LOUISA BONAVENTURE WOKE much later in the morning than she was used to—before she was wounded, that was. Blinking her eyes and lifting her head from her pillow, she saw that full golden sunlight angled through her room’s single, fly-specked window. On the street below she heard voices and the squawk and clatter of freight wagons and the whinnies and snorts of the teams.
She reached for her timepiece on the nightstand, and flipped it open. Eight forty-five. She’d slept half the morning away!
She’d decided last night it was time to take the search for Handsome Dave Duvall into her own hands, if only to spite the cunning Prophet. As she got up and started her toilet, she burned at the nerve of the man, trying to sweet-talk her into letting him track Duvall down alone!
Who did Prophet think he was, trying to tell her what to do? It hadn’t been his family that maniac had murdered! And to think she’d actually started to trust the big man, and to even rather sort of enjoy his earthy, if uncouth, company!
Harumph! No more! From now on she wouldn’t let him ride with her!
She had to smile, though, at the thought of the look that must have been on his face when he’d turned around last night to find her gone. Vanished into thin air! Actually, when she’d seen the sheriff, she’d just slipped off down the side street and made her way back to the hotel via alleys, hoping Prophet got what he deserved for making a fool out of her with that fancy dress and his tricky charms.
A night in the hoosegow. Yes, that’s exactly what the man deserved.
Louisa dressed in her trail clothes: her simple gray farm dress and ratty poncho, which concealed her silver-plated, short-barreled revolver and her sheathed knife honed to a razor edge. She snugged her hat on her blonde head, letting the acorn fastener hang beneath her chin. When she’d packed up her saddlebags, she grabbed her Winchester and headed out, halting at Prophet’s door to hook the fancy dress he’d bought her over the knob.
She found a simple cafe run by a buxom old German woman just up the street, and sat down to a meal of eggs, potato pancakes, and bratwurst. When the woman returned to refill Louisa’s empty coffee cup, Louisa wiped her mouth with her napkin and said, “Ma’am, may I inquire as to where the worst part of this village might lie? I mean, I know it’s all bad, and if all were right with the world the Missouri would swell up and take it all asunder, but I mean the really terrible part of town.”
The old woman blinked down at her, baffled, dentures sliding off her gums. “Vot? “
“The really bad part of Bismarck. I want to know where the really bad people stay.”
“Vy on ert vould you vont to know dat!”
Yes, why would she? Louisa thought about it, dabbing at her lips again to buy time. “Because I lost my brother last night, and I’m thinking that, after all our time on the farm, with nary a trip to town in two years and our father thumping our heads with his Bible all the time, Hansel’s run off to the really bad part of town. You know, to cavort with—”
“Yes, I see vot you mean,” the old woman rushed in, nervously eyeing her other customers to see if they’d been listening. She bent down and said in Louisa’s ear, her breath smelling like rotten cabbage, “The vorst of dis place is vest by da river. A shantytown, it is. AM Unspeakable filth. I’ve never been, but I’ve heard da stories.” She sighed, shook her head, and straightened with an audible crack of the bones in her back. “More coffee?”
When Louisa had finished her breakfast, she went over to the livery barn and saddled her horse. Then she fought the freight traffic to the west end of town, following a well-worn trail through the buttes along the river.
She smelled the shantytown before she saw it: the reek of buffalo hides and overfilled latrines. Then the town itself: a few log shacks and tents strewn along the trail, up and down the buttes and shallow ravines.
In one such ravine many horses had been picketed near small, guttering fires around which men of all sizes and colors lounged, alone or in small groups. Many drank from whiskey bottles or stone jugs. Nearby were bundles of buffalo hides over which black clouds of flies hovered.
A hide-hunter’s camp.
Louisa had seen one before in southern Iowa, and she’d never wished to see one again. The stench alone had made her ill. And when you threw in the human vermin that populated such places—women as well as men ...
Yes, this was a place that would attract the likes of Handsome Dave Duvall. Or at the very least, someone here would have seen or heard of him.
Louisa rode over to a dirty white tent whose wood shingle hanging over the open front door deemed it The National Saloon. Dismounting, she stepped inside. There were four men at one of the three long tables. Three were dressed like freighters. Another wore coveralls and an apron—the barkeep, no doubt.
Not knowing the best way to broach the subject, Louisa decided to dive in headfirst. “Excuse me, gentlemen,” she said, having to spit the “gentlemen” out like a sour plum while maintaining a neutral expression, “has anyone seen or heard of the whereabouts of Handsome Dave Duvall?”
All four men cast their gazes her way. She could tell from their expressions—a mix of wary caution and surprise—that they knew who she was talking about. They stared at her for a long time, looking her up and down, taking her measure.
Finally the barkeep said, “What in the hell would a pretty little thing like you want with Handsome Dave Duvall?”
“Personal business.”
“Personal, huh?” the barkeep chuffed, glancing at the others. “I bet it’s personal.”
