The Devil's Winchester

by Peter Brandvold

  Prophet yawned.

  Christ, he needed a nap.

  18

  “WOULD YOU LIKE a room next to Miss Bonaventure’s?” asked the portly gent sitting behind his desk under the stairs of the French Hotel. He gave an end of his longhorn mustache a twirl and lifted a faintly insinuating smile.

  “Oh, I suppose.” Prophet yawned as he dug in his jeans pocket for coins. “She’ll probably keep me up of a night with her snoring, but since we’re pards an’ all ...”

  “You’ll be staying until the matter of Blanco Metalious has been settled, I take it.”

  “You got it.”

  “Any idea how long that will be?”

  “Well, the judge is supposed to be here on Wednesday. So I reckon we’ll hang his rancid hide as soon as they can get a gallows built after that. Oh, say, till Friday.”

  “Optimistic, are you?” the portly gent said, plucking a key off one of the two dozen brass rings on the wall behind him, beneath the rings’ corresponding pigeonholes.

  Prophet stared at the man until he shyly dropped his eyes to the open ledger book on the halved and varnished cottonwood logs that comprised his desk. “How much for a bath?”

  “I don’t provide baths here. Mr. Talbot does—just down the street.”

  “No, thanks then. Just send me up a pail of hot water. A whore’s bath’ll do me.”

  Prophet picked up his room key, saddlebags, and rifle and headed for the stairs, stopping when he saw the louvered doors leading off the lobby to his right, flanking the desk. “Food served in there?”

  “The best in town.”

  “Tanglefoot?”

  “Of course. After seven o’clock every night except Sunday we have a roulette wheel, and the mayor often hauls in his faro box for those wishing to buck the tiger.”

  Prophet glanced at the man, narrowing one eye. “What’s your name?”

  “Green.”

  Prophet looked into the saloon, where only three men sat around a table playing cards while a barman in arm bands and with thin, pomaded hair automatically arranged glasses into a pyramid atop the bar under the watchful, glassy stare of a mounted moose head. The bounty hunter turned to the portly, mustachioed Green, and narrowed his eye once more. “What’s French about this place?”

  “Uhh ...” Green’s florid face flushed slightly, and he smiled with chagrin as he flicked a cottonwood seed off his desk with the back of his hand. “Its name.”

  Prophet turned away from the louvered doors and headed up the stairs. As he turned at the landing, he stopped as a girl came toward him from the steps above, her upper body mostly concealed by the basket load of linen in her arms. As she passed, Prophet said, “Rose?”

  She stopped and turned to him. She wore a plain, white-trimmed maid’s dress with a white apron, and her brown hair was double-knotted atop her head. Her sun-browned cheeks were flushed, and her eyes were bright from exertion.

  “Sure enough, Mr. Green needed a gal,” she said ironically. “Right away. Seems he’s been shorthanded for a time, and the work has piled up. Anything I can get you, Mr. Prophet? I also fetch food from the kitchen. Room service, they call it.”

  “No, I reckon I can haul myself down to the dining room later.” Prophet frowned with concern. “This kind of work suit you?”

  “I don’t know,” Rose said, a little breathless. “It’s a job, and a girl has to eat. I’ll be seein’ you around, Lou.”

  Prophet nodded and watched her continue on down the stairs and out of sight. From the lobby, he could hear Green issuing orders to Rose and Rose mumbling her replies. Prophet continued up the stairs and to room nine, and after he’d fumbled the door open and had tossed his gear on the bed, he slid the curtains back from the room’s lone window and looked into the street below, untying his neckerchief.

  The only movement besides a dust devil or two or breeze-blown trash was a dude in a shabby, green-checked suit coat and gaudy orange trousers riding slowly, wearily into town from the west, two canvas valises hanging from his saddle horn. A salesman of one sort or another. As he angled toward the French Hotel, which was near the edge of town, someone tapped on the door.

  “Room service,” Rose said.

  Prophet unbuttoned his shirt and jerked its tails out of his pants. Unbuckling his cartridge belt, he said, “It’s open,” and continued staring out the window.

