PROPHET TRAVELED SLOWLY, cautiously back to Little Missouri, so he wouldn’t be spotted by any of Loomis’s riders still scouring the country for him. The ride took him the better part of two hours, and he was sweaty and exhausted by the time the town appeared in a sagey hollow along the river, bordered on the north by salmon-colored buttes chipped and fluted by the winds and rains of time.
“Town” really didn’t describe Little Missouri accurately. It was mostly just a flag stop on the Great Northern tracks: a motley collection of log and lumber dwellings situated among the cottonwoods and buckbrush in no particular order, with the river curving between the buildings and the buttes.
The Pyramid Park Hotel was the largest structure and the closest one to the railroad tracks. Prophet stared at it from the rise he’d halted Rebel on, appraising the possibility of his chancing a drink there, where all his trouble had started. His side hadn’t begun aching until after the ride’s first half hour. It ached in earnest now, and a drink would sure soothe it.
No horses were tied to the hitch rack out front. In fact, there were only two or three horses tied anywhere in the whole town, and only one farm wagon was parked before the weathered, gray, two-story mercantile. Things looked quiet enough and would probably remain that way. Loomis and his riders wouldn’t expect Prophet to show his face again in Little Missouri after having been run out like a rabid coyote. Hell, they’d probably even given him up for dead by now and gone back to ranching.
Well, first things first, he told himself, spurring the horse toward the livery barn sitting catty-corner to the mercantile. It was an L-shaped log shack with a bellows and forge inside the big double doors and flanked by a paddock and corral. The corral was shaded by several cottonwoods and watered by the river itself. There were several horses obscured by the trees; Prophet couldn’t tell if Mean and Ugly was one of them or not.
Warily, he swung past the low-slung, flat-roofed building belching black smoke from its chimney. He didn’t want to deal with the liveryman; the man might get word to Loomis, who’d be on Prophet’s trail pronto. But he couldn’t very well steal the horse in broad daylight. And what about the tack, saddlebags, rifle, and sawed-off shotgun he’d left in the liveryman’s care? That was everything he owned, and he didn’t want to leave any of it behind.
He mulled it over as he circled the place, but he just didn’t see any way out of confronting the proprietor.
“Okay, here goes,” he told the horse as he pulled up to the hitching post and climbed down.
He looped the reins over the post and peered into the dark cabin where the liveryman was working at a bellows. Coals glowed in the forge, and the smell of hot iron assailed Prophet’s nostrils. Several cats lounged on split-pole shelves and behind the water barrel. A three-legged Siamese drank from a pan of milk near the anvil.
“Hello there,” Prophet said, peering through the smoke.
The man jerked around quickly, startled. He was a big man coated in soot and sweat, with long, stringy hair and a sparse beard. He stared at Prophet critically.
Self-consciously, Prophet edged forward, keeping his head low, so the man couldn’t see his face. Maybe the liveryman wouldn’t remember it was Stuart Loomis’s killer who belonged to Mean and Ugly.
“I was... I was wonderin’ if I could get my horse now,” Prophet said. “That’d be the dun with the spotted rump.”
“It would, would it?” the man said gruffly, tattooing Prophet with a belligerent stare. He stopped pumping the bellows and got up slowly, wiping his hands on a rag tied to his leather apron.
Prophet smiled, but it was really more of a wince. He didn’t know what he was more afraid of: the man remembering he was the shooter who’d shot Loomis’s kid, or hearing that his horse, tack, and weapons were gone.
“Is he still here?”
“Yeah, he’s here,” the man said, walking toward Prophet. He favored his right foot, and his knee was stiff, probably the result of some grisly blacksmith accident involving iron or heat or both. “Meanest son of a bitch of a goddamn horse I ever seen in my life. Took a hunk o’ flesh out of each shoulder.”
Defensively, Prophet said, “Now, I warned you about that...” .
‘That you did, but I was still fixin’ to shoot the bastard if you didn’t show for him. Sure as hell couldn’t o’ sold him. Wouldn’t have sold a horse like that to my worst enemy.”
Prophet kept his eyes on the hard dirt floor sprinkled with iron shavings, straw, and horse apples. “No, he’s a one-man horse, that’s for sure.”
There was a silence as the big man approached Prophet. He stopped two feet away, and Prophet braced himself for the worst.
