The Cost of Dying

by Peter Brandvold

  Crouching with their smoking pistols extended, Prophet and Colter started down the stairs. As they took the steps slowly, one at a time, their index fingers pressed taut against their triggers, Lou could see more and more of the saloon spreading out before them.

  It was vacant.

  At least, it appeared that way. All that remained of the crowd that had been gathered there was the tobacco smoke wafting in the ragged spheres of light cast by a half-dozen lanterns and bracketed wall candles trying feebly to shoulder away the stubborn shadows of the night.

  Lou and Colter dropped lower into the saloon . . .

  When they were halfway down the stairs, Prophet saw that two tables had been turned onto their sides. One was on the room’s left side, near the one he and the redhead had occupied. The other one was on the room’s right side, near the back. At the same moment he saw the overturned tables, two heads jerked up above the one on the right while one more head darted up from behind the one on the left.

  Three pistols flashed and roared, the bullets tearing through the air around and between Lou and Colter, hammering the steps and the rails to each side. Prophet crouched, extending his Peacemaker in his right hand, and returned fire.

  Colter leaped over the rail to his right as two bullets ripped wood from it. He hit the floor beside the stairs with a thud. A second later, he was throwing lead toward the table on the room’s right side while Prophet, dropping down the steps, peppered the table shielding the other two rurales on the room’s left side.

  He was nearly to the floor when his Colt clicked on an empty chamber.

  He cursed as more bullets cut the air around him. He leaped down the last three steps to the saloon hall floor and dropped behind a table near the bottom of the stairs. Immediately, he flicked open the Peacemaker’s loading gate and began reloading.

  In the corner of his right eye, he saw Colter do the same thing behind a chair just ahead of the bar. The redhead knocked over another chair to add additional cover.

  “Yep, should have brought the Richards,” the bounty hunter chided himself.

  As Lou quickly shook the spent cartridges out of his Colt’s wheel, letting them clatter onto the floor, bullets hammered the top of the table behind which he crouched, throwing slivers onto his hat. They threw glass shards from the glasses and bottles that had been left on the table after the drinking hall had been hastily vacated, the other customers apparently realizing what had been about to happen and not wanting to get caught in a cross fire.

  One of the rurales shouted in heavily Spanish-accented English, “You crossed over again, Lou! No, no, no—I told you not to do that!”

  Prophet flinched as a sliver of glass cut into his cheek. Brushing it away, he said, “Well, well—Lieutenant Oscar Ruiz! Is it really you, you chili-chompin’ old polecat?”

  Ruiz must have gestured for the others to hold their fire, for the shooting died abruptly.

  “It is me, Lou! Have you missed me, you old Confederate?”

  “I thought I recognized that ugly face of yours. You still look like an old rattlesnake that tangled with a rabid coyote!”

  “I will give you that, Lou! And you yourself still resemble what the banker’s sick dog leaves on a neighbor’s porch!”

  Prophet punched a cartridge into the wheel’s sixth chamber, flicked the loading gate home, and spun the cylinder. “I been called that an’ worse from better’n you!”

  “You might as well give yourselves up—you and your tattooed friend—or I will nail your hides to the wall!”

  “Go back to sleep and keep dreamin’, Oscar!” Colter shouted, adding his own two cents to the palaver.

  “Is that your tattooed friend, Lou?”

  “That’s him, all right!”

  “What’s his name?”

  Colter jerked his left hand up and fired two rounds toward where Oscar Ruiz was poking his head up above his table. Ruiz cursed as he jerked his head back down behind the table. He cursed again, his voice shrill with fury.

  “That’s his name, Oscar,” Prophet yelled with a laugh. “You think you can remember it?”

  “He damn near shot my ear off!” Ruiz bellowed. “For that, I am going to cut both of his off—after I have killed him very slowly—and wear them both on a string around my neck for the rest of my life! I will be buried with them!”

  “Careful, Oscar,” Prophet warned. “Red’s got a temper.”

  “I don’t appreciate being bushwhacked,” Colter yelled at the rurale. “Especially not when I’m funnin’ with a purty puta!”

  Prophet glanced at his partner, frowning. “What the hell were you doin’, anyway, kid? Pardon my curiosity.”

