Those had been heady times, back when, despite the fact that Gunnar Tibbs had actually been the one to lay hands on Skin Varney, Reg McDoughty had been deputy marshal, the lawman in charge of that posse, and with ten men under his command.
Joe Pooler, his boss, had been laid up with gout when the robbery took place. They never snared Sam Thorne and the money, but as a consolation prize, they sure as heck were able to catch Skin Varney.
That had been a couple of dozen years back, back when he’d been younger, had had more hair on his head than on his chin and less meat around his gut and more on his arms. He’d been, he didn’t mind admitting, a solid sort of fellow. He liked to think he still was.
Back then, maybe he’d been a little overeager to show what he could do. But he believed—and he still felt this way—that was how a fellow should behave when he was in his prime years. And he was proof it worked.
Hadn’t he landed himself a pretty young firebrand for a wife? Hadn’t he gotten ol’ Joe Pooler, after hemming and hawing and shuffling cards and kicking dirt, to retire as marshal of Promise so he could take over? Hadn’t most of the town rallied for him? Not everybody had, though, and that stuck in his craw. Gunnar didn’t like him, and then there was Millie, the very woman he’d tried to court for so long. She hadn’t supported his efforts much at all.
That had been a big ol’ disappointment, despite the fact he’d still won in the end. Edna had come along, a roving schoolteacher. He reckoned she really did love him, and he her, but it had been something else when she’d all but proposed marriage to him.
“That’s my job,” he’d said.
“Well, seems to me you’re sleeping at work, then,” she said. “And when I see something that needs doing and nobody else around doing it, I tuck in and get it done. So how about it?”
He had reckoned he didn’t have much choice in the matter. And then, by and by, they’d had two children, though neither lived long. Little Elmer, named after Edna’s favored grandfather back in Illinois, drowned at the age of four in a freak flood that swelled up the Chalk River behind town.
And then little Adeline, named after Edna’s favored granny, also back in Illinois. She had taken ill with a chesty croup at the age of nine months and died within two days. Edna had never forgiven herself and had never been quite the same toward him since.
And now here he was, twenty-some years since they’d wed, married to the same woman, not sharing much in their bed other than time, him awake, her asleep.
That was why he sought the soft comforts of one of Millie’s girls, Delia, a couple of times a week. Mostly they’d talk and then he’d nap. Doze right off without giving thought to the how or why or where.
Delia never once said a thing about it, never judged him. He was grateful for that. Truth was, he needed the sleep, and unlike his old boss, Pooler, he’d never felt right about locking the door and dozing on a cot in one of the cells. He had a lingering mortal fear that somehow the cell would lock. He always kept the spare key on his person anyway, but you never knew.
So he snailed his way to Millie’s every few days, always through the back door. It was a small town, though, and he suspected Edna had gotten wind of what he was doing. But nothing was ever said about it, and so life had gone on like that for a number of years now.
And that was how Reg had wound up at Millie’s that night of her death, half dressed in his long underwear and boots, when he shoved his way into Millie’s room to see the spitting image of Samuel Thorne in a murderous pose.
That pesky lawyer Millie had hired, Chisley DeMaurier, claimed the kid was Thorne’s long-lost son, which made sense to Reg, as the young dandy’s looks had puzzled him in the street. But no matter who he ended up being, he’d sure looked guilty, standing over Millie with her throat all gashed wide and deep. Then he’d rabbited out the window, carrying his own sack of luggage, same one they’d dealt with earlier in the street.
Sure, he was a stranger in town, and it didn’t seem like Millie was a threat to him at all; in fact, another thing he’d learned from the lawyer was that the kid would inherit Millie’s building and the business, such as it was. So why would he kill a woman who’d been so kind to him? And if he had, where was the knife he’d used?
None of it added up to much, but Reg had been out scouting the region, looking for the young man. He needed answers, and he figured the young man had some. But even before the kid showed up in town, he’d heard that Skin Varney had been cut loose from Tin Falls Prison.
