The RECKONING: A Jess Williams Western (34 page)

             
“You bastard!” Taggert exclaimed. “You can’t just kill me in cold blood!”

             
“You and your dead friend both reached for iron before I did,” he barked.

             
“Yeah, but this ain’t right!” hollered Taggert.

             
“Maybe you should have been thinking that way when you were raping and killing my little sister,” refuted Jess. “Besides, who’s going to stop me?”

             
“I know a lot of people in this town,” spat Taggert, as he looked at some of the men in the saloon “You can’t just let him kill me! Stop him! Go get the sheriff!”

             
Surprisingly, no one moved. Maybe they were too afraid of Jess or maybe they were beginning to believe Taggert might be guilty of what Jess was accusing him of. Jess had one more round in his pistol. He put that round into Taggert’s left elbow tearing it up so bad that his left arm just dangled to the floor. He was bleeding profusely. Jess quickly reloaded his pistol and put it back in its holster. He reached behind and pulled out his knife. He flipped it in the air and grabbed it by the blade and threw it right at Taggert, hitting him in the groin, pinning his gonads to the floor of the saloon. Taggert let out another scream and had an excruciating look of pain contorted up on his face. “You ain’t supposed to hit a man in his privates!”

             
“Now, where have I heard that before?” asked Jess curiously. “Oh, yeah, your friend that helped you murder my family. Now you’ll have even more in common to talk about while you’re in hell together.”

             
“That one was for my mother,” Jess said, coldly. Jess walked over to where Taggert’s gun was. He picked it up.

             
“I figure this is the pistol you used to put a bullet into my little sister’s head,” Jess said with disgust. “I think it’s only fair to finish you off with the same gun, don’t you?”

             
“Just do it, you bastard! I can’t take anymore! Finish me!” screamed Taggert writhing in pain.

             
“Oh, I’ll finish you; of that you can be sure,” he promised. “But you know all this gun fighting and excitement has made me a little thirsty. I think I need a nice sip of my beer.”

             
“You go to hell, you bastard!” Taggert yelled, as he watched Jess walk back up to the bar where Harry had set down a fresh glass of beer. Jess, keeping his eyes on Taggert, set Taggert’s gun on the bar and picked up the glass and took a nice long sip. He wanted Taggert to suffer as much as he could. Taggert tried to remove the knife that had his gonads pinned to the floor, but he was losing what little strength he had from the loss of blood. Jess walked back to Taggert and just looked at him moaning in pain. It would make most men feel a little bad, but Jess felt no pity for Taggert. Not after what he had done to his family.

             
“You ready to meet your friends, Beard and Hastings?”

             
“Kiss my ass, you son of a whore!” shrieked Taggert, bloody spittle flying from his lips.

             
“Just make sure that you give Beard and Hastings my regards,” whispered Jess, as he placed the barrel of Taggert’s gun about two inches from his forehead, just above the nose.

             
As Jess pulled the trigger, he closed his eyes and all the events leading up to this point flashed through his brain. When he opened his eyes, Taggert was laying against a fallen chair, his head half blown off.
It’s over;
Jess thought to himself,
it’s finally over.

             
Jess hung his head and closed his eyes for what seemed an eternity, but in reality, it was only about ten seconds. He threw Taggert’s gun down on the floor in front of Taggert and retrieved his knife, wiping the blood off on Taggert’s pants. Then, he walked back over to the bar and picked up his shotgun and put it back in its sling over his shoulder and downed his beer. Harry refilled it quickly and Jess took a long pull from it. Ted Watkins walked over to him and ordered a beer and took a drink.

             
“Well, I guess you finished what you came here to do,” Ted remarked, looking at the dead body of Blake Taggert.

             
“I guess so. It seems strange though, as if it’s not really finished,” said Jess. “What do you think that means, Ted?”

             
“I don’t think you’re finished, Mr. Williams,” stated Ted.

             
“What do you mean?”

             
“There are a lot more Blake Taggerts out there.”

             
“Yeah, and someone has to deal with them,” he said realizing his calling. “I suppose it might as well be me.”

             
“I can’t think of anyone better suited for the job,” said Ted confidently.

             
Jess finished his beer and thanked Ted for his help. He told Ted to take the guns and holsters back to the stables and Jess checked both men for any money. To his surprise, he found over one thousand dollars between the two. He thought that odd. Most men were lucky to walk around with ten dollars in their pockets. He headed over to the sheriff’s office to check on any bounty that might be available on any of the men he had killed today.
Five men,
he thought to himself,
I’ve killed five men today and it’s not even dark out yet.
Sheriff Clancy was sitting outside his office. He had heard the shots and had already heard how Jess had killed Taggert and Deets. Word traveled fast in this town.

             
“I was hoping to see you again, Jess,” the sheriff said standing up.

             
“You had doubts?”

             
“No, not really,” he replied. “Come on in.” Jess followed Clancy into his office and the sheriff picked up a wanted poster he had on his desk.

             
“Seems like one of those three you killed over at Little’s had a bounty of two hundred dollars on his head.”

             
“Well, I’ll sure take it, Sheriff,” he said. “This bounty hunting business pays pretty well.”

             
“It does for the ones who stay alive, and not too many of them do,” cautioned Clancy.

             
“Sheriff, I found over a thousand dollars on Blake Taggert and that Deets fellow. It’s been a highly profitable day, that’s for sure.”

             
“A thousand dollars? Really?”

