Autumn of the Gun

by Compton, Ralph

  Nathan hadn’t been sure how she would receive him, and her response exceeded his wildest expectations. She threw her arms around him, laughing and weeping. Renita, who had no idea who he was, had retreated into the dining room. Granny came in, shoving Renita back into the kitchen.

  “Nathan,” said Granny, “this Renita. She Wes Tremayne’s woman.”

  Nathan grinned at Renita, who was blushing furiously and glaring at Granny.

  “A pleasure to meet you, Renita,” Nathan said. “I’ve been hearing about Wes. I’d like to meet him.”

  “He don’t come in daytime,” said Granny helpfully. “Sandlin outlaws watch for him, and in the dark he hunt for them.”

  “What?” Nathan exclaimed. “He’s after the Sandlin gang! Why?”

  “Because he killed three of them,” said Renita, speaking for the first time. “He won’t leave here. They’re hunting him and he’s hunting them.”

  Nathan laughed. “He makes me feel like a coward. He must be some kind of man.”

  “He not a man,” Granny said. “He just a boy.”

  “He’s as much a man as anybody in Texas, or anywhere else,” said Renita hotly.

  “I won’t argue with that,” Nathan said. “I left here a while ago, after killing one of the Sandlin gang. It was that or start an ongoing feud with them.”

  “Wes is a strong man,” said Renita, “but he’s not as smart as you. He has this feud going and he won’t run out on it. They’re going to kill him.”

  “He sounds like he’ll take a lot of killing,” Nathan said.

  “You see him tonight,” said Granny.

  “I’m looking forward to it,” Nathan replied.

  Wes Tremayne rode along the river, resting at intervals, his eyes constantly on the trees and undergrowth that lined the south bank. For months he had seen nobody, and it seemed as though his vigil had become a fruitless one. Despite himself, there were times when he dozed, for he allowed himself only the hours between dusk and midnight for sleeping. He eyed the sun occasionally, as the golden disc slipped toward the western horizon. When he judged it was dark enough, he took a roundabout way to Granny’s boardinghouse, riding behind it.

  “You come in,” Granny said, from the darkness of the porch. “Someone wait to see you.”

  Wes came in with the Winchester under his arm. In but a few weeks, he would be eighteen years old, but he looked older. When Nathan Stone stood up to greet him, he was as tall as Nathan. His eyes met Nathan’s for only a moment, before dropping to the buscadera rig with its two matched Colts. When his eyes again met Nathan’s, there was unmistakable respect in them.

  “I’m Nathan Stone,” said Nathan, offering his hand.

  “Wes Tremayne,” Wes replied, taking his hand. “I’ve heard of you.”

  “And I’ve heard of you,” said Nathan. “You have friends in Dodge. Foster Hagerman and Harley Stafford spoke well of you.

  “I’m obliged to them,” Wes said. “Bodie West, a friend of mine, told me a little about you.”

  “Wes,” said Granny, “we already have supper. You eat.”

  Wes was hungry and he wolfed his food, eager to continue the conversation with this newly discovered gunfighter. Nathan said nothing, waiting, and didn’t speak again until Wes had finished eating.

  “Now,” Nathan said, “I’d be interested in hearing about this running fight with the Sandlin gang.”

  Wes played down his own role, eliminating most of the details, and it took prompting from Molly and Renita before Nathan began to get the entire story. He listened in amazement, for this young hellion had walked headlong into a situation Nathan Stone had avoided by just riding away. He half-hoped his ignominous retreat wouldn’t be brought up, but it was.

  “Wes,” said Granny, “you just go away like Nathan did, and the outlaws forget you.”

  “I may wish I had done just that before it’s over, Granny,” Wes said, “but it’s time I was getting back outside.”

  Nodding to Nathan, he took his Winchester and left.

  Conversation lagged after that. It was Molly who made the first move. She got up, nodded to Nathan, and made her way down the hall. He soon followed, found the door to the room unlocked, and went inside. She was waiting for him, and for an hour not a word was spoken. When she finally did speak, it was the very last thing he expected.

