Lou Prophet 2

by Peter Brandvold

  What he’d intended to do was get the hell out of here. And if he was smart, he’d follow through with his plan. The only problem was that, when you got right down to it, he didn’t feel like running. He’d been shot and chased and run aground, and he was getting damn tired of it. It was time to turn around and face those chasing him and to put an end to the trouble once and for all.

  It occurred to him now that he’d made the decision to stay and fight when he’d seen the three Loomis riders pull up to the saloon, and his fear had turned to hate and stubborn defiance. It wasn’t right that these men were chasing him. It wasn’t right that they’d shot him and run him aground. And it wasn’t right that they were tearing up the sod and bothering the Pretty Butte people in their efforts to find him.

  Prophet was no gunslinger, and he did not cotton to killing. But as far as his killing of Stuart Loomis was concerned, it had been either kill or be killed.

  “So what are you gonna do?” Prophet asked himself. “Take on Loomis and his entire Crosshatch gang?”

  Several minutes passed before he turned his horse into a ravine and nodded, pursing his lips. “Yep. That’s exactly what I’m gonna do ... one way or another.”

  He ground-tied Mean and Ugly in green grass under cottonwoods and close to a seep, and unsaddled him, noting with amusement that the horse did not try to bite him as he usually did. Offering the horse a dry sugar cube from his saddle bag, he said, “Mean, I do declare you missed me!”

  The horse nipped the cube from Prophet’s fingers, and chewed, feigning indifference.

  Prophet gathered wood and began setting up camp, and while he worked, he tried to figure out a plan for waging war on the Crosshatch. It was not a simple problem, and when the sun had set and the first stars had sparked to life in the eastern sky, and he still had no solution, he decided he probably wouldn’t—at least not a clear one. It was a quandary he would have to solve the way he usually did: on the hoof.

  But by the time he’d eaten his beans, drunk his coffee, and strolled out to the cottonwoods for his bedtime pee, he did have one hell of a half-baked idea. And when he rolled into his blankets a few minutes later, he was grinning.

  Chapter Thirteen

  THE NEXT EVENING, at sunset, Prophet hunkered in a cleft in the buttes and trained his spyglass on the headquarters of the Crosshatch Ranch below him.

  The big log house with the wide stone veranda appeared abandoned, its windows dark. The bunkhouse sat north of it, down a slight grade and near one of the several barns and a cow shed. A light glowed in a bunkhouse window, and several cowboys sat smoking on the stoop, but it was otherwise quiet. There was none of the usual laughter and cajoling that took place this time of day on a working ranch. None of the singing and storytelling, none of the friendly arguments breaking out over card games.

  In the middle of the yard, the windmill squeaked softly in the gentle breeze, its blades barely moving. Horses nickered in the remudas. In the far distance, a coyote yammered.

  Prophet crouched there, watching the yard closely for several minutes, as he’d been doing off and on for the past two hours, waiting for full dark. He’d set the spyglass down and was rolling a smoke when he saw something move out along the river. He set the tobacco and paper aside, and brought the glass again to his eye.

  Several horseback riders were approaching the camp, their horses’ heads hanging with fatigue. It was the same crew of about ten men, headed up by Loomis himself, that had been trying to track him all day, after they’d gotten word about the three men he’d left on the floor of the Pyramid Park Saloon.

  They’d gotten close a couple of times, but Prophet had been tracking men long enough to know how to cover his own trail and how to stay ahead of those behind. About two hours ago, he’d lost them once and for all and headed for the Crosshatch, the last place they’d expect him to be. And now here they were, tired and weary, heading home to rest up for another day of hunting.

  “Why don’t you just give it up, Loomis, for Godsakes?” Prophet groused.

  But a man like that never would, he knew. Not in two years, not in five or even ten. Because what he was living on now was hate and the vague sense that killing the man who’d killed his son would make everything right. That it would make up for the fact that he’d been a lousy father and that his son, having been taught all the wrong lessons, had kicked the wrong dog and paid the big price.

