Lou Prophet 2

by Peter Brandvold

  He was turning, ready to continue, when another voice pierced the night. “What was that?”

  Prophet turned to see a man standing on the north side of the corral, about thirty yards away.

  “Nothin’. I just dropped my gun,” Prophet said.

  The man didn’t say anything for several seconds. Then: “Oh.” Prophet didn’t like the way it sounded. It was too tentative, cautious, studied.

  The man moved slowly around the corner of the corral. He walked toward Prophet along the fence. Starlight flashed on metal as the barrel of his gun came up.

  Prophet couldn’t wait. It was either shoot or die. He thumbed back both broad-eared hammers of the ten-gauge and let it roar.

  Roar it did, like a Civil War cannonade, caroming around the night, echoing off the buildings. The man flew up off his feet and then back, hitting the ground with a thunk and one final, harsh exhale. The rifle he’d thrown high landed a full second later.

  Knowing the fight was now on, Prophet wasted no time. He hurdled the dead man and ran, crouching behind water and feed troughs, toward a barn humping broadly in the darkness.

  He turned his back to the barn, pulled a dynamite stick out from behind his belt, and jammed a fuse into one end of the cylinder. He crouched there, one with the black barn, waiting. When several fast-moving shadows and the sound of raised voices and running boots had descended on the corral, Prophet struck a match and touched it to the fuse. He let the fuse burn down to within an inch, then tossed the stick toward the milling shadows.

  The explosion rocked the night, the flash lighting up several startled faces before everything went black again, and only a ghostly veil of smoke hung over the west end of the corral, pieces of which were still clattering to the ground.

  A dying man wailed.

  “Son of a bitch!” someone else shouted as Prophet turned and headed around the barn.

  “Where’d that come from?”

  “That way!”

  A rifle cracked viciously, over and over again. Prophet kept his head down as he ran, ducked under a wagon, and crept across an open lot to another barn.

  Quietly, he opened one of the two back doors and stole inside. He felt around in the darkness for the ladder and climbed it into the loft, wincing as the weathered boards creaked beneath his weight. In the loft, he made his way to a chute and lay beside it, looking through the two-foot hole in the floor toward the door he’d left open below.

  He lay there listening in the musty, warm darkness, hearing the occasional shouts of the Crosshatch men fanning out around the yard, looking for him. Prophet could hear the anxiety in their heated calls. They knew they had a lynx on their hands.

  They had no idea. Prophet could feel the anger burn like a wildfire deep inside.

  A shadow flickered at the open door, and the outline of a man appeared, half concealed by the door. “Ray,” he called in a hushed voice. “This door’s open.”

  Footsteps. Then another, shorter, man appeared, stepping beside the wall. They said something Prophet couldn’t hear. Then both doors flew open.

  The men bounded into the opening, raised their rifles, and opened fire, flames sprouting from their barrels. Over and over, the rifles roared, sending bullets zinging through the barn, spanging off iron implements and thudding into wood and hay.

  Prophet curled into a ball, covering his head with his arms. The smell of cordite grew heavy. The roar set his ears ringing and the floor bouncing.

  Finally the rifles fell silent as both hammers pinged against firing pins.

  Prophet rolled toward the opening, poked the ten-gauge through, and leveled the bores at the two men standing amid the smoke. He let them have it with both barrels, and by the time Prophet brought the gun back up to have a look, both men were vague lumps on the ground, the pointed toes of their boots aimed skyward.

  Quickly, Prophet replaced the spent shells in the shotgun, then grabbed two of the dynamite sticks, and fed them each a fuse. He’d just finished the task when the doors at the other end of the barn opened. Prophet lit the fuses and watched them burn down.

  “Hey, what’s that?” someone said, hearing the fuses sizzle.

  “TNT,” Prophet said, lowering his arm through the hay chute and giving both sticks a hard toss toward the opening.

  “Oh, shi—!” The cry was cut off by the first explosion lighting up the barn. The second came an eye blink later, widening the door by several feet and setting fire to the hay and rafters.

