She left the cave to gather willow and cottonwood branches, which she brought back and set inside the ring of rocks she’d placed here three years ago, when she’d first started coming to the cave to be alone with her thoughts after her mother had died. Using a tumbleweed and bark for kindling, she started the fire with a lucifer from her watertight box. Knowing she’d need a good supply to get her through the night, she went out and retrieved several more armloads of wood, piling it all beside the popping flames leaping several feet above the fire ring.
That done, she retrieved her camping supplies from the wagon. She wedged a flour sack under Prophet’s head for a pillow, covered him with a blanket, and started a pan of coffee to boil. When she’d refilled her canteen from the freshet where her horse was staked, she rewetted the rag on the gunman’s hot forehead.
By now, the coffee was boiling. She removed the pan from the fire, added cold water to settle the grounds, and poured herself a cup of the strong brew.
She took the cup and sat down near the entrance, her back against the wall, facing down the canyon to watch for riders, wondering what she would do if they came. Prophet would be no help to her now. She’d never killed a man before, but she could kill a Loomis rider if she had to. They didn’t really count as men. They were varmints with guns. Besides, it was either kill or be killed.
But how many could she kill before they got her?
When she finished the coffee, she poured another cup, took her place again near the entrance, and watched the night fall and the first stars appear above the cliffs. Slowly, one by one, coyotes started yammering, and night birds screeched as they winged up the canyon, skimming the stream for insects.
The cave walls around her flickered orange as the flames danced, the pocked walls relieved in shadow. The sweat on the shivering gunman’s face glistened redly.
After an hour, she tossed away the grounds from her cup, set the cup on a rock, added more wood to the fire, and arranged her bedroll. She wiped the sweat from the gunman’s face, set the rag aside, then stretched out on half of her blanket, drawing the other half over her body. Resting her head on her arm, she lay there thinking, listening to the bounty hunter’s tormented breathing for a long time before she finally fell asleep.
“Robbie.”
The voice was so separate from the dream she’d been having about her father and mother that Layla awoke instantly. She lifted her head, looking around. The fire had died to glowing coals and one burning stick.
“Robbie,” Prophet said again.
Realizing the man was dreaming, Layla tossed back her blanket, walked over to him, and knelt down.
“So ... sorry ...” the man muttered, shaking his head from side to side. His voice was small and pinched, like a boy’s. “Please forgive me.”
The words were so filled with sorrow and pleading, that Layla felt compelled to say something. “Hush,” she said softly. “You’re dreaming.”
“Please,” Prophet said, shaking his head, moving his arms. “Oh, God!” His voice cracked, and Layla thought he would cry.
She touched his hand, picked up the cloth, and ran it across his forehead. “Shh,” she said, feeling awkward and embarrassed. “It’s just a dream.”
The fire sputtered, casting enough light that Layla could see the gunman’s eyes snap open. The light was orange in them as he stared up at her with mild astonishment and expectation. “Robbie?”
Layla didn’t know what to say, so she said nothing, feeling bewitched by Prophet’s strange behavior.
“I’m so sorry,” the gunman said. “I was wrong. I shouldn’t... I shouldn’t’ve ... talked you into it. I’m so sorry, Robbie... and now they went and killed ye.” His voice grew pinched, and tears washed over his cheeks.
“It’s okay,” Layla said, squeezing his hand. His sorrow was so poignant that, forgetting her embarrassment, she could feel it herself, as if it belonged to her, as well. Tears came to her eyes. “It’s okay.”
The big man sobbed. “I’m so god-awful sorry.”
“Sh.”
“I never should’ve brought you here.”
“It’s okay.”
Layla’s face was awash in tears, and she felt that her heart would burst. She felt as badly as she often felt when she visited her parents’ graves, one beside the other, down in the cottonwood grove along Pretty Butte Creek. Prophet stared up at her beseechingly. He clasped her hand tightly in his.
Before Layla realized what she was doing, she’d leaned over and brought her face to his. She hesitated at the touch of his lips, as if startled, then kissed him. She allowed her lips to linger on his for several seconds, enjoying their feel and the bristly touch of his beard.
