Blood at Sundown

by Peter Brandvold

  Lou snarled at the cussed fop as he stepped up to the front of the depot, leaving Hatchley grunting curses on Mean’s back, and pushed through the front door. Inside was all bleak shadows and the smell of wood varnish and cat piss. It was so warm that Prophet thought he’d faint before he made it to the ticket cage behind which a little, gray spider of a blue-haired old woman slouched on a low stool, smoking a loosely rolled quirley and stroking the liver-spotted puss on her spindly shoulder.

  She blinked her brown eyes through the ticket cage at the tall man standing slumped before her, and croaked out, exhaling smoke through wizened nostrils, “You look like you been rode hard an’ put up wet, you handsome devil.”

  The cat turned to Prophet and meowed as though in agreement with the spidery woman’s assessment.

  “You don’t know the half of it.”

  The woman smiled. At least, the lines in the lower half of her face deepened and widened slightly in what appeared to be a smile. “Wanna light and sit a spell, tell me about it? I could dig us out a bottle, and we could get to know each other.”

  She gave a slow, lewd blink of her eyes, the lids like moth wings.

  Prophet chuffed a laugh despite his sour mood . . . or maybe because it suddenly wasn’t so sour anymore. “Now, what makes you think I’m that kind of boy?”

  She looked him up and down, her dark eyes twinkling with devilish insinuation. “You’re a tall son of a buck. My husband was tall.” She stuck the quirley between her lips, if the thin pink lines running parallel to her chin were indeed lips, and sucked on the quirley, making the end turn dark orange.

  She sucked a long draw of the smoke deep into her lungs, held it, and said, “He’s long since dead, an’ I haven’t had my toes curled by a tall son of a buck like either of ya in you-wouldn’t-believe-how-long.”

  Prophet would probably believe it but he didn’t say so as he didn’t want to seem impolite, and he wanted to purchase a ticket each for himself and his prisoner. He took the spidery little woman as someone who could hold a grudge. Discreetly parrying the spidery woman’s advances though his mood was buoyed by the bleak humor of the old woman’s brashness, he managed to purchase the tickets—three dollars and seventy-five cents apiece and an extra fifty cents for a stall for Mean and Ugly in the stock car.

  While the transaction was being made, the chatty little spider informed Prophet that there was only one coach car, as the rest of the combination was taken up by “that damned charlatan Fair weather and his fay son along with them funny-talkin’ furriners they got up here huntin’ all the game off this prairie so the rest of us can live off gopher an’ blackbird pie for the rest of the winter.

  “So far, you an’ your friend and your hoss will be the only payin’ passengers. Don’t expect a conductor or, for heaven sakes, a porter, cause there ain’t no such thing on this line, sweetie. You’re lucky to have bench seats and a woodstove. You’ll tend the stove and your hoss yourself. For that purpose, there’s a stock car between your car and the first of the senator’s fancy-dancy coaches. That’s on purpose. The stock car is to keep you raggedy-heeled, unwashed heathens back where you belong—in the passenger coach with its hard seats and damn little else. You’re not to mingle with the hunting party. They’re way above your lowly station, hear? Or so I hear tell . . .

  “There’s a piss pot in the passenger coach, near the stove. Empty it yourself. I done punched your ticket and, less’n you’ve changed your mind about that bottle an’ a little slap ’n’ tickle—I got a new pad in back I just this past fall stuffed with new corn shuckin’s—you and your friend and your hoss have a nice trip to Bismark an’ come back an’ visit me soon when you can stay a little longer, now, you hear, handsome?”

  Prophet assured her he would do just that, then, pocketing the tickets and resting the Winchester on his shoulder again, headed for the door. He stopped when, through a front window, he saw three horseback riders ride from around the building’s left side and onto the platform between the station and the train waiting on the tracks.

  They were the three Cut-Head Sioux Prophet had seen before—the old man, Leaps High, the hand-shaker, Little Fawn, and the other, sober-faced young brave riding a sleek brown and black pinto.

  The old man and the sober-faced brave rode ahead of Little Fawn.

  Just as the three Indians started walking their horses across the brick platform, between the depot station and the sitting train, the countess stepped down from the car ahead of the stock car, which fronted the shabby passenger coach, which would have been the last coach in the combination if not for the little red caboose. The stylish, gleaming fittings of the countess’s sleek, black coach with red velvet curtains adorning the windows made the passenger car look like a derelict old fishing boat by comparison.

