Stagecoach to Purgatory

by Peter Brandvold

  He shifted the look to Mary, who stared at him almost as vacantly as usual, but now she was slightly wrinkling the skin above the bridge of her long, fine nose. Her gaze did not waver from his.

  “Nothin’ at all,” Prophet repeated.

  She turned her head to stare out the window. As she did, she nibbled the nail of her right index finger.

  Prophet turned his own attention to the rugged country sliding past the coach, spying nothing more of the men he had to assume were following the stage, possibly looking for a place to strike. He didn’t think the stage was carrying a strongbox, however, so unless the coach’s shadowers assumed otherwise in error, they must have been after the horses or whatever valuables they could find on the four passengers.

  Or they might have been after the women. They might have spied Mary from a distance and decided she was worth hitting the stage for. Prophet never underestimated the desperation of men this far off the beaten track. One pretty girl out here could drive a man to a rare savagery.

  Stages had been hit for a lot less.

  Prophet wasn’t surprised that trouble had shown itself. Earlier that day they’d crossed into Indian Territory. Or, what Prophet still knew as Indian Territory because it had been called that for as long as he could remember. It had been officially changed to Dakota Territory in 1861, during its official organization. But most of the old salts still called it Indian Territory, so that’s how Prophet knew it, as well.

  The name still seemed right. The area might be officially organized and under the jurisdiction of the U.S. marshals, but it was a savage place, a no-man’s-land of sudden death or slow torture. Official laws might exist here, but those were just for show. The real law that reigned supreme in these parts was the Law of the Gun.

  Prophet kept a close watch as the stage continued wending its way through the tawny buttes. There were only two more stops before he’d reach his destination—Jubilee—and he wanted to beat trouble to the end of the line. Soon, the stage dropped down a gradual slope, and the humble brick adobe buildings of the Cheyenne River Station slid around it on both sides.

  When Prophet and the other passengers had stepped out of the carriage, Prophet turned to Mort Seymour, who was supervising the changing out of the team by the station’s two hostlers. He asked the jehu if he’d seen the gang of riders, and Seymour said he had.

  “Just checkin’,” Prophet said.

  “I don’t like it.”

  Prophet had turned to head into the small, low-slung station house, but now he turned back to Seymour, who was shaking dust out of his sweat-damp neckerchief while the hostlers led the sweat-lathered team away to the barn. Seymour looked at Prophet warily and slid his pale blue gaze toward the cabin.

  “Mrs. Van Camp’s boy, James, was found dead two weeks ago. They found him between here and Lacrosse’s trading hut down by the river. There’s a partic’lar nasty brand of curly wolf running among these coulees, Lou. Folks around here think they’re the ones who beat James to one helluva bloody pulp. For fun, most like.”

  Prophet headed around to the coach’s rear luggage boot and pulled out his sawed-off Richards twelve-gauge. He slung the mean-looking popper over his head and shoulder and headed into the cabin.

  Mrs. Van Camp ran the Cheyenne River Station with the help of her daughter, Lydia, and, until last week, her son, James. James hadn’t been right in the head but he’d been good at horse wrangling and general maintenance of the place. Mrs. Van Camp’s husband, Ezra, had died two years ago when, not in good health in the first place, a frisky team had slammed him against the side of the adobe brick barn, breaking his back.

  Mrs. Van Camp had run the place alone with her two children ever since.

  She was a small but stalwart woman who was ladling stew into bowls when Prophet walked into the cabin. Lydia, a much younger version of her rawhide-tough mother, who appeared old enough to be Lydia’s grandmother, was taking the bowls to where Mary, Aunt Grace, and Beermeister were sitting at separate tables in the crude but well-scrubbed, earthen-floored shack.

  Mrs. Van Camp acknowledged Prophet with a single dip of her chin, which was all the acknowledgment she ever gave anyone. He sat down across from Beermeister, mostly to make for less running for Lydia, and pegged his hat on a hook on the wall to his right. He lifted the coach gun’s lanyard above his head and set the shotgun on the edge of the table.

  Mary and Aunt Grace sat against the opposite wall, to Prophet’s left.

