THE BARMAN WAS waiting at the bottom of the stairs. ‘What the hell happened up there?’ he asked Prophet.
‘You don’t want to know.’ Pushing past the man on his way to his table, Prophet said, ‘Got a sawbones around here?’
‘No. Mrs. Jergens handles most of the medical problems.’
‘Well, you better get her,’ Prophet said, retaking his chair at the table upon which his beer and half a shot of whiskey still sat.
‘I’ll send someone for her, and get some help hauling these bodies out.’
‘There’s one more upstairs,’ Prophet said as the barman headed for the door.
When the barman had gone, Prophet threw back the last of his whiskey and chased it with a healthy swig of the flat beer. He heard steps on the stairs, and the girl appeared at the newel post, gazing at the two dead men on the floor before the bar. Her expression was one of interest and mild admiration, not of the horror that would have been etched on the faces of most girls her age— most women, for that matter.
‘Nice shootin’,’ the girl told him at last.
Prophet grunted. ‘Can I buy you a drink?’
The girl walked toward him, blond curls bouncing on her shoulders, chin thong swinging against her poncho. She stepped over the bodies, sidled over to a table to Prophet’s left, grabbed a glass from it, and brought it over. She set the glass on Prophet’s table and sat down in the chair across from him.
‘Already have a drink, thanks.’
‘Sarsaparilla?’
‘Yep,’ the girl said when she’d taken a sip.
Prophet gave a sardonic chuff. Looking at her sitting there sipping her red bubbly water, all peaches and cream skin and blond hair and milk teeth, she could have been on her way home from Sunday school. You never could’ve guessed she’d sunk three .44 pills into one bad-man and left the other minus his oysters.
‘Figured a girl like you’d drink rye straight up with a blood chaser.’
The girl’s face was expressionless. ‘Nope—just sarsaparilla for me, please. That stuff you’re drinkin’ tastes like badger pee and fuzzies the brain.’
Prophet looked at her without saying anything for several seconds. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Louisa.’
‘Louisa what?’
‘Why?’
Prophet shrugged. ‘Why not?’
‘I don’t like men knowin’ anymore about me than they have to for civilized conversation.’
‘Okay,’ Prophet said with a sigh. ‘Then I suppose telling me what you’re doin’ here and why you killed those two men upstairs is out of the question?’
‘Yep.’ She drained her glass and set it back on the table. Standing, she said, ‘It was nice meeting you, Mr. Prophet.’
‘Where you goin’?’
‘After the others.’
‘How do you know where they are?’
‘Because I’ve been following them for most of a year.’
Prophet frowned, incredulous. ‘You have?’
‘Yep.’
‘Then I suppose you know they raided Luther Falls yesterday afternoon.’
‘That’s right.’
‘Where in the hell were you?’
‘Outside of town, in an old barn. I trailed ‘em to the outskirts of town. I would’ve warned the sheriff—if there is a sheriff—but I didn’t know where they were headed until they were almost there.’
Prophet stared at her again, as if at a puzzle he couldn’t begin to fathom. ‘Why is a nice-looking little gal like yourself tracking a herd of gunnies like them?’
‘I have my reasons.’ She turned and started for the door. ‘Now I best get after the others.’
When she’d left, Prophet sat there, his head swirling. Finally, he finished his beer, got up, and walked outside. The girl was heading out of town on the black Morgan that had been hitched to the rack. When she made the outskirts, she heeled the gelding into a gallop, and was soon swallowed up by the brown grass and rolling prairie, heading north.
Prophet turned to his right and saw the barman heading toward the saloon with two men in bib-front coveralls. ‘Sorry for the trouble,’ Prophet said to the barman as he untied Mean and Ugly’s reins from the rack.
‘Wait a minute, Mister,’ the barman called. ‘You best wait for the county sheriff. You got some explainin’ to do.’
‘You saw it,’ Prophet said, mounting up. ‘You explain it.’
He reined the dun around and kicked him into a trot. At the edge of town he reined Mean and Ugly northward and kicked him into a ground-eating gallop. He’d ridden nearly half a mile before the girl came into sight. She’d slowed her horse into a canter, which made it easier for Prophet to catch up to her.
When he was about fifty yards behind her, she heard him and turned around, reaching through a slit in her skirt—for the gun, no doubt. She halted the action when she recognized Prophet, and turned back in her saddle to scowl over the Morgan’s ears.
‘What do you want?’ she groused as he drew abreast of her.
‘Same thing you do,’ Prophet said. ‘The Red River Gang.’
‘Why?’
‘ ‘Cause I was in Luther Falls when they rode in and shot up the town. They kidnapped a girl, the daughter of the couple who ran the mercantile. They not only shot the girl’s parents in cold blood, but they shot the sheriff, too. A nice old fart named Arnie Beckett.’