  Seeing the girl, Little Fawn jumped down off his horse and ran over to the countess, extending his hand and bowing unctuously, wanting to shake. Prophet pushed through the door and out onto the platform.

  “It’s all right, Countess,” he said when he saw the startled, apprehensive look on the black-eyed beauty’s face. “He just wants to shake your hand, is all.”

  The countess looked at Prophet and then, turning to the Indian boy who stood only an inch or two taller than she, pulled her right hand out of the rabbit fur muff sewn onto her coat and gave it to Little Fawn, who shook it, laughing again with a combination of embarrassment and delight at the ridiculous custom. His laughter infected the countess, who, too, broke into laughter just before the boy released her hand and went jogging off down the platform, laughing.

  He ran toward where Rawdney Fair weather and Leo stood together with only one of the Russians now, the others having apparently boarded the stylish cars of the senator’s private combination.

  Prophet chuckled as he strode forward, heading toward the countess. He paused when he heard a voice raised in anger several cars up the train. He turned to see Rawdney Fair weather slap the young Indian boy, Little Fawn, hard across the young Indian’s face with the open palm of his right hand.

  Little Fawn jerked back, startled. Looking at the dandy who’d slapped him in round-eyed, wide-mouthed shock, the young brave stumbled back toward where his horse had followed him along the platform and was also sidling away from the red-faced dandy in apprehension.

  The other two Indians, Leaps High and the sober-faced brave, had their backs to the young Indian and Fair weather, but they both turned to peer back over their shoulders as the priggish dandy shouted at Little Fawn, “How dare you approach me, you filthy savage! Why would I want to shake your hand, you snickering red devil! Get the hell out of here before I fetch my rifle and shoot you through your savage heart!”

  Chapter 31

  “That sonofabitch!”

  Prophet lurched forward, heading toward where Fair weather was still regaling the Indian boy Little Fawn, as the boy leaped expertly up onto his horse and then hurried forward to catch up to the old man and the sour-faced brave, who stared coldly over their shoulders at the raging dandy.

  “Lou,” the countess called, grabbing his arm. “Don’t!”

  Prophet stopped, glanced at the countess staring up at him with pleading in her wide black eyes, then turned to glare up along the train at Rawdney. “He had no cause to do that. The boy was just wantin’ to shake his hand. He meant no harm. It was all in fun!”

  “I will admonish him,” the countess insisted. “I will talk to him later. It is not your place. He is . . . how do you say? . . . full of vim and vinegar, and very powerful.”

  “That little crawdad is a green-toothed, fork-tailed devil!” Prophet scrutinized her carefully, suspiciously, canting his head to one side. “Say, now . . . did I hear you two might be gettin’ hitched?”

  “Hitched?” The countess threw her head back, frowning. “What do you mean—hitched to a horse?”

  “No, no.” Prophet chuckled despite the anger still burning in his ears. “Married. You know—swap vows an’ such. Walk down the aisle. D
on’t tell me you’re gonna marry up with that—”

  “Yes. We will marry.” The countess dropped her eyes demurely then lifted her head and regarded the big man bravely. “My father and Rawdney’s father have gone into business together. My marrying Rawdney is . . . is . . . well, as Father says, it is my duty. My father’s businesses in Russia are, well, failing, if you must know. His brothers and a couple of powerful cousins have turned against him. We were nearly bankrupt before my father and Senator Fair weather went into business together, mostly on the senator’s capital. They are building several spur railroad lines across the west. They built this one, in fact.” She canted her head toward the train. “They are establishing several mines. We will visit those next . . . in Colorado . . . and hunt more grizzly bear!”

  She smiled brightly at the thought.

  Quickly, the smile faded, and she added with a vaguely troubled but resigned air, “I must be loyal to my father’s wishes. I am his only daughter. My mother, his wife of forty-three years, died last year. His own health is failing. We will move here together once Rawdney and I are married. Russia is no longer a hospitable place for us, though I do truly love it so . . . and will miss it.”

  She added that last with a sigh of deep longing.

