FROM THE SHERIFF’S office, Prophet gigged his horse southward, toward the mercantile, keeping a wary eye on the saloon.
He stopped his horse suddenly when he heard the general store’s door open and saw two women walk out. One was Louisa carrying a small burlap bag. The other was a silver-haired lady in a brown dress and a crisp white apron. Louisa and the woman were chatting amiably, though Prophet couldn’t quite hear what they were saying until they both stopped at the edge of the boardwalk, before Louisa’s Morgan.
‘Now, you go back down the street one block, and hang a left and then another left,’ the lady said, one hand on Louisa’s shoulder and the other pointing east. ‘My house is the big white one with the red barn behind it. You can’t miss it because it’s the only place out there!’ The woman laughed as though at the funniest joke she’d heard in years.
‘Oh, thank you, Mrs. McBride!’ Louisa exclaimed, gazing into the woman’s eyes with all the ingratiation the girl could muster. ‘I can’t tell you how pleased Poppa and Momma will be when they hear how well I was taken care of on my journey back homeward.’
‘An innocent child like yourself should not be allowed to journey so far from home!’
‘Oh, believe me, Mrs. McBride, it was a truly hard decision for Poppa and Momma to make. But with all their infirmities, they simply were unable to make the trek themselves. And I really wanted to go.’
‘Well, I’m sorry your grandmother has passed, child.’
‘Yes, but, you know what, Mrs. McBride? I think her passing was made more comfortable by having her only granddaughter at her side.’
‘Oh, I’m sure it was, I’m sure it was,’ the old woman cooed, drawing Louisa to her great bosom, hugging her and patting her back. Brushing a stray tear from her cheek, she said, ‘Well, I think you’ll find mine and Mr. McBride’s home quite comfortable, child. Run along now. It’s the second-story room to the left of the stairs. The hired boy will probably have a fire going in the hearth, so you can heat water for a bath. Have the boy stable your horse in the barn with plenty of hay and oats.’
‘Thank you, Mrs. McBride. As meager as my means, I don’t know how I’ll ever be able to repay you.’
‘Your gratitude is thanks enough, child.’ The old woman gave Louisa a gentle shove toward her horse, adding, ‘Hurry along now, dear. You look positively exhausted.’
‘Yes,’ Louisa said, lacing her voice with a weary trill as she untied the Morgan’s reins from the hitching post, ‘I do feel a bit worse for the wear.’
The girl mounted up and, waving to the old woman, turned the Morgan into the street. When she saw Prophet sitting atop Mean and Ugly and staring at her with a look of amazed disbelief on his unshaven face, she stuck her tongue out at him and gigged the Morgan into a trot.
Prophet turned his head to watch Miss Bonaventure disappear around the corner, a grim smile on his face. A survivor, that girl. Turning back to the old woman, who remained on the boardwalk before the general store, staring at him with her gnarled fists on her hips and a scowl on her face, Prophet gigged his horse toward her and reined up.
‘Ma’am,’ he said with a tug on his hat brim, ‘you have any idea where a poor, weary traveler might find a soft bed for the night?’
Brusquely she said, ‘Down by the river there’s plenty of soft grass, young man.’ She wheeled around on her stout, black shoes and disappeared into the store.
‘Much obliged, ma’am,’ Prophet grumbled at the door slamming closed.
He turned to the saloon sitting on the corner of the next block. The horses remained at the hitch rack, and, knowing what he knew about the gang inside, the poor animals would probably remain there all night, saddled and bridled. From the sound of the whoops and muffled laughter from inside the place, he suspected the gang was having one hell of a time. The girl they’d kidnapped was probably in one of the upstairs rooms, no doubt going through a hell administered by each of the drunken gang members in turn.
The thought set Prophet’s blood to boiling, but there was nothing he could do to help her at the moment. If he walked in there now, he’d be dead in two minutes.
Prophet rubbed his bristly jaw. Shit.
He thought it over and decided the first thing he had to do was free the girl, and the best time to attempt that was after dark, at least three hours away. The gang would be fairly drunk by then, and his chances of stealing into the place unseen would be fair to good. His chances of getting her out without being seen were probably only poor to fair, but he had to try it, and he didn’t have much time.
The girl was living on borrowed hours. The gang would no doubt head out of here in the morning, and Prophet doubted they’d take her along. They’d get all they could from her tonight, then probably slit her throat and leave her in one of those upstairs cribs to bleed to death.
