Ralph Compton Guns of the Greenhorn

by Matthew P. Mayo

  Fletcher nodded. Maybe he would get through to them. “He also told me that Skin killed Millie.” The women gasped; some shouted at him, called him a liar.

  “No!” he said with a force that startled himself. “I may be many things, but I am no liar. I have not lied to you, nor will I. Hear me out, and then if you decide to throw me to the wolves, I’ll go. But I’m telling the truth. If we don’t act soon, Gunnar may be killed.”

  “Why?”

  “He went to track down Skin Varney after we found Horton Meader dead.”

  Another round of gasps flurried up from the women. Hester walked closer to him. Fletcher backed up a step. She was a formidable presence; about his height, with her demure heels on, she was pretty but thick, solid seeming. She reminded him of a stout tree that could weather any storm.

  “You’re not making any sense, mister. You’d better keep talking or I’ll open that door and let those fools have their way with you. They all think you killed Millie and half of them believe you had a hand in marshal’s death and his wife’s, too.”

  With that, the woman on the stairs, she of the dewy eyes, sobbed and collapsed to a seated position on one of the steps. The woman beside her now patted her head.

  “And now you tell us Horton’s dead, too?”

  Fletcher nodded. “Look, I realize it could be construed that I am the guilty party here, but from what Gunnar tells me, my arrival here is coincident with the arrival of Skin Varney, as near as I can figure.”

  “That doesn’t explain a thing.”

  Fletcher sighed.

  Again, loud thumping sounded on the door. It bounced slightly with the blow. Now Fletcher could hear voices out there, too. Many. A small crowd.

  “How about this: If I am lying, I’ll give myself up, okay?”

  “What if you’re planning on killing us right now the way you did Millie?”

  “I didn’t kill her! Skin Varney did, and Gunnar might be in trouble!”

  The women stared at him. He returned the look to each face in turn. “Whether you all like it or not, Millie was, well, she was my aunt, of sorts. And she left this place to me.”

  All the women, save for Hester, burbled with shock and indignation.

  “It’s true,” he said, and saw a resigned look on Hester’s face that told him she knew he was telling the truth. “Please tell them,” he said.

  She stared at him a moment longer, then said, “It’s true. She left the place to him, the whole business. I never said anything after she died, because I wasn’t sure how much this fella knew. But I guess he knows just about all there is to know.”

  She sighed and looked at him. “What do you know? So Gunnar was right.”

  “You talked with Gunnar about me? Then you knew? Why didn’t you tell me?”

  She shrugged. “Testing you.” She looked at the women on the stairs. “I think he’s mostly telling the truth, at least about not killing Millie.”

  “You do?”

  “Yeah, Gunnar told me himself. But don’t get ahead of me now,” she said, that hard edge returning to her voice.

  “But . . . but,” said Dominique on the stairs, “where will we go? What will we do?”

  “You’ll go nowhere,” he said. “Look, I have the papers in my bag, but I’m not about to drag them out and read them to you, not with an angry mob outside.”

  “Ain’t no angry mob in Promise, mister,” said Hester. “It’s just Dewey and Melvin and a few others. They’re worked up, same as us, because you’re someone we don’t know much about, and we have had some mighty bad deaths lately.”

  “Okay, fine. We can worry about all that later. Look, I came here for help. I’ve grown fond of Gunnar Tibbs. He believed in me when no one else would, and I want to help him.”

  “We’ll talk. You go on through to the kitchen. Your kitchen.” Hester nodded her head past him.

  “I could use some water.”

  “Yeah, well, there’s water in a pitcher on the table.”

  He regarded them all. “Please hurry.” He walked down the darkened corridor toward the rear of the house and emerged into a kitchen. Not seeing a cup, he drank straight from the stoneware pitcher on the table.

  He paused, heard a few voices, whispers now and again. Suddenly he felt cold all over, as if he had just discovered a hunk of ice in his pocket. Something was wrong. He was getting hot prickles of warning, as Gunnar might have said.

  Fletcher gulped down the rest of the water and made for the back door. On his way, he spied a cloth-covered platter.

