Chapter 7
A low growling nudged Prophet from the depths of sleep.
The growling stopped. Prophet didn’t know how much time passed, for he was falling back into sweet slumber once more, before the growling came again—longer, sharper, more angry.
The sound pulled him out of his slumber again, all the way out this time. He lifted his head from the sofa and slitted one eye to see a large, round, shaggy head with a long black snout and two mud-black eyes, ears angling back and quivering. Leathery, whisker-bristling lips rose from the beast’s mouth, showing bone-white, peglike teeth framed by long, curved fangs.
The dark eyes, flat with wild savagery, glared at Prophet from three feet away. Lou could smell the sweet, dead-meat fetor of the beast’s breath.
The bounty hunter jerked his head farther up with a start and an involuntary, clipped yell.
The wolf wheeled with a frightened yelp, ran toward the saloon’s far wall flanking the stone hearth, and leaped up and through the broken-out window in which granular snowflakes swirled. The beast was a mottled gray and blue blur in the dingy shadows. There was a soft thump as the four feet hit the snowy ground outside the roadhouse, and then soft, frantic thuds faded as the wolf ran away, breath rasping.
“What is it?” Louisa said, lifting her head and looking around, her hair in her eyes. “What’s the matter, Lou?”
“You sure sleep sound for a bounty hunter!” Prophet exclaimed, his heart still pounding. “There was a wolf in here!”
“I always sleep sound when I’m with you, because I know you don’t. What are you talking about? A wolf? Inside?”
“Sure as hell!”
“You were dreaming. Go back to sleep.” Louisa stared toward the window, touched with the grays and blues of the early dawn. “Sun’s not up yet. And it’s cold and snowy. I need another hour. Build up the fire, will you?”
“Hell, I can’t go back to sleep after that.” Prophet crawled over his slender partner and rose, staring at the window through which the wolf had disappeared and through which snow swirled, dusting the floor several feet in front of it, around the now-cold hearth. “We was wolf bait. That beast likely smelled the carrion in the barn. Couldn’t get in the barn but he could get in here through them windows. I should’ve boarded ’em up.”
“What’s that horrible smell?” Louisa said, curled in a ball beneath Prophet’s bedroll, eyes closed but frowning as she sniffed the air. “First thing you should do when you get to Indian Butte, Lou, is take a bath.”
“That’s the wolf stench!”
“Hush.” Louisa turned over with a groan, giving her back to him. “I need another hour. Occupy yourself, please, Lou. Quietly.”
“‘Occupy yourself, Lou,’” Prophet mimicked, sitting in a chair and pulling on a fur-lined moccasin. “‘Quietly.’ Miss Uppity Britches.”
Louisa snored softly into the back of the sofa, sound asleep.
Prophet pulled on his other moccasin. “Wolf bait is what we was. Here, I survived the War of Northern Aggression and a dozen years on the wild and woolly frontier, hunting the baddest men for the highest bounties, and I was damn near ate by a damned wolf while sleeping in a backwater Dakota watering hole!”
He moved to the cold hearth, muttering, “‘Occupy yourself, please, Lou. Quietly. Take a bath when you get to Indian Butte, Lou!’”
He took an iron poker and poked at the remnants of last night’s fire until a flame licked up from a bit of burned log. He added paper and bark to the flame, growing it, then added twigs and branches and finally a couple of stout, split logs. Soon, a fire was once again licking up through the chimney, panting like a baby dragon and putting up a fight against the bone-splintering chill in the room.
The perfume of the smoke warred against the sweet, gamy stench the wolf had left behind.
Prophet buckled his cartridge belt and Peacemaker around his waist. He tied the thong around his thigh. He shrugged into his heavy buckskin coat, pulled on his knit gloves and then his wool-lined, buckskin mittens over the gloves. Having been caught up here in similar weather before, he’d be damned if he’d leave any fingers behind. His oysters, maybe, but not his fingers. He tramped lightly back along the bar then headed out the roadhouse’s rear door and into the chill air of early morning.
He paused on the wooden stoop, looking around.
The cold air nipped at his nose and cheeks. It was cold, all right, but it could get a hell of a lot colder in these climes. The air was now as still as that inside an abandoned church though a few small flakes were still falling, lazily, like afterthoughts. Sweeping his gaze around the yard, Prophet thought that only an inch or so of the white stuff had fallen overnight, not the good two feet he’d expected.
A rare bit of good luck.
The light was growing, the eastern horizon blushing like a Lutheran bride. Peering up at the sky, Lou spied a few stars flickering wanly between the parting, ragged-edged clouds. He’d be damned if it didn’t look like the sun might make an appearance once it had heaved itself out of the eastern plains. As he dropped down off the stoop and began tramping toward the big log barn, a single crow, larger than some hawks, cawed at him from atop the corral to the barn’s right, shuffling its feet and sending the light dusting of snow from the corral’s top slat to the ground.
The snow glittered like stardust.
Prophet threw open the barn doors and stood staring down at the dead men he’d laid out in the barn’s main alley, shoulder to shoulder and hip to hip, starting just a few feet beyond the door. “Don’t get up, gents,” Prophet said. “It’s just me—Lou Prophet, ex–Confederate freedom fighter from the hills of north Georgia.” He pronounced the last two words, “Nawth Joe-jahhhh,” playfully accentuating his drawl.
