Reaper's Fee (5 page)

“Well that asshole won’t be shovin’ anyone around anymore.”

Barrett winced slightly as he said, “That might bump up the price on our heads. He was still a lawman, after all, and you did shoot that woman.”

“I didn’t do nothing more than scratch her,” Nick said confidently. “And that was just to let folks think I was serious. Besides, what’s the problem? It worked, didn’t it?”

“Yeah. It worked.”

Ocean, California
1885

Switchback Gil sat in a chair on the boardwalk with his legs propped up on a hitching rail. One hand was draped lazily across his belly as the other reached down for a cup of water on the ground beside him. From where he sat, he could look directly across the street at the gun shop, or up and down the street in any direction to see who was coming.

Gil strained his arm a bit more to reach his cup of water. When he still couldn’t find it, he turned his head to look and see if he’d accidentally spilled it. What he found was a large figure standing beside and somewhat behind him. All he could make out was a leg and the flap of a dark coat. Before he could pull his legs down from the rail, the figure extended his arm.

“Here you go,” the scratchy voice said as he handed Gil the cup of water.

When Gil looked down, he didn’t pay much attention to the dented cup being handed to him. Instead, he focused on the gnarled, whittled-down fingers holding it. Gil got his legs down, but wasn’t able to stand up before the cup was tossed away and he was hauled up by the front of his shirt.

Nick lifted Gil from his chair and set him right back down again. Although Gil’s legs were a bit wobbly at first, he adjusted soon enough.

“You’re Nick Graves,” Gil announced.

“That’s the rumor.”

“I wanted to talk to you.”

“I know. That’s why I’m here. You want to spill it while we’re young or would you rather dance around some more?”

Chuckling uneasily and brushing himself off, Gil kept his hand upon the gun holstered at his side. Hooking his thumb toward the street, he asked, “You want to take a walk? I’d rather not do my talking where anyone can overhear.”

Nick glanced at the street and couldn’t find any strangers waiting for them. In fact, he couldn’t see much of anyone else in the area. “Sure.” Just to be safe, Nick stepped into the street and started walking in the opposite direction to where Gil had pointed.

Gil scrambled to his feet and followed him. “I wanted to ask about your friend, Barrett Cobb,” he said quickly.

Stopping in his tracks, Nick turned to him and said, “Barrett’s dead.”

“I…uh…I know. At least, that’s what I
heard.” Gil wrung his hands as he started walking again.

This time, Nick was the one who had to do the catching up. He did so with long, powerful strides and easily overtook the smaller man.

“I heard them boys in Montana got to you,” Gil said, motioning toward Nick’s hand. “Guess that rumor was true, too.”

“You asked about Barrett. What the hell do you want to know about him?” Nick growled.

Glancing around nervously, Gil hooked his thumb toward an alley. “It’d be best if we talked in pri—”

“We’ll talk right here,” Nick said in a tone that made Gil flinch. “Say what you came to say and do it quick.”

“You were his friend. Cobb’s, I mean.”

“Yeah.”

“Word is that you may be the one who gave him the Reaper’s Fee.”

Nick’s brow furrowed as he drilled straight through Gil’s skull with his eyes. “What’s that supposed to mean?” he asked, unable to recall Barrett ever using that term.

Leaning forward on the balls of his feet, Gil said, “You buried him with the money that was stolen on his last job. Some folks say you helped him steal it. Some say you were the one to bury him, since there weren’t nobody alive who’d care enough about Cobb to…well…to go through all that trouble.”

“You talk like you know an awful lot.”

Gil nodded and grinned as if he was about to reach around and pat himself on the back.

“What’s this ‘Reaper’s Fee’?” Nick asked.

“It’s just the name someone came up with for what’s supposed to be in that coffin with Barrett Cobb. You know…like the money he’d pay to the Reaper when he came a-callin’.”

Nick’s face might as well have been carved out of stone. His expression was a cold slap that knocked Gil’s grin right off his face.

“Even though I don’t believe you had anything to do with that robbery,” Gil said as he glanced down at the gun hanging from Nick’s battered holster, “my bet is that you’d know something about it. I hear you were the only man Cobb called his friend…although there are some folks who say you might have been the one to kill him.”

“Barrett was like my brother,” Nick said.

“Hell, I’d like to kill my brother every now and then. Ain’t nothing wrong with that.”

