FIVE MILES SOUTHEAST of Louisa, Prophet squatted on his haunches atop a bluff and stared off across the dark landscape unfolding before him.
He was looking for Duvall’s campfire, but he’d known even before he’d climbed the bluff after he and McIlroy had stopped for the day that he would not find any such light. Duvall was too far ahead. Tracking was a slow process, and Prophet and McIlroy were gaining very little ground, if any.
Still, Prophet scanned the dark land crowned with vivid stars, hearing coyotes and distant wolves, a vagrant night breeze rattling the leaves of nearby shrubs. He realized now he wasn’t looking only for sign of Duvall’s encampment but for sign of Louisa’s, too.
He cursed to himself, worrying about her. In spite of how tough she was, if she met up with Duvall before he, Prophet, did ...
He gave a grunt and, shaking his head, stood. He took one more long look around him, then turned and started down the bluff, picking his path carefully in the darkness, grabbing shrubs to slow his descent.
“It’s Prophet,” he announced as he neared his and McIlroy’s encampment lit by a small cook fire. Stepping into the circle of orange light, he saw McIlroy sitting back against his saddle, smoking a cigar and idly running an oiled rag over his rifle.
“See anything?”
“Stars,” Prophet said wryly. “Lots of stars.”
“You’re worried about the girl.”
Prophet picked his tin cup off a rock. Not saying anything, he retrieved the gurgling pot from the fire and filled his cup with the smoking, black brew.
When he’d sat down against a log, McIlroy cleared his throat. “If you’d pardon me for askin’, Proph, just what is she to you, anyway—Miss Bonaventure, I mean?”
Prophet sipped his coffee and stared into the fire and did not speak. He had no answer to the question. It was a good one, though. Just what was Louisa to him, anyway?
“Well, like I said,” McIlroy said after a while, sliding his rifle into its scabbard, “pardon me for askin’.” He stood with the scabbard and donned his hat. “I’ll keep the first watch and wake you in a few hours.”
Prophet nodded and took another sip of the coffee, feeling the burn down his throat and the comforting warmth in his gut.
McIlroy turned and headed out of the firelight. He’d taken no more than six steps when Prophet heard, “Well, I’ll be! Speak of the devil!”
Prophet’s hand jerked to his Peacemaker. He relaxed when he noted there had been no fear, only humorous surprise in the deputy’s voice. A horse whinnied, and Prophet heard a snort and the fall of a shod hoof.
“Don’t shoot, Proph,” McIlroy called. “It’s her.”
The tension eased in Prophet’s shoulders, and his stomach grew light with relief. Thank god. Arranging a casual expression, he waited for her to step into the firelight. Realizing she must have been picketing her horse, he set to work taking his Peacemaker apart and cleaning it, wanting to look casual when she revealed herself.
He heard her footsteps but did not look up as she stepped into the firelight. Seeing her out the corner of his eye, he said, “Well, look what the cat dragged in.”
She said nothing as she dropped her saddle and bedroll several yards from his, under a Russian olive, then turned and disappeared again. She returned a moment later, carrying her rifle scabbard and saddlebags.
He looked at her now. Her hat hung from its strap down her back, and trail dust coated her, streaking her face with mud where she’d perspired. Her hair was disheveled. Her face owned a flushed, weary look. Her eyes were wild. She’d been lost. She’d probably lost Duvall’s trail and ended up God knows where. She could handle a gun and a knife well enough, but keen tracking skills took time and experience to acquire.
She took a cup from her saddlebags and filled it with coffee. She sat on the other side of the fire, lifting her knees, grinding her heels into the dirt, and sipping from the cup. She did not look at Prophet, only stared into the fire.
As if reading his mind, she said, “All right, I’m not much of a tracker. I got lost. I need to stay with you until we find him.”
The statement had the air of a confession offered at great emotional cost. Her pride was so obviously bruised that he felt sorry for her and lost the urge to gloat. He only nodded and ran his oiled rag over the Peacemaker’s cylinder.
‘There’s some biscuits and beans in that pan over there.”
She said nothing, but when she’d finished her coffee, she produced a plate from her saddlebags and filled it from the pan. She ate hungrily, staring into the fire. When she was through, she cleaned her plate and cup, returned them to her saddlebags, and rolled up in her blankets, sighing tiredly as she rested her head against her saddle.
Watching her, he put the Peacemaker back together. In a moment, she was asleep, her chest rising and falling. Prophet got up and tended nature, then turned in himself and fell quickly asleep.