Finally, she lifted her head, feeling lighter, somehow less sad and alone. Gazing down at him, she saw by his eyes that he felt better, too. Then his eyelids fluttered shut, and he sank back into unconsciousness.
Layla sat there for a long time, gazing at the sleeping gunman thoughtfully, mildly embarrassed. Then she got up quietly, stoked the fire, and returned to her blanket.
She lay sleepless for nearly an hour.
Who was Robbie? Who was this strange, sad man on the other side of the fire?
She woke at first light, got up, and checked on Prophet.
He was still alive, breathing with less difficulty, but his skin was slick with sweat, and his clothes stuck to him. He’d bunched the blanket in his fists and held it close to his chin. He shivered, lips quivering, eyelids fluttering.
She checked the stitches, which had held, and changed the bandage to curb the chance of infection.
When she laid her hand on his clammy forehead, he opened his eyes, which widened for a second, as though startled. Then he saw her and relaxed.
“Hell... hell of a night,” he said.
“How do you feel?”
“Like a worm in a bed of fire ants—not to mention there’s a little man in my head with one hell of a big hammer.”
“Yeah, you about wore yourself out, liftin’ that bottle.”
“Next time, just let me die, will you?”
“Here’s water,” Layla said, lowering a canteen to his mouth. He accepted it, drank a few swallows, and shook his head.
“Thanks.”
“I’ll build a fire and fix breakfast.”
“Suit yourself. I ain’t hungry.”
“You have to eat something.”
Embarrassed about last night, wondering if he remembered the kiss, she went about kindling a fire, starting coffee, and whipping up corn cakes from the meal she’d purchased in town. She sliced side pork into a skillet, stealing self-conscious glances at the gunman, who lay snoring softly, chin tipped toward the dimly lit ceiling of the cave.
He didn’t remember, she concluded. He’d been delirious. She must have been, as well, roused from the dream about her parents, needing comfort, and clinging to the closest thing she could find. Terrible, the state of mind a person could succumb to, late at night.
Well, she’d never let anything like what happened to her last night happen again. Touching her lips to a stranger’s—she wouldn’t call it a kiss, exactly—and a bounty hunter’s, to boot!
Still, as the side pork sizzled in the pan, flooding the cave with its delicious aroma, she couldn’t help wondering who Robbie was and what had happened to make Prophet so distraught.
When the meat had cooked sufficiently, she removed it from the pan and dribbled corn cake batter into the grease. When the first cake was done, she set it on a tin plate with two thick slices of side pork, and, with a cup of coffee, brought it over to Prophet.
She shook his arm, waking him. “Here,” she said. “Flapjacks and side pork. You have to eat.”
He pushed up on his elbows, wincing from the pain in his side. She set the plate and cup down and helped prop him against the cave wall. His expression was annoyed, his eyes closed. He wished only to sleep.
She held the fork to his mouth. “Here,” she said. “Take a bite. Sorry th
ere ain’t no syrup.”
He grimaced, cocked an eye at her, saw there was no denying her wishes, and reluctantly took the food into his mouth, and chewed it slowly. When he swallowed, she brought the cup to his lips.
“Careful, it’s hot.”
When he’d eaten several bites and had swallowed several sips of coffee, he sighed and shook his head at the fork she held again to his mouth. Then he shrugged down against the flour sack and fell back asleep.
She regarded him quizzically, wondering if he was strong enough to ride in the wagon and deciding it was a risk she’d have to take. Loomis and his men would be on the rampage again today, looking for the two men Prophet had killed, and they’d no doubt find their tracks on the other side of the river.
That decided, Layla ate quickly herself, wrapping the side pork inside the corn cakes like tortillas, and washing them down with several cups of the strong, black coffee. She kicked dirt on the fire, scrubbed the pans down at the stream, and returned everything to the wagon, keeping her rifle nearby at all times and one eye peeled on her surroundings.
