Lou Prophet 4

by Peter Brandvold

  She drank the coffee in silence, then tossed out the dregs and snuggled down in her blankets. Prophet wanted to put his hand on her shoulder to comfort her, but he was never sure how she’d take a man’s physical ministrations after what she’d seen men do to her mother and sisters back in Nebraska.

  He settled for “Night, Louisa.”

  She returned with “Good night, Lou,” and rolled onto her side, away from him, raising her knees and flipping her long hair out from her collar.

  Prophet smoked another cigarette and drank another cup of coffee, watching the lightning grow and smelling the sage on the freshening breeze. The sound of Louisa’s breathing deepened. He’d flicked the quirley stub into the fire and was settling into his own blankets when he heard what sounded like a sob.

  He raised his head. “Louisa...?”

  A high-pitched sigh escaped her, and then she turned to him so quickly, fairly bounding against him, that he found himself stiffening as though setting himself for violence. Only a dimwit would not take heed when Louisa Bonaventure sprang on him like that. But then he realized she was not attacking with a knife or a pistol but with her fists clutching at his shirt as though to rip it from his chest... as though to extract from him a comfort, a balm to her endless pain that no man—or woman, for that matter—could ever oblige.

  Clutching at the shirt and digging her fingernails painfully into his chest, she wept and sobbed and cried aloud, ramming her head between her fists, against his tear-soaked shirt, venting her pain and outrage and unplumbable sadness. Prophet knew that all he could do was hold her tightly, rock her in his arms, and coo gently in her ear while she relived it all again: the screams and pleas of her siblings and parents, the thunder of the horses, the hoots and yells of the attackers, the pops of the pistols, the smell of the smoke, the wind of the burning cabin against her face, stinging her eyes.

  She’d been returning to the farm from selling eggs when she’d seen the smoke. She’d hidden in the weeds and, frozen with horror, she’d watched her father and brother butchered, one after the other. She’d watched her mother and two sisters dragged into the tall grass by the stream, and the Red River Gang, led by the handsome, diabolical Dave Duvall, had whooped and hollered their pleasure.

  She’d been able to do nothing but watch, horrified beyond the brain’s ability to comprehend. Prophet knew that horror. He’d lived it himself while fighting for the Confederacy during the War Between the States. He knew what slaughter looked like. He’d heard the screams, smelled the smoke and putrid odor of burning bodies and blood. Watched as his friends and family fell to minie balls and bayonets.

  And he’d been awakened by such dreams as that which had awakened Louisa now.

  “Hold on, girl,” he said, as her sobs slowly faded and her fists released their taut grip on his shirt. “Just hold on ... it’s all ye can do … ”

  Finally, her muscles relaxed, and she slumped against him. Her face on his chest, she slept. Cradling the fine-boned girl in his arms—she couldn’t have weighed much over a hundred pounds—he, too, slept, waking only occasionally to the thunder and lightning of the short-lived storm, hearing the tarpaulin snapping above his head.

  He woke the next morning to Louisa standing over him, fists on her hips. The sun was rising, and the sky was clear. The air was fresh and cool.

  “Are you going to sleep all morning, Mr. Prophet?” she said, prodding his ribs with a boot toe. “I don’t know what time you Georgians crawl out of the tick, but we Nebraskans rise with the sun.”

  Blinking sleep from his eyes, Prophet gazed up at her hovering over him like a schoolmarm, her brows ridged, her hat hanging down her back by a horsehair thong. Her storm had passed without a trace. Her pluck was back, and, in spite of the rude awakening, Prophet was happy to see it.

  Unsteadily, he reached for his boots and began pulling them on. “Louisa,” he drawled, funning her, “we got a term for women like you down South: brass-plated ball buster.”

  She’d turned and was tending the corn cakes she was frying on her breakfast fire. “Your language only serves to illustrate the fact that you are and always will be an unreconstructed vulgarian.”

  Prophet chuckled. “If I’m so damn unreconstructed and vulgar, why in the hell did you take up with me?”

