Prophet decided not to awaken the girl. She might make noise and give them away, or startle their horses.
He buckled on his gunbelt, grabbed his shotgun, and stole out around the horses as quietly as possible. The faint paling in the east told him it was nearly dawn. He had to be careful; the outlines of objects were growing faintly visible, which meant he would be visible, too.
He crept around a butte, traversed a narrow gully, and hunkered down in a cedar, listening. The morning was still and damp, without a breath of breeze. It was so quiet he thought he could hear the grasshoppers breathing in the thin clumps of bluegrass growing along escarpments and in hollows. A sickle moon angled low in the west. Far away rose the hushed cries of a magpie.
Prophet crouched and cradled the shotgun in his arms. His ears fairly ached with listening. Finally, he heard something. A horse clipping a rock? A man’s boot coming down in gravel? Or was it only a stone loosed by gravity down a butte?
Then he heard the unmistakable sound of a horse blowing. He knew it wasn’t one of his horses; it had come from farther west, maybe fifty or sixty yards away, behind that big butte yonder.
Prophet hunkered down on his haunches and waited. The trail he and the girl had taken last night passed near here, and if the man with the Big Fifty had risen early to track them, he would pass along their trail.
After about ten minutes, a figure emerged from the gray-black darkness to the west, stealing around the butte. It was a vague figure—only a few lines of a hat, face, and shoulders—but Prophet knew it was the man with the Big Fifty. He breathed gently through his mouth and poked his finger through the eight-gauge’s trigger housing.
The man approached slowly, one step at a time. When Prophet could see his outline clearly, a prairie dog chortled about ten feet to Prophet’s right. Prophet jumped, startled, heart racing. He cringed, hoping the prairie dog hadn’t spooked the tracker. The rodent made a scuttling sound in the weeds as, startled by Prophet, it ran back to its hole.
Gritting his teeth, Prophet returned his gaze westward. The man with the big gun in his arms had stopped, crouching. He stayed that way for over a minute.
“Come on, come on,” Prophet silently beseeched the man. “It was nothing. Just a prairie dog. He saw a hawk—that’s all. Come on.”
The man began walking again, moving slowly this way. He disappeared twice around rocks and shrubs, then appeared again, about thirty feet away. Now Prophet could hear the man’s boots grinding gravel; he could hear the anxious rake of his breath in his lungs.
The man approached to within twenty feet of Prophet, bending to study the prints of shod hooves in the powdery dust. He straightened and moved forward, to within twelve feet. Then he was so close that Prophet could have spit on him. He walked on by, slowly following the trail.
When he’d given his entire back to Prophet, he stopped suddenly, like a man startled. He’d either smelled Prophet or felt Prophet’s eyes burning a hole through his back. Before the man could react, Prophet stood and thumbed back the shotgun’s left hammer. The metallic grating and punctuating click echoed in the heavy silence.
Prophet said quietly, “You know what an eight-gauge loaded with buckshot will do to a man at this range?”
The man froze.
“Let the hammer down on your long gun there and, with one hand, hold it out to me. No, no... don’t turn this way. Just do what I told you, and make it snappy.”
The man cursed through a heavy sigh. There was a slight metallic click as he off-cocked the buffalo gun. Holding it out to Prophet, he said nothing.
Prophet took the gun and, crouching, keeping his eyes on the rifleman, set the rifle on the ground.
“Now, slowly,” he said, “unbuckle that gunbelt and let it fall.”
“What are you gonna do?” the man asked grimly, the flatness of his voice belying his fear.
“I’m gonna blow a hole through your back big enough to run a train through if you don’t drop that gunbelt.”
Slowly, with another curse, the man did as he was told, the gunbelt dropping around his boots. Prophet ordered him to kick it away. He said, “You got any more guns on you?”
“That’s it.”
“Well, I don’t believe you. Undress.”
“What!”
“Strip down to your skivvies.”
“I ain’t—!” The man stopped as he turned his head slightly and saw the wide bores of the eight-gauge yawning behind him. He sighed, shook his head, shrugged out of his coat, and started unbuttoning his shirt. Five minutes later, he was standing in the trail, facing Prophet in his undershorts, threadbare wool socks, and bowler hat. Prophet was going through his boots and clothes.
“Yeah, I reckon you were telling the truth,” the bounty hunter quipped. “You weren’t carryin’ any more guns.” As he spoke, he withdrew a razor-sharp stiletto from a sheath sewn into the man’s right boot. Holding the slender blade up to his face for inspection, he said, “But that there, I bet you wouldn’t even feel it goin’ in—till it plucked your heart.”
The man said nothing.
Prophet tossed the dagger away and stood. “What’s your name?”
“Dick Dunbar.”
“Dick, I should kill you right now—you realize that, don’t you?”
Facing him in his ridiculous garb, the man said nothing. As the sky lightened, the grim expression on his dust-smudged face grew plainer.
“Yeah, you realize that,” Prophet said. “But I’ll tell you what I’m going to do instead, Dick. I’m going to let you ride back to Billy Brown and tell him I want the bounty on the girl. When I get the bounty, the girl’s his.”
Still, the man said nothing, but Prophet watched his eyes narrow curiously.
“I’m tired of this shit,” Prophet explained. “Tired of busting my ass for a measly hundred and fifty greenbacks. When McCreedy offered me this job, he never told me about you fellas. I don’t give a shit whether or not this girl makes it to Johnson City. I’m a bounty hunter, for chrissakes. I take the best I can get, and I have a feelin’ I can get a might more than a hundred and fifty dollars from Billy Brown. Tell him I want two thousand five hundred.”
