Releasing the thong over his revolver, McIlroy turned his horse onto the intersecting trail. He’d ridden twenty minutes when he saw a cabin, barn, and corral in a wooded crease in the buttes before him.
The house was shaded by several poplars and ash. Cows milled about the place, grazing the rich bluestem. What brought McIlroy to a halt, however, was a commotion by a big tree by the barn. From this distance, he couldn’t tell what it was, but it looked damn peculiar.
He reined the chestnut into the brush and dismounted. He tied the horse to a sapling, retrieved his field glasses from his saddlebags, then climbed a butte, keeping the right shoulder of the bluff between him and the ranch. Halfway to the top, he hunkered down and raised his field glasses over the butte’s sloping shoulder, focusing on the ranch yard.
When he brought the scene into focus, he stiffened, his breath freezing in his lungs.
A woman in a long skirt and torn blouse stood under the tree. Her hair was disheveled and her face was bruised and smudged with dirt. On her shoulders stood a young boy of around seven or eight. The woman was balancing the boy on her shoulders, wavering from side to side with the burden. She couldn’t waver too much, however, for there was a hangman’s noose around the boy’s neck, and the end of the noose was tied to a branch of the tree. The boy’s hands were tied behind his back. If the woman gave way beneath him, the boy would strangle.
The woman was crying. So was the boy, his face contorted with terror.
Not far away from them, a man lay face down on the ground, blood staining his shirt. Three horses stood with their heads over the corral, staring and twitching their ears curiously at the woman and the boy.
Bringing his glasses back to the woman, McIlroy saw her knees buckling, giving and stiffening, giving and stiffening, her hands desperately gripping the boy’s black shoes atop her shoulders.
“Oh, my god!” McIlroy said to himself, his gut filling with bile. It could have been a trap, but he didn’t care. He had to save the boy.
Lowering his glasses, he ran back to his horse, dropped the glasses in his saddlebags, mounted up, and gigged the chestnut into a gallop. He drew his revolver as he approached the yard, clicking back the hammer and looking around for Duvall. He didn’t see anything but the dead man, the woman, and the boy. Seeing McIlroy, the woman’s crying grew louder.
“Help me ... please!” she wailed. “Oh, god, help me!”
McIlroy steered the horse toward her. As he approached the tree, he reined the chestnut to a stop and retrieved his Barlow knife from the small sheath on his belt. Reaching up with his left hand, he cut the rope above the boy’s head.
As the boy fell into the woman’s arms, a shot rang out. McIlroy felt the icy burn in his shoulder as the impact of the bullet knocked him sideways from the saddle.
“Run!” he yelled to the woman as he hit the ground.
The woman grabbed the boy, and they ran, screaming, behind the barn.
McElroy’s horse whinnied as another shot rang out, and galloped off, kicking. The deputy turned toward the cabin. A bearded man in black stood in the doorway, aiming a rifle at McIlroy. The gun cracked, smoke puffing, just as McIlroy raised his revolver.
Duvall’s slug tore through McIlroy’s other shoulder, and he dropped his gun with a yell.
“Ah! Goddamn you, son of a bitch!”
“You’re gonna die, lawman,” Duvall yelled.
“Maybe, but I’m gonna make sure you’re right behind me,” McIlroy retorted, reaching for his gun. But before he could get off a shot, Duvall’s rifle cracked again, and the bullet plunked into the deputy’s thigh.
McIlroy yelled again as he dropped the revolver and writhed in excruciating pain.
He cast his gaze back toward the cabin. Laughing, Duvall shucked another shell in the rifle’s chamber and moved in for the kill.
Chapter Twenty-Six
WHEN HE AND Louisa had ridden for a half mile, Prophet halted his horse.
“This ain’t right,” he said. “Duvall didn’t come this way. The tracks have thinned, and I don’t see any that look like Duvall’s.”
“Are you sure?” Louisa asked.
“Yeah, I’m sure,” Prophet said, offended that she’d doubt him.
He reined Mean around and headed back the way they’d come, Louisa doing likewise.
They’d turned onto the left fork and had ridden about ten minutes when they heard a rifle crack.
