Hell's Angel (12 page)

He pinched his hat brim to her and touched spurs to Mean's flanks. He did not look at Ruth as he rode on up the street, though he could feel her apprehensive gaze on his back. He probably should have let her buy the canteen for him and fill it from her own supply. That would have made more sense. It would have been practical.

But something in him—something stupid and mulish, which too often won out when pitted against his better judgment—wouldn't allow it.

12

PROPHET RODE UP
past the well in the middle of the broad street and looked at the three-story, gaudy, purple hotel with its lime-green gallery on his left. A small Mexican man in a red serape slept in the street, slumped back against one of the gallery's stone pilings, an empty bottle lying at one of his steel-toed boots. He was a remnant from the previous night's festivities.

Prophet merely glanced at the hungover Mexican. The brunt of his attention was on the small, brown-haired girl sitting at the top of the steps in a cream blouse and long, wool skirt, smoking a quirley. Her Stetson hat with conch-studded band was hooked over her left knee. She held the quirley between the long, slender fingers of her right hand.

Her sharp, devious face brightened when her eyes found the big man riding past the hotel. “Good mornin'!”

“Good mornin' your own self,” Prophet said, keeping Mean moving in the direction of the mercantile.

The girl turned her head and narrowed one speculative eye at the Rose Hotel and Saloon at the south end of town, and then turned back to Prophet once more, her smile turning foxy. “Have a good night, did you?”

“Slept like a rock. You?”

“I reckon I did okay for it bein' so hot.”

“Well,” Prophet said, grinning and pinching his hat brim to the girl he'd seen with Moon the day before, “be seein' you.”

“Most likely.” The girl grinned again, foxily, and lifted the quirley to her thin lips and took a deep drag, exhaling the smoke through her nostrils as she continued to watch the bounty hunter.

Her grin faded. Her eyes turned cunning.

Prophet continued on over to Soddermeyer's Dry Goods and reined up in front of the loading dock. The man he'd seen earlier was no longer on the porch but was standing just inside the door he'd propped open with a barrel bristling with picks, shovels, and scythes.

He was lean, bony, his skin tanned a dark, rosy hue. He had thick, black hair streaked with gray, and a mustache of the same color. “I don't need your business,” he said throatily, canting his head to his left. “Keep ridin'!”

Prophet swung down from the leather, glanced over at the dwarf's place, seeing only the girl still sitting on the steps, smoking and watching him, and then tossed Mean's reins over the hitch rail. He smiled affably at the shopkeeper scowling before him and climbed the loading dock's wooden steps, his spurs ringing loudly in the quiet morning air that was heating up quickly, foretelling another scorcher.

“Mornin', there, amigo. Looks like it's gonna be another hot one. Just a few things I'll be needin' before I shake a rein.”

Prophet crossed the dock and stood before the lean, dark-haired gent with the bushy mustache. A full head taller, the big bounty hunter loomed over the man, grinning.

Soddermeyer looked up at him apprehensively, his eyes flicking nervously from the Peacemaker thonged on this stranger's thigh to the fierce double maw of the coach gun peeking up from behind his right shoulder and then to the width of his shoulders that stretched the buckskin tunic taut across his chest.

The shopkeeper glanced toward the dwarf's place and then stepped back into his shop, beckoning with a quick, impatient sweep of his arm.

“Make it quick. I don't got all morning to spend on drifters who aggravate Mr. Moon!”

Ten minutes later, Prophet walked out of the mercantile with two canteens for the long ride to Alpine, a bag of Arbuckles, and a pouch of jerky. He slowed his stride as he walked across the loading dock, seeing first the two local lawmen, Lee Mortimer and his deputy, the Rio Bravo Kid, standing in the street to Prophet's left. Mortimer scowled beneath the brim of his black Stetson, his eyes like steel above his knife slash of a nose and his steel gray mustache. Despite the menace in his gaze, he had a bored, worn-out air.

The Rio Bravo Kid scowled beneath his hat that was tilted up an angle to accommodate the blue goose egg on his right temple. The two men cast long shadows, for the sun had just risen above the roofs on the east side of the street. The Kid didn't look good, and he didn't seem happy, either. Eagerly, again and again, he raked his thumb over the hammer of one of his holstered Colts; his teeth shone white between his thin lips.

