Chapter 34
Prophet’s bones were clattering like those of a skeleton hung out to dry in the wind when he returned to the shabby passenger coach.
He’d stabled Mean and Ugly in one of the two stock cars mostly populated with the blooded horses of the countess’s party, tying Mean on a short line so he didn’t try to harass any of those stallions who, in contrast, made him look like the lone, unruly mutt in a kennel of pedigreed hunting dogs.
In the short time Lou had been in the stock car, the wind had increased, and it was one hell of a cold wind. The snow was coming down even harder. Shivering, Prophet climbed up onto the passenger coach’s vestibule. He placed his hand on the doorknob, then, remembering the French Canadian ami of Hatchley’s, with the fast pistols, he stopped. He tried to peer through the glass pane in the door’s upper half but it was opaque with frost.
He bit off his thick mitten and his glove, stuffed both into his coat pocket, then took his Winchester in both hands. He’d left the Richards with Mean and Ugly, its lanyard hooked over a nail in the stock car. He levered a round into the Winchester’s action, opened the door of the passenger coach, shoved it wide, and took one long, resolute step into the car. Kicking the door closed on the cold wind and the snow, he swung the Winchester toward where he’d last seen Henri Shambeau, expecting the man to be aiming those pistols at him again with the intention of cleaning his clock and freeing his friend Hatchley.
Nope. This time the Canadian didn’t even stir at Prophet’s entrance. He lay beneath his blanket across the front-most seats on the aisle’s right side, his head propped atop his folded saddlebags. He stopped snoring, grunted, swiped a fist across his nose, then dropped his arm back toward the floor and resumed snoring, pooching out his lips inside his thick beard with every exhalation.
Prophet looked toward where he’d left Hatchley. The killer remained where he’d left him, all right. It didn’t appear that the mice had played while the cat was tending his horse. Hatchley sat on a left-side aisle seat near the stove, in the middle of the car. He sat stiffly on the thinly padded, stiff-backed wooden seat, head thrown back, gritting his teeth against the burning, well-deserved pain in his leg. He looked at Prophet and kept his head resting back against the seat but croaked out a jeering laugh.
“Did my friend spook you, Lou?”
The bounty hunter depressed his Winchester’s hammer and rested the long gun on his shoulder. He strode down the aisle, his saddlebags draped over his left shoulder. The train had given its long, wailing whistle and was pulling out now, leaving the station with a series of shuddering jerks. Prophet grabbed seat backs as he moved down the aisle toward Hatchley.
“I gotta admit,” he said, sitting on the other side of the woodstove from Hatchley, also in an aisle seat, facing the front, where Shambeau continued sawing wood, “I was a might impressed by that Canuck’s fast draw. Never knew a Canadian to move that fast less’n they was skinnin’ out of a married woman’s house.”
He set the Winchester and his saddlebags on the seat to his left.
“Oh, we can move pretty fast, Lou.” Hatchley glanced over at Prophet and winked. “You just watch us.” He cast a vaguely threatening gaze in Shambeau’s direction.
Prophet opened a pouch of his saddlebags and withdrew the bottle he’d purchased at the Indian Butte Saloon and had wrapped in burlap. “You obviously weren’t moving fast enough to skin back over the Canadian line before I ran you down in that woodcutters’ camp. That was one fool, Canuck move, Gritch.”
“Yeah, well, it was cold. I could feel this storm brewin’ as far back as last week. Me an’ Weed would probably still be holed up at old Jiggs’s place if that damn Sweets DuPree hadn’t gotten all doughy eyed over me and caused a big blowout with Pima.” Again, he chuckled. “Oh boy—did them two have ’em a fight over ole Gritch! Me an’ Weed thought we’d best see that as our omen to split tail for the border . . . till we seen them storm clouds roarin’ in. That’s why we held up in the woodcutters’ camp. Leave it to a crazy rebel devil like yourself to find us there . . . where damn few lawmen ever dare to tread!”
He shook his head without mirth.
“Leave it to a woman to mess things up for a feller.”
“Ain’t that the truth, though?”
