TWO DAYS LATER, Prophet walked through an early morning mist, scouring the bottom of a brushy draw for firewood. Finding a fallen branch, he stooped, picked up one end, and started dragging it back toward his camp, keeping an eye skinned for predators.
He’d eluded the Crosshatch men for two days now, since he’d trapped the two men in the spur canyon off Little Porcupine Creek and had mooned Loomis from the ridge. He knew they’d be closing soon. None seemed to be able to track, but even a city boy would be able to follow the tracks he’d left yesterday and the day before.
He just hoped they didn’t find him before he was ready.
Nearing his small, smoking fire, upon which a coffeepot gurgled and chugged, he gave a smile and wagged his head. He couldn’t help laughing at the mooning he’d given Loomis. It hadn’t been a calculated maneuver; it had come to him spur of the moment, and down went his denims and drawers. It would have served him right if he’d been plugged for such a reckless indulgence, but he hadn’t been able to help himself. He’d wanted to rub Loomis’s nose in the trap he’d set for his men, and he couldn’t have thought of a better way if he’d sat down and mulled it over beforehand.
Prophet knew he should have trained his rifle on the man and finished the whole mess right then and there. But the rifle had been in his saddle boot, and his horse had been too far away to make retrieving it feasible. So he’d indulged in a little fun. No real harm done. He’d get Loomis soon enough. Loomis and his whole goddamn crew.
Using the small ax he routinely carried in his saddlebags, he chopped the branch into sections and added several to his fire, which sputtered and hissed in the fine rain falling through the aspens towering over him. He adjusted the coffeepot in the coals, then laid several strips of the antelope he’d shot yesterday in his frying pan, and set the pan on a rock in the fire. When he’d poured a cup of coffee and rolled his first smoke of the day, he sat back against his saddle, trying to ignore the annoying mist dampening his clothes, and thought about Layla.
It wasn’t the first time he’d thought of her since leaving her the day he’d shot Kinch and Gerber and left her ranch with the bodies draped over their mounts. In fact, she’d been a constant image in the back of his mind, making him feel sort of itchy inside, like he’d inhaled poison ivy fumes. He wondered constantly, albeit half consciously, what she was up to, and he felt a heady eagerness to see her again. It was an urge he needed to resist, however, lest he put her and her brothers in danger.
No, he wouldn’t see her again until this was over. If it was ever over, that was. And if he survived it.
He still wasn’t sure what would happen if he did survive. He’d never for a second in his entire life thought himself a marrying man, but Layla Carr had him wondering.
Exhaling a long plume of cigarette smoke, he grinned again, imagining how Layla would react to his story about mooning Gerard Loomis from that ridge top. No hothouse flower was that girl. She could appreciate a story like that, and would no doubt laugh as hard as he.
Reaching forward to give the antelope steaks a poke, he froze at the sound of tin cans rattling. Something or someone had kicked the trap line he had strung around his camp to alert him of intruders. He hesitated for only half a second before throwing himself backward over the saddle. As he hit the ground on his back, a gun popped twice, the slugs cutting the air around him with raspy whistles.
Prophet bounced to his haunches, his forty-five in his hand and pivoting in the direction from which the shots had originated. Not seeing anything but knowing he didn’t have a second to waste, he fired blindly into the surrounding shrubs and rocks of the arroyo, snapping branches from the cottonwoods.
Between his fourth and fifth shots, he heard a groan, and ceased firing. Peering through the smoke and mist, he watched a man stumble out from a bullberry shrub, heading away from Prophet, and drop to his knees.
Still crouched, gun extended, Prophet jerked around, expecting more shots. The only sound was his meat burning in the pan and the rain sizzling in the fire. Among the surrounding rocks, trees, and shrubs, he saw no more movement than a crow lighting on a branch, cawing.
Finally, he straightened, releasing a weary breath. He stood silently for several minutes, watching and listening. He couldn’t understand why there wasn’t more shooting. Certainly the man he’d shot hadn’t come alone.