  He’d just glanced at Mary, who was hunched over her soup, when he spied movement out the window flanking her. A man crouched to look into the window, pressing his face right up against the warped but freshly scrubbed glass. Long, curly, chestnut hair fell to his shoulders. He looked from Aunt Grace to Mary, pressing his nose against the glass, and ogled the girl, bug-eyed.

  Aunt Grace glanced toward the window and jerked back in her chair with a terrified shriek. Mary lifted her head, saw the man in the window, and slapped a hand across her open mouth with a hushed gasp. The man in the window laughed, turned, and strode toward the front of the station. Another man walked past the window, following the first man.

  Prophet reached under the table and unsnapped the keeper thong from over his Colt’s hammer. He loosened the big popper in the oiled holster then returned his right hand to the top of the table, where Lydia had just set a bowl of steaming antelope stew down before him when Aunt Grace had screamed.

  Now the girl stood staring toward the front door, where the man from the window just now ducked into the shack, grinning.

  “Hi-dee, folks!” he said. “How’s everybody today?” He turned to where Aunt Grace sat, still recovering from the start the man had given her. “Sorry to frighten you, ma’am.” He lifted his hat by the crown then set it back down on his curly head as he nodded to Mary. “Miss.”

  As the second man stopped beside the first man, Mrs. Van Camp, standing by the range, where several pots were pushing steam up into the shack’s humid air, pointed a long, arthritic finger at the newcomers and narrowed her eyes angrily. “Out! Out! Get out!”

  The curly-headed gent looked hurt. “Say what? Out? But we just got here.” He glanced at the man standing to his right—a big, freckle-faced man in a wool coat and billowy red neckerchief. “Ain’t that right, Moon Face? We just got here—am I right?”

  The appropriately named Moon Face shrugged his heavy shoulders. Two pistols bristled on his shell belt, positioned on each hip for a cross draw. A Green River knife jutted behind the holster on his right hip.

  “We was just wantin’ to buy a bowl of that stew off ’n ya, is all. We could smell it all the way from the next ridge over, and, who-eee . . . we’re a mite hungry—aren’t we, Moon Face?”

  The curly-haired gent had been speaking to Mrs. Van Camp, but he’d kept his eyes on Mary, who stared straight down at her wooden stew bowl. Aunt Grace stared up at the two hard-bitten newcomers, her face twisted into a mask of horror. Mrs. Van Camp continued to glare at him, narrow eyed, hard jawed, fuming.

  Prophet glanced out the window flanking Mary and Aunt Grace. Mort Seymour and J. W. Plumb were standing over by the barn. Their backs faced the cabin. Apparently the station’s two hostlers had noticed a problem with one of the coach wheels. They’d removed the wheel and all four men were staring down at the felloe, smoking and talking it over.

  Obviously, they hadn’t noticed the two newcomers. Prophet wondered where the rest of the gang was, and what their intentions were. That these two were part of the pack he’d spied from the coach he had little doubt.

  The curly-haired gent pointed at Mary and said, “Say, lookee there, now. You ever seen the like o’ that, Moon Face? A purty li’l Injun gal all dressed up like—”

  Prophet, whose anger was burning up into his ear tips, cut him off with: “You gents are botherin’ us who’s tryin’ to eat, so you’d best run along now. I think I hear the rest of your gang callin’ for you.”

  Both the curly-haired gent and Moon Face swung ar
ound toward Prophet, looking shocked and befuddled at having been addressed so disrespectfully.

  “Well, excuse me all to hell,” said the curly-haired gent, “but who the hell are you, friend?”

  “Lydia!” cried Mrs. Van Camp, who grabbed her daughter’s arm and pulled her out of the line of fire, where she’d been standing, frozen in fear.

  “I’m not your friend—that’s for damn sure,” Prophet said casually.

  The curly-haired brigand looked at the sawed-off shotgun resting on the table near Prophet’s right arm. Prophet was spooning stew into his mouth. He glanced up at the two brigands now as though they were pesky flies buzzing around his head.

  “You the shotgun guard?” asked Moon Face. His voice was several notches lower than the curly-haired gent’s.

  “Nope,” Prophet said, spooning another mouthful of the delicious stew into his mouth. “I’m the fella who just asked you two to leave, seein’ as how Mrs. Van Camp don’t want you here and you’re bein’ impolite.” He took another bite of the stew and glanced up at the pair once more, curling one half of his upper lip. “And, if you’ll forgive me fer sayin’ so, you stink to high heaven.”

