Hell's Angel

by Peter Brandvold

  Prophet swung the gut shredder around and cut loose with the second barrel just as the second rider curveted his horse. The double-ought buck tore into the killer’s left arm and shoulder and tore a couple of red chunks from his face.

  Prophet slid the empty shotgun behind him, unholstered his Colt, raised it, and fired.

  “You fuckin’ son of a bitch!” the killer screamed, his cream duster billowing as a bullet tore into his side.

  He cocked his carbine and ground his heels into his horse’s flanks. The white-socked black lunged off its rear heels and galloped toward Prophet, its eyes white-ringed with fear. Prophet fired the Colt again, again, and again, watched dust puff from the rider’s duster, and then he dove to his left. One of the black’s hooves clipped Prophet’s right heel as he hit the ground and rolled as two slugs hammered the dirt and gravel around him.

  Ignoring the gnawing pain in his tender ribs, Prophet pushed to his knees. The man had stopped the black and was looking at Prophet. His duster had more red on it than white, and it sagged off his broad shoulders. Blood from Prophet’s buckshot slithered down his right cheek.

  Prophet shook his head. “You ain’t dead yet?”

  The man grinned, shook his head. With both hands, he raised the carbine.

  The man’s head jerked sharply to his right. He dropped his arms. The rifle fell to the ground. When the man lifted his head again, his brown bowler hat was gone, and the entire right side of his head was painted red and white from blood and brains.

  He sagged slowly to his right. As his horse turned to start running back in the direction from which it had come, the rider fell out of the saddle, hit the ground, rolled once, and lay still.

  Prophet turned to see Ruth walking toward him slowly, aiming her rifle from her hip. She held her yellow bandanna in her teeth, and it flapped around her neck in the wind that also tussled her hair, lifted dust, and tore at the lingering powder smoke.

  “Now, that,” Prophet said, “was the shootin’ of an Ozark Mountain gal! Good to know that about you.” He gave a devilish wink.

  She smiled as she lowered the rifle and strode toward him, taking her bandanna in her hand. She frowned, stopped suddenly, and stared down at his side.

  “Oh, Lou!”

  “What is it?”

  He looked down. Blood spotted his sweat-soaked and filthy buckskin shirt above his right hip.

  “Ah, shit,” he complained. “I thought I just landed on a pointy ol’ rock!”

  His seeing the blood and the ragged hole in his side caused the wound to fire war lances of sharp pain all through him. Odd how that was, he absently thought as his right knee started to buckle. He chuckled, a little giddy.

  Ruth lurched toward him, wrapped his right arm around her neck, and led him over to a rock. He sat down heavily, winced against the pain, and blinked to clear his spotty vision.

  “Oh, Lou!” Ruth said, sandwiching his big face in her hands, her eyes shiny. “Don’t you go and die on me, you big bastard!”

  37

  “WELL IF I was dyin’, which I ain’t, I don’t think it’d be right for you to curse me so,” Prophet said.

  He grinned at Ruth, trying to calm her down. She gave a reluctant smile, kissed him, and then knelt beside him to inspect the wound.

  “Is the bullet still in there?” she asked, looking around his side at his lower back for a possible exit wound.

  “I do believe so,” Prophet said with a grunt.

  “Water.” Ruth rose and began jogging away. “I’m gonna fetch our horses. The canteens. I need water to clean that out and get the bleeding stopped.”

  “Shit,” Prophet said, pressing a gloved hand to the wound and leaning forward against the hot pain flooding his side, making him queasy. “Sure could do with a shot of busthead.”

  For some reason, his desire for a shot of whiskey made him think of Louisa. He glanced toward the crest of the hill on which he and Ruth had effected their ambush and over which Louisa and Colter had ridden.

  He wondered where they’d gone and how they’d faired against the six riders who’d been trying to cut them off. As if by magic, two riders came up over the top of the ridge and started down—Louisa herself, and the redheaded younker, Colter Farrow.

  Right away, Louisa must have sensed something wrong. She ground her heels into her pinto’s flanks and galloped down the hill toward Prophet. “What happened?” she said, jerking back on her reins and leaping down from her saddle, chaps buffeting about her long, slender legs.

