TWO DAYS LATER, Dave Duvall said, “Damn. There they are.”
He sat his horse on the side of a brown bluff, so he wouldn’t be outlined against the sky. He stared north through his field glasses as he rolled a foxtail stem between his lips.
He’d slowed his and the soldiers’ pace with the intention of finding out whether or not they were still being followed. He thought if the bounty hunter wasn’t still pursuing him, he might change his plans and head for Denver, as Denver was as good as any place to disappear for a while.
He’d lay up in a brothel, and if his trail still looked hot, he’d head to Arizona. If marshals or bounty men trailed him there, then he’d head to Mexico, but not before. Why fritter away his relative youth in the land of the bean-eaters if he didn’t have to?
Now, adjusting the glasses to bring the three riders— two men and the blonde girl—more plainly into view, it looked like he might have to.
“Boys, I need a volunteer,” he said to the soldiers gathered around him.
“What do you need a volunteer for, Mr. Duvall?” Clyde asked.
“I need a volunteer to wait here and see if he can ambush those three—at least pin them down and hole up till nightfall. Give us others a chance to regain our lead on them. Whoever does the ambush can light out after us once dark has fallen. Since they won’t know he’s gone, they’ll hole up till morning.”
The soldiers looked at each other. Clyde turned to Duvall with a befuddled crease between his eyes. “Why don’t we all just ambush them? I mean, hell, there’s only three of ‘em, right? And didn’t you say one’s just a girl?” He chuffed a laugh.
“One’s just a girl, but that girl’s got nine lives,” Duvall said as he watched the three riders angle around an old buffalo wallow, keeping a close eye on the relatively fresh horse tracks in the short-grass sod. “And one of the men is a man by the name of Prophet. Rebel bounty hunter. Tricky son of a bitch. Relentless. If we all laid back, he’d smell the trap.”
Duvall thought it over, then lowered the glasses to his chest and shook his head. “No. I don’t want to tangle with him out here with our ammo runnin’ low and our horses tired. But one man—a good man—could kill him ... if he knew what he was doing and didn’t give himself away.”
Duvall didn’t really think one of these yahoos could ambush the savvy Prophet without getting himself killed, but what the hell? The worst that could happen was that the ambusher would get himself killed while giving Duvall and the other two time to gain some distance. Then Duvall would only have two yahoos to kill later.
Then again, the shooter could always get lucky.
“But the guy who stays has to be foxy,” Duvall warned, looking each lad in the eye, like a sergeant on the eve of battle. “He has to be calm under pressure and good with a rifle. He has to be the kind of man I’d want riding by my side through a Comanche war party.”
The soldiers looked at each other, squirming a little in their saddles, knowing they were being tested. Clyde looked a little suspicious, but not suspicious enough to call Duvall on his motives. He wanted far too badly to be a bona fide Red River Gang rider for that.
“I’ll do it,” Danny said finally, not appearing as enthusiastic as his words made him sound. “But you won’t have to ride far, ‘cause all three of them’s gonna be dead long before nightfall.”
“That’s the spirit!” Duvall said, patting the hefty lad on the back. “What I’d do if I were you is hightail it down to that cut down there. Let ‘em get good and close before you show yourself, and lay into ‘em. Most likely, you’ll get one or even two, and you’ll pin the other one down.
“When you have him pinned down and it’s good and dark, follow this creek to the Cannonball River, due south of here. Follow the river to the left about five, six miles, and you’ll run into an old shack in an elbow canyon. It’s easy to find if you’re watching for it,” Duvall lied, “even in the dark. Me and the gang threw that shack together a couple of years ago and used it for a hideout. Me and Clyde and Harold—we’ll stop there for the night.”
“No problem,” Danny said, reaching back, shucking his Spencer carbine from his saddle boot, and tugging his hat down low over his eyes. “I’ll be there; you can bank on that.”
With that, he reined his horse toward the ravine. Duvall watched him go, wanting to chuckle and grin for all he was worth, knowing he had one of these fools out of the way. Instead, he yelled, “I’m proud of ye, Danny boy! Mighty proud, indeed!”
He watched the heavyset lad ride away as though watching one of his own ride off to war. Then he turned to Clyde, who was staring at him with a vaguely puzzled expression on his young, belligerent face.
Then Duvall said, “Come on, boys. Time to ride,” and he led off at a trot.
Prophet got down on his hands and knees and lowered his canteen into the stream, filling it. He studied the tracks that disappeared into the slow-moving water, then reappeared in the mud, amid several deer and coyote prints, on the opposite bank.
Before him, cattails and saw grass rustled and scratched in the breeze. Behind him, McIlroy and Louisa sat their horses, watching him. Louisa hadn’t said more than five words to him since she’d returned to their camp four days ago, and most of those had been “Yes,” “No,” and “Perhaps.”