  The newcomers shared a quick glance, faces coloring with rage.

  “What did you just say?” asked the curly-haired gent.

  Moon Face slid one of his three pistols from its holster. As he began to level the long-barreled .44 at Prophet, clicking back the hammer, Prophet picked up the Richards with his right hand, swung the barrel out away from the table, angled it toward the floor, rocked one hammer back, and squeezed the eyelash trigger.

  The blast sounded like angry thunder from a sudden storm.

  Moon Face’s right boot turned dark red.

  Moon Face triggered his Colt into the hard-packed earthen floor near his bloody boot, then dropped the gun.

  “Oh! Oh! Ohhh! ” he screamed as he hopped back on his good foot, falling backward into the curly-haired man.

  He screamed shrilly as he looked down in horror at blood oozing through the shredded leather of his boot. Beyond him, Prophet saw another man step quickly into the doorway. The man was silhouetted against the bright noon light, but Prophet saw him cross his arms on his belly and start to draw two revolvers.

  Prophet extended the Richards at him, triggered the second barrel, and blew him out the door.

  The man was dead so fast, he didn’t have time to scream. There was just a heavy thud as his body hit the ground outside the cabin.

  “Jesus! ” Beermeister cried, half rising then falling back into his chair, him and the chair tumbling backward and hitting the floor with a crash.

  Chapter 8

  Prophet set the smoking shotgun on the table. As the curly-haired gent flung the howling Moon Face away from him with a shrill curse and reached for his pistols, Prophet leveled his Peacemaker on him and ratcheted back the hammer.

  Lou gave a challenging half grin.

  The curly-haired gent dropped his half-drawn Remington back into its holster and slowly raised his hands. “Now,” he said, taking a step backward. “ Now . . . just . . .”

  “Take them pistols out and drop ’em on the floor. Every one you got, includin’ any aces in the hole.”

  Out the window behind the curly-haired gent, Prophet could see Seymour and Plumb and both hostlers running toward the cabin. The jehu and the shotgun messenger had their pistols drawn. Keeping his tense gaze on Prophet, the curly-haired gent slowly slipped both his visible pistols from their holsters and tossed them to the floor.

  “Aces, too,” Prophet said, pitching his voice threateningly.

  The curly-haired gent reached into his duster and withdrew another revolver from a shoulder holster. When he’d tossed it onto the floor, he lifted his right foot and pulled a small-caliber, pearl-gripped over-and-under pocket popper from the well of his boot. He dropped that down with the others.

  “Anything else?” Prophet asked, again with threat.

  He had to speak loudly enough to be heard against Moon Face’s wails. The moonfaced brigand was flopping around on the floor near the curly-haired gent’s feet, blood from his ruined right foot pooling on the floor. He was the only one making any noise. The others in the cabin were frozen in place, staring in shock at the wounded outlaw.

  Beermeister sat on the floor near his chair, also staring in shock at Moon Face’s bloody foot. The shredded leather of the man’s boot made it apparent that he was now missing most of that foot’s toes.

  The curly-haired gent reached up over his head and pulled an Arkansas toothpick from a sheath strapped to the back of his neck. He tossed that down with his guns.

  “Who you ridin’ for?” Prophet asked him.

  Before the curly-haired gent could respond, Seymour ran into the cabin. Plumb ran in behind him, stepping over the dead man lying outside the front door.

  “What the hell... ?” Seymour said, scowling above his long, tangled beard. Stepping sideways around the curly-haired gent, he looked at the howling Moon Face then pointed his cocked .44 at the curly-haired gent and said, “Why, Jimmy Wells . . .”

  “Who’s Jimmy Wells?” Prophet asked.

  “No-account peckerwood,” Seymour said, flaring his nostrils. “Hind-tit calf who grew up in the badlands, took to the long coulees when he was still knee-high to a short-legged lizard.”

  “Drop dead, you old buzzard!”

  Seymour raised his pistol at Wells’s head and narrowed one eye.

  Wells lurched back in terror, raising his hands higher and yelling, “I ain’t armed, you old fool!”