Mortimer drew up one side of his mouth. “Why couldn't you just ride the hell out of town?”

Prophet continued on down the loading dock steps and glanced to his right, where the dwarf stood with the three hard cases he'd had out there the day before as well as four others, including the man whose hand Prophet had punched a slug through. The bandaged hand hung down by the man's side. His other hand rode atop the big Remington holstered on his other hip.

The additional four looked just as mean and hard as the other three. They all wore at least two pistols on their suited frames.

The dwarf stood at the head of the group, only a few yards from the well. He had his thumbs hooked in his vest pockets—a severely ugly child in a very bad mood. As he stared at Prophet, who dropped the coffee and jerky into his saddlebag pouch, Moon rose up and down on the balls of his child-sized black boots that looked as though they'd gotten a recent polish. He wore the shabby bowler with the small, ragged hole in its crown.

Casually sliding his shotgun forward, so that the sawed-off popper hung down to around the middle of his belly, Prophet hung his two new canteens from his saddle horn, swung into the leather, and neck-reined Mean and Ugly toward the well. From his higher vantage now, he could see Ruth Rose standing on the steps of her saloon, one arm hooked around a porch rail as she stared worriedly toward Prophet.

As Mean clomped slowly toward the belligerent group of men standing in a pie-shaped wedge between the well and the hotel, Prophet saw Miss May sitting where he'd last seen her, on the porch steps of Moon's hotel. She was no longer smoking her quirley, though Prophet could see its stub smoldering in the dust near the empty bottle of the Mexican still passed out beside the steps.

The girl wrapped her arms around her knees, staring at him gravely now, pensively, with none of the mocking humor of before. She almost appeared to be waiting to see what would happen, maybe wondering if it would turn out the same as the day before.

Or different. Almost as though she had a stake in it.

“You got a lot of nerve,” the dwarf said, rising up and down on the balls of his boots, jutting his knobby chin toward Prophet. “A lot of damn nerve . . . hangin' around my town after what you pulled yester—!”

He cut himself off abruptly and snapped his eyes wide, startled, as Prophet's two silver nickels winked in the air as they caromed toward him. He threw up his hands a split second too late, and both coins bounced off his chest and dropped to the street near his boots.

Prophet held his shotgun by its neck though he kept the barrel down, not wanting to bait anyone into slapping leather but wanting to be ready in case it happened. He turned his head slightly to one side, and saw the two lawmen standing where they'd been standing before, apparently out here to merely back the dwarf's play.

Or maybe cut off their quarry if Prophet chose to light a shuck to the north?

“There's your ten cents,” Prophet said, pulling back on Mean's reins with his left hand, squeezing the gut shredder's neck with his right. “Now, kindly vamoose.”

He squeezed his shotgun's stock even tighter, having a hard time holding his fury in check. Being made to pay for a canteen of water graveled him no end, and the only reason he did it now was so he could ride out of here and return later for Ruth and her husband.

The dwarf glared at Prophet. He looked down at the coins at his feet. He looked up at Prophet again, and both his eyes shone as red as a devil's eyes.

At that moment, Prophet fully realized the dunderheadedness of his own move. As though to confirm it, the hard case with the wounded right hand jerked his left hand toward the big horse pistol on that hip. With a snarled curse directed mostly at himself this time, Prophet raised the gut shredder's barrel, thumbing both hammers back, and tripped the left trigger.

The coach gun fairly exploded, the concussion of the blast sounding like near thunder and rocketing around a narrow canyon. The man who'd been going for his revolver was lifted two feet in the air and tossed straight back, as though he'd been lassoed from behind by a cyclone deadheading for the Rio Grande.

He landed in the street, lifting a grunt and a great swarm of tan dust.

All six of the dwarf's other men, and the dwarf himself, sprang into action. Prophet decided to take the bull by the horns, and slid the coach gun's barrel at Moon, but then revolvers began belching behind him. A slug raked the left side of his head and across his left temple, fouling his aim.

When the shotgun thundered a second time, it blew a pumpkin-sized hole in the street two feet in front of Moon's black boots. The little man screamed,
“Ach!”
and leaped back so quickly that he got his boots tangled, and he fell on his ass.