Prophet jerked, startled, and halted the lineback dun. “Sounded like it came from over there,” he said, nodding to the right of the trail. It was too brushy and hilly for fast riding in that direction, so Prophet gigged the horse into a forward trot, looking for a cross trail. When he found it, he turned onto it and gigged Mean into an immediate gallop, Louisa following suit.
As Prophet rode, he heard three more rifle shots. He prayed that McIlroy had not run into Duvall. The shots were sporadic enough to belong to a hunter, but Prophet didn’t think so. A cold prickling at the back of his neck told him that what he’d feared had come to pass.
The lineback ate up the trail, running hard and blowing with determination, its muscles working beneath the saddle. At Prophet’s right and a little behind, Louisa spurred the Morgan, crouching forward over the horse’s blowing mane, her hat bouncing against her back, her blonde hair blowing straight out behind her.
A ranchstead opened ahead as the rifle cracked again. Someone was standing in the cabin’s doorway, extending a rifle. There were two more men in the yard. They were both prone. One appeared dead. The other, Prophet saw as he approached the edge of the yard, was McIlroy.
The deputy lay in a twisted heap, legs curled beneath him, both shoulders and his left leg bloody. He was reaching for his revolver lying several feet away. The man with the rifle stepped out from the cabin. He was a tall, bearded man dressed in black, and he was moving toward the deputy as he cocked the rifle.
“Duvall!” Prophet yelled as he jumped from his horse. As Mean veered to the left, Prophet clawed his revolver from his holster and hit the ground on his belly, extending the gun before him.
As Duvall swung the rifle toward Prophet, the bounty hunter fired. He didn’t have time to take careful aim, however, and his slug sailed wide. Shots rang out to Prophet’s right. Turning that way, Prophet saw Louisa. She, too, had dismounted, and was firing from one knee.
A tree obscured her view, and her shots missed their mark. Duvall fired one round at Prophet, blowing dirt in Prophet’s face, and one round at Louisa. Then he wheeled, bounded up the porch steps, and disappeared inside the cabin.
“Get that son of a bitch!” Zeke shouted, his voice pinched with pain.
Prophet looked at Louisa. “Cover me!” he yelled.
He stood and ran to the cabin, his revolver in his right hand. When he’d bounded onto the porch, he jumped to one side of the door. Sliding a look inside and seeing no one, he ran inside, gun extended, hammer back and ready to fly.
There was a small sitting area before him, a kitchen to the cabin’s rear. In the kitchen, an outside door stood wide. Through the door came the sound of hoof beats as a horse thundered through the brush.
Prophet turned and ran back onto the porch.
“He’s got a horse!” he yelled to Louisa. But she must have heard, for she was already atop her Morgan and galloping past the porch, heading east, her expression savagely determined.
Prophet knew it would do no good to caution her to wait for him, so he ran through the dust she’d kicked up toward McIlroy, who lay on his side, staring after Louisa. The deputy bared his teeth in pain.
“How you doin’, kid?” Prophet asked, dropping to his knees beside the young lawman.
“I’m all right,” McIlroy said. “Get after him!”
Prophet shook his head with frustration, inspecting the wounds in McElroy’s shoulders and thigh. “Can’t leave you,” he said. “You’ll bleed to death.”
“No, Lou, you gotta get that son of a bitch!”
Prophet
was about to respond when he heard, “I’ll tend him.”
Turning to his right, he saw a woman walk toward him from the barn, a boy with trembling lips hanging back behind her. The woman was pale and disheveled, about thirty years old. Wide-eyed and ghostly, she moved stiffly toward Prophet. She was most likely the woman who lived here. And the man lying several yards away, dead, and whom the woman seemed to be trying hard not to look at, was no doubt her husband. Duvall had terrorized and devastated another family.
McIlroy grabbed Prophet’s wrist, rasping, “She’ll take care of me, Proph. Get after him!”
Prophet glanced at the woman again. He saw that, despite her obvious pain, courage shone in her eyes. He nodded at her and ran over to Mean and Ugly, who milled in the trees and brush beside the cabin. Forking leather, Prophet yelled, “Go!”
He and the horse were off at a gallop, Mean’s front hooves bolting high as his back legs bent and sprang.
