He lay there for a long time, staring at the stars but not seeing them. His mind labored over the details of his plan. Finally, a dark grin spread across his lips. He flicked his cigarette stub away and snuggled down in his blankets, satisfied that, like the reverend had said, everything would turn out just fine.
“Yep,” he said to himself as Doolittle snored nearby. “Everything’s gonna work out just fine ... for me.”
Dave snickered himself to sleep.
The next morning, over a Spartan breakfast of coffee and some jerked beef the preacher found in his saddlebags— Duvall needed to find a town where he could buy trail supplies, he realized—Dave talked with the old man.
He feigned only a desultory interest in the preacher’s life, as though there really wasn’t much else to talk about, so why not talk about the reverend’s hopes and dreams for the future? Every once in a while, he threw in a few lies about his own life to balance the exchange.
In reality, in his characteristically cunning fashion, Duvall was pumping the old man for information about Greenburg: logistical details like whom the old man intended to see when he got to town and where he was going to stay, and so on. The old man gave the information freely, innocently, thoroughly buffaloed and grateful to have someone to talk with after his several lonely days on the trail from Coffeyville.
When Duvall was satisfied he’d wrung the old preacher dry, he stretched, yawned, said it was time to answer nature’s call, and moseyed into the willows. By the stream, he found a stout driftwood branch and carried it back to the camp, where the preacher was rolling his soogan.
Duvall walked up behind the old man, who was whistling “How Great Thou Art,” and swung the branch hard against the old minister’s head. The old man jerked to the side and stiffened.
Duvall swung the branch again, making a cracking, thumping sound as the branch connected with the preacher’s head. The old man gave a guttural cry and slumped forward. Duvall stepped toward the old man, his mouth a savage slash across his face.
“Ah ... mercy ... mercy ...” the parson sighed, his left cheek in the dirt, eyes fluttering.
“You know who taught me those Bible verses I recited?” he asked the old man tightly, breathing hard through his nose, his face crimson with rage. “A preacher just like yourself.” Again, Dave smashed the branch against the preacher’s head.
The old man gave another grunt. His eyes fluttered some more, the light in them weakening.
“Yep,” Dave said as he lifted the branch once again, “and I finally learned it after the old bastard horsewhipped near all the hide off my back.” Dave swung the club down hard against the back of the old man’s head breaking the branch in two.
The preacher’s head jerked, his eyes fluttered and closed, and a long, final sigh escaped his lips. He jerked for a while, then lay still.
“Go with God, Reverend.”
Duvall sat down on a rock, squeezing his hands together as he tried to get his nerves and anger under control. He didn’t know what happened to him sometimes. It was almost like he filled with hate and anger the way a hot teapot filled with steam, until he couldn’t control it anymore, and he had to let out some of that wrath.
A laugh escaped him as his eyes slid back to the old preacher lying slumped on the ground. Duvall wrung his hands together, gave a shake to calm himself at last, and stood.
He stared at the old preacher.
“Yeah, you’re about my size,” he said, as he knelt to remove the old man’s clothes. “Maybe a little taller and thinner, but the good ladies of Greenburg’ll be more than happy to fix my duds.”
Duvall laughed uncontrollably, his shoulders jerking as he worked the old man’s tunic up over his head. “Yeah, they’ll be more than happy to offer their services to the new preacher in town!”
That started another fit of laughter that did not completely die down until he’d dumped the preacher’s body in a deep ravine, scared off his own three horses, and mounted the preacher’s mouse-brown mare. Dressed in the dark coat and white collar and black hat of the preacher himself, he jogged the mare toward Greenburg.
What better way to escape his pursuers than in the identity of another man?
As he rode, Duvall whistled an old hymn he’d learned a long time ago at considerable cost to his hide.
Chapter Eighteen
PROPHET TROTTED HIS horse back to Louisa and McIlroy, who’d been waiting for him along a creek bank while he’d surveyed the terrain from a butte top. The sky was lead gray. It had rained all night, and the low areas were filled with water.
“Okay,” he said with the air of grim confession. “I’m lost. Not only do I not know where in God’s green earth Handsome Dave Duvall is, I don’t even know where we are.”
