Chapter 4
Prophet looked skeptically at the envelope flopping around in the liveryman’s arthritic brown hand. He didn’t normally get mail. “What is it?”
“What does it look like, ya damn fool—it’s a letter!”
“I can see it’s a—” Prophet cut himself off, casting an anxious gaze in the direction that Walsh and the other policemen had gone, looking for him. “Well—fork it over and I’ll look at it later!”
He snatched the envelope from Stover’s hand, stuffed it into a pocket of his vest, and nudged Mean with his spurs. “See you when I see you again, Roy!”
“Good luck, Lou. Try keepin’ your pecker in your pants for a change!” The man’s voice faded as he added, “You’ll live a lot longer that way!”
Stover laughed as Prophet galloped straight south along a dirt street. It wasn’t long before the stables and ancient, sagging shanties of Denver’s outskirts gave way to rolling, brush-covered prairie. On his right Prophet could see a locomotive chugging on a route parallel to his own, the giant, diamond-shaped black stack issuing a large dark banner of wood smoke trailing off over the tender car and passengers and freight cars rumbling along behind.
Prophet wished he were on that train, heading south toward New Mexico. Then, again, when Walsh realized he’d been led astray, he might figure that Prophet had indeed hopped that very Denver & Rio Grande flier. He might send telegrams southward toward Pueblo and Trinidad, putting the authorities down there on his trail.
The bounty hunter shook his head as Mean lunged through the prairie brush. Another fine fix Prophet was in. This one was even finer than most. He’d been accused of rape by a governor’s daughter. A governor’s daughter! Denver had always been a destination for him when he had no other—a general hub, a home of sorts where he rested up and frolicked between bounty hunting jobs. Now there was no telling when, if ever, he could return.
And in the meantime, his ugly mug would no doubt be plastered across the West on wanted circulars!
As Denver became a smaller and smaller smudge on the prairie behind him, he became more and more aware of the direness of his situation. He was a hunted man, little different from the men he’d made a career of hunting. Also, he had a thousand dollars in his wallet—half of which belonged to Louisa—but would he ever see the Vengeance Queen again? He’d likely have to hole up in the Indian Nations with the other owlhoots on the dodge from the law, or change his name and take up some other occupation. His infamous mug would likely be recognized on the trails he usually haunted.
When he figured he was a good five or six miles south of Denver, Prophet swung north, following what appeared to be an ancient Indian hunting trail meandering across the near-featureless prairie. He rode slumped in the saddle, weary and sad as well as frustrated and angry.
For a brief time he considered riding back to Denver and trying to clear his name with the local police, even if it meant going to trial, but then he realized what would likely happen if he pitted his word against that of the governor’s daughter . . .
Ten or twenty years of hard labor in the Colorado State Pen.
For a crime he hadn’t committed.
As Stephane had said, if anyone had been raped last night, it was him!
But then he realized that self-pity and general moroseness were not going to get him out of his current tight spot. Besides, he had no one else to blame but himself. How long did he think he could keep living the lifestyle he’d been living, hunting badmen for enough money to carouse carelessly to his heart’s delight, before that life would turn into a coiled diamondback and sink its teeth into his backside?
Well, that time had come. The snake had bit him hard. Dark poison surged in his veins. Now he had to confront the cards his own careless betting had dealt him and figure out a new way of life as a wanted man.
Self-pity wasn’t going to help, but he rode for the rest of the day, slumped in the saddle, licking his proverbial wounds. He continued to follow the old Indian trail on its leisurely course generally to the northeast. Having followed such trails many times before, he knew they usually led to rivers. This one would lead to both forks of the Platte. Probably also to the remains of some ancient tipi town. Round indentations in the sod would be all that remained of the hide tents that had been erected to form a hunting camp from which the braves would ride out each day, stalking the buffalo herds that had once blackened this vast, blond, cerulean-capped prairie bordered by the majestic, ermine-tipped Rockies in the west.
Lou Prophet liked it out here. He liked the space and the silence punctuated by the rasping breeze and piping meadowlarks. Maybe he’d put too much stock in stomping with his tail up in towns like Denver, bedding down with questionable women . . . and governors’ daughters. Maybe he was better off out here.
