Ralph Compton Guns of the Greenhorn

by Matthew P. Mayo

  Once, Gunnar had seen the girl Skin had been with sporting a bright red cheek, just the one side, and a downcast look in her eyes and Gunnar knew Skin had smacked her for some imagined offense. Varney was not a man to be trusted, to be forgiven, or to be negotiated with. He was the roughest cob going and he needed to be served up his dish of just deserts.

  “No, sir, I say again. You’re going to make hard acquaintance with your earned comeuppance.” Keeping his eyes fixed on the surly outlaw, Gunnar jerked his rifle skyward and cranked off one, two shots before leveling it on Skin once more. “They’ll be here before long.” He was less certain of McDoughty’s tracking skills than he sounded, however.

  “Tibbs! I’m telling you!”

  “And I’m telling you, Skin Varney, you keep up this whining and groveling and I’ll shoot you in the forehead. Now shut up.”

  The man tried once more, got out the first half of a word, and Gunnar moved the rifle an inch to the left and squeezed off a shot. The bullet whizzed so close to Varney’s big knot head, Gunnar swore he saw a sweaty black curl waggle in the breeze.

  Skin yelped and leaned back, eyeing Gunnar hard and rubbing his leg, as if he’d just realized his ankle was a sore mess. The look he leveled on Gunnar was enough to make a tough man widen his eyes.

  “I won’t forget this, Gunnar Tibbs. Wherever you go, I will find you. And I won’t let you go, no matter how much moaning and crying you do.”

  Gunnar swallowed, then offered back his own level stare. “Lucky for you I ain’t planning on going nowhere, so you won’t have to track me far. And I’m not prone to belittling myself before another fellow, so it’ll be a sore disappointment to you, I reckon, to find out I’ll not be whining. But I will be waiting. Do come on back. Anytime if you’re still able.”

  The unspoken message he’d sent was plain—if you’re still among the living.

  It didn’t surprise Gunnar to know he had to wait longer than he would have liked with the glaring, bullheaded man. McDoughty’s posse took longer than it ought to find them.

  The men who finally arrived did so on horseback, which meant they’d been forced off the trail, slowing them. Reg looked down on them from the edge of the ravine. “Heard your shots.”

  “I never would have known.”

  “What’s that?” The acting marshal chewed his quid of tobacco with more vigor, color already rising in his ruddy cheeks.

  Normally, Gunnar was of a mind to let troubles waft over him, but he was sore and tired and annoyed all at once. “I’m just sure glad I wasn’t hanging by my thumbs!”

  “You’d best keep in mind who you’re addressing, Tibbs.”

  “Same to you, McDoughty. Now get down here and deal with your prisoner. I’ll collect my reward accordingly. How’s Horton?”

  “He’ll live. Sent him back with Winkins to get himself doctored further. And there ain’t no reward.”

  “There will be.”

  And Gunnar was right. He pressed the head of Piker Holdings and made vague mention of some point regarding questionable mining practices being dragged into the light of day. From a deep-pocketed outfit such as Piker, Gunnar Tibbs had little problem resorting to blackmail for cash. However meager the reward, it would be enough to help him limp along at the diggings.

  The slow trip back to Promise, on which Skin Varney had to ride aboard Reg’s horse while McDoughty walked, leading the beast by the reins, allowed all parties involved to stew and fester over their individual plights.

  McDoughty, as the lawman whose posse had captured the villain, should have been pleased. And yet because he had once more been personally bested by Gunnar Tibbs, Reg strode back to town in a dark mood. None dared bother him, save for Gunnar.

  As for Gunnar, he appeared to enjoy himself too much for everyone’s taste. He cracked wise and giggled a time or two, as well.

  * * *

  • • •

  Skin Varney was found guilty of the theft, despite the lack of sober witnesses and the definite lack of stolen money and gold nuggets and dust. Despite his insistence of cluelessness when questioned by the judge as to the whereabouts of Samuel Thorne, Varney was not believed.