But when he’d stood there, forty-five cocked, for nearly five minutes and no more gunfire erupted around him, he started walking slowly toward the wounded man, gun extended, not letting his guard down.
The man lay on his side, knees toward his belly, hands cupped around the bullet making a bloody puddle in his middle, an inch or two above his cartridge belts. His Stetson lay on the ground, and his wet brown hair curled flat against his head. The eyes were open and trained on the wound, but they didn’t see a thing. The man was dead. A Colt Navy with a bone grip lay several feet in front of him.
Prophet recognized the man. Wilt Axley, a gun for hire from Texas, wanted in at least five states for murder and robbery. If Prophet remembered correctly, the reward for Axley was fifteen hundred dollars, owing to the fact he’d ambushed two Texas Rangers outside a roadhouse near Laredo.
Apparently, Loomis liked his drovers fast on the draw, which told Prophet the man had big plans for himself. You didn’t hire men like Axley unless you thought you’d need them for more than running cattle. You hired them for running off other ranchers, which in this case would probably mean Layla and her brothers and the other Pretty Butte people.
Prophet shook his head, lips curved in a scowl. “Sure wish I had time to bring you in, Ax,” he said. He was ruminating on how far that fifteen hundred dollars would go—not toward having one hell of a ripsnortin’ good time in Bismarck or Billings, but, to his own vague surprise, toward fixing up the Carr ranch, outfitting Layla and her brothers in new clothes and maybe a rifle or two.
Catching himself, he said, “My God, Proph, what’s happening to you?”
Chuffing a wry laugh, he turned away from the body and headed back to the fire. Knowing the shooting might have alerted others, he gobbled what he could have of the burned antelope steaks, packed his gear, saddled his horse, and kicked dirt on the hissing flames.
In five minutes, he and Mean and Ugly were heading south along another no-name creek through the badlands, on the run again and seemingly forevermore.
Later in the day, he led the horse up a long, steep divide. At the crest he rolled a cigarette and looked around, squatting on his haunches and breathing heavily from the climb.
Before him, the brown river twisted through horizontally striped bluffs, the orange and brown strata sharply contrasting with the cream of the chalky dust between. Up and down the river were the brown smears of cattle grazing singly or in groups.
Behind him lay a ragged, patchwork tableau of low bluffs and vaguely defined ridges, sparse brush growing in the cuts. A trail ran through that country like a ship’s wake over choppy seas. It was the old Custer Trail, upon which the golden-haired general and the Seventh Cavalry had headed west toward the Greasy Grass and their Waterloo.
The dust puff a half mile away told Prophet others rode the trail now, toward Prophet holding his horse’s reins and puffing his cigarette. He pursed his lips around the quirley, thoughtful. They were trailing him, having cut the sign he’d been careful to leave after he’d stopped for lunch beside a mud pool in a reedy hollow.
He smoked his cigarette leisurely, then forked leather and jogged the dun back down the slope and across the river. He turned into a ravine and soon found himself in a stony amphitheater, fantastic water carvings rearing themselves from sallow gray slopes. He climbed a butte where the old trail passed between gray cliffs, then descended to the cool greenness of a timbered bottom. The grass was as high as Ugly’s hocks, and the cotton woods fluttered in the breeze, leaves flashing silver.
Custer and company must’ve camped here. It was the best grass for miles. The thought chilled Prophet as he looked for a place to effect an ambush.
Finding one, he picketed the gelding on the other side of a low divide, then walked the quarter mile back to the nest of rocks he’d found, thinly screened by cottonwoods and sage. From here, he had a good view of the trail descending the divide from the northeast.
He stood the rifle he’d stolen from one of the men he’d killed in the canyon beside him in the rocks and held his own .73 across his thighs as he squatted, looking over the wall.