‘You live there?’
‘No, I was just passin’ through. But I seen it happen. And since there ain’t no more law to go after those men, I’m doing it myself. I’m sort of in the profession, you might say.’
The girl sighed. ‘Well, I’m sure there’s plenty of bounty on their heads. They’ve cut a wide swath, that bunch.’
‘I’m not after the bounties,’ Prophet said.
The girl looked at him pointedly. ‘Neither am I.’
‘You know, I had a feeling you weren’t,’ Prophet said with an ironic wince. ‘Well, I told you my story. What’s yours?’
The girl rode along in silence for a minute, obviously pondering her response. Finally, she said, ‘They killed my family.’ That’s all she said, and she didn’t turn to look at him, but kept her gaze straight ahead at the rutted wagon trail they were following.
‘Where? When?’
She sighed heavily. ‘Last year. Nebraska.’
Prophet looked at her, waiting for more. No more came. Finally, he said, ‘Well, what in the hell made you think you could run them down? You’re just a girl, for chrissakes. I bet you aren’t seventeen.’
‘I am seventeen. And being ‘just a girl’ has come in mighty handy a time or two.’
‘A time or two?’
‘Actually, three times so far.’
Prophet tipped his hat back from his forehead impatiently and scowled at her. ‘What are you saying?’
Louisa shrugged. ‘I’ve already done away with three of ‘em. Just waited for the group to split up and went after ‘em one at a time. One I stabbed in a privy outside Julesburg, Colorado. Another one I caught with a whore in Deadwood Gulch. And the third one, Jimmy McPhee was his name, was trying to get into my bloomers when he stopped to help me with my horse I told him had come up lame. That was in southern Dakota, outside Sioux Falls. Ever been there?’
‘Once or twice,’ Prophet grumbled, staring at the girl, mystified.
‘Nasty place, ain’t it? I think some Saturday night the sheriff should lock all the owlhoots in the saloons and burn the whole kit ‘n’ caboodle to the ground. The whole damn town.’
‘You’re a real charmer, Miss Louisa.’
She favored him with a cockeyed smile. ‘Thank you, Mr. Prophet.’
‘What’s your last name?’
‘I guess it ain’t no big secret. Bonaventure.’
‘Louisa Bonaventure?’
‘That’s right.’
‘From Nebraska?’
‘My folks farmed out there, near the Platte River, before the Red River Gang rode through. Of course, they weren’t called the Red River Gang back then. That’s just been since they moved north to get away from the federal marshals down Kansas and Missouri way.’
‘They killed your pa and ma?’
‘And my two sisters and my brother, James.’ She squeezed her eyes tightly closed and grimaced, sucking air through her teeth, as though the images in her head were far too much for her to bear. ‘Let’s talk about something else now!’
‘Okay, Louisa,’ Prophet said quickly, seeing the pain she was suddenly in. ‘I’m sorry.’ They rode in silence for a while, Prophet reflecting what a tragedy it was that this pretty young girl, who should be churning butter on a porch somewhere and daydreaming about the neighbor boy who sparked her on Saturday nights was instead riding the vengeance trail, her eyes flat and cunning, her innocence lost without a trace.
He waited awhile before asking her if she’d been alone since she’d started hunting the Red River Gang.
‘Except for nights with farm folk here and there,’ she said, the color returning to her cheeks. ‘I try to stay away from people. Men, especially.’
Prophet glanced at her sheepishly. ‘Well, not all men are bad, Louisa,’ he said, casting her a reassuring smile. ‘How ‘bout ridin’ with me awhile?’
She jerked a suspicious look at him. ‘Wouldn’t you just like that?’ She looked him up and down, mostly down. ‘Why, you got rascal written all over you!’
Prophet flushed, offended. ‘I do not!’
‘Yes, you do.’
‘Listen, Missy, I’ve never once in my life laid a hand on a woman who didn’t want me to. Never needed to!’
She looked him over again, but this time she didn’t say anything and her eyes were hard to figure.
His anger waning—the girl was right to be suspicious of strangers—Prophet shrugged. ‘I just meant, why not throw in together for a while? We’re both alone, and we share the same objective. And hell, considerin’ how we cleaned up those four back in Campbell, I’d say we make a pretty good team.’ He really just didn’t like the thought of such a pretty young girl being all alone out here. It gave him a lonely, haunted feeling.
She didn’t reply for nearly a minute. ‘I’d have to think on it. I can’t go gettin’ mixed up with some stranger.’
‘You think about it, then,’ Prophet said. ‘In the meantime, we might as well ride to Wahpeton together. That’s where the gang’s headed.’
Louisa shrugged noncommittally. ‘I reckon it couldn’t hurt to ride together that far.’
