Stagecoach to Purgatory

by Peter Brandvold

  The gunfire fell silent after that.

  Still Prophet ran, following the course of the ancient riverbed as it doglegged to his left. He ran hard, scissoring his arms and legs, the Richards jostling down his back. He needed cover, but, looking around, he saw none. As he continued to run, however, another, smaller canyon opened before him, in the middle of the main canyon floor.

  A second canyon inside the first one?

  When he got to the edge of the second cut, he saw that that was exactly what it was. A secondary canyon roughly twenty feet wide and with chalky, crenelated walls. Its eroded floor was roughly ten feet below Prophet, who looked for a way down, as the secondary canyon appeared to continue to follow the main one, possibly offering better cover.

  Voices rose behind Prophet, echoing. He looked behind to see two men running toward him along the canyon floor—the older gent and the last young one. The older gent held back a little, running stiffly, limping.

  “There he is!” the younger man shouted, pointing.

  Prophet lunged into another run along the lip of the secondary canyon. He cast his gaze ahead, looking desperately for an easy way into the second cut.

  Rifles bellowed behind him, the reports echoing shrilly off the main canyon’s walls. A bullet screeched off a rock to Prophet’s right. Suddenly, he felt as though he’d been smacked in the right temple with an iron fist. He staggered left, toward the secondary cut.

  The ground dropped away beneath him. He fell, rolled, dropped freely for maybe one second, and landed on something solid with a deep grunt as his breath was punched out of his lungs.

  He lay in grinding agony.

  Then, as the cobwebs began to clear a little, he realized he’d just tumbled into the second canyon. He heard himself groaning, writhing. Remembering the two men pursuing him, he forced his eyes open. Each lid weighed ten pounds. A dark crevice shone in the wall beside him. Instinctively, like a wounded animal, he crawled toward the assumed safety of the gap.

  He had no choice. There was nowhere else to go.

  He crawled into the gap, desperately clawing at the ground with his hands, gouging at it with the toes of his boots. The top of the narrow gap raked his head and shoulders. Cold dirt and pebbles rained down on him, slithered under his shirt collar and down his back.

  He squeezed his eyes closed against it. It was too dark to see anything, anyway.

  A snug fit. Damned snug. Probably snakes in here. He was in no condition to investigate. He was probably a dead man, anyway. His thoughts were quarter-formed. Only his animal instinct for survival was working now though the raw fear of death in a tight, dark place made his heart hammer.

  He could smell cool earth and roots and stone.

  He could also smell the copper smell of blood. Taste its coppery taste on his tongue.

  Consciousness bled away, as though a heavy hand had been placed over his face, pinching off his wind.

  He rested his forehead on his left forearm.

  Darkness.

  Chapter 16

  When he awoke he wasn’t sure if he were awake or dead.

  He couldn’t be dead because it was doubtful that dead people felt this bad. Did they feel anything at all?

  That’s not how he’d heard it was. He’d heard you didn’t feel anything. At least, you didn’t feel pain.

  Unless you’d made a pact with the devil, as Prophet himself had done. Then you felt hot, right? Hot and overworked.

  He’d sold his soul for a good time in his remaining years, as a reward of sorts for all the hell he’d endured during the war. In hell, you suffered deeply, but it was supposed to be hot there, and Prophet wasn’t hot here. He couldn’t smell the burning tang of butane, either. He couldn’t hear the screams of his fellow condemned swimming or treading water in that burning butane, either.

  Wouldn’t there be the bright orange of leaping flames?

  Wouldn’t he have a shovel in his hands? That had been part of the deal. In return for Ole Scratch giving him a good long time to drink and screw and gamble and generally stomp with his tail up on this side of the sod, Prophet was supposed to shovel coal throughout eternity, keeping the giant stoves stoked that boiled the propane that the poor devilish souls were condemned to swim in until hell froze over or time ran out—whichever came first.

