“DAVE, I’M A married lady,” Margie protested.
“So, what are you sayin’?” Dave asked as he grunted between her knees.
“It ain’t... it ain’t right, Dave, us carryin’ on with Jack sittin’ right out there on the porch.” She sighed and groaned and wagged her head from side to side on the pillow.
“Well, all right, Margie girl,” Dave said heavily. “If you want me to stop, I’ll stop.”
She scissored his back with her legs and threw her arms around his neck. “Don’t you dare!”
A few minutes later, a tap sounded on the door.
“Go away!” Dave barked, still at work, sweating between Margie’s knees.
Another tap on the door. A throat was cleared. “Dave? It’s Bill. Bill Maggs.”
Margie lifted her head and jerked an exasperated gaze at the door lit by the lamp on the dresser. “For the love of God, Bill, go away!”
“Shut up,” Dave scolded Margie, clamping a hand over her mouth. Glancing at the door and raising his voice, he said, “Is he dead?”
“Uh...” the man said through the door, tentative. “I don’t think so, Dave.”
“What!” Duvall exclaimed, rolling angrily off Margie and grabbing his pants from a chair. He hopped into the breeches, cursing, and opened the door.
Bill Maggs stood in the doorway, looking crestfallen and scared. He was Jack Clawson’s woodcutting partner— or had been before Dave had beaten Jack senseless. Fearful for his own life, Bill had quickly become Dave’s truckling servant. Dave had sent Bill to Bismarck to see if anyone was looking for Dave.
Sure enough, Bill had heard a tall man with a sawed-off shotgun had been asking around the saloons and brothels. Hearing this, Dave had sent Bill and Bill’s stepson, Edgar, to dry-gulch the man. They’d assured Dave they could do it, and Dave reminded the wizened little man of that now, drawing him up by the collar of his grimy undershirt.
“I know, I know. Jeepers, I sure am sorry, Dave, but it wasn’t my fault. Edgar—he took the first shot at him and missed!”
“Goddamn, you, Bill!” Dave seethed in the little man’s face, tearing the undershirt bunched in his fists.
“I’m sorry, Dave. But it wasn’t my fault. It was Edgar’s! That boy’s just like his mother! Doesn’t amount to a speck o’ fly shit!”
“Where is he?” Dave said, savagely jerking at Bill’s shirt, flecks of spittle flying from his quivering lips.
“Dead,” Bill said. “He ... that bounty hunter shot him.”
Dave sighed and released Bill’s shirt. “Good,” he growled. His angry eyes turned pensive. “So he is a bounty hunter, eh?”
“That’s what Muriel Pierce over at the Pink Lady told me. A Southern bounty hunter, one o’ the best in the business.”
“What’s his name?”
“Prophet, I believe Muriel said. Lou Prophet.” Bill smiled. “Rides a big, mean horse, but the girls like him.”
Duvall turned away, nervously scratching his jaw. “Prophet, eh? I’ve heard that name. Lou Prophet. Yeah, I’ve heard of him a time or two. Damn you, Bill!”
“I sure am sorry, Dave, but like I said—”
“I know, I know. It’s not your fault,” Duvall groused, grabbing his shirt and shrugging into it. “Go out to the barn and tell them three boys camped out there to get their horses saddled, and one for me—and not that old paint I rode in on. We’re pullin’ out in fifteen minutes!”
Bill stood in the doorway looking puzzled. “Boys ... barn?”
“You heard me, you moron. Any one of ‘em is more man now than you’ll ever be! Move!”
“R-right away, Dave!” Bill said as he dashed for the door.
“Dave, where are you going?” Margie lay nude on the bed, propped on an elbow and curling a wisp of disheveled hair with a finger.
“I gotta go, Margie girl,” Dave said breathlessly as he tucked his shirt in his pants. “One thing I learned here tonight is to never send fools to do a man’s work.”
He found his socks and sat on the bed to pull them on. “I knew I should have gone after that Prophet fella myself, but I didn’t want the law to catch me in town. Then I’d really be up shit creek. But I’m up shit creek anyway, because now—on account of that dumbass Maggs and his dumbass stepson—Prophet knows I’m around. And no doubt he’ll figure out I’ve been holed up here. Sooner or later. It’s just a matter of time for a cussed bounty man like that one there.”
