Stagecoach to Purgatory

by Peter Brandvold

  “I heard strange sounds coming from beneath the floor. Groaning, whimpering sounds. I asked about it and the man only chuckled and shook his head. The wife and daughter stared down at their plates. I got up and walked over to a cellar door, and the man tried to come up behind me to bash me over the head with the locking plank for his cabin door. I laid him out with the barrel of my Colt, then lit a lamp and went down into that cellar.”

  She stopped, pressed her forehead more snugly against Prophet’s side.

  Lou reached down and ran his hands through her hair. “What was down there?”

  “A dozen girls,” Louisa said in a little-girl voice of her own, voice quavering slightly. “A dozen girls of various ages. Some white. Some Indian. One black girl. All chained up. Filth all around. He’d been holding them there. Two of the oldest ones were pregnant.”

  “Jesus.”

  “Turns out that girls had been disappearing from around Amarillo for years. He’d been taking them. Him and his wife.”

  Prophet sighed.

  “What makes people do such things, Lou?”

  “I wish I knew.”

  “Now, will you give me a drink?”

  “No.”

  She hardened her voice. “You’re rotten.”

  “I know. Jonas isn’t. When we’re done with Butters, you stay here with Jonas. Settle down, finally. Settle down with a man who dresses nice and don’t stink.”

  “You’re jealous.”

  “Just the same, you do it.”

  Keeping her forehead pressed taut against Prophet’s side, she said softly, “Yeah.”

  Chapter 9

  Birds woke Prophet early the next morning.

  He lifted his head from the pillow, blinking groggily and looking around. The pale light of false dawn was pushing through the room’s two windows. In the dim light he could see Louisa beside him, turned away from him, curled in a tight ball, her head on the second pillow.

  Her breath was soft, raspy. Her shoulders rose and fell slowly, steadily as she breathed.

  Prophet rose slowly. It was still early. He wanted his partner to get all the shut-eye she could before they hit the trail after Butters. He’d never seen her drunk before last night, let alone as drunk as she’d been last night.

  He winced, imagining how her head was going to grieve her when she woke. Then his upper lip curled a devilish smile. Now she’d know how he often felt. Having now sinned herself, maybe she’d finally get off her high horse about Prophet’s bad behavior.

  As he rose from the bed, Louisa stirred a little. Groaned. Then she must have fallen back asleep, for her deep, steady breaths resumed.

  “That’s right, darlin’—you just sleep,” he whispered. “I’ll wake you in another hour.”

  First, he’d go out and get a jug of water and one of coffee.

  She’d need plenty of both.

  Prophet dressed quietly and wrapped his gun belt and holstered Colt around his waist. He glanced at Louisa once more. She lay curled as she’d been before. He moved to the door, unlocked it, and stepped into the hall. He’d just started to draw the door closed behind him when he stopped suddenly and dropped his hand to his revolver.

  A man stood before him.

  “Mornin’, Lou,” Jonas Ford said. “I figured you’d be up by now.”

  Prophet became all too aware of the half-open door behind him.

  “Uh . . . mornin’, Jonas.”

  “I was just wondering if . . . uh . . . you’d seen Louisa yet this morning. I just stopped by her room to see how she was feeling, but she didn’t—”

  Behind Prophet, the bed squawked as Louisa moved on it. Her sleep-ragged voice: “Lou?”

  Ford’s lower jaw dropped an inch. His mouth opened but it took a second before he said, “Oh . . .” He canted his head slightly to look into the room, toward the bed. “Oh . . .” he said again.

  “Lou, you’re not starting after Butters by yourself, are you?” Louisa yelled, gravel-voiced.

  Prophet winced as he reached behind him for the doorknob and drew the door closed.

  “It’s not what you think, Jonas,” he said, keeping his voice low. “She stopped by my room last night. She was embarrassed about—well, you know. She was pretty tipsy. I’ve never seen her drink anything but cold milk or sarsaparilla. Doesn’t take much to get her pie-eyed. She was awful embarrassed and just wanted to unload on me about it. She crawled into my bed and fell asleep. Fully clothed. All night long.”

  “She feels pretty comfortable around you, doesn’t she, Lou?”

