“Come on,” Prophet said, booting Mean and Ugly ahead. “Let’s get a move on.”
They continued along the winding trail through the low, rolling hogbacks, their dust sifting in the brassy sunlight. In the early afternoon, they rode up a steep, broad bench to see the little town of Corazon nestling in the sage and pinyon of the broad valley below. The town’s mostly rough wooden buildings—a motley collection scattered around the doglegging main drag called Brush Street—looked stark and forlorn.
It sat in the valley between the No-Waters behind Prophet and the vaster, higher San Mateos beyond the town to the east. The population was a little over five hundred—Mexicans as well as Anglos. A supply town for the surrounding ranches, mostly, was Corazon. The stage trail wound in from the sage-covered hills to meet Brush Street at its southern end and continued on out beyond where the town stopped abruptly at its northernmost fringe, curving toward Springerville, Show Low, the Fort Apache Agency, and the even more remote camps along Arizona Territory’s Mogollon Rim.
The trail that Prophet’s party was traveling bisected the town’s southwest side, becoming a street of sorts sheathed by chicken coops and goat pens, a few humble little houses. It intersected Brush Street in the town’s center.
Near the intersection, a stoop-shouldered gent with coarse gray hair hanging down from his bald, sun-darkened pate stepped out of his shop holding a broom. He glanced at Prophet and shook his head anxiously, holding the broom beneath his chin. He tossed his head toward the intersection on his right, where there was apparently a dangerous ruckus building.
“What is it?” Prophet said, drawing Mean and Ugly to a halt before the small, narrow pink-painted CRUMB’S ROOTS, SUNDRY NATURAL ELIXIRS, AND FORTUNE TELLING shop.
“Law business,” Crumb said quietly, thumbing his small, wire-rimmed spectacles up his nose. “It’s Marshal Max Utter. Please don’t distract him. He’s all the law we have!”
Just then a raspy, slightly hoarse voice yelled from the main street ahead, “Get on out here, Roy Devlin. You, too, Johnny Reeves. Get on out here before I come and blow you outta that whore’s crib with my shotgun!”
The man guffawed, sending echoes pinwheeling over the otherwise quiet town.
7
AS THE HOARSE laughter continued to echo, Prophet nudged Mean and Ugly a little farther forward until he could see around the corner of the woman’s hat shop to his right. Town Marshal Max Utter sat his wheelchair about fifty yards up the main street, in the street’s dead center, facing down past Prophet’s left.
Utter was a big man with skinny, near-useless legs in black broadcloth, and an enormous belly pushing out his white shirt and black wool vest trimmed with a gold-washed chain. Two big Colt pistols jutted from holsters strapped to his chair arms, up high and in easy reach. A long, double-barreled shotgun rested across the crippled lawman’s lap.
Prophet swung his gaze to his left, where a man was slinking slowly out of a whorehouse on the far side of Brush Street. Another slunk out behind him, one dressed in a top hat and a clawhammer coat, the other in a cream duster and with a big, silver-trimmed Mexican sombrero tipped back on his head.
Both were Anglos. The man in the top hat was a red-head with the purple-lensed glasses favored by cardsharps. The other had long sandy hair hanging to his shoulders and a clean-shaven, pockmarked face.
One after another, they sidestepped off the whorehouse’s porch and into the street, looking bleary-eyed from drink. They’d both been holed up in the crib for a time, it appeared, and hadn’t exactly been ready to rise and shine. The bespectacled gent’s fly was unbuttoned, the tail of his white-striped pink shirt poking out the opening. The long-haired gent was still tucking in his shirttails and smacking his lips, narrowing one eye against the sun, which the sheriff had wisely positioned in his favor.
The crib they’d just left was a rough-hewn side shed sloping off the north wall of the Nova Saloon, a three-story structure that wasn’t much wider than its whorehouse addition. It abutted the San Mateo Bank & Trust—a boxlike adobe hovel with a plank door and one front window. The insubstantial saloon building, propped on low stone pilings, looked as though it could tumble into jackstraws at the first chill winter wind whistling down from the Rim.
“What the hell you want, old man?” the man in the purple glasses asked as he wandered out to the middle of the street, folding the right side of his clawhammer coat back behind an ivory-gripped Smith & Wesson.