Varney’s last words as they’d hauled him off to prison in that barred wagon were that he’d be damned sure to live through it all so he could return to Promise and kill them all—lay everybody in town low, and then lay the town low, too. Could it be he was keeping that gruesome promise, starting with Millie? Could it be that Sam Thorne’s long-lost young son had been telling the truth when Reg had found him over Millie’s dead body?
Reg shuddered in the dark and shifted to his right side, dragged the top of the blanket over his left ear and tried to think of something else. He could still hear Edna’s snoring. But at that moment, even that sounded okay to him. Anything was better than his thoughts about Skin Varney and his quest for vengeance.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The faint sweet tang of sage wafted through the darkness of the small hours as Skin rode through Promise, not caring if anybody saw him, not bothering to hide his face. He’d reacquaint himself with every damn one of the townsfolk before too long anyway. Just now, though, he had to get to the lawdog’s place. He had a special something he’d like to try out on him.
It didn’t take long before he approached the tidy abode of Promise’s boss lawdog, Marshal Reginald McDoughty. Good fortune was with Skin, for the marshal and his wife lived on a well-tended plot of land at the east end of town, not square in the middle of the business stretch, which suited Skin just fine, particularly for what he had in mind for the tin badge and his woman.
In many ways, Reg McDoughty was the one Skin most wanted to kill. He represented the filth of the law, the unfairness of it all, the very reason he had lost so many years of his life.
Gunnar Tibbs was high on the short list, too, as Gunnar was the one who’d caught up with him, but Skin was saving him for last. Gunnar was the man who’d earned the most hate Skin could muster on those long, hot—or freezing, depending on the season—nights in his cell, when he lay awake in the dark, vowing his revenge, yet deliciously uncertain how exactly he was going to go about it.
He imagined, in much detail, how each citizen of Promise would react. Mostly they begged him and promised him anything and everything, all at once. In his dreams, he’d say, “Why, yes, as a matter of fact, there is one thing you could do for me.”
“Anything!” they’d shout, tears soaking their faces, their heads nodding, desperation making their lips tremble.
“I could use two dozen years of my life, bundled up tidy, and topped with a pretty bow. If you could hand me that, I believe we could come to some arrangement.”
Their faces would slump and they’d cringe and cry harder than ever. That was about when Skin would wake up, smiling every time. Sometimes giggling, too.
As he approached the lawman’s place, he saw that it was a pretty little thing. The two-story clapboard house was painted white. Storm shutters flanked the windows and a brick walkway led to the front door. Where would a lowly town marshal come by the money for such a dandy home?
Skin felt he was not a front-door sort of guest, so he decided to skirt around to the back door, tied the bony old horse to the white slat-rail fence, and left him to doze. It was about the only thing the horse did with any dedication.
Skin’s fingertips checked the revolver and his wide-bladed hip knife, riding on each side of his waist. He walked quietly up to the back porch, a small affair that served as a place for the lawdog and his woman to store firewood out of the weather.
> Skin seized in place halfway to the house when he heard a slow, low sliding sound. He wondered if they might have a dog. No, he told himself almost at once. He’d have seen it, or sign of it, when he’d spied on the place earlier in the daytime.
Maybe it was the old woman’s ghost come back to torment him. He smiled wide. Nah, he didn’t believe in such foofaraw. At least not until a spirit interfered with his mission. Then they’d have words.
He proceeded on up the three steps, across the small roofed porch, and paused, standing to the left side of the door. He tried the knob, a wooden deal in contrast to the seldom-used brass affair on the front door. The door wasn’t locked. Didn’t mean Skin was going to stand in front of it yet.
He bet a dollar to himself that nobody was awake. He eased the door open. It squeaked, so Skin put pressure on the knob, pinching off the sound, and opened it enough to step into the dark, still room that smelled of past meals, of meat and gravy and coffee too long on the boil. He closed the door behind him, mindful of the squeak, and crossed the room, waiting for a plan to come to him.
