Blood at Sundown

by Peter Brandvold

  Louisa looked away from him then swung her gaze to the front of the room when boots thumped on the porch. The door opened and a large draft of cold air blew in with large, swirling snowflakes that instantly dusted the floor and began melting. Three men came in, raising a raucous din with their boots thumping, spurs rattling, the men talking loudly, the wind howling in the street behind them.

  “Shooo-weeee!” said the man entering first, doffing his hat and batting it against his woolly chaps. “Colder’n a banker’s heart out there!” He chuckled and glanced at the other two men moving into the room behind him, the third one closing the door on the storm.

  They were all dressed in rough trail gear. They had the seedy looks of market hunters. Blood stained their clothes. All three appeared to be in their mid to late twenties, and they owned the devilish, twinkling eyes of firebrands. Especially the first man who’d entered, who was tall and whipcord slender and with long, stringy blond hair hanging to his shoulders. He had a skull and crossbones tattooed on his neck, Louisa saw now as he unbuttoned his blanket coat.

  His wild eyes, glassy from drink—the trio must have been passing a bottle as they’d ridden to Sundown—swept the room several times, each time coming to rest on Louisa, whose belly tightened in dread of having to parry more unwanted, drunken advances.

  Keeping his eyes on Louisa, who did not look back at him directly but only out of the corner of her eye, not wanting to encourage him in the least, the blond firebrand said, “Hey, Morris, how ’bout a bottle?”

  Tutwiler said, “What the hell you boys doin’ in town, Vink? I thought you was huntin’ game fer the railroad down in Bismarck? And you know I don’t walk that far. You want a bottle, come an’ get it!”

  “You fat, lazy son of an old she-lion!” said the second young firebrand—shorter than the blond, and dark haired. He owned a roosterlike strut.

  Tutwiler didn’t react to the insult, which seemed to have been spoken only half seriously, mostly in a dry kind of joking though the dark-haired man wasn’t smiling. He had three days’ worth of beard stubble and close-set, mean little eyes. Tutwiler only said, “There’s beans on the stove. Bowls are up here—a dime apiece.”

  “It’s free if we’re drinkin’, ain’t it?” asked the dark-haired little man, bellying up to the bar.

  “No, it ain’t free if you’re drinkin’,” Tutwiler mocked him, setting a bottle of unlabeled busthead onto the bar before him.

  “Hi, little lady!” said the tall, blond Vink.

  Louisa had shrunk deep inside herself as out of the corner of her right eye she’d watched him saunter up to her table. Now he stood over her, thumbs hooked behind his cartridge belts, the flaps of his blanket coat shoved back behind the pistol holstered on his right thigh and the handle of the silver-capped bowie knife jutting on his left hip, from a bloodstained sheath.

  “What’s your name?” the blond wanted to know.

  Louisa brought her mug to her lips, sipped the tea. “Go to hell.”

  “Go to hell?” the blond said with a high-pitched squeal of laughter. “Well, hello there, Miss Go-to-Hell. My name’s Ray. Ray Vink. These is Mose and Nasty Ralph.”

  He’d glanced first at the short, dark-haired man just now chewing the cork out of his bottle at the bar, and then at the third man who’d walked into the saloon with them and who was kicking out a chair at a table between Edgar Clayton and the bar.

  Clayton sat broodingly over his shot glass and beer, appearing so preoccupied by his own thoughts—thoughts of Ramsay Willis, most likely—that he wasn’t even aware of the newcomers. The third newcomer stood over the chair he’d kicked out, unbuttoning his coat and staring lustily toward Louisa. He was big and rawboned, with a full cinnamon beard carpeting a round, fleshy face. A large, dark wart grew out of the side of his nose, near the stubby tip.

  “I’m Nasty Ralph,” he said, stretching a smile at Louisa. “I won’t be nasty to you, though, Miss Go-to-Hell, if you ain’t nasty to me.” He smiled more broadly and winked.

  “Shut up, Nasty Ralph,” Vink said, gazing dreamily down at Louisa. “I seen her first.”

  “Hell,” said the short man, Mose, carrying the bottle and three shot glasses over to the table where Nasty Ralph was sagging his bulk into a chair, “she’s the only woman in here. Hey, Tutwiler, you got any girls upstairs?”