  He lifted one corner of the blue-checked gingham and saw a pyramid of tall, fluffy biscuits. He felt a quick twinge of guilt, then decided that, by gum, he owned the building, so he technically owned the food, too. He snatched up a half dozen, jamming one in his mouth, the rest in his pockets. Then he opened the door, which led to a small picket-fenced yard, where five or six hens clucked and pecked at the dirt beneath a small coop.

  “Ladies,” he said, touching his hat brim as he bolted past them. He leapt the rear of the fence, not a huge feat, as it was less than a couple of feet tall, and glanced back toward the house. Nobody had seen or heard him yet. “Gunnar,” he whispered, “I’m not much, but here I come. I hope.”

  He cut left, following the same path he’d taken into town. This led him behind the other buildings, all with backyards, most with fenced-in chickens. One held a fat brown-and-black dog with one perked ear that stared at him and didn’t seem to have ambition enough to bark.

  Coming to town had been a mistake. He’d wasted precious time, thinking he could replicate the posse of all those years before. In truth, he’d been afraid to set out on his own. He’d not been confident he could find Gunnar. He still wasn’t, but now he knew he had to do it. And do it alone. Those women, the townsfolk, all of them, maybe they didn’t believe him. Maybe they were too afraid of Varney. Whatever the reason, he was on his own.

  All he’d accomplished in coming to town was wasting time. But Gunnar had been adamant that he do so, and he’d fallen for it. He’d still been so reluctant to accept who he really was that he’d blindly followed the old man’s orders and marched to town. All Gunnar had wanted was to get him out of the way so he could go off on his vengeance quest alone.

  Instead of leaving him feeling angry and violated and untrusted, it came to Fletcher that the thing Gunnar had done for him, sending him to safety, at least a safer place than where Gunnar was headed, had been an act of kindness because he didn’t want Fletcher to be killed. The old man had trusted that Fletcher was smart enough to convince the folks of Promise that he was in the right, that he was innocent.

  Yes, it was kind of Gunnar, but it was misguided. If Skin Varney was half as dangerous as Gunnar had said he was, then Gunnar was in trouble, and he knew it. The full force of the realization smacked Fletcher as if he’d been hit in the temple with a split of stovewood.

  Gunnar knew he was going to his death. Or at least that he stood little chance of defeating Varney. He was forlorn at having lost Millie and Horton. He knew Fletcher meant much to Millie, having heard of him for so long.

  What a disappointment I must have been to him, thought the young man as he ran toward the hills. He glanced back once more toward town, but saw no one following him.

  Let the townsfolk track him. What did he care? They weren’t interested in helping him. Maybe he had to do this on his own. He wondered if, in some odd way, this was how he was meant to seek retribution for all the ills caused to Promise by his father and Skin Varney.

  As he strode into the hills once more, Fletcher reached down and felt the two jostling guns that rode low on his hips, the ends of the holsters tied down about his thighs. He reached into his coat and patted the bulge that was the hideout gun. His guns. And about his neck, there sat the locket. The locket with the pictures of his parents. His parents. His family.

/>   “What have you gotten yourself into, Fletcher J. Ralston?” he asked out loud.

  Then he laughed, because Fletcher J. Ralston, he realized, no longer existed. Indeed, he had never existed. He had been a fabrication, a lie twenty-four years in the making, in the living, in the telling. Now it was time for the truth.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Fletcher made it back to Gunnar’s cabin after dark. How the old man managed to walk to and from town without benefit of a horse to ride for all those years, hauling his supplies on his own back, he’d never know. Maybe it was the whiskey that had enabled him to do it. Either way, it had been a hellish journey.

  Fletcher had scraped his shins, smacked his shoulders, and even knocked his bowler off his head twice on the journey. But he made it. All of a sudden, though, he did not feel safe there. Even earlier in the day, he’d felt plenty safe, but that had been when Gunnar was there.

  “Now,” he said aloud to the empty cabin. “Now there’s nobody here but me.” Then he paused. What if that wasn’t true? What if Skin had already killed Gunnar and lay in wait for him?