He didn’t have to wait too long. A quick, sharp sound, as of a floorboard popping under sudden weight, came to him from the darkness upstairs, somewhere to his right. After a few moments, similar sounds, soft sounds, followed, drawing closer. Down the stairs, across the dark room beyond a half-closed door that led to the kitchen. Then they paused.
“Who’s there?”
The voice was a man’s and it was scared, cold, and tight in the throat. Skin was close to busting with giddy excitement in his shadowed hidey-hole spot by the pie safe.
“I say, who’s there? I know someone’s here. I heard the boots, heard the door.” He walked, sock footed, nudged the door open and took one, two steps farther into the kitchen. Skin watched the man’s profile in the dark, silhouetted against the window in night blue light. The man had a turkey wattle hanging below his chin—not much of one, but it sure showed sign of a fellow who didn’t get up to a whole lot of labor in a day’s time.
There were a few chin hairs there, too, and mustaches. From what Skin had seen of the marshal’s wife—not a bad-looking little critter, and not prone to fatness—she had a shade of lip hair, too. Odd that. He’d never understood how women could have such. The fickle ways of nature, guessed Skin.
He waited another moment, one more step; then Reg McDoughty would be in the center of the room, likely armed—no right-thinking man would be caught otherwise when rousted in the middle of the night by a strange noise. There, he’d be the same number of strides from the back door, which Skin had closed behind himself, and the door behind the lawman, which he himself closed, that led to the rest of the house proper.
Since McDoughty was sock footed, he was a silent beast. He was also used to his own house, so he had that advantage. But what he didn’t have was Skin’s big knife, the edge honed keener than a spinster’s tongue.
“How you feeling tonight, Marshal?” Varney said low and even, a couple notches above a whisper.
Marshal Reg McDoughty didn’t react as Skin had expected—the man didn’t yelp, barely hitched his breath, and from what he could see in the scant moonlight, didn’t but half turn to face Skin behind him.
“Skin Varney. I suspected as much.”
Oh, man, thought Skin. He hadn’t seen McDoughty in twenty-four years, but already he was talking as if he knew the situation inside out. Irksome.
“Glad to hear I didn’t disappoint you, lawdog. It’s been a while, so I thought we could catch up, chat a little, see what each of us has been up to.”
“I know what you’ve been up to, Varney. You’ve been in Tin Falls Prison. At least until a couple of weeks ago. That’s about a week’s easy ride southward of here. I figure you took your time, committed a few crimes along the way, and then showed up here to seek that revenge you howled about all those years ago. That about right?”
Skin stepped out of the shadowed corner, gun in one hand, his other hand resting on the butt of the knife’s handle. “Why, Marshal, it’s almost as if you was with me the entire trip. Yes, sir, it’s uncanny how you knew just what I’ve been up to.”
“Crimes and all, eh?”
“Oh, you bet, McDoughty. You bet. You can’t expect a little ol’ thing like two dozen years in prison to change a man, can you?” Skin chuckled, long and low. “I’ll keep my voice down so as not to disturb your pretty little sleeping missus.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Skin watched as the marshal stood taller and pulled in a breath. That got the man, he thought. But a fellow could only look so menacing standing in his long handles and socks.
“You even think of harming a hair on my wife’s head and I’ll—”
“What is it you’ll do, Marshal? Hmm? Ain’t a thing I can think of that you could do to me that ain’t already been done. You humiliated me, you locked me away, you robbed me of my prime years, you stole my rightful fortune, you bumbled finding Sam Thorne, and to top it all off, you took away my favorite pigsticker knife—you ain’t still got that about this foul little town, have you?”
“Huh, you know what? That knife could well be at the office. I rarely throw away such items. Trouble is, that has resulted in two shelves in the storage closet full of other people’s junk.”
“Ain’t junk, Marshal.”
“Fair enough. What’d it look like?”
“You tell me,” said Varney.
“I can’t. As I said, I’ve stacked up twenty or more years of such goods from all manner of folks. You want to walk down there with me, I’m happy to look it all over. You know, Skin, so far as I know, you haven’t committed any crime I can’t overlook since you’ve returned.”
