She sat against the wall tight beside him, her head close to his, and said, “I love you, Reginald McDoughty. Always have, always will.”
Then that little nightgown-wearing woman thumbed back the hammer.
“No!” Skin shoved away from the wall and worked around the table, fouling up on an overturned chair.
Edna raised the revolver to her right temple.
“Don’t do that, lady!”
She let out a quick, stuttering breath and pulled the trigger. Her head slammed into her husband’s as the bullet passed through her skull and into his.
Once more, thunderous sound and blue smoke filled the room, swirling and choking everything with its bitter stink. The force of the close-fired bullet smeared blood and bone together in a grisly collision.
“Aww, hell,” said Skin, too close to have looked away, but too far to prevent Edna from firing.
Skin regarded the two dead folks laid out before him. “Huh.”
Voices from down the street drew closer. He let out a low sigh and winced at the pain in his side. “Well, here are two they can’t say I had a hand in. Plain to see they done for each other.”
His voice echoed in the otherwise still kitchen. As he walked to the door, holding his side, the revolver hanging from a hand, he looked down at the woman. “Now that’s a damn shame. Could have had us a time, darling.”
He nodded to the dead pair, then stepped over their legs and out the back door as fists thundered on the front door.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
What’s the matter, boy?” Gunnar’s question reached Fletcher from his corner where his broad bunk sat, heaped with skins and blankets. The man’s voice filled the midnight air of the cabin.
There was something about the crude mountain man and miner that, try as he might, Fletcher could not help but like. He was honest and not prone to playing games with words or deeds. That was a big difference from the folks Fletcher had known his entire life back in Providence.
Maybe it was city folks’ way of protecting themselves, arming themselves with words since they couldn’t rightly go around all day wearing guns strapped to their waists. Out here on the raw frontier, however, it seemed as if everyone wore a gun or a knife, or two guns and a knife, or a small ax on their belt, or all of them at once. Did that make him feel any safer? No, but he’d found that a good number of the folks on his travels westward were as Gunnar was, kinder somehow, perhaps more honest.
“I expect you can’t sleep either,” said the old-timer. He yawned, a loud, drawn-out sound that ended in a growl. Fletcher smiled despite himself.
“I might as well head out,” said Gunnar.
“Head out? Where are we going?”
“We ain’t going nowhere.” Gunnar shook his head. “I am. You go anywhere, it’ll ruin everything. I have to get back to town. I stay away too long, folks are going to suspect something’s foul, like I’m hiding a fugitive from the law or some such. Besides . . .” He looked out the window at the darkness.
He faced Fletcher. “I didn’t scrape the dirt off myself down at the creek last night for nothing. Figured I’d sniff around some, see if I can learn anything while I’m there. I expect folks will have all manner of opinion about you, though few of them will know anything close to the truth, nor even who you are.”
“The ladies at Millie’s will have told all, I’m sure.”
“Don’t be surprised. Millie’s gals ain’t stayed in business this long by blabbering what they know. Elsewise, a certain lawman would have been run out of town long ago. At least by his wife.”
“The marshal is married?”
“Course.”
“But he was at Millie’s, and when I saw him, he was half dressed.”
“Yeah.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
Fletcher thought for a moment. “If I talk with the marshal, he’ll understand. I’ll tell him I ran because I was afraid. I’ll explain that I’m currently low on funds, so I won’t go anywhere while he investigates.”
“Nah, even if he wasn’t inclined to see you hang, he’d only arrest you for vagrancy or some such. But once we get this resolved, you can live at the brothel.”
“Live there? I can’t live there! It’s full of . . . well . . .”
“Fallen women?”
“Yes.”
“Well, hell, son, your mother was one and you didn’t turn out too bad. Awful taste in clothes, though.”
Gunnar rummaged in a wooden chest and tugged out clothes that to Fletcher didn’t look much different from what he was wearing.
“I really should be there,” said the young man, reviving coals in the stove.