  The posse headed for the stables and dismounted. Prophet heard a voice suddenly raised in anger, then watched as one of the dark figures separated from the rest and stalked off to the house. The others remained motionless for nearly a minute. When the house door slammed, they unsaddled their mounts, turned them into the corral, and headed for the bunkhouse, rifles slung over their shoulders.

  Prophet grinned, pleased with his work. He hadn’t started this fight, but he was damn sure going to finish it.

  He smoked until the bunkhouse lights went out. A lamp remained burning in the house, but he had a feeling it would never be snuffed. A man like Loomis didn’t sleep until he’d evened his scores, and, in his mind, he had one hell of a score to even now.

  Prophet sat back against the butte and blew smoke at the stars, happy the moon was on the wane. Finally, when he was reasonably sure all the cowboys were asleep, he stood and made his way down a funnel in the butte face, treading slowly and methodically toward the ranch. He crept along a corral, walking slowly and cooing quietly to the horses to keep them from boogering.

  When he came to a hay barn, he lifted the wood latch, heaved the heavy door open, and stepped inside. The smell of fresh hay—the summer’s first cutting—assailed his nostrils pleasantly. Reluctantly, he reached in his jeans pocket for his lucifers and the paper he’d torn from his notebook.

  He held his breath for a moment and pricked his ears. When he heard nothing but the coyote yammering in the distance and the soft, almost inaudible squeal of the windmill, he struck the match. It flamed and hissed. He touched the match to the paper, let the flames build, then dropped the paper on the hay mound to his left.

  Prophet watched the flames lick from the paper to the hay. They fluttered, nearly died, then glowed brightly when the hay took. Suddenly, they leaped six and seven inches high, leaving no doubt that the entire barn would be engulfed in minutes.

  Grinning, Prophet turned and made his way back along the corral. Ignoring the ache of the stitches in his side, he climbed the butte. When he reached the cleft, he turned around and gazed at the ranch yard. The hay barn glowed from within, a flickering amber light showing in the spaces between the logs. He knew that in minutes the fire would be in the loft and in the walls of the barn itself, and there would be no stopping it.

  He climbed over the butte’s crest and found Mean and Ugly where he’d tied the horse to a cedar. Shucking his Winchester from the saddle boot, he patted the horse’s rump reassuringly, then made his way back to the cleft, where he’d hunker down and wait for the fireworks to start.

  After Loomis had entered the house and slammed the door behind him, he stood in the open foyer, gazing around. The house was dark, and May was nowhere in sight. He knew without even having to sniff the air that no supper had been made for him. She hadn’t cooked a meal in days. In fact, she’d rarely shown herself, keeping instead to the bedroom they’d once shared, which he’d abandoned over a year ago for the sofa in his study.

  He didn’t know what she did up there all day long, and he didn’t care. He did wish she’d cook for him, however. He wasn’t hungry, but he needed sustenance. He had half a mind to march up there and drag her down to the kitchen by her hair.

  “I’m trying to find the man who killed your son!” he’d yell at her. “Show a little appreciation!”

  But it would be more trouble than it was worth.

  Heading for the kitchen, he stopped to light a lamp and open a couple of windows, for the heat was intense. Apparently, she hadn’t opened a window all day. In the kitchen, he cut a steak from the side of beef han
ging in the icebox and built a fire in the stove.

  Waiting for the stove to heat, he went into his study at the back of the house, removed his hat and gun belt, and poured himself a whiskey. It was hot in here—too dark and hot—so he threw open the windows and lit the Rochester lamp on his desk.

  He stood before the window, the fresh breeze drying the sweat on his face, and stared out at the cottonwoods along the river. He didn’t see the river or the trees or the stars awakening over the buttes. What he saw in his mind’s eye was the horseback rider he’d been chasing all day: the conniving, murdering, no-account bounty hunter who had suddenly shown himself yesterday in Little Missouri and shot three of Loomis’s riders.

  When Loomis had learned of the shooting, he’d taken ten men and tracked Prophet north of town. He’d damn near caught up to him, too, along a spring in Grandfather Gulch. But then, just as suddenly as the man had appeared before him, he disappeared. He appeared again later, crossing a saddle, but when Loomis and his men had made the ravine on the other side of the saddle, the son of a bitch’s tracks vanished in a creek.