He wasn’t mocking the dead. Prophet had just enough hillbilly superstition in him to know to never mock a dead man and risk attracting a possible hex from the dead man’s ghost or from one of the many unknown but very real hoo-doo specters that prowled the earth. In fact, even after all the men Prophet had killed or seen killed on Southern battlefields as well as out here on the western frontier, dead men still made his spine tingle.
That’s why, as he went to work saddling the outlaws’ horses and then hoisting the dead men over the saddles and tying cold wrists to cold ankles beneath the horses’ bellies, he joked aloud and whistled while he worked. He was relieved to finally lead Mean and Ugly out of the barn and into the weak sunlight of the early morning.
Sure enough, it would be a sunny day. Sunny but cold . . .
Five horses, tied tail to tail, followed behind Mean and Ugly. Prophet led the lead horse of the second set of five by the lead mount’s bridle reins.
Also in his right hand were the reins of the spare horse he’d saddled and over which no dead man lay, as well as the reins of Louisa’s brown and white pinto.
The day was cold but clear. A breeze had picked up, swirling the freshly fallen snow so that it glittered in the clean-scoured air like crushed sequins. The horses clomped heavily, slowly behind him, several whickering anxiously at the dead men draped over their backs.
As Prophet pulled up in front of the roadhouse, just off its snow-dusted front porch, the front door opened. Louisa stepped out holding two steaming tin cups in her gloved hands.
She came down the porch steps and held one of the cups up to Prophet.
“Figured you might want some mud before you start for Indian Butte.”
Prophet dropped the reins of Louisa’s horse as well as that of the spare horse and accepted the cup. He salivated at the welcoming smell of the freshly boiled belly wash in his hand, the warm steam wafting up around him. “You’re good enough to marry.”
“Yes, I am,” Louisa said with customary insouciance. “Unfortunately, you’re not.”
Prophet gave a wry chuff. “Ever the charmer.” After he’d taken his first couple of sips of the coffee, blowing on its tar-black surface, he said, “Well, we got ten dead men here. I figured we’d each take five. You take the money. I’d likely get drunk and head straight to Mexico with it.”
Louisa had walked back up onto the porch. Now she turned toward the yard and glanced over the rim of her own steaming cup. “Who’s the calico for?”
Prophet glanced at the spare mount over which he’d strapped a spare saddle he’d found in the barn’s side-shed tack room. “Well, I figured . . .”
“Is that one for me?”
Toni stepped through the open door behind Louisa. She was bundled in a thick blue wool coat too big for her, a gray wool hat, red wool muffler, and matching red knit mittens, the bright red of the muffler and mittens fairly glowing in the crisp sunshine. She held a carpetbag in one hand. On her feet were heavy, wool-lined, deerskin boots that had seen better days but would do just fine, keeping the girl’s toes from freezing. One of the dead hardcases had likely left the boots upstairs, maybe the rest of the gear, as well.
“Yes, ma’am, it is,” Prophet said.
Louisa frowned at the pale redhead moving up to stand beside her. “I don’t understand.”
“She can’t stay here all by herself,” Prophet said. He glanced around at the sunlit, empty yard fogged by windblown snow. “There’s nothin’ here now. Jiggs is dead. Besides, the windows are broken out. And whether you saw it or not, we was almost eaten by a big blue wolf one short hour ago.”
“We could board up the windows before we leave,” Louisa said.
“No.” Toni moved up to stand beside the female bounty hunter, gazing pleadingly at Prophet. “I don’t want to stay here. I can’t run this place myself. I don’t want to. Besides . . .” She glanced around apprehensively. “Lots of bad men in these parts. Almost as bad as them.”
She pinned her gaze on the dead men riding belly down across their saddles, and she hardened her jaws in renewed anger.
“You must know some good folks in these parts,” Prophet said. “I figured one of us, Louisa or me, would drop you off on the way to Indian Butte or Sundown. Some nice rancher? Mayhaps a nice farmer in need of a cleanin’ girl?”
“I know few people in these parts, Mr. Prophet. The few I do are probably not looking for a maid.”
“Nice people are in short supply everywhere,” Louisa said to Toni. “But there must be someone you can . . . I don’t know . . . trust, at least.”
“Trustworthy folks are in short supply, too, Miss Bonaventure. I was hopin’ I could ride with you to Sundown. I won’t be alone there, at least. And I could maybe get a job working for Mr. Emory. Adam Emory. He’s the banker there. Came last year from Bismarck, I heard, thinking the town would grow with the coming of the spur line. I heard he has a nice new house but no wife and no children. I’m thinkin’ he might need a girl to help him clean an’ cook.”
A pink flush touched her cheeks, and she dropped her eyes with vague self-consciousness.
Prophet and Louisa shared a fleeting, meaningful glance. Toni was likely hoping in the back of her mind, or maybe even in the front of it, that the new banker in Sundown might need a young wife, as well. There was nothing unreasonable about that. Many a girl had married for far more nefarious reasons than to have a shelter over her head, food on her table.