  “Well, we’ve been partners a long time.”

  “I see.” Ford looked troubled standing there in his impeccable suit and black Stetson, thumbs hooked behind his black leather cartridge belt. “I guess . . . I guess riding together . . . doing what you do . . . would draw you pretty tight.”

  The door opened behind Prophet. He swiveled his head to see Louisa standing in the doorway. She looked as though she’d been swept up by a Texas tornado and deposited somewhere in the wilds of western Minnesota.

  Her hair was a tangled mess, matted in places. Her face was drawn and sallow. She looked a specter of her former self. Her blouse was half-unbuttoned, showing a good bit of cleavage below her disheveled, white cambric chemise.

  She stared past Prophet at Jonas Ford.

  None of them said anything for nearly thirty seconds.

  Louisa stared in mute horror at Ford.

  “Oh God!” she finally yowled, and slammed the door.

  Running footsteps sounded inside the room. They were followed by sounds of raucous vomiting.

  Prophet turned to Ford, who stared in shocked silence at the door. Lou chuckled his embarrassment and said, “Like I was sayin’, Jonas—she’s more accustomed to cold milk and sarsaparilla.”

  “I think I get your meaning, Lou.”

  Prophet canted his head and walked a few steps away from the door, until Louisa’s vomiting was appropriately muffled. Ford followed him.

  “Look, Jonas, Louisa sets store by you a lot. I can tell.”

  “Well, I guess it’s no secret I fancy her, too. I didn’t want to offend her last night, but—”

  “Well, heck, you would have offended me if you hadn’t kicked her out of your room, the state she was in!” Prophet said with a laugh. “I hope you won’t hold this against her. She’s a good gal, Louisa is.”

  “I know she is.”

  “But she’s got a lot of green in her, Jonas. She’s a broomtail mare. Been runnin’ wild in the wide-open for a long time, mostly alone. It’s gonna take some time . . . and patience . . . to get her gentled, if you catch my drift. But she does want to be gentled. Maybe not tamed but gentled. And trusted. She’d make a good husband a good wife someday. And she’d make a passel of sprouts a good ma. But, like I say . . .”

  “It’s gonna take some time.”

  “That’s right.”

  “I understand.” Ford gave a sheepish smile. “Now, I guess I’ve just embarrassed her further. Not quite sure what to do about that . . .”

  “Just give her some time. She’ll feel better once she’s on the trail after Butters.”

  Ford nodded.

  “About that, Jonas . . .”

  “About Butters?”

  “Yeah. I got an idea about how to start trackin’ him. Why don’t we go down to the dining room and palaver over mud?”

  * * *

  Later that afternoon, Prophet lay prone atop a sandy butte roughly ten miles south of Carson’s Wash.

  It was hot. Cicadas buzzed. A hot, dry breeze caressed the bounty hunter’s cheeks like sandpaper.

  Prophet trained his spyglass across the wash that twisted around the base of the bluff, toward a shabby collection of mud-brick shacks and shanties roughly two hundred yards away. They slumped in a scattered stand of dusty mesquites.

  A few horses moved in a corral. That was the only movement that Prophet could see. There was a main shack—a long, low, L-shaped cabin with a fro
nt veranda propped on fieldstones, and a fieldstone chimney climbing the far-left wall. No movement around the shack, either, but tack and other gear were piled on the veranda. That and the horses meant the place was likely occupied.

  Prophet lowered the spyglass. He turned to his right and gave a low, clipped whistle through his teeth. Faintly, he heard the crack of Louisa’s hand against the rear of Tom Lowry’s horse.

  He stared forward, toward the humble ranch yard, until footsteps rose off his right flank. He glanced over that shoulder to see Louisa climbing up the narrow trail from the wash, holding her Winchester in her right gloved hand. She had two canteens slung over her shoulders. She’d been drinking water like a parched she-lion all day, but she was still a little green around the gills.

  Crouching, she strode quickly up to Prophet, breathing hard from the climb, and dropped belly down beside him. “This has got to be your most lamebrained scheme so far, and that’s saying a lot.”

  “You’re just another Prophet doubter, Miss Bonnyventure.”