  They found them again later and even glimpsed the man in the distance, but then they lost him finally around six o’clock, and Loomis, in spite of his fury and frustration, decided to call it a day and start fresh again in the morning. It was pointless to try tracking in the dark, and if they camped out there, they were liable to get bush-wacked.

  Reluctantly, he had to admit that Prophet had outsmarted him ... at least today.

  “Toying with us,” Loomis said now, standing before the window, his drink in his hand. “That son of a bitch is mocking me.” He stood staring, his face expressionless, his mind racing over the recent events: the three men shot in the saloon and the cat and mouse game in the buttes east of Little Missouri.

  His cheeks dimpled where his jaws hinged. “That son of a bitch is mocking me!”

  There was the sound of breaking glass and a sting in his right hand. He looked down to see that he’d shattered his whiskey glass. Blood oozed around several large glass shards lodged in his flesh. Oddly, it was not an unpleasant sensation. Loomis stared at the bloody hand, feeling heady from the fire of the whiskey in the wounds.

  Finally, laughing, feeling better than he had in days, he removed the glass shards, slipped his bandanna from around his neck, and wrapped it around the hand and tied it. He poured himself another whiskey, tossed it back, then headed for the kitchen to start cooking his steak.

  Later, he was eating the steak and a dry biscuit in his study when he glanced out the east window and stopped chewing. Frowning, he stood, walked to the window, and stuck his head out, looking north.

  He froze, heart thudding, and blinked to clear his vision. But his eyes weren’t lying.

  One of the hay barns was ablaze!

  He spat a mouthful of food out the window, wheeled, and ran out of the house, shouting “Fire! Fire! Fire!” as he ran to the barn. In a minute, the bunkhouse door opened, and men ran out in various stages of dress.

  “Fetch the water buckets!” Loomis shouted.

  The fire roared as it licked through the roof and between the logs, doubling its intensity with every second. Heat waves danced like mirages, and the entire ranch yard was suddenly lit by the umber glow. Burning hay wafted on the fire-generated wind. In the corrals, the horses whinnied and pranced.

  Luther McConnell ran up behind him in his long Johns, boots, hat, and gun belt. “Holy shit!” he yelled above the roar of the blaze. “How in the hell did that happen?”

  Loomis jerked an enraged gaze at his foreman. “I thought I told you to make sure none of the men smoked around the barns!”

  McConnell sounded half indignant, half cowed. “Well, hell—I don’t think any of ‘em were. We were all in the bunkhouse getting to sleep.”

  The men, armed with wooden buckets, ran for the windmill.

  “Forget the barn!” Loomis yelled at him, knowing the structure was lost. “Water down the sheds over there, and the blacksmith shop! And when I find the son of a bitch who started—!”

  His voice was cut off by the crack of a rifle. Behind him, a man cried out and cursed. Loomis swung around to see one of his riders grabbing his knee, blood oozing between his fingers.

  Another crack, and another rider spun around and fell with a bullet through his chest.

  “Take cover! We’re being shot at!” Loomis yelled.

  With McConnell behind him, he ran crouching and dove behind the stock tank as three more shots puffed dust at his heels. Looking around, he saw his men scattering, taking cover behind stock tanks, feed troughs, and corral posts. Several ran for a wagon filled with cord-wood; when they were halfway there, the rifle cracked again, and one of the men screamed and grabbed his ass, falling forward.

  “Ah! That son of a bitch!”

  That son of a bitch, was right. Who else could it be but Prophet?

  Loomis stole a look over the rim of the tank, in the direction the shooting was coming from, and shook his head, thoroughly befuddled. He never would have suspected the bounty hunter to do anything so brash, anything so crazy and copper-riveted, cork-headed wild. Not even a goddamn rebel bounty hunter who’d led them on a six-hour wild goose chase through the badlands ...

  When the firing halted suddenly, Loomis turned to McConnell and grabbed the man’s forty-four from his holster. Turning to the men around him, several of whom were groaning and cursing with bullet wounds, he yelled, “Grab your guns and follow me!”

