Ralph Compton Guns of the Greenhorn

by Matthew P. Mayo

  “Sorry to cause you such strife, but I didn’t get to be an old crotchety mining mountain man by being carefree and citified.”

  “What have you got against cities, Mr. Tibbs?”

  “Ain’t nothing good ever happened in one, nor anything good ever come from one.”

  “I beg to differ. Innovations frequently arise from within so-called citified environs. And I myself am a product of the fair city of Providence.”

  “You ain’t helping your argument, boy. Why, just look at them togs of yours. My word, who in their right mind wears spats? What’s the point of such a getup?” The old man shook his head and stared in wonder at the begrimed, tattered gray thing hanging above Fletcher’s right boot.

  Fletcher’s gaze followed and he noted with a sigh that his left spat had dropped off somewhere on the trail. They hadn’t been cheap, but they had been, as the salesman at the haberdashery promised, “the very thing.”

  “Only thing worse than two spats is one.”

  “Are you going to be in your cups all day?”

  “If you mean, am I going to suckle on the whiskey teat? You bet. Millie never much minded and she mattered to me. You, on the other hand, I ain’t decided if you’re annoying or if you’re bold. You got spark. I’ll give you that. Ain’t nothing like Millie’s, though.”

  He rubbed his chin and eyed the ceiling. “I tell you that woman was a tiger, but you got spine. That’s your mama’s doing. And Millie’s, don’t mind saying. Ain’t nothing to do with that useless lump that was your father.”

  “What do you know about him? I want to know. Millie promised to tell me, promised to answer all my questions, but when I got there . . .”

  The old man stared at him for a long while, then finally shook his head. “No, I don’t know nothing that might help you. Nope.”

  “Okay, then. You mentioned something about someone else having done the deed.” Fletcher nearly gulped down the plate of food the man had set before him. He’d not realized he was so hungry. Nor could he deny that the man, however crude, had proffered a truly toothsome repast, however crude.

  Gunnar plunked a tin cup by Fletcher’s elbow and drizzled steaming-hot coffee into it from a dented gray enamel pot. “I did, yep.” He filled his own cup, then collapsed into his chair, uncorked the whiskey bottle with an audible punk, and dolloped some into his coffee.

  “Man I’m thinking of is none other than Skin Varney.” He looked at Fletcher with wide eyes and nodded his head. “Yep, none other than.”

  “Am I supposed to know who that is?”

  “If you don’t know who Skin Varney is, then you sure are from a city.”

  “I think we’ve already determined that I am. And proudly so. Who is he?”

  “He’s a notorious outlaw, an unsavory brute your father double-crossed . . . Oh, let’s see. How old are you?”

  “Twenty-four years of age.”

  “That’s when it happened, then. I know folks who know folks, and I heard tell he was released from Tin Falls Prison not long ago. Why they would do such a thing is a mystery. He’s a vicious, killing rogue wolf who should have been skinned out long ago.”

  “But surely he’s aged, mellowed since then. I have read that prison will do that to a man. In fact, rehabilitation is the entire reason for imprisonment in the first place.”

  The sound that clawed up and out of Gunnar’s throat was both a laugh and a gag.

  “All right, then,” said Fletcher. “Since you obviously disagree, why should we care that this brute has been set free on the world once more?”

  Tibbs rolled his eyes. “Young people, all the answers and none of the smarts. Because, smart young dandy fella, Skin was double-crossed by your very own father all them years ago in this very town. Well, north of town, to be honest, on the old freight road that ran the Chillowaw Rim. Folks don’t use it much now since mining tailed off. But back then, it was the quickest way to get from Talusville and the half dozen mines up back in the hills over to Promise way. Once Piker Holdings bought all those miners up and began ferrying ore and payroll back and forth, it was traveled regular.”

  “How does this . . . Samuel Thorne fit into all this?”

  “Oh, you mean your very own pap?” Gunnar winked and sipped his coffee.

  He seemed to take a sadistic pride in making Fletcher wince.

