“Give me an hour,” Prophet said as she walked away, the four canteens hanging from her shoulders. “After that, ride out and keep on ridin’. Don’t come back here.”
Louisa did not look back at him but only threw her arms up in frustration and kept walking.
When she and the others had disappeared in the darkness, Prophet retrieved his rifle and shotgun, which he’d put in the shed before he’d gone in to cut Ruth’s husband down. Now he checked to make sure each was fully loaded and then walked up through an alley beside the now-defunct Rose Hotel and Saloon to the main street.
He doffed his hat and edged a look around the front of the next building to the north, toward the dwarf’s place.
Business was hopping. Every window in the place was lit up like a Mexican Christmas shrine, and silhouettes of revelers danced in the street. Several bull or mule trains must have rolled in, and the men from the train, as well as the slavers, were overnighting at the dwarf’s place despite the fact that the dwarf was no longer hosting them himself.
His death hadn’t seemed to hurt his business much.
Beyond the well fronting the dwarf’s House there were a good dozen or so figures. They appeared to be holding candles as they knelt in the street kitty-corner to the giant building.
Prophet scowled. What the hell—were some of the folks who lived around here so devoted to the dwarf that they knelt in prayer for the man’s wretched soul? How could that be? Why, the little man had whipsawed them all between his water contracts and taxes! A sane man would be celebrating the little bastard’s demise!
Let him burn in hell!
Prophet scanned the dwarf’s bordello and gambling den once more. There were only a few men on the broad, roofed gallery fronting the place. No one on the street besides those kneeling with candles beyond the well. The wagons sat with their tongues drooping, their teams of oxen or mules in the corral out back.
Prophet walked up onto the boardwalk running along the street opposite from the House and began strolling slowly, keeping to the buildings on his right so he wouldn’t be so easily seen. He tried not to appear overly suspicious if he was seen, but he wanted to peruse the environs here as furtively as possible.
He needed to find a man alone out here somewhere. Someone whose clothes he could “borrow” for a closer reconnaissance of the House.
He dropped down off one boardwalk and crossed to the one fronting the next building beyond, and kept walking until he was opposite the well, leaning back in the shadows against a dilapidated adobe and looking past the well at the dwarf’s gambling parlor.
A couple of men in blue uniforms were milling on the gallery now in addition to the three from before. They were facing each other and moving their lips, conversing, though Prophet couldn’t hear much of anything against the music and ribald laughter and the roar of conversation issuing from the saloon. The slave traders were wearing light blue shirts and suspenders, sleeves rolled up to their elbows. They were all well armed with pistols and knives.
Obviously, they’d sold their cargo to the dwarf’s men. Most likely they’d be pulling out again soon, and, if Ruth had been right about the dwarf’s depraved operations, they’d be shipping out with the same number of slave girls they’d shipped in.
The dwarf’s herd would then be culled, his stock refreshed. . . .
Prophet gave a dry chuckle. He’d been around the frontier a long time, but he’d never heard of anything so baldly depraved.
He waited in the shadows. Several of the men on the gallery headed on inside the House, likely to partake of the fresh slave whores. There was no one around from whom Prophet could “borrow” a hat and a serape.
Frustrated but determined to get inside the House to get the lay of the land, he leaned his rifle and shotgun against the side of the dilapidated adobe. He had to leave the big poppers here. Entering the dwarf’s House so heavily armed would attract attention, and most likely suspicion.
The .45 and his bowie knife would have to do him.
He just had to hope the beard was enough of a disguise. The person he thought most likely to recognize him amongst Moon’s gang was his nasty little woman—Griselda. If Prophet could avoid her, he he’d have a good chance of appraising the place without getting shot so full of lead he’d rattle when he walked.
He stepped out away from the adobe and stopped. A man was dropping down the gallery’s broad steps. Prophet could see only the man’s silhouette, hear the trill of his spurs. The man stepped into the street and then Prophet watched his murky shadow moving toward him, the crown of his dark hat jostling against the brightly lit bordello behind him.