Despite everything running through Nick’s mind at that moment, he couldn’t help but look at Gil with outright confusion. “Just who the hell are you, and where the hell did you hear all of this?”

“Didn’t the lady tell you? I’m Switchback Gil.”

Nick recognized the tone in Gil’s voice, as well as the arrogant posture that meant that Gil fully expected his name to strike a chord with anyone who heard it. Seeing that proud display made Nick feel as if he were looking at a faded picture of him
self, back when he was young and full of his own brand of hellfire.

“That name don’t mean shit to me, boy,” Nick said. “Now tell me who filled your head with all of those rumors.”

“Word’s been getting around about that stash you buried. The company that owned them jewels has been out looking for them and they say you were wrapped up in the robbery.”

“Folks say I’m wrapped up in plenty of things.”

“Are they all lying?” Gil asked.

Nick didn’t respond to that right away. As the memories flooded through his mind, Nick had to stand there and let them run their course before he said, “Not all of them.”

“Then you know what I’m talking about. But that was in the past,” Gil quickly added. “A blind man could see you ain’t in any condition to be a threat no more. That’s what I was trying to tell the folks that came around talking about them jewels.”

“How thoughtful of you,” Nick said dryly.

“There ain’t many men as thoughtful as me. Most are just chasing off after the tales that are being spread without doing any scouting ahead. I hear there’s been graves dug up all the way from here to the Dakotas and everywhere in between.”

“That’s not a very wise way to go about things. Not with so many Indians in those parts.”

Gil smirked and snapped his fingers. “That’s exactly what I thought.”

“Are you going to tell me why you came out here to waste so much of my time?” Nick asked.

To Nick’s surprise, Gil actually stepped up to him and looked him squarely in the eyes. “I want you to tell me where I can find that grave. After that, I’ll be on my way and you can have all the time you need to think about how lucky you were that I found you instead of some of them others that are out there looking.”

“What others?”

“There’s a price on your head, old man. Didn’t you know that?”

Nick found himself grinning at the sound of that. Although he knew there were some gray strands in his hair and a few silvery whiskers in his beard, he hadn’t exactly thought of himself as old just yet. Then again, he could recall pinning that same moniker on men younger than himself when he’d been around Gil’s age.

If Gil had been concerned with privacy before, his own confidence had wiped that worry away. Now he stood in the street and glared directly into Nick’s eyes, bowing his shoulders like the proverbial cock of the walk. “You may have been a real bad man all them years ago,” he said. “But that was all them years ago. I’ve heard about some of the things you done from a cousin that lives up in Montana. He knows some real good stories about Nicolai Graves.”

“I barely ever hear people call me by my given
name anymore. Most folks just say Nick. That’s good to hear.”

“Glad you like it,” Gil said with a smug grin. “From what my cousin tells me, you were shot up, ran out of Virginia City and left for dead by the vigilantes up there.”

“I wasn’t the only one.”

“Not by a stretch, but you’re one of the most famous ones.”

“There was a time,” Nick said fondly, “when it would have done me good to hear that.”

Gil nodded and then took a step back so he could square his shoulders to Nick. “Yeah? Well you can look back on the old days all you want after you tell me where to find that grave.”

“Barrett was my friend. Why would I tell you something like that?”

“Because it’d be real bad for you if you didn’t.” As he said that, Gil pressed the palm of his hand against his holstered gun as the muscles in his jaw flexed beneath the skin of his face.

Nick kept his head down and his eyes on Gil. He could hear a few people walking along the street to his right, but he didn’t bother looking in that direction. It was too late to be concerned with appearances. As Nick’s hand brushed aside his coat to give him better access to his gun, he asked, “You sure you want to do it this way, boy?”

“You could just tell me what I want to know and
that’d be it. If you think I’m gonna start shaking because you got a gun strapped around your waist, you got another thing comin’. That piece of shit you got there couldn’t even kill a snake if you jammed the barrel down its mouth. Hell, the holster alone looks old enough to start rotting away if I gave it another few minutes.”

There were so many scars on Nick’s hands that he could barely feel the handle of the modified Schofield pistol. The leather of the holster was so worn and had been tooled so much that it was more like a piece of him. “Who else is going after that grave?” Nick asked. “I want names.”

“Well, it doesn’t matter if you heard of them or not. If I was you, I’d pile my things into a wagon and get out of this town, because there’s gonna be more coming around looking for you.”

“There always are.”

