“Better. Think my fever’s broke. How long was I out?”
“Two and a half days. Gonna be awake for a while?”
“Yeah, I’m feelin’ plucky.”
“How ‘bout hungry?”
He frowned, thought about this. “Now that you mention it, I am a little hollow.”
“I’ll empty your pot and bring you a plate,” she said, moving forward for the slop bucket. Hefting it, she said, “Jeepers.”
“Sorry. Didn’t realize I could hold that much. Any sign of Loomis?”
“Not since you hid under the bed from him.” She turned from the door with a wry smile.
Prophet scowled, flushing. “Sorry you had to see that.”
“If you’d tried shooting it out, they would’ve ventilated you.” She laughed openly, throwing her head back. “Just the same, it sure was funny, seein’ a big man like you crawling out from under a bed.”
“Laughin’ at an injured man ... it ain’t right.”
She left and came back with the empty thunder mug, a pitcher of water, and a tin cup. While Prophet slugged several cups of water, cold and fresh from the well, the girl went out again, returning several minutes later with a tin plate covered with stew: thick chunks of deer meat, onions, potatoes, and rich, dark gravy. The tangy aroma wafting up from the plate made him salivate.
“Oh my,” Prophet crooned, sitting up and digging in. “Oh my, oh my, oh my ...”
Layla pulled a creaky straight-backed chair out from the wall, turning it so the back faced Prophet, and straddled the seat, facing him. He was so hungry, he didn’t look up from the plate until he’d nearly mopped up all the gravy with a baking powder biscuit. Layla was twisting the ends of a cigarette, regarding it thoughtfully.
“You smoke?” he said with surprise, swallowing a mouthful, then shoving the last of the gravy-soaked biscuit into his mouth.
“A girl’s allowed a vice or two, just like a man,” she said defiantly, holding out the quirley between her thumb and index finger. “But here, this is for you. If you’re up to it.”
“Oh, I’m up to it,” Prophet assured her. “I am indeed up to a smoke.”
He exchanged his empty plate for the quirley. She set the plate on the cluttered stand beside the bed, fished a box of matches from her right shirt pocket, and struck a match. She touched the flame to the end of his cigarette. He sucked the smoke greedily, holding it in and blowing it out toward the low ceiling.
“Coffee?” Layla asked him, waving out the match and tossing it on the floor.
Prophet shrugged. “If you’re buyin’.”
She went out and came back with two cups of coffee. Prophet took his cup in his left hand, and with the cigarette in the other, a warm, happy feeling came over him: the feeling of a well-fed man enjoying the simple pleasure of a cigarette and a cup of coffee. He knew it was a fleeting sensation, for he was stranded here, in the middle of nowhere, horseless and with a madman on his trail.
“Thanks for the grub. You sure can cook.”
She was straddling the chair again, pouring a line of tobacco onto wheat paper, the bridge of her nose lined with concentration. “I’m getting better. I’ve been practicing for when I’m married. Next thing, I guess I’m gonna have to work on my housekeeping skills.” There was little pleasure in her voice.
“Gettin’ hitched, are you?”
She tossed the canvas pouch onto the nightstand and began shaping the cigarette in her long, slender fingers. “Sometime before the snow flies, I reckon.”
Prophet took a hard drag, held it, scowling, and exhaled. “Who’s the lucky hombre?”
“Our neighbor, Gregor Lang.”
“You don’t sound exactly smitten.”
She shrugged. “I promised Pa. Gregor’s wife died two springs ago, during her birthing travails. The baby died, too. He’s forty-two. He needs a wife, and I reckon I need a man. I’m eighteen, and there ain’t many prospects hereabouts.”
“A pretty girl like you should marry for love.”
She only shrugged at this, twisted the ends of her quirley, and licked them, then struck a match.
“What happened to your folks?”
“Ma died of pneumonia three winters ago. Pa took it hard and went on the Forty-Mile Red-Eye. He was drivin’ home from Ivan Goering’s ranch on Little Porcupine Creek last spring, and rolled his wagon down a ravine.”
“I’m sorry.”
“What’s done is done,” she said. “We have to get on with our lives.”