It was a hard ten minutes later when Prophet, cresting a rise, saw Duvall galloping about a half mile ahead, crossing a shallow valley. He was following the pale ribbon of a wagon road looping around to the south, and Louisa was just behind him, the Morgan’s head down, planting its hooves like a fine Kentucky racer.
Deciding to cut straight across the loop, Prophet reined Mean off the trail, through some thick brush, into a gully, and up the other side. When they were on the tableland again, Prophet gouged the horse with his spurs. The barrel-chested steed put his head down, digging deep in his heart for speed, as though he sensed the urgency of Prophet’s plight.
They were too close to Duvall to let him get away. He’d only kill again.
The horse galloped hard for a mile. Prophet reined him to a halt atop a long ridge spiked with brush and shale. Leaping from the saddle, Prophet quickly snagged his Winchester from the boot and gazed down the bluff, at the road curving below.
Duvall was galloping around a bend, his Appaloosa slowing with fatigue. He disappeared behind a rock, and when he reappeared, Prophet dropped to a knee, brought his Winchester to his shoulder, and snugged his cheek up against the worn walnut stock.
He lined up the sights slightly ahead of the galloping rider, so the slug would take him through the temple. That’s not what happened, though. When Prophet squeezed the trigger, Duvall’s horse dropped to its knees. Its ass flew up over its head, and so did Duvall, slightly ahead of the scissoring rear hooves.
Watching Duvall careen head over heels through the air, Prophet grunted, “Damn. Led him too much and didn’t account for the crosswind. Poor horse.”
He ejected the smoking shell, slid another into the firing chamber, and brought the rifle to bear once again on Duvall, who’d fallen in a heap about ten feet before the horse, which lay twisted and dead on the trail. Duvall was moving, trying to get up. Prophet wanted to drill him, but his chance of hitting him from this distance was slim. Besides, Louisa was now approaching the outlaw, and Prophet didn’t want to risk hitting her instead.
Cursing, he ran for Mean and Ugly.
Meanwhile, Louisa reined the Morgan to a halt on the trail, swinging the horse sideways as she reached for her revolver. Before her, Dave Duvall was climbing to a knee. His parson’s clothes and hair were dust-coated, and his eyes were bleary.
But he’d managed to draw his revolver, and as he glanced around, blinking and trying to clear his head, he saw Louisa and clicked back the hammer of his Colt.
About twenty yards away from the outlaw, Louisa raised her own gun and fired. The slug tore through Duvall’s left forearm, shoving him several steps backward and twisting him around.
Duvall looked at his arm with surprise. “Why, you shot me, you little bitch!”
Louisa slid out of her saddle and walked toward Duvall, extending her pistol in her hand. Her face was a mask barren of all emotion, her jaw set, her eyes cool. Her hat was hanging down her back and her hair was ruffled by the breeze.
“That’s right, I shot you,” she told the outlaw, who’d swung back around to face her, his gun still in his right hand, its barrel down. Pain shone in his eyes, but there was a grim humor there, as well.
“That’s just the first bullet I’m going to drill through your hide,” Louisa said.
Duvall gazed at her, curious. “Who are you?”
“Remember Sand Creek, Nebraska, Mr. Duvall?”
Louisa waited to see if the name of her hometown meant anything to him. When no light of recognition shone in his eyes—he’d killed so many people, ruined so many families, after all—she decided to help him.
“There was a family there, in the country along the creek. Happy, God-fearing farmers. My parents, my brother, and my two sisters. Your gang rode in, shot my brother and father, and raped my sisters and mother in the tall grass by the creek.”
Louisa was using the cold steel of her anger to remain calm, but her lips trembled slightly as she remembered.
“I was coming back from selling eggs to the neighbors, and I hid in the weeds when I saw the smoke of the fire. I saw it all.”
Her voice cracked, and she waited a moment before continuing. “I heard the screams of my mother and my sisters while you and your men ... while you ...”
Tears flooded her eyes. Through them, she watched Duvall raise the barrel of his Colt. She ducked as the gun flashed and cracked, the slug zinging past her ear.