             
“Well, it was about fifty dollars more than a thousand, why?”

             
“I just got a wire from a small town about three days ride from here. It seems two brothers who ran a ranch together along with their wives were murdered last week. Both women were raped and killed. Luckily, their two children were staying with relatives and not home when it happened. The brothers kept their earnings at the ranch. One of the brother’s uncles says they had almost a thousand dollars saved up to buy some more cattle. I wonder if it was Taggert and Deets who took the money and killed those poor folks,” the sheriff stated.

             
“That would be my guess, Sheriff. I’ll make sure the money gets returned to the two children. I’ll have Ted Watkins take the money to them personally, along with a message that the men most likely responsible for it are dead,” he said pensively.

             
“That’s mighty generous of you, Mr. Williams,” said Clancy. “I don’t believe I’ve met a nicer fella who killed five men in one day.”

             
Jess thought about what Sheriff Clancy said. He didn’t know what to say in response so he just nodded to the sheriff and walked out. He walked to the livery and told Ted what to do with the thousand dollars. Ted promised to deliver the money right away. He sold the horses to Ted and sold the guns off to a local gunsmith that Ted knew. He shook Ted’s hand and said his goodbye. He climbed up in the saddle and nudged his horse into a walk. As he rode out of Red Rock, he thought about the men he had killed and how much money he collected in return. The way he figured it, he was a little over a thousand dollars richer and he had a pretty nice watch to boot.
Not bad,
he thought.

             
As he turned Gray’s head back toward Black Creek, Kansas his thoughts turned to the three men who had murdered his family. August of 1878 was coming to a close and it had been over two years since that horrible day. He could still remember all the details vividly, too vividly. He could also remember killing each one of the three men responsible just as vividly. His thoughts turned to Blake Taggert lying on the floor of Harry’s Place in a pool of blood, all shot up with Jess’s knife sticking out of his groin. If you looked real close at Jess, you would almost think you could see a slight hint of a smile on his lips.

***

              The ride back to Black Creek, Kansas, was a long and somber one. Jess stopped only a few times in small towns to get supplies and his visits were short and for the most part uneventful. He finally arrived back at his family’s ranch about an hour before sundown. He sat down by the grave markers under the big oak tree and told his ma, pa, and his sister they could all rest in peace now because the men who had murdered them were all dead. He noticed someone had been putting flowers on the graves.
Probably Sara and Jim Smythe,
he thought. He would go into town to visit with them tomorrow. It would be nice to see them again. He couldn’t bring himself to sleep in the house, although he took a stroll through it. He peeked inside each of the bedrooms and tried to imagine his folks sleeping quietly. He glanced at the floor where his ma was hanging that day and could still see the fading dark spot from all the blood. He cried silently, tears running down his face. It was the first time he had cried since he had left home. He swore it would be his last time.

             
He bunked down next to the gravesites that night with the big oak tree at his back. There was a slight chill in the night air and he pulled a light blanket over himself. As he lay there, his thoughts turn to his brother, Tim Sloan. He needed to find him and ask him how he knew Blake Taggert. He needed to find out if his brother knew what Taggert had done. If his brother was a killer and a bad man like Taggert, Jess would deal with him in the same way he dealt with other bad men, brother or not. He decided that would be his next mission in life. Find his brother and talk with him. He would start out by talking some more with Sara and Jim. But that was for tomorrow. Tonight, he would again sleep with the family he loved so dearly and wished he could be with once more. He would lie here next to their graves and somehow he hoped that his dreams would take him to them so he could see them and talk to them once more.

             
As he fell off to sleep he imagined he was a sheriff in a small town and he was facing off with two bad guys and…

             
That night, Jess had good dreams.

***

Epilogue

              It had been four years since Dave Walters’s new pistol and holster had mysteriously vanished from his locked gun safe. He had continued to compete in fast draw competition and he was finally in the high twenties, but he still hadn’t won the elusive title of fast draw champion. He had continued to use his old pistol and holster, not even thinking about saving up enough money to have Bob Graham build him another one. Truth be known, he was almost afraid to. He sometimes felt that it was some kind of omen having the gun vanish the way it did. It had scared the living hell out of him. The night it vanished he hardly slept. For months afterward, he just kept looking at the gun locker as if some evil spirit would come out of it and take him next. Of course, with the way his wife had been carrying on about how he lost a two thousand dollar gun and holster and she still hadn’t gotten any furniture, maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad thing.

             
He didn’t really think about it all that much now, only when he had idle time on his hands, like right now. He was traveling with his wife, Jean, heading for Yellowstone National Park. After coming out of Granite Pass, the road to Cody, Wyoming, was a little boring compared to the drive through the pass and that gave him some time to start thinking about that day. He still couldn’t figure how it could’ve happened. After all, he was sitting right in the next room watching television and he could see the gun cabinet through the bedroom door. Sure, he had gotten up a few times to get another beer and to use the bathroom, but those things took all of sixty seconds. Someone would’ve had to enter the bedroom from the window, break into the gun locker, remove the gun and holster, close the locker and make it out of the bedroom in one minute. Even if you had the combination to the safe it would take at least fifteen seconds just to spin the dial. There had been no marks or any signs of forced entry on the gun locker. No, it had to have just vanished into thin air, taken by some means not known to Dave and he wasn’t sure he wanted to know. Although he had always wondered where the gun and holster was, he never reported it to the police. When he told his shooting partner Pat about it, Pat just looked at him like he was crazy.