[Gideon Johann 01.0] Last Stand

by Duane Boehm

  “I promised Mr. Chase that I would catch Bug Eye and Pasty for him. I gave him my word and I aim to keep it. Besides, it is time Benjamin got his room back,” Gideon said.

  “Mr. Gideon, promise me you will come back and see me,” Benjamin pleaded.

  “Benjamin, we have already gone over that. I hope to see you again one of these days, but I can’t promise,” Gideon said.

  Sarah got up from the table and started banging pans on the stove. She could not face Gideon to say what was on her mind. “This is pure nonsense, going back out there to the life that you lived. You are too good of a person to spend your whole life drifting aimlessly, and the next time when someone shoots the hell out of you, you might not be so lucky to be found. You could settle down and have a good life here. There are people here that care about you and would like to see you happy. Whatever your big Goddamn secret is that keeps you running, it is time to let it go. Only coming to terms with it will heal it. Running to hell and back won’t fix it,” she said.

  In a shocked voice, Benjamin said, “Momma.”

  “Hush, Benjamin,” Sarah said.

  Gideon stared at the egg yolk in his plate, trying to think of a response from the unexpected outburst from Sarah. “Sarah, it means the world to me that you care that much, and God knows I wish it were true, but I am never going to change. Too many mistakes have been made to ever fix them now.”

  Benjamin was about ready to cry. He jumped up from the table and ran toward his room, hollering, “Goodbye, Mr. Gideon.”

  Gideon rubbed his scar and blew out a breath. “If it means anything, getting shot was worth it just to get to be here. It was nice to learn that some things last forever, but I think it’s time to go,” he said as he stood up and pulled out his jackknife and placed it on the table. “Give this to Benjamin for me, please.”

  Sarah was staring at Gideon now, trying to decide what else she could do before concluding that the battle was lost. She walked over and gave him a hug and kissed his cheek. “Take care of yourself, Gideon Johann, or I will come and kill you myself,” she said.

  Gideon smiled. “You take care, too.”

  Ethan walked out onto the porch with Gideon. He stared out at the mountain range even though the sun reflecting off the snowcap hurt his eyes. “We’re never going to see you again are we?” he asked.

  “I don’t know, Ethan. I just don’t know,” Gideon said.

  Ethan hugged Gideon and patted his back. Gideon stood rigid, caught off–guard. Hugging another man was something he had never done. Realizing that he may never see Ethan again, he hugged him back until Ethan abruptly released him and walked back in the cabin without another word. Gideon took one last look around and saw Chase. He chuckled at the memory of bringing the puppy home and then headed to the barn to saddle Buck.

  While riding into town, Gideon thought about what had just transpired. Benjamin was the only one that behaved anywhere near what he would have imagined. He certainly never expected the wrath of Sarah or the hug from Ethan. As uncomfortable as it had been, it made him feel better about himself to know that others actually cared about him even as he struggled through life. He wondered if he ever confessed his secret to them if they would still feel the same way.

  His first stop was at Doc Abram’s office. The old doctor was sitting at his roll top desk doing paperwork when Gideon walked in.

  “Good morning, Doc. I wanted to stop in and tell you goodbye. I’m heading out,” Gideon said.

  Doc took off his glasses and spun his chair to face Gideon. “Well, son, I’m glad I got to see you again. You’ve made a good recovery, but you were damn lucky. You were about as close to death as you can get. How are you feeling?”

  “I’m almost back to good as new. The shoulder is a little weak and the leg is stiff when I first get up in the morning, but that is about it,” Gideon said.

  “I expect in time, they will completely heal. Muscle recovers most of the time. Will I be seeing you again?” the doctor asked.

  “I can’t say. Time will tell, but I don’t think that it will be any time soon.”

  “Well, don’t wait too damn long for I’m not going to live forever. You know the sheriff is going to die off one of these days too and you’d make a fine replacement for him. We need somebody to actually rein in some of these ranchers,” Doc said.

