Chapter 35
Gritch Hatchley was sagging forward in his seat, snarling and pulling at the cuffs fixing his wrists to the iron seat frame behind him.
He snarled and grunted and groaned, long hair hanging down against both sides of his face. He was staring at the dead man’s guns lying near his own boots, beside the body from which a steady stream of blood issued from each hole in the dead man’s coat.
Prophet rose from his seat and kicked both guns away. “There, I’ll get them out of your hair, Gritch. They’re only badgering you. There, now—you just sit back and rest easy.”
“Hell! Hell! Hell!” Hatchley bellowed like some gut-shot beast, jerking forward in his seat.
“There you go,” Prophet said, crouching down to grab the dead man’s ankles. “Let it out. Make ya feel better.” He began dragging the dead man toward the front of the coach. “You sit tight. I’ll be back just as soon as I give your friend Shambeau here a proper send-off.”
“Damn!” Hatchley said, pulling violently against his cuffs. “Damn! Damn! Damn!”
“There you go,” Prophet said, pulling the coach’s front door open. “Let it all out, Gritch.”
He dragged the dead man out onto the vestibule, the cold wind hammering against him. Immediately, he removed his hat before the wind could blow it away, and tossed it back through the car’s open door.
He rolled Shambeau toward the vestibule steps dropping down to the cinder-paved roadbed showing in wind-cleared patches amidst the fresh snow. The sun was bright now and the wind was still blowing, whipping the snow around in intermittent curtains that glittered like diamond-crusted ball gowns.
As Prophet looked through one such billowing, sparkling wave of windblown snow, he saw the three riders again—three horseback men moving straight out away from him, making their way across a corner of the lake toward another line of fur- and skin-clad riders sitting their horses facing them, apparently waiting for the first three.
The two Cut-Head Sioux hunting parties were meeting out there on the lake.
Even though the three riders’ backs faced Prophet and they were about fifty yards away from him, he could tell that they were the three Indians he’d seen in town, Leaps High, Little Fawn, and the third, stoic young brave whose name Prophet hadn’t learned.
The train’s whistle blew shrilly—three, short resounding wails as though in greeting to the three Indians.
One of the three Cut-Head Sioux turned his horse around to face the train. Prophet could tell by his diminutive size that he was Little Fawn. The friendly young Indian raised an arm and waved broadly, heartily. Prophet could see the white line of the boy’s teeth as he smiled, his face forming a brown oval beneath his rabbit fur hat.
Prophet wasn’t entirely aware of it, but seeing that guileless, life-embracing smile on the face of the young Indian made him begin shaping a smile of his own.
The train whistled once more.
The whistle’s echo hadn’t died before there was a belching sound.
Prophet shuddered.
Right away, he knew what that belching sound had been. He’d heard it before. Not long ago.
Instantly, a chunk of ice dropped in his belly.
He stared straight out across the lake in hang-jawed horror to see Little Fawn jerk violently back in his saddle, throwing both his arms high above his head. The boy sagged straight back against his horse’s hindquarters then rolled down the side of the mount to fall to the ground beside it.
Raucous laughter blew back toward Prophet on the wind from the countess’s party riding ahead of him.
Heart thudding heavily, Prophet dropped to the bottom step of the vestibule, grabbed the brass rail to his left, and leaned out away from the train, gazing up toward the fancy coach in which Rawdney Fair weather was extending his fancy shooting rifle through an open window, his round face laughing behind it.
“I told you I could make that shot,” the fancy Dan bellowed victoriously behind the raised rear sight. Collapsing the sight with his thumb and withdrawing the big rifle from the window, he turned to the Russians and Leo gathered around him, all laughing heartily, to yell, “I told you I could make that shot, didn’t I? Pay up, now. Pay up!”
Turning away from Prophet, Fair weather closed the window and disappeared in a glint of sunlight winking off the glass.
Grinding his teeth with fury, Lou glanced back toward the lake falling away behind him. The other two Indians, Leaps High and the second young brave, were scrambling down from their saddles to rush over to Little Fawn, who lay unmoving in the snow beside his fidgeting horse.
The other riders galloped toward them, whipping their rein ends against their horses’ hips, the lunging horses kicking up snow.
Prophet swung his head around to glare toward the fancy Dan’s coach and shouted, “You son of a bitch!”
