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“What the hell do you mean, you can’t put him on trial?” Mordecai demanded as the men stood in the marshal’s office.

He would have preferred to hold this meeting somewhere that Tom Gentry couldn’t eavesdrop, like Fleming’s office in the bank, but he didn’t want to leave the prisoner unattended as long as Burk Gentry and the other men were in town. They might try to bust him out.

There was also the chance that Walter Shelton could return and try to shoot Tom, and Mordecai didn’t want to risk that, either.

“I’m just trying to explain that I don’t really have the jurisdiction for a matter like this,” Judge Dunaway said. “I’m only a justice of the peace, Deputy. I enforce the town ordinances and certain misdemeanors under the state statutes, and that’s all. For something as serious as attempted murder, you need the circuit court judge.”

Mordecai pointed at the cell block door and asked, “Are you tellin’ me that I’ve got to keep Tom Gentry locked up until the blasted circuit rider comes around?”

“Well, to tell you the truth…and I don’t like what I’m
about to say…if I was you I’d probably let him go right now. Not because I like or agree with what he’s done, but because I think the chances of convicting him are pretty slim.”

“I saw the girl, Judge; you didn’t. What he did to her wasn’t hardly human.”

“And she, ah, violated her marriage vows with this man Bassett, I understand. When you take that into account along with a man’s natural rights as a husband…let’s just say you’d have a hard time finding twelve jurymen who would vote to convict him, no matter how unpleasant and distasteful they might find the whole matter to be.”

Mordecai looked over at Roy Fleming.

“What do you think, Mayor?”

“Why, I would defer to my good friend Kermit’s vastly greater legal knowledge,” Fleming said with a rueful smile on his face.

Mordecai stared back and forth between them for a second, then said, “Well, I’ll be damned if I savvy what’s goin’ on here. Judge, you read the riot act to Burk Gentry, and Mayor, you backed the judge’s play. Now you’re sayin’ he was right to ride in here and demand that I let his boy go?”

“I wasn’t going to stand for him taking Tom out of the jail by force,” Dunaway said. “That’s entirely different than Tom being released after charges have been dropped.”

Mordecai sank into the chair behind the desk and ran his good hand over his mostly bald head. He sighed.

“Walt Shelton’s gonna take this mighty hard,” he said.

“And I feel for Walt,” Dunaway said. “He and Clarissa are friends of mine. To tell you the truth, I always thought they raised the girl to be a mite spoiled and flighty, so I’m not all that surprised by what she did. I’m sorry for what happened to her anyway, and I’m sorry for the pain it’s brought to her parents. But none of that changes anything.”

“I feel the same way,” Fleming said. “Walt will just have to…get over it.”

Mordecai looked up at them.

“How much do you know about Shelton’s background?”

“I know he was a very successful businessman,” Fleming said. “He still owns those furniture stores, although he’s hired other people to run them now.”

The judge shrugged and said, “That’s about all I know, too.”

Mordecai wondered if Shelton considered him to be some sort of kindred spirit as a frontiersman, and that was why the man had told him about the massacre and killing those Indians.

He said, “I don’t think Shelton’s gonna take this news too well. I’d better get Tom Gentry out of town before I let him know about it.”

“That sounds like a good idea to me,” Dunaway said.

The two officials left. Mordecai cast a longing glance at the coffeepot. He’d never even got a chance to start it boiling before Shelton came in earlier, and he didn’t really have time now, either. Instead he put on his hat, picked up the keys, and went to the cell block door.

He found Tom Gentry leaning against the bars, a smirk on his handsome face.

“You don’t have to tell me, Flint,” he said. “I heard. You’re letting me go.”

“I’m turnin’ you loose against my better judgment,” Mordecai snapped. “And if you know what’s good for you, you’ll get out of town and don’t come back.”

“It’s a free country, ain’t it?”

“Yeah.” Mordecai turned the key in the lock. “Which means your father-in-law is free to try to blow a hole in your worthless hide, too.”

Tom laughed.