  “I don’t have any workin’ girls no more,” Tutwiler said. “I done already told you boys that several times. Runnin’ sportin’ girls is worse than herding cats, an’ I’m just too damn old to herd cats. If you want girls, Clarence Gray Wind has girls down at his place along the creek.”

  “It’s too cold for the creek,” Vink said, still staring with simpleminded fawning down at Louisa. “Besides, one of the half-breed’s girls gave me the pony drip last fall. I spent the winter on mercury!” He laughed at that. “Tincture of mercury,” he explained to Louisa, who still did not look at him. “The sawbones over to Devil’s Lake gave me some. Nasty stuff but it did the trick.” He paused. “Hey, how ’bout if I sit down here with you, Miss Go-to-Hell?”

  “Can’t you see the lady isn’t interested?”

  The man who’d spoken was the handsome, blue-clad soldier sitting at the table nearer the bar, playing cards with the drummers. He was hipped around in his chair, his cards in one hand, glaring at Vink.

  “Who’re you?” the blond firebrand inquired, sneering. “Her lord an’ master? Or . . . maybe you just wanna be.” He grinned insinuatingly.

  Ah, Jesus, Louisa thought, her gut tightening.

  The soldier slid his gaze to her then back toward Vink, who turned to face him now. The soldier laid his cards down, near a cigar smoldering in an ashtray, and rose from his chair.

  “It’s all right,” Louisa called, fashioning an affable smile. “He was just joking. Even if he wasn’t, I’m not offended. Come on, fellas. It’s a cold and stormy night, and we’re all friends here. Friends staying warm. Let’s be friendly!”

  The captain was having none of it. He left the drummers at the table, staring at him expectantly, and strode over to where Vink stood near Louisa, facing him. The captain was the same height as Vink, and he wore an army-issue Colt in a flap holster positioned for the cross-draw on his left hip. He wore a bone-handled bowie knife in a sheath on his right hip.

  His cobalt blue eyes glinted in the light of several smoky lamps guttering from ceiling support posts.

  He stopped three feet away from Vink and said, “Apologize to the lady.”

  “Please,” Louisa said, “let’s all just—”

  “No.” The captain kept his eyes on Vink. “This man insulted you. I won’t let him get away with it.” To the blond firebrand, he said, “Apologize to the lady.”

  “Go to hell, soldier boy!”

  “That’s Captain Yardley, you uncouth bastard. Apologize to the lady!”

  “Go to hell, soldier boy!”

  Captain Yardley jerked. It was such a quick jerk that he became a blur for half a second. When he stopped moving, Louisa saw the man’s right fist buried in Vink’s solar plexus. Vink gave a great “Gnahh!” as the air was punched out of his lungs, and he jackknifed forward, eyes wide, face swelling and turning dark red.

  As Captain Yardley pulled his fist back, straightening, Vink dropped to his knees, groaning.

  His two cohorts, Mose and Nasty Ralph, had gained their feet when the captain had walked over to Vink. Now they both leaped forward but froze when a gun blasted at the room’s rear, the sudden explosion making everyone, including Louisa, jerk with a start.

  Louisa quickly shuttled her gaze to the back of the room. A man stood on the stairs just far enough down from the top that Louisa could see his entire body, his hat crown grazing the ceiling above his head. Marshal Del Rainy held his smoking Colt down low in his right hand, aimed at the floor.

  Rainy just stood there, staring straight ahead. At least, he appeared to be staring straight ahead. His body was nearly entirely in shadow, his eyes deeply shaded by
his hat brim. Louisa kept expecting the man to order the men before her to stand down, but it didn’t come.

  Everyone in the room watched him, waiting.

  Finally, Rainy dropped his left foot down to the next step below him. It was a sudden, violent movement. His head bobbed as though he hadn’t been ready to take the step, as though his own movement had caught him by surprise.

  Rainy continued down the stairs, taking the steps faster and faster until near the bottom he was nearly running. He dropped his gun, which struck the second step from the bottom with a loud thud. He dropped to the saloon floor on both feet, twisted around as though drunk, and fell on his back near the bar without breaking his fall.

  Louisa had already gained her feet. She ran out from her table, pushing past Yardley and Vink, who remained on the floor, groaning. She ran down the bar to stand staring down at Rainy.

