WHEN PROPHET CAME to the edge of the woods leading MacDonald’s horse, Louisa was waiting there astride her Morgan. ‘Shit,’ Prophet said. ‘I was hopin’ you’d ridden on. I don’t have time for craziness, girl.’
‘I don’t go anywhere without my revolver, Mr. Prophet.’ She extended her hand for the gun.
‘So you can shoot my prisoner here?’ Prophet said, grabbing his saddle horn and pulling himself atop his hammerheaded dun. ‘No, ma’am.’
With her customary bald impudence, the girl said, ‘If I still wanted to kill him, I could plug him with my Winchester. Could’ve already done it, as a matter of fact— just as you were coming out of the trees.’
Prophet looked at her tiredly. ‘Where did you learn all this stuff, anyway—shootin’ and ambushin’ and cuttin’ men’s balls off? You’re only seventeen.’
‘It’s a tough world out here, Mr. Prophet.’
Slouched in his saddle, favoring his wounded arm that was giving him tremendous pain, MacDonald looked wary. ‘Whose balls did she cut off?’
‘Man name of Barry,’ Prophet told him.
‘Barry?’
‘I think that was his name.’
MacDonald blinked with horror. ‘That little girl cut Barry Little’s balls off?’
‘He was appropriately named,’ the girl quipped, flashing another of her icy smiles, then gigging her horse beside Prophet, who had begun heading west.
They rode for an hour in relative silence, the only sounds the chirping of birds in the trees along the river and the painful sighs and groans issuing from MacDonald, who rode behind Prophet and the girl on a lead rope tied to the tail of Prophet’s horse.
The day was warm and bright, and they stopped to water their horses in the river. When they were heading out again, Prophet turned to Louisa Bonaventure with a question that had been on his mind since he’d found out who she was and what she was after.
‘So Louisa, you’ve been on the vengeance trail for a year now, and you’ve killed five of the men you’re after. What makes you think you can get them all?’
‘ ‘Cause I’ve given myself over to it,’ she said matter-of-factly. ‘And because I don’t have anywhere else to go or anything else to do. And because I know the souls of my folks won’t rest until I’ve accomplished this task.’
‘Why don’t you just turn it over to the authorities?’
She laughed caustically, swinging her head and tossing her hair out from her slender neck. ‘The authorities, eh? The authorities haven’t been able to stop these men in the five years they’ve been raiding. Not even the marshals out of Fort Smith—Judge Parker’s boys—were able to do it. The ones that chase them either end up dead or out of their jurisdictions, and, lost and afraid, they head home with their tails between their legs.
‘Besides, that,’ she continued before Prophet could ask his next question, ‘I’m better equipped than the ‘authorities’ are. That gang can smell the ‘authorities’ from a hundred miles away. None of ‘em has any inkling I’ve been on their trail—sometimes only a half mile behind! Even if they did, they wouldn’t know who I was or what I was up to. I’m just a girl, see? That’s why it’s easy for me to sneak up on them and put a bullet in ‘em or stick a knife in their necks.’ She sighed. ‘It takes time, though,’ she added. ‘I swear, I have to have the patience of Job sometimes.’
‘To wait for ‘em to split up, you mean?’
‘Then to catch up with the rest again,’ she said with a nod, dramatically blowing air through her lips. ‘They can be a trial, that bunch.’
Prophet was regarding her uncomprehendingly as they rode, stirrup to stirrup, along the trail to Wahpeton. At last, he whistled and shook his head. ‘Miss Louisa, you’re the crowned queen of vengeance, if I ever knew one.’
‘Yessir, I am,’ she said, extending her open hand to him. ‘Now, how ‘bout returning my Colt?’
‘So you can play God with ole MacDonald back there?’ Prophet shook his head. ‘Not on my watch, queenie.’
‘I don’t have to play God with ole MacDonald anymore,’ the girl pertly replied. ‘The devil came and got him about fifteen minutes ago.’
Startled, Prophet whipped around in his saddle, placing his left hand on the cantle and darting his gaze at the outlaw. MacDonald was slumped forward on the speckle-gray, his face buried in the horse’s mane. He didn’t appear to be breathing, and the speckle-gray was tossing its head, its white-ringed eyes filled with an instinctive aversion to death.
Prophet clucked and sucked his teeth. Then he threw Louisa her gun and dismounted to dispose of the dead outlaw.