At the same time, several more revolvers barked, curling the air around Prophet's head. Mean and Ugly whinnied shrilly and pitched, rising high off his front hooves. Prophet, who was suffering the effects of the bullet that had carved a furrow along the side of his head as well as dropping the coach gun and reaching for his Colt, was thrown back so quickly that he had no time to reach for the horn to steady himself.

“She-eee-ittt!”
he heard himself cry as he turned a backward somersault off Mean's back, feeling the tail rake his face. He hit the ground hard on his back, one of Mean's scissoring rear hooves clipping Prophet's right boot and causing pain to bark in that ankle.

Groaning, seeing Mean twist and turn and edge off to the far side of the well, lifting a thick dust cloud painted butter yellow by the morning sun, Prophet sat up, reaching for his holster.

The Colt wasn't there. It lay in the dust several feet away, half covered with dirt and bits of straw.

A cold stone dropped in his gut as he switched his gaze to the group spread out before him, all grimacing and squinting against the dust, all with one or two pistols leveled on him. All but the man with the injured hand, that was. That gent now had another injury—a bad one that had left him flat on his back in the street yards away in the direction of the Rio Grande, an astonished expression on his face, a gaping hole in his chest and belly. His limbs quivered as though he'd been touched by lightning.

“Hold your fire! Hold your
goddamn fire
!” the dwarf shouted, sitting on his butt in the dirt, about ten feet from Prophet. His hat was off, his thin hair mussed about the pale, bulb-shaped top of his head. Dust hung in the ragged tuft of his spade beard.

His men held their positions, crouching, resembling a pack of wolves about to pounce. Behind Prophet, running footsteps sounded as well as the raucous chinging of spurs. He turned a quick glance to see Mortimer walking toward him and extending a pistol straight out from a shoulder while the Rio Bravo Kid ran toward Prophet, grimacing, a hogleg in each red fist.

“Ease up, Kid,” the dwarf ordered. “I don't want him dead. Not yet, anyways.” He laughed raucously, kicking his little, crooked legs, dust rising around his boots. “First, we're gonna show him just how unwelcome he made himself here in Moon's Well!”

Prophet, who had also lost his hat, stared grimly through the wafting dust at the gang surrounding him. They all had guns. He had only his empty barn blaster. He saw Ruth Rose standing in the street fronting her hotel, staring toward Prophet in shock and dread, holding both hands to her face.

He glanced over at the girl, Griselda May, who sat as before on the gallery steps of Moon's hotel. She had turned the corners of her small mouth down and was slowly, darkly shaking her head.

She seemed genuinely sad about Prophet's imminent demise.

He felt sad about it, too.

13

PROPHET BRUSHED A
hand across the side of his head and saw the blood on his glove. Not a lot. It was just a crease. Likely nothing compared to what he was in store for. . . .

The dwarf walked up to within a few feet of Prophet, trying to look cocky, but his movements betraying the hesitation of a man walking up to the edge of a snake pit. Moon, dusty, bedraggled, and now sporting his bullet-torn hat, dipped his fingers into his glove pockets and again rose up on the toes of his little boots.

“If we had some tar and some feathers, you know what you'd get. Since we don't . . .” Moon turned aside and swiped his short, stubby arm toward the big man on the ground. “Boys, I want you to beat the shit out of this son of a bitch, but stop just this side of killin' him. Strip him naked, tie him over his horse, and send him out into the desert to die slow.”

He squinted one eye up at the rising sun shedding heat like a locomotive with a freshly stoked boiler, and then cackled his wicked laugh and sauntered over to join the girl on the gallery steps.

Prophet looked at the six men before him. They were all hard-eyed, bearded, and decked out in gaudy wool or broadcloth suits with checked or striped trousers and bowlers or slouch hats. The guns and knives they wore conspicuously were very well cared for.

There were two Mexicans, one who appeared a half-breed Apache, and three white men, one with the white skin and yellows eyes of an albino. He was the biggest of the lot—Prophet's size or bigger, with long, cottony-white hair hanging down from his black derby hat trimmed with a stamped-copper Indian talisman of some kind. Maybe a witch's totem. Purple-tinted spectacles hid his eyes.

He spat to one side and, grinning, his pale, gaunt cheeks making him look dead, he came in hard and fast on Prophet, his freckled hands held out in front of him as though he were preparing to swing them in chopping motions. Prophet shrugged off the searing pain in the side of his head and scrambled to his feet, spinning to get a look at the two lawmen.