  Colter drew rein behind her and glanced toward where Ruth was returning with hers and Prophet’s mounts.

  “Bee bit me,” Prophet said. “You wouldn’t happen to have a snort of tanglefoot, would you?”

  “You drank the last of it.” Louisa crouched over him, placed a hand above the fist-sized patch of blood on his side. “Shit, Lou.”

  Prophet glanced at Colter, who was just now dismounting the coyote dun he called Northwest. “The women in this region are decidedly privy-mouthed.”

  “Is the bullet still in you?”

  “I’ll worry about it later. Where’re them six that were tryin’ to cut you off?”

  “We laid for ’em but they stopped suddenly, as though they were spooked, maybe sensing a trap, and swung east.”

  “Toward town?”

  “Well, Moon’s We . . . I mean, Chisos Springs . . . is east, so, yes, I guess they headed toward town.”

  “Well, we’ve cleaned up right good,” Prophet said. “They probably think we’re more than we are. Don’t call me Geronimo just yet, though . . .”

  He started to rise. Louisa placed her hands on his shoulders and pushed him back down.

  “You just sit there, Lou—you’re bleeding bad!”

  Ruth was approaching on the grullo they’d appropriated for her, trailing Mean and Ugly. “There’s my ride,” Prophet said. “We’re headin’ to town, girl. Gonna finish this, turn them slave girls loose.”

  “Not in your condition.” Louisa stared up at him worriedly and hardened her jaws. “Lou, don’t you die on me, you son of a bitch!”

  “Never seen such bossy, foul-mouthed women!”

  Ruth was walking toward him, holding a canteen by its braided hemp lanyard. “Water, Lou.” She shouldered Louisa aside, handed him the canteen, and knelt before him.

  “Obliged.” Prophet glanced at Louisa, who sidled away reluctantly, looking vaguely miffed at Ruth. Prophet popped the canteen’s cork. He took a drink, splashed some water down his side, and handed the canteen back to Ruth.

  He rose from the rock, shouldering both women aside, and strode heavy-booted toward his horse.

  “Lou!” both women admonished simultaneously.

  “Ah, hush up, both of you. Son, hold my horse, will you?”

  As Colter held Mean by his bridle, Prophet reached up and grabbed the saddle horn. He heaved himself heavily into the saddle, groaning at the tearing pain in his side and clamping his right hand over the wound, which oozed more blood as he settled into the leather.

  He looked at the women glaring at him, both standing side by side, feet spread, fists on their hips. “Christalmighty,” Prophet snorted, looking at Colter, who held his reins up to him. “Been ridin’ solo all these years, and now a coupla females think they can boss me like we was married.”

  “Lou, you think you oughta do this?” Colter said. “Maybe you oughta stay here, rest up. We’ll go to town—the three of us—and settle things, and be back by sundown.” The kid narrowed his eyes resolutely. “That’s bond, Lou.”

  Prophet scowled as he sort of crouched in the saddle, holding his neckerchief against the wound. “Ah, Junior,” he complained. “Not you, too!”

  He reined Mean around, touched spurs to the dun’s flanks, and galloped up and over the rise.

  * * *

  As Prophet
’s group approached from the south an hour later, Chisos Springs stood dusty, sunbathed, and silent in the still, searing afternoon air. Shadows were stretching out from the southeast sides of the buildings scattered around the low rocky hills stippled with Spanish bayonet and the upright poles of sotol cactus.

  Moon’s House of a Thousand Delights, standing at the center of the settlement, near the roofed well, looked especially garish in the unforgiving light, like a whore painted way too early in the day. A thick, purple shadow was bleeding out from the front gallery, edging toward the well.

  As Prophet’s group clomped slowly into the southern edge of the town, approaching the Rose Hotel and Saloon on the broad trail’s right side, a dust devil rose beyond the well. It swirled, picked up a newspaper, and swirled it with a couple of handfuls of dust, before the mini-tornado and the dust and paper all piled up against the far side of the steps of the dwarf’s front gallery.

