“Aww, you two stop talking each other to death and get to it! Man can’t hardly bleed out around here without palaver this and palaver that!”
The prompt from the old man spurred Skin Varney into action, and he snatched at the revolver at his waist, hanging down low on his left side. He clawed it free of the holster and in a single smooth motion raised it to bear on Fletcher. He paused but a moment to smile wide, revealing to all who stood by that he was taking great delight in the coming shot. But it was a moment too long.
Fletcher squeezed the little gun’s trigger and it snapped off a shot.
A long, thin, piggish squeal streamed out of the puckering hole of Skin Varney’s mouth. Above that, his pimpled nose twitched and ran yellow. At the top, centered betwixt the killer’s rheumy, mad eyes, a neat round hole welled red and pumped out thick dying blood.
The big man who’d caused so many people so much grief for so long dropped to his knees, still staring straight at the young man before him.
In his fading moments of clarity, Skin Varney saw his old pard, Samuel Thorne, the man who’d fed him to the wolves all those years before. It looked to him as if time had been most kind to ol’ Sammy Thorne. Most kind, indeed. He hadn’t even aged.
But, came Varney’s last thought, it can’t be . . . can it?
“Son of a whore?” said Fletcher, looking down at the dead killer. “You bet.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Varney had not shuddered his last before Millie’s women descended like vengeance-seeking angels and surrounded him. Angels with deadly weapons, thought Fletcher as they bent low and made damn certain the worm who’d killed their beloved mother figure was good and dead.
They worked in near silence, save for grunts as they kicked and flailed and savaged the killer’s corpse.
Fletcher left them to it, certain it was not something he wanted to see, but knowing it was something they felt they had to do.
He turned his attention to Gunnar Tibbs. “Are you okay, Gunnar?” He knelt before the seated man, regarding the old miner’s drawn face, as ashen as his flowing beard.
“Been worse. Good to see you, boy. Good to see you. Help me up.”
He raised a hand and Fletcher steadied him and helped him over to a sizable boulder near where he leaned. They each regarded the flailing mass of women, then turned away and said nothing of it.
Gunnar nodded toward the sawed-off shotgun clutched in Hester’s hands. “Looks familiar. Nice entrance you made there.”
“Yeah,” Fletcher said. “We found it back there along the trail, leaning against a pine tree. We figured we were on the right trail then for certain.”
“Might make a tracker of you yet, boy. But I ain’t holding my breath.” Gunnar winced and squeezed his bleeding shoulder tighter and Fletcher helped him bind it.
A few moments later, Hester walked over and set the shotgun next to Gunnar, brushing wisps of hair from her face with the back of a wrist, and took over tending to Gunnar’s wound. The other women walked up behind her, smoothing their dresses and dabbing sweat from their faces with their skirts. A few of them wore flecks of gore on their hands and cheeks and dress fronts, but, Fletcher noted, they were surprisingly clean.
He glanced at Skin Varney, then looked away. The corpse was foul and not a sight he needed to dwell on in his life.
“Should . . . ,” said Fletcher in a quiet voice. All eyes turned to him. “Should we bury him?”
“No, sir!” growled Gunnar, who, despite his pain, shook his head and pushed away from the boulder to stand upright. “That bastard liked this gulch so well, let him have it all to himself for all eternity. Me, I aim never to visit this dark place again.”
He turned and began walking back up the trail. “Gives me the creepin’ willies.”
Fletcher followed, and the women strode silently behind him, their grisly assortment of weapons hanging at their sides.
Gunnar stumbled once and Fletcher bolted forward and caught him. He bent down to drape Gunnar’s good arm over his shoulder.
The old man resisted. “Boy, I managed to walk through life all these years without no help. . . .”
“I know that, Mr. Tibbs,” said the young man, suppressing a grin. “But who’s to say I’m not the one needs a little support?”
“Ha!” cackled the old miner. “And just what, Mr. Thorne, do you think I been doling out to you for weeks now, you mooching young hound dog?”
“Mr. Thorne,” said the young man, smiling. “Not a bad sound to it.”
Gunnar Tibbs nodded. “Course, it’s tainted some by the one who wore it before you. But ain’t nobody saying you can’t polish it up as you go . . . Samuel Thorne.”
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Ralph Compton stood six foot eight without his boots. He worked as a musician, a radio announcer, a songwriter, and a newspaper columnist. His first novel, The Goodnight Trail, was a finalist for the Western Writers of America Medicine Pipe Bearer Award for best debut novel. He was the USA Today bestselling author of the Trail of the Gunfighter series, the Border Empire series, the Sundown Rider series, and the Trail Drive series, among others.
Matthew P. Mayo is a Western Writers of America Spur Award winner and a Western Fictioneers Peacemaker Award finalist. His short stories have appeared in numerous anthologies and his many novels include the Westerns Winters' War, Wrong Town, Hot Lead, Cold Heart, Dead Man's Ranch, Tucker's Reckoning, The Hunted, and Shotgun Charlie. He contributes to several popular series of Western and adventure novels.
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Ralph Compton Guns of the Greenhorn Page 23