“They’re all dead,” he said as he reached Palmer and Jeff.
“And Wade?” Palmer asked.
“Also dead,” Atlee said. “Sorry, Marshal.”
Palmer looked at Jeff standing alongside him and then put his arm around the boy.
“Where’d you learn to shoot like that?” he asked.
“I’ve been practicin’,” Jeff said.
“We’re going to talk about that,” Palmer told him.
CHAPTER FORTY
Palmer sat at his desk and stared. He still wasn’t sure he hadn’t murdered Johnny Brickhill just to keep him from telling Steve Atlee who he really was. He replayed the events that had taken place several days before, still unsure who had raised their gun first, him or Brickhill.
When they got back to Integrity—having buried all the dead before heading back, including Wade—Palmer had waited till he and Atlee were alone in the office.
“Why the hell did you bring Jeff out there?” he demanded.
“Marshal, it was the kid who figured out that you got took and hadn’t left on your own,” Atlee said.
“Why the hell would I leave on my own?”
“I don’t know, Marshal,” Atlee said. “I didn’t know that or why anybody would take you. But Wade and me, we were convinced by Jeff to follow you. The boy was real persuasive.”
“So you tracked us?” Palmer asked.
“Actually, Jeff did most of the sign readin’,” Atlee said. “He’s pretty good.”
“I tried to teach him what I know,” Palmer said. “I guess he put that together with what he learned from the Sioux.”
“Marshal, can I ask you . . . why did they kidnap you? Where were they takin’ you?”
Palmer had been waiting for that question.
“I still don’t know, Deputy,” he said. “I couldn’t get them to tell me anything once they dragged me out of town.”
“Did you know any of them?” Atlee asked.
Palmer still didn’t know if Atlee had heard anything Brickhill had said to him before he shot him, but he took a chance, anyway.
“No,” he said, “I never saw any of them before in my life.”
* * *
* * *
Atlee had not questioned Palmer about it again. So the only thing niggling at Palmer was, had he had to kill Brickhill? Had he done it just to keep the man quiet? If he had, that was certainly not the action of the lawman he thought he was, but rather the outlaw he once was.
The only other fallout he had to deal with from the experience was twofold. First, he had to deal with the fact that Jeff wasn’t a kid anymore. Not after he had tracked Palmer and the outlaws all that way and ended up shooting one of them.
Atlee and Wade had allowed Jeff to veer off from them, off the main road, in an attempt to locate Palmer and his captors. When Jeff had heard the shots, he hurried toward them and found Palmer tied to the tree. He untied him, gave him the rifle he’d been given from the office gun rack, and drew Belle’s husband’s pistol from his belt. The boy fired one shot from that gun with deadly accuracy. Palmer still had to deal with the fact that the boy had been practicing behind his back.
Second, there was Belle. Could he ask her to marry him, knowing it would be the second time she married a man without knowing his true identity? Or could he reveal the true identities of her husband and himself to her and expect anything good to come of it?
Palmer had allowed a couple of days to go by without confronting his issues with Jeff and Belle. He was hoping for some kind of inspiration on how to handle everything, but nothing was coming.
Johnny Brickhill coming to Integrity and recognizing him was his worst nightmare. Could it happen again? Probably. Maybe he should take Jeff and just move, go farther north, make his outlaw days a more distant past—only would they be?
And maybe what he truly needed was to talk to someone about all this, say it out loud so he could hear it. At one time that would have been Wade, but he had lost his best friend. His past had gotten the bartender killed. And his past could come back again.
There were only two people in town he could talk to about any of this, and it was time to do it.
* * *
* * *
He went home and found Jeff sitting on the front porch of the house he was supposed to have been sharing with his parents and brothers and sisters. Palmer mounted the front porch and sat next to the boy.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“For what?”
“For everything I’ve put you through.”
Jeff looked at Palmer and said, “You gave me a life.”
“And you saved mine,” Palmer said.
“So we ain’t got nothin’ to be sorry for,” Jeff said, and then added, “Pa.” He would call Palmer that in front of other people, but usually not when they were alone.
“Well, you don’t,” Palmer said. “I’ve got a whole past to be sorry for.”
“But you gave up that life,” Jeff said.
“I might have, but it came back and got Wade killed. Not to mention three other men.”
“That wasn’t your fault,” Jeff said. “Pa, we got a good life here.”
“As long as nobody else from my past comes along to mess it up,” Palmer said.
“Well, you know,” Jeff said, “keep shavin’.”
That was true. Had Palmer been clean-shaven and had a haircut, Brickhill might not have even noticed him, and the three men might have moved on.
“You know, there’s still something else we have to talk about.”
“What’s that?”
“You and that gun you’ve been practicing with.”
“Aw, Pa,” Jeff said, “I just wanted to—”
“We’re going to have to get you a better gun,” Palmer went on.
Jeff brightened.
“Really?” he said.