  “Ah hell,” Prophet said, genuinely feeling sorry for the girl’s plight. Sometimes it was worse to have so much and lose it than, like Prophet himself, to have ever had very little at all. “It grieves me to hear that, Tatiana.”

  The countess gave him a warm smile. She looked around self-consciously. The only ones on the platform were she, Prophet, and Rawdney, Leo, and the lone Russian, who’d gone back to talking and laughing, their backs to Prophet and the girl as they stared off in the direction in which the three horseback Indians had disappeared.

  Tatiana began to raise her hand to his cheek but, thinking better of the gesture, stopped and let her hand drop back down to her side. Blood rose in her face, and her eyes glinted warmly. “I will remember last night, Lou. I just wanted to tell you that. And to thank you. I only hope Rawdney will turn out to be as gentle and satisfying a lover as you.”

  “Oh, I’ll remember last night, too, Countess.” Prophet chuckled lustily. “You can count on that.” He would, too.

  “Maybe . . . perhaps . . . we will one day find each other again, and . . .” She glanced sheepishly off toward Rawdney, who still had his back to her and Prophet, and smiled again, lustily. “And have another night as sweet as the one we just shared.”

  “I’d like that.”

  “I would invite you up to my car for lunch, Lou. But, you know . . .” Again, she cast a sheepish glance toward Rawdney.

  “Oh no.” Prophet held his left gloved hand up, palm out. “Don’t you worry about that. A fella like me—hell, I belong back there. Born to such a ride, in fact.” He canted his head to the old coach car with rusty iron wheels and in bad need of paint. It was a goat cart compared to the senator’s string of varnished surreys. “Besides, I got my prisoner to look after.”

  Brows beetling suddenly, the countess jerked toward Prophet as though nudged from behind. “I would like to kiss you!”

  Prophet backed up, chuckling wryly, glancing toward Rawdney and remembering the slugs from the Scheutzen hammering the rock Lou had cowered behind like a chicken-thieving dog. “Oh no, no, no. Don’t do that! That’d likely bring down a whole cloud of trouble on us both!”

  He no longer felt all that indignant about Rawdney’s ill treatment. After all, he’d sampled—and thoroughly enjoyed—the dandy’s bride in advance of Rawdney himself. He couldn’t really begrudge the cuckolded fop a little fun with the Scheutzen, though he’d be damned if he’d ever let him do it again.

  Chuckling fondly at the memories of last night flashing through his brain once more, he stepped back, pinched his hat brim to the lovely young Russian, then turned reluctantly away, regretting that he’d likely never see her again. A frown drew his mouth corners down at the sight of the ugly Gritch Hatchley sitting on Mean and Ugly’s back, hunched forward and scowling, lips stretched back from gritted teeth, nostrils flared in anger.

  What a contrast to Countess Tatiana Miranova!

  “I hope you didn’t rush your little game of slap ’n’ tickle over there for me, Prophet. Just cause I’m bleedin’ dry here, and freezing my ass off. Whoo-ee—she’s purtier’n a speckled pup! Just as soon as I cut your throat, I’m gonna take her to the dance myself!”

  “Sorry to keep you waiting, Gritch.” Prophet twisted Mean’s reins from the hitchrack and led the horse over to the ugly little gray car used to transport the West’s unwashed minions. “I’ll have you all warm an’ cozy in three jerks of a whore’s bell.”

  Hatchley went into another haranguing tirade against the bounty hunter’s lineage. Ignoring the man, Prophet dropped Mean’s reins onto the snow-dusted cobbles beside the car then reached up, grabbed the sleeve of Hatchley’s coat, and jerked him out of his saddle.

  “Ow!” the curly wolf cried as he tumbled down the saddle to hit the cobbles with a hard thud. “I didn’t deserve that, you scallywag!” He writhed, raising his right knee and hugging his punctured thigh.

  With effort, Prophet got the wounded, howling outlaw into the car. The car was shabby and dusty and it stank like an unmucked stable. A distinct sour smell radiated off the coach’s sole passenger, who lay sacked out in the first seat at the front of the coach, on the right side of the aisle.

  The man was snoring loudly.

  The rest of the car was as empty as a Lutheran church on a Friday night. The temperature felt no higher inside than outside. Prophet’s and Hatchley’s breaths frosted the air around their heads.