He guessed he didn’t blame her. He shouldn’t have tried to trick her into staying in Bismarck while he went after the man who’d murdered her family. She’d been right; it hadn’t been his family that had been butchered. She had every right to see Duvall dead. He hoped she didn’t die in the process, but he’d decided not to worry about that. She’d been fighting this war long enough to know the risks, and she was old enough in both years and experience to make her own decisions.
He wasn’t her father, after all. He wasn’t her brother nor even her lover, though he knew now, after the other night when he’d held her to assuage her nightmares, that he wanted to be.
Such thoughts were only a shadow in his mind at the moment, however. Studying the horse prints, he corked his canteen and said, “Their trail keeps getting fresher and fresher.”
“They still slowing down?” McIlroy asked.
“Yep.”
“Why, do you suppose? Ambush? Get us off their trail once and for all?”
“I can’t figure another reason.” Prophet turned to the deputy and Louisa, gazing at each directly. “Watch yourselves,” he said. “Now more than ever. Remember what they did to those three drovers we found.”
Louisa’s eyes met Prophet’s for an instant, then shuttled away. “I don’t see any sense in dawdling here,” she said haughtily, tightening her hat thong beneath her chin. “You’ve filled your canteen. Let’s ride.”
She gigged her horse into the stream, starting across. Prophet glanced at McIlroy, whose eyes lighted with irony. “Yeah, will you quit dawdling, Proph? We have a job to do, dammit.”
Prophet cursed, hung his canteen over his saddle horn, and forked leather. Then he gigged Mean and Ugly into the stream behind McIlroy, mounting the opposite bank a few moments later and gazing around at more of the same country they’d been traversing; rolling hills pocked with bluffs and cut by creeks and deep ravines.
A big, dangerous, silent country, once owned primarily. by the Sioux. There were still some Sioux around, but most had been herded onto reservations so that the country west of here—the Black Hills—could be opened for mining. Now there were a few ranches here and there and a few buffalo. But mostly there was wind and occasional thunderstorms and plenty of places for badmen to hide in ambush for those following.
The thought had no sooner crossed Prophet’s mind than a rifle cracked in the distance. Involuntarily, he crouched low in his saddle and clawed his Peacemaker from his holster.
McIlroy’s horse screamed to his left and slightly behind. Turning quickly, he saw the horse rear jerkily, twisting. Then its front knees buckled, and it rolled over hard, expiring quickly with one grievous blow, a trickle of blood running from a hole near its left ear.
“Zeke!” Prophet yelled as the deputy went down hard.
“Oh, shit!” McIlroy complained as he tried to pull his leg free of the horse’s dead weight.
The rifle cracked again, and Prophet heard the bullet whine past him, no more than a foot away. Mean pranced anxiously. Gun drawn, Prophet held a tight grip on the reins as he whipped his head back and forth, trying to get a bead on the gunman’s location.
“It came from that way!” Louisa called, pointing straight south. “From that ravine there!” Her gun was drawn, and before Prophet could say anything, she squeezed off two pistol shots in the gunman’s direction.
“Keep shooting while I try to get Zeke out from under his horse,” Prophet told her, slipping out of his saddle and rushing to the groaning deputy’s assistance.
“Goddamn ... goddamn thing’s on my leg, Proph,” Zeke cried, his face blanched with pain.
Prophet tried to move the dead horse, but it was no use. Finally, he grabbed Zeke by his shoulders, grinding his heels into the ground beneath him, and pulled till the veins in his forehead bulged and knotted. By now, Louisa had dismounted, grabbed her rifle, and sat on her butt. Using her knees as a gun rest, she fired one round after another, giving Prophet covering fire while he tried to free McIlroy from his horse.
“Oh, god!” the deputy cursed as his leg finally slipped free, his boot and sock dangling off his foot.
“You think it’s broke?” Prophet said. “Can you ride?”
“I’ll make it,” Zeke said, nodding. His face was mottled red from the pain. “That son of a bitch!”
Prophet ran to retrieve Mean. When he’d forked leather, he galloped over to McIlroy, got down, and helped the deputy onto the horse. Calling to Louisa to mount the Morgan and follow him, Prophet again forked leather. With an encouraging bellow, he heeled the lineback dun toward a shallow gully quartering about fifty yards east, at the base of a rocky butte.
With Louisa now riding instead of shooting, the shooter-had commenced firing again. Prophet heard the bullets stitching the air around him as he approached the gully. He gigged the horse down the bank, then slid out of the saddle.
“Come on, Zeke,” he said, reaching for the injured deputy and easing him out of the saddle.
McIlroy limped over to the gully’s south-facing bank and ducked down, drawing his revolver. Prophet shucked his Winchester from his rifle boot and hurried over beside McIlroy just as Louisa approached the gully at a gallop, the Morgan leaping over the side in one fluid stride. Louisa slid out of the saddle with her rifle in her hand and crouched down behind the bank, several yards to Prophet’s left.