  As for the attempted murder charge, Horton made the mistake of mentioning while under oath he still had hopes of regaining his vision in his bedeviled eye. The judge gave this serious consideration and decided that Meader hadn’t suffered a grievous enough wounding, and thus, the man who’d committed the act shouldn’t suffer for such. Only for the theft.

  That Horton would soon enough learn he’d never again see out of that eye came as news too late. The judge had sentenced Skin to five years of incarceration for his part in the crime of robbing the good citizens of Promise.

  While Skin Varney was jailed in Promise, awaiting transport to Tin Falls Prison, word came that he was also wanted in Oregon Territory for the probable killing of a man and his dog over a spilled beer, and in California for kidnapping a prostitute and abandoning her, naked and abused, in a dry wash that had then filled in a flash flood.

  The irate woman had been able to cling to a log and thus make it to the safety of a Mexican village, where she was rescued by a humble shepherd who had but two days before prayed for a woman to marry him and mother his six children.

  Despite this amicable ending, the law looked on the capture of Skin Varney with grim satisfaction, and he was sentenced to twenty-four years of hard labor for his known and assumed yet unproven shenanigans.

  And thus, the town of Promise, Wyoming Territory, celebrated in grand style the day they carted Skin Varney off in chains, howling his rage and swearing revenge. He rolled away in a barred wagon bound for Tin Falls Prison, a hellish place no one had actually seen, but all had heard of, a fitting hole for Varney.

  Horton Meader recalled all this through the long view of time, twenty-four years after the events, as he lay supine with a forearm draped over his face on his sag-rope bed in his old cabin at the diggings. But now Skin Varney, as Gunnar had told him, was out on the warpath and howling once more for blood.

  Well, hell, thought Horton. He had never done much to harm the fellow back then. Just gone along on the posse because they had told him to. And of all the men who had been involved that day, he had been of little value to Skin. True, Gunnar had shared with him the reward takings he’d gotten from threatening the Piker company, but that cash had worn out long ago.

  “And still I’m here,” Horton said with a groan.

  “Not for long.”

  Horton stiffened. I never even heard the door open, he thought as he slid his hand from his face. He knew that voice.

  “Skin,” he said in a trembling voice no louder than a whisper. “Skin Varney.”

  “Yep.”

  Horton looked up and, even with the other man skylined against the morning light filling the doorway, he could tell it was indeed Varney.

  “Twenty-four years late, but I’m here.” Then Skin Varney laughed, a low, grating sound like chains dragging over rock.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Some days into his stay at the cabin, Fletcher asked Gunnar how he’d know if he made Skin Varney’s acquaintance. The old man merely said, “You’ll know.”

  “Perhaps a more specific description might be useful.”

  Gunnar sighed. “He’s big and mean and homely. Least he was all them years ago. I can’t imagine time has softened his edges none.”

  That was all Fletcher could get out of the man, so he decided to let it rest for the time being. Gunnar mumbled something about visiting a tree and walked outside. It was obvious something was bothering the crusty old miner.

  Fletcher decided a surprise might soften Gunnar’s edges. He’d try something at which he’d not had much experience—cookery. He’d seen Tibbs make biscuits enough these past days that he felt confident he could master the menial task with little effort.

&nb
sp; He set about the job with zeal, and as luck would have it, Gunnar stayed away until Fletcher had amassed a small, towel-covered pile of his efforts on the table.

  When he returned, Gunnar held one up to inspect it. “I don’t know, boy. I just don’t know. I ain’t never seen anybody torture a living thing like sourdough in such a way before. It ain’t a biscuit, and it ain’t a cracker, and it ain’t hardtack.”

  He looked at Fletcher, not working very hard to suppress a grin. “I don’t know what it is. I can tell you one more thing it ain’t, though: It ain’t natural—that’s what it ain’t. What it is, I don’t know yet.” He bit one and shrugged. “Flavor’s there, but that’s the power of the sourdough, not your skill. I appreciate the effort, I surely do, but I’m sorry, boy. You’d best stick to whatever it is you’re good at. What is it you’re good at anyway?”