“Nope. No, you should not. You can pay your respects later. Right now that fool Reg would arrest you because you’re the easy answer, and the town would praise him, and that would be that. Meanwhile, Skin Varney would still be running around these hills, not shouldering any blame for laying Millie low.”
“What’ll I do while you’re gone?” Fletcher almost hated to ask. Gunnar wasn’t the most reasonable old fellow at the best of times. He was likely to saddle Fletcher with all types of domestic chores.
“Oh, I figured you’d ask that. I’m not sure working on your aim is a good idea while I’m away. I have to buy more bullets as it is. Speaking of buying things, you got any money? I can’t expect to keep you in flapjacks and coffee and bullets on my meager takings from the diggings.”
Fletcher nodded and rummaged in his pocket, then turned to his satchel. He pulled out his wallet and offered Gunnar what he had—seven dollars.
“That’s all you had on you when you landed out here?”
“I don’t live in the upper echelons of refinement back in Providence, contrary to what you’ve been told.”
“I’m sure the folks of Promise would appreciate knowing that, seeing as how they paid for your lifestyle as it is.”
Fletcher let the comment go. He still wasn’t convinced that all the stolen money had been used to fund his life.
“Speaking of money,” he said as he tested the tepid, revived coffee, “maybe I could work the claim for you.”
Gunnar snorted. “You know anything about digging for silver and gold?”
“Well, no, but I watched you the other day. All you did was dig and pick and scratch around and mutter a considerable amount.”
“Yeah, well, everybody has their own methods.”
“Do your diggings still earn?”
Gunnar puffed up and eyed Fletcher as if he’d insulted a little old lady. “Course they have promise! I wouldn’t waste my time on ’em otherwise. I just can’t do all the labor it all requires anymore.”
“Have you ever thought about liquidating your assets and—”
“And what? Move? Why would I do that? This here’s my home.” Gunnar stomped a moccasin. It echoed in the little cabin. “Besides, I wouldn’t get anything for it.”
“Then you have thought of it.”
“Course I thought of it, but I wouldn’t get anything for it anyway.”
“How do you know it’s still a worthy claim?”
“Got me a feeling.” Gunnar winked and tapped his nose. “Either that or it’s my rheumatics playing up on me.”
They sipped coffee in silence while the morning’s first rays of sunlight glowed through the small windows’ wavy panes.
“Best time of day,” said Gunnar.
Fletcher nodded but didn’t say anything.
“If you really are interested in learning about the diggings, and you ain’t just whistling, I could show you a spot to dig later. I got a feeling about it, a fresh spot I never touched with shovel nor pick before.”
“Yeah? I’d like that. Will you show me before you leave?”
“Well, now, there’s a certain way of commencing a hole. We’l
l do that when I get back. But I will show you where I’ve been digging for now. Get yourself some practice.”
A little while later, Gunnar led Fletcher over a low rise behind the cabin and pointed to a shored-up hole in the steepest slope of the rise. It stood perhaps four feet tall and three feet wide. The entry was squared off by bark-on timbers and hewn at the corners.
Fletcher bent and looked in. It wasn’t a deep tunnel. Barely seven, perhaps eight feet in, but the old man had done a decent job of chipping the gravelly, loose-looking innards smooth sided and hauling the debris out, one bucket at a time.
“This here’s a hole I’ve been working on and off again for a handful of years now.”
Fletcher backed out. “I assume that pile of detritus is what has been removed from there?”
“You assume right, mister.”
“And how does one go about, um, removing said debris?”
“Huh? Oh, well, you use this here.” Gunnar held up a steel bar half as long as Fletcher’s leg. “And this with it.” Gunnar held up a hand sledge. “And once you’ve loosened up what you’re after, you fill that wooden bucket and drag it out and dump it yonder. You don’t know enough to know what you’re looking for, but I do. So leave the takings and I’ll rummage through the pile when I get back from town.”