  Colter blushed, shrugged. “How do you know this fella, Lou?”

  “Oscar and I tangled over in Sonora a time or two. He don’t like it when gringo bounty hunters cross ‘his’ border after bounties on ‘his’ Mexican cutthroats. Leastways, he don’t like it when gringo bounty hunters balk at sharing said bounties on Mexican cutthroats . . . with him. ¿Comprende?”

  “Is it so much I ask?” Ruiz said in a tone of mock injury. “To be respected by foreigners on my own soil?”

  “See, it’s ‘his’ soil,” Prophet said. “Now do you understand why it’s impossible to get along with this jackass?”

  “Some folks are contrary that way,” Colter said.

  “What happened to your face, you ugly gringo shaver?” Ruiz asked. “Did your horse of a mother kick you after she dropped you?” He wheezed a high, mocking laugh.

  “That tears it!” Colter bolted up from behind his table.

  “No!” Prophet shouted. “That’s what he wants you—”

  His warning was cut off by Ruiz’s own gunfire. The rurale lieutenant had been ready to spring, waiting for the kid to show himself, and now he did just that as Colter’s shoulders cleared his covering table. Ruiz’s first bullet punched into Colter’s left arm, sending the redhead stumbling back against the bar, dropping his Remy and gritting his teeth.

  Ruiz’s second bullet punched into Colter’s left thigh, making Colter give a sharp yowl of pain as well as anger.

  Ruiz was about to put another bullet into the young redhead when Prophet, trying to ignore the bullets being thrown at him by the other two rurales, swung his Peacemaker up over his table, aimed hastily, and fired. He was happy to see Ruiz slap a hand to his neck, trying to stem the flow of blood from it, just before the man dropped back down behind his table.

  He howled a curse that echoed even above the gunfire.

  As a bullet fired by one of the other two rurales on Lou’s side of the room seared a hot line across the outside of his neck, Prophet set his Colt down, grabbed an edge of his covering table, and pulled it over on its side. Broken glass from glasses and bottles came crashing down to the floor in front of him, spilled liquor soaking his trouser knees.

  Bullets punched into the table with loud smashing barks.

  Lou crawled to his left, pulled another table down, and crouched behind it as bullets hammered into it and the contents from its top crashed around him, glass and liquor tumbling onto his hat.

  He bulled the table out ahead of him, using it for a shield as he crawled at an angle across the saloon floor, pulling down yet another table and using it, too, for cover as he crabbed even farther forward and toward the saloon’s left wall. He pulled down another table, and another . . . until he’d worked his way around the left side of the two shooters. As the two rurales fired into his current covering table, Prophet snaked his right arm over the top of the table and aimed at the two men who’d turned toward him, eyes wide in shock.

  They were both fully exposed, and they knew it.

  They both swore and, aiming their pistols at him—they must have had at least two, possibly three, apiece—clicked the hammers back. They’d thrown all the lead they were going to throw for one lifetime, however.

  Prophet had the drop.

  Quirking a devilish grin, Lou let two bullets fly and then three, fou
r, and five for good measure, making sure that both rurales, who were writhing on their backs, swinging their arms and kicking their legs, would never get up again. He saved the sixth pill in his wheel for Oscar Ruiz, who appeared to still be breathing where he lay on the other side of the room, head propped against the base of the far wall.

  Lou rose heavily. He was wet from the drinks spilled from the tables he’d knocked over. He was also peppered with glass, and a few playing cards stuck to the wet spots on his clothes. He glanced at Colter, who sat back against the bar, clutching his left arm and wincing. The kid had lost his hat and his long hair hung over one eye.

  “You still kickin’, Red?”

  “Just not so high.”

  “I’ll be right over.”

  Prophet walked over to where Lieutenant Oscar Ruiz lay against the wall. The man had his left hand pressed to his neck. The hand was all red from the blood that had poured out of him. He held a Smith & Wesson New Model No. 3 revolver in his right hand, on the floor. The top-break gun was partway open and covered in blood. Apparently, he’d started reloading the weapon but weakness from blood loss had kept him from finishing.