  Shoveling coal had been part of the bargain. A foolish bargain, maybe, but then, Prophet hadn’t been in his right head in the years following the war. He probably still wasn’t, but that was another matter . . .

  No, dead folks didn’t feel the kind of physical agony he was feeling now.

  Dark here. Could be his grave. If so, he’d been buried alive!

  His heart lurched at the possibility of that. He’d dreamt such nightmares. But then he remembered the fall and the abrupt landing that had crushed the air out of him, and his crawl into what he’d hoped was the safety of a gap. Probably a notch cave that had revealed itself at the base of the secondary canyon’s wall.

  He lifted his head from his forearm, which, he realized, was slick and sticky and also crusty. With his own blood. His own partially dried blood that had leaked from the bullet crease in his forehead.

  He turned his head to his left. It was dark all around him but it seemed to be a little less dark in that direction. Cool air breathed at him from that direction, as well. He drew a lungful, wincing at the ache in his battered ribs and elsewhere, but feeling minimally refreshed by the air.

  But why was it dark? How long had he lain here? Long enough for night to have fallen while he’d been out?

  The earth pressed against him from above and below. He felt as though he were in the jaws of a cold, black, giant snake. The earth pressed against his right side, as well. But not from his left. That’s where he’d come from.

  He saw that his rifle lay against that side. He’d instinctively dragged it into the notch with him. He could feel the Richards rammed taut against his back, between his back and the ceiling of the narrow cave he’d sought safety in. The jaw of the Richards was digging into his back, on the right side about halfway between his shoulder and belt.

  He groaned.

  Damn, that hurt . . .

  He stared toward the notch’s opening, fresh air pushing against his face. If it were truly night, and that’s what it looked like out there from here, then his two pursuers—the older man and the younger one—must have long since given up on him. If they were out there waiting for him, they’d been waiting a long time.

  Nah, they’d most likely given him up for gone or dead.

  Only one way to find out.

  Prophet dug his fingers into the floor of the notch cave and pushed himself back and sideways, slithering along the ground. The Richards dug deeper into his back, twisting like the knife of a hateful opponent. Prophet grunted again, pushing, crawling, slithering out from his tight confines, loosing dirt and gravel as he did.

  His leg came free. Then his waist. Then his shoulders and, finally, his head. He slid the Richards around from his back and breathed a sigh of relief to be rid of that nagging discomfort. He rolled onto his back and took a deep breath of the fresh, cool night air.

  Night. It sure was. Prophet lay staring up at a black sky salted with twinkling stars. Just over the rim of the canyon toward what he thought was the southeast kited a sliver of waxing moon. The cool breeze raked across the canyon between the steeply sloping walls.

  Somewhere, an owl hooted. From somewhere else came the soft notes of . . . what?

  When the breeze lessened a little he heard it again.

  The melodic notes of a distant piano.

  A piano. He’d be damned.

  He lifted his hat, gritted his teeth against the agony in his head. In his right temple, more specifically. He must have caught a ricochet. He touched fingers to his head, felt the crusty blood. Some of it crusted, some of it gooey. Just beneath his hairline. His head felt as though a hammer were inside it, trying to smash his brainpan flat against an imaginary anvil.

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nbsp; He groaned again, gritted his teeth again as he heaved himself to a sitting position.

  “What the devil have I got myself into now?” he said, taking his head in his hands.

  Who in the hell was the second bunch of riders?

  Why in the hell had they tried to kill him?

  He tried to remember. To recall all the bits of his conversation with the older gent, all the incidents leading up to this, his sitting here in dire agony. But it was all a jumble in his mind.

  He knew only that he couldn’t stay out here all night. He wasn’t going to do any healing out here. He needed to get the gash in his head tended. He needed a couple of good, stiff shots of whiskey if not the whole bottle. He also needed, if he could hold it down, a plate of food. He hadn’t eaten since breakfast.

