Free Reaper's Fee by Marcus Galloway

better do it now.”
    At first, Nick was surprised. Then, he smiled and rubbed Catherine’s shoulders. “That’s awfully nice of you, but I’m going to face Stilson and tell him what happened.”
    “Why not just tell him that Gil was a threat? Plenty of folks from the Tin Pan will back you up.”
    As Catherine waited for an answer, Stilson knocked on the door.
    “Stilson’s a good man,” Nick said quickly. “He’s helped me plenty, but…”
    “Never mind,” Catherine said quickly. “You do what you need to do and get going. Just promise me you’ll come home.”
    “Of course I promise.”
    With that, Nick took Catherine in his arms and kissed her as if he hadn’t seen her for a year. Their mouths parted for a moment so their eyes couldtake in the sight of each other, and then Nick kissed her as if he wasn’t going to see her for another year. Stilson knocked again, so Nick cut himself short and forced himself to go to the door. When he opened it, he must have still been a little flushed in the face.
    “Oh,” Stilson said. “Did I interrupt anything?”
    “No, Sheriff.”
    “I guess you know why I’m here.”
    “It’s either about the Jeffrey boys breaking those windows,” Nick replied, “or that man I shot across from Don’s gun shop.”
    Chuckling despite his best attempts not to, Stilson nodded and took his hat off so he could run his hand over his balding head. “It’d be the second one. I’d like to know why I heard about it from Don before hearing about it from you.”
    “The bastard made some threats that I had to check on before going through the proper chain of command.”
    “He say something against Catherine?” Stilson asked.
    “Not specifically, but he threatened my wife and family.”
    “Why would he do something like that?”
    “Because I recognized his face from a gang of thieves in the Dakotas and let him know he should think twice before starting any trouble around here,” Nick said.
    “You think he was planning a robbery?”
    Nick shrugged. “I don’t know if he was planning anything, Sheriff. I do know I put him on a friendly notice, he didn’t like it too much, and then he decided to threaten my family.”
    “When did the shooting start?”
    Without flinching, Nick replied, “The second he went for his gun.”
    Stilson kept his eyes on Nick for a few more seconds. His eyes were intense and calculating as he mulled over what he’d heard. Finally, he nodded and said, “Apart from the words that passed between you, I guess that matches up with what Don and the rest of them told me. I wish you would have come to me with this first, though. At the very least, you could have said something to the folks who saw you gun that fellow down. They was all plenty scared.”
    “I bet they were. Sorry about that.”
    As the sheriff kept his eyes on him, Nick could feel the lawman sizing him up. He’d felt it plenty of times before whenever he, Barrett and the rest of his old gang had ridden into a town, whether they were there to get something to eat or burn the whole place to the ground. In the old days, Nick might have had a few choice words to say under all that scrutiny. Now he stood there and let the other man come to whatever assumption he saw fit.
    “Take a walk down there and clean up the mess,” Stilson finally said. “You are the undertaker, after all. While you’re at it, make it known who that asshole was. It’ll do folks good to know he only got what was comin’ to him. As for the restof it, I suppose you did what needed to be done. Every lawman gets shit tossed his way, but that don’t mean he needs to stand by and take it. If you say he went for his gun, then I believe you.”
    Hearing the pause in Stilson’s voice, Nick replied, “He went for his gun, all right.”
    There was no lie to be seen upon Nick’s face, so the sheriff nodded. “Then that’s that. I’ll expect you at my office to let me know when the street’s cleaned up.”
    “Yes,