The rifleman had fallen silent, and there was only the sound of the breeze in the grass, the occasional whinny of Mean and the Morgan.
“Did you see how many?” Prophet asked Louisa, sneaking a peak over the lip of the gully’s bank.
“Just one,” Louisa said, turning to Prophet with a question in her eyes. How were they going to handle this? she seemed to say.
Prophet thought it over. Beside him, Zeke panted against the pain in his leg. Prophet turned to the deputy.
“You think it’s broke?”
Zeke wagged his head. “No, just twisted good. It’ll be okay. But what the hell am I going to do out here without a horse?”
“We’re gonna get you a horse,” Prophet said.
“Where?” McIlroy laughed.
“Well, he’s gotta have a horse, don’t he?” Prophet said, gazing back toward the shooter.
McIlroy stared at Prophet thoughtfully, both doubt and optimism flashing across his features. “You sure are a cocky son of a bitch.”
“Yep,” Prophet said. He turned to Louisa, who watched him expectantly, waiting for him to make the decision.
“You ready to ride, senorita?” Prophet asked her.
Louisa’s full lips spread the first grin she’d offered in days. “Are you thinking what I think you’re thinking, Mr. Prophet?”
“I think I am, Miss Bonny-venture.”
“It’s Bonaventure. There’s no y in it.”
“Get your horse, Miss Bonny-venture.” To the deputy, Prophet said, “Sit tight, Zeke.”
“Jesus Christ, you two are going to get yourselves killed, and I’m going to be all alone out here on a bum leg!”
Louisa had already run, crouching, after her horse. Prophet pushed off the bank, making a beeline for Mean and Ugly, who watched him owlishly, white-eyed, as though he’d read Prophet’s thoughts and didn’t like them a bit.
“Steady now, Mean,” Prophet said as he grabbed the reins and climbed into the leather. Turning to Louisa, he said, “You ready?”
She held her revolver in her right gloved hand, and now she thumbed the hammer back and nodded.
“You curve around to the left,” Prophet told her. “I’ll go in from the right. Ride hard now, and whatever you do, don’t give him an easy target.”
“Okay, okay,” Louisa said, impatient. “Let’s do it!”
“Let’s do it,” Prophet said, tickling Mean with his spurs.
With that, the horse bounded out of the gully and onto the tableland, hooves drumming on the short-grass turf. As Prophet urged the horse forward to even more speed, he crouched low over Mean’s neck and saw Louisa gallop away to his left, paralleling him as they raced toward the shooter.
Smoke puffed before them, down low against the ground, about fifty yards ahead. Prophet heard the rifle crack and the bullet stitch the air over his right shoulder.
“Come on, Mean, you candy ass,” Prophet urged. “Let’s go!”
More smoke puffed; the rifle cracked again. This time the man had fired at Louisa. Prophet eyed her apprehensively, but her horse’s stride never faltered, and she made no sign she’d been hit.
“Come on, Mean! Ride, old son!”
Prophet grabbed his revolver from his holster. As he approached the gully, he thumbed back the hammer and commenced firing across Mean’s neck as he rode, one shot after another, spaced about two seconds apart. Louisa had commenced likewise, and it was working; the shooter was pinned down, unable to shoot, no longer showing himself above the lip of the ravine.
Prophet and Louisa were closing on the ravine now, arcing back toward each other, tearing up gouts of sod and dirt as they rode. Prophet closed first, and as he fired the last shell in his cylinder, he directed Mean to the notch in the ravine from which the shooter had fired. The horse leaped over the side of the ravine, and as he did, Prophet saw the gunman—a beefy lad with a Spencer carbine—look up at the horse’s belly, mouth agape.
Mean landed with a loud thump and a blow, leather squeaking, saddlebags flapping. Prophet twisted around in the saddle as he brought up the Richards sawed-off. The beefy kid had raised his rifle and was aiming down the barrel at Prophet with a vicious glare in his dark eyes.
“No!” Louisa cried.
At the same time, she fired her pistol as the Morgan went airborne over the ravine’s wall. The beefy kid jerked as the bullet took him in the neck. The rifle cracked, the slug flying wide. The kid cursed as he dropped his rifle and staggered sideways, grabbing his bloody neck.
“Ah, you bastards!” he bellowed, staggering and clawing the revolver from his hip. Before he could raise the gun at Louisa, Prophet slipped out of his saddle and leveled the Richards, nearly cutting the kid in half with ten-gauge buckshot.
The kid went down screaming before he died and lay still.
A few minutes later, Prophet and Louisa walked their mounts back toward McIlroy. Prophet was leading the bay behind Mean and Ugly.
He grinned as he called, “Here’s that horse I was talkin’ about, Zeke!”