  Prophet dropped through the hay chute, like a cat after a mouse, and scrambled to the barn’s back door. Poking a quick look out the door to see if anyone was there, he ran to his left, scrambled across an empty hay rack, and bolted to a long, low building he took to be the blacksmith shop.

  Against the back wall, wood was stacked to the roof. Prophet climbed the stack, tossed his shotgun onto the roof, and followed it up. He scrambled to the roof’s peak and, crouching low behind the wide stone chimney, looked around.

  The barn was burning in earnest, lighting up the entire yard with a garish orange glow. Two men ran out from behind a parked wagon and took cover behind the stock tank at the base of the windmill. Another shadow moved to Prophet’s right. Turning that way, he saw two men run out from around the bunkhouse and into the open-sided wagon shed about thirty yards from the blacksmith shop. Another came running from the general direction of the house, which loomed darkly on the southwestward rise.

  Prophet grabbed his revolver, steadied it against the shake roof, and dropped the man running from the house with a single shot. It was all the others needed to take a reckoning on Prophet’s location, and they wasted no time in opening up with their Winchesters.

  One bullet clipped the chimney before Prophet ducked, and the bullet tore a wide, burning gash across his forehead. Ignoring the blood dribbling down his face, he jammed fuses into his remaining four dynamite sticks, lit one, and tossed it onto the roof of the wagon shed. It blew a hole through the roof. When the smoke cleared, Prophet threw another stick into the hole he’d made with the first. A sudden cry told him he’d gotten at least one of the men hiding there, probably both.

  Meanwhile, the others were firing in Prophet’s direction, their slugs chipping away at the chimney, bullets spanging this way and that, flecks of stone raining down on Prophet’s hat. He pressed his back against the chimney, keeping his head below the peak, hoping none of the riflemen ran around behind the shop. If they did, he would have little way of knowing about it, and, with the barrage they were throwing at him, he’d have little defense against it.

  Smoke and cinders from the burning barn and wagon shed wafted in the wind generated by the fire. The rifles made an unceasing racket. From the sound, there were at least five men firing. It was encouraging to think he’d whittled their numbers that far down, but it would be just his luck for the last man standing to be his undoing.

  It just wasn’t likely he’d be able to get them all. But if he didn’t, Keith would die. And Loomis would probably kill Layla and Charlie, as well.

  Suddenly, something moved at the end of the roof. It was a man’s head. Someone had climbed the wood pile.

  Prophet was just raising his shotgun when a gun flashed and barked. He felt the bullet burn the top of his shoulder and disintegrate against the chimney, cutting his face with shards.

  He tripped the shotgun’s right barrel and the gunman’s head disappeared. He heard logs falling as the man collapsed on the ground.

  Knowing he had little time before one of the others made for the back of the shop, Prophet lit one of his last two dynamite sticks. He whipped it around the chimney, in the direction of most of the shooting. The explosion was followed by the sound of raining water. He’d hit the stock tank.

  What’s more, he must have taken out a couple of rifleman, because there seemed to be only two more rifles slinging lead at the chimney. He lit the last stick. As he did so, he was surprised to hear the firing stop. He stood quickly, tossed the stick, and ducked back
behind the chimney.

  The explosion hit his ears like a hammer. What followed was only the roars of the burning barn and wagon shed on either side of him.

  He sat there for a full minute, squeezing the stock of his ten-gauge and smelling the pungent odor of the fires. There was no more shooting.

  A horse whinnied. He turned to his right and saw two horseback riders head westward out of the yard, galloping hard. When they were gone, Prophet climbed heavily to his feet and looked cautiously around. Spying no human movement, he walked to the end of the roof and jumped to the ground.

  Sleeving blood from his eyes, he walked to the front of the shop and turned his gaze toward the house. He froze, his gut filling with bile.

  Walking slowly toward him was Gerard Loomis. The rancher pushed young Keith before him, holding a gun to the boy’s head.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  LOOMIS ROARED ABOVE the roar of the flames. “Drop your guns and any more dynamite, or this boy dies!”

  “You’ll kill him anyway.”

  Loomis stopped and halted the boy. The gold-plated Colt held to Keith’s head shone coppery in the light of the fires. “You want to see him die right now?”