“It’s been brought to my attention, Mr. Devlin, that you and your scoundrel sidekick, Mr. Reeves, have not only been cheating at cards for the past three days here in Corazon, but that you cut one of Miss Betsy’s girls. Cut a finger off her right hand.”
Devlin glanced at the long-haired Reeves walking out to join him and stopping about ten feet away from him.
“That you not only cut off the poor girl’s finger, but that you chopped it up and ate it in front of her.” Utter paused, tipping his gray-hatted head to one side like a preacher waiting to see how his message had been received by his congregation. “After which,” the marshal added, “Miss Betsy asked you to leave her premises, and you refused.”
“Well, hell, Marshal,” Reeves said, turning to face the lawman and sliding the left flap of his duster back behind his short-barreled Remington and also revealing a second pistol jutting up over his flat belly from the waistband of his trousers. “We was fixin’ to leave this mornin’ just as soon as we drowned the worms in our throats and had a bite to eat.”
“You was, was you?”
“We was,” agreed the bespectacled Devlin. “And that’s a bonded fact. Now, if you’d quit caterwaulin’ out here like a damn catamount, we’ll just do that and be on our way. If you like, I’ll even apologize to Miss Betsy for the finger episode.”
“Too late for that. I’m haulin’ you both into the hoosegow where you’ll wait and see what the circuit judge has to say about your less-than-poor behavior here in my fair city. And, in the meantime, you’ll be relieved of all of your misbegotten poker winnings. They’ll be returned to the men you fleeced with the use of a card file and by adding weights to the Nova’s roulette wheel. Anything left over will be paid to the whore whose hand you mangled.”
Devlin jerked a finger at the marshal. “I was drunk when I mangled that hand, Sheriff!”
“Yeah, a man ain’t responsible for what he does when he’s drunk,” said Reeves, hitching his shell belt up his hips and adjusting the handle of his belly gun.
“Get your hands away from them hoglegs, Reeves.” Marshal Utter gave them both the devil’s stare, propping his elbows on the arms of his wheelchair, just behind the upward-jutting Colts. “Now, very slow, unbuckle them belts and let ’em drop to the street.”
Devlin grinned mockingly. “Make up your mind, Marshal. Do you want our hands near our hoglegs or don’t—?”
He cut himself off abruptly as his left hand snaked across his waist to cover the butt of his cross-draw Smith & Wesson. His friend reached for his own weapons an eighth of a second later. Another eighth of a second after that, the big Colt filling Max Utter’s right fist popped. Then the one in his left fist, extended straight out in front of him and angled toward Devlin, stabbed smoke and fire.
The reports sounded like two tied-together firecrackers.
Prophet had jerked with a start at the first report and shuttled his incredulous gaze between the marshal and the two hard cases in the street only a few yards to his right. Devlin was the only one who grunted and bounded back a step as Utter’s .45 round tore through his paisley vest, causing Devlin’s string tie to leap. Devlin had his gun only half raised. As he staggered farther backward, groaning through gritted teeth, he raised the gun slightly higher and swung it toward Utter.
Utter’s right hand gun roared again, but the slug flew slightly wide and plunked into the street behind the purple-spectacled hard case.
Utter fired again quickly, hardening his jaws in frustration, and watched as Devlin was punched straig
ht back to hit the street spread-eagle on his back. Blood pumped through the hole in the dead center of his chest.
Meanwhile, Prophet wondered if Reeves had been hit at all. The long-haired outlaw just stood staring blank-faced toward Max Utter. Both his hands, each clutching a cocked revolver, hung straight down at his sides.
Was he giving himself up?
Suddenly, the gun in the man’s left hand roared, blowing up dust in the street about six inches from Reeves’s spurred boot. Then the hard case made a bizarre, high-pitched sighing sound and sagged straight back on his heels, hands continuing to hang straight down at his sides, until he, like Devlin, had smacked the ground hard on his back.
Obviously, he’d been dead before he hit, because he’d done nothing to break his fall.
Prophet glanced at Louisa, who’d ridden up beside him to watch the show. She arched an appreciative brow. Prophet shuttled his gaze back to Max Utter, who was holstering his Colts inside his chair arms and wagging his head in frustration.
