He hit the ground on his side then bounced and rolled in the snowy sagebrush, yowling and bellowing.
Prophet slid his glance from Hatchley and the fleeing Mean and Ugly toward the men clumped beneath the cottonwoods. Again, Rawdney grinned and crouched over the tripod-mounted rifle.
“Watch this,” Prophet heard him say, causing a stone to drop in the bounty hunter’s belly.
Chapter 28
Toni screamed again and lurched back against the back bar shelves, closing a hand over her mouth in shock at the sight of Morris Tutwiler lying dead on the floor near the stairway, in nearly the same spot that Del Rainy had died.
The hatchet angled up out of the big barman’s back.
“Christalmighty,” said one of the drummers, in a hushed tone of awe. All three drummers stood at their table, eyes bright from drink, mouths drawn wide in horror.
The two hard-eyed market hunters, Mose and Nasty Ralph, had been standing at their own table near the bar ever since Louisa had trimmed Ray Vink’s wick. That had happened just before the injured Edgar Clayton had stumbled into the saloon. Right after Clayton had stumbled in the front door, bleeding from his temple, Tutwiler had ambled in from behind the stairs, wearing that hatchet in his back.
“Christalmighty,” Captain Yardley said, standing over Clayton, who knelt on the floor, holding a hand over his bloody right temple. “What in the name of God is going on here?”
Slowly, Louisa stepped away from Yardley and Clayton. She walked down the length of the shadowy saloon, down past the bar, and stood over the bloody, lumpy figure of Morris Tutwiler.
“I don’t think it has anything to do with God.”
One of the drummers—the shortest of the three and wearing a thick, brown handlebar mustache peppered with gray—quickly crossed himself. “You can say that again.”
Another drummer, a tall, thin man in a gaudy, orange checked suit, slurred his words as he said, “What . . . what the hell’s goin’ on?” His voice trembled slightly. “Who’s . . . who’s out there . . . killin’ folks?” He turned toward where the back door stood open behind the stairs, letting in a near-steady draft of cold wind laced with snow. “Who killed the barman?”
Louisa stepped over Tutwiler. Drawing her right Colt, she walked around behind the stairs and stood in the open doorway, peering into the snowy darkness. She could see nothing but the snow and the indefinite edges of several piles of split wood and the privy standing about fifty feet straight out from the saloon. The snow was scuffed near the door, where Tutwiler had stumbled away from the wood when the ax had been plunged into his back, but the storm was quickly filling in the marks.
Louisa felt a wave of frustration mixed with fury rise inside her. She squeezed the Colt tighter in her right hand. She didn’t like being hunted. She was the hunter. Having the tables turned enraged her. But she felt that for some reason on this stormy night, she was being hunted, sure enough.
She didn’t know why. Maybe that’s what made it all the more frustrating. Maybe her hunter didn’t know why he was hunting her. He was just hunting. His mind turned to mush for one reason or another, and he was out for blood.
Louisa walked outside and stopped just beyond the woodpiles clad in downy snow. The wind whipped against her, pelting her with snow falling from the murky sky. She endured the cold ripping into her and suppressed her need to shiver.
Her heart thudding angrily, she yelled, “Are you out here, Willis?”
Nothing but the wind’s moans.
“Willis?” Louisa called. “Are you out here?” She paused, holding her Colt in one hand, sliding her windblown hair from her eyes with her other hand, the anger churning hotter and hotter just behind her heart. “Come to me, Willis! If you want to kill me, face me! Come to me, Willis! I’m right here! Face those you want to kill, you coward!”
She screamed that last.
A hand closed over her shoulder. Louisa whipped around, clicking the Colt’s hammer back and tightening her finger over the trigger. A tall, dark figure stood before her, two feet away. Louisa’s Colt was aimed at a gold button of the dark blue cavalry tunic showing between the flaps of an open bear coat.
Yardley jerked his hands up, palms out, in surrender.
“You almost got a bullet through your heart, Captain!” Louisa shouted above the wind.
“I came out here to talk some sense into you. This Willis character is off his nut. He’s crazy. I know you’re frustrated, but you can’t call him in like a wild turkey!”
“Get the hell away from me!”