As she hitched the horse to the wagon, the great arch of sky over the canyon lightened. By the time she was finished, the eastern horizon caught fire, and the great burning lances of a clear badlands dawn extended toward the zenith, the cliff swallows screaming as they hunted for breakfast.
“Come on, Mr. Prophet,” she told the gunman, gently shaking him awake. “We have to get out of here.”
“Where we going?”
“My ranch. I’ll hide you there till you’re well.”
“No,” the gunman said, shaking his head. “They find me there, they’ll burn you out.”
“They won’t find you there. Now, I didn’t go to all this trouble just to leave you here for Loomis to find or to starve to death, so come on.” She tugged on his arm. “You have to help me get you into the wagon.”
“Ah, girl,” Prophet complained, shaking his head. “You’re crazier’n a loco bedbug!”
“And you’re so ornery you wouldn’t move camp for a prairie fire. Get up!”
He curled his legs under him and, as she supported him, pushed himself to his feet with a grunt. He faltered a little, stepping back against the wall as though dizzy.
“You okay?” she asked.
“Never better.”
She led him over to the wagon. “I rolled this rock here for a step.”
“Very thoughtful, very thoughtful,” he said, stepping onto the rock and sitting on the end of the wagon. He sat there a moment, waiting for the pain in his side to wane and catching his breath.
“You okay?”
“Peachy.”
The girl mounted the wagon seat and started off at a walk. Behind her, Prophet reclined in the box, using the flour sack for a pillow, feeling as though someone had doused his side with kerosene and set it aflame. Every jolt of the wagon bit deep, pulling at the sutures. The ride eased a little, however, when they got onto the main trail, which more or less followed the Little Missouri.
As they rode along a sandy flat beside the murmuring river, Prophet nodded off, chin on his chest. He woke as they swung up a shallow side canyon, and he watched the girl’s slender back before him, long, tangled blond hair fanned across her shoulders, highlighted strands flashing in the sun.
He didn’t like the fact that she was risking her life for his, but he was grateful, just the same, and he hoped they both lived long enough for him to pay her back somehow.
Gazing at the trail dwindling behind the wagon, he saw something flash about two hundred feet to their right and on a slight rise of rock. Squinting, he made out the outline of a horseback rider.
The flash was the sun winking off a rifle breech.
Prophet had to dig deep in his chest to pull up enough wind to rasp, “Company!”
Chapter Eight
LAYLA, WHO HAD been studying the buttes on the other side of the trail, quickly turned to the right and saw the reflection. Adrenaline shot through her veins. She’d started to rein her horse off the trail when she saw the rider wave.
“Layla!” he called, his voice echoing off the buttes. It was a boy’s voice and one that Layla recognized. She expelled a sigh of relief.
“It’s okay,” she said, turning to Prophet. “It’s my brother.”
Layla sat the wagon seat, reins loose in her hands, and watched her twelve-year-old brother, Keith, descend the spur and traverse a narrow seep, splashing mud, his buckskin’s hooves making sucking sounds in the muck.
“Layla!” the boy yelled again, his suntanned face creased with concern. “I been lookin’ all over for you.” Keith Carr was a towhead, with bleached blond eyebrows. He wore a wide-brimmed, bullet-crowned hat, white shirt, baggy overalls, and worn, lace-up boots.
“Ran into a little trouble,” Layla said as the boy reined the buckskin up. She glanced behind her to indicate Prophet in the wagon box.
“Who’s that?”
“Lou Prophet’s the name, boy,” Prophet said, squinting his eyes, smiling with pain, his curly, damp hair blowing across his forehead in the breeze.
The boy turned his puzzled face to his sister.
“One of Loomis’s men shot him,” she said.
“How come?”
“Because I shot his son,” Prophet growled. “Do you two think we might continue this conversation some other time? Not to be a stickler for details, but Loomis’s men are probably still out here, scouring the country for me.”
“I just seen two over yonder,” Keith said, twisting around in his saddle and pointing northeast. “At least, I think they was Loomis riders. They were riding away from me.”