  Did Skin know about him? Did he care? How would he even know about him? Unless he’d spied on them, which was possible. Yet surely he’d not know or care that Fletcher was about. Would he?

  That thought stayed the greenhorn’s hand as he reached for the matches to light the oil lamp by the woodstove. No, maybe Gunnar had it right. Maybe a cold camp was the way to do this. All he intended to do was gather what gear he thought he might need.

  He’d not counted on needing much because he had no idea what to take. He’d only been passing by the cabin anyway on his route to tracking Gunnar. How did one go about tracking a man anyway?

  With a calming breath, he lit a lantern and turned the little wheel to keep the flame low. Keeping one hand on a pistol butt, Fletcher prowled the cabin, looking for things he might take. He felt as if he was violating the old buck’s privacy by peering into the few closed spaces, a drawer and two wooden boxes he found beneath the bed.

  One contained a bundle of twine-tied letters that Fletcher hastily put back. In the end, he settled for a short sheath knife that he strapped on his belt. Then he filled a flour sack with the remaining dozen or so biscuits he’d made.

  He bit into one and winced. Gunnar had been correct. They were awful. He also packed the last of the jerked meat hanging from lengths of twine from a ceiling beam. Then he snatched a small wool blanket that smelled horsey from the bed, draped it over his shoulders, lifted down a wooden canteen, slung its strap over his neck, and walked into the night.

  He strode down the path Gunnar had taken, walking slowly for ten minutes, doing his best to avoid more knee-height rocks, and thankful for the three-quarter moon, the glow of which lit the trail well enough. Or rather it shifted enough shadows to give him a general sense of the path.

  It would be all too easy for him to miss some clue as to Gunnar’s direction. Maybe he had taken a side route some minutes back?

  Fletcher paused, shivered, and pulled the blanket tighter about his shoulders. As he considered his situation, weariness, deep in his bones, began settling on him as if it were a pair of gentle hands pressing on his shoulders and not letting up, but pushing down and down. He stumbled backward, landing on his backside against a rock, and felt the night’s coldness creep through the rock, through the thin fabric of his trousers, and chill him. He shivered once more.

  What I need, he thought, is a cup of coffee. A cup of hot coffee and maybe a biscuit or two. Yes, that would be the ticket. Something warm. Warm . . .

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Gunnar woke slowly, as if he’d been trapped in river ice for months and it was only then beginning to melt. He’d spent the afternoon and evening before cold and wet some miles from his cabin. He hadn’t gotten all that far, because the hills thereabouts were a jagged challenge.

  He had often ruminated on the fact that if he were able to fly like a red-tailed hawk, he’d finally get himself a good look at the local terrain, from the Rondo Basin to the east clear on over to the Jawbone ridgelines that grew up to form the foothills. Everything between them was Promise country. At least that was how he’d always thought of it. When he’d imagined that from above, the whole of it looked not unlike a churned-up blanket atop an unmade bed.

  But he wasn’t a red-tailed hawk—just an old man, frigid and tired and damp all over from a rainstorm sometime in the night. Still, he thought, it was better than staying in the cabin any longer with the kid.

  Fletcher Ralston was a decent fellow, just not somebody he wanted to be around right then. He had things to do, things to figure out. Besides, he had to keep the kid out of this. Wasn’t his fault he was a greenhorn.

  The kid hadn’t asked to be born into a mess with no end. No, Gunnar knew he had to be the one to end it. As soon as he was able. Had to draw Skin out into the hills to have it out with him.

  But right then all he wanted was a cup of hot coffee and a decent biscuit or three with sugar syrup poured over the top of them. Maybe some berries . . . He adjusted his feet and rearranged his hinder end to find a more comfortable spot amongst the rocks and roots and duff—too much of the first two and not enough of the last.

  He sighed and groaned. It was still dark enough he should get going, make up some distance in hopes of drawing Skin farther from the kid, farther from Promise, before he killed again. Gunnar was pretty certain he was the killer’s target, so luring him away was as sound a plan as he could think of. The troublesome part was he couldn’t be sure where the killer was, let alone if the man was going to follow him. But his gut told him it was the move to make.