Louisa brushed past him and, holstering her revolver, walked back into the saloon. As Yardley came in behind her, she swung back toward him, the fire of rage in her eyes. “Do me a favor, Captain. Mind your own business from now on. You might think what other women do concerns you, but what I do concerns only myself. No one looks after me. You pull another stunt like that, I won’t fail to bury a blue whistler in your guts.”
Louisa turned and strode back along the stairs and into the saloon. All eyes were on her. Everyone in the room had heard her hand the captain his proverbial hat. She stepped over Tutwiler again and walked up past the bar on her left and the three gamblers on her right.
Mose and Nasty Ralph stared at her from over Vink’s body still laid out on their table. Toni stared at Louisa from behind the bar. The redhead was in the same place she’d been when Louisa had gone out the back door.
Toni’s eyes were wide with shock, her cheeks pale. She had one arm crossed on her chest. She had the other hand raised to her mouth and was nervously fingering her bottom lip.
Mrs. Emory sat in the brocade armchair at Louisa’s table. She was slumped forward over her tea mug, elbows on the table, kneading her temples with the heels of her hands. Edgar Clayton sat at his table, just beyond the two market hunters. He’d gotten himself a fresh bottle, and, one eye on Louisa, was just then pouring himself a fresh drink. The blood on his right temple had congealed.
The only other man in the room, the Sundown doctor who apparently did double duty as the town drunk, sat alone on the far side of the bar, staring over his table littered with two empty bottles, a shot glass, and a beer glass—just staring toward the dark windows beyond which the wind howled and against which the snow blew.
Louisa dragged a chair out from Clayton’s table and slacked into it. Leaning forward, crossing her arms on the table, she turned to the rancher. “Did you run into Willis?”
Clayton threw back half a shot of whiskey and nodded. “He ran into me, more like. The wind was blowin’. Mighty dark out there. I must’ve come up on him and didn’t see him. Don’t think he saw me till I near ran into him. He swung around sudden-like and hit me with the handle of his ax. I dropped my rifle and ran . . . ran before he could lay the blade into me. He chased me for a ways but he gave up fast.”
He took another, smaller sip of his drink and said, “I think he was heading this way.”
“Where was he when you ran into him?”
Clayton tossed his head. “Two, maybe three buildings to the north. In a break between Ed Lander’s old barn and the barber’s boarded-up shop. I was purty dazed. Took me a few minutes to get my wits about me. When I did, I went back for my rifle then came back here. He must have been out back just when I was comin’ in the front, and buried his ax in Morris’s back.”
Clayton showed his teeth like an angry dog and shook his head. “Crazy devil. Crazy, bloodthirsty devil!”
Big Nasty Ralph hipped around in his chair to regard Clayton over his shoulder, scrunching up his big, meaty face. “Who is this Ramsay Willis fella, anyways? What the hell’s his problem—murderin’ folks with an ax an’ such?”
“Worked for me,” Clayton said, throwing the last of his whiskey back then leaning forward again to stare down at his table with his rheumy, angry eyes. “For two years. Lived in a room off the back of our cabin—Rose’s an’ mine. Quiet man. He—”
“Hey, wasn’t there a Rose who worked here?” Nasty Ralph i
nterrupted Clayton. “Why, sure there was! Damn, she was one nice little . . .”
Looking around the room, the market hunter saw all eyes on him, including those of Louisa and Clayton himself, whose gaze was the darkest, most castigating of all. Even the town drunk/doctor was staring at Nasty Ralph.
“Jesus, Ralph,” Mose whispered.
Nasty Ralph brushed a sheepish fist across his nose and lowered his gaze to Vink, staring sightlessly up from the table.
“Kept to himself, Ramsay Willis did,” Clayton continued, his voice pitched with strained patience, keeping his gaze on the back of Nasty Ralph’s head. “Rarely came to town. Stayed in his room when we wasn’t workin’. He got restless every winter. Couldn’t take the short days. Endless gray days . . . all the cold, the snow. Took to drinkin’ too much. I seen it comin’ on in him this fall. That restlessness, thinkin’ about another winter comin’ on. Brewed his own beer, Ramsay did. Drank all of it himself. Never shared. Now . . .”
