Ralph Compton Shotgun Charlie (A Ralph Compton Western) - Softcover

SHOTGUN CHARLIE

THE IMMORTAL COWBOY

This is respectfully dedicated to the “American Cowboy.” His was the saga sparked by the turmoil that followed the Civil War, and the passing of more than a century has by no means diminished the flame.

True, the old days and the old ways are but treasured memories, and the old trails have grown dim with the ravages of time, but the spirit of the cowboy lives on.

In my travels—to Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, Wyoming, New Mexico, and Arizona—I always find something that reminds me of the Old West. While I am walking these plains and mountains for the first time, there is this feeling that a part of me is eternal, that I have known these old trails before. I believe it is the undying spirit of the frontier calling me, through the mind’s eye, to step back into time. What is the appeal of the Old West of the American frontier?

It has been epitomized by some as the dark and bloody period in American history. Its heroes—Crockett, Bowie, Hickok, Earp—have been reviled and criticized. Yet the Old West lives on, larger than life.

It has become a symbol of freedom, when there was always another mountain to climb and another river to cross; when a dispute between two men was settled not with expensive lawyers, but with fists, knives, or guns. Barbaric? Maybe. But some things never change. When the cowboy rode into the pages of American history, he left behind a legacy that lives within the hearts of us all.

—Ralph Compton

Chapter 1

The dove’s throaty growls had startled him at first, made him jump right off the bed. Surely she was in pain, some sort of trouble. A bad dream at best. Then it had occurred to Charlie that no, this was a natural sound. And this was as close as he’d ever come to hearing it.

Through a thin lath-and-plaster wall mostly covered with paper—still pretty but not nearly so vivid as he was sure it had been a long time since, with tiny pink flowers, roses he thought they might be, surrounded by even tinier green leaves—Charlie finally knew the sounds for what they were. They were the sounds of a man and a woman doing what he was still a stranger to. Would be forever, he guessed.

And so big ol’ Charlie Chilton, barely fifteen years old, spent the first night he had ever spent in a town, the first night he’d ever spent in a hotel, the first night he’d ever spent in a bed—an honest-to-goodness spring bed under a cotton-ticking mattress and all—and he spent it mostly awake.

He wondered as he was roused again and again from a neck-snapping slumber, if he should rap on the wall. He didn’t want to invite trouble, but he needed sleep. He felt sure when he’d checked in that he was about to receive the finest night’s sleep a body could get.

That the hotel was in the habit of renting out unoccupied rooms for short-term trysts was something that Charlie would not know for a long time to come. But that night’s introduction had startled him. All the long days preceding his arrival to town had been one odd surprise after another, saddening and shocking and worrisome. And so this last one, despite his earnest hopes, proved more of the same.

This was what the world was like? Not much different from the everyday misery of life on the little rented farm with his gran. He’d hoped for so much more. As he listened to the moans and thumpings and occasional harsh barks of laughter from the men, he hoped that at least his mule, Teacup, was safe and sound and enjoying a good night’s slumber in the livery.

It had cost a few coins that he knew he shouldn’t have spent, but he’d never indulged in anything in his life and the money he’d earned at that last farm had burned a hole in his trouser pocket until he’d spent some.

Charlie passed some of the long, noisy night by counting out the last of it, searching his pockets over and over again, sure he’d dropped some of the money somewhere along the way. But no, when after long minutes he’d tallied the figures in his head, he had one dollar and twelve cents left. And he decided then that something had to change. He figured he’d worry about it in the morning, but morning came with little interruption from night by sleep, save for brief snatches.

He left the hotel early, when the sun was barely up. The woman’s cries had continued long into the early hours, then dwindled, allowing him precious little rest. Before he left the room, his eyes had once again taken in the small lace doily, a marvel of hand-stitching the likes of which he’d never seen. He’d studied it for some time the night before, then set it aside.

It was white, with a pointed-edge pattern, round, smaller than his palm, but large enough to fit under the dainty oil lamp on the chest of drawers. When he’d lifted the lamp to peek at it, he saw tiny flowers, a dozen of them arranged in a circle. It was one of the single most pretty things he’d ever seen in his life, if you didn’t count all the wonders nature had up her sleeve.

