Bounty on a Baron

Chapter Thirty-two

When Brand entered the saloon he saw Josephine seated at a table, drinking a glass of whiskey.

“Josephine!”

She looked up and saw him, and her eyes went wide. She wasn’t afraid any longer, though. She’d had very little liquor in her life, and two shot glasses had begun to make her feel giddy.

“Well, if it isn’t the notorious Baron,” she said, raising her glass to him. “Decker proving to be an elusive target?”

“What are you doing here?” Brand demanded. “Why aren’t you at the store?”

“Don’t wanna be at the store,” she said. “Don’t wanna be anywhere but here.”

Brand moved to the table, put his rifle down, and grabbed her by the arm.

“Come on—”

“Let go!” she shouted.

“Hey!” Potts said.

Brand glared at him and said, “You stay out of this, bartender!”

“She may be your woman, Brand,” Potts said, “but that ain’t no way to treat her.”

Potts started around the bar and Brand reacted through reflex—the reflex that had become part of the Baron’s life.

He drew and fired.

Josephine watched in horror as the bullet struck Potts in the center of the chest. Potts stopped in his tracks, a puzzled look coming over his face. He opened his mouth as if to say something, and blood trickled from it.

He fell forward, dead.

“No!” Josephine shouted.

She ran and knelt by the body of the dead man, throwing an accusing look at Brand.

“You killed him!” she screamed. “You killed him for no reason!”

“I thought—” he said. “Bartenders usually have a shotgun behind the bar. I thought he was—”

“You didn’t think,” she said. “You just reacted the way a killer reacts. You’re a killer, just like Decker said.”

“Decker!” Brand shouted. “And what do you think Decker is? A saint?”

“He’s an honorable man. He knows what he is and what he does and he doesn’t try to hide it. He doesn’t go off and kill and then come back and hide behind a woman.”

“Is that what you think?” he said. “That I was hiding behind you?”

“Yes,” she said. “I think you’re a coward, Brand—or Baron, or whatever you call yourself! A coward, damn you!” she shouted, and she started crying.

Brand thought she was crying for the bartender or for Decker or for herself. It never occurred to him that she might be crying for him, for the man she had thought he was.

“All right,” he said, looking at his rifle. “All right, then.”

As if on cue, from outside came Decker’s voice.

“Brand! You in there, Brand? Or did you duck out the back door?”

“I’m here,” Brand called out, looking at Josephine. “I’m coming out, Decker.”

Josephine looked up at him then, her face streaked with tears, and said, “Don’t’—”

“Don’t kill him?” he asked. “That’s just what I’m going to do, Josephine. I’m going to kill him!”

As Brand went out the batwing doors, Josephine said in a low voice, “No, I mean…don’t go.”

Decker waited out in the street for Brand.

So, it would end this way after all.