The RECKONING: A Jess Williams Western (24 page)

             
“Yes.”

             
“You’re that certain?”

             
“Nothing is certain in life,” replied Jess.

             
“But you think you’re that fast, eh?”

             
“Yes.”

             
“Frank, you sure you don’t want in on this?” Spicer asked Reedy, glancing back at him, now seeming just a little unsure that he wanted to take Jess on alone after seeing Jess’s demeanor.

             
“Like I told you, Todd, I don’t agree with this job. It stunk right from the beginning. Leave it alone and let’s go back to Kansas. I’m telling you, this kid will drop you before you even know it happened. I feel it in my gut,” urged Reedy. Spicer turned his stare back to Jess who hadn’t moved except to move his gun hand into position.

             
“Well, kid. This is your last chance,” prodded Spicer. “Either you go back to Kansas with me willingly or I’ll have to pack you on a mule bent over. What do you say?”

             
“That’s just not going to happen,” he answered plainly.

             
Bounty hunters were a tough lot. They would face odds that most men wouldn’t. Most bounty hunters were pretty good with a gun and Todd Spicer was better than most. Bounty hunters were the type of men who stayed cool while facing death and Spicer was better than most at that, too. But most men just couldn’t walk away from a gunfight once they were in. It was a matter of honor. Most men would rather die and have people talk about how tough they were instead of walking away from it and having people talk about how they had turned tail and ran like a yellow dog. That kind of thing would follow a man around forever. These things, along with the thought of three thousand dollars, made Todd Spicer do what at any other moment in his life know he shouldn’t do. He had as good a sense about people as Frank Reedy did and he knew he was about to bite off more than he could chew, but he just couldn’t stop himself now.

             
Spicer went for his gun and it was a strange thing from his perspective. He felt himself reaching for his gun and even felt his thumb touch the hammer. Then, he felt a hard thump on his chest, heard a loud noise and saw a flash in front of him. He never blinked. He couldn’t understand how it happened so fast. He never even saw Jess draw his gun, yet here he was with a hole in his chest and the kid standing there with his gun pointed at him, and it was all over and he didn’t see any of it. He let go of his gun, which never even moved out of the holster. He glanced over at Steele who had a look of disbelief on his face and then he dropped to his knees, both of his hands trying to stop the blood that was now gushing from his chest. Todd Spicer finally fell face first onto the floor, dead before he hit it. Sheriff Steele, who had stood up after Spicer had been shot, sat back down again.

             
“Damn it, Jess, you ain’t natural,” said Steele, shaking his head. Reedy walked over to Spicer’s body, turned him over, and began to talk to him as if somehow he could hear him from the great beyond.

             
“I told you not to take him on, but would you listen? Hell no, you stubborn son-of-a-bitch. And now, there you are lying in your own blood, deader than dead. Damn it!” Reedy kept shaking his head in disgust as he reached into Spicer’s front pocket where he had tucked the five hundred dollars Reedy had put down on the bar. He pulled out the money along with Spicer’s five hundred and put the thousand dollars in his front pocket. He would take the money back to Carter and tell him what happened. He wanted no part of the money or Dick Carter. Then he sat down in a chair next to Spicer’s body.

             
“Sorry Sheriff, seems like you got more paperwork to do,” said Jess, as he sat down at the table. “It wasn’t my call. I didn’t want it.”

             
“I know,” replied Steele. “It seems like men just keep coming to you to get themselves killed. Hell, maybe you should become a preacher?”

             
“Now, why would I want to go and do something like that, Sheriff?”

             
“So you could read them their last rites before you kill them,” replied Steele. Jess almost smiled at that.

             
“Mr. Reedy, do you want him buried here or are you taking him back to Kansas?” asked Sheriff Steele.

             
“Hell, might as well bury him here. You
do
have a cemetery for idiots, don’t you?” he asked.

             
“Sure do,” replied Steele. “Most of the men buried there were idiots the day they died. The rest of them were drunk and stupid.”

             
“Well, just add one more to it,” said Reedy. “I’ll pay the undertaker on my way out of town. I’ll take it out of his share of the money, I think Dick Carter would say okay, not that I give a shit anyway.”

             
Jess and Steele walked out together. Jess spent the remainder of the day walking around town and asking a few townspeople if they knew anything about Beard. No one did. He had supper and checked on Gray. He went up to his room early, forgoing the saloon. Tomorrow he planned to ride out to some of the ranches to ask about Beard. He fell asleep and dreamed of little Samantha. She was throwing hay around the yard and throwing chicken eggs on the ground. Agitating Jess like usual; except she had a bullet hole in her head.

***

              Beard spent the day hanging around the Mason ranch. He had decided to go into town at night and try to ambush Jess. He even spoke with Mason’s widow to see if she would hire him on. He didn’t really want a job. It was just a ploy to show he had a reason for hanging around. He left the Mason ranch before dark and rode within a mile of Timber. He made a fire and some coffee and waited until late before he snuck into town. He wanted to make sure that most of the townspeople were in bed and out of the saloon. He planned to sneak into Jess’ room and ambush him. He would shoot him while he was sleeping and head out of town in the dark; hoping that by the time people woke and found out what had happened he would have a good head start. He hoped it would be enough time for him to hide in the hills near the small ravine he had spotted the other day.