  Steeling himself against the increased agony in his head, he heaved himself to his feet. He picked up his rifle, brushed it off, and looked around. The secondary canyon stretched away on both sides. The southern slope of the primary canyon loomed darkly above, blotting out the stars halfway up to the zenith.

  Two slopes to climb. One a good two hundred feet high.

  He sighed, looked around again for a relatively easy way out of the secondary ravine. Finding none, and having no idea where one existed . . . if one existed . . . he strode off to his left. He supposed he chose left merely because from the right was where trouble had been. He’d walked only a few yards when he saw his hat clinging to a branch poking up out of the sand.

  He hadn’t thought of the hat. He was glad to have it back, though. He groaned as he bent forward, plucked it off the branch, and then set it gently on his aching head. He shouldered his rifle and continued to walk heavily, stumbling often, along the secondary wash.

  When he’d shambled sixty yards or so, he was relieved to see that the floor rose gradually, so that there was only an easy, gradual climb required to reach the base of the primary canyon. He just had to make his way around large chunks of clay and ado-belike sand and a few boulders that littered the tonguelike inclination and that had probably washed away from the steeper slopes on both sides of the canyon when the original floor had eroded away and dropped, forming the secondary canyon.

  When he reached the base of the primary cut, he sat on a large rock for a breather. He could have sat there all night, but the pain in his head wasn’t going away even with the lack of motion, so he again heaved himself to his feet. He looked up at the slope towering above him with dread.

  He cursed, moved forward, and began climbing.

  By the time he reached the top, he was understandably even more miserable than before. Crawling over the canyon’s lip onto the tableland, he slumped against the ground, raking air in and out of his battered lungs, his shirt sweat-basted to his torso. He wasn’t sure how long he’d lain there like a dead man, before the piano’s melodic notes drifted to him once more.

  He hadn’t heard the music since he’d started making his way out of the canyon. It must have stopped for a time. Now it was starting again. He lifted his head, somehow buoyed by the sound not just because it meant people and possibly whiskey and general physical comfort but because it was damned pleasing to the ear . . . even though he was hearing beneath the clang of cracked bells in his ears.

  He lifted his head, stared off in the direction of the ragged melody.

  The moon was higher now. It shed its wan, milky light on the rooftops of Jubilee, which was a murky collection of small, bulky shadows gathered on the prairie maybe two hundred yards straight southeast of him. The piano strains were the only sounds emanating from the town. He couldn’t see any flaming oil pots or lamplit windows. But, then, he was looking at it from its northern flank. When he got closer he’d no doubt spy signs of habitation.

  And, hopefully, signs of a bottle of whiskey, a plate of food, maybe a sawbones, a comforting doxie, and a warm feather mattress . . .

  All right, maybe the doxie and the feather mattress were too much to hope for. But he’d find the tangleleg and some food, by God . . .

  Of course, as he dragged his boot toes toward the dark town, following the continuing strains of the soft piano music, it occurred to him that he might very well find his assailants in Jubilee, as well. The thought didn’t deter him, however. He needed a sawbones, whiskey, and food, and he’d just have to find a way to elude the wolves while pursing those three needs.

  Shouldn’t be too hard, it being night . . .

  He walked for what seemed a long time but probably wasn’t much more than fifteen or twenty minutes. Abandoned shacks and shanties and falling-down stock pens shoved up around him. There was an old windmill and several privies. The windmill’s two remaining blades creaked like a dying old witch when the breeze picked up.

  No lights shone in any of the shanties. The only sounds were the piano, the windmill, the breeze, and rodents rustling around in the knee-high grass.

  Several times Prophet stumbled over unseen trash, old planks, and discarded tools, including a hay rake hidden in the brush beneath his boots.

  Distantly, coyotes yammered.

  He continued to follow the piano chords to the rear of a bank of large buildings. The buildings doubtless fronted Jubilee’s main street, predictably called Jubilee Street. The structures were mostly built of log with a few of board-and-batten and one of stone. The stone one was the bank, Prophet remembered. Aside from the bank, all of the structures he could see looked rickety and abandoned, weeds growing tall and ragged along their foundations. Even a few small trees.

