Ralph Compton Guns of the Greenhorn

by Matthew P. Mayo

  Everything Gunnar had throughout his long years—all the work he’d put into his diggings, all the hours he’d spent with Horton jawing away the hours, all the evenings of happiness he’d found in Millie’s arms, all the hours he’d spent alone with his thoughts in his cabin or out front overlooking Chillowaw Rim—all that time of his life had led him to this.

  He snorted. Should be something better at the end of it all, should be something softer, gentler, kinder than to end up killed by the very man who’d fouled the lives of so many others, including those Gunnar most loved. And now he’d fallen right into that trap himself.

  “I’ve been a fool,” he said out loud.

  The snake of a man replied, “Yeah, you have, old man. An old, stupid fool.” Again, the vermin laughed, this time long and loud. The laugh tailed off into a ragged, wet, raspy cough. Didn’t sound right to Gunnar. Was something wrong with the man? Gunnar shifted, began turning around.

  “No, no.”

  He heard a steel snicking sound, a hammer being pulled back.

  “You keep yourself facing away. Do as I say or you’ll end sooner than I intend you to.”

  Tibbs spat. “Figured on smokin’ you out, Skin Varney.”

  “Yeah, well, I got to you first, Gunnar Tibbs. Wasn’t hard. You still smell like homemade sin, and them bowed legs of yours never did get any better.”

  Despite his situation, Gunnar chuckled. Varney was a lot of things, but boring wasn’t one of them. “What is it you intend for me, Varney?”

  “I intend to gut you slow, peel your hide from your bones until you’re a screaming sack of muck—that’s what I intend. But it ain’t gonna happen yet. First off, we got to get somewhere, just the two of us. Somewhere that will be familiar, I promise you. That is, if you can rouse your useless old bones and walk there.”

  That, more than any leafy tincture, riled Gunnar. “You bet I can, you foul stink of a man!” As he perfumed the air with all manner of raw talk, Gunnar slid a hand up from his right knee toward his holstered gun. “Get away from me and watch out. I intend to give as good as I get, and no mistake!”

  Again, the laughing erupted behind him. “I’ll give you this much, old man. You got a bigger set than most folks I ever did meet. Usually, they’re whimpering and pissing themselves about now in the proceedings. But I’ll wager you are full of ideas about how you can get the better of me. Well, we’ll see about that. Yep, sir, we’ll see.”

  Gunnar sought to distract Varney and alter the tone of the palaver. “I see you are on foot, Skin. Hard times befall you of late?”

  “Shot my horse.”

  “Well, why would a man do such a thing?”

  “Beast didn’t walk fast enough to suit me. Let that be a lesson, you old fool. Now get going!”

  Before Gunnar could pluck his revolver free, rapid footsteps thumped and crunched, coming up close behind him. Something whapped down hard on his left shoulder. He flinched and yelped. He lurched and shoved at the ragged, worn end of a long, straight branch. He spun his head, holding tight to the thing, and saw Skin for the first time, not but three feet behind him, staring down at him.

  “You keep trying to unbridle that gun, old man. You do it again and you just see what all’s going to happen!”

  The man’s face was recognizable to Gunnar. Other than a whole lot more lines and a beard now steel gray and flecked with strands of coarse black, he looked about the same.

  It was the eyes, always the eyes, that gave him away. They were hard, dark, and hateful. And they gave Gunnar pause, as always they had, never more than now.

  They were the eyes of a killer, after all. The man who’d laid low his love, Millie, and his friend, Horton. The renewed resolve of revenge bloomed hard and bright in Gunnar’s chest. He sneered, returned the stare, and noticed that while Skin Varney did have him covered with a revolver, the killer’s other hand held the hastily whittled end of the very branch he’d slammed on Gunnar’s shoulder.

  It looked to be a walking stick, recently made, and not with any craftsmanship, Gunnar noted. He took pride in his own ventures with carving, from decorations to practical implements.

  What’s more, Varney favored his left side, sort of leaned that way, as if he didn’t even recognize he was doing so. As if he was wounded, maybe?

