“Such as how you make a snorting sound anytime anybody mentions their fondness for somebody else.”
“I do not.”
Gunnar nodded. “Yeah, you do, too. I mentioned how I felt about Millie, and you did it. And a couple of times since when your mama’s name come up and Thorne was mentioned.”
“Oh. Well, I had no idea.”
Gunnar waved a paw at him. “I’m not bothered. But you ought to figure out a thing before you go trying to knock it off its feet. Besides, you can see the reason in that locket of yours. Your pap was a handsome fellow, and your mama, she was a looker. Sweet girl, too. Very kind, always laughing. Thorne fell for her. Shame his heart was already occupied by somebody else.”
“Who else? Was he already married?” Fletcher had thought that his newfound life story could not possibly become more complicated.
“No, I meant him. He was in love with himself. Thought he was God’s gift to the world.”
“Everybody speaks of him in the past tense, as if he were dead. Do you think he is?”
The old man shrugged. “No idea. Wouldn’t surprise me none, though. Fellows like that usually don’t last long. I expect he’ll have met his end since leaving Promise in the night. The only thing you have to keep in mind is that Millie kept her vow to Rose. Your mama wanted you to get an education. I’m not certain why Millie sent you back East for such, but I’ve thought on it some over the years.”
“And did you come up with any reasonable hypothesis?”
“There you go again, lobbing two-dollar words at me. Thing you should be asking yourself is how she could afford to pay your way all these years.”
“I was told it was an anonymous party that wished to remain so. After a while I gave up trying to find out.”
“Even after you got to an age where you could think for yourself?”
Fletcher nodded. “Even then, yes. But you know the truth behind it, I can tell. Otherwise, you’d not have brought it up.”
“I’m guessing Millie knew that all the good schools were back East, so she set you up there, give you a new name so nobody’d ever know you were . . . Well, in case anybody ever went snooping, they’d not find you so easy.”
“So that’s the beginning and ending of how I got my name?”
Gunnar shrugged. “Might be she mentioned an uncle or some such back in the family woodpile with the name of Fletcher or Ralston.”
“Hm.” Fletcher grunted. “But why would Millie do all that?”
“Shows you how much she thought of your mama. That Rose, she was like a daughter or a baby sister to Millie.”
“And so that made me a nephew of sorts to Millie.”
“Yep,” said Gunnar.
“It’s ironic.”
“How so?”
“Millie did so much for me, yet she was nothing to me.”
Gunnar turned on him, fire in his bloodshot eyes. “Nothing? Maybe she wasn’t nothing to you, but you were something to her. She was always going on and on about you. Like to never shut up about how well you were doing in school and such.”
“How would she know that?”
“Oh”—smiled Gunnar—“she had her ways. When Millie took a notion, there wasn’t a thing she couldn’t figure out. She was like time itself, was Millie. Unstoppable.”
It was a long while before Fletcher said, “My name, my real name. I’m not really Fletcher J. Ralston.”
The old man leveled his gaze on Fletcher once more. “Your mama named you herself before she passed on. About the last thing she did, according to Millie.”
“Then it’s true?”
Gunnar smiled and nodded. “Good enough for your pap, good enough for his squallerin’ bairn, I reckon.” He sipped his coffee and said, “Junior.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Horton Meader woke to the sound of a bell gonging somewhere deep in his head. There were no bells anywhere near his hillside hidey-hole. Heck, he didn’t know of any bells within a hundred miles of these mountains. It took several long minutes before it dawned on him that the bell was the god-awful sound of his hangover tormenting him, nothing more.
It also took him that long to crack an eye. He’d have cracked open two, but he had lost use of one a long time ago—twenty-four years back, to be exact. It had been on that cursed posse ride tracking that stink-hided Skin Varney and thieving Sam Thorne, though they all suspected ol’ Thorne had blown on out of town that night of the heist, near a week before.
Still, they’d reasoned, it would have been worth their efforts to catch up with Varney, who several folks swore they saw lingering in the region. Why? Likely he was on the scout for Thorne, too.