  The marshal lay flat on his back, staring up at her, his eyes glazed. His expression was blank except for one eye twitching spasmodically. Louisa raked her gaze down the man’s body and parted her lips, drawing a breath when she saw the blood oozing out from between the fingers of his left hand, which he’d placed on his belly.

  As the men in the room slowly converged on her and the marshal from behind, Louisa dropped to a knee beside the dying lawman. She slid his left hand aside and winced down at his belly. She drew another slow, deep breath as she studied the stab wound just above the square buckle of the lawman’s cartridge belt.

  Rainy’s dull-eyed stare found Louisa. He opened his mouth but was slow to speak. When he did, it came out as a raking, barely audible whisper. “Sh-she-devil buried a bowie in my guts.”

  Louisa lifted her head. All the men in the room except Vink stood around her and Rainy, quiet as church mice. They were so silent that Louisa could hear only the beans bubbling on the stove and the wind outside the saloon . . . and the snickering laughter, male and female, issuing from the ceiling.

  Chapter 19

  “I’m gonna ask you one more time,” Prophet told the young hardtail lying at the base of the window through which the cold wind blew. “Where’s Hatchley?”

  He pressed the Peacemaker’s barrel more firmly against the young hardcase’s right cheek. The hardcase flopped on his back on the deep, sour-smelling Oriental rug, kicking his legs defiantly. Blood oozed from the ragged hole on the other side of his face.

  “I don’t know, you son of the devil!” he screamed.

  Another scream sounded somewhere in the bowels of the remote whorehouse/saloon, beneath the wind moaning through the broken windows. This scream, a girl’s, had been muffled.

  “You go to hell!” the one-eyed hardtail bellowed.

  Prophet pulled the Peacemaker away from the young man’s cheek. Slowly, staring up at the balcony, he rose and started striding toward the stairs. The scream had come from the second story.

  When Prophet was halfway across the room, he heard soft scuffling and grunting sounds behind him. He wheeled.

  The kid was just then pulling a hideout pistol from the well of his right boot. Prophet whipped up the Peacemaker, cocking it, and squeezed the trigger. The kid was knocked straight back against the floor, where he lay flopping, dying fast.

  “Fool.”

  Clicking the Peacemaker’s hammer back again and holding the big .45 barrel-up in his right hand, Prophet continued across the room and mounted the stairs angling up the back wall, running parallel to it and the balcony. It was a steep staircase with a rail made of woven aspen saplings.

  Prophet moved slowly up the stairs, as quietly as possible then walked just as slowly along the balcony, listening behind each door as he passed. When he was three-quarters down the balcony, in deep shadows that wavered with watery light reaching weakly up from the first story, something sounded behind a door off his right shoulder.

  Prophet stopped, wincing as a floorboard squawked faintly beneath his left boot.

  From behind the door came a clipped, muffled cry and then the sound of someone saying, “Shhh” very faintly. A click followed the admonition.

  Prophet took a quick step forward. Before he’d even set his boot down again, a loud explosion assaulted his ears, making the balcony leap beneath his boots. A hole the size of a squash was blown through the door from the other side, the buckshot blasting the wood slivers out over the balcony and into the saloon below.

  Another concussive explosion sounded close on the heels of the first, plugging one of Prophet’s ears and doubling the size of the hole in the door.

  Prophet stepped back in front of the door and slammed the flat of his right boot against it, near the latch. The door with the gaping hole burst open, and before it could slam back against him, Lou stepped into the small room and caught the door with his boot as he extended his cocked Colt straight out from his right shoulder.

  The man standing before him—six feet, broad, long haired, pale skinned, and clad in only wash-worn balbriggans—had just lowered his smoking, sawed-off, double-barreled shotgun and was smiling as he aimed a Bisley .44 straight out from his own right shoulder, lining up his sights on Prophet’s forehead.

  Prophet was about to cut loose with his Colt but then the face of the man before him crumpled in sudden horror, chocolate eyes turning wide as silver dollars, his mouth opening to nearly the size of the hole he’d blown in the door. There was a girl on the bed to his right. She appeared to be a small, plump Mexican, and she had long, dark brown hair. She pulled a stiletto out from between Hatchley’s legs, from behind him.