“Once I find them jewels, they’ll stop coming and you can live out the rest of your years in peace.”

“I can’t allow that,” Nick said calmly.

Gil cocked his head and leaned forward a bit. “What did you just say?”

“You heard me, boy. I can’t allow anyone to defile my friend’s grave. Especially not some wet-behind-the-ears prick like you.”

Gil heard that just fine. His face contorted into an angry mask and he drew in a deep breath until his chest was puffed out, pulling himself up to his full height.

Nick, on the other hand, remained in the same
relaxed posture he’d taken since the conversation had begun.

“I’m finding them jewels one way or another,” Gil said. “You can tell me where the grave is or I could get it from that pretty lady who owns that restaurant. She seemed to know all there was to know about you.”

“That’s not the path you wanna take,” Nick said calmly.

“I won’t have to if you stop strutting like you got some stones between yer legs and answer the question you were asked.”

Nick let out a discouraged breath, blinked once and then drew his gun. The inside of his holster had been tooled with curved ridges that interlocked with the grooves twisting around the barrel of his modified Schofield. When the gun was brought up, the grip shifted directly into Nick’s palm. Most men wouldn’t have much use for such a feature, but most men also had all their fingers. The modification allowed Nick to make up some of the speed he’d lost when his gun hand had been mangled. His own skill and instinct, combined with a loosened trigger, gave Nick enough speed to clear leather and fire a shot before Gil could utter one more sarcastic word.

The shot cracked through the air and punched a hole through Gil’s chest. It was a little right of center, which meant Gil was still drawing breath and able to look down as his body absorbed the impact. Although Gil had drawn his own pistol
out of pure reflex, he wasn’t able to lift his arm before Nick’s second shot drilled through his heart.

Gil’s eyes were open wide and his face bore a look of surprise that wasn’t at all unfamiliar to Nick. He’d seen that same look on plenty of other men’s faces. Seeing it now, Nick’s ears were filled with the echoes of his own youthful laughter that might have followed such an easy kill.

Nick wasn’t laughing now. Instead, he kept his gun in hand and his eyes on Gil until the other man’s legs finally buckled and he crumpled to the ground.

Looking up, Nick saw several familiar faces staring back at him. Shop owners looked through their windows and a young man driving a wagon pulled back on his reins before his horses pulled him any closer to the spot where the shots had been fired.

Nick met every one of the eyes that were watching him. Some were frightened. Some were surprised. Some were just confused. All of them were waiting for an explanation. Most folks who saw such a thing just wanted to know what the other man had done or who he was.

Rather than take time to explain himself, Nick walked away.

There wasn’t enough time for explanations.

“Someone’s going to dig up a dead body?” Catherine gasped. “Are you sure about this?”

Nick was in their bedroom, stuffing clothes into a saddlebag and nodding his head. “Pretty damn sure.”

“Someone’s going to dig up Barrett?”

“Yes and for the tenth time, yes.”

Catherine stood in the doorway with her arms folded. She blinked and then rubbed her eyes with the heel of her hand. “Sorry, but I just can’t believe someone would do that.”

“I can.”

“Why?”

“Because,” Nick said, “I’m the one who buried those jewels in the casket along with him.”

Frozen right down to the expression on her face, Catherine had to wait until she was forced to draw a breath before she could speak. “Why on earth would you do that?” she asked. “It’s not like Barrett needs the money.”

“Barrett lived to pull off those jobs of his and he
wound up dying for it,” Nick explained. “The least I could do was let him have the money since I was the one to put an end to his career.” Pausing to close his eyes for a moment, he added, “Since I was the one to put an end to him.”

“You told me about what happened between you and him,” Catherine said. “Barrett didn’t give you a choice. You had to shoot him. That was years ago, Nick. Don’t let what happened ruin you any more than it already has.”

“They’re calling it the Reaper’s Fee,” Nick said as if he hadn’t even heard what Catherine was saying. “They gave it a nice little nickname and talked it up in all the saloons. I don’t know who found out about the money or who spread this shit around, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to let a bunch of ignorant, money-hungry shit heads dig up my friend.”

“It doesn’t matter if they do.” Seeing that her words had no impact, Catherine walked over to step directly in front of Nick. “Did you hear me? I said it doesn’t matter if they do dig him up. They’re the ones who’ll have that on their souls. Not you.”

“Do you honestly believe that there’s a God in the clouds somewhere who keeps track of these things so we don’t have to?”