  Gunnar would keep that in mind. Maybe hit him with something low and on the man’s side. Might not take much of a hard, swinging blow to render him a kneeling beggar. At least long enough to finish him off.

  “What’s the matter, Varney? You ailing?”

  The dark look on Skin’s face almost made Gunnar forget he himself was ailing.

  Skin sucked air in between tight set teeth as if he were holding something back, and jerked the stick from Gunnar’s grasp. “You never mind about me. I was you, I’d worry about your old, sorry hide! Now get up and get along, I tell you!”

  Skin raised the stick once more as if to strike Gunnar, but the older man rolled to his right and snatched for his gun. Too late. The stick came down once more, harder this time, striking Gunnar across the head. His old felt hat collapsed against his skull and the blow dizzied him.

  While he fought a sudden gush of heat and confusion that blinded him in a wash of pain, Gunnar felt Skin’s presence closer than ever, and he lashed out blindly.

  All he felt for his effort was a whoosh of air, and then his arm thunked the pine against which he’d been leaning all night.

  Skin jerked the revolver from Gunnar’s belt, likewise the old man’s big-bladed knife.

  “No, you don’t!” Gunnar lashed out once more and heard laughs for his efforts.

  “Now maybe you’ll get up when I tell you to. Start behaving like a whupped schoolboy and you might—just might—live to the end of the day. Why, I take a notion, we could share a pot of coffee together. Now wouldn’t that be nicer than you settin’ here like a brain-addled old donkey in the cold, thinking you was trailing me when all the time I was doing that to you?”

  “Huh?” Gunnar rubbed his head and did his best to stand. He groped the rough bark of the ponderosa and used it to gain his feet slowly.

  “That’s right. That’s good. Gonna need you to heft that pack of yours, slow and easy, and haul it on up onto your shoulder and carry it like the good donkey you are. Then we’re going to march. Maybe all day, if I take the notion to.”

  “Won’t share coffee with you. Nothin’ . . . ” Gunnar knew his mumbles amounted to less of a threat than he intended, but Skin heard them and laughed once more.

  “Anything you say, old donkey!” He chuckled and prodded Gunnar in the back. “Walk on, beast. No, no.” Skin rapped him hard on the side of his upper right arm. “Thataway. Northeastward. And don’t drag at it.”

  Gunnar took a single step and his guts rushed up to meet his throat. He bent over and vomited the jerky and biscuits he’d taken in the night before.

  “Gaw, you are a mess, old man. Walking will cure you of it. Now move!” Skin whacked Gunnar once more, and the old miner, on cramped, unsteady legs, picked his way forward, slowly angling downslope and northeastward, herded by hard raps from Skin’s walking stick.

  A few hundred yards ahead, Gunnar saw the lower edge of the gentle slope where he’d encamped. Beyond the trees bright sun flooded down. He was sunk, he guessed, but at least he’d have the warming sunshine to ease his bones. The medicinal leaves were beginning to take hold and soothe his joints. But his knees, worst of all, gave him sharp, hot needles of pain slicing up and down inside his legs with each gimpy step he took.

  His senses slowly began to clear. He tasted the bile and smelled the stink of sour food on his breath, and he was grateful for it, because it reminded him he was still alive and he had a job to do. Somehow.

  That bastard had forced him to leave behind his sawed-off shredder, the one Millie had given him. He’d sorely like to avenge her with th
at thing. It had been the fondest part of his plan.

  But now, unless by some miracle he somehow lived through all this, that gun was destined to rot, leaned against the ponderosa where Skin had chosen to walk on by it. He could hardly blame Skin—lugging that short, heavy brute, if he had to be honest, had been a sore trial, like hauling a length of stone around the mountainsides. But it had been Millie’s.

  Skin had robbed him, too, of his old revolver, so Gunnar took stock of the one weapon he had left on him, his Barlow folder. It sat where he always kept it, tucked in his buckskin tunic, in a pocket within easy reach through the garment’s flap on his breast.

  He’d find a use for it, he vowed, before the day was out.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Fletcher twitched. Something, a sound, had startled him. His eyes opened. It was daylight. Barely. Very early, and very cold, but it was dimly light out. What had he done? Fallen asleep? Gunnar . . . He had to fine the old codger before . . .