“Ha!” Louisa scolded. “I knew it. Some tracker you are!”
“If you think you can do any better,” Prophet retorted, his face red, “it’s all yours. Lead the way, Miss Fancy Britches!”
“Okay, okay, calm down,” Zeke said, holding up a placating hand. “I think Proph has done one hell of a job, considering who we’re tracking and all this rain. So we’re lost. Arguing about it isn’t gonna get us unlost.”
The deputy looked at the frustrated Prophet, who sat scowling at Louisa, who scowled back at him with her own unique brand of scorn and defiance. Zeke said, “Well, do you at least know what territory we’re in?”
Prophet scrubbed his chin with his gloved hand and glanced around thoughtfully. “I’d say we’re still in Kansas.” He thought about that for a few seconds, then thought about it again. “But hell, we might’ve slipped into Oklahoma by now. How in the hell would I know? I been scouring the ground for hoofprints. You two should’ve been keeping an eye on what direction we were headin’.”
“Oh, now it’s our fault,” Louisa said with a caustic grunt.
Before Prophet could launch a counterattack, McIlroy said, “I said that was enough, Miss Bonaventure!”
Louisa whipped her head at the deputy. “And who are you to tell me what’s enough? You think that tin badge you’re wearing gives you the authority to—”
She stopped when she saw that both men were no longer paying attention to her. Their gazes had been drawn to the west. Turning that way herself, she saw a weathered-gray box wagon meandering across the prairie, pulled by a pair of mismatched horses. The driver was a slight man in coveralls. A medium-sized dog sat atop the hay piled in the box.
“Well, maybe that farmer can tell us what country we’re in, anyway,” Prophet grumbled, gigging his horse down the slope.
Zeke and Louisa followed as Prophet cantered Mean down the hill, across a natural levee, and onto an intersecting route with the wagon. When the driver saw them, he planted his high-topped, lace-up boots on the footboard and sawed back on the reins, jerking the horses to an abrupt halt.
Reins held tight in his hands, he watched with wary curiosity as the singular trio—two men and a pretty, longhaired blonde—approached from across the undulating sod. Prophet hoped that Louisa’s presence along with Zeke’s badge would put the man at ease, keep him from reaching for a shotgun.
The dog scrambled to the side of the box and barked, planting its front feet on the side boards, wrinkling its long, pointed snoot, and stiffening its tail.
Prophet raised a friendly hand as he checked Mean down alongside the driver. “Good day to you, friend,,, he greeted.
The man said nothing, just slid his gray, cautious gaze from stranger to stranger. His eyes lingered longest on Louisa, curious lines etched in their corners. The dog growled deep in its throat.
“We were just wondering,” Prophet continued, fidgeting around with embarrassment, “where in the hell we are.”
“Where ye are?” the man said, drawing his upper lip back from a flat wedge of chew on his gum. “What do you mean where ye are?”
“Well, for starters,” Louisa piped up sarcastically, “we’d like to know what territory we’re in. Then maybe you could tell us what
part of that territory—east or west, or north or south.”
“And the way to the nearest town,” McIlroy added. “We’re low on trail supplies, and we could all use some real food for a change, and a couple nights in a bed.”
The farmer scratched the back of his head and squinted at the strangers bewilderedly. “Well, you’re in Kansas, I reckon. The south-central part of the territory.” He turned to the growling dog and told it to hush. “Nearest town is Greenburg.” He nodded to the west. “Straight that way about six miles, just over that divide yonder.”
“Greenburg, eh?” Prophet said.
“Yep, that’s the place. It’s small, but it’s grown, by jingo. There’s a hotel and a couple saloons and a school. Even got us a new church a few weeks back. I helped put it up myself. We been waitin’ on a preacher.” The old man’s lips stretched into a proud grin, chew juice dribbling out his mouth.
“You don’t say,” Prophet said with only mild interest.
“How ‘bout a sheriff?” Zeke asked. “There any law in town?”
The man’s eyes dropped to McIlroy’s deputy marshal’s badge. “Why, sure, we have us a sheriff. Elmer Tate’s his name. Say, if you don’t mind me askin’, what are the three of you up to in these parts, anyway?”
