Blood at Sundown

by Peter Brandvold

  He stared down at his hands, that sheepish half smile lingering on his dragoon-mustached mouth. Louisa noticed that what appeared to be dry blood streaked his left thumbnail—a gift from one of the bodies he helped haul outside, no doubt. He must have noticed the blood himself just then, because he covered that thumb with the other one.

  “What is it?” Louisa asked. “What has you tongue-tied, Captain?”

  Yardley looked across the table at her. “I must say . . . I feel a little silly, having rushed to the honor of one who so notoriously didn’t need it.”

  “Don’t feel that way. I was flattered.”

  He arched a brow at her. “Really?”

  “Really. It’s been a long time since a man has come to my rescue.”

  “Oh? What about your partner, uh . . . ?”

  “Prophet?”

  “Yes, Prophet.”

  Louisa smiled. “He might have a different story, but I believe I’ve had to save his honor more times than he’s had to save mine.”

  Yardley’s cheeks dimpled and his cobalt eyes flashed as he smiled more broadly. “I don’t doubt that a bit.” He cleared his throat. “Tell me, Miss Bonaventure . . . you and Mr. Prophet . . . uh . . .”

  “We’re partners.”

  “Just partners?”

  “Officially, we’re partners. For as long as we can stay together on the same trail without shooting each other. Unofficially . . .” Louisa sighed and glanced around the room before letting her gaze stray back to the soldier. “Well, let’s just say the nights can get very long and lonely out there on the hunting trail.”

  Yardley seemed pleased by the answer. “I see, I see.” He nodded slowly. “They do tend to get rather long and lonely here in Dakota, as well. Especially over the winter.”

  “Are you stationed at Totten?”

  “Yes. A crude, lonely place. I’m from back East. I’m furloughing out, heading home for the holidays.”

  “Congratulations.”

  “And you?”

  “Headed for Bismarck. Lou is coming in on the train tomorrow. He went after two killers, and I went after two killers.”

  “Well, you’ll find them out in the woodshed.”

  “Mr. Tutwiler will be glad to have to bury only Rainy in the spring.”

  Yardley winced. “Terrible thing what they did to the marshal. Seemed a decent man.”

  “Decent people are killed all the time, Captain. Surely you know that. That’s why I do what I do.”

  Yardley studied her, staring deep into her eyes from across the table, his dark brows beetled critically. “You are rather efficient at it, aren’t you? And merciless.”

  Louisa glanced at the dozen bullet holes in the ceiling, toward the back of the far wall. “You mean that?”

  “Yes.” Yardley chuckled. “I mean that.”

  Again, Louisa shrugged. “Getting shot through the floor while they lay in bed, making love after butchering a man who was only trying to do his job, was an appropriate way for them to go. They showed Rainy no mercy. Why should I have shown them any? A hanging in a public square in Bismarck would have been too good for them.” She paused, ran a finger around the rim of her tea mug. “They deserved being shot like rats in a privy.”

  Yardley was studying her again, lips drawn wide beneath his mustache. “My God, you are beautiful. As beautiful as all the scribblers have written about you. And just as . . .” He seemed to struggle for the right word.

  “Just as cold-blooded as they write about me?”

  The captain chuckled. “Yes, just as cold-blooded as they say.”

  They smiled into each other’s eyes.

  “Can I buy you a drink, Miss Bonaventure?”

  Keeping her eyes on his, Louisa shook her head. “Never touch anything stronger than tea. I have once or twice. Don’t like to lose my edge. And, trust me, you wouldn’t like what I become after a few sips of the tarantula juice, as Lou calls it.”

  “Hmmm,” Yardley said, canting his head to one side, tapping his fingers along his jaw. “Intriguing.”

  Louisa laughed then leaned intimately forward, toward the dashing young soldier. “Tell me, Captain, would you like to share my bed this evening?”

  Yardley’s lower jaw dropped. He sank back in his chair. For a moment, he just stared at her, not knowing what to say. Finally, he laughed. “You, uh . . . you don’t like to beat around the bush—do you, Miss Bonaventure?”

  “You never know when you’ve beaten the last one, Captain. I find you attractive. You find me, well, intriguing. Cold-blooded. So, I say we head up to my room and get down to business. Mr. Tutwiler has likely filled my wood box and laid a nice fire in the hearth.”