  “Nathan, the boy is the spitting image of you, and I get the feeling he’s the same kind of hard-headed idealist you were twenty years ago.”

  “Damn it,” Nathan said, kicking the covers off and sitting up, “what are you trying to say?”

  “Ever since Wes Tremayne came here,” said Molly, “he’s reminded me of someone I felt I ought to know. Granny’s spoken of it too, so it’s not just a fancy of my own. What can you do to fill in the missing years? Doesn’t the name mean anything to you?”

  Nathan sat on the edge of the bed, his head in his hands, thinking. When he finally spoke, his voice was so soft she barely heard him.

  “St. Louis, February of 1866. Molly Tremayne ...”

  “You’re Wes Tremayne’s father, aren’t you?”

  “My God,” said Nathan. “My God, it must be, but ... how was I to know ... ?”

  “But he doesn’t know about you,” Molly said. “Why doesn’t he?”

  “Because she didn’t want him to know,” said Nathan. “She must have hated me ...”

  “Tell me, Nathan,” Molly said. “You’ve been running from her all these years and now she’s going to haunt you ... through him. You must talk.”

  Nathan began to talk, slowly at first, but the words tumbled out, as his emotions took control. He talked for an hour, until at last he was silent, drained.

  “Don’t you think he should be told?” Molly asked.

  “My God, no!” said Nathan. “She didn’t want him knowing or she would have told him about me. I’ll respect her wishes.”

  “Is it that,” Molly asked softly, “or is it that you’re afraid he’ll hate you, if and when he knows who you are?”

  “No,” said Nathan, “it would be his right to hate me, because he doesn’t know all the story. I was as ignorant as a nineteen-year-old can be when I met Molly Tremayne. I’d joined the Confederacy when I was just fifteen, and I’d never been with a woman in all my life. Molly was older than me and she just took my breath away. I’d spent two nights with her before I got around to telling her why I couldn’t stay ... what I had to do.”

  “So she told you to go to hell, to get out and stay gone.”

  “She told me that and more,” said Nathan. “But it was what she wanted, against the oath I’d taken on my father’s grave.”

  “So that’s where Wes Tremayne gets his stubbornness,” Molly said. “That’s why he’s so determined to stop the Sandlin gang. He feels responsible for the three men the Sandlin gang hanged, and now he’s living up to some oath he’s taken unto himself.”

  “I reckon he is,” said Nathan, “and now that he knows I ran away from the fight he’s facing, he’ll be all the more determined.”

  “Maybe not if you tell him who you are,” Molly said.

  “Damn it, no,” said Nathan. “If Molly Tremayne hated me that much, I reckon she’s entitled to take her revenge any way she can. I don’t know how you’ll manage it, but you have spent more time with Granny than I have. Before she figures out who Wes is, shut her mouth, will you?”

  “I’ll try,” Molly said, “but it won’t be easy.”

  “Have you heard about King Fisher?” Nathan asked. “He’s dead.”

  “Far as I’m concerned,” she replied, “he was dead the day I walked out on him.”

  Struck by the coldness in her voice, Nathan said no more, and it was Molly who broke the prolonged silence.

  “Nathan?”

  “What is it?”

  “Molly Tremayne,” she said. “Was the first Molly anything ... like me?”

  “Not really,” said Nathan. “She was beautiful, just as you’re beautifu
l. At the risk of soundin’ like a damn fool, I’d have to say the first Molly took advantage and had her way with me.”

  Molly laughed. “That does sound strange, coming from you. The woman’s supposed to say that.”

  “Oh, hell,” said Nathan, “that didn’t come out like I meant for it to. Have you ever wanted something so much, had your mind made up as to how it would be, that you hated the person who didn’t live up to your dream?”

  “Of course I have,” she said. “That’s how I felt about you when you rode away to avoid the Sandlin gang. But it wasn’t just the Sandlin gang, was it? You were a rolling stone, and you weren’t quite ready for a clinging vine.”

  “Damn it,” said Nathan, genuinely irritated, “you could find work in a medicine show, reading minds.”

  She laughed. “But I’m not like the first Molly. I believed you’d come back, and now you have. Will you ride away again?”