  “Ol’ Sammy Thorne, he was a piece of work, I tell you. Mined a bit here and there, but he was a dandy at heart. No big thinking going on to see where you got that fondness for frippery and all. He’d get into trouble now and again, lots of small-time stuff—things would happen away from town and he was the suspect. Couldn’t necessarily explain himself or his whereabouts, but the law in them days was scant on the ground. Mostly it was vigilantes, citizen courts, and such.

  “I remember that night of the big robbery. It was storming, vicious weather. When the thunder boomers come on in here to the valley, why, they savage us. Roll right down here from the north to the south, mostly in summer, sounding like a cannonball dropped onto a wooden floor. Anyway, one night we had all manner of weather happening hereabouts. And most of the town was crowded into Filbert’s Dance Hall. Don’t look for it now, ’cause it ain’t there, much to my lasting regret. Ain’t no place finer a fellow could kick up a fuss and a fight and a dance, all rolled into one.”

  He nodded and sipped. “Your pap was in the dance hall, doing a solid job of winning more than he was losing to the baize goddesses. By the look on your face, you ain’t a gambling man, eh, Mr. Dandy?”

  “No, sir, Mr. Tibbs. It takes me long enough to make my money. The last thing I need is for some buffoon to take it all away from me due to an overreliance on liquor and chance. There is, to be certain, very little skill involved in thieving money from someone at a poker table.”

  “You’d think that, wouldn’t you, bein’ a greenhorn and all? I can tell by the way you run poker into the ground that you don’t have any idea what goes into making a true gambler. Not like your old man and . . .” Gunnar shook his head. “Well, since Skin Varney’s foul name has clouded my mind once again, I figure I might as well try to figure him out. See, I thought long and hard on this, and I come to the notion that Varney, he wants revenge. Sure, your father and him were pals once, but ’twas all of Promise who made him take to the high trails and go on the run, penniless and hounded by posses.”

  “How do you know all this?”

  Gunnar’s head whipped back as if Fletcher had smacked him with a dead fish. “How do I know? Why, boy, I was in on the posse. You got to understand: Nearly everybody in Promise and the surrounding mine camps hereabouts all had a stake in the money stolen that night. I was leaner then and could shoot the whiskers off a skeeter at a hundred paces. And I frequently did, too. Never was a skeeter in these parts who needed to own a razor. I was that good.

  “Good as I was with my irons, your father was even better. I don’t mind admitting it. Had himself a natural inclination, you might say, with those guns.” He nodded toward Fletcher’s satchel, in which the guns sat.

  “Why would he steal from his own town mates, his own friends?”

  “It’s a solid question, but I think the answer’s simply because he could. It was the challenge that intrigued him, not the notion of thieving from his fellows. Sam Thorne was a lot of things, but most of all he was a selfish young man who cared for his own comforts and happiness above all else.”

  “So where does that leave us, Mr. Tibbs?” Fletcher massaged his wrists where the rawhide bindings had trussed him tight.

  “It leaves us at what they call an impasse. I reckon you’re not the vicious bastard who laid Millie low. Could be it’s Skin Varney coming back around for revenge. It’s the best chance I’ve got for getting to the truth. And it’s the only chance you’ve got to clear your name.”

  Gunnar let that hang in the air for a moment; then he s
aid, “I’m not much for partnering, but”—he rasped a gnarled hand across his mouth—“I suppose if you don’t get in my way, why, I could be persuaded to take you on, show you what I know. Maybe we can work together to free the ties that bind you. Same time, we can track Varney and lay him low, as he done to Millie.”

  Tibbs’ olive branch was tempting, but Fletcher was still wary of the old rogue. “How do you know for certain it was Skin Varney?”

  “ ’Cause I don’t believe in coincidence, that’s why. He’s released from prison and Millie’s the one who . . . Well, you never mind that right now! Trust that I know what I know, is all. Too many questions. I knew it. This is going to be a big mistake. I knew it. I knew it. Should have blowed your head off while I had the chance. Now I got to put up with you.”

  “If this Skin Varney fellow is as bent on revenge as you say he is—”

  “He is!”

  “Okay, then, if that’s the case, you really think he’ll kill more people?”

  “I don’t think he will. I know he will.”

  “Until . . . ?”