Louisa looked at Prophet, frowning. She sucked her cheeks in, not liking the situation. She didn’t want the girl tagging along with her, but she saw no solution to the problem.
“If that’s what you want to do,” she said with a sigh. “Let’s get a move on. We’re burning daylight.”
“Thank you!” Toni set down her carpetbag. “I’ll be right back. I just have one more small bag.”
When the doxie had gone back into the roadhouse, Prophet frowned curiously down at Louisa. “What’s the matter with you?”
Louisa tossed the dregs of her coffee into the snow and set the empty tin cup on the porch rail. “She should ride with you.”
Louisa stepped back inside the roadhouse and returned a few seconds later with her saddle, saddlebags, sheathed carbine, and blanket roll. A second set of saddlebags contained the loot the gang had stolen from the bank in Wyoming.
“Why should she ride with me?” Prophet said, still scowling down at his comely but moody partner. “She wants to go to Sundown. I’m headin’ to Indian Butte.”
Louisa leaned her rifle against a porch post then moved down the steps and over to her pinto. “Indian Butte’s the larger town. I saw it on the map. Sundown is practically just a water stop for the spur line. Besides, you’re better with people than I am.”
“You can say that again. But the banker’s in Sundown. She wants to work for him.”
Louisa tossed both pairs of saddlebags over her pinto’s rump, behind her saddle. She shook her long, honey-blond hair over her left shoulder and began strapping her bedroll to her saddle. “She shouldn’t get her hopes up about the banker.”
“How do you know?”
“I just know, that’s all.”
“You’re some authority on bankers, now, are you?”
Louisa cast him a wry look then retrieved her rifle from the porch.
“What’s got your bloomers in a twist?” Prophet asked. “Don’t you like that girl?”
“I don’t know her enough to like her or dislike her. I just prefer to ride alone, that’s all.”
“She needs help, fer cryin’ in Grant’s moonshine! That’s what you’re all about—helpin’ women an’ children who’ve been savaged by outlaws like them!” He hooked a thumb over his shoulder, indicating the dead men behind him.
“I have helped her,” Louisa said, glancing at the dead men. “That’s all I can do. The rest is up to her.”
“I don’t understand you. I know I’ve said that before, but I’ll say it again. I purely do not understand you, Miss Bonnyventure.”
“It’s Bonaventure,” Louisa said automatically, tightly, pulling down on the rifle with one gloved hand as she adjusted the set of her scabbard with the other. “There’s no y in it.”
Prophet chuffed and shook his head. “Just get the girl to—”
He cut himself off as Toni came back out of the roadhouse, carrying another, smaller carpetbag. “I’m ready,” she said, stopping at the top of the porch steps, where her other bag leaned against a post. She stared down at Louisa, who was sliding her rifle back and forth in its oiled sheath, making sure of a quick draw if needed.
“I haven’t ridden a horse in a while,” Toni told her. “I’ve pretty much been cooped up here for nigh on three years now. You won’t ride too fast, will you?”
Louisa didn’t respond to that. Without even looking at the girl, she said crisply, “Get mounted up so we can get a move on, girl. Like I said, we’re burning daylight!”
Toni approached the spare horse tentatively.
“I’ll help.” Prophet swung down from Mean’s back and walked over to where Toni stood beside the spare calico, which had turned its neck to sniff the redhead curiously.
Prophet gave Toni a hand up into the saddle then handed her carpetbags up to her.
“Thank you, Mr. Prophet.”
Prophet pinched his hat brim to her then leaned toward her, muttering with a conspiratorial air, “Don’t mind her.” He jerked his chin toward the Vengeance Queen. “Louisa never did sleep in a bed she didn’t get up on the wrong side of. She’ll come around once the coffee hits her veins and you’re well along the trail. Sittin’ still is what gets to her. As soon as she gets another man in her rifle sights, she’ll be sweet as fresh apple pie.”
Toni glanced at Louisa and gave the ghost of a smile.
As cool as the freshly fallen snow, Louisa scooped up the reins of the first lead horse then swung up onto her pinto’s back. She turned the pinto away from the roadhouse, jerking on the reins of the lead packhorse, and said to Toni, “Come on, if you’re coming.”
“I know, I know,” Toni said, rolling her eyes. “We’re burning daylight.”
Louisa touched spurs to the pinto’s flanks and went loping toward the mouth of the southern trail leading away from the roadhouse. Toni glanced back at Prophet, who said, “Hang on, now!”
He slapped the calico’s rump, and the horse lurched forward, lunging after Louisa. The sudden movement took Toni by surprise. She leaned far sideways over the right stirrup, throwing her left arm high. Prophet winced, thinking she was about to lose her seat. But then she managed to grab the horn and pull herself upright. She hunkered low, holding on for dear life, as the calico bounded after Louisa and the pinto.
They turned around a bend in the southern trail and disappeared behind a clump of snow-dusted brush, only the thuds of their horses’ hooves and the rattle of the bit irons lingering in the cold, sunlit air behind them.
“Go with God, girl,” Prophet said. “Go with God.”
He didn’t mean Louisa.