“. . . and you just left him out there?” a woman’s voice said. It was the voice of Wayne’s wife, Mona.
Several men were talking over each other, so Deets couldn’t make out what they were saying. He opened the screen door. The inside door stood about six inches open. When he knocked on it, the door creaked open on its leather hinges. The voices died instantly.
“Who the hell is it?” Mona Wayne called.
“Marshal Deets,” Deets said as he pushed the door wide and, politely removing his hat, stepped into the large, open room that served as parlor and kitchen.
It was as cluttered with junk as the yard, with crates and old steamer trunks, some of which had rugs draped over them. Animal hides and skulls were tacked to the walls. A large, fieldstone hearth sat against the far wall from the door and it too was loaded down with junk of every shape and size, including a mess of wicker chicken crates, one of which had a sleek golden rooster in it with long, dark-brown saddle feathers.
Mona Wayne raised chickens—had even bred up her own line, which she loudly espoused to be the most productive chickens alive. She sold the eggs as well as the chicks throughout the county. Lupita bought eggs from the woman weekly.
“Well, well, well,” Mrs. Wayne said, eyeing Deets. She was a large woman in a shapeless dress, with skin like suet and long, dark-brown hair streaked with gray. She sat in a rocker far to Deets’s right, between two piles of crates or something similar, with Indian blankets draped over them to make them more appealing to the eye. “You in on this thing, too, young Marshal Deets?” Mona asked in a faintly mocking tone, rocking slowly in her chair.
Her pale cheeks were mottled red with anger.
“Mona,” said one of the three men either standing or sitting around the big woman, like three subjects who’ve come to pay their respects to some shabby queen.
James Purdy had said the woman’s name with gentle admonishment. He added, “This is private business. No need to trouble the young marshal about it.”
“Private, huh? Phooey! You left my husband out on the range somewhere, probably dead, and you’re tryin’ to tell me it’s private business?”
“He’s dead.” Deets moved into the room and stood before the three men—Purdy, Neal Hunter, and Glen Carlsruud. Purdy ran the town’s only livery barn. Carlsruud had the Arkansas River Mercantile Company, and Neal Hunter owned the hotel with his pretty wife, Helen, who had once been a saloon singer in mountain mining camps in the first years after the war.
Mrs. Wayne and the three men stared at Deets, incredulous. The woman’s large, round eyes glazed with tears and her upper lip trembled. “How do you know, Marshal? These men said they left him out there last night on their way back from some . . . some errand they felt was so important. Ran off in the middle of the night. I didn’t even know Eldon had gone until I got up this morning and found his bed empty.”
“A bounty hunter killed him,” Deets said, worrying the brim of his hat in his hands. “The bounty hunter who told me eight men from Box Elder Ford ambushed him last night. Shot his partner, Miss Louisa Bonaventure. The bounty hunter is Lou Prophet, a man of some renown.”
“Infamy, you mean!” said Neal Hunter, pointing his hat at Deets. He was a darkly handsome, middle-aged man with long sideburns and a thick mustache just now showing some gray.
“Ambushed?” Mona cried. “What in the hell were you boys doin’—ridin’ off in the middle of the night to ambush bounty hunters?”
“I’d like to know that, as well,” said Deets, when all three men merely stood there, defiantly silent, glancing around at each other.
“Mona,” Glen Carlsruud said, “we did no such thing.” He looked quickly at the other men, as though silently ordering them to fall into step behind him. “No such thing at all. In fact . . . those bounty killers ambushed us. Shot Eldon, and his horse ran off, leaving the rest of us long before we knew it.”
“That’s not how Prophet tells it,” Deets said, feeling that chill again, feeling that old weakness in his knees. He was up against the top men in the town, maybe even the entire county, and he was still wet behind the ears as a town marshal, having spent most of his life up to a year ago punching cattle. “He says you ambushed him up by Ramsay Creek. Ambushed him and Miss Bonaventure.”
“You’d take a bounty hunter’s word over ours?” Hunter asked Deets threateningly.