“I could tell you stories.” Prophet was thinking about Louisa. He hoped the persnickety Vengeance Queen’s hunt was going better than his own though it was probably just as cold if not colder and stormier forty miles southwest of here, in Sundown. Knowing how good luck always seemed to ride with Louisa, she’d probably taken down Sweets DuPree and Pima Quarrels ten minutes after she’d first ridden into town and was now soaking in a hot, soapy tub, awaiting the train.
Hatchley leaned out from his seat so he could peer around the stove at Prophet. “Why don’t you go ahead and pop the cork on that busthead, Lou? What you waitin’ for—Christmas? We’ll sit here an’ share the bottle and swap lies. The trip will go all that much faster!”
The outlaw had nudged Prophet out of his reverie. Lou looked down at the whiskey bottle resting on his thigh. He popped the cork on the fresh bottle and grinned around the stove at Hatchley eyeing the bottle hungrily. He glanced out the window beyond the outlaw, through a clear patch in the frost, to see the snowy countryside sliding by at about fifteen, sixteen miles per hour. “Oh, it’s goin’ fast enough, Gritch. Me—I’m gonna enjoy this warm stove . . . and this fresh bottle of prime, top-shelf tangleleg. Cheers!”
He winked, raised the bottle to his lips, and took several long pulls.
Hatchley cursed him roundly and told him to do something physically impossible to himself.
Laughter rose from the front of the car. Prophet just realized that Shambeau’s snores had ceased. Now as Prophet poked the cork back into the bottle he saw Shambeau sitting up and smiling over the back of his seat toward Prophet and Hatchley.
The Canadian laughed again, chuckling. He turned forward, dropped his feet to the floor, then rose, holding his blanket about his shoulders though he was wearing a heavy fur coat, and hurried, shivering, back toward where Prophet and Hatchley sat near the woodstove.
“Cold up there! Le ciel, m’aide, mes amis! You don’t mind if I join you back here by the fire—do you, pards?”
“The more the merrier,” Hatchley said, casting another taunting grin toward Prophet.
Shambeau was short but big through the chest. He wore deerskin breeches and home-sewn rabbit fur boots. His eyes were red and his broad face was ashen. “Le ciel, m’aide, mes amis! ” he said again, plopping into the seat directly across from Hatchley and pressing the heels of his hands against his temples. “My head hurts powerful bad!”
“What you need is a shot of whiskey,” Hatchley said.
“I’m fresh out, brother.”
“The big man over there . . .” Hatchley indicated Prophet with his thumb. “He’s got him a fresh bottle.”
Shambeau removed his hands from his head and turned to Prophet. “Do you really, brother?”
“Hatch ain’t just whistlin’ ‘Dixie.’” Prophet smiled and patted the bottle he cradled in the crook of his left arm, like a toddler in the care of its doting mother. “And you two scalawags ain’t gettin’ a single drop.”
“See how he is?” Hatchley said to his French Canadian friend. “He’s too good to share with us, and him a lowly bounty hunter.”
“That isn’t right, brother.” Shambeau’s dark eyes were leveled on Prophet, and his tone was deadly serious. “We’re all traveling together here. I mean, there’s only three of us in the whole car. It’s cold outside. Hell, it’s cold in here! Not only that, but it’s close to Christmas—the day baby Jesus was born. If one of us has a bottle, he should share with the others to celebrate the birth of baby Jesus if for no other reason.”
“Yeah, Henri’s got it right,” Hatchley said to Prophet. “Even if you think you’re so much better than your traveling companions, it’s only right to share, Lou.”
“Well, I am a whole lot better than you two louse-infested polecats. And I ain’t gonna share.” Prophet caressed the bottle lovingly. “I want the whole bottle for myself.”
“Tsk, tsk,” Shambeau said.
“You know what you oughta do, Henri?” Hatchley said.
“What’s that, mon ami?”
Hatchley canted his head toward the bounty hunter sitting on the other side of the stove from him. “Kill him.”
“Really?”
“Sure. Kill him an’ take the bottle.”
Shambeau arched a brow at Prophet, who grinned back at him.
“He killed Weed,” Hatchley told Shambeau. “At Duck’s place along the creek.”
