Ralph Compton Guns of the Greenhorn

by Matthew P. Mayo

  “Why, you bet I do. Some of them are the same folks you recall, too. You know, from the posse.”

  “Yeah, look, Skin. That was a long ol’ time ago. Ain’t many of us left, I expect. I mean, I wasn’t . . . I didn’t never do nothing to . . . I didn’t want to go on that ride!”

  Skin nodded and puffed. “Yeah, I know that, Horton.”

  The man at the stove sagged a little in relief as he filled the pot with a dipper from his water bucket, which sat atop a stump beside the stove.

  Long minutes passed and neither man spoke. Skin watched Horton and Horton fretted and didn’t look at Skin.

  Finally, Skin broke the silence. “But you did, Horton. You did ride along. Rode right along with them others with but the one thing on your mind: to capture me so I could be hauled back to town to swing in the middle of Promise proper.”

  “No, no . . .”

  “No? You mean all this time I thought it was you whose eyeball I shot out, but it wasn’t?”

  “No, no . . . I mean it was, but I didn’t lose the eye. I still got it, see?” He flipped up the patch and pointed to the milky eye beneath.

  Skin leaned forward. “So you have. Don’t look worth much, but I expect it’s some small comfort to you to have it instead of a puckered hole in your face, huh?”

  “That wasn’t called for and I don’t care who you are.” Horton’s words spilled out much bolder than he felt.

  “Uh-huh. Well, I expect you know what we’re going to get up to here this morning. I can’t make it an all-day chin-wag because I have a pile of folks to visit, you see.” He sipped the coffee Horton set before him. “This is mighty fine. Ain’t sure I’ve had its like since before I was sent away. It’s one of the things I’ll surely miss about Promise. Folks around here know how to brew up a pot of coffee, yes, sir.” He nodded, agreeing with himself, and sucked his teeth.

  “What do you mean, you’ll ‘miss about Promise’? You going away?”

  Skin chuckled. “Don’t sound so hopeful, man. I ain’t going anywhere, but you might say that Promise is. You see”—he leaned forward, his voice sliding out low and cold—“I will let you in on my little secret. I have big plans. Been thinking about this for a whole lot of time and I’ve concluded that it’s only right that in life we should pay in kind for the misdeeds we’ve done.

  “A fellow I shared my cell with taught me that lesson. He was in many ways a savage, even worse than me, but he had a head on his shoulders. And what he said rang true with me like a big brass church bell tolling way down yonder in Mexico on a still, hot day.”

  “Why, Skin, you’re a poet,” said Horton, cringing at this paltry effort to suck up, yet still hoping he might somehow wheedle himself into the man’s graces, if he had any. The outlook was bleak.

  “Thank you, Meader. Coming from you, that don’t mean much, but I’ll take my praise where I can.”

  Horton ignored the dig and tried to hold his cup steady with shaking hands. The coffee sloshed onto his knuckles. He knew he should be thinking of some way to save himself, to do something—cut loose with a gun or a knife or a club or some such. But the only thing he felt sure he might do was keep the man talking.

  Hadn’t it been Gunnar who said Horton could do that better than he could do almost anything? He was a born talker, and he didn’t mind admitting it. Though when he was on the far side of a drunken evening, Horton admitted he was less inclined to chatter. That didn’t help him much now. But he had to try.

  “So what’s your secret, Skin? You said . . .”

  “Oh, yeah. Well, as I was saying, the folks of Promise have got to behave, you see. Got to do the right thing in life. Folks can’t expect to ruin a fellow’s life and then sit back, fat and happy, as if nothing has happened.”

  “What . . . what are you planning, Skin?” The notion of Skin hunting down a whole town struck Horton as frightening, yet humorous, as if the man was having one over on him. Got to be my swollen head, thought Horton, to make me think that any of this is funny.

  “Why, Horton. I’m planning revenge.” Skin stood up, stretched, clunking his knuckles on the wall, and rested his big hands on his waist. He looked down at the still-seated Horton.