  Fletcher shrugged. “If you had asked me that a month ago I might have replied that I was most excellent at tallying the books at Rhodes and Son, the banking firm in Providence at which I am employed. Now . . .” He shrugged again. “Now I have no idea who I am and what I am doing, let alone what I may or may not be good at.”

  “Well, never mind about all that. Since we’ve established that you aren’t much of a cook, I expect we’d best explore some other way you might prove yourself useful, at least to me. Rummage in that bag of wonders of yours and retrieve those fancy irons and we’ll see.” Gunnar ambled out the cabin’s back door. He returned a moment later. “I had hoped you’d take that as a cue to follow me, boy.”

  “Yes, well . . . about those ‘irons’ . . . ” Fletcher’s cheeks and ears had reddened.

  Gunnar sighed. “Guns, revolvers, pistols, irons—same thing in any lingo. Now let’s get cracking. I have ammunition enough for a spell.”

  Within minutes, they were out back behind the cabin, where Fletcher had strapped on his father’s ornate double-gun rig at the behest of Gunnar.

  “First off, that ain’t how a man goes about holding a gun.”

  “It ain’t . . . I mean, it isn’t?” Fletcher looked down at the revolver in his left hand. His fingers were wrapped about the middle of the spinning round bit the crusty old man had called the “wheel.”

  “Second off, give me that thing.” Gunnar snatched the pearl-handled gun from the youth. “Liable to kill me before we commence!” He shook his head. “Now, which hand do you favor?”

  Fletcher looked down at his once-spotless hands, the long fingers now slightly callused, the nails mildly begrimed, despite his attentions. He shrugged. “I am, in most matters, of the left-handed persuasion.”

  “Well, now, if I were to hold this pistol like so, betwixt your hands, which one are you inclined to reach for it with?”

  Again the young man shrugged and moved toward the firearm with both hands. “Either, really. This is often the case with me. I am of neither one mind nor another in certain situations, and thus equally adept with either appendage at the task at hand.”

  “Uh-huh,” said Gunnar, sighing and shaking his head. “That about figures right.”

  “How so?”

  “Because your pap, now I think on it, was the same. ‘Ambivalent,’ I believe that’s called.”

  Fletcher smiled. “You mean, ‘ambidextrous.’ ”

  “That’s what I said.” Gunnar reddened. “Now stop interrupting me or we’ll get nowhere fast! For now, make like you’re a left-hander. Muckle onto that grip like so, and hold it firm like you’re a man and you mean it.”

  Three hours later and many spent cartridges littering the earth at their feet, Fletcher and Gunnar stood side by side, watching blue smoke clear away as the last of the young man’s shots echoed.

  A line of mismatched green, clear, and brown glass bottles stood whole and glinting in the sun, as if in proud defiance of the insults thrown at them for hours. Fletcher wanted nothing more than to run at them, knock them off their roost, and smash the smug vessels with a big rock. He settled for a groan and a growl of disgust.

  “Aw, don’t take it so hard, son. I reckon you’re just not inclined to gunplay. Goes against reason, but maybe it didn’t run in your family. You’d best stick to those books and figures and such.”

  Fletcher’s eyes smarted from the gun smoke, and his ears buzzed and rang so everything the old man said sounded as if he’d spoken to him through a long tube.

  He slid the pretty pistol back into its handsome leather holster. He’d grown fond of holding the two revolvers, of feeling their solid heft in his hand, first one, then the other, though he’d been a poor shot at best with either hand. “I may as well do something useful with them,” he said, and made to unbuckle the gun belt.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Taking them off. I would like you to have them, Gunnar. It’s little enough, and they should be owned by someone who can appreciate their obvious quality.”

  “No, no, no, you don’t, boy. Them guns are Sam Thorne’s and you are Sam Thorne, whether you like it or not. Didn’t they never teach you nothing in all those years of fancy educatin’ you got yourself? Such as how heaven wasn’t cobbled together in a day? No?”

  Fletcher felt chastised as if he were about eight years old. He reddened and looked at the mountainous horizon.

  “Besides”—Gunnar looked at his moccasins—“I appreciate the gesture, but I can’t shoot with one of those like I used to. Eyes are leaving me. That’s why I tote Millie’s sawed-off. Don’t need skill with that snarlin’ demon. Just a general direction and a finger.” He cackled and hunched over, slapping his knees.