“Goddamn, boy!” the man fairly yelled with either great anger or great joy—it was hard to tell which. He lunged for Prophet, wrapped his arms around the bounty man’s waist, picked him a foot off the ground, turned him in a circle, and set him back down. “How in the hell did you make it, anyway?”
Wincing against the pain in his injured side, one hand on the butt of his Peacemaker, Prophet regarded the big liveryman warily, half crouching to ward off another attack. “Uh ... what’s that?”
“How’d you make it away from Loomis? Good Christ! I saw him and his boys chasin’ you out o’ town. Why, you run right by here and nearly knocked a buggy over!” The man tipped his head back and guffawed. “I thought for sure you were buzzard bait. Especially after I found out you shot Little Stu. But no, sir—here you are!” He punched Prophet’s shoulder, mouth spread in a brown-toothed grin. “What happened?”
Gradually, Prophet relaxed, dropped his hand from his Peacemaker’s grips. “Well, I reckon I was a tad more afraid than they were eager.” He grinned and shook his head. “But just a tad.”
“Well, I know that ain’t true. No, sir. You killed Little Stu, and there ain’t any man more eager to see you dead than Gerard Loomis.”
“I reckon that’s so,” Prophet agreed. Through one eye, he studied the big man, who had at least three inches on him, and forearms like hickory knots. “So I take it you ain’t too broke up about Little Stu?”
“Me? Broke up about Little Stu? If it weren’t broad daylight, I’d kiss you right on the mug, fella. That Little Stu was one sick little hombre. He used to ride by here and take potshots at my cats. Why, he scared my wife so bad, she and my little girl headed back to Ohio last fall. I couldn’t find a buyer for this place, or I’d be gone, too.”
“So you won’t tell anyone I been here?”
“Hell, no!”
Prophet heaved a sigh of relief and grinned. “Thank you, friend.”
“No. Thank you, friend.”
The liveryman lifted his apron over his head and tossed it on a barrel. Heading for the side door into the corral, he said, “You know, I used to daydream up ways I could kill that little polecat without his pa findin’ out. I thought of ambushin’ him on his way into town, ambushin’ him on his way out of town, and even slippin’ metal filings in his beer over at the saloon.”
He stopped at the door and turned to Prophet. “But you saved me the trouble, and I appreciate that. I really do.”
With that, he turned into the corral and hobbled off after Prophet’s horse.
While he was gone, Prophet located his possessions in the little room in back of the cabin where more cats were lounging. It was all there: saddlebags, Winchester, shotgun, and tack. He hauled everything into the corral and watched the liveryman lead Mean and Ugly toward the cabin on a long rope, glancing anxiously over his shoulder.
When the horse saw Prophet, it jumped into a canter, putting its head down and blowing. It nearly ran Prophet over, then turned sharply sideways, as if ready and raring to be saddled and ridden the hell out of here, its big muscles rippling eagerly.
“Good Lord, that horse seems to actually like somebody,” the liveryman said as he removed his rope from around the dun’s neck with the caution of a man removing cheese from an unsprung trap.
“Yeah, he likes me well enough, but he’ll still take a chunk out o’ my hide now and then.”
“Why do you put up with him?”
“We been up the mountain and down the river together, me an’ him. Besides, who’d buy him?”
The man nodded and gave the horse a solicitous glance.
“Now listen,” Prophet said, as he threw the saddle over Mean and Ugly’s back, “I only have about a dollar and fifty cents to my name. I know that don’t come nowhere near covering my bill—”
The big man waved him off, shaking his head. “Don’t worry about it, pard. I’m the man owin’ you—for shootin’ that Loomis snake and keepin’ me from havin’ to do it. I’d of ended up hangin’ from one of his old man’s cotton-woods. Now, hell, I might even be able to coax my wife and daughter back out here. I can’t go back to Ohio—not with all my capital wrapped up in this place.”
“Much obliged,” Prophet said as he straightened from tightening the cinch.
The big liveryman turned back into the cabin. “De nada, as the bean-eaters say.” A thought dawning on him, he stopped suddenly. “Say, whose horse you ride in on, anyway?”
Prophet smiled deferentially. “Just as soon not say, if you don’t mind.”
“Oh, I get it,” the. man said with a grin and a discerning nod. “You found someone else not too upset at the news of Little Stu’s demise.” Snickering, he turned into the shack.