“I’m sorry you had to kill a man at fifteen, Jeff,” Palmer said, “although I think it was my bullet that killed him.”
“Aw, Pa—”
“Come on,” Palmer said. “I promised Belle we’d be at her house for supper.”
They stood up and started walking.
“When are you gonna ask ’er to marry ya, Pa?”
“You want me to do that?”
“Well, sure,” Jeff said. “Havin’ her cook all our meals would be the only way our life here could be even better.”
Palmer cuffed the boy behind the head playfully.
“There’s a problem with that, Jeff.”
“What’s that?”
“How can I marry her when she wouldn’t know who she’s really marrying?”
“She knows who you are now,” Jeff said. “Ain’t that all that matters?”
“I don’t know,” Palmer said. “I’ve been struggling with that question.”
“What do you think would happen if you told ’er?” Jeff asked.
“I’m afraid she wouldn’t want anything to do with me,” Palmer said.
“Seems to me she likes the man you are now,” Jeff said. “Maybe she wouldn’t care about the man you once was. But what do I know? I’m just a kid.”
“And when did you get to be such a smart kid?” Palmer asked.
* * *
* * *
Supper was a happy affair, because Palmer and Jeff were back in Integrity, safe and sound. It was the first time since their return that Belle and the men were all together celebrating that fact.
When Belle went back to the stove to load up their bowls with seconds, Jeff leaned over and asked, “When are you gonna ask ’er?”
“Well, I’m not going to do it with you sitting here,” Palmer said.
“I ain’t done eatin’ yet,” Jeff said. “When I am, I’ll go out on the porch.”
“What are you
two whisperin’ about?” Belle asked as she returned to the table.
“Nothing,” Palmer said.
“Just man talk,” Jeff said.
“Oh, is that right?” Belle asked. She reached over and grabbed Jeff’s ear. “So you’re a man now?”
“He sure is,” Palmer said, but he didn’t go any further. They hadn’t told Belle everything that had happened on the trail, so she had no idea that Jeff had shot a man.
“Well,” she said, releasing his ear, “after he went out there and found you and brought you back, I guess he is.”
After they finished their second helpings, Jeff stood up and said, “I’m gonna go sit out front and . . . whittle.”
“Make sure you come back in for dessert,” Belle told him. She looked at Palmer. “When did that boy start to whittle?”
“He’s not whittling,” Palmer said. “He’s just leaving us alone for a little while.”
“Oh? Why’s he doin’ that?”
Palmer studied Belle Henderson. She had been working all day and then all evening in the kitchen. She was wearing a simple cotton dress with an apron over it. A few locks of hair had come loose from behind her head and they were hanging down over her eyes. And to Palmer, she looked radiant.
She was taking dishes from the table to the sink, so he said, “Sit for a few minutes, Belle. We need to talk.”
“Uh-oh,” she said, “this sounds serious.” She sat across from him, folded her hands on the table, and stared. “What is it?”
“I guess you know folks in town are expecting us to get married.”
“Really?” she asked. “Is that what they’re expectin’? Because I haven’t even been asked yet.”
“I want to ask you,” he said, “but there are some things you should know first.”
“I think I know all I need to know, Abe,” she said.
“My name,” he said, almost choking on the words, “it’s not really Abe—”
“Stop,” she said, holding one hand up. “If you’re gonna tell me that you changed your name to get away from your checkered past, I’ve been through that already. My first husband wasn’t named Henderson.”
“You knew that?” he asked.
“Of course I knew it,” she said. “He told me before we married, and I accepted him.”
“No matter how bad his past was?” Palmer asked.
“He was tryin’ to get away from that past and start again,” Belle said. “I think everybody’s got a right to do that, don’t you?”
“That was what I hoped,” he said.
“So if you’re gettin’ ready to tell me what a bad man you once were, don’t. If you’re gonna ask me to marry you, I’m only gonna consider the man you are now when I give you my answer. So . . . are you gonna ask?”
He reached across the table, took her hand, and asked, “Belle, will you marry me?”
“Of course I will, you silly man,” she said. “Isn’t that what the town expects?”
About the Authors
Ralph Compton stood six foot eight without his boots. He worked as a musician, a radio announcer, a songwriter, and a newspaper columnist. His first novel, The Goodnight Trail, was a finalist for the Western Writers of America Medicine Pipe Bearer Award for best debut novel. He was the USA Today bestselling author of the Trail of the Gunfighter series, the Border Empire series, the Sundown Riders series, and the Trail Drive series, among others.
Robert J. Randisi has authored more than five hundred published books and has edited more than thirty anthologies of short stories. Booklist magazine said he "may be the last of the pulp writers." He cofounded and edited Mystery Scene magazine and cofounded the American Crime Writers League. He founded the Private Eye Writers of America in 1981, where he created the Shamus Award.
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The Wrong Side of the Law Page 22