  “You know there’s no y in my last name. You say it that way whenever you feel threatened by my superior intelligence.”

  Prophet chuckled as he watched Lowry’s claybank trot out from the base of the bluff and into his field of vision, heading in the direction of the Lowry ranch. Tom Lowry’s blanket-wrapped body was tied belly down across the dead man’s saddle. It moved stiffly beneath the blanket as the horse climbed up out of the wash and trotted straight toward the ranch headquarters. It likely smelled home as well as hay and water.

  Pale dust rose from the dirt it churched with its shod hooves.

  “You hide an’ watch, Miss Bonnyventure,” Prophet said, raising his spyglass to watch the horse as well as the L-shaped shack it was heading for.

  The horse was a hundred yards away from the ranch yard, and closing.

  To Prophet’s left, Louisa took a long drink from one of her canteens. She wiped her lips with a gloved hand and said, “What did you tell Jonas?”

  Until now, she hadn’t spoken a single word about last night or this morning.

  Prophet shrugged. “I told him you’d had better nights.”

  “I mean about him finding me in your room. In your bed.”

  “I told him it wasn’t your fault you couldn’t resist my charms.”

  “Lou!”

  Prophet chuckled. “Oh, don’t get your bloomers twisted. I told him how it really was. You kept your clothes on all night. I told him you fancied him and I hoped he’d give you another chance.”

  “What’d he say to that?”

  Prophet stared through the spyglass. The clay was just now entering the Lowry yard and swinging past the house’s left-front corner. It was heading toward the corral. One of the horses in the corral saw the newcomer and strolled slowly over to the gate. Prophet saw the corralled horse’s left wither ripple. The greeting whinny drifted to his ears on the ratcheting breeze.

  The clay approached the corral gate, stopped, and lowered its head. It gave its tail a single sharp switch.

  Prophet glanced at Louisa. “Ford’s gonna give you another chance.”

  He peered through the spyglass toward the house.

  “Damn,” he said.

  “What is it?”

  “Nothin’. Not a damn thing.”

  “I told you.”

  Prophet stared at the house. No movement. The clay stood statue-still in front of the corral. The horse that had greeted it stood facing it from only a few feet away, its head also lowered in the still, silent, mysterious communion of horses.

  “If someone’s there, surely they’d have come out and checked out that hoss,” Prophet said in frustration, lowering the spyglass and staring toward the ranch yard with his naked eyes. “How does a hoss that is obviously carrying a dead man waltz into your yard and you don’t come outside and check it out?”

  “Maybe because they know it’s a trap.”

  “But it ain’t no trap! I just wanna get some sense of who’s there. How many. And if Butters is there!”

  “We should have ridden into the yard with Lowry. That would have gotten a reaction.”

  “It likely would have gotten the same reaction I got just outside of Carson’s Wash yesterday afternoon. I avoided that bullet. Odds are gettin’ steeper and steeper I’m going to keep avoiding all the ones that get tossed my way!”

  “Just because you think Lowry was sent to bushwhack you by Butters doesn’t mean Butters is here at the Lowry ranch. Besides, how would Butters even know you were on the way to run him down? We’re ten miles from town!”

  “Word travels fast even this far out in the wild an’ woolly,” Prophet said, peering again through the glass. “An’ Jonas said himself he didn’t see any reason to keep it a secret. Besides, folks have been seein’ you in Carson’s Wash for a week, followin’ Jonas around all daisy-eyed. Someone who knows we ride together might have figured I’d be there sooner or later, an’ sent word to Butters.”

  “I wasn’t following Jonas around all daisy-eyed !”

  “I don’t know, when I first seen you and Jonas together in his office, you sure looked daisy-eyed to me.” Prophet winged a brow at her. “You are gonna stay on here, aren’t ya? After this is done? I mean, if I tucked my tail between my legs every time I embarrassed myself, I’d . . .”

  “Lou?”

  “What?”

  “Shut up. Let’s just get this done.”

  “That’s what I’m tryin’ to do, damnit!” Prophet looked through the spyglass again, adjusting the focus.

  “Give me that.”