Maybe he suspected Thorne had stashed the haul somewhere local. The Piker brothers, owners of the mine company who had the biggest share of the stolen money, as well as the dozen or so independent miners who had had their shares filched, estimated the take at more thousands of dollars than Horton had ever seen to that point in his life.
Had he known that that was going to remain the case for all his days and that he’d end up living out those days in Promise, Wyoming Territory, he’d have slit his own stringy throat right then and there on that hellish posse ride. Or he’d have worked harder to track Thorne and relieve him of the money—and kept on riding himself.
That annoying thing called hindsight told him he’d made a mighty poor choice in staying on at his diggings near Promise after the big gun down in the hills north of town. There hadn’t been a week that went by since that he hadn’t cursed that posse ride and the gruesome theft it had spawned.
“Should have gone away and stayed there,” Horton Meader murmured, the words echoing in his hungover, cotton-mouthed, throbbing, bell-clanging head. And as he lay there on his sag-rope cot hoping for a second dose of morning sleep to drop on him of its own accord, his mind dragged back to that cursed time when everything in his life had turned to muck.
Back to that morning twenty-four years before when his pard, a fellow on a claim but two ravines west of his, wiry Gunnar Tibbs, had dropped in on him all in a lather. Should have known something was stirring. Should have said no to him, should have not even answered the door when Gunnar knocked. But he had.
“Curse me for a fool,” murmured Horton as memory and not sleep smothered him. . . .
TWENTY-FOUR YEARS EARLIER
“Horty, you in there? Horton?”
“Yeah, yeah, door’s open. I’m frying up a mess of bacon before it goes south on me. It’s been greenin’ earlier and earlier with this heat wave.”
“Heat wave?” said Gunnar. “Why, it’s November! We got one day last week that nibbled up into the forties and you’re ready to shed your clothes, which ain’t something I care to look upon.”
“Why are you here, Tibbs? If it’s to insult me, I hear that all the time anyhow. Not like you to make the trip over here this early, less you’re out of whiskey and looking for a few swigs of the dog’s hair.”
“Nope, not this time. This time, I’m here on official business. Of a sort. You and me, we’re some of the few miners in these hills who ain’t sold out to Piker Holdings, right?”
“Yeah, so what? Don’t mean we didn’t lose money, just the same.” Horton stuffed another log into his stove and rattled the door closed. Tibbs always took forever to get to the point.
“So what? I’ve a good mind not to tell you, that’s what!”
“Good. Then leave me be so I can cook my old bacon in peace.” Meader had known that would rattle Tibbs and he’d come out with it. He forked the sizzling slabs of pink-and-tan meat and waited.
Sure enough, Tibbs growled, “They still ain’t caught Skin Varney for his part in the robbery.”
“No? Not a surprise, I guess. Been a week or more. He’s likely long gone by now.”
“That’s just the thing. He ain’t!”
“What? Why on earth would he still be around these parts? You steal from folks, you don’t linger. I mean, I don’t much like Varney, never did, but that don’t mean he’s stupid.”
Gunnar nodded. “Sure enough, but something’s keeping him hereabouts. Spinelli and Crawford saw him. They swear to it.”
“That don’t explain why you’re here. Unless you think I’m hiding the rascal.”
“Deputy McDoughty and a few of the boys are spreading out into the hills looking for him.”
“A posse?” Meader slowed his prodding of the spitting, crackling bacon. He wanted it good and dead before he’d consider tucking into it. He reckoned he’d have to share it with Gunnar, too. That story of it greening wasn’t but half the truth and Gunnar’s nose worked as well as any man’s.
“Yeah, a posse.” Tibbs nodded his head, eyeing the bacon. “I was sent to fetch you.”
“Fetch me? I am not a parcel, Gunnar. I won’t be fetched.”
“Don’t you want to see that rascal caught?”
“Sure, though I’d rather see him and Thorne caught, along with the money.”
“Me, too, Horton. So would everybody. That’s how come there’s a posse.”
