On his bad leg and cursing with every step, Prophet tracked the horses down in a small box canyon. They were idly cropping grass, reins dangling around their feel.
He discovered that his own horse came to a whistle. The girl’s horse, however, was more skittish, and Prophet had to run it down atop the speckle-gray, reaching out and grabbing the reins just before it broke into a gallop. He led the Appaloosa back to where the girl waited in the shade of a sandstone escarpment, bathing her wounded shoulder in the water that bubbled out of the rocks.
In spite of his painful calf, he knew a moment’s arousal when he saw the skin the girl had exposed when she’d slipped the sleeve of her dress halfway down her arm, revealing a good bit of ample cleavage. The sensation was not at all welcome, and he was vaguely startled and disgruntled that after all he’d been through— after the bullet he’d taken in his calf—that a woman needed only to reveal a little more skin than usual to make his member stiffen.
He’d always known he was a rather simple mechanism—plenty of women had told him so—but the current revelation was all the more startling for his being in such an otherwise foul mood. Why the hell hadn’t he stayed in Henry’s Crossing and drank himself stupid?
“Pack some mud on it and let’s ride,” he ordered. “You can tend it more after sundown.”
“It won’t stop bleeding.”
“Pack some mud on it, and that’ll stop it. Let’s go. We don’t have time for dawdlin’. If that polecat with the Big Fifty follows like I think he’s going to, you’ll have more holes than that one to worry about.”
She turned to him sharply, red hair flying. “What are you so goddamn mad about? You act like I’m the one that got us ambushed!”
Prophet flushed as her barb hit home. He realized he’d gotten careless back there but wasn’t about to admit it to her. “I said pack some mud on your shoulder, and mount your goddamn horse!”
She grabbed up a handful of mud, laid it on the wound, and stalked over to the Appaloosa idly cropping grass. Grabbing the reins out of Prophet’s hand, she turned a look on him that would have sent Lucifer packing. “You son of a bitch, Prophet!” Then she mounted with an angry huff.
Without looking at her, Prophet reined his horse around and led out at a canter which he quickly stretched into a gallop, ignoring the fire burning in his leg. They had to eat some ground if they were going to reach Johnson City before Owen McCreedy set Billy Brown free.
And if they were going to stay ahead of that Big Fifty, as well.
They’d ridden for only a half hour before they came to the badlands, the cuts and gouges spreading out before them as far as the eye could see. Under the harsh, midday light, it was a menacing moonscape relieved here and there by tiny mesas and round-topped buttes slashed by the runoff of recent rains. It was a maze of sandy canyons in which the only green was a smattering of grass and sage in the lowest areas, and the spindly spikes of yucca.
In the hazy blue distance, two hawks hovered low over the canyons in their hunt for mice and rabbits—two black specks lazing on thermals, appearing nearly stationary.
Lola Diamond turned to Prophet with the angry, terrified expression that had become glued to her face over the past couple of days. “You’re insane.”
“It’s shorter this way than by the stage road. And Brown’s men—and whoever else is after us—will have a lot tougher time tracking us down there, too.”
He spurred his horse toward a game trail winding into the canyon yawning below.
“Wait,” she said. “I need a rest and so does my horse.”
“No time” was his curt reply. He rode until he and his horse disappeared into the canyon.
“You son of a bitch,” she muttered, hating his arrogance. He knew very well she wouldn’t stay here alone, would have to follow him like a dog no matter how much she wanted to do otherwise.
She reined her own horse to the game trail, then closed her eyes as the animal took halting, mincing steps into the canyon. It was a steep descent, and halfway down the horse broke into a run, which it checked when it reached bottom.
It looked around as though wondering where to go. Lola did the same. All she saw before her was several sandy buttes with sage growing along their gravelly bases, each with a much-used game trail winding around its bulk.
Which trail had Prophet taken?
She called his name.
There was no response but the distant screech of a hunting hawk and the breeze playing in the bushes along the rim. The sun beat straight down upon her, so that her hat barely shaded her face. She knew a moment’s concern. Then, looking around, she saw fresh hoof prints and gigged the Appaloosa forward.