Seething, he pulled himself back onto the passenger coach’s vestibule, tripping over the body of Henri Shambeau, who in the wake of young Fair weather’s shooting and likely killing of Little Fawn, he’d forgotten about.
Now, cursing, Prophet pushed up off his knee and kicked the body down the vestibule steps. Shambeau rolled off the bottom step to the ground, bounced, and quickly disappeared as the train rumbled forward.
Prophet pressed his back against the front of the passenger coach. His mind was racing. Fury was a fully stoked locomotive raging inside him. Over and over he heard the loud, concussive report of Fair weather’s fancy Scheutzen. He saw Little Fawn jerk back in his saddle and tumble to the ground. He heard the senator’s spoiled son’s cackling laughter.
Before he knew what he was doing, rage taking over his mind, Prophet lunged forward and grabbed a rung of the iron ladder running up the front of the stock car in front of the passenger coach. He clambered up the ladder, stretching his lips back from his gritted teeth.
As he gained the stock car’s roof, the wind hit him from the west side, on his right, like a giant fist. He staggered to his left and dropped to both knees to keep the frigid wind from throwing him off the car. The cold in the wind must have registered well below zero. It bit his cheeks like a thousand angry yellow jackets.
It sucked the air from his lungs and chewed his fingers, which were bare, for he’d left his gloves and mittens in the passenger car.
Knowing he couldn’t stand without the wind throwing him off the train, he crawled forward on hands and knees. He scrambled across the stock car to the far end, where he gauged the gap between the stock car he was on and the second stock car in the combination. He rose quickly to his knees and gave a loud bellowing yell as he sprang forward off his heels.
The wind slammed him again, throwing him hard left. He dropped to his knees atop the second stock car’s far-left edge.
Snow-covered ground streamed past him, perilously close over his left shoulder, the wind shoving him toward it like a sadistic enemy. His stomach lurched into his throat. He threw himself sharply right, into the blasting wind, and lay belly down against the car’s cold tin roof.
Grinding his molars in desperation, he clawed his way back to the crown of the car, where he lay for several seconds, gasping and catching his breath.
He was vaguely aware of the wind shifting, of swinging around to blast him from the front. He looked ahead. The train was making a slow curve to the west, angling around the lake’s southern end, the dark smoke spewing from the locomotive’s stack resembling a dirty scarf pluming out from where it hung on a line. It blew back toward him now, making his eyes sting.
“Gonna get yourself killed, Prophet, you no-good crazy rebel!” he bellowed to himself, his words whipped and torn by the wind.
With a determined grunt, he scrambled on hands and knees, keeping his head down against the headwind, to the second stock car’s front end. He stopped a few inches from the edge and peered at the passenger coach from which young Fair weather had fired at Little Fawn.
“All right, you devil!”
Prophet scrambled down the ladder running up the front of the stock car and dropped to the vestibule at the rear of the passenger coach. He bent his knees, letting his feet and hips take the brunt of the landing.
Rising, he grabbed the knob of the door facing him. It turned. He threw the door open and lunged inside. He was a bull barreling through a chute, his heart thudding, the fire of his rage fighting back the cold that had so mercilessly assaulted him.
“Lou!” the countess screamed, rising from a chair somewhere to his left.
Prophet didn’t look at her. Since the second he’d entered the coach he didn’t look at anyone except the senator’s son, whom he’d picked out of the crowd sitting or standing in the posh parlor car, warmed by a small, ornate iron stove.
Several Russians leaped from their overstuffed leather armchairs, exclaiming their astonishment at seeing the big, red-faced bounty hunter so unceremoniously entering their private domain.
“Good Lord, man!” Senator Fair weather exclaimed, frowning at the intruder. He sat smoking a fat cigar with the old count.
Rawdney Fairweather was leaning over the rifle stretched across a table before him, on an open, fleece-lined scabbard, lovingly running a cloth down the polished stock while holding court with several men standing around him, some still chuckling or laughing over Rawdney’s kill shot. Rawdney’s face was still flushed from his own boastful laughter. A smile still played across his thick-lipped mouth as he turned to see Prophet striding toward him.
Prophet stopped three feet away from the murderous young dandy, yelled, “Kill-crazy fool!”
As he raised his fist, Rawdney screamed, “Help!”
He started to duck but couldn’t avoid Prophet’s large, clenched fist, which smashed into his left temple, knocking him back against the table.