He waited there for a half hour. Then a brown speck appeared on the butte before him, moving slowly. The speck stopped for a moment, then came on, descending the trail, horse and rider slowly defining themselves against the eroded butte, the horse sliding in the loose gravel and dust.
Prophet looked around. Where were the others?
The first man descended the hollow, his horse quickening when it saw the grass. The man didn’t let the animal eat, however. He kept its head high and looked warily around, turning his gaze this way and that, suspicious of a trap.
Prophet saw something flash out of the corner of his eye, and he turned right. A horseless man was stealing over a bluff, keeping to the buckbrush for cover. The receiver of his carbine winked in the sunlight.
Okay, that accounts for two. Where was the third? Prophet was sure the dust he’d seen had been enough for three horses.
He whipped his head around, catching movement in the corner of his left eye. Turning, he saw nothing but scoria-crested bluffs above the cottonwoods.
If someone was there, he’d gotten behind Prophet. He’d done it pretty fast, so it had to be someone who knew the country.
Prophet cursed under his breath. He had to assume they had him surrounded.
He cast his gaze forward, where the first rider sat near the base of the butte that he’d descended. The man was staying put for now, probably hoping the other two on the higher ground would pinpoint Prophet’s location and telegraph it to him with hand signals.
Prophet couldn’t wait for that to happen. And he couldn’t wait for the man on his left—if there was a man on his left—to get behind him. He had to make his move.
Leaving the spare rifle where it was, he climbed out of the rocks and ran crouching to the bluff behind him. Guns popped, and two slugs spat dust several yards behind and above him. He ran into a crease and climbed a shallow trough that ran around a dike. It was slippery going, and, having to use his hands, he almost lost the rifle several times.
Near the top of the bluff, he looked around. There was no sign of either of the two gunmen. Deciding to go after the man he figured had gotten behind him, he moved eastward, dodging behind rocks and scaly dikes jutting out of the scoria.
The air was smoky, as lignite burned deep within the bluff, probably set afire by lightning. The smoke gave Prophet additional cover, but it also covered the man he was hunting. It gave off a putrid odor and made his eyes burn.
Entering a particularly thick screen of the smoke, he heard the muffled grind of gravel, and he slipped behind a boulder. There he waited for several minutes.
Finally, something moved through the smoke to his left.
Prophet cupped his hands around his mouth and whistled softly.
The figure whirled and flashed, and a rifle barked. The slug tore into the boulder near Prophet, splashing him with rock fragments. Holding his Winchester hip high, he fired off two quick rounds, jacking quickly. When the echo of his second shot had died, the figure was gone.
Prophet moved slowly forward, holding the rifle out before him, his finger on the trigger, ready to squeeze. After several paces, he found the man lying face down, one arm beneath him, the other stretched out above his shoulder. His greasy leather hat was smashed beneath his head. His face was turned enough that Prophet could see the patch over the man’s left eye. Blood pooled around him.
Not recognizing the man but satisfied he was dead, Prophet hurdled the body and made his way back the way he had come.
‘That’s far enough, Proph.”
Prophet froze, turning his head left, where Donnell Hewitt, a tall, slim kid in a linsey-woolsey shirt, buckskin trousers, and worn black boots stood facing him with a Spencer carbine snugged up to his shoulder. The coal smoke was thinner here, and Prophet could see the grin on Hewitt’s sun-freckled face.
“Been awhile, compadre,” the kid said with a high, Ozark twang.
Prophet knew Hewitt well enough. After the war, Hewitt had ridden with a band of Missouri outlaws before everyone in the entire gang but him had been the guests of honor at a necktie party arranged by Kansas vigilantes. Somehow, Hewitt had escaped and gone on to rob several banks and stages and rape and murder the daughter of a well-to-do express agent. Prophet had hunted him once, two years ago, and had almost had him in a saloon. But then a girl who’d turned out to be Hewitt’s girlfriend thunked Prophet over the head with a beer bottle, and Prophet woke up an hour later with a scrawled note in his mouth: “Mabe some other time ombre.” It had been signed “Donnell.”
