Reaper's Fee Part 2

THREE.

Nick and Catherine walked back to the Tin Pan and stepped inside just as the barkeep was about to lock the door. She said a few words to the barkeep and then held the door open so he could leave for the night. After giving her employee a quick wave, Catherine locked the door and pulled down the shade in the front window.

Leaning against the bar, Nick reached over the top and fished out a bottle of clear liquid. He used his other hand to get a gla.s.s, poured himself a healthy dose of the liquor and took a sip. "Sometimes I think it was a mistake to stay here," he said as the vodka worked its way through his system.

"No, you always think it's a mistake to stay here," Catherine said as she leaned against the bar next to him. "It's almost to the point where I think you regret marrying me."

Nick looked into her eyes and smiled. The gesture seemed odd for features as harsh as his, but it was genuine enough. A thick beard covered his face, making his cheeks seem fuller and rounded. Cool, steely blue eyes took in the sight of her as he reached out to run a callused hand along the side of Catherine's face. "You're the only reason I'd even consider staying," he said. "You know that."

"Sure I do, but it's still nice to hear every now and then."

"Well, you just heard it."

After draining the gla.s.s, Nick set it down and reached for the bottle.

"You haven't had that much to drink in a while," Catherine said.

"You're the only place in town that bothers keeping any of this for me," Nick replied as he tapped the bottle of vodka with the edge of his gla.s.s. "I'd hate to see it go to waste. Are you going to tell me about that fellow you were talking to, or do I have to wait until you warm up to the subject?"

Catherine blinked and took a step back from the bar. Crossing her arms sternly, she said, "Sheriff Stilson must be working you awfully hard for you to be so cranky."

"He's got me walking the same rounds as before and I can't blame him for it. Even with what little he knows about me, it's a miracle he deputized me at all."

"The way you handled that bank robber who rode through here a few months ago should have been enough to convince anyone. That isaunless he came here because he knew you from your wild youth." Although she'd been kidding when she'd said that, Catherine quickly recognized the expression on Nick's face.

"Did he come here looking for you?" she asked.

Nick let a few seconds pa.s.s before he answered. "He won't be coming around here again."

"That's because he's buried in the cemetery."

"As far as Stilson knows, he is."

"What?" Catherine asked. "He isn't?"

Nick shrugged and waved the bottle as if he was about to pour. Before he could refill his gla.s.s, Catherine reached over and took the bottle from him.

"He isn't?" she repeated.

"I'm trying to live a quiet life here. Isn't that why I allowed you to talk me into wearing this ridiculous thing?"

Seeing that Nick was pointing to the badge on his chest, she replied, "That ridiculous thing earns you some respect and it puts people off your trail." She paused and shrugged before adding, "I thought it was a pretty good idea."

"It is," Nick said as he reached over to rub her cheek. "And it does put people off my trail, but that doesn't mean I'm safe from anyone else who comes through here looking for me. How long do you think it'll be before that man you were talking to finds out who I am and where I can be found most every day of the week?"

"You're out at that cemetery or your workshop more often than that parlor you run. A squirrel can't get within twenty yards of any of those places without you knowing about it." She patted Nick's hand and smiled lovingly. "Perhaps you should talk to Stilson about being a deputy in more than just t.i.tle. Itaprobably pays better, you know."

"I'm doing the only work I know," Nick said. Looking away from her, he added, "Well, the only work that won't land me in jail, anyways. Things around here have been good. I'd rather not fool with that."

"Good for the town isn't exactly good for an undertaker, which is your chosen profession. You can still do that job when it's needed, but we could use a salary that doesn't require a steady stream of people dropping over."

"It's been a while since the last funeral," Nick said. "Some of the folks around here are bound to keel over sooner rather than later." He met Catherine's eyes and smirked. "When it rains, it pours."

She wasn't amused.

"All right, so maybe I just don't like wearing this thing." With that, Nick took hold of the badge and tore it off his shirt. He looked down at it and then flipped it over to find shreds of cotton hanging from the pin behind the star. "What did that fellow want?"

"Who?"

Looking up at her, Nick said, "The fellow who you were talking to outside not too long ago. The one who scampered off the moment he saw me coming."

Catherine took a deep breath and ran her finger along the top of the bar. After pausing for a while, she realized that Nick was still waiting for an answer. "He was asking about you."