Keeping a close eye on the fresh tracks, she followed their serpentine route through the buttes. It was like a maze she’d once read that a rich man had formed out of hedges. One butte or boulder after another, each a different height and width, each stepping out before her to make her rein the horse either left or right. When she hadn’t caught up to the bounty hunter in ten minutes, she grew concerned that she wasn’t following his tracks after all.
Her heart pounded and her mouth became dry. Her eyes were large, her brows furrowed. She couldn’t imagine being out here alone at this lonely end of the world.
Her voice quivered. “Prophet, goddamnit, where are you?”
“Keep your voice down, will you? You never know who else is out here.”
She reined her horse to a quick halt and swung her head right. There he was, in a corridor made by a sandstone scarp and several low, deeply eroded buttes. He stood beside his horse, filling his hat from his canteen.
He was such a welcome sight, she felt like running over and hugging him. Then her anger burned at his leaving her back there.
“What in the hell ... what in the hell do you think you’re doing ... leaving me back there?”
He shrugged as he held the hat for the horse to drink. “I told you we didn’t have time to stop.”
His nonchalance sent another fire through her. She gripped her saddle horn until her hands turned white, and her voice quivered again, this time with rage. “I have never in my life, Mr. Prophet, met a more arrogant ... impertinent ... supercilious cuss than you!”
He regarded her casually as the horse drank from his hat. “I think I know what arrogant means, but the other two words”—he shrugged and shook his head, returning his attention to the horse—”I didn’t get much schoolin’ back in Georgia, you see. Mostly just picked my daddy’s cotton and raided watermelon patches.”
“You could have fooled me,” she said with taut sarcasm.
“Better get down and give your horse a drink. I’m gonna be pullin’ out again in about two minutes.”
She was so outraged at his insouciance that her vision swam, and she wanted to scream. Instead, knowing she could very easily be left behind again, she scrambled down from her saddle and, taking his cue, filled her hat from her canteen and fed the water to her horse.
Meanwhile, Prophet donned his wet hat and retrieved his field glasses from his saddlebags. She watched as he climbed a low butte, using rocks and sage clumps for handholds, creating small sand slides in his wake. He gave little indication that his leg was hurting, other than to grunt now and then. He sat near the top of the butte and trained the glasses on the country behind them.
“You see anything?” she called to him.
He didn’t say anything as he peered through the glasses. Lowering them, he turned and descended the butte, sliding on his butt over the steepest grades. Limping slightly as he approached his horse, he said, “He’s back there, all right. Him and that Big Fifty.”
“How do you know?”
He forked leather, took the reins in both hands, and the horse scuttled sideways and back several steps. “Lady, I may not have a whole lot of proper schoolin’, but I’ve been on the owlhoot trail long enough to know when a man with a big gun’s doggin’ me, and one’s doggin’ me now. Bank on it.”
He spurred his horse into a trot, disappearing around a shelf. She watched him, flabbergasted, and hurried to mount her horse. “Well, wait for me ... goddamn you, Prophet!”
A mile and a half as the crow flies behind Prophet and Lola Diamond, Dick Dunbar rode his mouse-brown gelding, leaning out from his saddle as he read the sign left by Prophet and the girl’s mounts.
Dunbar was a tall, thin man with close-cropped brown hair, a severe, sun-seared face, and a bushy brown mustache drooping around the corners of his grim mouth. On his head was a sweat-soaked bandanna beneath a weather-beaten derby hat he’d swiped from a businessman he’d killed in Alder Gulch two weeks ago. He’d stolen the hat not because he thought it went better with the rest of his attire—faded chambray shirt, rawhide suspenders, dusty broadcloth trousers, and cartridge belt and holster—but because it didn’t. He liked the contrast of the hat with the rest of his scruffy clothes and savage-looking weapons, including the big, fifty-caliber rifle perpetually poking out of his saddle sheath.
He thought the hat gave him distinction. It was also a trophy, for the man it had belonged to had been one of Alder Gulch’s more prominent businessmen who had, for some reason or another, gotten on the enemies list of
Dick Dunbar’s primary employer: Billy Brown.