  “No,” he said. “I’ve been killing men and having men try to kill me for eighteen long years. I’m tired. Tired of having men—even kids—that I don’t know, trying to kill me, just to prove they’re faster with a gun. That’s what bothers me about young Wes. Before I associated the name, before I knew who he was, all I heard was how quick he is with a gun. Maybe that’s what bothered Molly Tremayne, why she never told him about me. She didn’t want him riding vengeance trails, a gun in his hand and a lonely grave ahead of him.”

  “You feel that’s what you’ve been doing?”

  “I reckon,” he replied. “What do I have to show for those eighteen years, except the men that I’ve left dead? All my friends have lived by the gun, and most of them are dead by it.”

  “So you’re going to settle here, across the river from the Sandlin gang?”

  “Why not? I can’t name a town on the frontier where I can be sure I won’t meet an hombre wantin’ to kill me to prove he has a faster gun.”

  “What will you do in El Paso?”

  “I don’t know,” said Nathan. “I have enough money so that I don’t have to do anything, unless I want to. I aim to stay out of the saloons, and if I play poker, I’ll stay with low-stakes games.”

  “I like the sound of that,” Molly said. “Since I’m partners with Granny, why don’t we just stay here for a while?”

  “That might be wise,” said Nathan. “Wes doesn’t know who I am, but I’d like to stay close enough to side him if he needs me.”

  “He’s so much like you,” Molly said. “Don’t be surprised if he refuses any help.”

  In the days that followed, Nathan continued spending as much time with Wes as he could, without the boy becoming suspicious. But Wes Tremayne never wavered in his determination to destroy the Sandlin gang. One night after supper he raised the lid on his watch to check the time.

  “That’s an interesting old watch,” Nathan said. “May I have a look at it?”

  “It was left to me by my grandfather on my mother’s side,” said Wes, handing the old time piece to Nathan.

  Nathan had caught just a glimpse of the photograph in the lid of the watch, and as he looked at it more closely, there was no mistaking the well-remembered face of the young Molly Tremayne. Nathan swallowed hard before he spoke.

  “A beautiful lady, Wes. Is this your mother?”

  “Yes,” Wes replied. “It’s all I have left of her. She died when I was born.”

  Nathan returned the watch to the young man who was his son. No longer was there any doubt, and among the others in the room, Molly Horrell and Granny Boudleaux had seen and understood.

  A month after Nathan’s arrival, the Sandlin gang struck again. They rode across the river half a dozen miles east of El Paso, murdered a rancher and his wife, and then set fire to the house. They rode away with a dozen horses, escaping across the border. Following breakfast at Granny’s, Wes Tremayne broke his long-standing rule and rode into town and went right to the town marshal’s office, to talk to Jim Gillett.

  “All hell has busted loose,” Gillett said. “The city fathers have telegraphed Austin for help from the Rangers.”

  “A lot of good that’ll do,” said Wes. “They’ve already had two Rangers here—you and me—and our authority ended at the border. A Ranger can’t be everywhere at once. I was riding the river west of town, and the Sandlin bunch crossed the border a dozen miles to the east. I learned of it when I saw the glow from the burning house, and long before I could get there, the varmints had taken the horses and were back across the river.”

  “There’s just one way to get at the Sandlin gang,” Gillett replied, “and that’s to lure them across the river for some definite purpose, but that can blow up in your face.”

  “Yeah,” said Wes. “Like when they hung the Connors men.”

  “Exactly,” Gillett said. “Then you’ll have the whole county giving you hell because you were responsible for enticing the outlaws across the river. When I took the marshal’s badge, I thought I could make a difference here. But I’m not allowed to do what has to be done, and I’m giving it up.”

  “When are you leaving?”

  “Just as soon as I can be replaced,” said Gillett. “The town council was after me this morning before breakfast. They wanted to know where the hell I was when Eli Danvers and his wife were murdered and their ranch house set afire. I had no way of knowing the Sandlin gang was coming, and even if I had known, they could have crossed the border anywhere along a fifty-mile stretch. Damn it, I’m one man with one gun. Let them send for the Rangers.”