  “Well, ’cause,” she said, her voice softening, “I guess we’re sort of alike.” She looked up from the smoking skillet, her eyes no longer haughty but pensive. “I mean, we’re both alone, with no other friends or family. And we’re both manhunters—you, by profession, and me, by circumstance.” She flushed and turned her gaze back to the skillet, scraping the corn cakes off the pan with the fork and flipping them. “Besides,” she grumbled, frowning again, “you threw in with me.”

  Prophet watched her, wondering how it was that God or whoever was tending things down here could have allowed life to turn so sour for a girl so basically good and sweet. But then, he’d asked similar questions about the war, and had received nothing even close to a satisfying answer.

  Finally, he stomped into his boots and said, “I’ll rig up the horses,” as he donned his hat and walked away through the brush.

  After a hurried breakfast washed down with Louisa’s pungent coffee, they rode back toward the farmstead, where they hoped to pick up Duvall’s tracks. Louisa rode the black Morgan she’d confiscated from one of the gang members she’d turned toe down. Prophet was in the hurricane deck of his trusty hammerheaded lineback dun, Mean and Ugly. Thus mounted, they tried for a half hour to break Duvall’s sign; then Prophet halted the recalcitrant dun and scowled with frustration.

  “Nope—that shower last night was just enough to wipe out his tracks.”

  “Surely there’s sign somewhere.”

  Prophet shook his head. “Lady, I can track a snake across a flat rock. If I say there’s no sign, there’s no sign.”

  “I hope you don’t intend to give up,” Louisa said huffily, knitting her blonde brows together. Her eyes were shaded by the round brim of her hat.

  “Who said I was givin’ up?”

  “If you’re not giving up, what do you intend to do?”

  “Peck, peck, peck. Is that all you women ever do?”

  “I’ve found that most men are laggards, in need of constant cajoling.”

  “Is that so? Who saved your crazy hide back at the Red River Gang’s hideout, for chrissakes?”

  “Isn’t it just like a man to gloat instead of taking action?”

  Prophet only stared at her, partly dumbfounded, partly amused. A more changeable nature, he’d rarely encountered.

  “You know this country,” Louisa said. “Where do you think he’s headed?”

  Prophet was thinking it over. “Bismarck.”

  “Why?”

  “’Cause it’s the largest town within a reasonable distance.”

  “Which way and how far?”

  The bounty hunter pointed. “Southwest about a hundred miles.”

  “Well, don’t just sit there,” Louisa cajoled, heeling the Morgan into an instant, ground-eating gallop, spraying Prophet’s horse with dust. “We’re burning daylight!”

  Prophet stared after her, bemusedly shaking his head. “Mean and Ugly,” he said, patting the horse’s beefy neck, “that girl’s a handful.”

  Two days later they were riding due west when Prophet halted his horse suddenly and stared, lowering his hat brim to shield the afternoon sun from his eyes.

  Louisa pulled up beside him and followed his gaze to a low, rocky ridge about two hundred yards ahead.

  “Smoke,” she said, watching the thick, white puffs rise from the ridge and unravel skyward. “Cook fire?”

  “Could be.” Prophet was thoughtful.

  “Handsome Dave?”

  Prophet looked around and chewed his lip. “I don’t know.”

  “Well, let’s find out.” Dismounting, Louisa led her horse to a spindly cottonwood and tethered him, then shucked her carbine from the saddle boot.


  “Just hold on, girl,” Prophet cautioned. “That so-called ‘cook fire’ could be a trap. Hate to admit it, but I’ve walked into one or two.”

  “Or it could be Handsome Dave settled in for a cup of coffee,” Louisa pointed out, jacking a shell in her rifle’s breech and off-cocking the hammer.

  As she started walking toward the ridge, Prophet said, “Maybe so, but we do this my way, or we part company here and now.” He meant it. She may have single-handedly laid waste to half the Red River Gang, and her success may have been partly due to skill, but a good deal of luck had been involved, as well. She’d been damn lucky that her overzealous nature and tendency to throw caution to the wind hadn’t gotten her beefed.

  She turned to him angrily, opening her mouth to object. Then, realizing he was only trying to keep her from getting killed, and happy to have someone caring about her again, the lines in her suntanned forehead planed out, and she said demurely, “No need to get huffy about it.”