Deets didn’t know what to say to that, so he said nothing. His heart was grinding nervously away in his chest. His ears were ringing. Nerves. Those blamed nerves of his. He just couldn’t tamp them down once they got sputtering around just beneath his skin.
Once, he’d been a man. Now, he was a mere mouse peeping around in the brush, afraid of its own shadow . . .
“What were you doing out there?” Mrs. Wayne wanted to know, pounding her fist on the arms of her rocking chair.
“It was a private matter,” said Hunter. “Private business.” He looked at Deets again, threateningly. “Our own private business. All you need to know, young Marshal Deets, is that those two bounty hunters ambushed us last night in the dark. If Eldon is dead, it is they who killed him.”
Before Deets could respond to that, Purdy said, “Where did you see Prophet?”
Deets hesitated, not sure he should answer the question. The three men stared at him. Mrs. Wayne was staring off into space, letting the information she’d learned here this afternoon sink in, not the least of which was that her husband was dead. The three men’s eyes were demanding, threatening. Deets found himself shriveling beneath those hard, commanding gazes.
Turning his hat in his hands, he said, “At the doc’s. He brought the girl in. She’s wounded bad.”
“Yes, well, we had to fire back, of course,” Neal Hunter said, glancing conspiratorially at the others.
“I . . . I don’t get it,” Deets said. “Why would they fire on you?”
“Because they’re killers.” Purdy turned to Mrs. Wayne. “We sent two men out looking for Eldon. They’ll find him and bring him home.”
She was staring now at Deets, wide-eyed. Her cheeks were flushed, lips set in a straight, tormented line. She wanted to say something, but, she, too, felt beaten down by these men—the most powerful men in the town.
“We’re sorry for your loss, Mona,” Carlsruud said, donning his black bowler. “We’ll make sure you’re taken care of . . . in Eldon’s memory.”
As she continued to stare at Deets, her eyes filled with tears. The corners of her mouth wrinkled as she pursed her lips with sorrow and frustration. Obviously, she saw that the town marshal would be of little assistance.
Purdy squeezed the woman’s wrist.
“I’ll send Helen over, Mona,” Hunter said, patting the woman’s shoulder and donning his own hat. She kept her accusing eyes on Deets, who lowered his own in chagrin.
The three men strode over to where Deets stood near the door. Hunter glanced over his shoulder at Mrs. Wayne and then turned to the young marshal. He leaned forward until his mouth was only six inches from Deets’s left ear.
“I suggest you arrest the bounty hunter, Prophet, for the murder of our friend, Eldon Wayne. That’s all you need to concern yourself with, Marshal.”
“I think I’d best talk to the county sheriff about this,” Deets said and swallowed.
“Sure, sure,” Glen Carlsruud said. “We wanna dot all our i’s and cross all our t’s, of course. You send a telegram off to old Boss Crowley. Keep in mind he’s damn near thirty miles from here. He’s sixty years old and laid up with the Cupid’s itch from those cheap, disgusting whores he frequents . . . and both his deputies are drunks. But you’d best let him know, sure enough.” The mercantiler winked, sneering.
Purdy said, “Then you arrest Prophet and wire for the circuit judge. I reckon we’re gonna have us a murder trial.”
“And keep in mind,” Hunter added with a frigid smile, “the trouble you had a while back. The trouble we helped you get out of . . . young marshal. No one wants to dig up old
bones—both literally and figuratively—now, do we?”
He patted Deets on the back, and he and the others walked out of the house.
Deets’s heart thudded.
He looked at Mrs. Wayne. She was still staring at him, sneering at him, lips pursed.
Deets cleared the dust from his throat. “Mrs. Wayne, do you have any idea—?”
“Good day, Marshal,” she said and turned her head sharply away from him.
Deets pinched his hat brim to her and left.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Sitting on his saddle in Doctor Whitfield’s yard, leaning his back against the cool stones of the well coping, Prophet drew deep on his quirley and let the smoke trickle out his nostrils and mouth. He’d been sitting out here, following the shade around the well, for several hours, waiting for word on Louisa.
Each one of those hours had felt like days.