‘I have a stop by the river, though. I caught one of ‘em this mornin’, and I left him tied to a tree.’
‘You did!’
Prophet grinned proudly. ‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘Which one?’
‘Didn’t tell me his name.’
‘Well, what are we waitin’ for?’ she said impatiently, spurring the Morgan into a gallop.
They rode hard for fifteen minutes, and then the river came into view over a hill. At first, Prophet couldn’t remember where he’d left his prisoner, but then he recognized a landmark and headed toward a clump of trees in a southward curve in the Ottertail.
Riding up to the copse, he dismounted, and Louisa Bonaventure did the same. They tied their horses to low branches, then Prophet followed the trail of bent grass into the trees, Louisa following closely behind.
The prisoner was asleep but woke with a start when Prophet kicked the man’s foot. ‘You still alive?’ Prophet asked the man.
The man’s voice was raspy and he was breathing hard. ‘Kiss my ass,’ he growled. His arm was bleeding badly, the entire sleeve soggy scarlet. His eyes found Louisa, who’d stopped beside Prophet to gaze grimly down at the man.
‘Wayne MacDonald,’ she said.
The man frowned at Prophet. His voice was thin. ‘Who in the hell is she, and how in the hell does she know my name?’
‘I studied the wanted dodgers on all you boys,’ the girl replied in a tone of withering malevolence. ‘I could pick each one of you out of a crowded train station. Prepare to meet your maker, you murdering savage.’
The girl yanked her silver-plated revolver from a fold in her skirt and aimed it in both hands.
‘Hey, wait a minute,’ Prophet objected, reaching out and shoving the gun down. ‘What in the hell do you think you’re doin’, girl?’
‘She’s crazy!’ MacDonald cried. ‘She’s plumb crazy!’
‘Get your hand off my gun,’ she warned Prophet. ‘This animal raped my mother and sisters.’
MacDonald gazed at her with wide-eyed fear and incredulity. ‘Huh? What are you talkin’ about?’
‘You know what I’m talkin’ about, you dog. Back in Nebraska. Last year. I saw it all—or enough of it, anyway,’ she added darkly. ‘And you’re gonna die for your part in it, just like all the others are gonna die.’
MacDonald looked beseechingly at Prophet, who still had a grip on the girl’s gun. ‘I don’t know what she’s talkin’ about.’
Prophet gazed at the man, remembering the raid in Luther Falls, his own anger returning like kerosene dribbled on a guttering fire. ‘You don’t, eh?’ he grumbled skeptically.
‘Release my gun,’ the girl ordered Prophet.
Prophet turned to her. Sympathetically, he said, ‘I’m sorry about what happened to your family, but I can’t let you shoot this man in cold blood. I know he deserves to die, but you can’t do it.’
Louisa’s eyes flared angrily. ‘Just see if I can’t! He murdered my family!’
‘You can’t judge him, Louisa. As tempting as it is, it ain’t your place.’
‘What about the two men you killed with that scatter-gun back in Campbell?’
‘That was different. They drew on me. I was ready and willing to take them alive and haul ‘em before a judge, but it came down to either them or me.’ Prophet shook his head. ‘You can’t kill a defenseless man, Louisa. It ain’t right. I won’t let you do it.’
With a sudden tug, he jerked the gun from her hand. She gave an angry grunt and cursed him, watching as he tucked the revolver behind his own cartridge belts. ‘I’ll return this to you when you’ve calmed down.’
She stared at him, fuming, then stomped off through the trees toward her horse. Prophet waited until he was fairly certain she hadn’t gone to get the rifle he’d noticed in her saddle boot, then said to MacDonald, ‘You worthless pile of dog shit!’
The last thing in the world he’d wanted to do was to be in the position of defending a man such as this. As much as he knew MacDonald deserved to die, his letting Louisa drop the hammer on him would have been the same thing as Prophet doing so himself. And one thing he’d never let himself do, for as long as he’d been collecting bounties on wanted men, was allow himself to play the tempting roles of judge, jury, and executioner. Because once he got a taste for it, he knew, there would be no stopping himself, and before he knew it he’d become no better than the men he hunted.
MacDonald looked up at him and grinned, reading his mind. It was too much for Prophet, and, without thinking, he drew his hand back and smacked the outlaw hard across his jaw, whipping the man’s head sideways against the tree.
‘Ow!’ the man cried. ‘That hurt!’
‘Yeah, well, there’s more where that one came from,’ Prophet groused, cutting the man’s tethers and jerking him to his feet. ‘Move! I wanna hit Wahpeton before sundown.’
MacDonald laughed as Prophet pushed him toward his horse. ‘Then you wanna be dead before sundown.’
‘How’s that?’
‘‘Cause the whole gang’s gonna be there,’ MacDonald said through a grin. ‘The whole damn bunch!’