  “And I would like you to know you hold an honorable position, Horton. You get to be first— Well, no, that’s not quite true. There was that pesky old whore. She wouldn’t tell me what I wanted to know, so I had to let her have the honor. She didn’t deserve it—the honor of being first blood on my tour of vengeance. The treatment she got, however, she surely did earn.”

  By now Horton’s head was swimming. Had he heard the man right? Was he going to take some sort of revenge out on him? The other person must have been Millie Jessup. So Gunnar was right. Skin Varney had murdered Millie. Had to be. What other “old whores” were there about the town?

  And from what Gunnar had told him, the old girl had ended up in a bad way, a very bad way. Throat cut in her own bed. She was going to die soon anyway, but still, that was too brutal for words.

  “Okay, Horton. Get up and come on. No sense making a mess of things in here. Might be I’ll want to use it for a spell and I don’t fancy having to clean up after myself if I can help it.”

  “Oh, no, not me,” said Meader, shaking his head and melting into the chair. “I’ll sit right here and I won’t say a word, Skin. You can leave me be. I swear I’ll keep shut of ever seeing you. If it helps, I’ll skedaddle from here and you’ll never see me again.”

  “Well, it don’t help, and no, you’ll not skedaddle. You’ll take this like a man.”

  Horton sat still a moment, thinking. Then he finally said, “At least let me fight like a man, damn your homely hide!”

  He always remembered Varney as a big, ugly lout who got only homelier and nastier whenever he’d drink at Chalkey’s, which was most nights of the week.

  Then Skin and Sam Thorne had become chums, and the whole thing had gotten worse. They drank together all the time, pulled a handful of small-coin thefts, enough to keep them in whiskey, and next thing you knew, there was the robbery. Thorne came up missing and Skin was pinned to the crime.

  Quick as a rattler strike, Skin’s big right fist reached out and snatched the front of Horton’s green work shirt, balled it in his fist, and dragged the groggy little one-eyed miner out the door.

  “What? What . . . ?”

  “Time for talk is over,” said Skin, barely huffing at the effort. His left hand rested on his revolver. Beside that, saw Horton, hung a big wide-blade knife, a Bowie if ever there was one. He recalled Skin had earned his name as a trapper in the high places back in his youth.

  Horton was towed along, his moccasins drumming against the planked floor that led to his front door. A door, he realized as Skin’s fist drew tighter around his neck, that he’d never again walk through. So this was how it was going to end?

  No, curse him! Shake off the fuzziness! Horton commanded himself. This man is not your friend. This man is a killer and a thief and a jailbird and who knows what else?

  Anger finally roused Horton’s dragging body, and he growled, spat, and windmilled his arms. He managed to land a shot to Skin’s crotch, which brought up a groan and slowed the big brute a moment.

  Skin swung his left hand around and snatched at the shirt on Horton’s back and hefted him higher. “Don’t make this harder than it needs to be.”

  Then a funny thing happened. The big man caught the toe of his boot on one of the crooked planks. It was his left boot, the foot he limped on; Horton recalled something about Skin injuring himself when Gunnar had previously tracked him down.

  Skin’s left leg buckled at the knee and he went down, letting go of Horton on the way and thudding hard face-first to the ground. Horton did his best to roll out of the way. He scampered as quickly to the door and outside as his addled mind would allow. His headache came back with the force of a ha
mmerblow, and he groaned and made odd noises that might have been embarrassing, had he not been fleeing for his life.

  Somehow he found himself up on his feet and running, and still making a weird whining sound. At least, he thought as he ran, if I’m making any sound, that means I’m still alive. Behind him, he heard shouts from Skin, words he couldn’t make out, but they didn’t sound friendly.

  Horton stumbled on, his breathing coming harder now. Still he kept moving, over and then off the trails he’d made over the years, past his various test holes and false starts.

  There was the spot he thought he’d build his cabin, until he found a hunk of promising ore. He’d mined the spot and built his cabin elsewhere in the meantime. Then he found that the spot wasn’t promising, so he built his latrine over it. As it had that lovely view, he didn’t build a door for it. Just three walls so he could have privacy from the rear while he was doing his morning business and not get ambushed by Gunnar or somebody else looking for coffee and flapjacks.