An hour after Prophet had finished burying MacDonald, a job Miss Bonaventure proclaimed the biggest waste of time since the invention of alcohol, they paid a wizened little man in a black stocking cap fifty cents to ferry them and their horses across the Red River, still swollen with snow melt. As they crossed, Prophet found out from the man that he’d ferried eight men and a girl across the river about three hours before.
‘They were all looking for a good time in Wahpeton tonight, sure enough!’ the man cackled, shaking his head.
‘There much in the way of fun to be had in Wahpeton ?’ Prophet asked with a skeptical air.
Glancing sheepishly at Louisa, the little man sidled up to Prophet and whispered in his ear that there was one tavern and two whores—both German girls—but that the lack of amenities had never stopped the farmers from having a good time when their wives would let them out of their potato fields. He wheezed, cackling, his one tobacco-colored tooth glinting like a raisin in the sun.
‘The town have a sheriff?’ Prophet asked.
‘Sure it does,’ the man said, offended. ‘It’s the county seat!’
‘Much obliged,’ Prophet said as the ferry scraped the river’s west shore, nearly knocking them all, including the horses, off their feet.
When the ferryman had dropped the ramp, Prophet and Louisa led their horses across it and onto the grassy bank near several flooded ash and cottonwood trees and a few old, gray cabins where woodcutters for the riverboats probably lived when the Red lay within its banks.
They splashed through a slough and into the little town of Wahpeton, not much more than a wide, muddy main street lined with hangdog-looking stores before which supply wagons sat. Men in farmers’ garb crossed the street between stores, and several glum-looking blanket Indians stood out front of a blacksmith shop, apparently getting the wheel of their dilapidated wagon repaired.
The Indian group was composed of three men, two women, and four children. The children were running around in the mud alongside the shop, chasing chickens. The men were smoking and staring at Prophet and Louisa as the strangers passed before them. The women stared, too, their faces as expressionless as the men’s.
Prophet pulled up beside the blacksmith working on the wheel.
‘Where can I find the sheriff?’ he asked the stout, balding man, who did not turn to look but momentarily ceased hammering the wheel onto the axle.
‘One block west, turn right. It’s the log cabin beside the bathhouse.’
He jerked his head up sharply when a chicken squawked, then turned to the Indian men lounging in the shop’s open doors. ‘I told you to keep your damn kids away from my livestock!’ the blacksmith complained.
One of the women turned to the mud-splashed kids and said something in Sioux, only slightly raising her voice, and all four kids stopped suddenly and looked at her.
‘Much obliged,’ Prophet said to the blacksmith, who did not reply but only started hammering again on the wheel.
As Prophet and Louisa walked their horses along the street, glancing from side to side for signs of the men they were after, Louisa said, ‘What do you want the sheriff for?’
‘It’s his town,’ Prophet said. ‘He should know if there’s badmen about, shouldn’t he?’
‘What’s he gonna do about it?’
‘I reckon that’s up to him,’ Prophet said, adding, ‘If there’s one thing I learned in my years as a bounty hunter, it’s to never step on a lawman’s toes. Most of ‘em hate bounty hunters the way it is. But you get between one and his quarry without consultin’ with him first. . .’
Prophet let it go at that, giving his head a resolute wag.
‘I don’t think you have to worry about that around here,’ Louisa said. ‘The Red River Gang has a way of sendin’ local lawman into the hills lookin’ for their mommas.’
Prophet brought his horse to a halt when they came to a cross street. Looking left, he saw what appeared to be a saloon about a block away. The hitch racks before the place were crowded with horses—more than a dozen of them, all craning their heads around to watch the loud freight wagon passing behind them into the vast, flat prairie beyond town.
‘Speaking of which,’ he said to Louisa, ‘you think that cavvy belongs to our boys?’
Louisa studied them coolly, then turned to Prophet, arching one of her eyebrows. ‘Who else?’
Prophet nodded and looked right, and pointed. ‘That must be the jail over there.’ He gigged his horse toward the sheriff’s office, but stopped when he saw that the girl wasn’t following him.
When he hipped around in his saddle, she said, ‘You go ahead. I’m gonna go in that general store over there and scrounge up some foodstuffs.’ She reined her horse left, heading south down the street toward the general store, which sat kitty-corner to the saloon.