“How will I know where to dig? Surely one spot in there holds more appeal than another.”
“Yeah,” said Gunnar, nodding. “There’s a jag of ledge in there, just to the left—center of it has color running through her. Or at least it smells of it enough that I remain hopeful. Millie used to say that if me and Horton didn’t have no hope, we’d blow away on a stiff breeze.”
Fletcher looked to where Gunnar pointed and saw a yellowish smear that appeared to continue behind a shelf of brittle-looking rock.
“You chip all that odd-colored gray stuff out to get at that promising color back there.” Gunnar rubbed his big old-fingered hands together as if he were freezing. “Wish I was staying here with you. There’s promise in there, I can tell.” His eyes glinted with possibility.
“Yes,” said Fletcher, keeping his own eyes wide and forcing a smile. “I can hardly wait to engage in this most exciting task.”
Gunnar squinted at him, uncertain if he was fooling or if his wordy remarks were genuine. “Okay, then. Well, I’d best be off. You get ambitious, and you can keep on going. That hillside’s pretty sound. Ain’t had a cave-in up here in a couple of years.”
As he walked away, he heard Fletcher say, “Cave-in? You mean the dirt collapses inward and fills the tunnel? Mr. Tibbs? Mr. Tibbs!”
Mr. Tibbs kept walking, a smile riding wide behind his freshly combed, voluminous beard and mustaches.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
As he switchbacked down the last length of trail to the town proper, it occurred to Gunnar he’d not need to visit the settlement near as often anymore now that Millie was gone.
Visits to town had been a rare thing for him as time wore on. His age was the culprit mostly. It was a long walk. But he’d long ago given up beasts of burden. Felt bad about them having to lug him and his gear and goods. When his last donkey, ol’ Nedley, died eight . . . no, nine years back, he’d not sought a replacement, though he’d been urged plenty of times to do so.
In truth, life had been easier since then—he didn’t have to figure out how to feed the beast, which left more of his meager income for him to survive on. He put that toward tobacco, whiskey, and vittles, and with what little else was left over, he often bought Millie gewgaws and fancies and useful items, too, for her sewing.
That woman had loved to sew quilts and such and had been a dab hand at it, too, as the handsome and warm quilt on his bed back at the cabin proved.
* * *
• • •
Sometime later found him in the kitchen at Millie’s, talking with Hester, the woman who’d run the place for a year or more now, since Millie had taken ill and, so, to the bed. Millie could not have chosen a more capable—and intimidating, Gunnar didn’t mind saying—woman.
Hester was a mulatto from Virginia or some such place back East, born into slavery, but she’d fought and bought her way west years before, all on her own. How Millie had managed to accumulate such a household of tough women, Gunnar had no idea. He’d asked Millie once, and she’d only said, in true Millie fashion, “What makes you think all women aren’t that tough?”
And now Gunnar was facing the most frightening of the lot. Coming down out of the hills toward town, he’d made up his mind to tell Hester he had Fletcher J. Ralston bunking under his cabin’s roof with him, and what was more, he knew him to be innocent of Millie’s killing.
The instant fire that rose in Hester’s eyes forced Gunnar back a step, and he gulped a time or two. His throat was suddenly craving a glass of cool beer. And he’d take it in hell itself—anywhere but that kitchen.
“You come here and tell me he’s living with you? And you think he’s innocent? After what he did to Millie?” Hester’s eyes narrowed as she looked at Gunnar.
“Thought you’d feel that way,” said the crusty old miner, pooching out his bottom lip. “Oh, well, not much I can do about how you feel. Even if you’re wrong.” He glanced sideways at her.
“What do you know?” she said. “You have some sort of proof? Because I was there and he was standing over her . . .” She turned back to punching her bread dough.
“You sound as if you know your mind so well, there’s no way you’d ever change it. That right?” Gunnar had known the woman for nearly the same amount of time he’d known Millie. And now that Millie was gone, he reckoned he’d soon know Hester longer than he had Millie. But never as well.
