Helldorado (11 page)

A man stumbled out from the back of the shed. The pin-striped shirt behind his black vest and tan duster glistened with fresh blood.

Prophet stopped.

The man moved shamble-footed toward Prophet, dropping the Sharps carbine he’d used to interrupt the bounty hunter’s soak, and gritted his teeth as his cobalt blue eyes bored into Prophet angrily. “You killed me, you fuck!”

“Not yet,” Prophet warned, dropping the double bores of his ten-gauge.

Foolishly, the bushwhacker clawed at the long-barreled Remington holstered on his right thigh. He continued stumbling toward Prophet and gritting his teeth. Prophet had no choice but to trip the shotgun’s front eyelash trigger and blow the man ten feet into the brush and rocks behind him.

The man had no sooner hit the ground on his back and expelled a last, gurgling cry, when the sound of a boot snapping a thin branch rose behind him.

Prophet spun, saw the second man beside a gnarled cedar aiming a Spencer carbine at him, and tripped the barn blaster’s second trigger. The boom sounded like a cannon blast echoing off the shed’s near wall. The concussion blew Prophet’s hat from his head.

The second bushwhacker rose nearly as high as the first one had, triggering the Spencer skyward as he went flying off into the brush before smacking the back of the dry-goods store west of the washhouse. He left a good-sized blood smear on the unpainted, clapboard-sided wall before slumping down into the rocks and sage at the wall’s base.

“Oh,” he said, kicking his silver-tipped black boots. His blond head was tipped at an odd angle against a rock, and he seemed to be staring at his bloody belly. “Oh . . . oh, shit. . . .”

Just beyond him, another figure stood aiming a rifle toward Prophet. The bounty hunter’s heart thudded as he was about to drop the gut shredder and draw his Peacemaker.

A familiar voice said, “Lou!”

It was Louisa. She lowered her Winchester and came running. She was dressed in nothing more, it appeared, than a red poncho, hat, and boots. Her creamy legs were bare. Her wheat-colored curls bounced on her shoulders laid nearly bare by the poncho’s wide neck. Others ran up behind her—Hiram Severin and two other men wearing silver stars on their wool vests or coat lapels.

Louisa slowed to get a look at the dying blond bushwhacker slumped between the bathhouse and the dry-goods store. She glanced at the back of the bathhouse, where the Chinaman stood in the open doorway, yelling in his bizarre tongue while throwing his hands up toward the bullet holes peppering the bathhouse’s back wall.

Swinging her head back to Prophet, Louisa sidled up to the big bounty hunter, who was only a little better clothed than she, and looked at the first gent he’d torn in half and flung off in the brush.

“You, too, huh?”

PROPHET FROWNED AT his comely younger partner.

Before he could ask her what she’d meant, Sheriff Severin jogged up, red-faced beneath his crisp bowler, breathing hard. “Lou, goddamnit—what’s all the shootin’ about?” The sheriff’s tone was breathless and grieved as he looked down at the blond gent who lay blinking and kicking against the rock. “I told you, I run a peaceable town here!”

Prophet returned the sheriff’s accusatory glare. “Sounds like empty boosterin’ to me, Hiram. Both these gents tried to ventilate my hide as I washed it. At least one of ’em did. From the roof of this here shed. The other was skulkin’ around out here, ready to finish off what the first gent left kickin’.”

Sweating, Severin regarded Prophet skeptically. “You didn’t start it?” He seemed surprised.

“I sure as hell did not!”

“No more than I could start a lead swap from the comfort of my own tub,” Louisa expostulated saucily to the haggard-looking lawman, whose two younger deputies— one small and wiry, one tall and slender with cow-dumb eyes—moved up cautiously behind him.

Prophet swung his indignant gaze from the confused-looking sheriff to Louisa. “You, too?”

“No sooner had I dispatched my two than I heard the shooting over here. Had a feeling it wasn’t someone putting down an old dog.” She paused. “And I wasn’t far from wrong.”

“All right,” Prophet said, cutting her off. “I ain’t no old dog, but these snipes here are privy slop of the lowest grade. I don’t recognize the first gent, but the blond one over yonder is Kentucky Earl Watson. Brother of Jed Watson, who I brought to Judge Parker in Fort Smith about three and a half years ago. He wasn’t long out of the saddle before he was dangling about three feet off the ground. His little brother Earl there, who was in Parker’s lockup at the time, though not for a hangin’ offense, vowed he’d kick me out with a shovel, but that was so long ago, I’d forgotten about him.”