  She must have stuck him in his backside. She appeared very satisfied with her work, too, for she slid her plump lips back from her gritted teeth and shrieked, “¡No sabes cómo tratar a las chicas, loco!”

  Prophet, who knew just enough Spanish to get himself into deep trouble south of the border, roughly translated the puta’s exclamation as: “That’s no way to treat a girl, you crazy fiend!”

  Hatchley had dropped to his hands and knees, bellowing. He dropped the Bisley and reached down to cup his hand over the gash whose placement Prophet still hadn’t pinpointed.

  The girl vaulted her small, dark, plump body off the bed and onto Hatchley’s back and went to work, screaming and punching his head, slamming her fists against his ears, the back of his neck and the crown of his skull, making his dark brown hair, which was nearly as long as the girl’s hair, fly like a muddy tumbleweed in the wind.

  Hatchley glared up at Prophet and yelled, “Get her off me!”

  Prophet lowered his Colt as he stepped farther into the room.

  “All right, señorita,” he said. “I’ll take over from here.”

  She continued to punch and slap the wounded hardcase, screaming Spanish epithets, for a good half a minute. She likely would have continued the assault if she hadn’t gotten winded and if she hadn’t looked up and seen the big man in the buckskin coat holding the .45 low in his right hand, his funnel-brimmed Stetson tied to his head with a ratty green muffler.

  She didn’t know if Prophet were friend or foe. For all she knew, he was just as bad as Hatchley. Breathing hard, muttering curses under her breath and sobbing now, as well, she climbed down off the hardcase’s back and brushed past Prophet as she ran out of the room. She gave a scream in the hall, and Prophet turned to see that she’d run into Marshal Sheldon Coffer, who’d just stepped into the room’s doorway.

  She bounced off Coffer and then ran down the balcony to her right, the padding of her bare feet dwindling behind her. Another door opened and slammed shut, and she was gone.

  Coffer held his old Remington barrel-up, and looked first at the howling Gritch Hatchley and then at Prophet. Coffer’s face was red from the cold outside, and his nose was running. “You clean up right well, Lou.” He nodded at the cursing hardcase, who now sat on his butt against the washstand abutting the room’s back wall, to the right of the bed. “Who’s your friend here?”

  “This here’s Gritch Hatchley,” Prophet said. “Damn near thought I wasn’t gonna be ab
le to take him alive. If that little girl had had her way, I wouldn’t have. She really worked him over.” He raised his voice. “How you doin’, Gritch? Feelin’ all right, you old bank robber?”

  Hatchley’s face was as broad as an Indian’s. In fact, he looked Indian though Prophet had heard he hailed from French coal-mining stock up in Canada. He wore long, black mare’s tail mustaches down past his chin, long sideburns, and a silver stud shaped like a cross in his right ear. His left earlobe was missing. Only a grisly white knot remained. His face looked as though it had been hammered crudely out of dark granite though the rest of his body was as white as salt.

  “That loco señorita cut me good!” The outlaw spat through large, square, gritted teeth. “I’m bleedin’ bad!”

  “She cut off anything important?”

  Hatchley glared at Prophet, dark eyes shiny from both drink and exasperation. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you, Prophet?”

  The bounty hunter had never met the man before though he’d heard plenty about him. Hatchley had probably heard plenty about Prophet, in turn.

  “No, I wouldn’t,” Prophet said, shaking his head. “Because that’d mean you’re likely gonna bleed to death here in a few minutes, and that would cost me five hundred dollars. Me? I’m a thrifty son of the old rebel South. I’d just as soon tote your livin’, cussin’ corpse into Bismarck for the full two thousand.”

  The bounty hunter canted his head, trying to get a look at how bad his prisoner’s wound was, but all he could see was way more than he wanted to see and not the wound itself. Plenty of blood was oozing onto the floor between the man’s pale legs, however. He had his right hand cupped under his upper left thigh.

  “She missed the important stuff,” Hatchley hissed, “but she come close! I’m bleedin’ bad! Fetch me a sawbones before I bleed dry!”

  Prophet dragged a pair of girl’s pantaloons off a chair back. He tossed them to Hatchley. “Wrap it up and get dressed. We’re ridin’ back to Indian Butte.”