“We’re hunting a degenerate by the name of Handsome Dave Duvall,” Louisa said. “You haven’t seen him, by any chance, have you? A handsome devil in spiffy duds trailing two horses on a lead line?” She cast an accusatory glance at Prophet. “We lost his trail a few days back.”
“It wasn’t that long ago,” Prophet said defensively, wondering what had ever compelled him to kiss the little polecat. What he felt for her now was nothing close to affection.
“No, I ain’t seen no man leadin’ two horses,” the farmer said. “Ain’t seen no one today but you and the man I bought this hay from this mornin’.”
“Much obliged, then,” Prophet said, tipping his hat to the man and reining his horse westward. When Zeke caught up to him, he said, “Well, I guess we’ll check out Greenburg. If Dave’s there or passed through, the sheriff will probably know it, it bein’ a small town and all.”
“I reckon,” Zeke said. “And I can wire a report to Yankton.”
“Kind of out of your territory by now, aren’t you?”
McIlroy shook his head. “There’s no way I’m heading back north until I know Handsome Dave’s out of commission, once and for all. I’ll remove my badge, if I have to.”
“Maybe you should exchange it for a compass,” Louisa carped as she spurred the Morgan into a gallop, passing Prophet and McIlroy in a dust cloud.
The two men looked at each other as they held their mounts at a leisurely walk. “That girl’s as nettling as she is pretty,” Zeke remarked.
“Yes, she needs a stern hand. I think when all this is over, you should marry her, Zeke.”
“Me? Why the hell should I marry that minx?”
“Well, you said yourself she’s pretty. Underneath it all, she’s even civilized. You could give her a nice, comfortable life in Yankton.”
Prophet halfway meant it. He certainly wasn’t the man for her, no matter how much her beauty attracted him. What she needed, sooner or later, was a husband closer to her own age. If Prophet knew one thing about himself it was that he would never in any stage of his life be a suitable husband to any woman worth marrying. He was a bounty hunter, and he would die a bounty hunter, a free man of the mountains and plains, his closest ally his horse, no matter how mean and ugly that horse might be.
A steady woman just didn’t fit into those plans.
“Nah,” Zeke said as they rode, squinting off through Louisa’s thinning dust. “You’re the one she wants.”
“How’s that?”
“Haven’t you ever seen the way she looks at you, Proph? Well, I have. That girl’s smitten. She doesn’t want to be. In fact, she fights it and even hates it in herself. But she’s gone for you. Plumb gone.”
Prophet sighed, scowling, staring at the diminishing speck that was Louisa.
“And you know what else I know?” McIlroy said.
“I suppose I’m going to hear it whether I want to or not,” Prophet groused.
“You feel the same way about her.”
Prophet jerked his gaze at the red-haired deputy, who was grinning at him knowingly. Prophet scowled, flushing, working his mouth around a retort that never formed.
“Come on,” he said finally, spurring Mean into a gallop. “Let’s ride before you bore the tallow right off my bones!”
They caught up to Louisa a mile from the town, and rode abreast through the outskirts of tar paper shacks and log cabins where small children played, chickens scratched, and dogs barked. Greenburg sat on a high bench, with a grand view of the Kansas prairie stretched out around it, tawny and green in the sun that peeked through the tattering clouds.
The trio passed the school and the new church, whose fresh paint gleamed brightly in the kindling afternoon sun, and continued on to the town’s small business section. McIlroy reined up to the sheriff’s office, and Prophet and Louisa followed suit.
A thickset man with a shock of salt-and-pepper hair sat on a bench before the window. He wore a five-pointed star on his cowhide vest. A little boy of six or seven sat to his right, watching as the man slashed at a chunk of wood with a pocket knife.
“Well, hello there,” the sheriff said. “What can I do for you three?”
“Afternoon, Sheriff,” Zeke greeted the man. ‘Tate, isn’t it?”
“I’m Elmer Tate,” the sheriff said, letting his hands relax in his lap. He tilted his head to the boy beside him. “And this is my grandson, Sam. He’s home from school today on account of he’s got a tummy ache.” The sheriff winked, indicating the lad was really just playing hooky for one reason or another.
