that sounded near exhausted. “Where the hell are you going now?”
Instead of answering, Halliday said;
“If you can stay out of Rudder’s way, I figure Red Rock is as good a place as any for you to spend the next few days. Any fool can see you’re in no shape to travel ...”
He looked down just once at Melissa’s body. It was hard to imagine that night in his room in the boardinghouse. All that silky warmth and wild passion now had become an ugly thing that needed to be hidden from view.
Ten – Redemption
For their own reasons, Harp McPhee and Luther Hahn were both worried men. Nine hours ago, Melissa had gone to Red Rock to fetch Bob Rudder. So far, there was no sign and no word of either Melissa or the gunman.
“Dammit, Luther, we can’t just sit here and wonder what’s happened,” McPhee insisted. “Why don’t you ride out and look for them?”
Hahn scowled down at his tightly-clasped hands. Ever since sunup, he had the feeling that something was wrong. The last thing he wanted was to have the feeling confirmed.
McPhee kept at him, though. Finally, he nodded and took himself as far as the street door. He was standing there trying to summon whatever it took to go further when all the premonitions started to become fact.
“Mr. McPhee,” he said heavily, “you better come here.”
With the early morning sun behind him, the lone rider was entering town by the trail from Red Rock. It seemed that his horse was following the trail with little guidance from the man in the saddle.
McPhee caught the troubled tone in the sheriff’s voice, and hurried to stand beside him. When he saw the rider coming, he frowned and asked;
“Somebody you know?”
“Yeah,” Luther Hahn said, “that’s Bob Rudder, but there’s somethin’ funny about him.”
“From the way he’s sittin’ that horse, he looks to be asleep,” McPhee said.
“Yeah ...”
“Well, don’t just stand there, go talk to him.”
“I don’t think we’re gonna like what he tells us,” Hahn said honestly.
“So what are you gonna do?” McPhee snapped. “Hide under your bed or go find out what’s happened?”
He gave the sheriff a push and went back into his office to wait. After a time, he heard Hahn’s voice from outside.
“You best let me help you down,” the sheriff was saying, and someone else began to cuss.
A few minutes later, a blood-streaked apparition filled the sheriff’s doorway, steadying himself against the doorframe as he glared at the man inside.
“Are you McPhee?” the stranger demanded in a hoarse voice.
“I am,” McPhee said carefully. “Who are you?”
The stranger walked stiffly into the room and stood there with his thumbs hooked in his shell belt, staring at McPhee with an expression that said he wasn’t pleased by what he saw.
He was tall and lean, there was dried blood on his face and more of it in his matted hair. He wore all the trappings of a gunfighter and the look of a man who had been allowed to live only because the shame of it would be worse than dying.
“I’m Bob Rudder.”
“I was afraid you’d say that,” McPhee said. “You look half-dead.” Taking the bottle from the top drawer of his desk, he held it out to the newcomer. “You better have some of this.”
Rudder accepted the bottle and took a healthy swig. Then he shook a little whiskey into the palm of his hand and rubbed it into his hair.
“I wanna get cleaned up,” he said.
“Luther,” McPhee said, “show this feller where he can wash up.”
The sheriff led the man out back, and McPhee waited for them to return, his fingers tapping on the desk.
Several minutes passed, and then Rudder slouched back into the room and dropped into a chair. The sheriff hovered in the doorway as if he was reluctant to get too close to him. In a way, Rudder looked worse now that the wounds had been bathed. Before McPhee could open his mouth, the gunman began to speak.
“From what I hear, my brother’s dead because of the mistakes you made. It ain’t gonna be like that with me. I’m gonna be the one that calls the shots from now on. You hear that?”
“Wh-what happened to you?” McPhee stammered.
“A feller by the name of Halliday, is what happened,” Rudder said. “He got the jump on me in Red Rock. Looked like that woman you sent led him straight to me.”
Rudder picked up the bottle again and took another swig.
Both McPhee and Hahn were wanting to ask him about Melissa, but something in the gunman’s manner made them hold their tongues. Finally, Rudder set the bottle down and fixed his eyes on McPhee.
“I want to know exactly what happened to my brother. Come on, spit it out.”