  “You’ll probably outlive me. Take care, Doc,” was all that Gideon said and walked out of the office.

  The saloon had not opened yet. Gideon walked around to the alley and knocked on the back door. Mr. Vander opened the door, recognizing Gideon as the man in which Mary had fallen in love.

  “Can I help you?” Mr. Vander asked in his stilted English.

  “I’m Gideon Johann and I’m headed out. I was hoping I could tell Mary goodbye.”

  “Johann, that is a good German name.”

  “Yeah, my father was born there. His family moved over when he was a small boy. I never had a chance to learn the language. Pa never thought we should know it. He said we were Americans now,” Gideon said.

  Changing the subject, Mr. Vander said, “You know, Miss Mary is a good girl. She has had a hard life. She would make a fine wife for somebody ready to settle down and treat her right.”

  The forthrightness of Mr. Vander caught Gideon off–guard, considering he did not even know the man. It seemed as if everybody had advice for him today. He wondered why everybody was so hell–bent on him staying in Last Stand when none of them knew what he had been up to for the last eighteen years. He could have been a bank robber for all they knew.

  “I think that she would make a fine wife, too. It’s just that I am not the settling down type. I travel light,” Gideon said.

  “I see,” Mr. Vander said. “Well, you are going to break her heart. I tell you that. Go on up and see her. Youth are full of foolish and folly. I tell you that.”

  As Gideon walked up the creaky stairs of the saloon, he smiled at the thought of being called a youth. It had been a long time since he had thought of himself as young. If this was youth, he hated to think what old age was going to feel like.

  Mary let Gideon in after he woke her up on the second knock. She looked so young standing there in her nightdress with her hair messed up and sleep still showing in her face. Gideon wondered if he was too old to be seeing her in the first place. It had never occurred to him before that she must not be any older than twenty–five

  “What brings you out so early?” Mary asked warily.

  “I’m heading out this morning and I wanted to stop in and tell you goodbye,” Gideon said.

  “Oh,” she said and sat down at her vanity. “I never had one of my cowboys come by and do that.”

  “Well, I can’t say I’ve ever done it before either. It was nice getting to know you and such.”

  Mary grinned. “Was it the getting to know me or ‘the such’ that you liked the best?”

  Gideon took off his hat and chuckled. “They both made me feel pretty good.”

  Mary stood and put her arms around his neck and kissed him on the lips. “I got a little going away present for you then,” she said.

  Mary pulled Gideon into the bed and took him as if her love was a fire that she wanted to spread. She tried to will him to love her and he gave back like a desperate man. What he was desperate for, she was not sure. Afterward, she held him to her as he nestled there quietly, reminding her of the babies in the orphanage that she used to cuddle to sleep.

  After Gideon got up and dressed, he reached into his pocket to pull out some money. Mary grabbed his arm. “Don’t you dare pay me. That was not a whore and her customer. That was a gift from one friend to the other,” she said.

  He kissed her awkwardly. “You take care of yourself, you hear?”

  “Will I ever see you again?” Mary asked.

  “That seems to be the question of the day. I just don’t know. I never thought I would be back, and I don’t know how I will feel when I get gone,” Gideon said.

&nbs
p; “Please be careful. You know I forgave whoever killed Eugene for my own peace of mind. The anger was making me a bitter person. You should forgive yourself. If I can forgive a lowlife like Hank Sligo, you can surely forgive a good man that made a mistake,” she said.

  “Hank Sligo killed Eugene?”

  “Did you hear what I said? Hank was not the point. I don’t know that the killer was Hank, but he was the one that came and threatened us. The point was to forgive yourself,” she said, exasperated.

  “I wish I could,” Gideon said. “I should have shot that son of a bitch when I had the chance.”

  “Just go, Gideon Johann. Just go, but know that I believe in you.”