  “Until”—Gunnar shrugged—“the whole town’s dead, I reckon. That’s what he promised when they hauled him out of here in irons. And he can do it, too. That Skin, he’s hellish with a knife and a gun. Always was, I don’t reckon much has changed. If anything, I expect he’s gotten meaner. Prison has a way of making a fellow curl in on himself, like a horn that keeps growing in a circle, until it grows right back in and poisons the body.”

  “That’s a gruesome imagine, Mr. Tibbs.”

  “Yep,” he said, nodding. “And that is what’s happened with Varney. ‘Gruesome’ is the word for the likes of him, Mr. Thorne.”

  “Please don’t call me that.”

  “What? Your name? Pshaw, I ain’t about to call you something somebody made up when that’s not who you are. Can’t outrun your past, boy. It has long arms.”

  “I still don’t understand how you’ve come to know all this. But perhaps you can tell me one more thing. For now.”

  “Just the one, eh? I’ll count myself lucky if all you ask is one more thing and nothing else.” Gunnar smoothed his mustaches with a gnarled hand and resettled his feather-bedecked hat on his shining dome.

  Fletcher ignored him and plowed ahead. He reckoned that he knew the answer, given what Gunnar had told him all along about his father, but he asked anyway. “Is what you’ve told me the reason behind why Marshal McDoughty said the apple didn’t fall far from the tree?”

  Gunnar nodded. “Yep, pretty much what I’ve told you, boy. Your pap, Sam Thorne, he was a gunhand, a low-class gambler, and a thief. He was a scoundrel of the first order. He left a bunch of sore folks scattered all over the West who still, to this day, still feel ill-used by him, me included. The worst of them all was his old pard, Skin Varney.”

  “Why?”

  Gunnar sighed, then nodded, as if he’d come to some agreement with himself. “Because your dear ol’ papa made off with all the money from a big heist they pulled, left Skin holding the bag to take the blame. And for that, Skin got hisself sent to Tin Falls Prison. I for one, but not the only one, hoped that bastard would have died there long ago. It ain’t a forgiving place, from what I’ve heard. But as we know, he didn’t. And now he’s riding hard on the vengeance trail.”

  “What happened to Sam Thorne? I have his guns, left to me by Millie. She must have known him, met with him after the theft. I assume he’s dead. That’s what everybody seems to want me to think, isn’t it? And the money, if she’d met with him then, perhaps she had the money? Maybe he left it to my mother? Surely if that had happened, perhaps she gave it to the authorities.”

  Gunnar looked at him for a long, quiet moment. His watery eyes didn’t waver but held firm. Then in a quiet voice he said, “Could have worked out that way, yeah. But it didn’t.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Gunnar sighed. “I’ll tell you this just the once. Then I’ll never speak on it again. You hear?”

  Fletcher nodded.

  “Okay.” Gunnar looked toward the ceiling. “So help me, Millie, I know I promised I’d never spill this sack of beans, but dang it, the boy has a right to know! And you didn’t have any right telling me something like that in the first place. You know how I am with a secret.”

  He looked at Fletcher. “Your father, Samuel Thorne, that low-class gambler and thief, come back to the bordello that night you was born—same night as the heist. He had the money on him, and he demanded that Rose go with him. Millie wouldn’t allow it. Wasn’t possible anyways. You was not only coming. You was on the way. But that Sam, he was impatient.

  “He told Rose if she didn’t go with him right then, he was never coming back for her. He knew she couldn’t, which made it all the worse. He didn’t want to be stuck with a wife and a kid. Not a fella like him. Too stuck on himself, he was. But it broke Rose’s heart to hear him say that. Millie, bless her, she was a spitfire. She leveled on him with her trusty sawed-off gut shredder—same one I carry now—and gave him an ultimatum. ‘You will stay, and you will pay the piper,’ said she.

  “ ‘Or?’ said Sam.” Gunnar shook his head as if in disbelief at the memory. “Millie, she cocked both barrels. ‘Or I will kill you.’ ”

  “Well, that Sam, he licked his lips, looked at the struggling, failing Rose, about to have his baby, and said, ‘But . . . the money, the law. I can’t go to jail!’ Then he smiled. He was a waffler, old Sam was. Even then he tried to make a deal with Millie. ‘I’ll tell you what,’ he said. ‘I’ll split the money with you.’