  Fletcher rubbed at his ears to dampen the ringing, and Gunnar said, “Tomorrow we’ll stuff tufts of sheep’s wool in our ears. It helps a little. Not as much as hitting the target now and again, but it helps.” He winked. “But before we pack it in for the day, you got to give it one last go.”

  “Why? We’ve already seen I’m not the gun sort.”

  “Naw, could be I was wrong. Ain’t happened much in my time, but I’ll allow as it has happened here and there. But a wise old man once told me that when you feel like you’ve done all you can on a thing, give it one last go. It will often surprise you.”

  Gunnar nodded toward the line of as-yet-unharmed bottles perched atop the firewood chunks and rocks standing on end at the edge of the cabin clearing. “This time, don’t think about it at all. Just close your eyes, pull a deep breath, relax those slumped, bookish shoulders, and see what happens.”

  Fletcher fought down another sigh. Might as well play along with him, he thought. It’s not as if I have tickets to the theater or a game of snooker at the club.

  He let out the long breath in an easy stream, relaxed his bookish shoulders, and thought of a most pleasant thing to him—a long, rainy afternoon at the Algernon Davies Memorial Library, lost in the stacks, making his way slowly up and down the aisles, sampling from poetry, architecture, medicine, philosophy, novels.

  He never quite felt his hands reach, his long fingers seat themselves with practiced ease about the pearl grips, never felt his long thumbs peel back on the stiff little bird-head-shaped hammers, never felt his pointer fingers squeeze the triggers. He only came to as the two centermost liquor bottles, one green and one brown, exploded at the same time in clouds of powdered glass.

  Fletcher stood, wide-eyed, looking at the impossible. He glanced over at the old man beside him.

  “Sweet Lord above,” whispered Gunnar Tibbs. “I never seen nothing like it. Whatever you did, son, you just keep on doing it.”

  “That advice was from a wise man, indeed. Who was he?”

  Gunnar offered a wistful smile. “My own pap.”

  Then he reached up and smacked Fletcher on the shoulder. “End the day on that high note. Come on. I’ll treat you to a slab of charred cow and a shot of something that’ll burn your gullet.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

&nbs
p; Horton’s headache drifted away like gale-driven smoke. He squinted through his good eye again at his uninvited guest. “How you been keeping, Skin?”

  “Oh.” The big man stepped into the room, the motion uneven. “So you want to talk over old times, huh?” Skin dragged a chair backward across the floor to a corner where he could see the open door and the rest of the cabin, including Horton. “First, I’m going to need you to brew up a pot of coffee. That is, if you are all still civilized enough in these parts to offer a guest such niceties.”

  “Oh, yeah, sure, Skin. Sure.” Despite his fear and conviction that he was about to meet his end, Horton Meader couldn’t help but be curious about Skin’s appearance here.

  As he shoved up out of the bunk, he did his best not to take his eye from the big man, who groaned in accompaniment to the wooden chair’s pops and creaks.

  “You’re surprised to see me, I expect,” said Skin, readying a cigarette.

  “Oh, well, not really, no. You see, Gunnar told me a couple of days back he heard in town you’d been let out of Tin Falls—” He shut his mouth and prodded the stove’s innards for coals to revive. He wasn’t about to mention that Gunnar also said that he suspected it was Skin and not the dandy greenhorn who’d killed Millie.

  Skin chuckled. “Okay, that answers that question. I expected that bastard would still be hereabouts.”

  Horton cursed himself, and in doing so, the leading edge of a thin squeak escaped his tight-shut mouth.

  “Aw, don’t go blaming yourself, Meader. I would have found him anyway. That’s why I’m here, after all. Looking up old pals—don’t you know? What do they call it?” He looked up at the ceiling toward which he blew his smoke. “Yeah, getting reacquainted and all.”

  “Oh?” Horton fumbled with the stove’s door and it clunked with a harsh metallic bang. “You . . . you still know many folks hereabouts, Skin?”