‘You be careful,’ Prophet yelled.
She didn’t so much as turn, just kept riding. Prophet chuffed ruefully at the girl’s independence, then continued toward the sheriff’s office—a long, low cabin with the words richland county sheriff in gold-leaf lettering on the hovel’s only window. There was a heavyset young man sitting on the gallery, to the right of the window. Shaggy blond hair tumbled out of his shabby bowler hat, and a shiny silver star hung from his ratty wool vest over an even rattier white dress shirt. He leaned forward on his bench, elbows on his knees, rolling the barrel of a Spencer carbine between his hands like a pool stick.
‘Who are you?’ he asked, casting his weary, blunt-faced glance at Prophet reining up at the hitch rail.
‘Name’s Prophet, and you and me got trouble, if you’re the sheriff.’
‘I ain’t the sheriff, I’m just the deputy,’ the young man was quick to respond, casting another cautious glance to his right, toward the saloon at the other end of the street. ‘You aren’t part o’ that bunch down the street, are ye?’
Prophet said he wasn’t. ‘Where’s the sheriff?’
The young man—about nineteen or twenty, Prophet guessed—measured him from the doughy gopher holes of his eye sockets, then jerked his head to his right. ‘Out back. He’s plantin’ his garden.’
‘Kind of early for gardenin’ in these parts, ain’t it?’ Prophet said, crawling out of his saddle.
‘That’s what I told him,’ the young man grunted.
As he tossed his reins over the hitch rack, Prophet considered the lad nervously rolling the carbine between his hands, then, with a knowing smile, headed around the building to the back. He found a tall, middle-aged man in suspenders and a wash worn undershirt raking a patch of freshly turned earth. The man’s gray hair was thin on top, and he wore a beard, Prophet saw as the man turned to him.
‘What the hell do you want?’ the sheriff asked, narrowing his eyes with the same wary expression his deputy had offered. Obviously, both men knew what kind of snakes had ridden into town, and were more than a little jumpy.
‘Don’t worry, Sheriff,’ Prophet said, raising his hands in a gesture of acquiescence. ‘I ain’t part of that crew down the street. I’m after them, as a matter of fact. Yesterday, they raided Luther Falls. Shot a couple and kidnapped a girl of about fourteen or fifteen years old.’
The sheriff’s eyes dropped, scouring Prophet’s chest for a badge. ‘You a federal?’
‘No, I’m a bounty hunter.’
The sheriff stared at him, holding his rake across his chest. His eyes were gray and old, and his chin jutted like a sharp rock. ‘You alone?’ he asked finally.
‘Well... not exactly, but close enough.’
‘What the hell does that mean?’
Prophet studied the man from across the black, wet garden that smelled of worms and fresh earth and which a pair of robins eyed from the eaves of the jailhouse. Prophet could see the man wanted no part of the Red River Gang, and the bounty hunter didn’t blame him. He’d probably farmed most of his life, and when the sheriff’s job had opened, he’d probably figured why not take it? Beats following mules around a potato patch. It was a pretty typical state of affairs, Prophet had found, and one that contradicted the newspapers and dime novels that had the easterners believing every town was Dodge City and every lawman was Wyatt Earp or Bat Masterson.
Prophet waved and, turning, said, ‘Never mind, Sheriff.’ He should have listened to Miss Louisa, but he always figured that giving the local lawmen a courtesy call would save him trouble in the long run.
‘They send me federals, I’d go in there after those bastards,’ the sheriff said.
‘It’s all right, Sheriff,’ Prophet said over his shoulder.
‘Hell, I have a wife and a daughter, and my deputy just had a baby!’
‘I hear ye, Sheriff.’
‘If I wired Bismarck today, they wouldn’t have federals here till next Wednesday!’
Prophet threw up a hand, waving, and walked back to the front of the jail, startling the deputy as he approached the veranda.
‘Jeepers, you scared me!’ the lad said.
Prophet untied his reins from the hitch rack. ‘Sorry, kid.’
‘What’d the sheriff say?’
‘He told me you just had a baby.’
The lad grinned. ‘Sure did.’
Prophet crawled into the leather. ‘Boy or girl?’
‘Girl. Named her Sony a after my mother, God rest her soul.’
‘Greet her and her mother for me, lad,’ Prophet said. ‘And stay away from that saloon tonight.’