“Have you ever known me to lie, Hester? You forget how much I . . . how very fond I was of Millie?” He wiped at his leaking eyes and found he didn’t much care if Hester saw him weep or not.
Without looking at him, she said, “Never have known you to lie, Gunnar. But this time . . .” She shook her head as she worked the dough.
“Trust me,” he said.
Eventually she nodded, then wiped her own eyes and changed the subject. “How long you figure we’ll be allowed to stay on here?”
“Stay?” Gunnar pulled a thoughtful frown. That was something that had not come to him. He assumed Millie’s would always be where it was and what it was—same went for the women who lived and worked there.
“I don’t see why you can’t hole up here until you go on, as Millie used to say, to meet your eternal reward. Why do you ask?”
“That nephew character you’re so fond of,” she said, wringing out a cloth she’d used to wipe down the flour-dusted table. Her thick fingers were wet, the knuckles red. “He worries me.”
“He shouldn’t. I tell you, he’s a greenhorn with a hard shell, that’s all. Between you and me, he ain’t got the sense God gave a squirrel. But he does have a way with words, perfumes the air with enough of them. It’s of tallies and such he tells me he’s most proud. Numbers! I never heard the like. I told him the only numbers I like are the ones I get for my diggings in the form of cash money. Elsewise, I don’t care much.”
There was another long silence and Gunnar knew Hester well enough to see that she’d mull over what he told her, and it still might not make any difference. It was all he could do. “I got to pay a visit to McDoughty, see if I can convince him of the same thing I hope I’ve convinced you of.”
Hester stopped pinching biscuit dollops off the big wad of dough and looked at him.
“What’d I say now?” Gunnar settled his hat on his head and laid a hand on the back door’s latch.
“You haven’t heard, then.”
Even before he replied, Gunnar knew something awful had happened. “What ain’t I heard, Hester?” he said in a low voice.
“He’s dead,” she said, going back to pinching off lumps of dough and la
ying them on the cutting board.
“Dead? Reg?”
She nodded. “Yeah. Edna, too.”
“Oh, no. When? How?”
“A day since. Figured that’s why you were here.” She sighed. “It looks like she did it and then shot herself. Finally got tired of him coming here, I guess.”
For once, Gunnar didn’t know what to say. “But . . .”
“No buts about it, Gunnar. Just that it happened so close to Millie’s murder.” She turned on him, picking dough off her fingers. “Unless you’re wrong, and your back-East city boy did this, too.”
He finally looked at her and shook his head, frowning. “Couldn’t have.”
“How’s that?” she said.
“Like I said before, he’s been with me. Since the night Millie died.”
She nearly dove for him, knocking aside a chair. Jamming herself between him and the door, her back to the door handle, she said, “You listen to me and you listen good, Gunnar Tibbs. Millie was my friend, too. Best one I ever had. A mama, a sister, and a best friend all in one. Just what is this game you’re playing?”
“What game would that be, Hester?” Lordy, he thought he’d gotten through to her. Gunnar Tibbs didn’t scare off easy, but Hester was a formidable woman.
She stared at him a long time, then walked back to the counter. “You really saying he’s been with you?”
“That’s right.”
“Never slipped out and made his way back to town last night?”
“Nope. Getting so he hardly leaves my sight, save for visits to the necessary house. It’s a little annoying. He’s so green he can’t find his own feet without a map.”
“Hmm,” she said.
Gunnar didn’t think she sounded convinced yet of Fletcher Ralston’s innocence, but at least she wasn’t throwing dishes at him. But that was of little concern just then. What he really wanted to know was more about Reg and Edna. He didn’t believe in coincidences such as this. He asked Hester a few more questions about the circumstances of their deaths, and then there was a long moment of quiet.
Ralph Compton Guns of the Greenhorn Page 16