“Ain’t that a fact?” Prophet said. He set his coffee down on the bedside table, stuck his quirley between his lips, and flung the covers back. He swung his legs to the floor.
“What are you doin’?”
“I’m gettin’ outta here before Loomis finds me here and burns you out.”
“You just woke up, and that side ain’t fit to ride.”
“I’m feelin’ plucky,” Prophet said, standing gingerly. “Those my jeans over there?” he asked her, nodding at the washed denims hanging from a hook, beside a clean, pin-striped shirt and cream-colored Stetson.
“Yes. The shirt and hat were Pa’s. I took the shoulders out of the shirt... Pa was some skinnier than you. He only bought the hat a few months before he died. It’s like new.”
“Much obliged, Miss Carr.”
“I told you my name’s Layla.”
“Layla.”
“You could at least have a bath before you get dressed. No offense, but you stink, and you sure could use a shave.”
Prophet stood there in his long Johns, not feeling embarrassed in front of her, who had been doctoring him for the past several days. He brushed a hand over his hairy cheeks.
“I reckon you’re right, ah, Layla. Wouldn’t wanna go soilin’ your pa’s shirt and hat up right away.” He lifted an arm to smell the pit and winkled his nose.
“Sit back down,” she said, taking his plate and cup and heading for the door. “I’ll fetch the tub and some water.”
When she’d finished filling the tub, he said, “Would you mind lending me a horse? I’ve got my own in town, at the livery barn—if Loomis didn’t mess with him, that is. I can send yours back when I’ve found ole Mean an’ Ugly.”
She looked at him with a wry grin. “Mean an’ Ugly?”
“That’s my hammerhead. Meanest damn animal you ever saw. Just as soon take a bite of your hide as look at you. I don’t know why I put up with him, but I won him off a rancher back in Wyoming about three years ago, an’ he and me, well, we been down the river and over the mountain together.” Prophet’s eyes acquired a worried cast. “Sure hope he’s still where I left him.”
“I’ll have Charlie saddle Rebel for you,” Layla said. “Seems right fittin’, since you’re Southern an’ all.”
“Now how did you know that?”
Layla laughed, not bothering to explain. “And you won’t need to send Reb home with anyone. Just take him to the edge of town and slap his rear. He’ll head straight back.”
“Good ’nough.”
She turned to leave and turned back, a troubled expression on her face. “But how do you ever expect to make it to Little Missouri without running into Loomis’s riders? They’re probably still scouring the country for you.”
“I thought of that,” Prophet said. “Figured I’d wait till late in the afternoon, travel most of the way under cover of darkness. Besides, I doubt they’d expect me to head back to town, do you?”
She shrugged. “I wouldn’t know what to expect from a man like Loomis.” She paused, studying him. “Where will you go?”
It was Prophet’s turn to shrug. “Figure I’ll head for Montana, disappear into the mountains for a while, until this shit storm blows itself out.”
“Any shit storm involving Gerard Loomis will take a good long time to blow itself out, Mr. Prophet.”
“Lou.”
“If it ever does.”
Prophet thought about this. “Yeah, I suppose he’ll post rewards, eh?”
“I wouldn’t doubt it a bit. I’d head to Canada or Mexico, if I were you. And I’d stay there a good long time.”
She turned and went out, pulling the door closed behind her.
Prophet stripped gingerly, careful not to irritate the stitches, then climbed into the tub for a leisurely bath, shaving with care. He figured it would be a long time before he ever saw a bathtub again. Probably weeks, maybe months. If the girl was right and Loomis put out wanted notices, Prophet the bounty hunter would be Prophet the hunted for a good long time to come, and he could ill afford to show his face in populated areas, where someone might recognize him.
It was going to make it hard to do his job; he might have to try something else for a while. That would be even more difficult, for he hadn’t done anything but hunt men for a living for the past six years.
Maybe Layla had been right; maybe he should head to Canada or Mexico. He didn’t know what he’d do in such places, but there was little chance he’d be recognized in either country.
When he’d dressed, he fished around in his jeans pockets and found his dollar fifty in change, his pencil, and a small notebook. The girl must have taken them out, then replaced them after she’d washed the jeans.