  If there was one thing Horton always reckoned he could do right, it was fix a morning feed. He was a fair hand at that. Never had interest in baking breads or anything else, but folks liked his breakfast.

  More than once, after he’d lost the use of his eye, folks, mostly Gunnar and one of the ladies at Millie’s, Connie, had told him he ought to give up on the gold seeking and move on into town, open up a little diner, and serve breakfast all day long.

  It was an idea he’d considered with seriousness for a spell. But the notion of having to get up even earlier than the rest of the folks and make all manner of food and then serve them—well, that was distasteful.

  At least with a mine, you knew where you were going to be all day long and what you were going to do. You were going to wake up, eat, visit your outhouse with a fine view, then peck a deep hole deeper in the ground for a few hours, stop, drink coffee and water, and eat a few cold biscuits, maybe some god-awful beans, then get back to it.

  Now that was a sight easier than rising before the cock’s crow and forking over food for other folks. All for money? No, sir.

  That stream of thoughts rabbited through Horton’s fevered mind as he ran. Just past the outhouse, the trail angled and he glanced back to see Skin not nearly as far back as he thought he should be. And worst of all, the big bastard was standing still and aiming a rifle at him—where’d he get a rifle?—and smiling. The man was about to kill him and he was smiling about it, as if he finally saw a present he had long been expecting.

  Horton set to squealing again and dove in time to feel air sizzle a course where his head had been a scant moment before. From a sprawling seated position, he gulped and saw dirt furrow up by his outstretched right leg. He pulled it back with a yelp and saw blood welling up where the tip of the moccasin had once been.

  Now there was a ragged hole, as if a puppy had worried it, and blood leached into the rawhide. He wondered if maybe he’d lost a toe. Good thing it didn’t hurt yet, because he had to keep moving. He had a notion he could lose Skin by hiding in a deep shaft he’d sunk some years before when he had more ambition.

  It went into the hillside for quite a way and angled left and right at odd intervals. It wasn’t his favorite place because he’d once heard a rattler somewhere in there when he’d gone back in to poke around. He’d not dug in there for several years since.

  But it was still there, as he’d left it, and now he felt his foot throbbing. He knew he wouldn’t be able to outrun Skin, even with the brute’s own limp.

  There came another shout, something of a cackle, mismatched with his own frenzied sounds.

  “Got you now, Horton! All this time and I got you where I want you! Open that eye wide, man, because it’s about to see something it ain’t never seen before!”

  Skin’s husky, raw-edged bellow chased Horton as he scrabbled in his moccasins, slipping and sliding on scree, looking for the mine hole. Where was it? And still the big man’s voice chased him.

  “You guess what it is you’re about to get a good look at, Meader?”

  Another shot whistled by, parting his hair and sending his head lower, as if he were a startled pond turtle.

  “It’s death, man! Death! And it’ll be the last thing your one good eye ever sees!”

  Varney’s vicious howling sounded as if it were dropping behind. Maybe Horton was losing him back there in the twists and switchbacks he’d taken.

  Then Horton saw the partially caved-in black maw of his old mine diggings. He noted that the path to it was rubble, so he wouldn’t leave footprints behind. He gulped but once as he ducked low, knelt, and crabbed his way in. If there were critters lying in wait, he’d as soon die of a bite in his own diggings than shot in the back by Skin Varney.

  As soon as he thought that, he knew it wasn’t true. He’d seen a man die of a snakebite once. It had been back in Paso Canyon years and years ago, long before he’d come to Promise and stayed.

  He’d been on a crew hired out to a big mining firm hauling in timbers and shoring up tunnels. Rough work but honest. A snake had emerged amongst them at the noontime meal when they’d sought what meager shade was available among a boulder tumbledown.

  That vicious viper had doled out at least three fast strikes to the man’s neck, one to the jaw, and his entire head had swelled up like a pig’s bladder blown full of air. He thought it might pop but instead it had purpled, then blackened.