Catherine looked back at him and nodded solemnly. “Yes. I do.”

Just then, Nick felt like a heel for asking that question as if it was a joke. Although Catherine
made plenty of exceptions in order to live as his wife, she’d always kept her religion wrapped up securely inside of her. It wasn’t ever forced down Nick’s throat, but it was still there all the same.

“Sorry,” Nick said. “I didn’t mean it that way.”

“Yes you did, but that’s all right. I want you to tell me why you want to follow up on this so badly.”

Nick stopped what he was doing and took a moment to compose his thoughts. At first, he figured he would just give her the short version, which would be more than he would give to anyone else. Then Nick remembered that Catherine wasn’t just anyone else. The biggest difference between her and the rest of humanity was that she would actually listen to what he had to say.

“I’ve never had many friends,” Nick said, “but Barrett was one of them. I may have had to be the one to send him off, but I sure as hell won’t let someone disgrace him by digging him up and stealing what I gave to him.”

“But those jewels…they’re stolen. Aren’t they?” Catherine asked.

“Whether they’re stolen or if they belonged to his granddaddy doesn’t matter. Whether he was a thief or a preacher doesn’t matter. Whether he spent his last days shoveling dirt or trying to kill me doesn’t matter. All that matters is that he was my friend and now he’s dead. I’ve been earning my living as a mourner all these years, sending folks off to meet their Maker and carving their head
stones. The least I can do is mourn my friend and see that he rests in peace.”

Catherine didn’t say anything for a while. She reached out to rub his arm as he was talking and kept her hand on him when he was through. Now, she gave his hand a squeeze and said, “I understand.”

Nick blinked and waited for another shoe to drop. When it was clear there was nothing else coming, he asked, “You do?”

She nodded. “I may not agree, but I understand. If you’ve got to leave, then…” Catherine kept herself from finishing what she’d been saying when she heard a horse ride up to the front of the house and come to a stop.

Even before the horse had settled down, its rider slid from the saddle and landed loudly enough for the impact of his boots to be heard inside the house. “Nick? You in there?” a familiar voice called out.

Voicing the same words that were going through Nick’s head, Catherine whispered, “It’s Sheriff Stilson.”

Nick felt the old impulse to bolt, which was exactly what he would have done in his younger days when a lawman came knocking at his door. Old habits were hard to break, but Nick choked down the reflex and let out a strained breath. “Whatever I say, you just keep quiet,” he cautioned Catherine.

Catherine’s face had been neutral before, but she now looked more worried with each second that passed. “What’s the matter, Nick?”

“Stilson isn’t here for a social call.”

“Why? What happened?”

“You remember Switchback Gill?” Nick asked.

“Yes.”

“He backed me into a corner and I had to kill him.”

Catherine’s eyes closed for a second before she started to nod. “If you need to leave, you’d better do it now.”

At first, Nick was surprised. Then, he smiled and rubbed Catherine’s shoulders. “That’s awfully nice of you, but I’m going to face Stilson and tell him what happened.”

“Why not just tell him that Gil was a threat? Plenty of folks from the Tin Pan will back you up.”

As Catherine waited for an answer, Stilson knocked on the door.

“Stilson’s a good man,” Nick said quickly. “He’s helped me plenty, but…”

“Never mind,” Catherine said quickly. “You do what you need to do and get going. Just promise me you’ll come home.”

“Of course I promise.”

With that, Nick took Catherine in his arms and kissed her as if he hadn’t seen her for a year. Their mouths parted for a moment so their eyes could
take in the sight of each other, and then Nick kissed her as if he wasn’t going to see her for another year. Stilson knocked again, so Nick cut himself short and forced himself to go to the door. When he opened it, he must have still been a little flushed in the face.

“Oh,” Stilson said. “Did I interrupt anything?”

“No, Sheriff.”

“I guess you know why I’m here.”

“It’s either about the Jeffrey boys breaking those windows,” Nick replied, “or that man I shot across from Don’s gun shop.”

Chuckling despite his best attempts not to, Stilson nodded and took his hat off so he could run his hand over his balding head. “It’d be the second one. I’d like to know why I heard about it from Don before hearing about it from you.”

“The bastard made some threats that I had to check on before going through the proper chain of command.”

“He say something against Catherine?” Stilson asked.

“Not specifically, but he threatened my wife and family.”

“Why would he do something like that?”