Louisa kicked a rock and rested her rifle on her shoulder as she stared up at Prophet, who was having trouble not looking at her long, creamy legs even though he’d seen them plenty enough times before though perhaps not in such a favorable slant of sunlight. “I recognized both men who kicked my door in so rudely, Lou.”

She tipped her glance up at Sheriff Severin, who, in turn, jerked his own appreciative glance from Louisa’s legs, as did the two deputies flanking him. “They were Noah Calhoun and Big Dick Broadstreet. Broadstreet gave himself the favorable moniker, though I’d heard from a sporting girl in Dodge that Dick was big in name only.”

“What was their beef with you . . . uh . . . little lady?”

“Did you notice the scar on Big Dick’s right cheek? Came from a bullet of mine up near Little Box Elder Creek in southern Dakota Territory. I took down two of his partners for killing whores for fun in Bismarck, and he skinned out the back of the roadhouse that they were drinking in and jumped on a horse, but not before I triggered a forty-five round at him. I knew I’d hit him. I’d been hoping ever since he’d died miserably in some creek bottom. Noah Calhoun is his brother. Saw his likeness scratched on a handbill at Fort Griffin last year. It seems he had the same weakness for mistreating sporting girls as his brother.”

“Well, I’ll be damned.”

“Maybe you don’t run such a peaceable kingdom, after all, Hiram.” Prophet couldn’t resist getting the dig in.

“I said it was peaceable,” the sheriff said as he walked over to the first man Prophet had shot. “Not Heaven.”

The taller deputy had followed the sheriff while the short, wiry one had walked over to the blond bushwhacker. The sheriff shuttled his gaze between them. “You boys see either of these brigands around town before?”

“I seen ’em, Sheriff,” said the tall deputy, who wore his curly hair long but whose scraggly beard couldn’t hide his round, boyish face. “They drink over at the Mexican’s place every now and then. They ain’t in town all that much, though, so I never seen no reason to inquire about their business. You said to confront those who stay too long without any real purpose. Ain’t that so?”

“Yeah, that’s so.”

“I figured these two must work for one of the ranches,” the tall deputy said and hiked a shoulder with a defensive air. “As for them that bushwhacked Miss Bonaventure—I wouldn’t know either o’ them from Adam’s off-ox.”

“This one here’s still alive, Sheriff,” said the short, blond badge toter standing over Kentucky Earl Watson, who seemed to be trying to lift his head. The bushwhacker’s lips were moving as his chest rose and fell slightly.

As the short deputy prodded Kentucky Earl with his boot toe, Louisa strolled over, dropped her rifle down from her shoulder, spread her boots about shoulder-width apart, and aimed the Winchester at Kentucky Earl’s head. The blond deputy looked at her, his eyes wide with shock. He opened his mouth, but before he could say anything, Louisa’s Winchester barked.

Kentucky Earl’s head jerked violently as the bullet went in one ear and out the other, blowing about half of Earl’s brains out with it.

“Now he’s not.” Louisa shouldered her rifle once more and strode back off in the direction of the Golden Slipper, leaving all three lawmen staring incredulously after her.

Sheriff Severin looked at Prophet, who looked away, scratching the back of his head. “Can’t blame her for wantin’ to leave the profession in style.”

 

After Hell-Bringin’ Hiram Severin sent one of his deputies off to fetch the undertaker for the two dead men, the sheriff asked Prophet with a chagrined air if he’d join him and Jose Encina for supper at Avril Tweet’s Cafe that evening, obviously feeling guilty that he’d been so quick to assume that Prophet had started the lead swap. Not one to hold a grudge, and since he had no one else to sup with, Prophet agreed to join the two men.

When the sheriff had given Prophet directions to the eatery, the bounty hunter clomped back into the bathhouse to finish dressing and endure more of the Chinaman’s tirade.

When he’d dressed in relatively clean clothes from his saddlebags—faded denims, powder-blue denim shirt that had shrunk a couple sizes too small for his broad shoulders, and red neckerchief—he lugged his gear over to his second-floor room at the Muleskinner’s Inn. The room was furnished with a lumpy iron bed wedged between the door and the right wall, a rickety wooden washstand, a backless wooden chair, and a few shelves and some hooks for hanging clothes on.