Meader prodded the crispy bacon curls about the pan a bit longer, then shoved it off the hot spot. “I reckon I’ll go along.”
He didn’t really want to, but he wanted to dig for color even less on that particular morning. Fire just wasn’t in him yet. Not that he’d admit that to Gunnar Tibbs. “But I haven’t eaten my breakfast yet.”
“Now you mention it, neither have I,” said Tibbs, still staring at the pan much as a dog would do when shown forbidden goods.
Horton closed his eyes a moment, then sighed. “Pull up a chair, then, you rascal, and you can tell me all about it.”
A half hour later, the two men, well-fed and sloshing with coffee, rode back down the trail toward Promise proper. Halfway to town, they met up with the rest of the cobbled-together posse.
“Where have you two been?” growled McDoughty. “We been setting here for far too long, waiting on you slowpokes!”
“Well, now, McDoughty.” Gunnar eyed the man with a cool level gaze.
Horton kept quiet and watched the two butt heads, a common enough occurrence betwixt them. The rest of the men did the same. They were all fellows Gunnar and Horton knew—some townsmen, some rock hounds such as themselves, all sitting their horses and trying not to look as uncomfortable as they felt.
“I told you, Mr. McDoughty, that me and Horton wouldn’t need you all to hold our hands. I expect we can track a man in these hills about as good as anyone here.”
“Yeah, but I have to deputize you first.”
“Why?” said Gunnar.
“Because then whatever you do will be legal.”
“You saying that whatever I get up to in a day’s time ain’t legal?”
“Nope, never said that, Tibbs. Now just raise your right hand. . . .”
“Why?”
The lawman sighed and dragged a hand down his face, same thing he always did when he conversed with Gunnar Tibbs. If that was what you could call this chatter.
Gunnar raised his hand anyway, surprising everybody, and let Reg McDoughty proceed with the oath. The other men had already been sworn in. Before the lawman could finish with his instructions, Gunnar and Horton wheeled their horses around and departed in a choking cloud of grit.
“Didn’t want to say anything back there,” said Gunnar, “but I saw a strange track on the way down. Figured you and me could follow it up.”
“Hold on now. Just what are we supposed to do should we find Skin?”
Gunnar shrugged. “Ain’t worked that out yet. But I will, now that I’ve had bacon and coffee.” He winked and led the way higher into the foothills northeast of town, keeping his eyes on the trail and his ears perked.
He didn’t doubt Skin Varney could lay them low at any moment. The thought was humbling, and not a little exciting, too.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
A bullet spanged off a granite ledge crusted with pine duff, a front porch for a squirrel that wasn’t certain what to make of the proceedings unfolding before his house.
Gunnar had only just heard howling beyond, erupting from a copse of trees to his right. He had thought it might be where Horton was holed up, but he wasn’t certain—they’d split apart when they got closer and smelled a campfire some minutes before.
Despite the bacon of earlier, the scent of grease-popping, pan-frying ham slabs had set Gunnar’s gut growling once more. He’d nodded toward Horton to dismount so they might advance on foot.
Horton, however, who was prone to bouts of stupidity or deafness—Gunnar didn’t know which it ever was—began talking in the loud, dumb voice of a fellow who spends his time pounding steel against rocks. That was all it took for Skin Varney, or whoever was holed up in the rocks hereabouts, to open up on them. Gunnar and Horton had scattered.
With the tumbledown boulders all about the place, trekking in a straight line wasn’t possible, and now he had no time to find out where his pard had gotten to. The howling ceased and Gunnar nibbled his lip hair. What to do?
“Skin Varney!” he finally shouted, and then paused, hoping the fool would give up a clue as to his whereabouts. He didn’t hear anything, which worried him because if Horton had been shot but was still among the living, he’d likely be howling some more, yelping, running around and cursing, or something. He was a fidgety sort anyway.
“Come on out! I’ll make it easy on you!”
“Ha!”