Clayton looked at Nasty Ralph and gritted his teeth. “Now he’s got the winter fever. He’s a killer. He’ll try to kill all of us, and that’s a fact. That’s how it works—the winter fever. You gotta work it out, think the only way is to kill . . . kill . . . kill. Till someone kills you. That’s the only way to stop a man afflicted like that. Kill him.”
“Just like a goddamn rabid dog,” said the drummer in the orange suit, sitting stiff-backed in his chair and staring wide-eyed toward Clayton.
The rancher refilled his glass from his bottle and raised it in salute to the drummer.
No one said anything for a time. The lanterns shunted thick, purple shadows wildly about the room. One fluttered out and smoked, and Toni grabbed a box of lucifers off a shelf and walked over to relight it. She moved quickly, desperately, as though worried all the lanterns would go out and leave the entire room in darkness. Leave them all exposed to the killer, Ramsay Willis.
“Well . . .” Mose rose from his chair near Nasty Ralph, staring down at the dead man on the table before him. “I for one am damned tired of starin’ at Vink’s ugly face. Let’s get him out to the woodshed.”
“Forget the woodshed,” Nasty Ralph said, scraping his own chair back. “You seen what happened to Tutwiler when he went out there. Let’s drag him out to the front stoop and call it good.”
“Sure, call the wolves in,” Toni said as she touched a flame to the lamp’s wick. “That’s all we need.”
“Carry him out to the woodshed.” Captain Yardley stood over a half-filled shot glass at the bar. “Two of you should be all right. Just keep your eyes skinned.”
Nasty Ralph scowled across the room at him. “Who the hell are you, anyway, soldier boy? You think just ’cause you’re wearin’ that uniform you got the right to issue orders? Rainy’s dead. So no one’s in charge. Not even you . . . soldier boy!”
Yardley didn’t appear to be in any mood to endure any more tongue-lashings. Louisa had injured his male pride. He cursed under his breath, tossed the rest of his shot back, then strode swiftly over to the table where Mose and Nasty Ralph stood over the body of their dead pard.
Yardley stopped not two feet away from Mose and glared down at the shorter man, stony-eyed.
“Take your friend out to the woodshed,” he said tightly. Toni just then got the lamp lit, and the growing glow caressed the captain’s left cheek and was reflected in his left, cobalt blue eye.
Nasty Ralph glared back at him, his broad forehead creasing and turning red beneath his matted cap of coarse, wavy, straw-colored hair.
Mose sidled up to Nasty Ralph, nudged his arm. “Stand down, Ralph. We got enough trouble. Let’s take Vink outside. We’ll be all right. We got our guns. We’ll be just fine. We see that crazy bastard, we’ll blow his lights out.”
Still glaring up at Yardley, Ralph said, “Don’t ever push me like that again . . . soldier boy. I don’t take orders from no soldiers.”
Yardley glanced at Louisa sitting at the table with Clayton, almost directly behind Nasty Ralph, then flushed a little with embarrassment. He strode back to the bar, where his bottle and empty shot glass were waiting for him. As Nasty Ralph and Mose began back-and-bellying their dead friend off their table, Louisa rose from her chair and buttoned her coat.
“I’ll ride shotgun,” she told the market hunters.
Chapter 29
Louisa pulled on her gloves and shoved her mittens into the pockets of her wool coat. She wrapped her muffler around her ears, shoved the tails down inside her coat, and set her Stetson on her head.
She picked up her rifle and, as Mose and Nasty Ralph hefted Vink up by his arms and ankles, strode back along the bar. Louisa did not glance at Yardley standing at the bar with his shot glass and bottle, one high-topped, black cavalry boot perched on the brass rail running along the bar’s base. Out of the corner of her eye she saw him glance at her in the back bar mirror as he once again lifted his glass to his mustached mouth.
Louisa stepped over Tutwiler then walked around the stairs to the back door. She threw the bolt, nudged the door open. The wind caught it and slammed it back against the saloon’s rear wall with a loud bang that made both Mose and Nasty Ralph jerk with starts behind her.
“Jesus,” Mose said, anxiously shaking his head.
Holding her Winchester straight out from her right hip, Louisa stepped outside. She looked around and, deeming the area relatively safe though she couldn’t see much farther than about fifteen feet out before her, glanced at the two men standing in the doorway behind her, and nodded.