“Let him try. I’ll kill him. It’ll be self-defense, Deputy.”

Mordecai backed off and drew his gun.

“Come on outta there,” he said. “I’m takin’ you to Smoot’s. That’s where your pa’s waitin’.”

There wasn’t a crowd gathered around the marshal’s office when Mordecai and Tom Gentry came out, but folks all up and down the street were paying attention to see what was going to happen. Mordecai ignored them. He held his
Colt down at his side as he walked behind Tom toward the saloon.

“I live here in town, you know,” Tom said over his shoulder. “I have a house. I have every right to go there.”

“Maybe so, but it’d be a damned foolish thing to do. Go out to your pa’s ranch and stay there until things cool off.”

“What about my wife? I have a right to see her, too.”

“You try and I’ll arrest you for disturbin’ the peace. And I’ll bet a hat I can make
that
charge stick.”

“Fine,” Tom said, and his voice was surly now. “She’s not worth fighting over, anyway. I’m done with her and her prissy ma and pa.”

It was a sure thing that the young man didn’t really know his father-in-law, Mordecai thought. From what he had seen in Shelton’s eyes, that old badger was anything but prissy.

Word of Tom’s release reached Smoot’s before Mordecai and his former prisoner did. Burk Gentry swaggered out onto the boardwalk to meet them, as much as a fat man could swagger. His other sons and the men who had come with him followed.

“I see you’re out,” Gentry said to Tom. “I told you you were makin’ a mistake by marryin’ that gal. She ain’t our kind and never was.”

“Yeah, Pa, I’d be a lot better off if I’d just listen to you all the time, wouldn’t I?”

Mordecai heard the hostility in Tom’s voice and knew that while the Gentry family might close ranks whenever one of them was threatened, there was a lot of friction between father and son, too.

“Listen to me, Gentry,” Mordecai said. “Take your boys—
all
of your boys—and get out of town.”

“You got no call to run us out of town,” Gentry shot back.

“I’m charged with keepin’ the peace here, and if you and your bunch are around when Walt Shelton hears about this, the peace is liable to be mighty disturbed. So for the good of the town…” Mordecai took a deep breath and forced himself to phrase it as a request. “I’m askin’ you to ride out and take Tom with you.”

Burk Gentry stood there sneering and pretending to think about it for a long moment before he finally said, “I’m sick of the place, anyway. Come on, boys. Let’s go home.”

“Pa, I—” Tom began.

“You got somethin’ to say to me?” his father demanded, raising his voice. “You really got somethin’ to say to me right now?”

Tom shook his head and said, “No, I guess not. I need to go back to my house and get my horse—”

“No, you don’t. We already fetched it. It’s right there at the hitch rack, if you’d just open your damn eyes and look.”

Mordecai couldn’t resist saying, “Mighty confident you’d be takin’ him home, weren’t you?”

Gentry gave him an ugly grin.

“I sure was, Deputy. I sure was.”

Mordecai waited until they had mounted up and ridden hard out of Redemption, raising another cloud of dust. Then he shook his head and turned back toward the marshal’s office.

He was only halfway across the street when he saw Walter Shelton hurrying along the boardwalk on the other side. Mordecai didn’t see a gun in Shelton’s hand this time, but that didn’t mean the man was unarmed.

They reached the porch in front of the office at the same time.

“Is it true?” Shelton demanded. His narrow face was a mottled gray, and Mordecai knew he was a man who turned pale with fury, rather than flushing. “You let Tom Gentry go?”

“The judge and the mayor and I all talked about it,” Mordecai replied, unwilling to throw all the blame on Kermit Dunaway. The judge had just given his honest opinion on a bad situation. “We decided that there was no point in holdin’ Tom for trial until the circuit court judge comes around. Given the, uh, facts of the case, it ain’t likely that any jury would ever convict him.”

“So he gets away with what he did to my daughter,” Shelton said, his voice shaking a little. “With what he did to my little girl?”

“I know that’s the way you feel, Mr. Shelton, and I’m not
sayin’ that you’re wrong to feel that way. But sometimes you got to just go on.”