It was little larger than a cookhouse broom closet. Not only was it sparsely and crudely furnished—the iron bed frame was speckled with chipped white enamel—but it had come with the threat that another lodger might be joining Prophet later that evening if the other twelve rooms filled up, unless Prophet paid an extra twenty-five cents for guaranteed privacy.

Prophet, who was almost broke and too proud to go on the take from Louisa, who was always flush, told the owner of the place, a shifty-eyed gent with dentures that didn’t fit right, that if anyone disturbed him, the disturber would get a load of buckshot for his trouble. He wasn’t promising the proprietor wouldn’t get a load, as well.

The proprietor, Henricks, clicked his dentures, curled his nose, and snapped his newspaper as Prophet tramped up the stairs that were missing two entire steps, the whole shebang sloping dangerously to one side.

Now the bounty hunter dropped his gear on the bed, rearranged the possibles in his saddlebags, and rolled a smoke. He looked at his old Ingersol railroad watch and saw that he had some time before supper. Dropping the watch back into his jeans pocket, he dragged the backless chair up to the bed and, smoking, laid out all his guns—three pistols, shotgun, and Winchester ’73—side by side on the bed’s stained quilt.

Always good to have clean weapons, and he hadn’t cleaned his in over a week.

He hadn’t used much of his arsenal in that time, outside of the rifle and shotgun, of course, but they might have collected just enough trail dust or plant seeds or moisture to hamper their actions.

No bounty man in his right mind—especially one who’d made as many enemies as Prophet had—carried guns with compromised actions. He never knew when said gun might come in handy, which his little run-in with Kentucky Earl Watson and his unknown compadre had so handily reminded him.

While Prophet worked, taking apart each weapon and carefully cleaning and oiling each part, he sipped from a bottle he’d picked up in a roadhouse along the trail up from Mexico. Nothing like a bottle to quell the frayed nerves on the lee side of a gun battle.

Nor for clairfying a man’s thoughts.

While he cleaned the guns, smoked, and nursed the unlabeled hooch, he couldn’t help wondering if any more of Kentucky Earl Watson’s gang was around. It seemed damn queer that several men from the same gang could have beefs with both Prophet and Louisa, from separate past dustups. But they had to all have been part of Kentucky Earl’s bunch.

And if they were from the same bunch—and they
had
to have been—what had they been doing in Juniper? Obviously, they hadn’t merely spotted Prophet and Louisa along the trail and followed them in. Hell-Bringin’ Hiram’s deputy had said he’d seen at least two of the men—Prophet’s bushwhackers—around town.

What had they been doing here? Kentucky Earl Watson was many things, but a cow nurse was not one of them.

As Prophet put his rifle back together, caressing the fore-stock with an oily rag, he thought about Louisa.

A worry pang bit his belly, but the girl could take care of herself. He denied the urge to check on her before heading over to Avril Tweet’s Cafe. Not only was it not necessary, but he didn’t want to interfere with her evening with Miguel Encina. She’d look out for herself and the young banker tonight, and God help anyone who tried dry-gulching her. Unlike Prophet, the girl never took a drink of anything stronger than sarsaparilla—hell, she didn’t even drink coffee!—so her mind was always as clear as Rocky Mountain snowmelt.

No, she could take care of herself. Prophet had no reason to worry about her. Of course, he had no reason to be jealous of young Miguel, either—since it had been his own idea for the young bounty hunting lass to settle down here in Juniper—but he was.

He puffed the quirley stub in his lips as he rubbed the rifle down, then tossed it onto the bed beside the others, the bluing of the entire arsenal shiny with fresh oil.

Christ
, he thought
. Why don’t I just pull out? I’m going to have to jerk my picket line sometime. I never should have taken the gold-guarding job. The only reason I did was because I wanted to get Louisa settled in here. I always knew I’d leave eventually. If she’s already falling for the young banker, I have no business hanging around here, torturing myself and being a thorn in her side.

He puffed the quirley and tossed it out the open window, then blew a long, ragged smoke plume after it.

PROPHET RUBBED WATER into his longish sandy hair and combed it.

He snugged his battered Stetson onto his head and, reluctantly leaving his ten-gauge in his room and armed with only his Peacemaker, tramped down the deathtrap stairs and out of the Muleskinner’s Inn and over to Avril Tweet’s Cafe. The eatery sat on a meandering side street on the town’s north side near an open sage flat rolling up to distant, brown ridges. It was a wood-frame, two-story house with ginger-bread siding and a simple but tastefully furnished interior, with two separate eating areas divided by a narrow, carpeted staircase.