GERARD LOOMIS SAT his steeldust gelding at the edge of the trees and stared through the cottonwoods and cedars.
Exasperation simmered deep within him, making his chest tight, his heartthrob, and his molars grind. It was all he could do to keep his hands from shaking, from throwing his head back and howling like an enraged animal.
His dust-caked nostrils flared above his mustache as he worried the steel-head grips of the gold-plated forty-five positioned for the cross-draw on his left hip. He heard his men snapping branches and rattling brush as they scoured the slope for the man who had killed his son, the man who one of his men had recognized as a Southern bounty hunter named Lou Prophet.
Lou Prophet would be dead very soon. But only after he’d paid dearly for what he had done to Stuart.
Loomis brushed sweat from his brow with an angry sweep of his gloved hand. He didn’t like the fact that his men weren’t saying anything but a few curse words now and then. It meant they hadn’t cut Prophet’s sign. If they didn’t cut it soon, Loomis was going to explode. Just to set an example and to show how serious he was about finding that son of a bitch—just to express his anger and see some of the blood he was yearning to see—he might shoot one of his own men.
He didn’t want to do it. But Gerard Loomis did a lot of things he didn’t want to do when he was aroused.
He spat a curse now and spurred the steeldust forward, into the trees.
“Anyone see him?”
“Not yet, boss,” one the cowboys yelled up from the creek.
The men had dismounted and were kicking through the woods, rifles held at the ready.
Loomis called, “What about in the water?”
One of the men walking along the very edge of the cutbank cast his glance up the slope and shook his head.
“Goddamnit!” Loomis raged.
He spurred his horse down the slope, the horse flexing its back legs to keep its footing on the slippery ground. When it came to the edge of the cutbank, the rancher dismounted, dropped his reins, and frowned at the ground. Several of the sage clumps were flecked with blood.
‘This where he went into the creek?” he asked the nearest man.
“Looks like.”
“So he’s in the water, then.”
“I reckon.”
Loomis looked at the man’s moony, sunburned face. “You afraid of a little water? Get in the goddamn creek!”
As the man took his rifle in one hand and scrambled backward into the water, grabbing roots to ease his descent, Loomis yelled to the others. “Everyone in the creek! He’s in the goddamn water!”
When all the men were knee deep in the creek, Loomis split them up, sending three upstream and three down.
“First man that sees him gets a twenty-dollar bonus,” he told them. “But don’t kill him unless you have to. You can wound him—hell, you can blow his legs off, for all I care—but I want to finish him.”
When the men had gone, Loomis stood along the bank looking around, sniffing the air like a dog. His senses were as sharp as a predator’s. He could smell the mossy water and the rotting driftwood and the dusty green of the cottonwoods, and he felt as though he were looking through a pair of low-power binoculars.
Prophet was here. Loomis thought he could hear the man’s heart beating from somewhere nearby. But where?
The rancher looked around. He sent his gaze across the creek, brought it left, allowing it to linger on the beaver dam over which the seed-dappled, coffee-colored water poured with a soft rushing sound. Finally, he decided that Prophet might have crossed the creek and that the best place for fording would be the dam itself.
Loomis was fifty-eight years old, but he was a strong, slender man: barrel-chested, broad-shouldered, and agile. On Saturday nights at the ranch he often wrestled his own men, some of whom were young enough to be his grandchildren, for money. More often than not, he won.
The dam, tricky as the footing was, gave him no pause. Leaving his horse ground tied, he simply took his rifle in one hand, snugged the butt against his belt, and began walking, one purposeful step at a time.
He came to the big dome of the beaver’s den, gave it a kick to test its fortitude, and sat down. He jacked a shell into the Henry, then off-cocked the hammer.
“Come on, Prophet,” Loomis called above the muttering water. “I know you’re here. I’m not going to let you get away. You might as well come out and take your due.”
Loomis glanced around, his predator’s senses alive and ready for anything, his heart tapping a steady, urgent rhythm in his powerful chest. Two veins bulged in his forehead.
“You don’t think you’re going to get away with killing my son, do you?”
His eyes swept the bank, the water, the branches dodging and sawing in the breeze, the magpies and blackbirds skittering among the firs. Behind it all, as though in a dream inlaid behind the moment, he saw Stuart lying dead on the saloon floor, a dime-sized hole in his chest.
Enraged at the thought, at the vision that would not leave him—would never leave him—Loomis bolted to his feet, grinding his teeth, and shouted, “Get out here, goddamnit, Prophet, you murdering son of a bitch!”
Although Loomis was sure he could smell Prophet nearby, could hear the man’s fearful heart beating, only the gurgle of the water answered him. A gopher skittered somewhere behind him in the brush.
Loomis stood, pushed off the beaver den, and continued on across the dam to the other side.
Prophet was here. Loomis knew he was here. The man who’d butchered his son was so close Loomis could smell the blood leaking out of him.
And he would not eat or sleep until he’d found him, tortured him, killed him, and left him to the coyotes and the crows.