  After he’d left the cabin and the kid, Gunnar had spent the few hours of daylight yesterday making distance, kicking stones, snapping branches, scuffing extra footprints, away from Horton’s diggings and more northward. He hoped it would be enough of an obvious trail.

  Maybe just another few minutes of catnapping, he thought, letting his lids drift closed once more. The day would be a long one as it was. A few minutes more of snoozing time can’t hurt, now, can it?

  “Where you at, old man?”

  The shout caught Gunnar by surprise. He’d dozed again. His eyes jerked wide open. It was full daylight.

  “I said, ‘Where you at, old man?’ ”

  It was Skin Varney, sure as the devil knew he was a bad seed. Gunnar spun his head, growling and biting back a curse. He didn’t want to give away his location and risk Skin seeing him before he caught sight of the bastard. Bad enough he’d snoozed too long. Curse me for a fool, he thought. And now he was knotted up worse than a stunted shrub of wind-tortured cedar.

  “Who you callin’ ‘old’?” mumbled Gunnar in a whisper, even as he suppressed a groan as he tried to straighten his stiff legs. He’d figured that since he wasn’t able to see in the dark, neither could Varney. That might have been a mistake, he now realized. Not only was Skin a dang night hunter, but now he was close, and the bastard knew it.

  If Varney moved and called again from a different spot, Gunnar figured either he was not certain of where Gunnar was hiding or maybe he was playing a round of cat and mouse with him.

  Within a minute, the crusty miner had his answer.

  “Oh, Gunnnnnar? Where you at, old man? Time to show yourself!”

  The voice teased out as if released from a passing bird’s mouth. And it came from Gunnar’s right this time, somewhat southeast of where he sat. He continued to massage his knees.

  He’d been gimped up many mornings in the past, and he’d come to depend on the fineries of his home for far too long now. This was the first time he’d felt helpless, as he couldn’t get up and go. He was willing, but his legs throbbed with aches the likes of which he’d never before felt. What was wrong with him?

  His quarry’s voice shouted once more, farther away, more northeastward. Could be Skin was walking away from him
because he didn’t know where Gunnar was. That seemed likely, given that Skin used to be a spur-of-the-moment sort of fellow, a dangerous trait when coupled with the fact that he was also a killer.

  Gunnar knew Skin had killed Millie and Horton. The other two, the marshal and his wife, they weren’t so easy. Gunnar felt mostly sure they’d been killed by Skin, but folks in town thought Reg’s shenanigans at Millie’s were what had brought about their ruination. No matter now.

  Even as he rummaged in his pockets, Gunnar knew it was more than morning stiffness he felt. It was the brave face of something he wasn’t used to—his own weakness. He rummaged again and found a mixed wad of dusty medicinal leaves, comfrey and whatnot, that he’d stuffed in haste into his breast pocket while he’d been gathering his goods from the cabin.

  He’d been so intent on getting out of there before the kid could talk him into taking him with him that he’d overlooked too many items he should have taken, more tinctures and medicinal plants among them. Age was a scurvy-ridden beast that would not leave him be.

  Gunnar chewed the leafy blend, wishing he could avoid tasting its bitterness. Though the mixture was unpleasant, he hoped it would limber him enough that he could get himself upright and moving. Now that he knew he was on the snake’s trail and that Skin was close, he didn’t want to lose him.

  “Come on now, Gunnar Tibbs,” he whispered to himself, chewing and swallowing back the bite of the medicinal leaves. “Get cracking.”

  “Yep,” said a voice right behind him. “Get cracking, Mr. Tibbs.”

  Gunnar froze, eyes wide, hands on his knees. There was only one person who’d called him Mr. Tibbs of late, but this voice wasn’t the kid’s. It was low and gravelly and cold as a fresh-dug grave at midnight.

  “You,” he said, without turning.

  “Yep,” the voice chuckled. “It’s me. Ain’t nobody but me.”