about. Perhaps I do belong in a cage.”
“Cobb’s paid his fee,” Kinman said. “Time for you to pay yours.”
Nick nodded as his face shifted into an expression that was the coldest thing the bounty hunter had ever seen. “Maybe it is,” Nick said. “But I’ll be damned if a bastard like you will be the one to collect.”
Kinman’s instincts were good enough to know what was coming. He just wasn’t fast enough to do anything about it.
Nick brought up his gun, aimed, and fired from the hip in less time than it took to blink an eye. His modified Schofield barked once to send a round up into Kinman’s chin that dug a tunnel that opened at the top of his skull.
The bounty hunter’s arm was bent midway up to take a shot of his own, his finger clenching around the trigger, and that shot went into the soil near Nick’s left boot. When his back slammed against the dirt, Kinman dropped the bundle and spilled several rough diamonds to the ground.
The deputy was so startled by Nick’s lightning-quick shot that he nearly dropped the rope and his pistol. To his credit, he did manage to lift his gun and point it more or less in Nick’s direction.
Ignoring the sound of approaching horses, Nick kept perfectly still…perfectly quiet…and watched until he finally saw the deputy’s eyes flicker toward the jewels scattered upon the ground.
“I don’t want to shoot you, boy,” Nick warned.
“But…but I saw what you did.”
“Kinman was the murderer. He killed those women in that house. Ask your marshal what he found in there. Or, better yet, go see for yourself.”
The deputy shook his head. “I know who you are. I saw what you did.”
The other horses were getting closer. It had taken them a while to pinpoint the location of Nick and the deputy, but they seemed to have narrowed down the general direction.
“Well, now,” Nick said with a sly grin. “Looks like we’re going to have to work something out.”
Less than a minute later, Marshal Eaves and his other two deputies rode up with their guns drawn. They surrounded Nick in a matter of seconds and took aim the moment they saw him standing amid the two bodies.
Eaves was a tall man in his early sixties who wore a battered felt hat that might have been older than his other two deputies put together. The gun he carried was a newer-model Colt, however, showing that the marshal at least had his priorities straight.
“Don’t you move a muscle,” Eaves said. “Where’s my other deputy?”
“He’s gone,” Nick replied.
Eaves couldn’t take his eyes off of Lester’s body, which lay facedown in the dirt. Nodding to one of his deputies, he said, “Go check that one there. That other body looks like Alan Kinman.”
The deputy climbed down from his horse without once taking his aim away from Nick. He circled his target cautiously until his boots nearly tapped the side of Lester’s head. Kneeling down and taking a closer look at Lester’s face, the deputy stood upright and got away from the corpse. “It ain’t Jim.”
“You know who it is?” Eaves asked.
After thinking for a moment, the deputy shook his head. “Don’t think I’ve ever seen him.”
Eaves looked to Nick. “Is that one of the boys who lived with Wesley and Pat?”
Nick nodded. “He was their cousin.”
“Well, he’s dead now. So’s Kinman and everyone who lived in that house. Even the ladies were gunned down like dogs. What’ve you got to say about that?”
“Me and Kinman were after the bounty being offered for Wesley and his cousins,” Nick replied with a shrug. “One of the men tried to kill me, so I shot him. Kinman shot up the rest of that house.”
The marshal showed Nick a humorless grin. “That’s mighty handy. What about that dead man lying there?”
“Kinman shot him, too.” Looking up so his eyes met the marshal’s, Nick added, “That bounty hunter was one hell of a shot.”
So far, both deputies had been content to keep their mouths shut and watch the marshal. When Eaves seemed to be at a loss, the deputy still on his horse said, “He’s carrying a gun, Marshal.”
“Go on and get it from him, Chuck.”
Chuck climbed down to walk past the first deputy. Unlike the other deputies, Chuck held his gun in a steadier hand. His eyes didn’t have the unchecked energy in them that made him look like he would act without thinking first. He stopped well out of Nick’s reach and kept his gun trained on him.
Nick held up his hands, palms out, so everyone could get a good look at the mangled remains of his fingers. The deputies winced slightly, but the marshal didn’t flinch. When Chuck snatched the pistol away from Nick, he looked as if he’d been forced to pick up a cow pie.
“This thing’s barely even a gun,” Chuck said.
The marshal was quick to reply, “Take it from him anyway, and step back so we can tie his hands.” Looking at Nick, he said, “You’re coming with us, mister. What’s your name?”
“Nicolai Petkus.”
The marshal took the Schofield that was handed over to him, and the two deputies tied ropes around Nick’s wrists and ankles. “I ain’t never heard of a Nicolai Petkus.”
“I suppose that’s a good thing,” Nick said.
“Yeah, well you’re still gonna hang for killing these folks, Nicolai.”
“Don’t I get a trial?”
“Sure do.”
Nick held his chin up and said, “Then I shouldn’t hang. There’s not one witness here who saw me kill anyone who wasn’t shooting at me first.”
The fact of the matter was that Nick would have staked every bit of that Reaper’s Fee on the fact that there weren’t any witnesses who could attest to his shooting anyone at all.
At least, he would have wagered those jewels if they were anywhere to be found.
The Reaper’s Fee was gone. Every last bit of it had disappeared, along with the sole witness to Lester and Kinman’s final seconds on this earth. In return for the Reaper’s Fee, that deputy simply had to ride far away and forget what he’d seen. Jim had been just frightened enough and just greedy enough to take Nick’s offer and start running. Nick’s faith in lawmen was sent right back down to the cellar, but at least those jewels had done some good.
Somewhere, Nick was certain Barrett was laughing his ass off at how that loot had been put to use.
Once Nick was bound tightly within those ropes, Marshal Eaves looked him in the eye and said, “I’ve got some bad news for you, Nicolai. I spoke to Kinman before and he never mentioned working with anyone. He did mention rounding up more than just Wesley and Pat, though. He must have had his sights set on someone real good, because the two dipshits who lived here weren’t even worth enough for me to come get ’em myself.”
“He must have meant him,” Nick replied, nodding toward Lester’s body. “I hear he stole a horse from a man down in Texas.”
Eaves winced at that and shook his head. “That could be. It ain’t wise to take a Texan’s horse.” Raising his voice as he looked at his deputies, Eaves announced, “All right, boys. Let’s take our prisoner to his cell.”
“He’s a damn killer,” Chuck said. “We should string him up for what he done to them ladies back there.”
“We don’t know who the hell he shot,” Eaves replied. “Wesley was a crazy asshole, so he could have done it. This ain’t ours to decide. That’s what judges are for. This man’ll get what’s coming to him once he’s on trial.”
With that, Eaves snapped his reins and rode toward the trail that led back into Hackett.
Nick didn’t put up much of a fuss as he was lifted up onto the horse that Kinman had been using. In fact, he did his best to make the deputies’ job easier by going where he was pointed, sitting where he was supposed to sit and keeping his mouth shut. Part of his brain still raced with ways to get away from the lawmen, get out of his ropes or possibly get a weapon, but Nick set all of that to the side.
Once he was tied to the saddle and bound up like a prize calf in a rodeo, Nick’s options had dwindled down far enough to put that unquiet part of his brain to rest.
The quiet did him some good.