31
PROPHET’S SHOULDER MUSCLES tightened as the dark-clad figure kept moving toward him. He had to make a quick decision here, because he was about to be spotted if he hadn’t been already.
Letting his instincts lead him, he continued toward the well, staggering a little as though mildly drunk, as though he’d been sleeping off a bottle or two outside the adobe across from the well.
He dragged his boot toes over to the well, and leaned his elbows on the stone coping, bowing his head and drawing his hat brim down over his eyes.
“Rough night, killer?” The man approaching chuckled.
Prophet sighed raspily.
“If you can’t hold your skullpop, my friend, you really oughta stay home with Mother. Hold her yarn for her while she knits you a sweater.”
The man began turning the winch handle, lowering the bucket into the well. Prophet looked across the well, beneath the roof, at him.
He was about Prophet’s size—big, rawboned, and bearded, and he wore a cavalry shirt and suspenders. His teardrop-shaped hat was trimmed with gold acorn bands and a crossed-sabers army hatpin. Its wearer looked very much the size and shape of the man Prophet had watched crawl out from beneath the slave wagon the night before.
The bounty hunter’s heart quickened slightly. Keeping his hands pressed to both sides of his face as he watched the man crank the bucket up out of the well, he said, “Any chance you’d help a fellow out with some water, there, friend?”
“Gotta pay.”
“Huh?”
The slaver chuckled, said jeeringly, “Gotta pay the dwarf’s box. You know how he is about folks not payin’.”
“Oh,” Prophet said, the old rage flickering like still-hot debris from a recent wildfire. “Sure, sure. Yeah, gotta pay the box.” He chuckled.
He started walking around the well toward the slaver who was just now pulling the filled water bucket over the coping. He hesitated. Had the slaver said is when he’d referred to the dwarf, as though the demon were still alive?
Ah, hell, Prophet thought, continuing around the well. People talk like that all the time. Doesn’t mean a thing. Ruth said she shot the black-toothed serpent through his little, mean head. That would have snuffed his candle, all right.
The slaver had set the bucket on the side of the well and he was drinking from the rusty tin dipper. “Mmmm, sure is good,” he said, lowering the dipper into the bucket once more. “Damn!” He chuckled, glanced at Prophet, and closed his shaggy mouth over the edge of the dipper, taking another long drink.
“Nothin’ like a good, cold drink o’ water in the desert, is there? Nope. Nothin’ like it.” The bearded slaver drank another half a dipperful and glanced at Prophet.
“You pay the box?”
“Did you pay the box?”
The man grinned, showing white teeth inside the shaggy, dark brown beard. “Me and Moon got an agreement. Business partners, don’t ya know.” He tossed his chin at the box on the post behind him. “Pay the box.”
While the man had another long drink, snorting it up loudly, really making it sound good, Prophet went over and dropped a coin in the box.
“Okay, there’s the coin,” he said. “Mind if I have a go?”
“Sure.” The man dropped the dipper in the bucket. “Have at it.”
He slid his hand behind the bucket and knocked it over the outside of the well coping. It hit the ground with a thud and a splash. Water oozed out around Prophet’s boots.
“Now, look what you did, you damn fool!” the man snarled. “A cork head like you don’t deserve a drink of water.”
He grinned jeeringly.
Suddenly the grin was gone, and he lunged forward, and buried his right fist in Prophet’s gut.
The bounty hunter hadn’t expected that. He doubled over as the air left his lungs in one long grunt. Memories of the ass kicking he’d taken here were fresh in his mind, not to mention his ribs, which barked and squirmed like small, angry dogs in his chest.
“Why, you son of a bitch!” Prophet said, straightening, sucking air into his lungs, groaning at the miserable ache in his belly and chest.
The man laughed as he stood before Prophet, balling his fists at his sides.
“What’d you do that for?” Prophet wheezed.