  Somebody cleared a throat. That was the same noise that had awakened him. He spun his head right, then left. Somebody stood nearby, not ten feet away. He blinked, then rubbed his eyes and looked again.

  It was not a big frightening killer. Not Skin Varney. It was a woman, a woman Fletcher recognized. Hester from the bordello. And she was holding a rifle cradled in her arms. Behind her stood two, three, four other women. The women from Millie’s Place. From his place.

  He opened his mouth, but nothing came out. So this was it: They were going to kill him out here in the wilderness. Or truss him up and drag him back to town for the rest of the townsfolk to do what they would with him. Perhaps hang him! That was their way out here in the wild lands, was it not?

  Fletcher sat up.

  “About time you woke,” said Hester.

  “I . . .”

  “You what?” she said; her eyebrows rose. “We’ve been waiting on you.”

  Fletcher noticed the woman directly behind her, Dominique, held the bail of a now-quenched lantern. And beyond her, the other women stared at him.

  They’d walked all night in the dark to get here. He looked past them.

  “Where are the others?”

  “Others?” she said.

  “The others from town.”

  “Ha!” She shook her head. “Too lazy and scared.”

  “Then how come you . . . ?”

  “Us?” said Hester, half turning to look at her friends, who had spread in a semicircle about her. “Gunnar is our friend, too, you know. They all were. Besides, we have nothing to lose, Mr. Ralston. Nothing at all. Except our dignity.” She smiled at that word. “Yes, we do have dignity, Mr. Ralston. We also deeply believe in ourselves—two things that really are one anyway. That’s one of the things Millie taught us.”

  “She sounds like a remarkable woman,” he said, sitting up and rubbing his neck. He was still confused, but he let her talk.

  “You’re damn right she was.”

  “Then does this mean you no longer think I . . .”

  “Oh, no,” she said, shaking her head, though he swore he saw a thin grin on her face. “Not so fast on that score. We just think you’re maybe not as guilty as you are innocent. We’ll find out. Now, if you’re about through with your rest, we’d best be moving on.”

  She walked past him on the trail, followed by the women. “We have Millie’s man to rescue and a killer to catch.”

  Fletcher struggled upright, shaking himself back into wakefulness, and tugging the blanket tight about his throat. “What will you do with him should you catch Skin Varney?”

  “Oh,” said Hester over her shoulder, “we’ll catch him. And then we have a number of possibilities open to us.” They all giggled low and kept walking.

  It was then that Fletcher noticed not all of them held guns. One carried a double-bit ax, one wore a bandolier of rope, and another wore two massive kitchen knives riding at her hips.

  He swallowed and fell into line behind them. Fletcher had some thinking to do.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  As the morning wore on, Skin grew quieter, and his comments were reduced to random grunts and curses. It sounded to Gunnar as if Skin was drinking, what with all the growling and slurring. If he was lapping up whiskey, it would provide Gunnar with an advantage in the situation.

  Now that he was limbered up, Gunnar was moving pretty near as good as he did back home. Of course, if Skin was liquored, his fuse, already short and sputtering, might prove even shorter, were Gunnar to kick up a fuss. He had to get that Barlow knife out of his tunic without Skin seeing him. He couldn’t afford to risk losing it, but he’d rather have the bastard in view when he went for it.

  He decided to leave it where it was until an opportunity came up. It had better show itself soon, though.

  The sunlight had gone a long way toward warming his bones and limbering him enough to keep from stumbling up and down the graveled slopes and falling on his face. As it was, every time he stumbled, Skin howled with laughter. Soon, Gunnar thought as he dusted himself off from the last drop to his knees he’d taken. Soon I’ll gut Skin like a fresh-caught trout.

  The terrain had become unfamiliar to him, though they were still within traveling range of his cabin. Little more than a day’s worth, at his reduced pace, and well less than a day for someone with young legs, like the kid. Oh, that kid, thought Gunnar.

  He hoped he had done the right thing in sending him to town. Hell, Fletcher Ralston was no dummy. Green about the ways of the West, sure, but he was no mental sluggard. Maybe he’d think for himself and hightail it away from Promise. That was what Gunnar would have done were he the kid.