“Help!” Rawdney screamed again.“Help m—!”
Prophet slammed his fist against the kid’s mouth and instantly felt the wash of warm blood as Rawdney’s lips exploded like ripe tomatoes. Lou slammed his fist against the kid’s mouth two more times—powerful, savage blows laying waste to the kid’s mouth and shattering both of his front teeth—before two or three Russians grabbed him from behind.
Prophet turned, head-butted one and punched another, shrugging out of the grip of the third, who tripped over one of his fallen comrades. Prophet turned back to his quarry, who lay back atop the table, his hands over his face, screaming. Rage a living, breathing beast inside him, Prophet commenced throwing one blow after another at the dandy’s face, driving the mewling urchin to the floor.
Prophet followed Rawdney to the carpet, both fists like pistons.
Wam!
Wam!
Wam!
Wam-Wam!
“Get him, for God’s sake!” he vaguely heard the senator yell. “For the love of God, get that man off my son!”
Several men grabbed Prophet from behind. One grabbed his hair and jerked his head back sharply. Still, he managed to shrug from their grips long enough to land two more hammering jabs to Rawdney’s face, which was by now a mask of pulp and blood.
One of the big Russians launched himself onto Prophet’s back, grunting as he wrapped his arms around Lou’s neck and rolled over onto his own back, pulling Prophet over on top of him, belly up. The other two and then yet another big Russian surrounded them, dropping to their knees and punching Prophet’s face while others kicked him in the ribs, hips, and thighs.
Lou tried to fight back but the big man beneath him, holding him fast against him, pinned his arms behind his back.
Prophet stared up in frustration, grunting and groaning as the Russians’ big fists smashed into his face—one hammering blow after another. He felt his brows and lips split. Thick, oily blood ran down his face only to be smeared against his cheeks and jaws by more savage blows. Meanwhile, the Russians’ boots were like railroad spikes hammering his ribs and belly, his hips and his legs . . .
Vaguely, as though she were standing atop the deep well at the bottom of which he lay, being pummeled by the Russians, Prophet could hear the countess screeching out protests and crying. Just as vaguely, he could see someone, probably her father, holding her back away from the fray.
The room was beginning to fade around Lou when a man, probably Senator Fairchild, bellowed in perfect English, “That’s enough. You’re making a mess of the place. Get him the hell out of here!”
Prophet was fading fast when the beating suddenly stopped.
Several hands brusquely pulled him to his feet. His boots dragged across the thick carpet as two men, each holding an arm, half carried him across the railcar and out onto the windy vestibule. The cold, cold wind and bright sunlight braced him a little, at least enough that he opened his eyes in time to see Rawdney’s assistant, the immaculately tailored and barbered Leo, step out through the door behind him and the Russians.
“Hold on!” Leo yelled into the wind.
The two Russians dragging Prophet to the top of the vestibule steps stopped and turned him around.
His short, dark, carefully cut hair sliding around his head in the cold wind, Leo stepped up to Prophet and curled a menacing smile. With a pale, beringed hand, he removed the cap from a six-inch stiletto with a jewel-encrusted, obsidian handle. The nasty, slender blade glistened in the new-penny sunshine.
Leo snarled again and gave a prissy little grunt as he lunged forward, sinking the blade into Prophet’s belly. Prophet felt the blade’s sharp bite, like a snake sinking its teeth into him, just above his cartridge belt.
“There!” Leo shouted. “Now rid this train of that Dixie vermin!”
The Russians stepped around Prophet, each holding him by an arm, then gave him a shove.
Prophet flew backward off the vestibule. His arms flopped out around him. He watched in an absentminded sort of horror his moccasins leave the iron platform and dangle in midair. For a long, cold moment he hung there in the air beside the train, glimpsing the snowy, gravelly ground rise up around him.
The snowy ground engulfed him like a firm pillow.
“Ohhh!” The exclamation was punched out of his lungs in a burst of wind.
He went rolling, rolling down a long hill, the snow biting into him like a million cold teeth while the train’s whistle blew somewhere beyond him.
“Oh! ” he heard himself say. “Oh, oh, oh . . .”
In the periphery of his blurred vision he watched the train slide away . . . away . . . away along the tracks until there was only silence and a bed of ice around him and a cold night enfolding him in its black wings.