Billy Brown was why Dunbar was here now. Two days ago he and the other three in his band—the three who’d been so shamefully greased by Lou Prophet and the showgirl—had gotten a cable from Billy’s men in Johnson City, telling them to intercept the stage from Henry’s Crossing and kill the red-haired showgirl named Lola Diamond and anyone and everyone in her company. The cable hadn’t said why. They never did, and Dunbar had learned not to question Billy Brown’s motives. But it did say that once the girl was dead, Dunbar and his three associates would be paid one thousand dollars in cash.
One thousand dollars split four ways came to two hundred and fifty dollars, not bad for one girl. One thousand unsplit was even better, and that’s why Dunbar felt little but disdain for his fallen comrades, and embarrassment for the way they’d so stupidly walked into Prophet’s trap, like calves walking into quicksand. Imagine getting gunned down by a showgirl, which is what had happened to the stupid Sonny Lane!
“Well, I won’t tell ‘em, Sonny,” Dunbar said now as he studied the hoof prints in the tough sod. “I guess that’s the least I can do, after you got me on with Billy Brown and all. I’ll just say Prophet drygulched all four of us, and I got away ... somehow.”
His face tightened as he considered the “somehow.” He decided not to mention the girl opening up with her pea shooter. He certainly wouldn’t admit that she’d sent him running for his horse after the last of the other three men were killed and he’d momentarily lost his nerve when the Big Fifty had misfired and the shell had jammed in the breech. He’d say he’d sensed the trap but couldn’t convince the others, who rode into it while Dunbar stayed behind, pleading with his brave but foolhardy compatriots to no avail....
Yeah, that should cover Dunbar’s ass. Billy Brown couldn’t fire him for that. The last thing anyone wanted was to be fired by Billy Brown, because when Billy Brown fired you, he usually killed you in some sneaky, underhanded way when and where you least expected it. Billy Brown didn’t like leaving any loose ends, and ex-employees definitely fell into that category.
Satisfied with the story, Dunbar heaved a sigh of relief. Approaching a stretch of open ground, he turned his head to make sure the buffalo gun was still in his saddle boot—the damn thing always misfired when the barrel got hot—then gigged his gelding into a gallop, wanting to eat up some ground between himself and the two he was following. It sure would be nice if he could get this thing over with before nightfall. He’d get himself a good night’s sleep, then head back to the main trail to Johnson City first thing in the morning.
It would take him another half day to reach town as it was, packing the girl’s body for the reward money, and he couldn’t wait to get his hands on that thousand dollars. As long as he’d been killing folks for hire—going on seven years now, and that wasn’t counting all the years he’d spent killing Yankee farmers and small-towners with Quantrill’s raiders down in Missouri and Arkansas— he’d never once had that much money in his pockets at one time.
Soon the tall, thin gunman with the sunburned face and grim eyes beneath the curled brim of his dusty bowler came to the edge of the badlands. He halted his horse and spat a wad of chew on a flat rock two feet to his left.
“So this is what you had in mind, eh. old boy?” Dunbar said, sending his gaze over the pocked and gouged gray landscape before him.
He’d recognized Prophet when he’d glassed him before he’d tried to ambush him and the girl with the Big Fifty. Prophet had a reputation as a man you didn’t mess with, and that was why Dunbar had decided to take the long shot, which had been nudged wide by a sudden wind gust. He rarely missed from that distance, and he sure as hell wouldn’t miss again. The damn cannon wouldn’t misfire, either, because he’d finish the job with his first two shots.
Also, he’d cut the distance in half. Out there, where he saw a telltale feather of sun-bleached dust lifting about a mile ahead—the dust of two fleeing riders, he was certain—it wouldn’t be at all hard to get that close. With all those buttes and rocks for cover, why, a man could practically ride into another man’s camp unseen.
Dunbar pulled his bandanna down to his eyes, mopping the sweat from his brows, then shoved it back up on his forehead. Grinning, he gigged his horse into the canyon.
“Damn, Prophet … you’re makin’ this too easy.”