  But would Fletcher? That would only offer a lifetime with his head on a swivel, like a songbird did every time it lit somewhere for a drink or to pick at a bug. No, that was no way to live.

  But then again, what would going to Promise bring Fletcher? Misery and a whole lot of angry townies who all thought the kid had killed Millie and perhaps even suspected him of the deaths of the marshal and his wife.

  Though given that they were found dead together, he with a gut wound, she with a shot to the bean that nibbled into Reg’s head, too, maybe Edna really had done the double deed herself.

  Maybe she had gotten tired of sharing her man, such as he was, with the women at Millie’s, notably Dominique, the one woman he’d been seeing regularly for years. Everybody in Promise knew, and though they never mentioned it, everybody assumed Edna knew, too.

  But what was between a man and his wife was just that, between them. Nobody else’s business. And Gunnar knew deep in his gut that the townies were wrong about what had happened to Reg and his wife. They’d not had their final fight. No, they’d been laid low, somehow, by Skin Varney; of that, Gunnar was certain. At the very least, the filthy animal had had a big hand in their deaths.

  “Hold up, old donkey!”

  The shout from behind Gunnar was farther back than he’d expected it to be. He stopped, grateful for the break from trudging over and between rocks, and looked over his right shoulder. There was Skin, stumping along himself, putting awkward weight on the stick. The revolver hanging loose in his right hand, swinging by his leg.

  He caught Gunnar peeking at him and raised the gun. “I told you before: You keep your eyes front and forward. I have to tell you again, I won’t tell you at all. I’ll just open up on you!”

  Gunnar complied as Skin walked closer. When he was still five or six feet behind, Skin said, “Any of this terrain starting to come to you now?”

  Gunnar looked about himself and shrugged, shaking his head. “Nope. Should it?”

  That seemed to anger the killer. “You’re damn right it should! Get moving through them bushes ahead, past that big reddish rock. Yeah, that one. And keep going. Now, you get past them bushes, you tell me what you see.”

  Gunnar sighed and ambled forward. He was
bone sore and tired, and he could have used a long pull on his canteen. His shoulders and upper back muscles were twitchy, aching, and tense from the rucksack riding there. That put the shotgun in his mind and he felt a twinge of regret at not having it, and an even bigger twinge for losing something Millie had given him.

  Before he shoved through those bushes, he hesitated; maybe this was where Varney planned to kill him. End of the trail, pard, he thought, then shook his head. No, that was no way to think.

  Millie deserved justice. Horton deserved justice. If he failed the people he loved, why, Gunnar reckoned, he’d twist and spin and scream for eternity on a red-hot spoke in hell. He had to try.

  A hasty plan took shape. He’d slow up. Then as they both got through the bushes, he’d lunge to his right and get that Barlow knife out, maybe start working it loose before he dove to the side.

  It was a lousy plan, but then again his entire situation was lousy. Best he could do. “Guide me, Millie and Horton,” he whispered. “Help me through it. . . .”

  He slowed as he shoved through the bushes and saw the scene before him. His plan was forgotten. Of course, he thought. How could I forget this place?

  There, ahead and below him, sat the ravine, the very spot he’d tracked Skin to all those years before. The very spot where that dumb bastard had tried to cross the gap on the back of an old log, a log that had sloughed its bark and bucked off his inching weight.

  All he’d had to do was scramble down the ravine, then cross the dry wash bottom and climb up the far side, but Skin had been too stupid or too lazy or both. And now, twenty-four years later, here they were once more.

  “Can’t get enough of tormenting yourself, Varney?” said Gunnar, risking a sideways glance. To his surprise, Varney had joined him at the edge of the ravine, well to his left, the revolver aimed loosely in Gunnar’s direction. Skin was staring down at the gravel below.

  “Yeah,” he said, his voice calm and low. “I believe you’re right, Tibbs. Every day, all day, week after month after year after decade, I dreamed of this place, of walking to it with you, getting you down there where I was laid up, where you lorded over me with your gun.” He turned with reluctance toward Gunnar.