  “Old fool, am I?” Seymour railed, and began tightening his right index finger around his Schofield’s trigger.

  “Hold on, hold on,” Prophet said. “Don’t kill him just yet, Mort. I wanna know who he’s ridin’ with.”

  “He’s ridin’ with the bunch who killed my brother!”

  All eyes turned to Lydia standing by her mother, steam wafting up from the range behind them. She glared at Wells, brown eyes glistening with anger. “I saw you skulking around here that day. Stalking the trail, just like you always are, lookin’ for folks to rob . . . or worse!”

  She screamed that last. Her mother grabbed her and pulled her against her, and Lydia sobbed, “Oh, Mother, he killed James!”

  Mrs. Van Camp held her daughter’s head taut to her chest and glared at Jimmy Wells, who laughed and said, “I don’t know what she’s talkin’ about. Why, she’s as cork-headed as her fool brother!”

  Lydia jerked around and bolted toward Wells, her fists clenched, but Mrs. Van Camp grabbed her and pulled her against her once more.

  Wells laughed. “She’s crazy. Look at her. Crazy as a rabid skunk!”

  Prophet had risen from his chair. Now he walked up to Wells. As Wells turned toward him, laughter still in the outlaw’s eyes, Prophet slammed the barrel of his Colt against the man’s left temple. Wells yelped and fell, howling.

  “Get him outside,” Prophet told Seymour.

  While the jehu and J. W. Plumb half carried and half dragged the raging, cursing Wells out the door, Prophet slung his barn blaster over his shoulder and dragged the wailing Moon Face outside by his shirt collar. The hostlers were standing around the dead man, looking baffled and worried. Seymour told them to get back to work on the coach’s wheel, and when both men had jogged back to the barn, where the stage was now parked, Prophet, Seymour, and J. W. Plumb looked around warily.

  “The rest of their gang is likely skulkin’ around here somewhere,” Seymour said.

  Wells was on his hands and knees, one hand clamped to his bloody left temple. He laughed jeeringly as he looked up and slid his glance from Prophet to the jehu and the messenger. “You fellas is sooo dead for what you just done to me an’ Moon Face. I mean, you’re so dead the coyotes that’s gonna feed on you might as well break out the forks and knives right now!”

  Prophet looked around. The sun-splashed relay station yard was eerily quiet. There was no movement in the chalky buttes
surrounding the place, nor in the scattered, stunted cottonwoods standing hunched at their bases, the breeze making the leaves flash silver and gold.

  Lou turned to Mort Seymour. “What’re you carryin’?”

  “Not a damn thing except you, Mr. Beermeister, and the ladies.”

  “No strongbox?”

  “Nope,” said Plumb, shaking his head.

  Prophet turned to Wells. “That’s what you were wondering, weren’t you? That’s why you and your two friends came skulking around. You were scouting the coach and passengers to see if there was anything worth hitting the stage for, farther on down the line, most likely.”

  “A pox on you!!” Wells raged, climbing awkwardly to his feet. He’d lost his hat inside the cabin, and his curly chestnut hair hung in his eyes. Blood glistened on his torn left temple. “You had no cause to pistol-whip me like that. No cause at all.” He pointed at Prophet. “You’re gonna pay for that, big fella!”

  Prophet raised his Colt once more as he lunged at Wells.

  Wells gave a yelp as he stumbled backward. He tripped over the groaning Moon Face and hit the dirt with another shrill curse.

  Prophet turned to Seymour. “That’s what they were doing. They were scouting us. The rest of the gang is likely on the lurk in them buttes yonder. They’re probably glassing us right now.”

  “No doubt,” Seymour said.

  “Really? You think so?” Plumb stomped around, lifting both hands and waving his middle fingers at the buttes. “There—take that, you son of bitches!” He laughed caustically. “There you go—them birdies is for you!”

  Prophet looked at the shotgun messenger skeptically.

  Seymour looked down at Wells. “What’re we gonna do with him?”

  “We’ll take him,” Prophet said. “Maybe the gang won’t hit us if we got one of their own aboard. Of course, they probably don’t care if he lives or dies any more than we do, but it’s worth a shot. No point in lettin’ him go. We’ll use him for leverage and then you can turn him over to the law when you get to Deadwood.”