  Prophet dismounted and tied his horse with the Morgan, admonishing the horses not to fight. Then he shucked his Winchester ‘73, leaving the ten-gauge hanging from his saddle horn, and started walking slowly toward the ridge. Louisa followed a few steps behind. When they came to a depression about a hundred yards from the ridge, Prophet stopped.

  “You go around that way,” he said, pointing to the northwest. “I’ll go this way. We’ll work our way around the ridge and come in from the sides. Keep your head low, and don’t get too close to the ridge. If it’s a trap, he’ll probably try to bushwack us from the top.”

  When Louisa had turned and begun walking away with her carbine in her gloved hands, Prophet hefted his Winchester ’73 and tramped east, keeping a wary eye on the ridge around the smoke, watching for reflections off gun barrels or spyglasses—anything that might tell him he and Louisa were walking into a death trap.

  When he’d made a wide half-circle around the ridge, he came in from behind it, walking slowly, his rifle in his hands, swinging his gaze from left to right, wary of a concealed gunman. When he’d stepped around a sage bush, something rustled a clump of bromegrass to his right. Heart thudding, he whipped his rifle that way, seeing only a gopher scamper into a hollow log.

  He turned back toward the camp smoke, which had thinned considerably since he’d first glimpsed it. When he was less than a hundred feet away, he stopped, crouched behind a shrub, and gave the campsite a thorough scanning with his naked eyes. He couldn’t see much for the rocks and shrubs, but there didn’t appear to be anyone around the fire. Hair prickling under his collar, he stood and began walking again.

  He’d taken only two steps when a rifle cracked ahead and to his left.

  Prophet dropped to his knees and looked in the direction from which the rifle had sounded. Smoke puffed, and another crack cut the prairie silence.

  Prophet bolted to his feet and ran toward the gunsmoke, head low, leaping shrubs and low rocks. More gunfire sounded directly ahead, in a hollow, but he didn’t stop. When he saw a horseback rider, he dropped to a knee. The rider was galloping away on a paint horse, kicking up dust and stones in his wake.

  More gunfire sounded from just ahead, and Prophet again ran toward it, dropping into the hollow. He saw Louisa lying on her side amid several sage clumps, her rifle lying nearby. Her hat had fallen down her back, and her hair hung loose. She held her revolver in her slack right hand.

  “Louisa!” Prophet yelled as he approached.

  “That son of a bitch!” she screamed, raising her silver-plated Colt and firing three times toward the disappearing rider. “He dry-gulched me, the son of a bitch!”

  She fired once more and then the hammer clicked on the firing pin. She gave a frustrated yell and threw the revolver at the rider, who had disappeared behind a hogback. The gun flew about fifteen feet and landed in the turf with a plunk.

  “Where you hit?” Prophet dropped beside her and saw the blood just below her left shoulder, even before she indicated it with her hand.

  “He dry-gulched me,” Louisa cried, gnashing her teeth, her face pinched with pain. “I did just what you warned me not to; I walked right into it!”

  “Easy, easy,” Prophet said.

  He took her in his arms, letting her rest against his chest, and unsheathed his bowie knife. Carefully but quickly, he cut her poncho, dress, and chemise away from her neck and shoulder, revealing her smooth, porcelain skin and the ragged hole from which blood leaked, gushing down her chest.

  Prophet made a face. It was bad. There was no exit wound, which meant the bullet was still in there somewhere. And she was bleeding like a stuck pig.

  “Oh, god,” she sighed, flopping against him. She turned to see the wound, and her face turned white as bleached flour. “Oh, god ... I’m bleeding.”

  “Don’t look at it,” Prophet warned, unknotting his neckerchief. He’d known her long enough to know that, while she didn’t mind the sight of others’ blood, one glimpse of her own knocked her cold.

  “Oh, god, Lou,” she cried, “I’m ... I’m ...”

  “Don’t pass out, Louisa!”

  Then she was out, sagging against him like a hundred pounds of cracked corn.

  Chapter Three

  PROPHET KNEW THE girl needed a doctor, but where in hell was he going to find a doctor out here?

  The nearest sawbones was no doubt in Bismarck, still a two-day ride away. Even with Prophet’s bandanna shoved in the bullet wound to stem the bleeding, he doubted she’d make it.