  Louisa grabbed the glass away from him. She lifted it to her right eye. She stared for ten seconds at the ranch house then slid the spyglass to and fro, inspecting the entire yard.

  Finally, she handed the glass back to Prophet. “No one’s there. Someone’s living there, but they’re not there now. We’d have seen some sign by now.”

  “How much you wanna bet?”

  Louisa rolled her eyes. “Five silver dollars.”

  “Done.” Prophet extended his hand. She rolled her eyes again as she let him shake hers.

  “Let’s not get in no hurry, now,” Prophet said, crabbing back away from the lip of the butte.

  As Louisa followed suit, Lou said, “I’ll ride around to the south side and move in slow-like. You come in from the north. I’ll go in first and check out the shack. You cover me from the corral area.”

  Prophet followed the trail into the wash in which he and Louisa had tied their horses out of sight of the ranch yard. As he approached Mean and Ugly, Louisa said behind him, “Lou?”

  Prophet untied Mean’s reins from a gnarled ironwood and turned to her.

  She untied her pinto’s reins and said, frowning down at the reins in her hand, “Were you really jealous of Jonas?”

  Prophet grinned. “Bad enough to wanna shoot him in both knees.”

  Louisa’s cheeks flushed as she continued to stare down at the reins in her hand.

  “What about you?” Prophet asked her. “Were you jealous of Phoebe Dahlstrom?”

  Louisa looked up at him with cool insouciance. “No.”

  She toed a stirrup and stepped into her saddle.

  Chapter 10

  “Polecat,” Prophet grunted as he watched his partner ride off down the wash, heading north.

  The bounty hunter stepped up onto Mean and Ugly’s back and also rode off down the wash. His direction was south. The bed of the wash was cut deep enough that he didn’t think he could be seen from the ranch house two hundred yards away, but he held his hat and crouched just to make sure.

  When he’d ridden at least a hundred yards south, he turned Mean up out of the wash and, keeping thick chaparral between him and the house, rode east toward the ranch. He started to be able to see the mud buildings after about ten minutes of riding.

  Stopping the horse in a thick tangle of brush and cactus, he dismounted, looped the reins around a sotol stalk, and removed his spurs. He left h
is sawed-off shotgun hanging from the horn of his saddle. He dropped the spurs into a saddlebag then shucked his Winchester from its sheath.

  Slowly, he walked toward the house, its south side taking shape before him through the brush. There were two windows on the facing side of the house.

  Still no movement.

  The only sounds were the crunch of the gravel and mesquite beans beneath his boots, the breeze, desert birds, and cicadas. The pulsing hum of the cicadas seemed to match the pulselike throb of the sun hammering the house’s bleached adobe bricks across which the breeze slid the shadows of bobbing brush and tree limbs.

  Prophet moved up to the house. He was out in the open now, in plain view if anyone was watching from a window. Quietly, he levered a shell into the Winchester’s action, mounted the three rotting steps of the moldering front veranda, and stepped up to the front door.

  The two windows to each side of the door were covered with heavy flour sack curtains. He tried the door latch. Locked. Probably barred from within.

  He stepped to the window right of the door and rammed the butt of his Winchester through it, loudly shattering the glass. He stepped back from the window and pressed his back to the cabin’s front wall, waiting for possible bullets. When none came, he slowly turned to the window, slid the curtain aside with his gun barrel, and peered inside.

  His breath caught in his throat when he saw a blond young woman of maybe sixteen standing against the brick wall to his right, between a cupboard and a range. A stooped, spidery-looking woman stood beside her. The blonde, dressed in a plain wool dress, had an arm draped protectively around the old woman’s spindly shoulders.

  The blonde’s blue eyes were sharp with fear as she looked at Prophet and said, “He ain’t here!”

  “Who?” Prophet said.

  There was a thud and a scrape of door hinges somewhere in the back of the shack.

  Crouching, Prophet stepped through the window.

  “You two stay here!”

  Prophet pushed through a curtained doorway and ran down a short hall. A door was open on his right. He turned to peer into a bedroom. A brass-framed bed nearly filled the room. The covers were thrown back. The sheets were bloodstained. The room smelled like a neglected slop bucket.