“Where is he now?”

Mordecai didn’t see that it would do any harm to answer that question.

“He left town with his pa and brothers. I reckon they’re headed back out to the Gentry ranch. And I told ’em not to come back to Redemption anytime soon.”

“You don’t think they’ll pay any attention to that, do you?” Shelton snapped. “That bunch of high-handed bastards thinks that they rule the roost around here! Well, they’re going to find out that they’re wrong!”

Mordecai pushed on, saying, “If I was you, Mr. Shelton, I reckon I might take my wife and daughter and go back to Wichita for a while—”

Then Shelton’s last comment soaked into him, causing him to stop short in what he was saying.

“You think I ought to run, Deputy?” Shelton asked, smiling thinly. “You think I ought to run and hide my head like the meek little man all of you believed me to be?”

“What did you mean by that, about the Gentrys findin’ out that they’re wrong?”

“I didn’t run from the Indians, and I’m not just about to run from sorry trash like the Gentrys,” Shelton went on, as if he hadn’t heard Mordecai’s question. “I’m going to have justice for my family, and if I can’t get it from the law, I’ll see to it myself!”

Without thinking about what he was doing, Mordecai reached out with his good hand and gripped Shelton’s arm.

“Damn it, you can’t go gunnin’ for Tom Gentry! He’s thirty years younger’n you, and his whole family’s tough as nails.”

Shelton jerked his arm out of the deputy’s grasp.

“They
think
they’re tough as nails. But don’t worry, Flint, I’m not a fool. I know I can’t take them all on by myself.” He was still smiling that cold smile. “But I know men who really are tough, a lot tougher than the Gentrys. And they’re all going to be sorry for what Tom did. Each and every one of them!”

Shelton turned and stalked away. Mordecai could only watch him go and think how a fella should never be a big enough fool to think that the worst was over.

Things could always get worse…and it looked like they were about to in Redemption.

Eden hadn’t liked the look in Tatum’s eyes as he watched her while Hannah was cooking supper at the cabin’s fireplace. Eden’s hands were tied, but her feet were still loose and she was sitting in an uncomfortable chair at the rough-hewn table while Tatum sat across from her.

From time to time, Hannah glanced in their direction, and the cold, implacable hatred on the redhead’s face was worrisome, too. It was like a storm was building in this little, stone-walled room, and there was no telling when it might break.

An oil lamp sitting on the table filled the single room with a smoky glow. Eden glanced around. One bunk lay against the wall. A couple of blankets were spread on the floor on the other side of the room, the pallet that Tatum had told Hannah to prepare. The table, the chairs, some crude shelves formed of old crates…those were the cabin’s only furnishings. There were loopholes for rifles in the crumbling mortar holding the stones together in the walls, but no windows and only the one door.

Only one way out, Eden thought. And Caleb Tatum wasn’t likely to let her get anywhere near it.

Hannah filled wooden bowls from the pot of stew she had simmering on the fire. She brought them over and set them on the table, being none too careful about it so that some of the broth slopped over the side of the bowl she placed in front of Eden.

“Your hands are tied in front of you,” Hannah said in a surly tone. “You can pick it up and eat from the bowl.”

“All right,” Eden said. Arguing wasn’t going to do any good.

As she picked up the bowl and saw the steam rising from the hot stew, she thought about flinging the contents into Tatum’s face. That ought to blind him momentarily and give her a chance to make a dash for the door.

And it would also give Hannah an excuse to grab the rifle leaning on the wall close at hand and shoot her, she reminded herself. Even if by some miracle she made it out of the cabin, she wouldn’t be able to escape from the bowl that nature had scooped out of these badlands. The guards in the passage would stop her.

So she sipped the hot broth instead. She needed to keep her strength up. Maybe that was just rationalizing, she thought, but it was all she could do right now.

Hannah got a bowl of stew for herself, kicked one of the empty crates over to the table, and sat on it as she ate. The mood around the table was tense and awkward as the three of them ate in silence.