  As Prophet approached the south front corner of the Roses’ hotel, he said softly, “Whoa,” and pulled back on Mean’s reins, bringing the horse to an easy stop.

  The others stopped around him, Louisa on his left, Ruth and Colter Farrow on his right. He’d been looking around cautiously, sensing gunmen waiting for him, but now the brunt of his attention was on the gallery of Moon’s House of a Thousand Delights. Several shadowy figures milled there, some sitting on the rail, others in chairs against the House’s front wall. Smoke wafted around a couple of the men.

  Suddenly, a quirley stub sailed out of the shadows and turned copper white in the sunlight before it landed in the street near one of several long hitchracks. The shadows on the gallery shuffled lazily and then one came down the gallery steps, nonchalantly cocking a carbine one-handed. Four more men filed down the steps behind him. They walked in a line out into the street, heading toward the well.

  Prophet continued to turn his head slightly from left to right and back again, scanning all the shadows around stoops and boardwalks, all the windows and rooflines. His gaze held on a second-floor window of Moon’s House. A face peered out at him—the round, gray, old-man’s face he’d seen when he’d first ridden into town nearly two weeks ago.

  The haunting, haunted visage of Mordecai Moon.

  Unlike before, no girl stood beside him. Maybe it was a trick of the light, but the dwarf’s face looked grayer, more haggard than it had that day when Prophet had first ridden up to the well, wanting only water.

  He couldn’t see the expression, if any, on Moon’s face now, but he detected a simmering rage in the little eyes.

  Prophet looked at the five men who had now stopped in the street, standing about four feet apart, between Prophet’s group and the well. There were four Anglos and one Mexican.

  Prophet looked at Ruth. “Don’t argue with me now. You go inside your hotel and keep your head down.”

  She slid her eyes from the five gunmen to Prophet. There was no defiance in the expression. She knew this was no place for her now. A shoot-out in the street was for seasoned shooters. She’d only get in the way if she didn’t get herself killed first.

  Ruth drew a breath, nodded slightly, swung down from her saddle, glanced up at him, wishing him luck with her eyes, and then turned, patted Colter’s thigh, and then walked around behind the young redhead’s horse and over to the hotel.

  She climbed the porch steps and then stopped and turned, one hand on the rail post, staring apprehensively at the five men lined up in front of the well.

  Prophet swung down from his saddle. He tied his reins to his saddle horn, turned Mean around, slapped his rump, and watched the horse gladly head back along the trail. Mean had been Prophet’s horse long enough to know when lead was about to fly.

  Louisa and Colter dismounted, hazed away their own horses, and turned toward the men and the well.

  Prophet gave a grunt. He’d stuffed Ruth’s bandanna into the bullet hole and that had seemed to quell the flow of blood though he knew he must have lost a pint by now. Still, the wound was a raw agony in his side.

  Louisa glanced at the bounty hunter. “How are you doing, Lou?”

  “Fine as frog hair. Mind your own business.”

  Staring at the men glowering back at him, all of them holding rifles across their chests, he said, “There were six sons o’ bitches before, only five here.” He started walking forward, and Louisa and Colter matched his stride. “Keep your eyes skinned for the other son of a bitch.”

  A thunderous blast sounded on Prophet’s right. At the same time, a man came hurling out a shop door in a hail of breaking glass and wood. The man was thrown over the short boardwalk fronting the door and out into the street, his rifle piling up beside him about ten feet to Colter’s right.

  “Never mind,” Prophet said.

  The would-be shooter lay belly down. The back of his doeskin vest was shredded, and blood oozed through the pellet holes in the vest as well as those in the back of his head that was a mess of long, tangled, greasy brown hair.

  Boots clomped in the shop behind the dead man. Prophet watched Lee Mortimer walk through the door and stop on the boardwalk, holding a double-barreled shotgun in both hands across his chest. Mortimer glanced at the dwarf’s men and then turned to Prophet. He lifted his left hand slowly, pinched his hat brim, and offered a grim smile.

  His eyes were as shiny as polished, dark blue marbles.

  One of the five men near the well pointed at Mortimer. “You’re gonna pay for that, Sheriff!”