Prophet paused, reading the man’s grim, befuddled expression.
“Tell him I want two thousand five hundred, and I want it tomorrow at noon in the old mining cabin at the west end of Miner’s Gulch. There’s an old miner’s shack there. When I get the money, he gets the girl. You got that?”
Brows furrowed, the man nodded.
“Tell Billy I want him to deliver the money to me personally. I don’t deal with middlemen. If he’s afraid of me, he can send his second-in-command. But I want him alone. If I see more than one man, the deal’s off. The girl goes free to tell her tale. You got that?”
The man gave a grim nod.
“Good. Now get dressed.”
When the man had dressed, Prophet followed him back to his horse and checked the man’s saddlebags for more guns, finding an old army-issue forty-four the man was using as a backup, and another knife. Confiscating the weapons. Prophet turned to the man. “Mount up and ride. Remember what I told you, Dick. Two thousand five hundred, and the girl is Billy’s.”
“You’re a son of a bitch,” the rider mumbled, forking leather.
“What’s that?”
“Nothin’.”
“That’s what I thought.”
When the man had gone, Prophet tossed Dunbar’s weapons behind a rock—all but the Big Fifty, that is. The heavy Sharp’s in hand, he headed back to the camp.
He stopped suddenly as he approached the horses. The girl stood before him, holding her pocket pistol straight out before her, aimed at Prophet’s face.
“You’ll never get away with it, you son of a bitch!”
“Hey ... easy,” Prophet said, spreading his hands. “Put that thing down.”
“I’ll put it down, all right. After I kill you, you lying, cheating, low-down, bounty-hunting bastard!”
“I... I take it you overheard,” Prophet mused.
“I’ll say I overheard. Gonna take the best price you can get, that it, Mr. Prophet?” Her voice was thin and quaking, but tight with outrage. “Two thousand five hundred is a little better than a hundred and fifty. What does it matter if I live or die? At least you’ll have your bounty, and that’s everything, isn’t it?”
“Now just a minute ...”
She cocked the gun and steadied it. “Just when I was beginning to think you were a man of integrity … ”
“What you heard me say lo that man was a lie. I wanted him to believe I’d exchange you for the bounty so I can get all Brown’s men together, and spring a trap on ’em.”
“Oh, of course—Billy Brown’s gang. You expect me to believe that?”
“Not only Brown’s gang, but Billy Brown himself. Owen’s gonna have lo set him free by noon today if we don’t get there. That means he’ll be free to supervise the exchange himself, and I have a feeling that, after the thorn you’ve been in his side, he’ll be there. Probably want to drop the hammer on you himself.”
Lola watched him, pondering this. “You’re lying. Not even you would come up with something that crazy.”
He took two steps toward her. “You’ve been with me long enough to know I’m not the kind of man who’d turn a woman over to Billy Brown. Not for any amount of money ... not after all the people who’ve died ... after all we’ve been through, the last three days....”
“I heard he has twenty-five men riding for him.”
“And I figure about twenty-six will be at Miner’s Gulch tomorrow, including Billy himself.”
The gun came down several inches. Lola furrowed her eyebrows. “Why ... ?”
“I have a feeling Owen has more than his hands full with that gang. I know we have. Well, I have a sure-fire— or, pretty sure-fire—plan to wipe them out, including Billy.”
She dropped the gun to her side. “You’re crazy, Prophet.”
Prophet nodded and exhaled a ragged sigh. “Maybe so. That’s why you’re free to go if you want. There’s no way I can force you to do what I have in mind for tomorrow. You give me the word, and I’ll take you to the stage station over in Skowfield, buy you a ticket for Denver. Then I’ll go over and help out Owen myself.”
“What about the subpoena?”
Prophet shrugged. “It’s just a piece of paper. Paper burns right easy, gets lost.”
She brushed a strand of hair from her eyes and inclined her head, appraising him, a soft light entering her eyes. “You mean it?”
“Damn tootin’. You’ve been through enough.”
She lifted her dress, resheathing the pistol, and walked away, running her hands through her hair. Two minutes later she turned to him and shook her head. “I don’t know, Mr. Prophet, I must be crazy, but I feel inclined to join you to this ... Miner’s Gulch, or whatever you call it.”
“You sure?”
“I reckon I’ve done enough running from Billy Brown. If I don’t play it through, I’ll never know if I need to keep looking over my shoulder or not.”
Prophet found himself walking toward her. He stopped and gazed into her eyes, lifted to his. “You got sand,” he said with a smile.
They stood staring into each other’s eyes while the first birds cooed and the horses craned their necks, watching them. Finally, she leaned into him, slowly wrapped an arm around his neck and lifted her head to kiss him. It was a quick kiss, ending when she grew tentative and self-conscious.
He held her, however, and brought her back to him. It was all the encouragement she needed. She brought the other arm up, and held him tightly while they kissed, long and deep, exploring each other’s mouths with their tongues. She swiped his hat off, ran a hand through his hair. He released her arms and brought his hands up to her face, caressing her cheeks while he kissed her, liking the swell of her breasts against his chest.
Finally, knowing this was neither the time nor the place, they separated. Their bodies were heavy with want and reluctant to part.
Prophet cleared his throat. “Well,” he said, grinning self-consciously. “You ... kiss right well ... Miss Diamond.”
She smiled and looked down. “You, too ... Mr. Prophet.”
“I reckon we’d better go.”
“I reckon.”
He reached for her, kissed her once more with the hunger of a man who hadn’t kissed a woman in a long time. Then he released her again, and, amazed and befuddled by his feelings, turned to the horses.
“Well, I reckon ... ” he sighed. “Miner’s Gulch ... ”