Lou Prophet 4

by Peter Brandvold

  Prophet got down on his hands and knees and lowered his canteen into the stream, filling it. He studied the tracks that disappeared into the slow-moving water, then reappeared in the mud, amid several deer and coyote prints, on the opposite bank.

  Before him, cattails and saw grass rustled and scratched in the breeze. Behind him, McIlroy and Louisa sat their horses, watching him. Louisa hadn’t said more than five words to him since she’d returned to their camp four days ago, and most of those had been “Yes,” “No,” and “Perhaps.”

  He guessed he didn’t blame her. He shouldn’t have tried to trick her into staying in Bismarck while he went after the man who’d murdered her family. She’d been right; it hadn’t been his family that had been butchered. She had every right to see Duvall dead. He hoped she didn’t die in the process, but he’d decided not to worry about that. She’d been fighting this war long enough to know the risks, and she was old enough in both years and experience to make her own decisions.

  He wasn’t her father, after all. He wasn’t her brother nor even her lover, though he knew now, after the other night when he’d held her to assuage her nightmares, that he wanted to be.

  Such thoughts were only a shadow in his mind at the moment, however. Studying the horse prints, he corked his canteen and said, “Their trail keeps getting fresher and fresher.”

  “They still slowing down?” McIlroy asked.

  “Yep.”

  “Why, do you suppose? Ambush? Get us off their trail once and for all?”

  “I can’t figure another reason.” Prophet turned to the deputy and Louisa, gazing at each directly. “Watch yourselves,” he said. “Now more than ever. Remember what they did to those three drovers we found.”

  Louisa’s eyes met Prophet’s for an instant, then shuttled away. “I don’t see any sense in dawdling here,” she said haughtily, tightening her hat thong beneath her chin. “You’ve filled your canteen. Let’s ride.”

  She gigged her horse into the stream, starting across. Prophet glanced at McIlroy, whose eyes lighted with irony. “Yeah, will you quit dawdling, Proph? We have a job to do, dammit.”

  Prophet cursed, hung his canteen over his saddle horn, and forked leather. Then he gigged Mean and Ugly into the stream behind McIlroy, mounting the opposite bank a few moments later and gazing around at more of the same country they’d been traversing; rolling hills pocked with bluffs and cut by creeks and deep ravines.

  A big, dangerous, silent country, once owned primarily. by the Sioux. There were still some Sioux around, but most had been herded onto reservations so that the country west of here—the Black Hills—could be opened for mining. Now there were a few ranches here and there and a few buffalo. But mostly there was wind and occasional thunderstorms and plenty of places for badmen to hide in ambush for those following.

  The thought had no sooner crossed Prophet’s mind than a rifle cracked in the distance. Involuntarily, he crouched low in his saddle and clawed his Peacemaker from his holster.

  McIlroy’s horse screamed to his left and slightly behind. Turning quickly, he saw the horse rear jerkily, twisting. Then its front knees buckled, and it rolled over hard, expiring quickly with one grievous blow, a trickle of blood running from a hole near its left ear.

  “Zeke!” Prophet yelled as the deputy went down hard.

  “Oh, shit!” McIlroy complained as he tried to pull his leg free of the horse’s dead weight.

  The rifle cracked again, and Prophet heard the bullet whine past him, no more than a foot away. Mean pranced anxiously. Gun drawn, Prophet held a tight grip on the reins as he whipped his head back and forth, trying to get a bead on the gunman’s location.

  “It came from that way!” Louisa called, pointing straight south. “From that ravine there!” Her gun was drawn, and before Prophet could say anything, she squeezed off two pistol shots in the gunman’s direction.

  “Keep shooting while I try to get Zeke out from under his horse,” Prophet told her, slipping out of his saddle and rushing to the groaning deputy’s assistance.

  “Goddamn ... goddamn thing’s on my leg, Proph,” Zeke cried, his face blanched with pain.

  Prophet tried to move the dead horse, but it was no use. Finally, he grabbed Zeke by his shoulders, grinding his heels into the ground beneath him, and pulled till the veins in his forehead bulged and knotted. By now, Louisa had dismounted, grabbed her rifle, and sat on her butt. Using her knees as a gun rest, she fired one round after another, giving Prophet covering fire while he tried to free McIlroy from his horse.