“The woodcutters’ camp?”
“That’s right.”
“Weed Brougham?”
“Shot him deader’n two-penny spike. Shot him in the back. Didn’t give him a chance. In fact, Weed was dead asleep.”
“Well,” Prophet said, “which one was it—did I shoot him in the back or when he was dead asleep?”
Hatchley looked at him and flared a nostril, an angry light flashing in his eyes. “Both.”
“Oh, both,” Prophet said with a snort.
“Sure. He was sleepin’ on his back,” Hatchley told Shambeau.
Shambeau looked at Prophet. “That ain’t right, doin’ a man like that.”
“No, I reckon it ain’t,” Prophet said. “You two are startin’ to make me feel down in the dumps about it now.”
“Tue-le!” Hatchley spat out at his Canadian friend, leaning slightly forward at the waist. “Kill him an’ take his whiskey. He took a good pile of money off me an’ Weed, too. He’s probably got it in his saddlebags.”
Prophet grinned again and patted the saddlebags piled beside him.
Shambeau stared at him. There was very little light left in his eyes though suddenly the sun was shining again outside the train car. Apparently, there was a break in the storm. That light did not find its way into the French Canadian’s deep-set, chocolate-dark eyes, however.
His gaze burned two holes through Prophet’s own. Or that was the impression the Canuck wanted to give, at least. He’d probably practiced that menacing look in back bar mirrors.
The Canadian outlaw’s hands were splayed on his thighs, just beneath the butts of his pistols poking up from the pockets of his fur coat. Prophet did not look directly at Hatchley, but he could see in the periphery of his vision the killer staring at him in hushed anticipation, unabashed delight, waiting on pins and needles to see Prophet drilled a third eye.
The train pitched and swayed as it wended its way around a long, gradual curve, the snowy prairie sliding past the frosted windows to both sides, streamers of black wood smoke slithering back from the locomotive.
The iron wheels clacked on the rails.
Prophet could fairly hear Gritch Hatchley’s heart beating. It was beating even faster than his own.
Shambeau’s hands rose to his guns in a blur.
Prophet filled his own right hand from his coat pocket and fired.
Shambeau’s right-hand pistol roared a half an eye wink after Prophet’s, flames stabbing between Prophet and Hatchley. The bullet clanged shrilly off the woodstove. Shambeau jerked for a second time in that half an eye wink as his own ricochet punched him back in his seat after parting the fur of his coat, almost directly over his heart. The ricochet’s hole was about three inches right of the hole Prophet had just drilled in the man’s chest.
“No!” Hatchley shouted.
The smoking six-gun in Shambeau’s right hand tumbled straight down to the floor between his and Hatchley’s boots. He’d just gotten his left-hand Colt into that hand, but he hadn’t gotten the hammer cocked. Now as he cocked it, Prophet shot him again.
The left-hand gun dropped to the floor beside the right-hand gun, from the barrel of which gray smoke curled.
“No! No! No!” Hatchley bellowed. Leaning forward at the waist, he glared at the hard-dying Henri Shambeau and yelled, “You always was slower’n molasses in January, Henri, ya damn fool! Look at ya now! You’re dead, dead, dead!”
Shambeau sat shivering and bleeding from the mouth. He opened his mouth as though to speak but only more blood came out. He looked at Prophet then sagged to his left, turned, and dropped to the floor where he lay jerking at Hatchley’s feet.
“Ah hell!”
“Doggone it, Gritch,” Prophet said, twirling his smoking Peacemaker on his finger then shoving the pistol back into his coat pocket, “your luck has purely gone south.”
“Hell!” Hatchley kicked the dead Canuck. “Hell! Hell! Hell!”
Prophet glanced out the train window to his left and right. They were passing woods to his left. On his right, a snowy slope dropped away to the north, toward what appeared to be a broad, snow-and-ice-covered lake rimmed with winter-naked trees. He looked away then turned back toward the lake. He saw what appeared to be three horseback riders riding out onto the lake, which the train was curving along the shore of.
“Who in the hell would be out here in this weather?” he muttered to himself.