  “All right, all right,” Prophet said, holding out his hands. He dropped the shotgun and unbuckled his gun belt, letting it fall at his feet.

  Loomis started toward him again, shoving the boy ahead. Keith was stiff and pale but for a bruise around his right eye, swelling the lid. Prophet ground his jaws together. Loomis would pay for that, the son of a bitch.

  “Kick the gun belt away,” Loomis said.

  Prophet did as he was told, then stood there, watching Loomis come on, the wagon shed throwing up cinders to his left. Loomis wasn’t wearing a hat, and his round, bald pate was glistening with sweat. His slick black mustache dropped down both sides of his mouth. His eyes were large and as black as his vest and pants.

  He grinned crookedly, showing his big white teeth. “We meet at last, you son of a bitch.” He came to a stop about ten feet away. Sweat cut gullies through the dust on Keith’s young, frightened face.

  Loomis glanced around with his eyes. “You did quite a job here. All my men are dead... except for the two cowards that just rode out of here. I’ll have them hunted down later.”

  Prophet shrugged. “Oh, I don’t know I’d blame them. They gave a pretty good fight.”

  “Not good enough, though. There was around twenty of them ... one of you.”

  “Got lucky, I guess.”

  Loomis shook his head, grinning at Prophet with an expression of wonder and total disdain. “No, you’re good. Very good. Better than any of them. Too bad we weren’t on the same side. We could have raised hell, you and me.”

  “One pact with the devil’s enough.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Never mind. Why don’t you turn the boy loose now? I’m the one you’re after.”

  Loomis tilted his head to look Keith over. “You like this boy, eh?”

  Prophet didn’t say anything. His knees were weak with anxiety as he watched the cocked hammer of Loomis’s forty-five, the bore snugged up against Keith’s right ear.

  “You like him, eh, your lover’s brother?” Loomis continued in a slow, menacing, mock-casual tone. “Well, that’s too bad. Because he’s going to die.” Loomis lifted his head to regard Prophet directly, his face turning hard. “Slow. Just like his sister and his brother, only his sister’s gonna die even slower... much slower.”

  “Why?”

  “Because they gave you shelter. And because it hurts you to know it’s gonna happen.” Loomis grinned that lopsided grin, his eyes flinty and flat as coal under water.

  “Leave them out of it, Loomis. I’m the one who killed your son. He had it coming, and someone else would’ve done it sooner or later, but I’m the one who pulled the trigger.”

  “Yes, you’re the one,” Loomis said. “And you’re the one who’s going to die slowest of all.”

  With that, he lowered the barrel of the revolver, taking aim at Prophet’s left knee. As Loomis snapped the trigger, Keith yelled, “No!” and nudged the gun. It barked its slug into the dust a half inch from Prophet’s left foot.

  Raging, Loomis slapped Keith hard with the back of his left hand. As Keith spun, flying, Prophet dove forward. His left hand closed on Loomis’s gun wrist, jerking the weapon. It barked off another wide round. Before Loomis could thumb the hammer back again, Prophet bulled the rancher over backward, and the gun flew.

  Surprisingly strong, Loomis rolled Prophet onto his back, punched him savagely several times, stunning him, then crawled to his gun. Knowing he was doomed if he didn’t fight off the cobwebs in his brain and take action fast, Prophet gained his feet and dove. He landed on Loomis’s back as the rancher wrapped his right hand around the grips of the forty-five.

  With his left fist working like a steam-powered piston, Prophet delivered several sharp, powerful blows to the back of Loomis’s head. They dazed the rancher enough that Prophet was able to roll the man onto his back and wrestle the gun up to his face, snugging the barrel under his chin.

  Purple-faced, Loomis cursed and raged and tried with all his strength to wrestle the gun out of Prophet’s grip. It didn’t work. At last, Prophet had the upper hand.

  With both hands, the bounty hunter held the gun to Loomis’s chin as he rasped into his face, “You know why you’re so filled with hate, Loomis... why you’re so bound and determined to kill the man who killed your scoundrel son?”