Prophet stood there in his new shirt, with his new hat on his head, staring at the coins, notebook, and pencil stub in his open palm. That and the Peacemaker were all he had to his name. He had his tack, saddlebags, rifle, and ten-gauge shotgun in town, but who knew if they were still there? Loomis might have confiscated it all, including Mean and Ugly.
Prophet sighed. He wished he had some money to leave these kids for saving his life and tending him, risking their own necks. He owed them something, that was for sure, but he wasn’t going to insult them by leaving them a dollar fifty in change. He’d send them something more substantial later.
He found Layla on the porch, where she and the mutt named Herman were playing tug-of-war with a knotted rope. Seeing Prophet, the dog barked and growled, and Layla shooed him away. The dog cowered to the other end of the stoop and lay down beside a bleached jawbone, over which he draped a protective paw and eyed Prophet defiantly.
The boys, Keith and Charlie, were working a colt at the snubbing post in the corral off the barn. Outside the corral, a roan gelding had been saddled and tied, ready to
go-
“That my horse?”
“That’s him. I put some beans and biscuits in the saddlebags, a little coffee. If there’s anything else you need...”
“That should do. I’m sorry I can’t leave you any money, Miss Carr—”
“I don’t want your money, and it’s Layla.”
“Layla, I mean.”
He glanced around the yard, at the chickens pecking in the hay-flecked dust, at the weathered gray outbuildings and corrals, at the pigs snorting languidly in their pen on the other side of the log barn.
He touched his hat brim, finding it hard to say goodbye to this girl. “Thanks again, Layla.”
“Travel safe. If your horse ain’t in town, just take Rebel. He can be a little fiddle-footed at times, but he’s been a good cow pony for us. You can bring him back sometime when it’s safe.”
Prophet walked off the porch and started across the yard. “I’ll do that.”
“And don’t forget about those stitches. They need to come out in a week or so, or they’ll grow in an’ fester.”
“Will do.”
He untied the reins from the corral and climbed gingerly into the saddle, talking quietly to the horse, letting it get to know him. The wound in his side complained some, but he thought he’d be all right.
Looking over the corral fence, he said, “See you, boys.”
“See ya, Mr. Prophet,” the youngest, Keith, said.
Charlie, the oldest, waved stiffly, a befuddled expression on his face. “So... so you ain’t gonna marry our sister, after all?”
Prophet laughed and shot a look at Layla, who blushed.
“No, I don’t reckon, Charlie,” Prophet said. “I think she’s done spoken for.”
“Yeah, by ole Gregor Lang,” Keith groused.
“Keith, you watch your tongue,” his sister admonished him from across the yard.
Chuckling, Prophet tipped his hat to Layla as he walked the horse out of the yard. Crouched on the top porch step, holding onto the collar of Herman, who was giving Prophet a parting rebuke, she watched him ride away, squinting her lovely eyes against the bright, afternoon sun.
Prophet wasn’t sure, but he thought she was reluctant to see him go.
He knew for a fact that he was reluctant to leave.
Chapter Eleven
PROPHET TRAVELED SLOWLY, cautiously back to Little Missouri, so he wouldn’t be spotted by any of Loomis’s riders still scouring the country for him. The ride took him the better part of two hours, and he was sweaty and exhausted by the time the town appeared in a sagey hollow along the river, bordered on the north by salmon-colored buttes chipped and fluted by the winds and rains of time.
“Town” really didn’t describe Little Missouri accurately. It was mostly just a flag stop on the Great Northern tracks: a motley collection of log and lumber dwellings situated among the cottonwoods and buckbrush in no particular order, with the river curving between the buildings and the buttes.
The Pyramid Park Hotel was the largest structure and the closest one to the railroad tracks. Prophet stared at it from the rise he’d halted Rebel on, appraising the possibility of his chancing a drink there, where all his trouble had started. His side hadn’t begun aching until after the ride’s first half hour. It ached in earnest now, and a drink would sure soothe it.