  All the while, the man’s howls rose higher in pitch, while his eyes bugged and bled, and his breath whistled and wheezed. Then his screeches pinched off and his eyes were lost inside the bulbous, doughy mess that was his head. His limbs trembled and his body spasmed, fingers scrabbling and flicking, and then he stiffened. Finally, he sagged in on himself and died.

  No, I’d sooner take a bullet, thought Horton, but he continued forward, holding his breath with each step he took, leading him deeper into the low tunnel. He’d ventured only about a dozen feet when he heard a rattling behind him. He froze, certain it was snakes. Then he heard a raspy chuckle.

  “You think you could hide in that there hole and escape from me, Horton Meader?”

  Horton held his breath and shook his head as if he’d been stricken with palsy. How could he ever live through this? Oh, no, no, no . . .

  Skin sighed long and deep, as if he were in a stage production. “All right, then. You’ve left me no choice, Horton. If you won’t drag on out of there under your own steam, I’ll send in my friend. Maybe you’ve met one of his cousins sometime in the past, being a mining man and all, used to playing with rocks.”

  What? thought Horton. Cousin? He heard a match flare, then a snapping, hissing sound. “Horton, you’re about to meet my friend, Mr. Dynamite Stick. Mr. Dynamite Stick, meet an old chum of mine, ol’ Horton Meader. Okay, here we go. . . .”

  “No!” Horton shouted, and clawed back toward the light, falling on his knees, scrabbling at the rocks with his hands. One of the greatest fears he’d ever come to know was not just being underground. No, he’d never had trouble with that, especially not in a hole he’d dug himself. He had always been careful about shoring up his efforts.

  But stuck in a collapsing tunnel? Now that was something he could not abide. What a hellish thought, to have rock and earth and dust and timbers collapse down on a man, crushing him to death with no hope of ever breathing good, fresh air again. No, not that. Anything but that. Anything . . .

  He reached the edge of the hole, gulping and gasping at the fresh air, knowing he had better dive to one side. Surely that dynamite would be smacking into him at any second. His eyes adjusted to the day’s light, and he looked up at Skin not ten feet before him.

  Horton shoved out from the awkward black hole in the hillside and stood, half crouching, his mouth sagged open and his eyes—one milky gray, one brown—wide. He was vaguely aware he’d lost his eye patch somewhere.

  Skin laughed and held up
a finger-thick stick as long as his hand. His other hand held a smoking match. With his mouth, he made a hissing sound, as if a flame had livened a wick.

  “That . . . that’s not . . .”

  “Dynamite?” said Skin. “Nah, I ain’t got no dynamite.” He tossed the stick into the rocks beside him and, slick as you please, shucked his revolver. “But I do have bullets.”

  He thumbed back the hammer, and as Horton watched, the snout of the gun’s barrel, itself a neat black hole, swung slightly so that he felt he could see straight into it.

  And so Death was not the last thing Horton would ever see. The last thing his one good eye would ever see was that little black hole as it spat hot lead venom in his face.

  The last thing he would ever feel was not the deadly, crushing weight of timbers and rock and earth and dust, but clean, fresh mountain air. At least there was that, he thought, closing both his eyes. At least there’s fresh air.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Gaw, but Edna could snore!

  Sounded like a bucksaw blade being dragged across shale. And she kept up for hours on end. Then she’d stop, as if the snoring got to be too much and her body gave out, and Reg would think maybe that was it. She’d not breathe for a good fifteen seconds, maybe longer, and he’d find himself wondering if he should prod her to get her going again, or should he let her go? Maybe this time she’d just stop breathing, as if the snoring got to be too much and her body gave out. But every time, the air would return to her chest with a low snort.

  Such thoughts had nested in Marshal Reginald McDoughty’s brain since he’d been snagged awake by the god-awful rasp of his wife’s snoring. Edna wasn’t a particularly large woman, but she made up for it in the wee hours with a ferocity in her slumberous breathing that, at one time, many years before, she’d reserved for other nocturnal pursuits. That had been all right, of course. Nowadays, he’d have gladly traded such amorous intent for a half night’s solid rest.