  Gideon kissed her again and left. Buck was restless and so was he. Giving the horse free rein, he let him run until he slowed on his own into a trot. Silverton was a three–day ride and there was no need to wear down the horse. After an hour, he wondered why something did not feel right and smiled when he realized that it was the quiet. He had gotten used to the hustle and bustle of family life. As much as the day’s outpouring had forced him to alter his opinion of himself, it had also been suffocating. The farther he rode from Last Stand, the better he felt. He was back into his own element. The smell of horse sweat and the sound of creaking saddle leather were things that he loved.

  Chapter 17

  Business was a slow at the Last Chance Last Stand Saloon. The usual crowd had never rolled in that evening. The bartender busied himself with polishing glasses while the two saloon girls played rummy. Hank Sligo was sitting at a table drinking a beer by himself and grumbling about the lack of company when Doc Abram walked in.

  “Hey, Doc, come sit with me and I’ll buy you a beer,” Sligo said.

  The old doctor smiled as he sat down with Hank. Mary brought over the beer. Doc reckoned that being the town gossip had earned him more free beers than any man alive in Colorado.

  “Thank you, Hank. What have you been up to?” Doc Abram asked politely.

  “Tending the herd. It’s always busy this time of year. And yourself?” Hank asked.

  “I set the Thompson boy’s arm today. That kid breaks a bone a year,” the doctor said.

  “My brother was like that, always breaking something,” Sligo said. “How is that Gideon fellow doing?”

  Doc took the first sip of his beer, studying Sligo’s face as he did. The man was trying to act nonchalant, but his face betrayed a keen interest. The doctor decided that Sligo would never make it as an actor. “I suppose he is doing fine. He left this morning,” he said.

  Now Hank took a sip of his beer, not wanting to seem too anxious to inquire further. “He sure didn’t stick around long. I guess that once you get that rambling in your blood, it’s a hard thing to break. Do you think that he will be back any time soon?”

  “Nah, he said as much himself.”

  “He is a strange one. As much as the people around here seem to love him, you would think he would come around more. Do you think he will ever come back?” Hank asked.

  “Well, it took him eighteen years to show up this time and that was by accident, so I have my doubts.”

  “Yeah, that’s kind of what I thought,” Sligo said, barely hiding a grin.

  ∞

  Though Hank was bursting at the seams the next morning to tell Frank his latest news, he decided to wait until mid–morning in hopes that his boss would be more appreciative than he had been with the early morning and late evening gossip deliveries. They had ridden out to check the herd and were sitting on a ridge watching the cattle. Trying to sound offhanded, Hank said, “I talked to Doc Abram in the saloon last night and he had some news on Gideon.”

  Frank waited for him to continue before realizing that Hank was going to make him ask. “All right, Hank, what would that be?”

  “Gideon is gone and he does not plan on coming back any time soon. In fact, Doc doubts that he will ever be back. That old doctor should have been a reporter the way he likes to spread the news,” Hank said.

  “Good. We won’t have to worry about him then.”

  “Do you want me to shoot Ethan like I did that whore’s husband?” Hank asked.

  “Hell, no, I don’t want you shooting him. I already told you what happened to my uncle, and Ethan has too many friends around here that would stir things up. Shooting a greenhorn is one thing, killing a pillar of the community is another,” Frank said as he nudged his horse down the ridge into the herd.

  “What are we going to do then?” Hank asked, riding after Frank.

  “We are going to ruin him financially.”

  Hank tried to get his head around what Frank meant. If the plan was to rob Ethan, it didn’t seem like a good idea to him. “How are we going to do that?” he asked.

  “You are going to kidnap his boy as he is walking to school. That gives you all day before anybody starts looking for him. You can take him to Moccasin Cave. The things that you need to make sure of are that you surprise him and get a hood over his head so that he can’t identify you and to not leave a trail to the cave. That place is so damn remote and rugged that you should be able to do it. Nobody ever rides over there unless they have cattle roam off. You do remember the place don’t you?” Frank said.

  “Yeah, yeah, I have been there a couple of times with you. What happens after we kidnap him?”