  He stole up the badly trash-littered gap between two of the buildings and stopped, finding himself staring out onto Jubilee Street, as he’d expected.

  “Christ,” he said, shunting his gaze from right to left along the broad thoroughfare.

  Or what had once been a thoroughfare. Now it resembled the deserted canyon he’d just left. The buildings on both sides of the street were dark and haggard. Weeds grew up between the rotted slats of the boardwalks fronting the old business establishments. Windows and doors were boarded up. Some windows had been broken out. Awning roofs sagged severely.

  Jubilee Street resembled the main street of a ghost town, which it obviously was.

  Prophet walked a few paces to his right, surveyed the front of the bank. The large front window was also boarded over. Even the bank was closed.

  The piano music had faded but Prophet turned now to stare east along the street. That’s the direction from which the music had come. There was a light up that way. It came from an oil pot set out on the street before one of the businesses. There also appeared to be a light in the window of the building the oil pot fronted. A lone horse was tied to a hitchrack.

  Prophet pressed two fingers to his head, trying in vain to quell the ceaseless throb of the bullet burn. His feet were getting heavier. His knees weaker.

  He stumbled along like an old drunk as he made his way along the street. The smell of the burning oil laced the breeze. Smoke fluttered around the pot and on the boardwalk fronting the Lazy Day Saloon.

  At least one saloon was still open. Nothing else appeared to be. The last time he’d ridden through Jubilee, the Lazy Day and the Three-Legged Dog had been the town’s two remaining watering holes. Now there was only the Lazy Day, it appeared. There was no light on up the street where the Three-Legged Dog had once been.

  Prophet stumbled up past the oil pot and the lone horse toward the covered boardwalk, saw the large, badly faded sign mounted above the boardwalk’s sagging awning which read LAZY DAY with Day tilted at an angle. A bullet had punched a ragged hole through the tail of the y.

  The horse gave a curious whicker as Prophet shambled up onto the boardwalk and stopped to peer over the batwings. A couple of lanterns offered a watery amber light that couldn’t compete with the saloon’s inky shadows.

  The bar ran down the room on Prophet’s left. There were a dozen or so tables and chairs to his right. One man sat at one of the tables, his head on his arms. He was snoring softly. At the rear,
a staircase climbed to the second story. A piano sat near the base of the stairs, and just as Prophet focused on it, gentle notes began to ebb once more.

  That’s when he saw that someone was sitting behind it. He could barely make out the player in the weak light angling that way from the lanterns. The player’s head bobbed slowly as the notes drifted gently, melodically through the air. Prophet recognized the tune, “The Willows of Old Ohio.”

  Prophet smiled as the notes soothed him.

  He stumbled forward through the batwings and into the saloon, trying to walk lightly so as not to startle the piano player. He wanted the song to continue. He took another step, then another, setting each heavy boot down carefully. He took one more step, vaguely angling toward the sanctuary of a near table and a chair, but then his right knee buckled.

  Then the other one buckled. Both knees hit the floor with a thunderous boom!

  “Oh!” said the piano player with a start, sending a loud, resounding off-key note bolting about the room.

  “Who’s there?” a woman called, frightened.

  Prophet sagged forward on hands and knees, the saloon’s dark floor pitching around him. He heard the bark of chair legs scraping across the floor. Sharp heels stomped toward him. He smelled her before he saw her. He thought he recognized the scent—a hint of raspberry blossoms and lime.

  She stopped before him, a safe six feet away. He saw only the billowing folds of her dark green gown, the hem edged with white lace. He saw the toes of her high-heeled, gold-buckled, black patent shoes.

  “My God, what’s wrong?”

  The voice was familiar.

  No. Couldn’t be.

  Prophet lifted his head, wincing against the hammer smashing incessantly against his brain. He stared up at her, squinting, trying to make her out.

  “L-Lola?”