Those could hardly be topped by man, he figured—a new calf, the soft hairs on its head, how it felt when you rubbed it before the calf awoke, the long lashes on its eyes staring up at you in innocence, spring buds on an apple tree, then how they unfolded over a week or so, the little leaves getting bigger and darker and tougher as the season wore on.

They were special things, to be sure, but that little doily was a corker, maybe because it had no real purpose? Even its prettiness was hidden by the oil lamp. How many folks got to see what some woman had worked so hard to make, hidden as those little flowers were by the lamp? He appreciated them, at least.

And so as he left the room, he spied that doily and thought to himself, Why not, Charlie? Why not have something pretty in your life? After all, didn’t they sort of cheat you out of your good night’s sleep? And so he had slid it off the polished top of that chest of drawers and poked it quickly down into his trouser pocket with a long, callused finger, reddening about the neck, cheeks, and ears even as he did so.

By the time he reached the bottom of the long staircase in the lobby of the hotel, he felt as if his entire head might catch fire. He shuffled toward the front door and thrust a hand into his pocket. His fingers tweezered the crumpled little doily. He would set it on the counter and leave, walk right out. It was so early no one was there. He lifted it free and that was when he noticed the desk clerk, same man as the night before, in the mirror, was watching him from across the big room where he was busy sweeping the hearth of the great fireplace. How had Charlie not seen the thin, pasty-looking man when he came down the stairs?

Charlie nodded. The man watched him, didn’t look particularly angry. No angrier than he’d been the night before when Charlie checked in. He’d looked confused then and looked more of the same now. Charlie pushed the doily back down into his pocket and struggled with the fancy brass knobs of the lead glass doors, worry warring with fear and guilt in his brain. Worry and guilt that he’d stolen the first thing he’d ever stolen in his life, fear that he’d soon be arrested, and slim wonder too that maybe, just maybe, he’d get away with it.

By the time he reached the livery and, with frequent glances back over his shoulder, saw no one trailing him from the hotel, he became more and more convinced that he and he alone deserved to own that doily, that it was made and meant for him to admire, to appreciate. He rode out of that town and vowed, just the same, never to return to Bakersfield. Just in case.

Little did he know that a few short years later he would be a member of an outlaw gang dead set on committing a crime that made stealing a doily the very least of life’s offenses.

Chapter 2

Charlie Chilton woke in the dark and lay still, trying to remember where he was. Somewhere on the trail, somewhere out West. Far, far west of anywhere he’d ever been. There was a stream close by, and in the dark he heard its constant rush. It was an odd but welcome comfort.

It had been a week or more since he’d seen another person, which suited him fine. He’d been robbed and swindled and cheated so many times in the past few years since taking to the road that he didn’t have much left worth taking. Except for Teacup, the mule.

And that, his sleep-fogged mind told him, was exactly why he was in this forest, off the trail, and had been for a few days. Teacup was poorly and Charlie knew they wouldn’t be going on any farther together, so he’d made camp here. The best camp he could with what little he had. If he could see in the dark, he knew he’d see Teacup standing by the big pine, her legs locked, her bony old head leaned against the tree’s mammoth trunk. At least he hoped she was still standing.

Before he awoke, he had been smack-dab in the midst of the same dream he always had when he was in a bad way. Only thing was, the dream was a good one. Or at least something he could understand, not like some of those dreams like when he was flying or when mountains turned into the heads of sleeping giants or some other such craziness. This dream was a good one. Points of it were sad, to be sure, but it was the warm feeling of the dream that made him feel as he’d not felt in a handful of years of living out on the road by himself.

It always began the same way—he was standing over Gran’s grave, a fresh-packed affair that he himself had dug, then filled. It had been a lot like digging a posthole, only this time when he cracked open the bony ground he made the hole a long, narrow crater from side to side instead of top to bottom. In truth, the old woman wasn’t much more than a fence post herself. Certainly no bigger around, and she’d had the personality to match. Stubborn too.

He couldn’t pretend his upbringing by her had ever been easy, or particularly pleasant. She’d been a stringy old thing with a sour attitude and a resentment toward him that had nibbled away at him the entire fourteen years he’d been under her care—if it could be called that.