The man only laughed louder, more jeeringly. The bully was having a real good time. He’d probably been looking all night for someone he could kick around.
His smile faded sharply, however, a half second before Prophet head-butted him with a solid, resounding smack.
The man grunted and staggered backward, rage flashing in his eyes as he raised a hand to his forehead. Prophet stepped into him quickly, brought a haymaker up from his knees, and laid it resolutely against the left side of the man’s face—a hammering, crushing blow.
As the man’s head jerked to his right, Prophet welcomed it with his knuckle-out left fist. Another skull-splintering blow. Prophet felt the sharp pinch of a back tooth through the man’s bearded cheek.
The man stumbled backward and fell like a windmill in a Kansas cyclone. Blood from his cut cheek oozed out his mouth and down his furry chin.
Prophet glanced at the dwarf’s House. Thank God none of the slaver’s friends—no one at all, really—was out on the gallery. Prophet glanced behind him. The Mexicans holding their prayer vigil were still muttering and holding their candles, all faces turned warily toward Prophet. He grinned, placed two fingers to his lips, and pinched his hat brim to the small crowd.
Then he crouched over the shaggy-bearded man, who lay sprawled on his back, dead out, bleeding into the dirt, and grabbed the man’s arms. He dragged him around the well and into the darkness just left of the dilapidated adobe.
About halfway down the adobe, near where his rifle and barn blaster leaned, and well concealed in the muddy darkness, Prophet quickly removed his buckskin shirt and replaced it with the bearded man’s shirt and yellow neckerchief. He replaced his hat with the bearded man’s blue kepi, tipping it straight forward over his eyes, cavalry style.
He wouldn’t bother with the pants. Hell, everyone inside would be too drunk to notice his denims.
He turned to appraise the lit-up House once more just as a man staggered outside. He was a short man in a palm-leaf sombrero, cartridge bandoliers crisscrossed on his chest. He stopped just in front of the open front doors, staring out at the night for a time, toward Prophet.
Then he staggered sideways, leaned back against the front wall. His hat fell forward down his chest as he slowly sagged to the gallery floor. His head slanted to one side, chin to shoulder, and he sat there, statue still.
“A good time was had by all,” Prophet muttered as, adjusting the unfamiliar hat on his head once more, he walked out from beside the adobe and tramped around the well.
As he approached the large, gaudy building before him, he raked his right hand across his holstered Colt, taking a modicum of comfort from the solid feel of the walnut-butted revolver that had seen him out of many pinches.
He hoped he wouldn’t need it for any such pinch tonight. Sharp-nailed witches’ fingers of apprehension raking the back of his neck, he strode slowly up the gallery steps, toward the doors yawning before him like the gaping jaws of a lion’s den.
As he stepped up onto the gallery floor, a familiar, raspy, laugh—like the long, shrill squawk of a chicken-thieving eagle—rose high above the din. It careened around the place until it was nearly drowned by an explosion of accompanying laughter.
Another weird sound rose on Prophet’s left. His nerves bouncing around just beneath his skin, he glanced sharply at the man sitting beside the doors. The man’s chest rose and lips pooched out and then rippled like shuffled cards as he exhaled.
Snoring.
Prophet felt an extra-angry dog nibbling at his sore ribs as he moved slowly across the gallery, through the gaping doors, and into the smoky air and flickering lamplight inside the great drinking hall.
There must have been a hundred men in the place, crowding the tables as well as the horseshoe-shaped bar to Prophet’s left. They were smoking and drinking and talking and gambling, smoke wafting as thick as summer storm clouds. Some customers lay in pools of vomit on the floor. Others sat with bored-looking Apache girls on their laps.
Some of the girls wore so little as to be mostly naked. There were Mexicans as well as Indians. Even some blonds and a redhead. Not all of the dwarf’s whores were slaves, it appeared. Some had that look of a veteran professional who knew exactly how to ply their wares.
Some were topless. Some were overly expressive, as though they were trying too hard to please their prospective jakes as well as their employer.