“Nice shootin’, Marshal,” Prophet said as he booted Mean and Ugly slowly forward.
Utter jerked his head toward him with a start, the surprised light in his eyes softening when he recognized Prophet.
“Ah, shit, Lou—I tell you it’s no damn fun getting old!”
“What’re you talkin’ about? You just took down a pair of veteran cold-steel artists. I know Devlin was, anyway. As for the long-haired hombre—I never seen him before.”
Prophet was riding along beside Utter as the sheriff wheeled himself toward the two dead men. Utter had no trouble hauling himself through the six inches of churned dust and horse shit of Brush Street. He kept his wheels well-greased, and his arms were stout as fence posts.
When he needed a rest, his deputy Ivano Rubriz gave him a push. Prophet saw Rubriz walking out from the bank on the street’s right side, holding an old Spencer repeater down low by his side as he angled toward the dead men, half dragging his gimpy left leg.
Rubriz was a whipcord-lean, nut-brown Mexican with some Indian, or mestizo, blood and a cloud-white mustache brashly crowning his upper lip. He’d been quite the cold-steel artist in his day, about twenty years ago, but story had it he’d taken a Lipan Apache knife in his back and had never been the same since. He could handle the drunks and the slower gunnies, but even in his wheelchair old Max Utter presided over the curliest of the curly wolves who wandered into Corazon.
“Reeves is from around here,” Utter said as he, Prophet, and Ivano Rubriz met at the spread-eagled carcass of Devlin, whose glasses hung down over his mouth and whose dead, dung-brown eyes stared skyward. “As you can see—he wasn’t much good. That’s likely why Devlin drew first.”
“Still, damn good shootin’,” Prophet said. “A clean brisket shot.”
“Yeah, but shit, my second bullet flew two feet over his damn head!” Utter stared down at the dead gambler who was bleeding out from two holes in his chest. “I never used to miss from that distance.”
“The point is,” Louisa said, “you gunned both these well-deserving privy scum from a distance of sixty yards, and from a wheelchair, no less. Even I would have a hard time making a shot like that.”
Utter looked up at Louisa. His dark blue eyes softened in their withered sockets. Louisa had that effect on men, no matter how old. Prophet thought he could feel the marshal’s heart melting in his chest.
“Why, thank you for that, pretty bounty-huntin’ lady. You’re right sweet!” His eyes shifted to Blanco Metalious sitting slumped on his horse behind Louisa, head down as though he were trying to make himself as small as possible. “Hey,” the marshal intoned, bright eyes widening with glee. “You got Blanco!”
“Yeah, they got me,” Blanco grumbled, curling his upper lip. “When you’re done celebratin’, you suppose you could fetch me a doctor, Marshal? That blond bounty-trackin’ polecat damn near cut my balls off. If I can’t procreate and continue the Metalious line, see, my old man’s gonna be even madder than he will be when he finds out where I’m at.”
“Shut up, Blanco!” Utter said. “You’ll see a medico when I’m good and ready to send for one.” Utter summoned his deputy with a jerk of his head. “Right now, damn your ugly eyes, I gotta see to these two men I done gunned, get ’em stripped of their stolen cash, and turned under before we draw that bobcat back to town. You know the one, Ivano—the one that kept runnin’ off with chickens and our smallest children for two months last winter.”
“Si, si,” said Rubriz as he pushed the marshal over toward Reeves, who lay closer to the whorehouse side shed.
“That damn painter ran off with two toddlers and a four-year-old, not to mention about six tomcats that was doin’ a real nice job of keepin’ down the rat population!” As Rubriz halted the marshal near Reeves’s boots, Utter stared down at the gunman’s face, which was already turning chalky in death.
Prophet, who remained atop his horse near Devlin, heard the marshal ask his deputy, “Where’d I hit the son of a bitch?”
Neither man said anything for a moment. Then Rubriz pointed. “There. See? Blew a tooth out when you shot him through the mouth.”
Utter leaned slightly forward in his chair to inspect the body. Chuckling, he sat back. His chuckle grew to a deep guffaw, which sailed high over the street as he threw his head back on his shoulders.
“Hey, Prophet, can you believe this? I shot this poor bastard through the mouth.” Utter roared. “I was aiming for his heart!” He roared some more.