  He got up and ran past the burning, roaring barn, the intense heat searing his face, and out past the corrals, hurdling the scraggly buckbrush and rocks. When he was a good distance from the barn, he dropped to one knee, the gun in his right hand, and listened.

  The night was quiet, but in the west he heard the distant beat of a running horse. Quickly, the sound grew fainter and fainter until the night swallowed it completely.

  “Prophet, you son of a bitch!” Loomis raged, his voice cracking, spittle jetting from his lips. He wanted to go after him, but he knew Prophet would be long gone by the time he got a horse saddled.

  He heard several men running up behind him. He stood and turned to them, saying, “It’s Loomis,” so he wouldn’t get shot.

  “Any sign of him, boss?” one man said as they approached.

  Loomis shook his head and ground his teeth, staring into the night. “He’s gone.”

  A man cursed. “Shouldn’t we saddle up an’ get after him?”

  “And let the ranch burn?” Loomis chuffed, beside himself with anger and frustration. “Get back there and start watering down the buildings, so the fire don’t spread.”

  “You got it, Mr. Loomis.”

  When they’d gone, Loomis turned back in the direction the rider had disappeared. He stood there like a statue for a long time, his nostrils flaring, heart pounding, fists balled at his sides. He was a man used to having his own way, and the fact that he wasn’t having it now—that, in fact, he was being made a fool of—was beyond his comprehension. He felt as though he would implode.

  He finally found relief in his certainty that Prophet wouldn’t be laughing at him for long. He was only one man against twenty.

  He might have won a battle, but the war had just begun.

  Chapter Fourteen

  WITH QUICK, ANGRY strokes, Layla Can-swept the pile of dirt over the cabin’s threshold and onto the porch. She followed it out and swept it off the step, turning up her nose and squinting her eyes against the dust blowing in the wind.

  She took a ten-second rest, catching her breath, then wheeled and walked back into the cabin. What else needed doing before Gregor got here?

  She’d straightened up the place, hiding all the excess in her room. She’d scrubbed down the tables and chairs, dusted the lamps and pictures hanging from the log walls. She’d hidden all the illustrated newspapers she and her brothers loved to read in the evenings, and she’d set all the kitchen chairs around the table, which she covered with a checked oilcl
oth and adorned with her mother’s blue lamp. And now she’d swept.

  That should do it for the cleaning. She wasn’t a damn maid, and if Gregor found fault with her housecleaning skills, he could find himself another girl to marry. She couldn’t imagine how her mother had kept the cabin so spick-and-span while raising three kids! Try as she might to fill her mother’s shoes, Layla just couldn’t seem to keep ahead of the filth. It didn’t help that the boys were constantly bringing in tack, traps, and tools, which they promptly scattered and forgot.

  She couldn’t imagine what she was going to do when Gregor had given her children. How would she manage everything with a kid on each hip and another wailing from the cradle? Keith would grow up and head out on his own someday, but Charlie would always be hers to look after: a man-child forever.

  The prospect of raising a family with Gregor, and of all the work involved, hovered over her like a dark cloud while she went about her chores, churning butter on the porch and butchering two chickens for supper. She was preparing a juneberry pie when Keith and Charlie walked up onto the porch, sweaty and filthy from hauling wood.

  “Don’t you dare come in my clean house!” she scolded. “Down to the creek, both of you. There’s a towel and soap on the porch.”

  “What’s goin’ on?” Keith asked.

  “It’s Sunday.”

  It took only a second for Keith to remember Sunday’s significance. Every Sunday since Gregor had started courting Layla three months ago, he’d ride his mule over for supper. Keith screwed his face up miserably. “Ah, shit!”

  “Damnit, don’t cuss! Wash!”

  “Ah, Layla!” Keith cried, turning away.

  Charlie regarded him blankly, clueless. “Wha... wha ... ?”

  Keith didn’t bother explaining. He just threw the towel over his shoulder, stuck the soap in his pocket, and grabbed his older brother’s shirt and pulled. He headed hang doggedly across the barnyard toward the creek, Charlie following, tossing Layla a baffled expression over his shoulder.