Then she fired her own revolver. Duvall stumbled back as though punched, dropping his pistol and clutching his right shoulder with his left hand.
“You bitch!”
Louisa took three steps toward him. “It’s not nice to call a girl names, Mr. Duvall. I have four bullets left. Where would you like them?”
“You goddamn whore!” Duvall raged. “I chew little sluts like you up for breakfast! I bite your damn toes off!”
“Your dining days are over,” Louisa said calmly. “For good.”
Duvall’s eyes were bright with apprehension. He glanced at his gun on the ground.
“Go for it,” Louisa said, reading his mind. “I’ll see how big a hole I can blow through your hand.”
Duvall lifted his gaze again to hers. The outrage was slowly leaving his eyes, replaced by fear. Unable to believe he’d been bested by a girl, he flushed with bewilderment. Small sighs and grunts of pain escaped his lips.
He stood slouching, knees quivering. Blood oozed through the fingers of the hand cupping his wounded right arm. His hat lay near the horse, and his sweaty hair was peppered with seeds and dust. His black clothes were gray with filth.
As miserable as he appeared, he flashed her a smile, the Handsome Dave grin that dimpled his cheeks and set girls to blushing. “Y-you don’t want to kill me now, do you?” he said. “I mean, I got money in those saddlebags, and you and me ... we could have us a tail-up time in some city.”
His eyes gave her a lusty twice-over, and his grin widened as his confidence grew. “Why, sure we could. We could have a grand ole time.”
Louisa stared at him dully. Then she clicked back the Colt’s hammer and raised it.
“No ... wait!”
Duvall threw up his arms and lowered his head, cowering. Louisa drilled a bullet through his left knee. Duvall screamed as that leg buckled and he fell on his ass, writhing and grabbing the wounded leg, cursing for all he was worth.
“Do you remember them now, Mr. Duvall?” Louisa asked him calmly. “Do you remember the family you murdered?”
He gazed up at her, blinking and swallowing, sweat troughing the dust on his face. He nodded slightly. “I remember.”
“I’m the girl you left without a family,” she said. “My name is Louisa Bonaventure.” She fired the Colt again. It jumped in her hand, drilling a hole through Duvall’s right knee.
The outlaw stiffened, throwing his head back, his mouth widening as he screamed.
“No!” he bellowed. “I’m sorry... Please! Don’t kill me.” Sobs racked him as he begged, “Please, don’t kill me!”
He lay back on the ground, draw
ing ragged breaths through his mouth.
“Please,” he said, sobbing. “I’m a young man. I’ve made mistakes, like we all have. I beg you, miss. Please, please, please have mercy on me.”
“I believe that’s what my mother and sisters asked of you, didn’t they?”
Duvall lifted his head, his brown eyes glowering up at her, filled with pain and outrage and terror.
Louisa winced angrily as she fired the Colt. Duvall had jerked sideways, however, and the slug sailed wide, plunking into the sod. He looked up at her, a cunning light in his eyes, and lunged toward her. She brought the Colt to bear again, and fired.
The slug took Duvall through his groin, throwing him back down and evoking a scream so loud that the rest of the world seemed to go silent.
“All right, have it your way,” Louisa said tightly, after she’d listened to the man’s wails of utter anguish. “I won’t kill you, after all.”
She’d let him die slow, let him wallow in his pain while he bled to death. Give him time to remember the cries and the anguished faces of those whose lives he’d claimed. Lives like those of her family.
Louisa holstered her revolver and turned toward the Morgan, which had skittered some distance away. She stopped suddenly. Prophet sat his lineback dun behind her, watching her gravely.
They shared a long, meaningful gaze. Then Louisa walked over to her Morgan and mounted up.
She sat staring off pensively, her eyes wide and deep. Then tears filmed them and her shoulders convulsed with a relieved sob.
“It’s all over, Louisa,” Prophet said.
She nodded. “I’ll see you back at the farm,” she said. “I’d like to ride alone for a while.”
Wiping her cheeks with her gloved hands, she gigged the Morgan into a trot, riding north.
Prophet watched her.
“Help me!” Duvall crouched over his bloody groin, chin lifted toward Prophet, his face streaked with tears. His plea was that of some wounded beast.
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