Nick straightened up as his hand immediately drifted toward the gun at his side.

Watching him go through that simple, practiced motion was almost enough to bring tears to Catherine's eyes. Under most circ.u.mstances, she looked at him the way any wife would look at her husband. There were moments when she was exasperated and moments when she wanted to laugh at him, but all of those moments were shaded by the love that flowed so easily between them.

When Nick made that subtle reach for his gun, he became the man he'd been when they'd first crossed paths. That also drew her attention to the gnarled stubs that remained of the middle two fingers on his gun hand and the pieces of his left hand that had also been torn away. Even the parts of his hands that were intact were covered in old wounds that made them look as if they'd been cobbled together from spare parts.

The gun at his side wasn't much different. It had begun as a Schofield revolver but had been restructured into something else. Its handle was whittled down to less than half its original size. Catherine had seen the gun enough to know the barrel was gnarled and grooved as well, as if it had been heated, twisted and then allowed to cool. Most people figured the gun was a cheap piece of garbage only used to fire a round at the occasional snake.

Those people would have been dead wrong.

Catherine had seen what that gun could do in the proper hands. In fact, there was only one hand for the pistol and it was the same hand that hovered over it now.

"What did he want with me?" Nick asked.

Snapping herself out of the silence that had enveloped her, Catherine replied, "He said he needed to ask you something, but didn't say what it was. I know it had something to do with a lot of money."

"How much is a lot?"

"So much that he was willing to hand over a thousand dollars as an advance if I could help steer him in the right direction."

"Are you serious?"

She nodded. "And that was without any bargaining on my part. I probably could have gotten a higher offer."

"Maybe, but collecting it would have been another matter."

"Just the fact that he offered that much with a straight face told me a lot. Or do you think it was all just a load of dung?"

Nick rubbed his chin and felt the fresh whiskers that had taken up residence there. Even through the beard, he could feel the scars and lines as if they were tracks left in freshly blown sand. "It wasn't dung," he muttered. "At least, not all of it. Even if he figured on killing you, he wouldn't have parted with that amount of money so easily. Not unless he was certain he could miss it if push came to shove."

Knowing better than to question Nick's instincts on the matter, Catherine told him, "He wanted to know where you were."

"What did you tell him?"

"To try back tomorrow. It was the best I could do with you coming up on us so fast like that. Do you think he could have been an outlaw?"

Nick chuckled coldly as he lowered his hand. "No man on the right side of the law bolts from a badge like that."

"Did he look familiar?" Catherine asked.

"Nope. I don't even know how the h.e.l.l he found me."

Catherine closed her eyes for just a bit longer than it would take her to blink. A change drifted over her face like a stray cloud pa.s.sing across the moon. "I think I may know how he found you."

"You do?"

"Back when you and Joseph Van Meter were riding together, someone came here looking for me. WellaI guess they were looking for me so they could get to you."

Nick nodded solemnly. "And they almost found you. If Sheriff Stilson hadn't covered our tracks, things might have turned out a whole lot worse."

"Well, it's my guess that whoever came looking sent a telegram about what he foundaor didn't find. Someone at that telegraph office remembered you being mentioned, and that got around to someone else."

"Jesus Christ," Nick grumbled. "I wonder why anyone even bothers with newspapers and such when there's so many G.o.dd.a.m.n gossips in this world. Are you sure that's the man who sent the message?"

"No, but he's the only one to come around after you since you put on that badge."

Nick took some of the edge from his voice when he asked, "What else did he say?"

"Not much more than that. All he kept asking was where to find you."

Backing away from the bar, Nick placed his hand upon the gnarled grip of his pistol and said, "Then I suppose I shouldn't disappoint him."

Catherine turned to face him, but didn't move any closer. "Or you could just let him go. He didn't even recognize you when he saw you, so he'll probably just leave if I don't give him anything else better to do."

"Or he might not leave," Nick said. "OraI might want to hear what he's got to say."

"Why in the h.e.l.l would you want to hear what he's got to say? You just told me that he's probably on the wrong side of the law. That's not the life you lead anymore. You promised me that."

"What I promised was to take care of you the best way I know how. I've had a badge pinned to me for a little while, but I was earning money another way for most of my life before that and I'll remind you that the money back then was a whole lot more than any deputy's salary."