  “I’ll take the badge for a while,” Wes said, “if you can arrange it.”

  “I can arrange it, but are you sure that’s what you want? I’d feel like I’m signing your death warrant.”

  “I believe I can lure that bunch of owl hoots across the river,” said Wes. “They want me, and I’ve kept out of their reach, waiting for them to make a move. Well, they made it, and I was too far away to make any difference. They have to think they can get their hands on me.”

  “So you aim to set a trap with yourself as bait,” Gillett said. “There’s just one of you, same as there’s just one of me. They can always spring the trap, take the bait, and just ride back across the river.”

  “They can try,” said Wes. “Get me the badge and let me try.”

  Gillett had no trouble getting Wes appointed as town marshal, but nobody at Granny Boudleaux’s favored it. Only Nathan Stone kept his silence.

  “They’ll kill you,” Renita predicted. “The only reason they haven’t already is that they couldn’t find you.”

  “She right,” said Granny. “You young, have pretty woman. Why you want to die?”

  “Wes,” Molly said, “you and Renita could make a new start somewhere else, far from the border. You don’t owe this town anything.”

  “I don’t run from a fight,” said Wes, “however unfair or uncertain it may be.”

  Wes Tremayne refused to change his mind, and Molly tried to get Nathan to intervene.

  “I didn’t see you trying to talk sense to him,” she said.

  “No,” said Nathan, “and you won’t. He’s enough like me that it wouldn’t make a bit of difference. He knows I ran out on a fight once, and the Sandlin gang has been a threat ever since.”

  “Then if he won’t take Renita and leave here,” Molly said, “why don’t we get away from here?”

  “No,” said Nathan. “The kid’s right. I ran away once. I won’t do it again.”

  “You’re going to get yourself killed alongside him,” Molly said.

  “I aim to be here if he has need of me,” said Nathan.

  “I have need of you alive,” Molly said. “Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”

  “Sure it does,” said Nathan, “but I have to make up those wasted years. Is that so hard to understand?”

  “I understand perfectly,” Molly said. “He’s going to get himself shot dead, and you’ll be right there beside him. Well, if I’m going to have to live without you, we’ll start now. I’m mov
ing to another room. You can sleep by yourself.”

  She slammed the door with a finality that shook Nathan but did nothing to weaken his resolve. He sighed, tugged off his boots, and stretched out on the bed.

  CHAPTER 32

  Wes Tremayne found himself in an increasingly precarious position with Renita. After her outburst following his appointment as town marshal, she said little to him unless she was forced to. To make matters worse, outlaws—presum—ably the Sandlin gang—raided yet another ranch, and while nobody was killed, all the stock was rustled. A week later, the town’s request for Ranger assistance was answered when ranger Tom Webb arrived. He was a young man, not more than twenty-five, and Wes liked him immediately.

  “A company of rangers couldn’t solve this town’s problems,” Wes told him.

  Webb laughed. “Be a little more specific.”

  Wes told him of having shot three of the Sandlin gang, only to have them cross the river and murder three innocent people.

  “I’ve ridden this border as thoroughly as one man can do it,” said Wes, “and it makes no difference where I am. The outlaws are always somewhere else, and when they strike they’re back across the border before I can get to them. I reckon you’re aware that you’re not allowed to cross the river?”

  “Yes,” Webb said. “That’s the first thing I was told.”

  “Two elements must come together,” said Wes. “First, they must be lured across the river, and then we must have some idea as to where they are. They’re over here plenty often, but I’ve never been able to get to them. I never know where they’ll cross.”

  “Maybe we can set a trap with enough bait to bring them to a specific location,” Webb said. “Are they partial to cattle or horses?”

  “Horses,” said Wes.

  “Suppose we had a holding pen, and in it fifty or more horses. Wouldn’t that draw them across the river?”

  “I reckon it would,” Wes said. “It might be the only way to draw them to a specific place. Even then we’d have to stake it out day and night.”

  “Exactly,” said Webb, “but wouldn’t that be better than constantly riding the border, never knowing when or where they’re going to strike?”