“Because I recognized his face from a gang of thieves in the Dakotas and let him know he should think twice before starting any trouble around here,” Nick said.

“You think he was planning a robbery?”

Nick shrugged. “I don’t know if he was plan
ning anything, Sheriff. I do know I put him on a friendly notice, he didn’t like it too much, and then he decided to threaten my family.”

“When did the shooting start?”

Without flinching, Nick replied, “The second he went for his gun.”

Stilson kept his eyes on Nick for a few more seconds. His eyes were intense and calculating as he mulled over what he’d heard. Finally, he nodded and said, “Apart from the words that passed between you, I guess that matches up with what Don and the rest of them told me. I wish you would have come to me with this first, though. At the very least, you could have said something to the folks who saw you gun that fellow down. They was all plenty scared.”

“I bet they were. Sorry about that.”

As the sheriff kept his eyes on him, Nick could feel the lawman sizing him up. He’d felt it plenty of times before whenever he, Barrett and the rest of his old gang had ridden into a town, whether they were there to get something to eat or burn the whole place to the ground. In the old days, Nick might have had a few choice words to say under all that scrutiny. Now he stood there and let the other man come to whatever assumption he saw fit.

“Take a walk down there and clean up the mess,” Stilson finally said. “You are the undertaker, after all. While you’re at it, make it known who that asshole was. It’ll do folks good to know he only got what was comin’ to him. As for the rest
of it, I suppose you did what needed to be done. Every lawman gets shit tossed his way, but that don’t mean he needs to stand by and take it. If you say he went for his gun, then I believe you.”

Hearing the pause in Stilson’s voice, Nick replied, “He went for his gun, all right.”

There was no lie to be seen upon Nick’s face, so the sheriff nodded. “Then that’s that. I’ll expect you at my office to let me know when the street’s cleaned up.”

“Yes, sir.”

Stilson put his hat back on and walked to his horse. After climbing into the saddle, he tossed a wave over his shoulder and rode back to town.

After making sure the lawman was gone, Nick closed the door and turned around to find Catherine standing in the same spot where he’d left her.

“Sounds like that went pretty well,” she said from the bedroom’s doorway.

“I think it did.”

“It also sounds like you’ve got some work to do. Or were you planning on heading out before following that through?”

Nick shook his head. “I ain’t about to shirk my duties, but I’ll be leaving town after that.”

“You’re headed for the Dakotas?”

Nick nodded. “Yep. Barrett’s grave is in the Badlands.”

“What do you intend on doing once you get there?”

“I guess that depends on what I find. I’m hoping
to just take down any marker I might’ve left and see to it that nobody’s able to find that grave even if they know where to look. If I find something different…then I’ll just have to play whatever cards I’m dealt.”

“How long will you be gone?”

Nick felt his stomach clench as the answer jumped into his head. “I can’t say for certain, but it’ll be a while. It’s a long way to the Dakotas and I may have to make some odd turns to avoid cutting through too much Indian territory.”

To Nick’s surprise, Catherine smiled. She began tugging at the ribbons and strings that kept her dress cinched in tightly against the ample curves of her body. “Then maybe you should see to some of your other duties before you go. A husband can’t just leave his wife for that long without giving her something to remember him by.”

“No,” Nick said as he walked to her. “He sure can’t.”

Catherine turned within his arms and pulled him into the bedroom.

Switchback Gil was still in the street when Nick finally got around to cleaning up. Someone had draped a blanket over the body, and the bit of street traffic, walking or riding, curved around it as if Gil were a rock in the middle of the road. Nick felt a little bad, simply because his duties as an undertaker were to make certain the departed weren’t put through such indignities.

Then again, considering the kind of man Gil had been and what Nick had been doing in the meantime, the slip in professionalism was easily overlooked. Nick came along with his wagon, boxed Gil up into one of the coffins he’d made, and hauled it to his cemetery.

After spending a lifetime digging man-sized holes in the ground, Nick put Gil under a few feet of soil in no time at all. Since he knew it would be difficult to leave if he saw Catherine again, he decided against taking his wagon back and simply left it next to his workshop at the edge of the cemetery.

Nick saddled up Kazys, the younger of his two horses, and unhitched Rasa from the wagon. After scratching the older girl behind the ears, he led the horse in the direction of his house and gave her a smack on the rump. She would be able to find her way home.

As he watched, Nick couldn’t help but be a little jealous.