  “Oh, god!” the deputy cursed as his leg finally slipped free, his boot and sock dangling off his foot.

  “You think it’s broke?” Prophet said. “Can you ride?”

  “I’ll make it,” Zeke said, nodding. His face was mottled red from the pain. “That son of a bitch!”

  Prophet ran to retrieve Mean. When he’d forked leather, he galloped over to McIlroy, got down, and helped the deputy onto the horse. Calling to Louisa to mount the Morgan and follow him, Prophet again forked leather. With an encouraging bellow, he heeled the lineback dun toward a shallow gully quartering about fifty yards east, at the base of a rocky butte.

  With Louisa now riding instead of shooting, the shooter-had commenced firing again. Prophet heard the bullets stitching the air around him as he approached the gully. He gigged the horse down the bank, then slid out of the saddle.

  “Come on, Zeke,” he said, reaching for the injured deputy and easing him out of the saddle.

  McIlroy limped over to the gully’s south-facing bank and ducked down, drawing his revolver. Prophet shucked his Winchester from his rifle boot and hurried over beside McIlroy just as Louisa approached the gully at a gallop, the Morgan leaping over the side in one fluid stride. Louisa slid out of the saddle with her rifle in her hand and crouched down behind the bank, several yards to Prophet’s left.

  The rifleman had fallen silent, and there was only the sound of the breeze in the grass, the occasional whinny of Mean and the Morgan.

  “Did you see how many?” Prophet asked Louisa, sneaking a peak over the lip of the gully’s bank.

  “Just one,” Louisa said, turning to Prophet with a question in her eyes. How were they going to handle this? she seemed to say.

  Prophet thought it over. Beside him, Zeke panted against the pain in his leg. Prophet turned to the deputy.

  “You think it’s broke?”

  Zeke wagged his head. “No, just twisted good. It’ll be okay. But what the hell am I going to do out here without a horse?”

  “We’re gonna get you a horse,” Prophet said.

  “Where?” McIlroy laughed.

  “Well, he’s gotta have a horse, don’t he?” Prophet said, gazing back toward the shooter.

  McIlroy stared at Prophet thoughtfully, both doubt and optimism flashing across his features. “You sure are a cocky son of a bitch.”

  “Yep,” Prophet said. He turned to Louisa, who watched him expectantly, waiting for him to make the decision.

  “You ready to ride, senorita?” Prophet asked her.

  Louisa’s full lips spread the first grin she’d offered in days. “Are you thinking what I think you’re thinking, Mr. Prophet?”

  “I think I am, Miss Bonny-venture.”

  “It’s Bonaventure. There’s no y in it.”

  “Get your horse, Miss Bonny-venture.” To the deputy, Prophet said, “Sit tight, Zeke.”

  “Jesus Christ, you two are going to get yourselves killed, and I’m going to be all alone out here on a bum leg!”

  Louisa had already run, crouching, after her horse. Prophet pushed off the bank, making a beeline for Mean and Ugly, who watched him owlishly, white-eyed, as though he’d read Prophet’s thoughts and didn’t like them a bit.

  “Steady now, Mean,” Prophet said as he grabbed the reins and climbed into the leather. Turning to Louisa, he said, “You ready?”

  She held her revolver in her right gloved hand, and now she thumbed the hammer
back and nodded.

  “You curve around to the left,” Prophet told her. “I’ll go in from the right. Ride hard now, and whatever you do, don’t give him an easy target.”

  “Okay, okay,” Louisa said, impatient. “Let’s do it!”

  “Let’s do it,” Prophet said, tickling Mean with his spurs.

  With that, the horse bounded out of the gully and onto the tableland, hooves drumming on the short-grass turf. As Prophet urged the horse forward to even more speed, he crouched low over Mean’s neck and saw Louisa gallop away to his left, paralleling him as they raced toward the shooter.

  Smoke puffed before them, down low against the ground, about fifty yards ahead. Prophet heard the rifle crack and the bullet stitch the air over his right shoulder.

  “Come on, Mean, you candy ass,” Prophet urged. “Let’s go!”

  More smoke puffed; the rifle cracked again. This time the man had fired at Louisa. Prophet eyed her apprehensively, but her horse’s stride never faltered, and she made no sign she’d been hit.