"No good can come from this, Nick!" Catherine said as she pounded the bar with her fist. "Everything's been going so well since you decided to stay here with me. The Tin Pan's prosperous. You're a respected man in your own field and now folks even respect you as a lawman even though all you do is make the rounds every so often. You're a part of this town, Nick."

"I'm a part of you," he said as he stepped up to her and held both of her hands in his. "But that might not be such a good thing."

Catherine recoiled as if she'd been slapped in the face. "How could you say that?"

"Because there's parts of who I am that will never fade. They'll never go away and I'll never be able to wash them off, no matter what I do, what I say or what I pin onto my shirt. Those things will become part of you too, and you don't deserve that kind of stain upon your soul."

Although she'd been fighting him at first, Catherine pulled her hands out of Nick's grasp so she could take hold of his face and make certain he didn't look away. "Knowing you is the best thing that has ever happened to me and if that brings some ghosts along with it, then so be it. I'll go wherever you want me to go if you'll have me."

"I know, Catherine." Nick gently eased out of her grasp. He let his hands linger on her for a few moments before taking them away as well. "But you shouldn't have to give up so much. You don't deserve that kind of life."

"And you do?"

Nick knew the answer to that and so did she.

Neither of them wanted to say it out loud.

FOUR.

The following day, Nick had plenty of work to do. Even though n.o.body had died, he was still short a few coffins after the outbreak of fever during the previous winter. His father had always taught him to prepare for the future and that meant spending the good times preparing for the worst. Because he was a coffin maker and undertaker, most folks' best times just happened to be his worst.

Nick had been raised watching grave markers spread across one hillside or another. His father had taught him how to build coffins and he'd picked up the rest of the undertaker's trade from a few others over the years. Most of his days were now spent at or near Ocean's cemetery, tending the grounds, caring for the folks who were there to serve their time beneath it.

Nick's workshop was a small shack filled with fresh pieces of lumber and the tools of his trade. It smelled of cedar, oak, varnish and wood chips, which always brought a smile to his face. That smile wasn't there at the moment, however. The stacks of empty coffins outside the shack were only growing taller, and each wooden box was the culmination of a few days' work that had yet to bear fruit.

The cemetery grounds were immaculate and every marker was cleaned off. In fact, several of the markers looked better now than when Nick had first carved them. He spent much of his quiet time making the letters more ornate or putting a brighter smile upon a cherub's face. Unfortunately, the dead couldn't express their appreciation by putting money in Nick's pockets.

Even though it was a beautiful morning, Nick didn't spend much of it in the tranquility of his own personal boot hill. There was other work to be done, and most of that was in his parlor.

Nick decided to walk into town. Even though Rasa or Kazys could have used the exercise, there was no reason to bother saddling up either of his horses. It wasn't a long walk, but Nick took his time. There was n.o.body waiting for him when he got there.

His parlor was dusty and had some cobwebs growing in the upper corners like moss spreading over the surface of a log. After sweeping them away, Nick rolled up his sleeves and got to work cleaning the rest of the place. He wiped off the display cases, straightened the chairs and arranged the Bibles in neat piles. When he was done, Nick stood at the front door so he could admire his handiwork.

"You should have sent word you were doing all this cleaning," Catherine said from just outside the door. "I would have helped."

Nick jumped and reflexively reached for his gun. Fortunately, he wasn't wearing his holster, or he might have cleared leather before realizing who was there. "Jesus, Catherine," he said. "Don't sneak up on me like that."

Grinning at the fact that she was the only one who could catch him off guard so easily, Catherine gave him a peck on the cheek and walked around him. There was a basket dangling from one of her arms and a bottle in each hand. "Sorry about that," she said, walking to the display cases where Bibles and invitation samples were kept. "I would have knocked, but I thought that might startle you more."

"What's this?"

"Lunch. What does it look like?"

"How did you know I'd be here?"

"You usually stop by here on Wednesdays." Glancing at him with a mischievous glint in her eyes, she asked, "Don't you know your own habits, Mister Graves?"

Nick had to stop and think for a moment before he realized that she was right. "I guess not. You haven't brought me lunch for a long time."

"Well, I can't be waiting around for you every day, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't mind doing so every now and then. I can't stay long, though." The farmers will be wanting lunch soon.

Digging through the mix of sandwiches and fruit in the basket, Nick selected one of each and said, "I'll take whatever I can get."

"You seem to be in a better mood. Did someone die?"