“He won’t find you here, Dave.”
“Won’t he?” Dave said as he reached for his boots. “You’ve had a lot of travelers pass through here the last few days. No tellin’ if one or two might’ve recognized me. My handsome mug’s right famous, you know, Margie girl.”
“I reckon you got a point there, Dave. Still, though, I sure hate to see you go. I mean, it wasn’t right how you treated Jack, but before you came”—Margie rolled her eyes, glancing around the stark room—”it was so boring around here.”
“I’m sure it was, Margie,” Dave said with a laugh, standing and stomping his heels into his boots. He reached for his gun belt coiled around a bedpost and strapped it on, adjusting the holster on his thigh and tying the thong just above his knee. “But I think I can do something to keep things from being quite so boring around here from now on, Margie.”
“What do you mean, Dave?”
“I mean, Margie,” Dave said, sitting beside her on the bed and regarding her sympathetically, brushing a lock of hair from her face. “I mean, I think I can take the boredom away, for good.”
She stared at him, concern growing in her large eyes. “What are you talkin’ about, Dave?”
Dave pinched her right breast like he would a melon, checking for ripeness. Then he ran the fingers of his right hand lightly along her plump thigh. Her skin quivered slightly at his touch, goose bumps rising.
“I mean, I sure am sorry I have to do this, Margie, but damn, if you ain’t too purty not to shoot.”
Slowly, he drew his revolver and clicked back the hammer.
Margie’s eyes widened as she pushed up on her elbows, lifting her knees before her. “What? Dave, what are you doing?”
“Thanks for the good time, Margie,” Dave said, smiling with glassy-eyed insanity. “But you know what the preachers always say: good times don’t last forever. No, they sure don’t. The grim reaper comes callin’ sooner or later. It’s just a little sooner for you, I’m afraid.”
“Dave, no!” Margie pleaded, her eyes on the gun Duvall swung toward her. “No, Dave, please! Why? Oh, my—”
The sharp crack of the forty-five finished the sentence for her. Her head flaw back against the wall, the hole in her forehead gleaming wetly. Slowly, she sagged to the side and lay limp across both pillows.
Dave gave her thigh one last appreciative pat, then donned his hat and walked into the main room, where only one bracket lamp was lit, sending a weak, liquid light wavering over two tables while leaving the rest of the room in semidarkness. He took one step forward and heard a commotion on the porch. He hurried to the porch door and drew his gun.
Turning to his right, he saw the overturned rocking chair and the dark figure of Jack Clawson trying to crawl to the other end of the porch, making hoarse, fearful rasping sounds as he scuttled bug like on his hands and knees, trying to escape his fate.
“Oh, no you don’t, Jack,” Duvall said with a menacing chuckle. “You ain’t goin’ nowhere.” With that he raised the gun and fired, and Jack fell on his face with a guttural sigh.
Turning toward the barn, Dave saw something move in the darkness about halfway across the yard.
“Bill, that you?” he called.
The figure stood still, on the other side of a horse trough.
“What’s all the shootin’ about, Dave?”
Dave stepped off the porch and moved fluidly across the yard, toward the stocky, dark, hatted figure of Bill Maggs. “I just shot Margie and Jack,” he said matter-of-factly. “And I’m afraid I’m going to have to shoot you, too, Bill.”
“Huh? What?” Bill said, frozen there in the shadows.
As Duvall approached him, he extended his gun and blew a hole in the man’s head, just above his left ear. Bill hadn’t dropped before Dave had resumed his purposeful stride toward the barn, before which the three lads were standing and staring, looking jittery.
“What’s all the shootin’ about?” Clyde asked.
“Just tyin’ up some loose ends,” Duvall said. “You boys have those horses saddled yet?”
“Well, no,” Clyde reported. “We heard the shootin’ and we—”
“Boys, if you’re gonna ride with me, you have to do as you’re told, shootin’ or no shootin’. Now get those horses saddled before I change my mind about lettin’ you throw in with me.”
With that, the three young men scurried back into the barn, and Duvall followed them. Ten minutes later, they were all mounted on fresh horses and galloping south toward the buttes along the river.
Behind them, Bill Maggs gurgled and died.