  The bullet had to be removed quickly. Prophet would attempt removing it himself only as a last resort. First, he’d look around for a farm or ranch in the area. Living as isolated as they did, some ranch women were often better medics than the medics themselves.

  He’d decided on the plan while carrying Louisa back to their horses. Now he tied Louisa’s Morgan to the tail of Mean and Ugly, then scooped her up in his arms and gently mounted, setting the comatose blonde before him on the saddle. He heeled the horse into a walk, balancing Louisa between his shoulders, her head lolling against his chest.

  He’d had to leave their rifles where Handsome Dave had bushwhacked her. He retrieved them now, dismounting and holding the girl in the saddle with one hand. When he’d slid both rifles into their saddle boots, he remounted and heeled the dun into a lope, heading west, leading the Morgan and scouring the countryside for a settlement.

  He’d ridden for twenty minutes when he found himself on a hogback looking into a ravine opening on the north. A creek threaded the ravine, sheathed in box elders and cottonwoods. In the trees, spindly wagons and carts were parked, and seven or eight ponies grazed from a picket line.

  Travelers. If there wasn’t a half-decent medic among them, they’d have hot water and blankets, at least.

  “Come on, Mean and Ugly.” Prophet reined the dun down the hill. But the horse walked only sluggishly, jerking his head and rattling his bit in his mouth. He turned a white-ringed eye to his master and snorted.

  “Come on, Mean,” Prophet carped. “This is no time to get ornery. What the hell’s the matter with you, anyway? Drift, dammit!”

  Prophet was about fifty yards from the trees when the recalcitrant mount stopped so suddenly that Prophet and Louisa nearly flew over his head. “Goddamn you, M—!”

  Seeing two people step out from the trees, Prophet froze. They were Indians—an old man and a boy. The old man wore a black bandanna with white polka dots, and his coarse gray hair cascaded over his shoulders. He wore a muslin shirt open halfway down his dark brown chest. Buckskin breeches were held over his modest paunch by snakeskin suspenders. In his arms he carried an old Spencer single-shot.

  The boy was about ten, with neck-length, jet-black hair. He was clad in only cut-off breeches, and his roan skin was mottled with insect bites. The inside of his right wrist was scraped, as though he’d been squirreling around in briars. His lips were drawn back from square, white teeth, and his big, black eyes were fixed on Prophet warily.

  “Whoa,” t
he bounty hunter said under his breath, reprimanding himself for not heeding his horse’s warning. Mean rarely reacted like that to anything but diamondbacks, Indians, and preachers. “Shoulda known ...”

  It was too late to turn back now, so Prophet manufactured a smile and raised a hand in greeting. “How.”

  “How-do,” the old man said with a curt nod, his hair breezing around his face.

  “You speak English?”

  The old man nodded once.

  “I have an injured girl here.” Prophet glanced down grimly at the unconscious Louisa Bonaventure lolling against his chest. Her face was pale and her lips moved, but she said nothing. He wasn’t happy about riding into an Indian camp, but Louisa didn’t have much time left. This old man might be her only chance.

  Prophet lifted his gaze to him, beseechingly. “If there’s anyone in your camp can help her, I’d be mighty obliged. She’s lost a lot of blood.”

  The old man and the boy stood side by side, regarding Prophet with mute skepticism. The boy expectantly shuttled his puzzled gaze between Prophet and the old man.

  “What happened?” the old man asked.

  “She was shot by an outlaw named Handsome Dave Duvall. He and his gang killed her family. We been trackin’ him.”

  The old man stared at Prophet hard, a brown light flickering in the depths of his flinty eyes. Then he turned to the boy and muttered something in guttural Indian. The boy turned and ran back through the trees.

  To Prophet, the old man said, “Come,” and then he, too, turned and started into the trees.

  In the ten years Prophet had been on the Western frontier, he had steered clear of Indians. He’d tracked a couple breeds in the Staked Plains a few years back, but he’d never tangled with a war party. That was soldiers’ work. Nothing there for a bounty hunter. Besides, he felt Indians in general were getting a raw deal, with the whites moving onto their ancestral lands, killing their buffalo, and crowding the natives themselves onto reservations of the worst land imaginable.