First thing he had to do was get Mean and Ugly stabled, fed, and rested, so he’d be able to ride later. To that end, he reined the horse back along the way he had come. Seeing a barn and paddock down a side street, he headed that way and paid a lad to bed the horse down with fresh hay and oats. He gave the boy an extra dollar to tie the horse before the general store in three hours. Taking only his shotgun and leaving his rifle and the rest of his tack with the boy, he headed back down the street toward the saloon.
Halfway there, he caught a whiff of something cooking, and followed the smell to a small, tar-paper shack sitting on a weedy lot behind the general store, flanked by stacked wood and a smokehouse. On a crude sign tacked beside the door the word food had been painted in white letters. The place was propped by logs about a foot off the ground, and out from under it came a dog to bark at Prophet and sniff his clothes.
Tripping over the dog, he made his way to the door, pushed inside, and looked around at the three hand-hewn tables and benches surrounding a smoky woodstove. In one corner, an old man and an old woman worked on a plate of roast beef and mashed potatoes with gravy, not saying a word and glancing up only briefly at the stranger. Noting the shotgun, they quickly returned their eyes to their tin plates, muttering in a foreign language.
The meal Prophet was served turned out to be as humble as the setting it was served in, and he left the place fighting down the frothy acid bubbles rising in his chest. Unsteadily, he made his way back to the main street and stopped on the corner just east of the general store.
The sun was nearly down, and there was very little activity on the street. The only horses were those of the Red River Gang, still tied to the hitch rack before the saloon. The animals’ heads hung sleepily.
Glancing to his right, Prophet saw that there was no light on in the sheriff’s office, and he was grateful for that. He hoped the sheriff and his deputy had gone home for the evening. He didn’t want them getting in his way or fouling up his plan to remove the girl from the rooms above the saloon. From the fear he’d seen in their faces earlier, he didn’t think he had anything to worry about.
Now, little Miss Bonaventure was another problem altogether. Not having seen her since she’d headed for the room she’d wrangled from the woman who ran the general store, he had no idea what she was up to. But sure as rabbits hopped, you could bet she was up to something. He just hoped she realized what a pit of perdition that saloon was tonight, and stayed away from it. If she did not, she could tie Prophet’s plan in one hell of a knot and probably get herself killed to boot.
The bounty hunter scanned the area around him for several minutes, trying to spot a good location from which to keep an eye on the saloon and to wait for a couple more hours to pass. Finally, he headed for the alley paralleling the main street, hung a right, and came up behind the general store.
Seeing that the roof over the store’s rear was fairly low, he used a couple of shipping barrels to help hoist himself on it. Adjusting the shotgun hanging down his back, he made his way toward the front, hoisting himself onto the store’s second story, and hunkered down behind the false front, which jutted up a good six feet and offered perfect cover from the saloon as well as the quickening spring breeze.
Standing, Prophet could peer over the top of the facade at the saloon, from which tinny piano music prattled above the Red River Gang’s raucous revelry. Bright lantern light spilled onto the boardwalk and the heads of the horses stationed there. Shadows flickered in the windows and occasionally the sounds of breaking glass rose.
One of the second-story rooms, whose windows he could see from this angle, was lit, and he fairly shuddered as he imagined what could be happening to the Luther Falls girl in there.
As the minutes passed, the laughter in the saloon grew louder, the yells and shouts more and more boisterous. Someone tried playing a banjo for a while, and gave up amidst a barrage of wild complaints and several gunshots. At one point, a girl screamed, and Prophet, who was sitting with his back to the facade and smoking a quirley, jumped. But then the girl laughed harshly, and he realized it was one of the whores.
The minutes passed slowly. To stretch his legs and stomp the chill from his bones, Prophet rose occasionally and walked around the general store’s roof. Then he sat down again and rolled another quirley.
About two hours after he’d begun his vigil, he heard the slow thud of hooves and the tinny clatter of a bridle bit. Standing, he saw the boy from the livery barn leading Mean and Ugly this way down the main drag. The boy tied the horse to the hitch rack directly below Prophet, then, tossing a wary glance at the saloon, slipped slowly off in the darkness.
The sounds in the saloon had grown into a constant, muffled roar, the piano not so much being played anymore as pounded, its discordant notes punctuating the din of the yelling, drunken men. It was time. The noise would cover any made by Prophet, and the senses of the men would be sufficiently dulled that even if they did happen to see or hear him, they’d be less effective at doing anything about it.