  As Prophet shoved his prisoner down the aisle, the sleeping man came awake with a grunt. He sat straight up on the green velour–covered bench, his single wool blanket tumbling to the floor where a nearly empty whiskey bottle stood near the man’s piled gear, which included a saddle and a rifle. The man grabbed two pistols from the pockets of his quilted deer hide coat, extended them straight out toward Prophet and Hatchley, and clicked the hammers back.

  “Whoa, now,” the bounty hunter said. “Easy, partner. No reason to get your blood up. Just headin’ for our seats, is all.”

  “Jesus!” Hatchley said, staring at those two Colt Army revolvers and the big, dirty hands gripping both walnut grips.

  The man on the bench stared down the Colts’ oiled barrels at Prophet and his prisoner, the alarm in his mud-brown eyes gradually fading. His thick, black brows beetled slightly beneath the edge of his soiled and somewhat frayed red stocking cap pulled low on his ruddy forehead.

  An affable light glazed his eyes. As he depressed both hammers and lowered the hoglegs, to Hatchley he said, “Bonjour, mon ami. Je voudrais vous voir ici.”

  Hatchley’s own brown eyes widened in surprise. A smile stretched his thick lips back from his scraggly teeth. “Henri! Bonjour, bonjour, Henri! Qu’est-ce qui vous fait sortir de cette façon?”

  “Canada was getting a little too hot for me.” Henri spoke nearly perfect English, with only a trace of a French Canadian accent. He glanced at the silver bracelets adorning Hatchley’s wrists. “What’s with those?” He slid his scowling gaze to Prophet.

  “It got a little too hot for me down here,” Hatchley said with a fateful sigh.

  “You two know each other, I take it.” Prophet glanced at Henri’s Colts, which the Canadian now rested slack in his lap.

  “Henri Shambeau,” Hatchley said, canting his head toward Prophet. “Meet Lou Prophet, bounty hunter. Lou, meet my old friend Henri. We go back a ways, me an’ Henri do.”

  “Bounty hunter, huh?” Henri said, wrinkling one nostril distastefully. Then he shrugged. “Well, I reckon we all have to make a living some damn way, eh, mon ami?”

  “Couldn’t have put it better myself. Now, while I hate to break up this happy reunion, I gotta get my prisoner situated and my horse tended before the train pulls out.” Prophet glanced once more at the pist
ols he was glad to see still resting, hammers down, on Henri’s lap, then shoved Hatchley on down the aisle.

  Following his prisoner, Prophet glanced over his shoulder several times, keeping an eye on Henri Shambeau, who wore a patchy black beard over his broad face cleaved by an enormous hooked nose. Shambeau smiled over the sea of velour-covered seats at Prophet, his close-set eyes vaguely mocking, enjoying the bounty hunter’s discomfort.

  “Christ, it’s cold in here,” Prophet said to Henri, shoving his prisoner down on a bench seat near the potbelly stove, which squatted in the middle of the car, its tin chimney poking straight up through the roof. “Did you ever think about building a fire?”

  Henri shook his head. “I didn’t need one.” He reached down then raised the bottle in the air above his head. “I had this.” He took a pull from the bottle then set the whiskey back down on the floor. He smacked his lips, yawned, and dropped back down out of sight. Soon, as Prophet cuffed Hatchley’s wrists behind the man’s back and around a strap of the iron seat frame, the Canadian began snoring again loudly.

  “This ain’t one bit comfortable,” Hatchley complained, leaning forward and straining against the cuffs pinning his wrists behind his back. He gritted his teeth at Prophet. “You expect me to ride all the way to Bismarck trussed up like this?”

  “I’m sorry you’re not comfortable, Gritch—purely I am,” Prophet said, dropping to a knee beside a corrugated tin washtub sitting beside the stove. The tub was filled with split firewood. “But there’s a whole lot more people out there you made a whole lot less comfortable than you are here this morning. And, lookee here, now—I’m even gonna build you a fire to keep you nice and warm.”

  When he’d laid feather sticks and wadded up newspapers inside the stove, he scratched a lucifer to life on the stove door and cast a hard, ironic look at his prisoner. “Gonna keep you nice an’ warm and ready for the hangman. We want you dancin’ real good when they drop you through the trapdoor, give the good folks of Bismarck some good, old-fashioned entertainment there on Main Street.”