Then he turned his wheelchair around to face the three newcomers. “I tell you, it don’t pay to get old.” He frowned as he canted his head to see the girl riding behind Prophet and Louisa and off the hip of Blanco’s steeldust gelding. “Hey, who’s that? Didn’t realize you had another girl with you?”
Before Prophet could say anything, Blanco leaned forward and shouted, “Will someone please get me a goddamn doctor! My crotch has done opened up again, and all my blood which has been dribblin’ down my leg the whole way here will soon be fillin’ my boot!”
Utter glared at the young killer. “How ’bout if I call for the mother of that boy you killed on your way out of the bank—Delwyn Harris? Have her come out here and tend your oysters for you?”
Blanco fidgeted and dropped his eyes to the street.
Utter gave a disapproving chuff, then glanced over his shoulder at his Mexican deputy. “Take Blanco on over to the jailhouse, Ivano. Lock him up, then fetch the doc. Lock up the loot in one of the cells. The judge’ll want a look at it.”
Rubriz limped over to take Blanco’s reins from Prophet, as well as the saddlebags stuffed with the stolen money, then led the horse and the hunched outlaw past the several townsfolk who’d wandered out of their shops to tentatively investigate the killings. The man who had taken charge of the bank stood on the bank’s ragged stoop, fingertips in his vest pockets, scowling.
“Will we be getting our money back soon, Marshal?” he asked in a tentative voice.
Utter didn’t look at the man as he barked, “I’ll be holdin’ it for evidence till the judge gets here, Howard. Don’t bother me about that now. You’ll get your money back!”
Utter cranked his chair close to Prophet’s group to stare curiously up at the girl.
Prophet shuttled his gaze between them. “You know her, Marshal?”
“Rose Tawlin, ain’t it?”
The girl stared down at him apprehensively. She looked to Prophet as though for help.
“She don’t know. She come to hit her head on a rock before we found out who she was. Jarred her memory—in the wrong direction, if you get my drift.”
“Amnesia,” Louisa said.
“Say what?” asked Utter.
“Memory loss,” Louisa explained with a faintly haughty air, looking off in disgust. “Usually caused by a sharp blow to the head.”
“Well, hell ... she don’t remember nothin’?”
“I don’t remember anything, Marshal,” the girl said weakly. “This Rose T
awlin—are you sure I’m her?”
8
AS A TALL man in coveralls and a boy dressed the same meandered over toward the two dead men fallen in the street, Marshal Max Utter poked his gray Stetson back off his forehead and massaged his receding hairline with two chubby fingers. He stared critically up at the girl from his wheelchair, balling his cheeks in hard thought.
“Well, I think you’re Rose Tawlin. I mean, the last time I seen Rose she was a whole head shorter than you.” Utter’s scowl deepened almost painfully. “Your pa didn’t bring you to town much. I reckon if you don’t know ... hell, I reckon I couldn’t be sure, neither.”
“She looks pretty close to this Rose Tawlin, though?” Prophet said.
“Well, hell, now you got me doubtin’.”
“Please, Marshal,” the girl said. “Look at me close. Could I be Rose Tawlin? I gotta know. Not knowin’ who I am has got me feelin’ all hollow inside and just plumb scared!”
The girl’s dark eyes acquired a golden sheen, and tears began to dribble down her sun-browned cheeks. She was terrified, and Prophet didn’t blame her. He’d never lost his memory, but he could imagine how doing so would make you feel like a very small boat lost in a vast ocean during a big storm.
“Well, sure,” Utter said uncertainly, continuing to stare up at the girl, narrowing one eye. “You sure do look like Rose. I reckon about the only way to find out is ride out there.”
“Out where?” Prophet asked.
“Out to Silver Creek. A half day’s ride north of here. Out near the Plains of Saint Augustine. The Tawlin family has a gold claim out there on the creek, and they run a few cows. Haven’t seen ole Roy Tawlin in a month of Sundays, though. Him and Sarah might have pulled their picket pins. Last I heard, they were so poor they couldn’t afford the ammo needed to keep themselves fed.”
Prophet looked at the girl, who was thinking hard on what the marshal had told them. Then he asked Utter, “Is there anyone else in town who’d know Rose?”
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