He woke sometime later to the sound of whimpering. Believing it had come from some animal in the camp, he reached for his revolver. He looked around the camp only dimly lit by the dying fire and saw nothing out of the ordinary.
The whimper came again, from right behind him.
Startled, he jerked that way. It was Louisa. She lay beside him, her head on her saddle, tossing and turning under her blankets, enmeshed in a dream. A nightmare.
He returned his revolver to its holster, snuggled back down in his blankets, and took the moaning girl in his arms, gently holding her and patting her shoulder while she dreamed.
“It’s okay, Louisa,” he whispered. “Everything’s gonna be just fine.”
Two days later, Handsome Dave Duvall and the three deserter soldiers were waiting out a rain squall under a tarpaulin erected between two cottonwood trees. On a spit over a cook fire, a beef tenderloin sizzled and crackled as the skin split and dripped grease into the glowing coals below. Harold and Danny were playing two-handed poker, and Clyde was darning a sock, frowning like an idiot over a McGuffy reader.
Dave was smoking and considering the possibility of killing these yahoos in their sleep later tonight, and stealing their stolen cash.
In Sante Fe, where he’d decided to head after shaking his trackers in the Indian nations and before disappearing into Mexico for a few years, a thousand dollars would go a long way toward a new wardrobe and plenty of whiskey and women, not to mention song. He’d get him a couple of good horses, too, and knock off a bank or a roadhouse on his way south. You could live for years in Mexico on a handful of greenbacks.
He was tired of the soldiers. They might’ve done some killing and stealing in their time, but they were tinhorns just the same. And each was annoying in his own particular way. Especially Clyde, who bragged ceaselessly about his sexual conquests. They were all lies, Dave knew. No kid who looked like Clyde—even if he was hung as well as he claimed—could have sacked as many girls as he professed. Why, not even Dave himself, who was about as handsome a devil as he himself had ever known, had bedded that many ladies.
And the story about the president’s niece in the broom closet of Omaha’s Imperial Inn-—that was just puredee nonsense, and not worth the time it had taken the dumb honyonker to tell it. No, that kid needed his throat cut from ear to ear, and left to bleed to death in his soogan.
Duvall thought about that as he took a long, luxurious drag on his quirley, a thin smile breaking out on his unshaven face. He stiffened and lost the smile when he heard the ratchety scrape of a shell levered into a rifle breech.
Turning left, he saw a man dressed like a common drover—battered Stetson, neckerchief, cotton shirt, and chaps—standing on a knoll, facing his way. He held a Winchester saddle gun low across his thighs, not aimed in Duvall’s direction but ready to be. He had a face like a coyote, with a thin patch of beard on both cheeks. His gray eyes flashed.
“Enjoying that Rockin’ Horse beef, are ye, boys?”
“What the ... ?” Clyde said, tensing.
“Easy” Duvall told him. He smiled at the cowboy. “Well, I don’t know whose beef it is, but it sure does taste good. You’re welcome to join us, if you’re hungry. There’s plenty for all comers.”
“No thanks,” the cowboy said. “That beef you’re roastin’ belongs to my boss, Major Donleavy over at the Rockin’ Horse Ranch, and he don’t cotton to grub liners movin’ through and paddin’ their bellies on it whenever they please. Accordin’ to him and a few other cattlemen in this area, that’s rustlin’, and you know how we handle rustlers in this neck of the woods?”
Dave glanced at Clyde, then returned his eyes to the cowboy and grinned. “How?”
“Necktie party.”
That hadn’t come from the cowboy before Duvall. It had come from someone else, behind him. Berating himself for not posting one of these yahoos on watch duty—he had to admit he’d gotten careless—Duvall craned his head around to see two more drovers standing before a cotton-wood tree. One carried a beat-up Sharps rifle with a leather lanyard; the other held a rusty Smith & Wesson with the hammer cocked back. Unlike the first cowboy, these two looked edgy and worried, like they weren’t used to trouble like this, and they didn’t think their thirty a month and found covered it.
“Necktie party, huh?” big Danny said, a testy light entering his gaze. His hand moved toward the iron on his hip.
“Easy,” Duvall said. Then, to the gray-eyed cowboy: “We sure are sorry about the beef. We were hungry, you see, and we just figured, with so many here and there about this big country, no one would miss it.”
“Yeah, that’s what a lot of ‘em think. Who are you, anyway, and where you headed?”