  “Come on, Mean! Ride, old son!”

  Prophet grabbed his revolver from his holster. As he approached the gully, he thumbed back the hammer and commenced firing across Mean’s neck as he rode, one shot after another, spaced about two seconds apart. Louisa had commenced likewise, and it was working; the shooter was pinned down, unable to shoot, no longer showing himself above the lip of the ravine.

  Prophet and Louisa were closing on the ravine now, arcing back toward each other, tearing up gouts of sod and dirt as they rode. Prophet closed first, and as he fired the last shell in his cylinder, he directed Mean to the notch in the ravine from which the shooter had fired. The horse leaped over the side of the ravine, and as he did, Prophet saw the gunman—a beefy lad with a Spencer carbine—look up at the horse’s belly, mouth agape.

  Mean landed with a loud thump and a blow, leather squeaking, saddlebags flapping. Prophet twisted around in the saddle as he brought up the Richards sawed-off. The beefy kid had raised his rifle and was aiming down the barrel at Prophet with a vicious glare in his dark eyes.

  “No!” Louisa cried.

  At the same time, she fired her pistol as the Morgan went airborne over the ravine’s wall. The beefy kid jerked as the bullet took him in the neck. The rifle cracked, the slug flying wide. The kid cursed as he dropped his rifle and staggered sideways, grabbing his bloody neck.

  “Ah, you bastards!” he bellowed, staggering and clawing the revolver from his hip. Before he could raise the gun at Louisa, Prophet slipped out of his saddle and leveled the Richards, nearly cutting the kid in half with ten-gauge buckshot.

  The kid went down screaming before he died and lay still.

  A few minutes later, Prophet and Louisa walked their mounts back toward McIlroy. Prophet was leading the bay behind Mean and Ugly.

  He grinned as he called, “Here’s that horse I was talkin’ about, Zeke!”

  Chapter Sixteen

  PROPHET BROKE THE sign of the other three riders about fifteen minutes after he and Louisa had shot the drygulcher. They followed the trail along a creek bottom, over a divide, and into another watershed, gradually tracing a southeastern route toward water-scored country that lay like toothy shadows before them.

  McIlroy rode the bay easily. He claimed his leg felt fine, but Prophet could tell by the occasional flush in his cheeks that he was lying. As Zeke had pointed out, the leg probably wasn’t broken, but sometimes a severe sprain or a twist could hurt just as bad.

  ‘Thanks for shooting that varmint when you did,” Prophet told Louisa when they’d stopped to rest their horses in a small box canyon shaded by cotton woods. McIlroy was sitting with his back to the rock wall, eyes closed, resting his leg, a dozen yards away.

  Louisa looked at Prophet as though she hadn’t understood what he’d said.

  “You know—the fat kid with the Spencer repeater,” he said. “If you hadn’t shot him when you did, I’d be wolf bait ‘bout now.”

  She turned her hat over and wiped the moisture from the sweatband with a lacy white handkerchief trimmed with green leaves—an heirloom, no doubt. “You would have done the same for me, wouldn’t you?”

  “Of course.”

  “Well, what’s the point in thanking me, then, Mr. Prophet?”

  “Hey, what’s all this Mr. Prophet stuff? I thought we were friends.”

  Louisa shrugged and set the hat on her head, shaking her hair back from her shoulders. “I guess you could say I’ve been reevaluating our relationship,” she said with characteristic presumption. “We’re partners, yes, but friends—well, I haven’t decided if I want to be your friend any longer, after the trickery you pulled in Bismarck.”

  “Is that a fact?” Prophet said, staring at her with anger flushing his cheeks.

  Finally, he grabbed her, pulled her to him brusquely, and kissed her. It wasn’t a slow kiss, but it wasn’t fast, either. He let his lips linger for about two seconds, noting how she’d stiffened in his arms after giving a sudden gasp of surprise.

  But she didn’t resist him.

  When he eased her away from him, he found himself wanting more. So that’s how those full lips felt... tasted. He’d never kissed lips so soft and sweet and pliable ... so utterly delicious. They were like the softest peach he’d ever tasted in his Georgia boyhood.

  Why, he wondered, as he stared at her, trying for something to say, had he been resisting her for so long? Why had he been trying for so long to keep his distance?