  Mortimer grinned and leaned against the door frame.

  The man who’d pointed turned his attention to the two men and one woman standing before him. The two groups were about fifty feet apart. Prophet raked his gaze across each of the rugged faces partly shaded by their hat brims.

  He smiled. That caused a couple of his opponents to frown. A smile in such a situation usually caused a moment’s confusion and peevish anger in Prophet’s opponents, and that’s why he did it. Anger could translate to a slightly shaky aim in some. A man, especially a wounded, outgunned man, needed any edge he could find.

  Silence hung over the street. It was so heavy that Prophet could hear Louisa breathing to his left, Colter on his right. In the corner of his left eye, Prophet could see the dwarf staring into the street.

  “Sorry I got you into this, kid,” Prophet told Colter.

  The redhead drew a deep breath. “Me, too.”

  Prophet felt his lips stretch a wry grin.

  The man second to Prophet’s left in the opposing group said, “How you wanna do this?”

  One of his own men, the man on the far right, didn’t wait for Prophet to respond.

  “How about thisaway!” he shouted, snapping his rifle to his shoulder.

  38

  LOUISA MUST HAVE sensed the killer’s sudden move as he hoped to surprise his quarry.

  The man didn’t know Louisa. She was very rarely surprised.

  The blond snapped her own rifle up and shot the man outright, and he triggered his own rifle over Prophet’s head as he flew straight back with a scream, dust billowing from the dead center of his short, fancily-stitched charro jacket.

  All the killers snapped rifles to their shoulders then, as did Prophet and Colter. Louisa was pumping lead as fast as she could, triggering and levering her Winchester from her right hip. Prophet punched a round through the man who’d pointed at Mortimer, and a half second later, Louisa punched one through him as well.

  He stumbled back, screaming.

  Prophet felt the burn of three slugs and, weakening, he dropped to a knee and continued shooting, empty cartridge casings flying over his right shoulder, until no more outlaws were standing.

  At least, not as far as he could tell.

  Three were down. Two lay still. One was crawling on hands and knees toward the right side of the street.

  Colter fired at him but merely blew up dust and ho
rse shit in front of him. When the redhead triggered another round, the crawling gent screamed and jerked his right hand up as though he’d laid it atop a fiery hot range. Prophet fired two rounds at the crawler, but both slugs thudded into the stock trough he’d just thrown himself over, clutching his bloody hand to his chest.

  Prophet glanced at Colter and saw why the redhead had missed his target. He was down on his butt, one leg bent beneath him, the other straight out in front of him, his right arm hanging slack, as though it had a bullet in it. Colter was spitting curses through gritted teeth as he clumsily jacked another shell into his Winchester’s breech with his left hand.

  When the crawling man lifted his hatless head above the lip of the stock trough, Prophet was ready. His Winchester roared. The man’s eyes widened as the .44 rounds drilled a quarter-sized round hole in his forehead, just above his shaggy left brow.

  The street pitched and rolled to either side of Prophet. The sun seemed to flicker. When the street rose up steeply on his left, he threw that arm out to keep himself from tumbling sidelong.

  Louisa was still on her feet, tracing a broad semicircle around the well. Her hat was off. Blood streaked her right cheek, and her hair danced messily. Her face was pinched with fury as she thumbed a fresh cartridge through her Winchester’s loading gate and moved toward the well behind which two of the surviving five shooters were crouched.

  “Don’t hide like whipped dogs, you slave-running cowards!” Louisa screamed.

  A rifle cracked from behind the well. Louisa screamed and jerked sharply to her left, sending a slug careening into the dirt about six feet in front of Prophet. She dropped the rifle, staggered sideways, holding both hands out to her sides in shock, and dropped to a knee.

  Wild laughter erupted from behind the well.

  Fury blazed through Prophet. Grinding his teeth and suppressing the pain from the wound in his side and his sundry other more recent complaints, he tossed his rifle aside. He heaved himself to his feet, grabbed his shotgun from behind his back, and ran growling like an enraged bruin toward the well. One of the shooters was just now stepping out from behind it, crouched over his Winchester.