Duvall considered his answer. Then he said, “Well, my name is Dave Duvall. You might have heard of me. Some call me Handsome Dave Duvall.” He paused to chuckle humbly. “I don’t know where they get that, but anyway ... these here boys are part of the Red River Gang.”
The gray-eyed drover just stared at him, his eyes going flat. The other two didn’t say a word, but Duvall could sense their tension. The soldiers glanced at him and grinned.
“You’re, uh... you’re who, did you say?” the gray-eyed cowboy asked. The lines in his forehead had flattened out so that his face looked like a death mask.
“Why, I’m Handsome Dave Duvall, and these three boys are the latest members of the Red River Gang.” Duvall patted Clyde’s knee affably. “The rest of the gang is on their way here, to this here meetin’ place, even as we speak. Shoulda been here by now, as a matter of fact.”
One of the cowboys behind him said, “The ... the Red River Gang?”
Duvall was grinning. “You heard of us, I take it. Who might you boys be?”
The gray-eyed cowboy glanced around stiffly, then worked his throat as he swallowed. “We’re from the Rockin’ Horse over yonder. Been holed up in a line shack with the summer herd ... watchin’ for rustlers an’ such.”
“Well, you found some, I’ll admit that,” Duvall said, nodding his head. “The question is”—here his face went flat and serious—”what are you three gonna do about it?”
Clyde laughed through his teeth. Danny and Harold just grinned. Duvall frowned, his shaggy brows hooding his eyes.
“W-watch out now, Ned,” one of the drovers behind Duvall said. “If he is who he says he is—and I think he is—he’s dangerous.”
Ned stood there tensely, holding the rifle across his thighs, not aiming it but thinking about it. Definitely thinking about it.
“What are you worried about, Mickey?” he said as he watched Duvall. “We got the drop on ‘em. Hell, there might even be a reward on their heads.”
“Yeah, there might be a reward on the whole damn gang,” the other drover piped up, “but hell, are you gonna take the whole dang gang in to the law? I say we just let Mr. Duvall enjoy his beef. I’m sure he ain’t plannin’ on hanging around long. No reason why the major has to know about it.”
“You chicken shit,” Ned said. “I don’t believe none o’ that bullshit about the rest of the gang on its way. I say he’s bluffin’. I say we kill these three right here and take ‘em into town for the reward.”
Duvall laughed, tipping his head back and showing his teeth. He laughed long and hard, as though at the funniest joke he’d heard in a long time.
“What’s so damn funny?” Ned asked, indignant, inching the barrel of his rifle Duvall’s way.
Duvall let his laughter die, and he turned to Ned. “I don’t think you can do it.”
“What?”
“I don’t think you can shoot us. I don’t think you can bring yourself to drop your hammers.” Duvall paused, smiling smugly. “I’ve killed pret’ near a hundred folks in my life, and at least a fourth of them were even odds. They didn’t need to die. They could’ve shot me instead. But they just couldn’t do it. And because they couldn’t do it, or spent too much time thinkin’ about doin’ it, they died.”
Ned stared hard at Dave, his face pinkening as he worked it through his head. Dave could see he was reluctant to bring the barrel forward. He lacked confidence. He wasn’t sure he wanted to start a firelight. But then, he also knew that if he didn’t shoot soon, Dave would. It was a hell of a pickle, and Ned had the shakes. They were getting worse.
As for Dave, he felt Sunday-morning calm, like he’d just been blessed by angels. No one could touch him.
“Boys,” he said calmly, “I’m gonna shoot Ned. You turn around and shoot those dumbasses behind us whenever you’re ready.”
Dave blinked once, then clawed his revolver from his holster. Ned stood frozen, his eyes flashing terror, as Dave lifted the revolver and planted a forty-five slug in the center of his forehead. Ned jumped back, head twisting around with the force of the slug. He staggered, taking mincing steps, then dropped his rifle and sagged to his knees before falling face forward in the grass.
The soldiers laughed as they turned and took aim at the other two cowboys, triggering their pistols. Duvall turned to see the two cowboys running off through the weeds, both men losing their hats in the wind. The soldiers’ pistols clattered, and finally one of the cowboys dropped. The other continued running.
Clyde and Danny fired at him, cursing now as they grew frustrated with their aim.
“Oh, for chrissakes!” Duvall groused, lifting his own revolver, sighting down the barrel, and squeezing the trigger. The gun barked, and the second cowboy pitched forward in the grass.
He turned to the three soldiers looking cowed as they stared off at the dead drovers. “Didn’t they teach you how to shoot in the army?”