  Prophet swallowed, his breath coming hard as he fought to keep the gun snugged against the underside of the rancher’s chin. “Because you’re the one who made him the way he was.” Enraged, he heaved his body against Loomis’s. “You’re the man responsible for his death. Not me. You taught him that bein’ a man meant bein’ a bully, that bein’ strong meant never ownin’ up to your losses. But you don’t want to face that. And that’s why I have to kill you ... because if I let you live ... you’ll go after

  Layla and her brothers.”

  With both thumbs, Prophet ratcheted back the forty-five’s hammer. Hearing the click, Loomis’s eyes grew wide. He rasped through gritted teeth, “No ... please ... I... see.” But his eyes stayed hard. Deep in their depth, they were grinning.

  Prophet shook his head. “You never would. That’s why I’m putting you down ... like a dog.”

  Loomis’s face turned pale, his eyes opening even wider, lips stretching back from his large, hard teeth. “No! I—”

  Prophet squeezed the trigger, the gun’s report muffled by Loomis’s face, the bullet going in cleanly and exiting the top of his head with a spray of blood, brains, and bone.

  The man’s body relaxed. Turning away from the carnage of the rancher’s face, Prophet left the gun on Loomis’s chest and climbed heavily to his feet. Turning to Keith, he saw the boy sitting on his butt several feet away, knees drawn up to his chin, face etched with mute horror.

  Prophet walked over to his gun belt, stooped, and wrapped it around his waist. Picking up his shotgun, he heard Keith say something.

  “What’s that, son?”

  Still sitting, Keith pointed toward the house. “She’s ... in there.”

  Prophet frowned. “What’s that? Who is?”

  The boy only looked at him with dark eyes.

  “You stay here,” Prophet said, holding his shotgun in both hands and starting toward the house, its dark windows reflecting the geysering flames.

  Cautiously, Prophet climbed the stone porch and threw open the door. He stood in the foyer, glancing around the rooms opening on either side. A few lanterns spat smoke. Nothing moved.

  “Anyone here?” he called.

  When no one answered, he looked through the first story. Finding nothing, he strode to the bottom of the stairs. He wrinkled his nose at a faint, rank odor hanging in the warm air.

  Clutching the ten-gauge before him, he made his way slowly up the stairs. The smell grew stronger, ranker.


  He followed it to a room at the end of the hall. The door was open about two feet. With the barrel of the shotgun, Prophet nudged it wide. The odor hit him like a fist. Wincing and squinting his eyes, wanting to cover his nose, he tensed when he saw the woman hanging from a rope looped over a ceiling beam.

  She was in her mid-fifties, dressed in a black dress, black shawl, and shiny black shoes. Her long black hair was streaked with silver. Her face was round and puffy and blue, and her swollen purple tongue protruded from the right corner of her mouth.

  Her eyes were open and staring at the chair she’d upended when she’d kicked it out beneath her.

  “Jesus Christ,” Prophet rasped, shaking his head. He wondered how long she’d hung there, how long Loomis would have let her hang without cutting her down. He must have kept Keith in one of the rooms up here, and the boy had seen her when he’d passed in the hall.

  He turned and headed downstairs. As he walked to the door, he stopped and looked at the lantern on the table.

  With the shotgun, he knocked it onto the floor, breaking the bowl and spreading flames across the floor to the curtains over the window.

  In a few minutes, the house would be engulfed, and there would be nothing left of this hell.

  He walked outside and headed for the stables across from the bunkhouse. He turned out all the horses but the one he saddled for Keith. Then he led the horse over to the boy, who was still sitting in the middle of the yard, watching the flames lick through the house’s tall windows.

  “Come on, son,” Prophet said quietly. “Let’s get you out of here.”

  When the boy was mounted, Prophet led the horse eastward out of the yard, toward his own horse tied to the dwarf pine across the creek.

  Behind them, the conflagration lit up the sky, sending smoke and cinders toward the stars.

  When they came to within a hundred yards of the Can-ranch, Prophet halted his horse and turned to the boy. Keith reined his own mount to a stop and watched Prophet expectantly. He hadn’t said a word the entire trip. Neither had Prophet.