The Graves at Seven Devils (31 page)

PROPHET HELD HIS barn blaster in his left hand, the Colt in his right, and crept forward slowly, heading away from Louisa, making his way around the boulders, and swinging his hatless head from left to right.

The sporadic shots now rose from ahead and to his right, from upslope, and they all seemed to be aimed toward the ridge from which purple shade was slowly bleeding into the canyon.

He moved around a boulder and stopped. A long-haired gent in a green-checked suit coat and brown trousers lay facedown, blood staining the orange caliche around his head. Prophet kicked him over. From Big Hans's description, the hawk-faced corpse glaring up at him, lips stretched with shock and horror, was one of the triplets the gang had been named for. A big-caliber bullet had smashed a silver cartwheel-sized hole through one side of his head and had left a fist-sized, gaping cavern in the other side upon its exit.

Squeezing the barn blaster in one hand, his Colt .45 in the other, Prophet continued forward until the snake pit sheathed in mine tailings appeared just ahead. The redhead, Cora, was no longer here, but her blood marked where she'd lain.

Three more bodies lay around the pit, blood like red paint splashed from a bucket. Another triplet lay beside the hole—this one dressed in a brown-checked coat and fawn vest, the pistol with which he'd been about to clean Prophet's clock lying a few yards from his pale, long-fingered, outstretched hand.

A big black man lay draped belly up over a small boulder, a hole the size of a wheel hub gushing blood from his chest.

A few yards farther up the slope sprawled a tall gent with long, sandy hair and a handlebar mustache. He held two Buntline Specials in his fists, one cocked and splashed with blood from the hole in his throat. His eyes stared glassily at the rocks beneath him, one cheek and a black boot twitching in death spasms.

Men's voices drifted from upslope. A boot clipped a rock. Prophet glanced around more, then, sleeving sweat and dust from his eyelids and hefting his Colt and his barn blaster, began striding upslope, moving quickly but quietly.

He tramped between the rocks and dwarf pines, keying on the voices continuing to drift down from the rocks just ahead. He couldn't hear what the men were saying, as they were forty or fifty yards away, facing the ridge, but he could tell from their conspiratorial tones they were setting up an ambush.

As he moved, Prophet glanced at a large, flat-topped boulder leaning slightly to one side and snugged up to the ridge wall behind it. Several smaller boulders and pinyons lay around it. The boulder seemed to be the point the two killers—he could tell there were two by their tracks and voices—were heading for.

When the boulder was about thirty yards away, the crown of a black opera hat appeared, shifting around behind rocks and brush ahead of him. Prophet hurried forward, sidled up to a boulder shaped like a cracked eyetooth, and edged a look around it. A man with a black braid falling down the back of his salmon-checked suit coat knelt, facing the ridge from behind a wagon-sized chunk of black granite.

Breathing hard from the climb, Prophet sucked a deep breath and stole slowly out from behind the boulder. He'd set his left boot down softly in the dry gravel, when his quarry swung his head around sharply, black eyes snapping wide and lifting two saddle-ring Schofields in his black-gloved fists.

Prophet froze and, with an implacable expression on his scraped, dusty, sunburned face, tripped his ten-gauge's left trigger. At the same time, he fired the .45 in his right hand.

The .45's crack was drowned by the short-barreled barn blaster's cannon-like explosion, which made the ground shudder beneath the bounty hunter's boots.

If he'd hit the man with the .45, he'd hit him in the same place that the double-aught buck punched a pumpkin-sized hole through his lower chest, lifting him violently off his feet and throwing him straight back over several rocks to finally disappear in a deadly patch of spiked catclaw and ocotillo, dust rising in his wake.

One of the Schofields, which he'd thrown into the air unfired, dropped to the gravelly caliche only a few feet from the man's boot and spur prints, the soft, baleful plunk of iron against earth fittingly punctuating a wasted life.

Prophet holstered his .45 and, jogging forward, knowing the other killer would be headed in his direction, dropped down behind another boulder in the shade of the mammoth stone devil capping the looming southern ridge. He breeched the ten-gauge, plucked the spent wad from the left barrel, and replaced it with a fresh shell from his cartridge belt.