The doctor’s screen door slammed. Prophet looked hopefully toward the house. The boy leaped down off the side door’s top step and walked toward Prophet, carrying a wooden bucket by its rope handle. His worn, black shoes scuffed dust up around his black socks, which rose nearly to his knees, where the knickers took over.
The boy looked at Prophet tentatively as he moved toward the well, the bucket bouncing against his right thigh.
Prophet took another drag from the quirley, exhaled, and said, “How is she, boy?”
“I’m not supposed to talk to you,” the boy said as he hooked the bucket to the winch and began turning the crank, lowering the bucket into the well.
“Oh,” Prophet said. “Well, that’s understandable.” He paused, watching the kid working, the boy chewing his lower lip as he cranked the bucket down into the well. “What’s your name?”
“Titus.”
“Titus, you’re not supposed to talk to me.”
Titus glanced at Prophet, sheepish. Prophet grinned. Titus’s cheeks flushed. The bucket sank into the water with a gurgling chug, and then the boy began cranking it back up.
“What’s the water for, Titus?” Prophet asked.
Titus grunted but didn’t say anything as he unhooked the bucket from the winch hook and began hefting it back toward the house, carrying it in both hands in front of him. Halfway between the well and the house, he turned toward Prophet, scrunching up his eyes against the sun and the dust the breeze was lifting.
“Pa says she’s got a heartbeat, but that’s about all,” Titus said.
Those words sent a hard stone tumbling down the well of Prophet’s throat and into the cold water of his belly. He nodded to the boy, who turned and continued walking to the house and up the steps and through the screen door, water slopping over the bucket’s rim.
A half hour later, when the shadows were growing long across the yard and the birds had that solemn tone now on the heels of the day, Doctor Whitfield stepped out of the house, letting the screen door slap back into place behind him. He stood at the bottom of the steps and looked at Prophet as he rolled down his left shirtsleeve and buttoned the cuff.
Prophet wanted to get up and go to the man. But he wasn’t sure he wanted to hear what the doctor had to say. He sat there frozen against the well, another of many quirleys smoldering between his fingers, a dozen or so butts mashed in the dirt near his boots.
Rolling down his right shirtsleeve, Whitfield walked toward Prophet. He looked glum. Downright dark. He wore no hat and his thick, auburn hair blew around in the breeze.
Prophet mashed out the quirley where he’d mashed out the others and heaved himself with a weary grunt to his feet. He cuffed his hat brim back up on his forehead.
“It’s not good,” the doctor said as he stopped before Prophet. He scowled up at the big bounty hunter, who stood a good four inches taller than he did. “But it could have been worse. The bullet in her torso missed her heart by an inch and lodged against the back of a rib. It tore her up pretty badly. I got the bleeding stopped and I repaired as much of the damage as I was able. The bullet in her leg didn’t sever any arteries, but it nicked the bone. Cracked it, in fact. If she makes it through the night, which is doubtful, she’s going to be a very sick young lady for a good, long time.”
“But she’s still alive . . .”
“She’s still alive. Now, it’s the shock, fever, and infection we have to worry about. Fever could take her by tomorrow morning. Even if and when she’s out of that danger, there’s the danger of infection.”
“Shit.”
“Well, what do you expect, Mr. Prophet? That is what guns and bullets are meant to do, aren’t they? Rend the flesh?” Whitfield curled his upper lip distastefully. “Kill?”
“Skip the sermon, preacher. Can I see her?”
“For five minutes. But don’t make any loud noises or disturb her in any way. She must sleep. Sleep is the only thing that can help her now. Sleep and a frequent change of bandages for the first three or four days.”
Prophet walked toward the house. The doctor fell back behind him, dragging his bad foot. Prophet stopped and turned back to the man. “You’ll keep her here, won’t you? With you? I got money—I can pay. What I can’t pay for now, I’m good for later. I’ll guarantee you that, Doc.”
“I don’t want your blood money, Mr. Prophet,” Whitfield said, stopping beside him now and giving the bounty hunter a look of bald disdain. “I just want you to stay the hell away from here. And if that girl is somehow able to survive the savagery that’s been done to her, I want the both of you to ride far, far away from here.”