Employer . . .
As the bounty hunter moved into the room and walked slowly through the crowd, trying not to make eye contact with anyone, he continued to hear the rise and fall of that grating, eagle-like voice. His hands sweated inside his gloves. He missed the security of having his double-barrel gut shredder hanging down his back.
Halfway down the long room, he stopped. He stared, a ringing growing in his ears.
He blinked as though to clear his vision. But, no, his eyes weren’t playing tricks on him.
Thirty yards away, the dwarf was standing on a wooden table fronting a brocade-upholstered sofa on which the dwarf’s woman, Griselda May, lounged like a queen. The dwarf was standing on a shipping crate atop the table. Unless Prophet was hallucinating, there was no doubt that the little man was Mordecai Moon. No, that big, dome-like head, pig face, long arms, and feet clad in the child’s black boots definitely belonged to Moon.
A tuft of colorless goat beard straggled from his chin. He wore his age-coppered clawhammer frock coat and the feathered bowler hat that Prophet had shot a bullet through.
Moon was surrounded by an especially rough-hewn group of men whom Prophet took to be freighters. He was holding court, yelling, flapping his arms like the eagle he sounded like, and then suddenly lifting a bandaged hand to his forehead.
“Bang!” he shrieked and then immediately started laughing. “I thought I was dead, but, hell, no!” He held up his bandaged hand that was purple and swollen to twice its normal size and pointed at the blood-spotted bandage over the palm. “The big ole paw here saved my rank old hide! Took the zip out of the bullet, and she bounced right off my wooden head!”
The dwarf laughed and did a little dance atop the crate, pinwheeling his arms.
“And the Mescins all think I’m a saint! Ha!”
Griselda May rose to a half crouch behind him and extended her arms to catch the obviously pie-eyed little demon if he should fall. As he swung his little body back forward, he smacked his bandaged hand against the head of a tall, long-haired man who’d been walking past him and his semicircular crowd of admirers.
The dwarf snapped his hand to his chest, lifted his furry chin, and sent a brittle shriek hurling toward the rafters.
He lost his precarious footing atop the crate. Griselda screamed as the crate tumbled away beneath the dwarf’s scissoring boots. She managed to grab only one of Moon’s arms before the dwarf slammed down hard on the t
able.
He gave a yelp and then rolled off the table to pile up on the floor, Griselda crouched over him, yelling, “Mordecai!”
The dwarf half rose, pushing the girl away. As she fell back on the couch, the demon gained his feet, his face swollen and red, eyes wide with rage. The man who had run into his hand stood staring down at him skeptically, swaying slightly on his hips from drink.
“That hurt like hell, you lummox!” Moon shouted, his good hand clawing his Colt Lightning from the holster on his right hip. “Teach you to watch where you’re goin’!”
His voice cracked on that last. The long-haired man took one step back, wagging his head and raising his hands, one with a beer in it.
But the Lightning spoke once, twice, three, then four times.
The long-haired man went stumbling off into the crowd of men beyond him, sending two others to the floor as he fell, the four holes in his shirt pumping blood out of his chest.
The dwarf lowered his smoking pistol as he walked over to the long-haired man, who was fast dying on the floor as several innocent bystanders scrambled away lest the dwarf should cut loose with the Lightning again. The long-haired gent stared up at the dwarf, shock on his face. He blinked his eyes several times. His chest rose and fell sharply. He lifted one big, brown hand as though in beseeching.
Moon spit on him. “Teach you to walk into my hand, you son of a bitch!”
The long-haired man sighed. Blood frothed on his lips and dribbled out his nose. His arm dropped, his chest stopped rising and falling, and his horrified eyes rolled back into his head until Prophet could see little but their whites.
“Get him out of here!” the dwarf ordered, and three of his men came running from various points about the room.
The dwarf holstered his pistol, clutched his bandaged hand—the bandage was slightly redder than before—to his belly, and winced. Griselda walked over to him and wrapped an arm around his shoulders.
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