“Did they see you?” Layla asked.
The boy shook his head. “Don’t think so.”
Prophet cleared his throat. “Like I said, you think—?”
“Yeah, yeah, we’re goin’,” Layla said, shaking the reins against the dun’s back. “Come on, Keith.”
After they’d ridden a couple hundred yards along the trail, Keith riding up beside his sister and Layla filling him in on the details of her adventure, the boy screwed up his courage and fell back even with the wagon box. Peering inside, he saw Prophet riding half sitting up, head lolling, hair blowing in the breeze. The man’s eyes were closed, but Keith didn’t think he was sleeping.
“So you killed Little Stu?”
Prophet opened one eye at the lad, then the other. Then he closed both. He was trying to shut the pain out of his mind.
“That’s right.”
The boy’s full lips—he had his sister’s lips, Prophet had already noticed—widened with a wicked grin. He snickered. “How come ye done that!”
Prophet opened his right eye and looked at the boy askance. “’Cause he was askin’ a lot of fool questions.”
The boy’s smile faded, and his face paled. Hurriedly, he jogged his horse ahead to his sister. Behind him, Prophet shaped half a grin.
In spite of the wagon’s rock and clatter, he had managed to fall asleep by the time they rolled through the poor man’s gate into the compound of the Carr ranch headquarters on the north bank of Pretty Butte Creek. When Layla slowed to a stop, he woke and glanced around at the unchinked log barn, several corrals, a pigsty, a chicken coop, and a small gray cabin built into a bluff. Gnarled weeds grew from the cabin’s sod roof.
On its sagging stoop, from which several boards were missing and weeds had grown up through the holes, a mottled black and brown dog slept. Waking at the wagon’s clatter, it came running, wagging its tail and making happy, groaning sounds.
Layla greeted the dog as she climbed down from the wagon seat. The dog followed her around the box and put its feet up to look inside. It fixed its copper eyes on Prophet, working its nose and growling deep in its chest.
“Only one leg at a time, dog,” Prophet said.
“It’s okay, Herman,” Layla told the dog, pushing it down. “He’s friendly enough.”
“Speaking of which,” Prophet said, squinting a
n eye at her. “Did you kiss me last night?”
Layla looked at him aghast, her face flushing. “I should say I did not!”
Prophet looked skeptical. “You sure?”
Layla was about to utter another response when a horseman came galloping around the corral, spooking the several horses gathered there and scattering the chickens in the yard.
“Layla!” the rider called.
“It’s okay—just another brother,” she told Prophet when he touched his gun butt again, tensing.
“Where you been?” the young man cried as he slipped off the saddleless horse.
He was a good six or seven years older than Keith, Prophet speculated. A year or two older than Layla. But Prophet could tell by the folly in his eyes that something wasn’t right about him mentally.
He lumbered over to his sister and stopped several feet away when he saw Prophet in the wagon box. His eyes grew wide and his big, blunt face flushed. His mouth opened several times, but no words came out. Wearing soot-blackened coveralls with no shirt, he stood about five feet ten and was lean and long-muscled. On his head he wore a shapeless brown hat with a crow feather protruding from the snakeskin band.
“It’s okay, Charlie,” Layla said. “This is Mr. Prophet. He’s gonna stay with us for a while.”
“Wha ... what?”
“I’ll explain later; help me here.”
Charlie remained where he was, his horse’s reins in his hands, pondering the stranger cautiously. When Prophet stood, grunting and favoring his side, Charlie said through a mouth swollen with chew, “What happened to him?”
“One of Loomis’s riders shot him.”
“That ain’t so good.”
“Tell me about it, son,” Prophet said, smiling to set the youth at ease.
“Layla kissed him last night,” Keith said.
“I did not!” Layla cried, whipping her head at her youngest sibling. Prophet’s left arm was around her, as she was helping him toward the cabin. He grinned.
“How come ye did that, Layla?” Charlie asked, incredulous, giving Prophet the twice-over. “You sweet on him?”
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