He made his way carefully off the roof, trying not to make any noise and wake any dogs on this side of the main street. The night was black as pitch, for clouds had moved in to cover the stars. He had to be extra methodical in finding the barrels he’d used to hoist himself onto the roof. He got only one foot on one of them, and went down hard on his side, the barrel falling on his right leg.
Fortunately, the barrel was empty and didn’t do any damage, but Prophet still cursed his clumsiness as he adjusted the shotgun, made sure his revolver was still on his right hip, the bowie on his left, and headed down the alley. When he came to the main drag, he paused beside the general store, making sure none of the gang was outside, then headed for the saloon.
He was no more than halfway across the street when the saloon door opened and several men started onto the boardwalk under the awning, their voices loud in the quiet night, the piano music and din pushing out behind them.
Prophet froze, his veins filling with adrenaline. He crouched, looked around, and headed for the boardwalk across the side street from the saloon, hoping the shadows of the shop there would conceal him.
Making the boardwalk at a shuffling, crouching run, holding the shotgun across his chest, he pressed his back against the wall of the store and gritted his teeth, watching the three silhouettes of the men across the street, and listening. From their conversation, if you could call their drunken blather conversation. Prophet could tell they hadn’t seen him. He knew from experience that men who’d been drinking as long as they had were experiencing the world from a thick, gauzy curtain, their senses deadened.
They were grumbling and cursing about something as they milled before the horses. Prophet waited there in the shadows, frozen, watching and listening, trying to figure out what they were up to. Surely they weren’t leaving town at this hour, after all they’d had to drink.
At last, it became obvious they were gathering up the reins of all the horses at the hitch rack, and were leading the horses off somewhere.
‘Shit... I don’t see why this is my job,’ one of them complained.
‘Shut up, Price.’
‘I’m gonna miss my turn with that girl upstairs.’
‘You rather have a dead horse to ride tomorrow?’
Price said something in reply, but Prophet couldn’t hear it because the three men and the eight horses had drifted off down the street, apparently heading for the livery stable. He’d heard enough, however.
So the girl really was upstairs... .
Prophet watched the saloon to see if anyone else came out, then took a breath and ran northward down the side street. After about fifty yards, he stopped, took another gander at the saloon, then headed across the street to the saloon’s rear.
There was a slender staircase running up the back of the building to the second story. Peering around in the dark to make sure no one was around or using the privy, which was a pale splotch in the darkness twenty yards north, Prophet put his hands on the railings, trying to cushion his steps, and began climbing.
He took it slow, for the stair planks were badly rotted in places and squeaked like rusty hinges. When he made the second-story landing, he peered into the frost-edged window in the door’s top half. Before him was a narrow hall with a shabby rug, faded, peeling wallpaper, an askew picture frame, and a single lantern in a wall bracket. In each wall there were two closed doors. Opening the outside door carefully, Prophet stepped inside.
When all appeared clear, he closed the door behind him and moved forward, hearing the thunderous noise below, laced with the piano’s cacophony and a drunk man singing an Irish drinking song Prophet had heard once or twice during the war. It was a lusty song Prophet had liked, but he suddenly didn’t like it anymore. Through the soles of his boots, he felt the vibration all the racket made in the floor.
He moved forward, peering at the cracks under the doors. No light escaped the cracks of the first two doors he passed. When he came to the second set, the set closest to the door leading to the stairs to the floor below, he discovered lights bleeding from the cracks under both doors.
He stopped between the doors, breathing shallowly, his heart beating slowly but powerfully, his pulse throbbing in his neck. Now, how in the hell was he supposed to figure out which room the Luther Falls girl was in?
The answer came a few seconds later, in the form of a giggle behind the door to his right.
Okay, she wasn’t behind that door, he thought with a sigh, turning to the door on his left. He took another deep breath, lifted his hat, and ran a hand through his sweat-damp hair. He replaced the hat, produced his bowie from the scabbard on his left hip, knowing that, in spite of the revelry below, there was no way he could use the revolver and not bring the whole gang down on top of him.
He began twisting the doorknob but stopped suddenly when he heard boots scuffing inside the room and a deep male voice say, ‘Shit, she’s about as fun as a dead fish.’
The man’s voice had grown as he neared the door, as did the sound of his footfalls. Obviously, he was about to exit the room.
Prophet looked around, finding nowhere to hide, his heart leaping into his throat.