  “Millie shook her head no. ‘Tell you what. You will take your leave right now, or I will kill you where you stand.’ ”

  “What happened then, Mr. Tibbs?”

  Gunnar sighed, blew out a breath. “Well, Millie ran him off into the night. But oddly enough for him, he was true to his word. Mostly.”

  “Mostly?” said Fletcher. “What’s that mean?”

  “Millie did see him one more time. At Rose’s funeral, Millie swore he was there, overlooking the proceedings from a small rocky rise. Then she never saw him again.”

  Fletcher was silent for long moments, sipped his cold coffee, then said, “Were they in love?”

  “She loved him, yes.”

  Fletcher offered a wry smile. “That’s not what I asked, Mr. Tibbs.”

  “Oh, I know that. I’m no expert on such foofaraw, boy. If I was, I’d likely have married Millie a hundred years ago and had a passel of squallerin’ brats.”

  Again, there was silence. Then Gunnar said, “Look, boy, I can’t tell you what I don’t know. And I won’t make up something just so you can feel good. That would be a lie, and while I’m not above working up a windy tale now and again, it doesn’t sit right to lie about that to you.

  “But your mama, Rosie McGuire, now she was something else. Don’t know much about her past. Millie told me some years ago that she was an orphan girl ended up making her way out West from back East somewhere. Was poorly treated by folks on the trail and Millie found her near starved here in Promise. Took her in and the girl sort of fell into the way of life natural-like.

  “But Millie was no demon madam like you will hear about now and again. She was a mother to them girls. She run a clean operation, wouldn’t brook no badness from the men who visited. Millie was hellish with that shotgun of hers. That one there. She give it to me when she took too ill to heft it well. The other women there, Hester and Delia and Dominique and the rest, they all have weapons of their own. I wouldn’t cross them.

  “But your mama, she was a peach. Kindhearted and always smiling, no matter what foul things she’d been through before she got to Promise. Never spoke of them except to say the past was always something you could learn from. It was your duty to learn from the past, that sort of thing. Good egg, that’s what she was. And devoted to Millie. Neve
r was a cross word betwixt them. Not until she fell in love with your pap anyway. Then she went against the grain with Millie, got crosswise with her a bit. Never enough so they’d fall out, nothing like that, but there were hot words tossed back and forth. Millie saw Samuel for what he was, you know, but couldn’t convince Rose to keep clear of him. Love is like that.”

  He stopped talking long enough that Fletcher, who’d been tracing a pine knot on the tabletop with his fingertip, looked over at the old man. Gunnar was wet eyed and gazing out a front window.

  “Fine, I’ll take you on. I’m going to need you to work with me, no question, so we can lay low ol’ Skin Varney. I can’t let that man get away with this madness of his, killin’ folks and all.”

  “And you’ll help me clear my name.”

  “Yeah, that, too.”

  Fletcher nodded, but decided he’d need to keep a close eye on Gunnar Tibbs. Not because he didn’t trust the old man. In the short time he’d come to know Gunnar, he felt certain he could trust him, but he also knew the old buck’s hatred for Varney and his own father was so deep—and for good reason—that it might cloud him when a critical moment showed itself. What that should be and when, Fletcher had no idea. But he had to be ready.

  “Did my mother really love this Samuel Thorne?”

  Gunnar sighed and sipped his coffee. “This again?”

  “Yes, this again.”

  “You mean did she love your namesake?” Gunnar cackled and smacked his buckskin leggings with a gnarled old hand. “You bet she did.”

  “But how could she love so unsavory a character?”

  The old man looked at him for a long moment, his head tilted to one side. “You ain’t never been in love. Else you’d know the how of it.”

  “I most certainly have,” said Fletcher, reddening.

  “No, no, you ain’t, neither.”

  “Well, maybe I have and maybe I haven’t. I really don’t see where that’s any concern of yours.”

  “You’re right. None of my affair, but it explains a whole lot about you, boy.”

  “Such as?”