  Yardley continued to stare at her as though suspecting she might only be teasing him. Finally, convinced her proposition was genuine, he said, “Miss Bonaventure, I would like nothing more than to go upstairs with you and, uh, ‘get down to business,’ as you say.”

  “Well, then . . .” Louisa slid her chair back.

  “Wait!” Laughing, Yardley reached across the table to close his hand over hers. He glanced around at the other men in the room, including Tutwiler behind the bar, and said, “Shouldn’t we be discreet? Perhaps you should go up to the room first. Then, after a fair amount of time, I’ll—”

  “That’s silly, not to mention cowardly.”

  Again, Yardley’s jaw dropped “What?”

  “Why on earth would you care what anyone in this room thinks of you?”

  “Well . . . it wasn’t so much myself I was thinking about.”

  “Okay, now, Captain,” Louisa said, giving him a remonstrating, sidelong stare. “Your chivalry is beginning to wear a little thin. If you want to share my bed, you’d best show a little more—”

  She stopped as boots thundered suddenly on the stoop outside the saloon, muffled by the snow but still loud. The front door opened quickly, but not before Louisa had shucked her right-hand Colt from its holster and whipped it toward the old man just then entering on a windy blast of snow-laced air, and clicked the hammer back.

  The old man looked at the pretty blonde aiming the Peacemaker at him, narrowing one hazel eye as she aimed down the barrel. He frowned, blinked. He wasn’t holding a weapon in either wool-mittened hand, so Louisa depressed the Colt’s hammer and lowered the weapon.

  Yardley glanced at her dubiously, his mouth corners lifting in a wry, knowing smile.

  The old man closed the door, glanced once more, cautiously, at Louisa, then turned to the bar behind which Tutwiler was standing, saying, “Well, well—Lester Johnson. What’re you doing out in this weather? I figured you’d be snuggled up with your cats, a long book, and that bottle I sold you earlier.”

  “Where’s the marshal?” the old man asked, leaning forward, hands on his knees. He was trying to catch his breath.

  “Dead,” Louisa said.

  Johnson looked at her. He had a broad face nearly as dark as an Indian’s, and a full, snow-white beard. He was short, lean as a flax stem, and bowlegged. A large, liver-colored wart sprouted from one of his shaggy, white brows. “Who’re you—Annie Oakley?”

  “Close.” Standing beside Louisa, Yardley smiled.

  Still crouched forward, breathing hard, Lester swallowed and looked at Tutwiler again. “What happened to Rainy?”

  “Two tough nuts did him in. Upstairs. He’s out in the woodshed, where he’ll likely remain till spring. What’s the matter, Lester? You look like a ghost of one of your dead wives came back.”

  “Worse than that.” Johnson straightened, widened his eyes beneath his shaggy white brows. “Someone took a hatchet to the banker, Emory. That’s what I came to fetch Rainy for!”

  “The banker?” Louisa glanced around the room, looking for Toni, but then she remembered that the girl had gone upstairs and hadn’t come down again. Not even after all the fireworks.

  “Yeah, the banker,” Johnson said, glancing at Louisa again, curiously. He strode forward in his bull-legged fashion, headi
ng toward the bar, removing a mitten and brushing an arthritic hand across his nose. “That’s what I came to fetch Rainy for.”

  “Emory’s dead?” Tutwiler asked in disbelief. “You sure, Lester, or has this cold weather just got you hittin’ the bottle extra hard?”

  Johnson turned to rest an elbow atop the bar. He shook his head in shock and consternation. “Seen him myself. I was fetchin’ firewood outside my shack—you know, over close to where Mr. and Mrs. Emory got their new house—and I heard the woman scream. She screamed several times. Really scared-like. Crazy-like.

  “I throw on my cold-weather gear and I walk over there and I see her sitting down outside the back door beside Mr. Emory himself. Emory’s got a hatchet in his back, right up close to the back of his head. Laid his spine wide open! And it was still in there, lookin’ like a pump handle, when I come up on him and that poor woman. She was just cryin’ an’ kickin’ and screamin’ an’ really carryin’ on! I didn’t think I was ever gonna get her settled down and inside out of the cold!”