  Two reasons occurred to him. One: she was just a kid. Two: he was a rapscallion, born and bred.

  Besides, it was just better—easier—to keep things simple.

  But as much he wanted them to be, things just weren’t that simple anymore. And he knew from the way she’d screamed when she’d thought the beefy kid was going to plug him with the Spencer that she felt the same way.

  Finding no words, he just stared at her, flushed and grim and confused, for another couple of seconds. She stared back, flushed and befuddled. Then he sighed and turned toward his horse.

  “Come on,” he said gruffly, trying to cover his emotions. “They’re not far ahead of us. Let’s ride.”

  They rode for another hour. As the sun was setting, Prophet reined his horse to a stop. He looked around, smelling the air like a dog.

  “What is it?” McIlroy said, gazing around cautiously.

  “I thought I smelled woodsmoke. Lost it now.”

  Louisa said, “I smelled it, too.”

  Prophet sat the dun for nearly a minute, sniffing the air and looking around apprehensively, his rifle resting across the pommel of his saddle. Finally, he said, “Come on, but be careful.”

  They rode along a narrow, meandering river for another half mile. It was full dark when Prophet, smelling the woodsmoke again, stopped his horse and slipped out of the saddle.

  “Wait here,” he told the deputy and Louisa.

  He handed his reins to McIlroy, then walked around a bend in the river, staying near the woods and moving slowly. Behind him, Louisa and McIlroy watched him until he disappeared in the darkness. Five minutes later, they watched him return from the trees, walking quickly but softly, with a grace odd for a man his size. The sliver of moon rising in the east winked light off Prophet’s Winchester.

  “What is it?” Zeke asked.

  “A cabin,” Prophet said. “Smoke coming from the chimney.”

  “You kidding?”

  Prophet shook his head. “It has to be a trap. I want you two to stay right here with your guns out and cocked. I’m going to check around the woods real good, see if they’ve laid a snare for us. Keep your eyes and ears peeled for anything.”

  “There he goes, telling me what to do again—me a deputy United States marshal,” Zeke complained to Louisa.

  “Yes, he likes telling people what to do,” Louisa remarked as Prophet slipped away, quickly disappearing in the darkness.

  The bounty hunter made a careful reconnaissance of the woods b
efore the cabin, moving slowly, taking his time to stop and wait and watch before moving on, ready for anything. When he was certain no traps had been set before the cabin, he made a wide sweep around it, at one point making noise enough to attract would-be attackers.

  Nothing happened. The only sounds were owls and coyotes and burrowing night critters. The cabin itself was dark and silent, though Prophet could see a thin column of smoke rising from its tin chimney pipe.

  Why hadn’t Duvall posted a night watch? Could he actually believe Prophet hadn’t been able to follow his trail? And where were the riders’ horses? In his reconnaissance, Prophet had seen no sign of the mounts.

  The bounty hunter hunkered down behind a cottonwood and stared at the boxlike cabin that had been erected at the base of a high bluff, with brush and trees nearly concealing it from the view of anyone passing along the river. Discontentedly, he rubbed his jaw. He didn’t like it. This was too easy. He felt as though he’d been led here, and if that were true, he’d been led into a trap, sure enough.

  Unless Duvall only wanted him to believe it was a trap, as a way to befuddle and confound. While Prophet was standing around here, wondering if he’d been snookered into a fox trap, Duvall could be hightailing it down the trail, pushing for the Indian nations or wherever the hell else he aimed to disappear.

  The way Prophet saw it, he had two options. He, McIlroy, and Louisa could storm the cabin and risk getting caught in a trap, or they could wait around out here a few hours and see what happened. The second option meant losing a few hours’ trail time, but...

  Prophet’s thoughts were stifled by the sound of the cabin door opening. He watched as a figure appeared on the narrow stoop. The man made a coughing sound as he hacked phlegm up from his lungs. He stopped at the edge of the stoop, a wiry, youthful-looking figure clad in only short summer underwear and socks, his longish hair in disarray. The kid fumbled with his fly, then stood there as Prophet heard the tinny trickle of urine hitting the ground.

  Prophet lifted his rifle, uncertain what to do. If he took this kid out now, that would leave only Duvall and one other man in the cabin. But if he waited until later, when all would probably be asleep, he, McIlroy, and Louisa could take them all by surprise.