  Ruiz glared up at Prophet, flaring his nostrils. He flared them wider and squinted one eye as he began raising the Smith & Wesson, also called a “Russian.” He pressed the barrel against the floor, closing the gun with a click, but before he could raise it any higher, Prophet pressed his left boot down on it, pinning it and the man’s hand to the floor.

  “¡Bastardo!” Ruiz yelled, though in his depleted state it was more of a rasp.

  Prophet raised his Peacemaker, aiming down the barrel at the lieutenant’s head. “Maybe see you down below, Lieutenant,” Lou said with a grim smile.

  Ruiz turned his head slightly, eyelids fluttering as he awaited the bullet with dread. “There are more where I came from, Lou.” He tried a mocking, satisfied smile to go with the faint singsong in his voice.

  “Then you’ll be in good company.” Prophet’s Peacemaker bucked.

  Ruiz’s head bounced off the wall then settled back at an angle against it, the man’s eyes rolling up in their sockets, his tongue sliding to one corner of his mouth. His chest sank as his last breath left him, and he lay still.

  Chapter 23

  Prophet turned away from the dead lieutenant and walked over to where Colter lay against the bar. The redhead appeared to have been hit in his left arm and his left thigh. “How bad?”

  “I just need to collect myself. Give me a minute.”

  “You hotheaded fool!”

  Colter grunted, winced. “My ma . . . she died in a plague. Along with my pa. I take it personal when her name is mentioned unfavorably. It ain’t a joke to me, ya see, Lou.”

  “Yeah, well, you just got a case of lead poisoning to go with your thin skin. Christalmighty, anyway—you’re damn lucky you ain’t dead!”

  “Am I?” Colter seemed to find some humor in that, albeit a gallows humor. He smiled and his eyes glinted. He was no more afraid of death than Louisa was . . .

  Prophet spied movement in the upper periphery of his vision. He jerked back from the bar while casting his gaze behind it. The middle-aged barman with the curlicue mustache and wide green silk tie stood facing him, quickly raising his hands to show he wasn’t armed. “Por favor, señor—do not shoot me!”

  Prophet had raised the Colt and clicked the hammer back—a benign gesture since the gun was empty. Realizing that fact just then, he automatically clicked the loading gate open and started emptying the spent cartridges onto the floor. “You spooked me, amigo.”

  “Señor,” the barman said, “Lieutenant Ruiz was not lying. He rode into town with a sizable contingent. He and these men you killed came here to La Princesa . . . but there are just as many, maybe more, who rode over to Doña Fernando’s burdel just up the trail to the west.” He canted his head to his left. “They no doubt heard the shooting, which means they will be here to investigate quickly.”

  “Ah hell!”

  Prophet punched the last load into his Peacemaker’s wheel, clicked the loading gate home, and spun the cylinder before dropping the piece into its holster. He reached down and grabbed Colter’s right arm. “Time to rise an’ shine, kid. We got no time to shilly-shally.”

  Colter cursed as Prophet hoisted the young man to his feet. “I’m fine, I’m fine,” Colter insisted, setting his hat on his head.

  “The blood comin’ out of you says otherwise,” Prophet said. “Just the same, we gotta fog some sage.”

  The redhead was obviously in pain, so Lou looked at the barman and said, “Give me a bottle for the road—will you, amigo?”

  “Sí, sí, That will be three of your American dollars, señor.”

  “Horse hockey—I left nearly a fresh bottle I paid ten dollars for upstairs. Hand me over more of the same. Damn good painkiller.”

  The Mexican scowled at Prophet then turned to pluck a bottle off the back bar. He set it briskly down on the bar and fingered the right curlicue of his big, ridiculous-looking mustache, giving Lou the woolly eyeball. Prophet grabbed the bottle with one hand and wrapped his other arm around Colter’s waist, turning him toward the open door. “Onward, Red. Time to do-si-do—the girls is waitin’.”

  “I’m fine, Lou. Really.”

  He wasn’t walking fine. In fact, he was walking as stiff as a ninety-year-old ex–fur trapper with the chilblains in his knees. Prophet kept a tight grip on his waist as he led him through the door.