  The door opened, and he glanced over his shoulder to see Rose lugging a wooden bucket of steaming water over to the washstand. “I’ll let you lift it up there, if you don’t mind.”

  “Careful, or you won’t get a tip.” Prophet tossed his cartridge belt onto the bed with the rest of his gear.

  Rose came over to the window and stood beside him, looking out. “I heard shooting earlier.”

  “Only me ridding the range of another snake.”

  “The man in the wagon—was that Metalious?”

  Prophet nodded.

  “He looked right vicious, if you ask me. You’re gonna need help guarding Blanco until the judge makes it out here, especially if you gotta wait all the way till Wednesday.”

  “You offering your services?”

  “I seem rather expert with a six-shooter.”

  Prophet returned his gaze to the street, where a couple of punchers in shabby trail gear were riding toward Brush Street by way of a side street south of the hotel. Prophet remembered neither man from Metalious’s group, and while they rode grim-faced and were obviously hard men, they were likely just looking for a couple of shots of coffin varnish and maybe a mattress dance in one of Corazon’s fleshpots to relieve the boredom of a Sunday afternoon.

  As the riders approached Brush Street and swung toward Prophet’s left, he said, “Lots of kids who grow up on ranches know how to handle a hogleg. It don’t mean nothin’, Rose.”

  “I wish something would mean something.”

  She turned and headed for the door, looking a little too sunburned and outdoorsy for the maid’s dress she wore even with her hair pinned up.

  “Here.”

  She turned around at the door, and Prophet tossed her a ten-cent piece. She caught it with one hand and looked at it, giving a bashful smile. Her eyes slipped quickly across Prophet’s bare chest, a chest that had caught the admiring glances and caresses of more than a couple females in his time, not all of them whores, before she lowered her gaze to the floor.

  “My first tip. Much obliged, Mr. Prophet.”

  Prophet grinned, wanting to try to cheer the girl up a little. If she ever got her memory back, he had a feeling she wasn’t going to like all that she remembered, even if hers was just the usual kind of life—a life lived out here in western New Mexico ranch country. A hard, lonely damn life with few frills. She’d be looking at even fewer if she belonged to the dead Tawlin family.

  “De nada, senorita,” he said.

  She raised her eyes to his face—they glowed with the light from the window behind him—then backed out, closing the door behind her.

  Prophet sighed. He ran a tired hand over his face, then shrugged out of his shirt and let it drop to the floor as he walked over to the marble-topped washstand.

  There was water in the porcelain bowl that sat there beside a cracked stone pitcher with a blue ring around its top. He emptied both the bowl and the pitcher into the thunder mug by the bed, then refilled the bowl from the steaming water bucket. He took the threadbare cloth from the peg on the wall over the stand, soaked it and lathered it with the scented purple soap cake that rested in a glass holder with tiny roses painted on it, and thoroughly scrubbed his face and chest and the back of his neck, making sure he dug around in and behind his ears.

  That much washing alone turned the water in the bowl black, so he emptied the bowl into the chamber pot, refilled the bowl, then stripped down to his birthday suit and gave his privates, front and rear, a thorough scrubbing. He grunted and groaned with the effort.

  Kicking out of his boots, he peeled off his sweaty wool socks, sat on the bed,
and ran the cloth over each foot in turn, until each was white with frothy suds, not neglecting the gaps between his toes.

  He rinsed his feet off over the thunder mug.

  “Whew!”

  Nothing like removing a couple of weeks of grime and trail dust to make a man feel human again. But he was still tired. He emptied the porcelain bowl and the thunder mug out the window, hearing the water splash in the street below, then tramped heavy-legged over to the bed. He looped his shell belt and Colt over the bedpost nearest the door beside it, then pulled the covers back and collapsed.

  He left the covers off, lying there naked. The fresh, late-summer air felt good against his freshly scoured, pleasantly burning skin.

  He rested his arm over his forehead and tried to block out the droning of a late summer fly caroming through the room. Finally, he let go. Sleep tumbled over him, mowed him down like rocks in a slide, hammering him down deep into the depths of warm, black slumber.