“Halliday got him,” McPhee was quick to say.
“I know that already,” Rudder barked. “I want to know how.”
McPhee shot a nervous glance at Hahn, who was edging forward with his hand out for the bottle.
“Stay away from me!” Rudder hissed. “I heard all about you—the crooked tin star with no guts. Now, who’s gonna start talkin’? Maybe you should do the honors ... Sheriff.”
He pronounced the final word as if it was the worst thing anyone could call a man.
Hahn nodded and tried to speak, but the words stuck in his throat. He took a deep breath and started again.
“Wes went after him. It was fair and square, and there was nothin’ between ’em when they drew, not a shade ...”
Rudder let out a bellow of outrage as he grabbed Hahn by the throat. He pushed him back over the desk with both hands around his throat and held him there, while the sheriff was kicking and struggling helplessly as his face went from red to purple.
It took all McPhee’s strength to pull Rudder off, and the gunman immediately turned on him and went for his gun.
“What the hell’s wrong with you?” McPhee shouted. “It ain’t our fault your brother’s dead. You know who did it, the same man that shot you.”
The gunman went still and stood with his head hanging.
McPhee decided that there would be no better chance to restore his authority, and he jumped at it. “I asked you to come here to do a job and let you pay Halliday back at the same time for what he did to your brother. Are you interested or not? If you want to work for me, you got to get control of yourself.”
Rudder grunted and let Hahn go.
“Except for Halliday,” McPhee added, “we got this town sewed up tight. That’s why we need you ... and you need us. It’s like Hahn said, your brother called Halliday out and lost. That don’t mean to say you have to do the same.”
Rudder glared at McPhee, but finally he wiped the spittle from his lips with the back of his hand and nodded.
Hahn struggled for breath and let out a long sigh of relief, pleased to see that McPhee was back in charge. He coughed and spluttered, then managed to say;
“We need you and you need us. We want Halliday dead, and I just want my little girl back safe and sound.”
“What girl?” Rudder asked sourly.
“Her name’s Melissa,” Hahn said quickly.
“Hallida
y killed her in Red Rock,” Rudder said dismissively.
Hahn stared at the gunman in shocked silence. Then he slumped into a chair and put his hand to his mouth.
“I don’t believe it,” he moaned.
“It’s true,” Rudder said with little sympathy.
Hahn got up so fast that the chair overturned as he ran for the door.
“Where the hell are you goin’, Luther?” McPhee called after him, but Hahn’s ears were hearing only one thing, again and again;
‘Halliday killed her in Red Rock.’
“Are we talkin’ business or not?” Rudder said to McPhee.
“Big business,” McPhee said briskly. “The way Luther’s run out on me, I need you more than ever. You’ll have to get some fellers to back you, just in case some gutless townsfolk decide this is their big chance to get brave. Time’s runnin’ short, but if I hold off foreclosin’ on the ranchers for a couple days, that ought to give you time to get settled. I figure it’s best if I make myself scarce in the meantime. That all right with you?”
“It’s fine by me,” Rudder said. “But what about Hahn?”
“He could still come in useful,” McPhee said with a sly smile. “I reckon he’s gone to look for Halliday. Why not let him find him? And who knows ... he might get lucky. It doesn’t matter a damn who gets Halliday, just as long as he’s got.”
“It matters to me,” Rudder said in a hoarse whisper. “I want him!”
The sheriff stumbled into the law office like a man in the grip of a nightmare. He leaned over his desk, supporting himself on the palms of his hands as he stared down at the familiar clutter of Wanted posters and unwashed coffee cups.
The only thing he had ever loved was dead.
It wasn’t even a death where men could come up and shake your hand in awkward sympathy and women would leave a basket of food on your doorstep out of kindness. It wasn’t that kind of death. Respectable girls don’t die in saloons.
Suddenly, it was important to Luther Hahn to know just how and where it had all gone wrong. Melissa had been a good girl by her father’s reckoning, wild and full of spirit maybe, but devoted. Hahn first noticed the change in her when she took up with Finch Rogan. Hahn had never liked the banker, but it was clear he worshipped the ground Melissa walked on and he would never do a thing to hurt her.