That did it. Gunnar jerked his head to his left. Maybe those three boulders, the topmost looking almost as if a giant had placed it to balance for eternity on the others. Or at least until some doughhead with a stick of dynamite chose to ruin the setting.
Just then another shot cracked the silence. Gunnar heard a whistling and a buzzing and felt a slight breeze, then something soft drifted down past his face. It was the top half of a feather. A large feather.
“Hey!” he shouted. “That was my prize eagle feather, you bastard!”
What he got in reply was another bark of laughter. “That’s a taste of what you’ll get if you keep hounding me, Tibbs! I already did for your idiot friend!”
“Like hell you did!” came a wheezing shout from Gunnar’s right. It was Horton, alive. Good, thought Gunnar. If Horton was swearing, he was in decent enough shape to throw lead at Varney.
Gunnar cranked off a shot toward the rock stack. Nothing happened: no screams of pain, no yelps of surprise. It was too much to hope for that he’d laid the varmint low with a single shot.
High above them stretched a long white cloud like a misshapen ox yoke being pulled apart against the blue slate sky. Not for the last time did Gunnar Tibbs wish he was up there, on the wing, soaring where the eagles took a notion to do so any old time they chose.
The silence was unnerving, since Gunnar knew how cruel Varney had been back before he was wanted for a big daring theft. The fact that he had been seen at the crime with Sam Thorne linked him enough in the eyes of the town, a town that all but depended on the income from the mines. You took that away, and there wouldn’t be a chance of keeping the bars open or the mercantile, the whorehouse, any of it. So the townsfolk were suitably dandered up. And Skin knew it.
“I didn’t do nothing wrong, you know!”
“Technically,” said Gunnar, shifting position so he might get a better view of the rock pile and maybe Varney with it. “That means you did do something wrong.”
“Huh?”
Gunnar scooched his hinder parts to his left, but kept his head tucked low. “You said you did not do nothing wrong. So that means you did something that was wrong.” The logic of his words had sounded solid when they first popped into his head, but Gunnar wasn’t so certain anymore.
“You ain
’t making sense, you dirty woodchuck!”
“Names, Skin? You of all people want to go and call me names? You dress like you found your clothes in a hole in the ground, and you smell like you ain’t washed in a year of Sundays!”
Again, there was silence, then a chuckle. “Gonna have to work harder than that, Tibbs, you want to rile me!”
“Wasn’t trying to, Skin. Just making conversation, stating the truth.” Gunnar pictured the big, dark-haired, rangy brute sniffing his shirt, his pits, beginning to doubt his hygiene.
“No wonder the women run from you! And you’re bowlegged, to boot!” Gunnar nibbled his knuckles to keep from giggling.
“I ain’t, neither! And I never heard the ladies complain!”
“Not the ones you got to pay for—money makes a liar out of all of us, Skin Varney! Now quit this and come out. The whole posse’s here, and while you’ve been yammering in them rocks, we got you surrounded!”
“Like hell, Tibbs.” Skin peeled off another shot that scored rock and plowed a finger-length furrow inches from Gunnar’s face. Flecks of granite drove into his right cheek like tiny fists.
He bit back a yelp and a snarl and clapped a hand to his face. Blood welled from what felt like a hundred tiny rat bites. Gunnar heard Skin’s chuckle pinch off as the sound of horses drifted closer, carried up trail to them from below, from the south, where Gunnar and Horton had ridden up. He gave brief thought to their own horses, but no—this wasn’t the sound of a horse or two walking aimless with no riders.
This was the sound of several mounts, snorting, being ridden with purpose, huffing up that last steep bit of trail. They’d break through any second. And then they’d be visible to everybody up here—Skin included.
“Get back!” Gunnar shouted. “You on the trail! Take cover!”
That was all he had time for, because Varney opened up and cranked a volley of shots at the newcomers. Gunnar guessed it was the other men from the posse.
The horses stopped. They were close enough, though, that Gunnar heard low, growled words and whispers.
Ralph Compton Guns of the Greenhorn Page 11