  Johnson turned to the barman, his eyes bright, stricken. “Give me a whiskey—will you, Morris? Make it a big one.”

  As Tutwiler grabbed a bottle from beneath the bar, Louisa walked over to stand facing Johnson. “Do you have any idea who might have killed Emory, Mr. Johnson?”

  “Hell, no. But, then, I don’t know him that well. He ain’t been here long, and I’m just an old hermit livin’ alone in my shack, readin’ an’ tendin’ my cats an’ such. And that’s just how I like it!”

  “The woman’s still over there?”

  Johnson nodded as he watched Tutwiler fill a water glass. “Of course, she’s still over there. I was just gonna fetch Rainy an’ leave it up to him. I ain’t the law. I was just gonna have me a coupla drinks to calm my nerves.” He lifted his glass in salute to Louisa. “And that’s just what I’m gonna do, too!”

  Louisa glanced at the other men in the room. None looked eager to face the cold. Most of them turned away from Louisa’s vaguely accusing gaze.

  With a disgusted chuff, she strode back over to her table and shrugged into her coat.

  “What’re you gonna do?” Yardley asked her.

  “I’m gonna see to the banker’s wife.” Louisa cast old Johnson an incriminating glance. “Her own life could very well be in danger.”

  “It’s started,” said Edgar Clayton. He sat at his table, staring over his shoulder toward the front of the saloon, his eyes dark, round, and ominous.

  Buttoning her coat, Louisa frowned at him. “What’s started?”

  Clayton turned his head slowly to face her. “The killer of the banker, Emory, is Ramsay Willis. He’s started killin’ here in Sundown.”

  “Ramsay Willis?” said Lester Johnson. “I haven’t seen Ramsay Willis in town since it turned cold. Don’t he still work for you?” He paused, scowling deeply at Clayton. “In fact . . . what’re you doin’ in town, Clayton? It’s stormin’ outside.”

  Clayton returned his dark gaze to the front of the room, sliding his eyes quickly along the windows and door, as though expecting the nightmare specter of Ramsay Willis to gain entrance at any moment. “I’m huntin’ Ramsay Willis. Gonna shoot him down like the loco wolf he is.”

  “Huntin’ him?” The bartender and Lester Johnson said at the same time. “Why?”

  “He’s gone mad.” Clayton turned to give both Tutwiler and Johnson a grave, direct look. “It’s the winter fever. It’s got him. He’s mad with it. He killed Rose. He killed the three old woodcutters at the camp on the Cannonball.” He swung his head back around to face the front of the room. “Now . . . he’s come to town to keep right on killin’.”

  “What’s the winter fever?” Louisa asked.

  “Old wives’ tale,” Yardley told her. “It’s said that some men go mad at the start of the winter up here. They can’t stand the thought of the next five, six months of cold, of being socked inside a small prairie cabin with nothing around, not even any trees to look at, so they go mad and start killing folks.” He smiled wisely and shook his head. “The notion itself is madness.”

  “It happens,” Johnson told the captain. “I was here when this place was still only a hiders’ camp. It happened a time or two. Men stayed on here through the winter ’cause maybe they didn’t have nowhere to go, or maybe they’d married up with a squaw from around here. In November, with all those hard, cold, lonely months starin’ ’em in the face, they’d go mad and start killin’. It’s like a demon took hold.”

  Tutwiler nodded slowly. “I’ve seen it, too. I was trappin’ once up on the Mouse River, just across the border in Canada. We had us a small camp, and . . .” He let his voice trail off as he stared at the saloon’s front door. He gave a barely perceptible shudder. “Yeah. Yeah . . . I’ve seen it.”

  Louisa felt a chill crawl up her spine. She looked from Johnson to Edgar Clayton, staring darkly at the door beyond which the wind moaned like a lonely witch.

  “Nonsense,” said the captain. “It only happens to those men who already have cold-blooded killers living inside them. Then, when the itch to kill gets so strong they can’t control it any longer—and some men . . . and even some women . . . are born with it, unfortunately—they go mad, pick up the weapon of their choice, and blame the weather for causing them to leave one hell of a blood trail.”

  “There ain’t no nonsense to it,” said Clayton with stubborn defiance.