They appeared to be content to watch from a distance, Mortimer filling his pipe while the Rio Bravo Kid stood grinning eagerly, maliciously, hands on both his holstered pistols. The purple bruise dipped down from beneath his hat.

“Shoulda left while you could, Lou. Reckon the trail ends here,” Mortimer said. “Too bad we're so far off the beaten track. Many a man with paper on his head would love to see this.” He shook his head and swiped a match across his black leather holster, firing it.

Mordecai Moon clapped and yelled, “Give it to him good, boys! Make him feel it, now, hear?”

Prophet swiped his shotgun's leather lanyard up over his head and right shoulder. Shuffling just beyond the albino's reach, setting his feet and grabbing the gut shredder by its barrels, wielding it like a club, he made a mental note to save his last ounce of strength for breaking the dwarf's neck.

“Hey, that ain't fair!” the Rio Bravo Kid shouted, pointing at the shotgun in Prophet's hand.

“Since he's outnumbered,” the dwarf said, sitting down beside the girl, “I'm gonna let him use it. Otherwise, I'd shoot him in the knee.”

Moon cackled and looked at the girl, who laughed then, too.

The albino lurched toward Prophet, who saw it for the feint it was, and smacked the stock of his shotgun hard against the side of the big man's head. The albino opened his eyes wide in surprise and stiffened, a muscle in his cheek twitching as blood ran down the side of his head from his badly ruined ear.

“Ah, damnit all, Hans!” bellowed the dwarf in disgust as the albino's knees buckled.

Prophet swung the shotgun at the next man coming toward him—an Anglo with a gold earring and two Green River knives sheathed on his hips—but the bounty hunter was distracted by the half-breed circling around behind him, and the coach gun whistled through the air over the man's head as he ducked.

Prophet lurched forward and rammed his knee against the ducking man's forehead, sending the hombre stumbling straight back, cursing and clutching his temple. The half-breed jumped on Prophet from behind, wrapping his arm around the bounty hunter's neck and doing a good job of pinching off Prophet's wind. His head felt as though it doubled in size as the half-breed hung on his back, closing off the carotid arteries in Prophet's neck, whooping and hollering and grunting and jerking back with his hooked left arm.

In the upper periphery of his vision, Prophet saw a Mexican storming toward him and swinging his right fist far back behind his shoulder, intending to slam it against Prophet's head. The bounty hunter wheeled, turning full around, and the Mexican's fist slammed with an audible, crunching smack into the half-breed's back.

That caused the half-breed to loosen his grip enough that Prophet got both his arms up beneath the half-breed's arm and, throwing himself forward into a deep crouch, sent the half-breed tumbling into the air over Prophet's head.

The half-breed bounced off the well coping and piled up in the dirt at its base, instantly rising to his hands and knees and shaking his head.

At the same time, Prophet swung around to see the Mexican throwing a haymaker at Prophet's face. The Mexican was a short, wiry man, and Prophet reached up and stopped the fist with his own hand, hammering the Mexican's face twice—two resounding left jabs that turned the Mexican's nose sideways against his face and exploded it like a tomato splattered against a stone wall.

Prophet hit him again, but then, to his right, the half-breed came at Prophet with the bounty hunter's own gun, which Prophet had dropped when the half-breed had jumped onto his back. Prophet saw the stock growing bigger and bigger so quickly, that he only got his hands up after it had smacked with savage force against the dead center of his forehead.

The bounty hunter stumbled backward, leaning forward and grabbing his forehead in both hands. He stopped, the street pitching and wheeling around him and under him, bells tolling in his head.

From somewhere, a woman was screaming.

As he dropped to his knees, he opened his eyes beneath his hands pressed to his forehead. Ruth Rose was running toward him, her own hands pressed to the sides of her head, her face crumpled in terror, tears glistening down her cheeks. She'd thrown her gray dress on but her hair wasn't brushed, and it hung in messy waves across her shoulders and down over her bosom.

“No!”
the woman screamed.

“Stay there!”
Prophet shouted raspily, and then heaved himself off his heels and bulled forward into the half-breed's knees, lifting the man off his feet and slamming his back to the ground.