All four men just stared. Finally, one drawled in a Southern accent, “I ain’t seen him. Don’t care to, neither.”
When the others did not say anything but only kept staring at Louisa, their eyes growing more and more lascivious, she became convinced none really had seen or heard of Dave Duvall’s presence here and walked away, leading her Morgan by the reins.
She stopped at another saloon and a dugout cabin before which an Indian woman, probably a hider’s wife, was cutting up a buffalo tongue. Getting no reply to her question at either place—neither the Indian nor the lone man sweeping out the second saloon so much as looked at her!—she headed over to another cabin across the road, sitting in a shallow ravine. It was flanked by three more sod-roofed shacks and a corral in which a handful of horses hung their heads and swished their tails at bugs. Several soldiers sat talking on the first cabin’s stoop.
lying the Morgan to the hitching post out front, Louisa walked across the hard-packed yard and mounted the porch. Ignoring the soldiers, who had ceased talking as soon as they saw her and were now staring the way most men of low breeding stared at her, she crossed the porch and knocked on the door. She did not bother asking the soldiers about Duvall, for she knew such men and knew from the smirks on these men’s faces that she could not count on the sincerity of their answers.
One of the soldiers laughed. “Door’s open, sweetheart. You don’t have to knock!” He laughed again, and the other four followed suit.
Louisa lifted the crude leather latch and stepped inside, shutting the door behind her on the laughing voices of the soldiers. The cabin was stuffed to brimming with crude furniture, including several cots and an iron range. Shelves spilled pots and pans and dry goods. Louisa stood where she was, for she knew that to move in such dusky, cramped quarters would probably mean knocking something over.
“Who’re you?” came a female voice from the shadows across the cabin.
Squinting and casting her gaze about, Louisa discovered a woman reclining on another cot behind two blankets hanging from a wire, which she had parted with her hand. Her black hair was streaked with gray. She wore only a wash-worn chemise, it appeared, exposing nearly one whole, sagging breast. A cheroot smoldered in her hand parting the blankets. The air in the place was fetid with unspeakable human secretions.
“My name is Louisa Bonaventure of Sand Creek, Nebraska, and I’m looking for a man called Handsome Dave Duvall. Have you seen or heard of his presence hereabouts in the last few days?”
The woman stared through the parted blankets, expressionless. Finally, she blinked. “Why on earth would you be looking for such a man?” she asked sadly.
“I’ve personal business with him.”
“Personal?” The woman’s gaze turned vaguely ironic as she studied Louisa from head to toe and back again. “Let me give you a free piece of sound advice, honey. Dave Duvall might be as handsome as all get out, but he’s the devil’s filth. Not the man a sweet little thing like you should be chasing all the way from Nebraska or anywhere else.”
“You know where he is, don’t you?”
The woman sighed and puffed the cheroot. Her face paled. “I heard from someone who thought they seen him over at Jack Clawson’s sawmill down the road apiece, south. I hope to hell he isn’t, because there’s nowhere Dave goes that the people don’t suffer in the most horrible ways.”
She studied Louisa, whose heart was thudding. “But you just leave him alone. Stay clear of that man, honey.”
“South, you said?”
“Listen, honey, you just never mind what I said. You just—”
Louisa didn’t hear the rest, for she’d already turned, opened the door, and stepped back onto the porch. She moved toward her horse, but one of the soldiers gathered around the door stepped into her path, smirking.
“Excuse me, sir.”
“Excuse me, sweetheart.”
“I was heading for my horse.”
“Ah, now, what’s the hurry?”
Louisa glanced around at the five leering faces. Fear and anger gripped her, but she was no stranger to either emotion. “Kindly remove yourself from my path, sir,” she ordered the young, stringbean firebrand standing between her and the Morgan.
“What are you gonna do if I don’t?”
Louisa reached into the slit in her poncho and produced the Colt. Extending it, she thumbed back the hammer. “I’ll blow a hole in your worthless hide a mile wide.”
The firebrand stared at the gun, his eyes widening. “Jesus Christ, boys, look at the cannon this pretty little gal’s packin’!”
Suddenly, his left hand slashed at the gun, knocking it out of Louisa’s hand before she had time to fire. It went off when it hit the porch floor, the slug tearing into the base of the cabin. Before Louisa knew what was happening, one of the soldiers grabbed her from behind, lifting her off her feet.
“No!” she cried. “No, you vermin ... slime!”
The soldiers hooted and howled. The one holding Louisa dodged her flying fists and kicking feet, and then one of the others grabbed her legs in his arms, pinning them together.
“Eeee-tow, Jeb!” the stringbean soldier cried. ‘Take that little polecat in the cabin and go to work! Let me know when you’re done, ’cause I’m next!”
“Help me, Jim!” Jeb howled to the man holding Louisa’s feet.
“You got it, Jeb!”
One of the other soldiers opened the cabin door, and Jeb and Jim carried the desperately fighting Louisa into the cabin and kicked the door closed behind them.