His father had been her son, the old woman he’d only ever known as Gran. He knew she had a proper given name; everyone had one. But so far as he could tell, there was little to no proof of it anywhere about the place.

Charlie had never gone into her private little bedroom in the three-room shack he’d lived in his entire life. The day she died, he entered that room for the first time in his life. In fact, he reckoned he should have gone on in earlier in the day, as she was still as a stick when he found her. He reckoned she’d died in the night.

He was surprised when he didn’t loose one tear on her behalf. He figured, despite the fact that she’d been a sour old thing all his days, that he would at least feel something about the passing on of this person, the only relative he’d ever known. But he hadn’t. Instead he felt that same creeping feeling of having lived through her slow-simmering, near-constant anger.

So why was it that whenever he recalled that burial scene in that blasted little dream that wouldn’t leave him alone, it always ended up the same way—him feeling some sort of happiness? No, happiness wasn’t quite the right word for it. More like a satisfied feeling. That somehow everything would work out all right.

It had been what, five, six years since that day when he buried the old woman? Then he’d loaded what few possessions he had on the old mule, Teacup, and headed on up that long dirt track to places unknown. He still recalled, with a knot in his throat and a twinge in his eye, the wide-open feeling that sort of washed over him, like a sudden summer shower on a hot-as-heck afternoon. The sort that feels good right when it happens, but you know you might pay for it quickly because such showers usually meant a choking-hot afternoon was soon to follow.

But right then, when he’d stopped at the end of the long lane that led to the little dirt farm where he’d spent his whole fourteen years, it was still raining, still fresh, still cool, still promising. The hot, sweltering feeling, the uncomfortable edge hadn’t set in yet. He knew he’d miss the place, but only because that was all he’d ever known.

He hadn’t even gone to a school. The one time he’d ever hinted at wanting to go, Gran had simply said no. “What you need schooling for when you already know all you need to take care of this here farm?” Then she’d given him that sour look that made him jelly inside. She’d turned back to complaining about how he was so big he should have been drowned at birth like an unwanted puppy instead of costing her all her life’s fortunes just to keep him in meals.

Charlie reckoned she had been a decent cook. There was never enough of it on the table to suit him, but what was there was always tasty.

And so he’d turned away from the little farm forever, a farm he learned hadn’t even belonged to her—she had merely been a tenant. He’d read that in what few papers he’d found in her things. He didn’t know what would become of the place, but he’d buried her beside his papa, her son and Charlie’s father. The man he’d been told by a few visitors over the years he greatly resembled in size and mannerisms. He had wished every day of his life that he’d been able to know the man. But his father had died when Charlie was but three.

Charlie had dim, vague memories of the man, a big, smiling face looking down at him, reaching to stroke his hair, the weight of a big hand on his head, the rough fingers of a workingman. The same hands he inherited, working the same fields behind the same mule that his father had been trudging along behind when he’d simply dropped in the field one day.

This much he knew because the old woman had blamed Charlie for her son’s death. He’d heard it said to him from her so often that he had never really questioned it, had assumed he’d somehow killed his father.

He felt a kinship with that old plodding mule. He’d taken to calling her Teacup because he liked the sound of the word. He’d heard it said in the little mercantile one day when he was a boy, on one of the few visits to town his gran had ever allowed him.

A woman in a fancy dress and a tall blue hat with purple feathers on it had said the word to the bald man behind the counter. He’d attended to her even though Gran had been in there first. Gran had sputtered all the way home about it in the wagon. She’d even turned to Charlie and said he was to blame.

The claim hadn’t shocked him. If he’d thought about it he would have guessed she would come around to arrive at that discovery sooner or later. In her eyes, everything in life was Charlie’s fault. Well, not everything. Only the bad things. He’d never in his life been responsible for anything good that had happened.

And so, all those years later, after leaving the little farm and its two sad graves, Charlie Chilton had roamed, not expecting much from himself, not knowing much more than the dulling, ceaseless ache of farm labor, plodding along beside Teacup until her own demise, quietly in the night, along a burbling valley brook a good many thousand miles, territories, and states to the west of where he’d grown up.

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