McDoughty had been hoping he might be able to butter up the man, get him out of the house. It didn’t work.
Skin snorted, obviously not afraid of waking Tully’s wife. “You must think me a fool, Marshal. You and I both know that I cut the throat out of that old crow Millie. You going to forgive me for that? Tell me it’s okay for me to kill a person? Shoot, I’ve laid low a handful of them on the road from Tin Falls Hell House to Promise. That old whore come next, then Horton Meader.”
Reg groaned. “Not Horton, too?” His voice came out as a wheeze. “Why him?”
Varney’s brazen admittance of murder caught the marshal like a plank to the head. His thoughts swam and he snatched for the back of a kitchen chair. This job, Reg thought, it’s getting to me. Hell, it caught me a long time ago.
“What’s the matter, Marshal? You ain’t going to give up the ghost before I get to do it for you, are you?”
“You aren’t going to do a damn thing, mister!”
Both men turned to see a wraith in a white nightgown glowing in the doorway. The wraith held a shotgun at gut level, aimed at Skin Varney.
“Edna!” shouted Reg. “No! Go back! Get out of here!”
“Like hell I will, Reg. This is the vermin you told me of?” She readjusted her grip on the heavy gun.
From the way she braced her feet, Skin could tell it was an effort for her to hold the thing.
“Now, now, Edna. That’s what he called you, ain’t it?” Skin tried to make his voice smooth and soothing. He should have been mortally afraid, he knew, but something about her appealed to him—she was a witchy little thing. And he liked it.
“I’d like to get you to calm down, but we ain’t going to get far in knowing each other if you keep calling me such hurtful names. Vermin? Why, that’s downright unfriendly.”
“Good.”
“Edna, back away. Now!” Reg barked that last word, and she flinched, glanced at him. It was what he’d wanted. Had to break her spell. She could be as dedicated to a thing as a dog on a bloody bone.
Skin’s gaze jerked toward him, and the marshal raised his revolver. He pulled the trigger at the same time Skin did. Both men jerked as their bullets b
urrowed into flesh.
Skin growled and snatched at his left side, mashing a fist hard into the spot. Right away he knew it was not an immediate mortal wound. Might be later if he didn’t tend to it, but unless McDoughty or the devil woman dosed him with another shot, he’d live through it.
Reg spun from the punch of the bullet deep in his right side. He braced his backswept right leg to keep himself upright and fought to raise the revolver again. At the same time, he shouted at his wife.
“Get gone, Edna! Go!”
Like always, she didn’t do a damn thing he said. Never had.
She dropped the shotgun in the doorway and rushed to him.
Skin retreated back a pace, closer to the shadows, and held the revolver steady before him. His position was perfect to level on either of them.
“Reginald!” She nearly knocked him over as she reached him. Her feet slid on something wet and slick on the floor. Even in the scant light, they saw and smelled the rank, curdled sweetness of blood, a whole lot of it.
She clapped a hand to her husband’s belly and he groaned and staggered backward, his revolver held weakly in his left hand. He staggered and she guided him backward.
They clunked against the wall, and his head knocked into a small round of needlework of two flowers leaning together she’d done years before on their fourth wedding anniversary. He’d made a cute frame of twigs and twine and hide glue. The small remembrance slipped off the tack and came to rest on his left shoulder as he sagged against the wall.
“Oh, Edna,” he whispered as he squinted at her face, inches from his. “So sorry, all of it. Love you, girl . . .”
“Hush now, Reg. You’re going to be just fine.” But her voice was a trembling thing, not sounding a bit like the voice either of them had known all those years together.
With her left hand, she reached to her wheezing husband’s chest and laced her fingers tight among those of his own bloodied right hand. With her right hand, she pried the revolver from the fingers of his weak left hand where it sat atop his bloodied rising and falling belly.
Ralph Compton Guns of the Greenhorn Page 15