“Ah, I see,” Zeke said. “Most likely just growing pains.”
“That’s probably all it is,” Sheriff Tate agreed with a smile. His eyes found the marshal’s badge on Zeke’s vest. “I see you’re sportin’ a badge of your own.”
“I’m a U.S. deputy marshal,” Zeke said with a nod. “I’m looking for an outlaw by the name of Handsome Dave Duvall. Tracked him all the way from north of Bismarck, as a matter of fact.”
“You don’t say,” the sheriff said soberly. “Handsome Dave Duvall’s in these parts, is he?” The man, who appeared to be fifty or a little older, glanced up and down the street, as if half-expecting the badman to be riding into town at that very moment. “I have a couple wanted dodgers on him in the office. I posted them, but I sure never expected—or I should say I hoped—I’d never run into him. It’s usually pretty quiet around here. Heck, I rarely even carry a gun unless them cowboys is up from Texas.”
“Then you haven’t seen him,” Prophet said.
“Nope,” the sheriff said, shaking his head and pursing his lips. “And I can’t say as I’m sorry, neither.” He looked at Zeke, squinting an eye against the sunlight. “You’re kind of out of your territory, aren’t you?”
“I reckon so,” Zeke said with a sigh. “I plan to cable the marshal’s office in Yankton as soon as I can find a telegraph office. But, with orders or without, I don’t intend on going home until Duvall’s either dead or behind bars. That’s how bad he is. We three have seen it with our own eyes.”
“You three are together, then?” the sheriff said, his eyes sliding to Louisa, who met them boldly with her own.
‘That’s right—for one reason or another,” Zeke said. “This is Lou Prophet and Louisa Bonaventure. Mr. Prophet’s a bounty hunter.”
“I’ve heard of Mr. Prophet,” the sheriff said with a nod at the bounty man, who smiled affably and touched his hat brim. “I reckon if anyone can catch Handsome Dave, it’s you two.”
Louisa gave a caustic grunt and turned away. Apparently, the sheriff didn’t notice. He said, “But if you need any help, you just let me know. If you find him in Green-burg, why, I reckon this is my jurisdiction .. .”<
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Prophet could tell the sheriff wanted nothing to do with the outlaw, and he didn’t blame him. Tate had probably been a cowboy or a farmer most of his life and had taken the Greenburg sheriff’s job because he’d thought it would give him time with his grandkids. He hadn’t planned on having to hunt killers like Duvall. Not for twenty dollars a month, a free beer in the saloons now and then, and a cut on his house rent.
Apparently, Zeke had read the same thing in the sheriff’s demeanor. “Much obliged,” he said. “I’ll call you if we need you, Sheriff, but I think Prophet and I can take care of it.”
“With a little help from the lady,” Louisa cut in with customary sarcasm.
Zeke looked at her with annoyance, then flashed a discomfited grin at Tate. “She’s a... an unofficial deputy, you might say,” he explained to the sheriff, who only nodded, puzzled lines etched across his forehead.
“Yeah, that’s what she is,” Prophet wryly agreed as he reined his horse away from the sheriff’s office. Under his breath he added, “And an official pain in the ass.”
“You’ll find the telegraph office up the street a block,” the sheriff called.
“Much obliged, Sheriff,” Zeke said with a wave. “Good day to you, sir.”
“And don’t forget,” the sheriff returned, his halfhearted voice faltering a little, “you need any help with ole Duvall...”
“We’ll send for you,” Zeke said as he, Prophet, and Louisa walked their horses down the street.
Only the occasional farm or ranch wagon passed. A handful of ranch ponies milled before saloons. While boasting a few ladies in sunbonnets, the boardwalks were fairly uncluttered, as well.
“Looks like a nice town to hole up for a few days, listen to the wind for word of Duvall,” Prophet said.
Zeke nodded. “My tired ass isn’t going to know what to make of a feather bed.”
The town’s only hotel, the Kansas House, sat in the middle of the main drag, flanked by a tinware shop and an apothecary. Zeke continued on to the telegraph office while Prophet and Louisa tied their mounts to the hitch rack before the hotel and walked inside.
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