  A light tap on the door pulled him back to half consciousness. Immediately, he wrapped his right hand around the worn walnut handle of his Colt holstered to the bedpost. At the same time he noted that the light in the window, stitched with snowy cottonwood from the trees lining the creek, had dulled to the hues of late afternoon. “Who’s there?” he asked.

  “Me,” came the cool, familiar voice through the door.

  Prophet removed his hand from the gun handle with a sigh, reached over, and turned the key in the door lock, then lay back on the bed, limbs akimbo, sleep still clawing at him like an unfulfilled woman.

  The door opened, hinges moaning. Prophet kept his eyes closed. There was a familiar tread on the floor. He could smell her as she closed the door, fanning him with a slight wind that brought not only her unique smell to him—which he often likened to the smell of jelly beans, for some reason—but that of the trapped air in the hall, rife with smoke, varnish, and human sweat.

  Sleep tugging at him, he listened to the sounds she made kicking off her boots and undressing. He was too tired to open his eyes, no longer sleepy but enjoying the luxury of the big bed and the clean sheets beneath his scrubbed, naked body, and the dolor of the afternoon with a cooling breeze whispering through the window.

  Birds cheeped faintly.

  It was so quiet that he could occasionally hear the faint trickle of the creek over its rocks at the edge of Corazon.

  The edge of the bed sank, the springs squawking quietly, and then he felt her hands on his arms, her hair caressing his chest. He opened his eyes. She kissed his belly lightly, sliding her hands slowly up across his chest to his shoulders, and squeezing the slabbed muscles there.

  Prophet groaned luxuriously, lifted his big, seasoned brown hands, and slid her blond hair back from her face. She scuttled up his body, her thighs feeling like velvet as she straddled him, grunting softly, desperately, her sleepy hazel eyes meeting his before her tongue flicked across her lower lip.

  She stared down at him, her expression oblique, her bare breasts, pale as snowflowers and tipped with rose-buds, sloped toward his chest. “There’s going to be some killing soon.” Her voice was soft, slightly raspy.

  Prophet nodded.

  “Why does it make me feel this way?”

  With his left hand, he smoothed a wing of her thick hair back from her smooth, lightly tanned cheek. “What way?”

  She thought about it, staring at him, her blond brows wrinkling. She shook her head as she whispered, “Hungry.”

  She pressed her breasts and belly down hard against him, closing her mouth over his.

  He left her an hour later, when the sun angling through the window was adobe-colored and he could hear the strains of a Mexican trumpet emanating from the east end of town, near Bayonet Wash and its Mexican cantinas and fleshpots. A guitar sounded along with the trumpet, very softly.

  It may have been Sunday, but that end of town never rested long.

  Prophet looked at Louisa lying on her side, facing away from him. He leaned over and kissed her slender arm, then rose and dressed quietly, dragging out fresh underwear from his saddlebags. He could hear her breathing softly, deeply as he opened the door, stepped out into the hall, then drew it closed behind him.

  She should lock it, but he didn’t want to wake her to tell her. Besides, she’d sleep just long enough to replenish herself. She’d likely be back at the jailhouse in a half hour.

  There was another man at the desk downstairs—a thin, bald gent in wrinkled shirtsleeves—quickly devouring a huge supper plate of short ribs and potatoes smothered in gravy.

  “That the special?”

  The man nodded but did not look up from his plate.

  Prophet went into the dining room, where Rose was now waiting on the dozen or so men who’d gathered for drinks and supper, a couple grouped near the roulette wheel. He had her fetch him a couple of plates of short ribs while he sipped a whiskey at the bar, then paid her and hauled the plates, covered with oilcloth napkins, out onto the hotel’s front porch.

  He was just starting down the porch steps when a horse nickered to his right. Stopping and setting his feet once more, he looked east along the trail that shone like vanilla cream as it wound through the darkening scrub over which a soft, blue-and-jade light hovered. The sun was drifting low over the jagged, dark brown western ridges, turning as rich red as the first roses of a southern spring.

  Three men came along the trail on trotting horses. Prophet squeezed the plates in his hands as he appraised the three who entered town and rode on past him, two tipping their hats to him, the third giving an oily grin.