Prophet was only about three-quarters conscious after that, only vaguely aware of the fight continuing, his fist slamming against flesh and bone and hairy scalps, only vaguely aware of many more fists hammering his jaws, cheeks, ears, the back of his head, until, after what he suspected was his own shotgun butt slamming into his head once more, just above his left ear, all turned black and hot and quiet.

It remained that way for he didn't know long, until he heard what sounded like someone smashing an ax handle against a barrel a hundred yards away.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

The sound kept getting louder until he was sure that whoever was wielding the handle was now smashing it against the top of his head. Then against the back of it. Then the top of it again, as though he were trying smash Prophet's head to a bloody pulp.

The misery was almost unendurable, and he tried to run away from it but he had no legs or feet with which to run. He could do nothing but lay there, against what felt like a rough-cut board raked back and forth across his belly and groin, while his tormentor continued to beat him, as hard as he could, about the head and shoulders with the ax handle.

The torture continued for a long time, and with it were other tortures, like that of a second tormentor setting hot irons against his back, between his shoulders, on the tops of his shoulders themselves, and against his ears and his ass. He could hear himself groaning and struggling, trying to flee these savage, merciless captors, but his hands and his feet were bound together.

The hammering continued, as did the raking of the crudely sawn board against his belly.

Gradually, the heat in the irons dwindled, and for a time he felt relief from that torment only to gradually feel a hard chill coming, as though a winter storm were descending.

It was just one more thing to endure, and he wished only that the horrible injuries he was surely suffering from all the abuse if not from the hombre wielding the stick would go ahead and kill him. Time to see the Devil, Ole Scratch, and start paying back the loan that Prophet had received for extra party time up here on the green side of the sod in return for Prophet's shoveling coal down below for all the rest of eternity.

He'd hoped he'd be able to stay up here longer, enjoy the green side of the sod for a few more years, but, oh, well, all good things must come to an end. Thinking back on it, they really hadn't been as good or as much fun as he'd hoped, anyway.

Ole Scratch had really taken him for a ride on that one. That would teach Prophet to sell his soul to the Devil . . .

Truth be told, though, he was ready. Oh, Christ on a merry-go-round—he was truly ready. Just toss him a shovel and show him the coal pile. And for the love of God and all that's holy, tell the bastard with the ax handle to light and sit a spell!

He heard himself mewling like a whipped coyote, but then, mercifully, he lost all sensation for a while, as though his brain had been shut off.

Vaguely, he became aware of being able to separate his hands and his feet, and to move freely, and then he groaned luxuriously at a cool—not cold, but
cool
—soft, soothing feeling as though mud were being rubbed into his back and butt, relieving some of the tenderness from the irons that had been pressed there.

The hombre with the stick was still in business, but he seemed to be taking a smoke break now and then. When he was back at it, smashing that stick against Prophet's head and shoulders, he seemed to ease up slightly. Maybe he was getting tired or a little bored. Whatever the case, the pain in Prophet's throbbing brain was easing.

Later, or what must have been later in this timeless, dark world he found himself in, he was aware of soft hands on him, making him feel wonderfully, soothingly cool, gently massaging that mud into his back and butt again. Then soft breasts pillowed his head while a feminine hand fed him soup with a spoon. He couldn't see the woman when he opened his eyes a little, only a snapping fire radiating warmth and light in a stone room, a wall of blackness beyond.

Then he was aware of being alone for a time.

He'd awaken now and then and look around the stone room, which he gradually realized was a cave with his gear spread around. He was resting against his saddle, and he was naked beneath his blankets. Sometimes he was alone, and sometimes he wasn't. When he wasn't, he could hear a woman's soft, soothing voice in his ears, though he couldn't seem to pry his eyelids open far enough to get a good look at her.

He smelled something foreign, which set his nerves on edge. It was the rancid odor of long-unwashed men and leather. Horses snorted. Men were speaking around him in Spanish, and when he opened his eyes, he saw two Mexicans kicking through his gear.

One turned to him. He had a big, dark face with a long mustache and one white eye with a scar above and below it. He lifted a big pistol with a deer horn handle. There was the loud
click-clack!
of the hammer being cocked.

“Amigo!” the Mexican said, smiling to reveal a gap where his front teeth should have been, the fang-like eyeteeth giving him a serpent-like, predatory look.

He aimed the cocked revolver at Prophet's head. “You wake up only to die, huh, amigo?”