The canny lad gave a high-pitched chuckle. “Look who’s got you on the run!”
Prophet sighed. “Fancy runnin’ into you again, Donnell. Hope you left your girlfriend home.”
The kid grinned and chuckled through his wide-stretched mouth, blue eyes flashing great joy. “Set that rifle down nice and slow. Make any sudden moves, I’ll ventilate you. Would right now, put an end to ye and your damn trouble, but it’d be more fun to bring you in to the old man alive. He’s got plans for you, ole Loomis does.” The kid laughed again.
Prophet bent his knees, laying the Winchester at his feet, then straightened again.
“Now,” Hewitt ordered, deadly serious, “unbuckle that gun belt and let it drop.”
Feeling a sinking sensation, feeling it all slip away, Prophet did as he was told, the gun, holster, cartridge belts, and knife sheath falling around his heels.
Donnell Hewitt enjoyed the drawn look on Prophet’s features. Lighthearted again, he cackled like an old woman, strutting forward with his rifle aimed at Prophet’s face.
Prophet was thinking, Don’t let this kid be the end of me, goddamn it. Not him. He’d always fancied himself going out by the gun of someone like Clay Allison or Butch Cassidy, not some nickel-plated Missouri farm boy.
“Saco!” the kid yelled, his high-pitched voice resembling a hawk’s screech. “Up here ... I got him.”
The kid had turned his face for a split second. It was enough time for the desperate, cornered Prophet, having nothing to lose, to lunge. He swiped the rifle away with his right hand and brought his right knee up squarely to the kid’s crotch. The rifle barked, throwing a slug a half inch over Prophet’s ear, and the kid cried out in pain and anger, crouching over his belly.
As the rifle clattered on the rocks, Prophet slammed his left fist into the kid’s face, the kid falling on his ass with another angry cry, face red with exasperation. He drew the revolver on his hip, but before the barrel had cleared, Prophet kicked it out of Hewitt’s hand.
Figuring the kid was out of commission for the moment, Prophet bent to retrieve his own rifle. He’d figured the kid wrong. Young Hewitt got his birdlike legs under him and sprang, virtually flying upon Prophet while braying like a lung-shot mule.
Prophet went down hard, the kid on top of him, pummeling Prophet with his fists. They rolled over and over in the gravel and dust, Hewitt cursing and spitting and flailing at Prophet with his arms. He got Prophet onto his back and from somewhere produced a stiletto, slim as a reed and sharp as a razor.
The kid brought his hand up to Prophet’s neck, ready to slip the stiletto into his throat. Prophet caught the wrist just in time. Hearing the man the kid had summoned running up the butte, he fought young Hewitt’s blade away from his jugular, which was no easy task. The kid seemed to have more muscle than bone, and he moved like a snake.
The kid made a young man’s mistake, however, when he took his concentration off the stiletto long enough to give Prophet a groining. Prophet took the opportunity to flick the blade sideways and drive it with both fists into the kid’s shoulder, separating muscle from bone. The kid made a humming sound, expiring air through a slit in his pursed lips. His face flushed scarlet, and his body tensed.
He glanced at the blade embedded in his shoulder, and before he could continue the fight, Prophet had reached out, found his revolver, planted the barrel under Hewitt’s chin, and pulled the trigger. The firebrand’s head blossomed vermillion, and Hewitt slumped to the side.
A second later, the man named Saco approached the lip of the butte. He froze when he saw the two men lying motionless, side by side, Donnell Hewitt’s legs crossed over Prophet’s. Saco frowned, befuddled, and approached with a cautious set to his jaw, extending his rifle.
Suddenly, Prophet rolled over, rising to his knees and lifting his revolver. Saco was slow to process the ruse. Prophet’s bullet tore through his brain and out the back of his head, throwing Saco back the way he’d come.