  The crowd that had been reveling inside the saloon earlier was gathered in several loose groups out front of the brush ramada. The doxies who’d been working the floor formed a tighter group off the ramada’s right end. They and the customers regarded the two americanos warily, stepping back away from the two men as though they were afraid to catch a bout of the same lead poisoning Colter had.

  “All’s well, amigos . . . señoritas,” Prophet said as he led Colter over to where their horses were tied at the far end of the third hitchrack. “You can all go back to havin’ fun now. Just a little hiccup is all . . .”

  He chuckled dryly at that as he led Colter between Mean and Ugly and Colter’s coyote dun, heading toward Colter’s left stirrup. He paused to stare carefully west, happy not to see any more dove gray uniforms bearing down on him. Maybe he and the redhead would get lucky, and the other rurales were three sheets to the wind . . . or otherwise preoccupied . . . and hadn’t heard the gunfire. He helped the young man into the saddle, Colter grimacing and shaking against the obvious pain.

  “As soon as we can,” Prophet told him, throwing him his horse’s reins from the hitchrack, “we’ll hole up and I’ll tend them wounds for you, get some painkiller into you.”

  “Like I said, Lou,” said the redhead, sitting straight-backed in the saddle, “I’m fine.”

  “Humor me.” Prophet wrapped some burlap around his bottle, dropped it into a saddlebag pouch, then swung up onto Mean’s back.

  He neck-reined the mount out into the street. Again, he glanced west. Still, it was all clear. “Let’s go!” he rasped, and booted Mean to the west.

  Colter did the same to his coyote dun. As the horse lunged forward into a gallop, Lou heard Colter give an agonized groan.

  * * *

  They ran the horses hard for nearly a mile.

  The trail was wide this close to the La Bachata where it was likely well traveled, and it was lit by the stars and the light of a sickle moon kiting about halfway up the lilac sky to the east. When the trail narrowed and grew rocky, Prophet pulled Mean off the trace, to the right, and headed south for the murky darkness showing between two milky buttes.

  He glanced behind. Colter was behind him but not as close as before, and the kid was sitting sort of loose in the saddle, his head wobbling. He held his reins with one hand, but his chin was down. Prophet thought the redhead was mostly just letting Northwest follow the leader—Lou and Mean and Ugly.

  Worry touched Prophet. He wasn’t accustomed to worrying about anyon
e but himself. Sometimes Louisa. But mostly himself. He didn’t like the way it felt, because worry fogged the mind and just plain didn’t feel good. The truth was, he’d come to like the scar-faced redhead, and he’d feel even worse if the kid up and died on him. He’d probably feel worse about Colter Farrow’s death than the redhead would himself.

  They had to stop soon. Lou just wanted to make sure they were far enough off the trail that the rurales wouldn’t find them if they came looking, that they wouldn’t spy the fire he and Colter were going to need to get the kid’s wounds cleaned and stitched properly.

  The gap between the buttes doglegged first to the left and then to the right. When the gap ended, the buttes drifting off behind, Lou followed a sandy wash for another quarter mile or so between six-foot-high banks of crumbling sandstone. Finally, when he judged they were surrounded by enough cover in the form of rocks, boulders, and bristling desert chaparral that it would take a damn good tracker to find them in the dark, he drew rein and swung down from Mean’s back.

  He turned to look behind him. Colter wasn’t back there.

  Dread touched Prophet. He had a brief, imagined glimpse of the kid lying dead on the ground beside his horse. Lou began walking back the way he’d come but stopped when he heard a horse whicker. Hooves thudded softly. A shadow moved, growing until it became a horse and a rider. Colter was slumped forward across Northwest’s neck. He looked bad as hell. He looked damned miserable.

  Prophet hurried forward and met the horse about thirty feet from where he’d ground-reined Mean and Ugly. He reached up and placed a hand on Colter’s shoulder. “Which side of the sod you on, Red?”

  His voice must have startled Colter out of a semi-doze. He jerked, lifted his head. “You worry like an old woman!”

  “Come on—I’ll help you down.”

  “Quit mother-hennin’ me, damnit. I’m fine.”

  Prophet pulled the younger man out of the saddle, eased him to the ground. “Yeah, I know you are. I’ve never seen anyone look so good. Just the same, why don’t we set you down over here and you try to stay awake while I gather wood and build a fire?”