He dug a boot heel into the gravel and started to push himself up. Smelling a sweet, cloying odor—the stench of an overfilled privy doused with hog slop—he froze. Staring straight ahead, keeping his ears pricked but hearing nothing, he sat with his back to the boulder. The stench grew more intense, stinging his eyes like the devil's own supper.

Behind the boulder lifted the rasp of an indrawn breath. Prophet winced against the pain in his aching bones as he heaved himself quietly to his feet and, crouching and holding the barn blaster straight out from his waist, cat-footed around the side of the rock and edged a look behind it.

A huge figure—a good four inches taller than Prophet—clad in a short charro jacket and bull-hide chaps over bell-bottomed deerskin slacks—was turning around the boulder's other end, his back facing the bounty hunter. The stench emanating from the man was now so thick that tears squeezed out from Prophet's eyes to dribble through the dust down his cheeks.

The bounty hunter began raising the shotgun. Behind him a squeal rose sharply, freezing the blood in his veins and jerking him around suddenly, eyes popping wide, his right index finger drawn taut against the ten-gauge's curved triggers.

Something dog-sized and dark moved in the brush, snorting and grunting. The javelina pulled its pink snout back, wheeled, squealed loudly, and burrowed off through the scrub. At the same time, the smell of the man Prophet had been stalking became so strong it was like an actual dead thing in his nose.

A spur trilled softly. Sensing a target drawn on his back, Prophet twisted around, grinding his heels into the gravel and diving back the way he'd come.

Behind him, a rifle barked—two quick shots flatting out over the canyon followed by the mad, frenzied yowl of the shooter.

As Prophet hit the ground on his belly, his barn blaster tumbled out ahead of him. Spurs rang and boots thumped behind him. He turned to look over his right shoulder as his heart rattled in his chest and blood rushed to his cheeks.

The big Mexican, with a suety face shadowed by four-day stubble and a thick mustache, grinned with delight and, stalking toward Prophet lying helpless on his side, raised his Winchester to his shoulder.

He narrowed one eye as he drew a bead on Prophet's chest with the other. His mouth was a near-toothless cavern crusted with long-seasoned chaw.

Prophet's legs turned to putty as the man bore down on him. He didn't have a hope in hell of reaching either his .45 or the shotgun before the big, stinking demon looming in front of him sent him to Ole Scratch in a smoking, smelly cloud of glowing lead. He mused vaguely that at least he'd come to an appropriate place, a hot canyon ringed with massive red devils, to receive his send-off to El Diablo.

The Mexican slammed the cocking mechanism home with an angry, metallic rasp. Unexpectedly, he lowered the rifle to glare down at the silver-chased breech. As though the long gun had just insulted him, his grin dissolved, replaced by a face-crumpling, exasperated frown.

Prophet's chest fairly imploded.

The Mex's rifle was empty!

The bounty hunter threw his right arm out in front of his head, curled his fingers around the barn blaster's stock, and brought it back toward him. At the same time, the Mexican threw his empty Winchester down as though it had suddenly turned hot.

Knowing it was now himself who didn't have time to reach for one of his holstered six-shooters or knives, he bolted forward and sprang off the heels of his high-topped, mule-eared boots, bellowing as he dived toward Prophet, arms stretched out in front of him, hands spread wide, thumbs forward.

He landed atop Prophet just as Prophet drew the rear stock of his sawed-off ten-gauge down against his right rib cage and, raising the barrel up in front of him, curled his index finger over both triggers shaped like a pretty girl's long eyelashes.

The Mex wrapped his big hands around Prophet's neck and, half rising on his knees for leverage, his stubbled, dusty cheeks puffing, his black eyes popping wide with fury, began to sink his thumbs into Prophet's throat.

The man dropped his gaze suddenly to the stout barrels of the barn blaster snugged up under his chin. Just as suddenly, he pulled his thumbs back from Prophet's neck, crumpling his cheeks and slitting his eyes, throwing his head back on his shoulders.

Prophet lifted his head from the ground, hardening his jaws, tears dribbling down his cheeks from his stinging eyes. “Goddamn, old son—you ever heard of a
bath
?”

The hammering explosion of both detonated shotgun barrels drowned out the last word of his sentence, and he stared up as the Mexican's head turned to red jelly and flew in pieces from his shoulders.