When Prophet had finished saddling the horse, he led it outside, untied Rebel’s reins from the rack, and mounted Mean and Ugly. “You haven’t seen any Loomis men in town today, have you?” he asked the liveryman.
“Hell, no,” the man said, back at his bellows. “They’re south o’ town, huntin’ you!” He threw his head back with a hearty guffaw.
“Be seein’ you,” Prophet said, kneeing Mean and Ugly down the street and leading the other horse along by the reins.
“Good luck, my friend,” the liveryman said, adding darkly, “Something tells me you’re gonna need it.”
Prophet rode up the knoll on which he’d stopped when he’d first entered town. He pulled Rebel alongside him, tied the reins to Rebel’s saddle horn, and slapped his butt. The horse reared and ran, heading home.
“Thanks for the ride, Reb.”
Prophet turned his horse back into town. He’d decided several minutes ago that he was going to sit down and have a drink to numb the pain in his side, no matter what. He didn’t see the risk in it, as long as no Loomis riders were around. Like the liveryman had said, they were all south, hunting him. He doubted any of the other townsmen begrudged his killing Little Stu any more than the liveryman had. It wouldn’t matter if they did. He had his sawed-off ten-gauge slung over his back and his Winchester under his thigh.
Just to be on the safe side, he pulled around the Pyramid Park, a faded red, two-story building with a shabby veranda on the second floor, and tied Mean and Ugly to a tree out back, behind the privy and near a trash heap. Sleeving sweat from his brow, he entered the hotel through the back door, walked down a narrow hall with an uneven floor and through a single batwing into the saloon.
The room was abandoned, and Prophet had to clear his throat at the bar for a full minute before a man finally appeared, striding through the door from the hotel.
“Sorry—I fell asleep at the front desk. Didn’t hear anyone ride up.”
Prophet had only turned to glance at him, then quickly turned away, keeping his hat low. No sense in letting the man get a good look at him unless he had to.
“No problem, friend,” Prophet said. “How ‘bout a beer and a shot o’ rye?” Then he’d hit the westward trail and camp in a quiet ravine. He’d make Montana by sundown of the next day.
The man filled a mug at the keg while Prophet watched, salivating. The apron set the foam-topped beverage on the bar, then filled a shot glass and set it beside the beer.
“Fifteen cents.”
Staring at the straw-yellow beer and the coffee-colored rye like a man in love, Prophet rummaged in his jeans pocket for the coins. He slapped them on the bar and reached for the rye.
“Say,” the barman said, haltingly. “Oh, my God, it is you!”
Prophet glanced out the front window, feeling exposed. “Easy, friend.”
“You’re still alive.”
“So far...” Prophet tossed back the rye and set the glass on the bar.
The barman watched him with a look of surprise on his sharp, diminutive features.
“I’d just as soon you kept quiet about my bein’ here, if you wouldn’t mind. I know there ain’t no Loomis men in town, but...”
“I ain’t gonna advertise it,” the man assured him. “Just the same, you’re takin’ quite a chance. Those Loomis men, they come in here all the time. Haven’t been in here the last couple days, but—”
“Relax, friend,” Prophet said with a smile. “I’ll be outta here in a minute, after I take my medicine.” He smiled and sipped the beer, then tapped the shot glass. “Why don’t you hit me one more time.”
When the man had refilled the shot glass and relieved Prophet of another dime, he corked the bottle. “Well, I best get back over to the hotel. I’m s’posed to be dusting. If you need anything else, just give a holler.”
“Thanks, this’ll be it,” Prophet said.
When the man had gone, Prophet decided to sit a spell and give his aching side a reprieve. He hoped those stitches would hold. All he needed was to open that wound again ...
Beer in one hand, rye in the other, he made for a table at the back of the room, kicked out a chair, and sat down. He sipped the beer and the rye alternately, savoring every sip and noting a definite quelling in the fire in his side.
He was nearly finished with the rye when the barman appeared in the door from the hotel, looking pale. The man gave his head a single, philosophical shake.
“Well, I’ll be goddamned. What rotten luck—”
“What’s that?” Prophet asked him, frowning.
The barman jerked a thumb over his shoulder just as three horseback riders appeared in the window behind him, reining their mounts up to the hitching post. They were haloed in dust, and their weapons winked in the waning light.
“Loomis men.”