Free Man From Boot Hill by Marcus Galloway

bull.”
    “He’s been asking for you, you know.”
    “Who has?”
    “Stilson,” Catherine replied. “He asked me about you yesterday and then again today.”
    “What’s he want?”
    “I don’t know, Nick. Now that you’ve cooled off a bit, you can go see for yourself what he wants. After all we’ve been through, we don’t need any trouble with the law. You’ve been working so hardlately, I hardly even get a chance to see you.”
    Hearing the genuine concern in Catherine’s voice cut right down to the center of Nick’s soul. When he looked into her face and found her smiling hopefully at him, he wrapped an arm around her and drew her in close. After giving her a quick kiss on the cheek, he nestled his face in her hair and kept it there.
    “You don’t have to stay with me if you don’t want to,” he said. “You might even be better off somewhere else.”
    “So you keep telling me. But I just don’t listen. Does that make me stupid or gullible?”
    Nick laughed and held onto her even tighter. “It makes you the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”
    “Then don’t be so quick to invite me to leave.”
    “After what happened to Van Meter, I’ve been thinking…” Nick sucked in a breath. “Maybe I should make an honest woman out of you.”
    “Too late for that,” she scoffed.
    “I’m serious. We got married so quickly that it hardly seemed to happen. We should have a bigger ceremony. Maybe even throw a party.”
    “You’ve had your chance, Nicolai Graves. Besides, I may not be ready to go through all that fuss just so we can come back to the same home and live the same way we have been living.” Placing her hand against his cheek, she added, “Our life is just fine. Don’t think for one moment that Iconsider it to be otherwise. I would like to wear our rings, though.”
    “I know,” Nick said as he winced to himself. “It’s just that I’m barely able to draw any attention to myself anymore. The sort of men that have come after me would start looking for you the minute they spotted that ring on my finger. I just can’t bear the thought of that happening.”
    “I’d risk it.”
    “Are you sure about that?”
    “Yes,” she said without hesitation. “And now that that’s settled, how about getting back to my first question? What are we going to do with Mister Van Meter and that sweet little boy of his?”
    “The night of that fire might have been the worst of it, but it wasn’t the end. Those killers are moving along to their next job as we speak. Believe that.”
    “How do you know for certain?”
    “In case you’ve forgotten, I’ve had some experience in these matters,” Nick said.
    “I haven’t forgotten. Whatever you did in the past, you weren’t half as bad as those men who killed Joseph’s family.”
    Nick’s face may have been pointed in Catherine’s direction, but he wasn’t seeing her anymore. His eyes took on a faraway look as his ears filled with the gunshots and screams from his memories. “We were killers,” he said softly. “One’s just as bad as another.”
    Blinking, Nick snapped himself back to the present. He walked around to the back of the wagon and ran his hands along its gritty floor. “We were a gang just like those killers at the Van Meter place.”
    “You’re not like those men, Nick,” Catherine said vehemently. “Not anymore.”
    “Maybe you don’t want to think about me that way. Actually, I’d be grateful if you didn’t. Still, I could tell what they were doing, Catherine, just like it was something my gang might have done back when I was a dumb-shit kid. They were there to leave their mark. It’s not the first time anyone’s done such a thing.”
    When she heard those words, Catherine rubbed his back as if she’d gotten a real good idea of what particular ghosts were haunting Nick at the moment. The muscles under his skin grew taut. “You weren’t the only gang out there, you know. Not every death from those times