No horses were tied to the hitch rack out front. In fact, there were only two or three horses tied anywhere in the whole town, and only one farm wagon was parked before the weathered, gray, two-story mercantile. Things looked quiet enough and would probably remain that way. Loomis and his riders wouldn’t expect Prophet to show his face again in Little Missouri after having been run out like a rabid coyote. Hell, they’d probably even given him up for dead by now and gone back to ranching.
Well, first things first, he told himself, spurring the horse toward the livery barn sitting catty-corner to the mercantile. It was an L-shaped log shack with a bellows and forge inside the big double doors and flanked by a paddock and corral. The corral was shaded by several cottonwoods and watered by the river itself. There were several horses obscured by the trees; Prophet couldn’t tell if Mean and Ugly was one of them or not.
Warily, he swung past the low-slung, flat-roofed building belching black smoke from its chimney. He didn’t want to deal with the liveryman; the man might get word to Loomis, who’d be on Prophet’s trail pronto. But he couldn’t very well steal the horse in broad daylight. And what about the tack, saddlebags, rifle, and sawed-off shotgun he’d left in the liveryman’s care? That was everything he owned, and he didn’t want to leave any of it behind.
He mulled it over as he circled the place, but he just didn’t see any way out of confronting the proprietor.
“Okay, here goes,” he told the horse as he pulled up to the hitching post and climbed down.
He looped the reins over the post and peered into the dark cabin where the liveryman was working at a bellows. Coals glowed in the forge, and the smell of hot iron assailed Prophet’s nostrils. Several cats lounged on split-pole shelves and behind the water barrel. A three-legged Siamese drank from a pan of milk near the anvil.
“Hello there,” Prophet said, peering through the smoke.
The man jerked around quickly, startled. He was a big man coated in soot and sweat, with long, stringy hair and a sparse beard. He stared at Prophet critically.
Self-consciously, Prophet edged forward, keeping his head low, so the man couldn’t see his face. Maybe the liveryman wouldn’t remember it was Stuart Loomis’s killer who belonged to Mean and Ugly.
“I was... I was wonderin’ if I could get my horse now,” Prophet said. “That’d be t
he dun with the spotted rump.”
“It would, would it?” the man said gruffly, tattooing Prophet with a belligerent stare. He stopped pumping the bellows and got up slowly, wiping his hands on a rag tied to his leather apron.
Prophet smiled, but it was really more of a wince. He didn’t know what he was more afraid of: the man remembering he was the shooter who’d shot Loomis’s kid, or hearing that his horse, tack, and weapons were gone.
“Is he still here?”
“Yeah, he’s here,” the man said, walking toward Prophet. He favored his right foot, and his knee was stiff, probably the result of some grisly blacksmith accident involving iron or heat or both. “Meanest son of a bitch of a goddamn horse I ever seen in my life. Took a hunk o’ flesh out of each shoulder.”
Defensively, Prophet said, “Now, I warned you about that...” .
‘That you did, but I was still fixin’ to shoot the bastard if you didn’t show for him. Sure as hell couldn’t o’ sold him. Wouldn’t have sold a horse like that to my worst enemy.”
Prophet kept his eyes on the hard dirt floor sprinkled with iron shavings, straw, and horse apples. “No, he’s a one-man horse, that’s for sure.”
There was a silence as the big man approached Prophet. He stopped two feet away, and Prophet braced himself for the worst.
“Goddamn, boy!” the man fairly yelled with either great anger or great joy—it was hard to tell which. He lunged for Prophet, wrapped his arms around the bounty man’s waist, picked him a foot off the ground, turned him in a circle, and set him back down. “How in the hell did you make it, anyway?”
Wincing against the pain in his injured side, one hand on the butt of his Peacemaker, Prophet regarded the big liveryman warily, half crouching to ward off another attack. “Uh ... what’s that?”
“How’d you make it away from Loomis? Good Christ! I saw him and his boys chasin’ you out o’ town. Why, you run right by here and nearly knocked a buggy over!” The man tipped his head back and guffawed. “I thought for sure you were buzzard bait. Especially after I found out you shot Little Stu. But no, sir—here you are!” He punched Prophet’s shoulder, mouth spread in a brown-toothed grin. “What happened?”
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