  “I will write a ransom note that you stick in the kid’s books when you grab him. And here is the beauty of this. We will tell Jasper and Walter that all they have to do is babysit the kid in the cave. Then Jasper will return the kid, and since Walter is a little smarter, he can collect the money. We’ll tell them that we will give them a thousand dollars apiece and they can ride off and disappear when it’s all over. They aren’t worth a shit as ranch hands anyway, so we won’t lose much there. Those two idiots will do anything for money,” Frank said.

  “What if they get caught picking up the money? They would give us up in a heartbeat,” Hank worried.

  “I got this all figured out. In the note that you leave in the book, we will tell them to go to, I don’t know, maybe to Sand Creek Bridge, and then the night before they are to go there, we will leave a note on the bridge telling them to go to Sulfur Pond to leave the money. You can see for a couple of miles in every direction from there and no way that they can pull any funny business. Just to be safe, you can hide at the edge of the flats and if anybody is chasing Walter, you can kill him and we forget about the money,” Frank said.

  “You think we can trust Walter and Jasper to keep their mouths shut when they get drunked up in some other town down the road?” Hank asked.

  Frank grinned so evilly that it gave even Hank pause. “Here is where it gets even better. Hank, you will meet them back at the cave to settle up. I want you to kill them and make it look like they killed each other over the money. Stick a hundred dollars in each of their pockets. Everybody will think that they hid the rest of it out there somewhere and will be all worried about finding it,” Frank said.

  “Aren’t you worried that people will connect us to Jasper and Walter and wonder how they pulled it off under our nose?” Hank asked.

  “We’ll just tell everybody that they quit on us and told us that they were headed to Texas looking to join a cattle drive. After we get them at the cave, you can scrounge around and find us a couple of new hired hands. We’ll just keep the news under our hats and keep the new guys busy on the ranch,” Frank said.

  “You really thought this all out didn’t you?”

  “Damn right, I did. No one will ever think that we had anything to do with it. You and me will split the money. Just make sure you don’t start flashing it around town. It might get you hung. Ethan won’t be able to buy the Holden place and he will have to mortgage what he already owns. By the time he gets out from under that debt, I will have control of things around here,” Frank said.

  Chapter 18

  Gideon rode for three days and was close to Silverton with plans to reach there at dusk. It had been
an uneventful ride, only crossing paths with a couple of travelers. The terrain had been varied, crossing land so barren and bleak that he felt as singular as an old memory, and then navigating mountain ranges so glorious that he had called out just to hear the echo of his own voice, believing that maybe he did have a place in the world.

  The trip provided opportunity for reflection, something that since his stay in Last Stand, he found himself doing for the first time in years. He did not intend to do it, even had hoped his life would return to normal, but found he could not avoid the contemplation. The farther he rode, the worse it got. Too many events had taken place in the last few weeks that needed sorting out, and trying to make sense of what it all meant eluded him.

  To his annoyance, the time with Ethan and his family had changed him. Life was much simpler before he was shot, back in a time when he never thought about anything, just lived out each day. He now realized that emotions he thought long dead were very much alive. Ethan was his brother, Sarah his sister, and Benjamin a nephew. He could even admit that he loved them no matter how foreign the emotion had become. And he loved Abby, too. He knew it from the moment he heard her voice before he even recognized her face. Thoughts of her made him angry for the choices that he had made, and ache with sorrow for what never could be. His feelings towards Mary confused him the most. He cared about her, but was not sure how much of it was pity. She was a good woman that had been dealt a bad hand and it collided with his natural inclination to fix wrongs.

  Sarah’s words about settling down, having a nice life, and coming to terms with his guilt kept running through his mind. He wondered if she was right, and if she was, how one went about forgiving oneself. The thought of forgiveness was new to him, something that he never would have even previously considered. Tired of all the contemplation, and wishing that he could quit torturing himself with all the thinking about his life, he tried to focus on the job at hand in finding Bug Eye and Pasty.