  They all wore brush-scratched chaps. Two had donned denim jackets against the growing chill while the third sported a leather jacket with small silver conchos on the cuffs and elaborate stitching across the shoulders. They were all armed, and they wore their pistols either high on their hips or low on their thighs, with double shell belts and Winchester rifles protruding from their saddle boots.

  As men, they didn’t look like much. They were ugly as gobblers. They were a dirty, seedy lot emanating callousness and stupidity as well as an animal brutality.

  All three Prophet had seen in the group that had ridden in earlier with Sam “Man-Killin’” Metalious.

  They rode off down Brush Street like they had people to see and things to do, heading in the direction of Bayonet Wash. Prophet loosened his .45 in its holster—he’d left his rifle in his room, figured he wouldn’t need it until after dark, but maybe he was wrong. Then, carrying one plate in his left hand and balancing the other on his left arm, keeping his right hand free, he tramped toward the jailhouse a block east of the hotel.

  The three gunmen had just passed Max Utter sitting on his porch with his shotgun across his thighs. He and the three men standing around him, the liveryman E. E. Spalding and two other townsmen whom Prophet hadn’t seen before, were still staring after the wolves. The one who’d grinned greasily at Prophet was doing the same to Utter over his left shoulder.

  Then the three disappeared around the dogleg and were gone.

  Utter said something to the liveryman, which Prophet couldn’t make out from his distance of forty yards or so. The liveryman responded, throwing up his hands while the other two men turned away from the marshal and moved off down the porch steps and into the street, keeping their heads down, sort of truckling under Utter’s harsh stare. The two other men were dressed much like Spalding, in patched coveralls and shabby felt hats—one medium tall and paunchy, the other old and swaybacked.

  As Spalding followed the other two into the street, heading for the Mecca Saloon back past Prophet on the other side of the street, Utter growled, “You’re a chicken-shit, Spalding. You’re on the Corazon Gallows Committee, you son of a bitch!”

  Spalding turned toward Utter but continued walking backward. “You can throw all the rocks you want, Utter, but I done resigned. Better to quit and look the coward than stare up at six feet of dirt.”

  The liveryman turned forward and followed the other
two into the Mecca, whose outside bracket lamps were growing brighter as the afternoon light continued to fade.

  “What was that all about?” Prophet asked Utter.

  “Those weak-livered lobos refuse to build a gallows for Blanco. Sam sent ’em a message. Told ’em if they started erecting the gallows, they might as well pick out a coffin for themselves over to the undertaker’s.” The marshal gritted his teeth as he glared at the Mecca. “Weak-livered tinhorns!”

  “Well, hell, why don’t you just hang ole Blanco from one of them cottonwoods down by the creek?”

  “’Cause we’re not lynching the son of a bitch. We’re hanging him by order of the judge. Or we will be. Christ, Prophet, were you raised by wolves?”

  Prophet handed Utter a plate, which the marshal took with an owly air. “No reason to get personal, ’specially since I brought you some vittles an’ all.”

  Utter set the plate on his lap, atop his rifle, and lifted the oilcloth. “Well, I’ll be damned. Don’t tell me you want a raise already!”

  The joke seemed to lift his spirits, so, as Prophet sat down on the middle porch step and propped his own plate on his lap, he thought he could broach a subject that had been on his mind but one that would probably be a sore topic for the marshal. “Speaking of the judge ...”

  Utter was already working on his short ribs, using his hands. “What about him?”

  “You think he’ll make it?”

  “Of course he’ll make it. Your memory that short? I done told you he’s got a passel of soldiers from Fort Stockton escortin’ him around three counties. He’ll be here on Wednesday. Mark my words.”

  “All right.” Prophet laid into a short rib.

  Utter stopped eating to scowl at the back of the bounty hunter’s neck. “What do you mean—‘all right’?”

  “I mean, all right. If you say so.”

  “You don’t think the cavalry can protect the judge?”

  “Obviously you do,” Prophet said, chewing. “You know this stretch of sage better than I do.”

  “Well, that’s just plumb loco if you don’t think ten soldiers from Fort Stockton, with an experienced sergeant and a good lieutenant, can keep the judge from gettin’ greased by old Sam and his brigands. Hell, the soldiers out here are used to fightin’ Apaches!”