The thundering boom continued echoing off the southern ridge, as though several cannons were being fired in the far distance, one after another. Finding himself staring at the bloody, ragged hole where the Mexican's head had been, Prophet kicked the man off him and rolled away.

Resting on one elbow and staring at the remains of the Mexican's head painting the catclaw and ocotillo and rocks beyond, a few strands of hair and one big eyeball clinging to a bloody boulder, a contemplative expression brushed Prophet's dusty, haggard features.

“Chulo Alameda.” The bounty hunter rammed a fist into the dirt beside him. “Goddamnit!”

“What is it, Lou? He get ya?”

Prophet turned to see Big Hans ambling across the rocks from the direction of the large, flat-topped boulder hulking against the base of the ridge. The kid's arm rested in the sling Prophet had fashioned for it. In his other hand he carried his Big Fifty. His blond head was shaded by his shabby sombrero while his dusty coveralls flapped around the tops of his lace-up boots.

“Nah,” Prophet said, shaking his head and gaining his knees. “It just came to me who he was. Chulo Alameda. Army payroll thief, rustler, and regulator. Even done some slave tradin' back and forth across the border. If I remember right, the U.S. government has two thousand big shiny ones on his head.” The bounty hunter cursed again as he breeched his blood-splattered barn blaster. “Shit, not even ole
Jesus'd
recognize that son of a bitch now.”

“Pee-
ewe
!” Big Hans exclaimed, stepping wide of the headless corpse whose knees continued bending slightly, as though in some bizarre, half-remembered death dance. “That's one rotten-smelling son of a bitch!”

“They included that description on his wanted dodger. ‘Stinks to High Heaven.'” Prophet cursed as he plucked the spent wads from his shotgun's breech and tossed them back over his shoulder. “You shadowed me, I reckon.”

Big Hans nodded. “Damn arm wouldn't let me sleep. I figured you might need a hand.”

“Much obliged.”

“Ran out of cartridges about fifteen minutes ago. Thought for sure these fellas were gonna smoke me out of my hidin' place and grease me up for the fryin' pan.” Big Hans looked around, stretching his thick lips back from his white teeth. “Where's Louisa?”

As if in response, a shrill scream rose—a high, keening cry like that of a grief-stricken squaw. Prophet's pulse jumped. “What's that high-headed filly gotten herself into now?”

He snapped his shotgun together as he leaped to his feet and, with Big Hans ambling along behind, ran back down the slope, wending his way through the scrub.

Prophet leaped atop a flat-topped rock and stared into the canyon below, filled now with angling, wheat-colored light slanting shadows out from the sage clumps and rocks. The copper-headed outlaw girl was running across the canyon toward the brush-sheathed arroyo, to the left of a dozen or so saddled, waiting horses.

As she ran, stumbling and yowling, she twisted around to look at the slender blond striding purposefully behind her, a pistol in Louisa's outstretched right hand.

“Noooo!”
Cora begged, stumbling over her own feet and dropping to one knee, throwing her arms toward Louisa with prayer-like beseeching. “Please, don't. I don't
wanna
die!”

If Louisa said anything, Prophet didn't pick it up. The pistol in her hand belched smoke and flames, and the redhead flinched, brushing a hand across her right temple a half second before the pistol's report and Cora's cry reached Prophet's ears.

The outlaw girl twisted forward, fell, scrambled back to her feet, and stumbled into the brush along the arroyo. Louisa followed, striding stiffly, with grim purpose, keeping about ten feet between herself and her hapless quarry.

“Jeepers,” Big Hans said, breathing hard as he stood to Prophet's right, staring skeptically into the canyon. “Think we should go help her?”

Prophet shouldered his shotgun and laughed.

EPILOGUE

PROPHET, LOUISA, AND Big Hans didn't linger in the death-drenched canyon after Louisa had finally finished off Cora, stifling those eerie squeals that chilled Prophet even in the high heat of the desert day.

When silence finally descended, the buzzards weren't long behind.

The unlikely trio gathered their horses and weapons, mounted up, and headed back through the narrow fault in the northern wall that Big Hans had discovered several years ago during his boyish explorations. The defile's west-side opening was concealed amongst pinyons and boulders so that you had to know the country as either an Apache or an adventurous boy would know it to find it.