             
It was three in the morning when Beard tied his horse up to the pole on the back porch of the hotel. Sheriff Steele had already made his last rounds and was turned in for the night. Jed was still cleaning up the saloon, but there were no paying customers in there. The last of them left over an hour ago. The desk clerk in the hotel was up in his room, asleep. Beard tried to be as quiet as he could. He went into the lobby behind the counter and checked out the names on the register. He found the name he was looking for. Jess Williams was the name next to room #201. Beard thought that almost funny since he had stayed in room #203 just the other night.

             
This hotel was like most small hotels in many small towns. Drafty, in dire need of a coat of paint and creaky, especially the floorboards. That fact had not gone unnoticed by Jess. He paid attention to many of the smallest details concerning his surroundings. He noticed that the third step going to the second floor had a squeak to it. He was also aware that the floor just five feet from his door squeaked ever so lightly when you stepped there, and he had made a mental note of the fact that the top of the door to his room stuck a little. Not enough to stop you from opening the door, but just enough that when the door was opened, the top would hold slightly so when you continued to push on the door, the top would pop open and cause the all too flimsy door to shake a little.

             
Jess never heard that third step, although Beard paused for a full minute when he hit it and it squeaked. And Jess never
consciously
heard the slight squeak of the floor by his door, although it broke a bead of sweat on Beard’s forehead. He waited for another minute or two after that one. He was standing just outside of Jess’ room, trying to hold his breath and not move. He was waiting to see if anyone heard the floor squeak before he made his move into Jess’s room. He also took this time to gather up enough courage to make his move.

             
Sometimes when one was asleep, a sound out of the ordinary sometimes wakes a person up even when you never really consciously heard the sound? That’s what the squeak outside Jess’s door was like. Jess didn’t consciously hear it, but his
subconscious
did, and his brain began giving out signals to let him know that something was awry. It didn’t wake him. It just put him on the edge of awake.

             
Now, when the door did that little shaky thing when Beard finally got the nerve to push it open, well, that was another thing. Jess was always prepared for an ambush. When he slept, he slept with his shotgun by his bed within easy reach and his pistol was right next to his right hip. He always slept on his back and he always moved the bed so that he had a clear view of the door when he opened his eyes. Those things, along with the squeaky floor and the shaky door, were what spelled bad news for Hank Beard, although Hank didn’t realize it yet.

             
Beard pushed the door and noticed that it was stuck a little at the top. He had already made the decision to open the door and even though his brain was telling his body he should stop, his body weight was already in motion and it was one of those things that you just can’t stop in time, even though you know you should. Beard threw open the door and raised his shotgun to put a load of buckshot into Jess, but things didn’t quite go the way Beard had planned.

             
Jess was awake and had his pistol trained on the door before it was open enough to see who was coming in. The next thing Jess’s eyes saw in the dim light was a shotgun barrel. That was all he needed to know. Jess’ first shot was right through that flimsy door just as it flew open and it hit Beard in his left side knocking him off balance. By then, the door was fully open and Beard was totally exposed. Jess’s second shot hit Beard in his right shoulder, which caused him to drop the shotgun as he fell against the wall a second time, this time falling on his ass. By now, Jess was standing up and hovering over Beard, trying to see in the dim light. The noise had awoken just about everybody in the hotel, including the desk clerk who was quickly coming down the hall with an oil lamp. He stopped outside of Jess’s room and called into the room.

             
“Mr. Williams,” he said, “are you okay?”

             
“Yes, I’m fine,” replied Jess. “Bring that lamp a little closer and be careful stepping over the trash.”

             
The clerk stepped inside Jess’s room and held the light up high to see the room better and gasped when he saw a large man sitting against the wall bleeding from both sides.

             
“Hold the light a little closer to his face,” asked Jess.

             
The desk clerk put the lamp as close as his shaking arm would allow him. Jess recognized the man as Hank Beard, the man he had been looking for. Jess never took his eyes off Beard and he never looked at the desk clerk. He simply said to the clerk, “Leave that lamp on the table there, and shut the door on your way out.” The desk clerk, not one to argue, especially with the young man who had already killed several men over the last few days, did what he was told and left. Hank Beard was bleeding pretty badly. His pistol was still in its holster and he thought about trying to go for it, even with a bad shoulder. He looked up at Jess.

             
“Do I know you, son?” asked Beard, lying about it.

             
“You should.”

             
“Well, I don’t,” replied Beard, still lying.

             
“So, you’re going to lie about it, too?”

             
“I ain’t lying,” spat Beard.

             
“Why’d you come in my room with a damn shotgun?”

             
“I got lost.”

             
“Lost?”

             
“Yeah, I stayed in the room two doors down from here the other day,” said Beard. “I thought I was going into my room.”

             
“There’s an old woman staying in that room tonight.”

             
“How do you know that?”

             
“I pay attention.”

             
“Well, what now?”

             
“You don’t remember me?”

             
“Remember what?”

             
“Meeting a young boy in a wagon back in Black Creek, Kansas?” Jess reminded him.

             
“Maybe,” Beard responded.

             
“Maybe right before you went to that young man’s home and murdered his family,” exclaimed Jess angrily.

             
“I don’t know if I remember that,” Beard lied. He knew what Jess was talking about. He just didn’t want to admit it.