He glanced suddenly toward the door behind Prophet. “Titus, stop eavesdropping and feed the stock!”
Prophet glanced back to see the boy’s face disappear behind the rusty screen door. His footsteps dwindled into the bowels of the house.
Prophet said, “Look, I know you don’t cotton to my sort, Doc. But I need to stay here. I can’t leave her. I need to be close . . .” Prophet’s throat grew thick. Tears were trying to ooze into his eyes despite his effort to choke them back. “I need to be close . . . in case she dies.”
Whitfield studied him. His voice was less harsh as he asked, “What is she to you?”
“She’s everything to me,” Prophet said sternly. “And if she’s gonna die, I need to be here.”
Whitfield continued to study the big man before him with puzzled interest.
He sighed, glancing around in frustration. “Tonight will be her highest hurdle. You can stay here tonight. In the stable with my horse. You can stable your own mounts there. That’s as close as you’ll be able to come, I’m afraid. You can visit her for five minutes every hour until Titus and I turn in at sundown.” He threw up a placating hand at Prophet’s dubious frown. “Don’t worry. I will rise every two hours to check on her, refresh the cool cloths I’ll be using to keep her fever down with. Fortunately, I have a deep well.”
The doctor continued limping toward the door. “You can stay with her until I get back. I have another patient to tend in town. If anything happens, send Titus. He knows where I’ll be.”
Prophet stared at the man’s back with interest as he followed him into the house. “Who might this other patient be, Doc?”
Plucking his bowler hat off a peg by the door, Whitfield scowled at Prophet. “That is none of your business.” He made a face. “Good Lord, man—you smell like cigarette smoke and horses. Please wash at the well before you come in here again!”
The doctor doffed his hat, grabbed his leather kit off a chair, brushed past Prophet, and limped out into the yard, heading for the stable. The bounty hunter watched him go, curious.
Had one of his or Louisa’s bullets pinked another bushwhacker last night? There was a good chance that the doctor’s other patient was another man they’d wounded. Prophet would have followed the young pill-roller, but at the moment he was more concerned about remaining close to Louisa’s side than hunting her attackers.
He doffed his hat as he pushed through the curtained room that smelled heavily of arnica. Louisa lay under a sheet a
nd blanket, which were pulled up to her neck. Her arms lay straight down along her sides. Her eyes were closed, but the lids were twitching faintly and her brows were furrowed. She appeared to be asleep but feeling miserable even in sleep, which Prophet supposed was natural. It was hard to see her in such a state. She’d taken lead before, but she’d never been hit this severely.
Lying there, unconscious, she looked so young, fragile, pale, and vulnerable.
And miserable . . .
Prophet pulled a slat-back chair up to the side of her bed. He wanted to take her hand in his, but the doctor had told him not to rouse her. She needed to sleep. Screw the doctor. He knew nothing about them. To him, Prophet and Louisa were just a couple of raggedy-tailed bounty hunters. Whitfield didn’t know how Prophet’s taking her hand might ease Louisa’s pain a little.
Prophet took her left hand and held it gently between his. He held it for a long time, staring down at her, feeling helpless and afraid, sort of the way he’d felt before his first skirmish back in eastern Tennessee during the war.
As frightened as a little boy.
Sometimes, Prophet wished he’d never met this girl. They’d been thrown together when the outlaw gang led by Handsome Dave Duvall had stormed into her family’s farm, killing the entire family after raping Louisa’s mother and her two sisters. Louisa had hidden from the marauders in the brush and afterwards—after she’d seen to her family’s burial—she’d headed off on the warpath against Handsome Dave and his tough-nut bunch of renegades.
She and Prophet had met up in eastern Dakota Territory, after the same gang. They’d followed the killers into western Dakota and then south into the Black Hills country, whittling the gang down gradually until they’d snuffed the wick of Handsome Dave himself.
Sometimes Prophet wished he’d never crossed paths with this girl. Before, he’d been free and easy, nary a care in the world except killing his next killer and securing enough money for his next meal and a bottle of whiskey. His next game of stud.
His next doxie.
To Hell on a Fast Horse Page 6