Mose and Nasty Ralph carried Vink out the door. They followed Louisa, leading with her rifle aimed before her, around the privy and out to the woodshed.
She set her rifle down and lit a match. Cupping it carefully in the palm of her left hand, she used the wan glow to inspect the shed, which was a small pole structure with a sloping roof, open on one side. It was filled with cut logs. Atop one five-foot-high woodpile lay Rainy, on his belly, ankles crossed. On another pile sprawled Pima Quarrels and Sweets DuPree, both with their arms and legs spread, heads tipped to one side, eyes wide and staring.
The wind snuffed the match but not before Louisa saw that no hatchet-wielding killer was lurking in the woodshed.
She nodded to the market hunters and stepped aside to let Mose and Nasty Ralph pass with Vink, whom they swung back and forth a few times between them. On “four,” they sailed him up onto the pile beside Del Rainy. Vink rolled off the pile, dislodging several logs before he hit the ground with a slapping thud.
“Jesus H. Christ!” Mose complained.
They picked Vink up again and sent him sailing up onto the woodpile beside Rainy. The tall blond stayed that time though he dislodged one more log, which fell onto Mose’s right foot, evoking a curse.
“Now, Tutwiler,” Louisa said, jerking her chin in the direction of the saloon.
“Oh Christ!” Nasty Ralph intoned. “We’re not undertakers!”
“Now, Tutwiler,” Louisa repeated, more firmly, flexing her hand around the neck of her Winchester.
When Mose and Nasty Ralph had hauled the big barman out from the saloon and deposited him in the woodshed with the other cadavers, Mose turned to Louisa and said, “Happy now?”
He and Nasty Ralph stomped back toward the saloon.
Louisa remained outside the woodshed, holding her rifle on her shoulder, looking around through the blowing tendrils of her blond hair. She did not follow the men back to the hotel. Instead, she stared at a footprint in the snow near the front of the woodshed, at the base of a crooked cottonwood pole supporting the roof.
The print wasn’t hers and it was neither Nasty Ralph’s nor Mose’s. She knew because she’d spied the print before they’d entered the woodshed. The wind was slow to fill it in because of its placement there on the lee side of the building. Now she looked around and found another print on the leeward side of a shrub straight out from the shed, maybe fifteen feet to the south. The wind was gradually filling it in.
; Louisa walked slowly eastward, holding her rifle with both hands across her chest, her jaws taut against the cold wind battering her. Whoever had made those footprints had made them less than a half hour ago. And he was heading south, away from the saloon at the rear of which Tutwiler had been impaled with the hatchet.
Who else could those prints belong to but the killer, Ramsay Willis?
Louisa’s heart quickened as she walked slowly east in the snowy darkness, her gaze darting this way and that, frequently returning to the ground before her that was mostly dead brown grass and buck brush partly covered with snow.
Bushes cropped up to both sides of her as she moved slowly beyond the ragged outskirts of Sundown. She crossed the new railroad tracks mounted on their recently graded, cinder-paved bed nearly swept clear by the blowing snow, and continued heading east.
She almost stopped and turned back, the icy hands of the wind grinding her bones to jelly, but then she found another recent print and knew she was heading in the right direction and that she was likely close on the heels of Ramsay Willis.
Louisa’s heartbeat quickened again, her blood flowing warmly despite the chill engulfing her like a giant witch’s hand.
A dark, broken wall of trees moved up on both sides of her—winter-naked and creaking and moaning as the wind ripped at them. They were cottonwoods, she believed. Maybe some ash and box elder. A small copse out here on the open prairie at the very edge of Sundown.
As she moved into them, setting one high-topped fur boot down at a time, following a meandering break through the woods, she spied another footprint. It sat askance some low shrubbery matted with fresh snow. He was here, just ahead of her, probably. He was on the run from the saloon.
Did he know Louisa was behind him, stalking him?
Louisa swallowed. She breathed slowly, taking one cold breath at a time, wincing when a gust of wind sucked it back out of her lungs and sent a chill wave spasming through her.
She stepped over a deadfall tree blocking her path, noting where snow had been brushed off it recently by her quarry, when he, too, had hiked a leg over the fallen cottonwood, likely putting a hand down to support himself like Louisa did now, removing her right hand for a moment from her Winchester’s neck.
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