  “It’s all nonsense. Oh, a few men . . . possibly even some women,” Yardley added for Louisa’s benefit, “have gone mad this time of year and started killing people. But that doesn’t mean that’s what’s going on here. Now, because of the legend that has grown from a very small but all too fertile seed, men on the prairie have come to fear it the way children fear the grim reaper.”

  “Well, I seen my dear Rose lyin’ dead on my cabin floor with my own eyes,” said Clayton.

  “Rose?” Tutwiler exclaimed in shock. “Rose is dead?”

  Clayton nodded slowly. “He killed her. Ramsay Willis did. I was off huntin’ a wildcat that was pesterin’ my cows down along Porcupine Creek. Ramsay stayed home with Rose because he wasn’t feelin’ right. Took to his bed several days ago. Couldn’t sleep. Paced the floor at night. I come back and found the cabin awash in blood . . . and Rose dead with a hatchet through her head. Ramsay was gone. Saddled a horse and headed this way . . . to Sundown . . . but not before stoppin’ at the Cannonball to kill them old woodcutters.”

  Tears glazed Clayton’s eyes, dribbled down his cheeks. A sob welled up from his throat and it sounded like the utterance of some poor, bereaved, unearthly soul. “Now he’s here, in town,” Clayton said, clearing his throat. “And he’s started with the banker.” He paused, then added in a low, menacing trill, “He’ll work his way over here . . . sooner or later . . . and continue the carnage.”

  Clayton rose from his chair and grabbed the rifle lying across the table before him, near his half-empty bottle. “If I don’t hunt him down and kill the son of the devil first, which I surely aim to do!”

  He stomped across the saloon and went out into the cold.

  Louisa grabbed her own rifle and pulled on her gloves and mittens.

  Yardley stepped up to her. “What’re you going to do, Louisa?”

  She scowled up at him. “What do you think I’m going to do? I’m going to check on the banker’s poor widow, and I’m going to see to finding the killer who widowed her.”

  Louisa knotted her muffler beneath her chin and followed Clayton out into the cold, howling night.

  Chapter 23

  “That was wonderful!”

  The countess Tatiana Miranova placed her hand on Prophet’s cheek and turned his head toward hers, giving his nose a tender peck. “You are better than Cossack!”

  Prophet snuggled down in the surprisingly soft bed in his room in the Indian Butte Saloon & Hotel, and nuzzled the girl’s neck, chuckling. “Well, I reckon I don’t know how a—”

  “I think I will take y
ou home with me, Lou. Back to Russia!” Tatiana wrapped her arms tightly around his neck, drew him taut against her, entwining her legs with his.

  “Not that I even know where your home country is.” Prophet chuckled. “But I doubt your old man the count would go in for haulin’ my raggedy behind back to your castle or palace or whatever it is you folks live in, Miss Tatiana.”

  She frowned at him, curious. “I don’t understand. What is . . . ‘raggedy behind’?”

  Prophet thumbed his chest and laughed. “Me!” He laughed again. “What I mean is I don’t think your pa would go for that.”

  “No. Probably not.” The countess sighed. She snuggled against him, burying her nose in his armpit and sniffing, savoring his manly smell. “But I think I will spend the night right here in your arms. I never want to leave your bed, Lou Prophet!”

  “That may not be such a good—”

  Prophet stopped. He pricked his ears, listening. The music downstairs had fallen silent and now there was a low rumbling of footsteps and concerned male voices.

  Prophet’s heart quickened. Uh-oh.

  Before he had time to voice his concern at the sudden change in the atmosphere of the sprawling hotel, a deep, heavily accented male voice shouted from somewhere below: “Tatiana! Tatiana! Where are you, my daughter?”

  “Ach!” The countess jerked her head up and stared wide-eyed at the door. She exclaimed in what could only have been Russian, adding for Prophet’s benefit, “My aunt, Sonya Drubatskoya, must have checked my room and found my bed empty!”

  Prophet sat straight up in bed, his heart thudding. “Who the hell is Sonya Drub . . . whatever-you-called-her?”

  “Drubatskoya. She was the big woman playing the gusli downstairs! My mother’s sister! She is my chaperone on this trip to America!”

  Just then a woman’s chortling, angry, exasperated voice shot up the stairwell at the end of the second-floor hall: “TAT-I-ANAHHHHHHH!”