What he didn’t like, however, were the ghosts of the dead that haunted this remote prairie. He was reminded of them when, late in the shadowy afternoon, crossing a dry, shallow gully, he came across several human bones embedded in the sand scalloped by many spring floods.
He recognized one such bone as a human arm to which a few blue wool remnants of a cavalry uniform still clung. A little beyond the gully he found an Indian spear with a moldering gray shaft. A few bits of feather remained attached to the bottom of the shaft, near the obsidian spear point.
Some likely nameless, long-forgotten skirmish had been fought out here many years ago, probably even before the War of Northern Aggression. Due to circumstances that would forever be lost to time, at least one dead from each side had never been recovered. There were many more bones strewn around this slice of the Colorado prairie. Prophet had seen his share. The Utes, Prophet knew, believed that when their dead had not been given a proper send-off to the Land Beyond, the spirits of those dead warriors inhabited living coyotes and gave voice to their grief in the yips and yammers that haunted the western frontier on any given night.
The thought caused gooseflesh to ripple across Prophet’s shoulders, when, later that night, sitting around a crackling fire along the banks of another shallow wash, he heard the first coyote give its ululating cry. The sun just then teetered over the Rockies, and heavy black shadows spilling out away from those mountains engulfed the plains like stygian floodwaters released by some giant, broken dam.
The green sky darkened. A star winked to life. Then another.
Another coyote added its yammer to that of the first.
Prophet had enough ancient Appalachian superstition in his Confederate bones to hear the cries of the dead in those mournful wails. He fumbled his whiskey flask out of a saddlebag pouch, twisted off the cap, and added a goodly portion of the firewater to his coffee. He capped the flask, set it at his feet, drew the collar of his mackinaw, which he’d donned against the growing night chill, up tighter around his jaws.
Still, he shivered.
“Damn scaredy-cat,” he told himself, and gave a dry snicker.
He sipped the coffee. A breeze lifted, making rasping sounds in the brush, causing the limbs of the gnarled, old cottonwood flanking his camp to squawk like rusty door hinges. A crinkling sound caused him, in his anxious state, to give another jerk, causing some of the coffee to dribble over the rim of his cup. He turned his head to find the cause of the noise and saw the pale envelope lying over a small grass clump near his right boot.
The letter Stover had given him must have fallen out of his vest pocket when he’d pulled his coat on. The breeze tugged at it, lifted it over the grass clump, slid it along the ground so that it made a sound like a small rattler. Prophet reached down and with a grunt plucked the envelope off the ground. He held it to the fire’s flickering orange glow, studied the loopy, feminine writing on its face.
It was addressed to Mr. Lou Prophet, c/o General Post, Denver, Colorado.
The return address was Mrs. Margaret Knudsen, Jubilee, Dakota Terr.
“Margaret Knudsen?” Prophet didn’t know any Margaret Knudsen, much less anyone else in Jubilee, Dakota Territory.
Apparently, however, someone up there in that land of the brutal winters and mosquito-feasting summers knew him . . .
Prophet slid his bowie knife from its sheath and used its razor edge to slice open the envelope. Returning the knife to the scabbard, he shook out the folded piece of lined notepaper and awkwardly peeled open the folds with his thick fingers.
The date written at the top of the single sheet told Prophet that the missive had been written nearly a month ago. He adjusted the sheet to the dancing flames and crouched low over the writing, so he could get a better look at the purple-inked cursive that filled a little over half of the sheet.
He fidgeted atop the log he was sitting on, a nettling chagrin warming his ears as it did at such times he was presented with the need to dredge up his limited reading skills. It wasn’t that Prophet hadn’t had the opportunity to go to school now and then back in the north Georgia mountains, it was just that nearly every time he had, he’d chosen to go fishing instead.
Holding the breeze-nibbled paper up before him with his left hand, he used his right index finger to point out the words as he sounded out each one in turn.
Hello my Dear Friend,
Do you remember me? I am the former Margaret Jane Olson whom you once knew by my show name—Lola Diamond. Lou, I am in terrible need of your help. The problem is too long and complicated for written words. This letter may not even reach you. Just know that if you get this, I am in dire need of the assistance only you can provide, so won’t you please visit me here in Jubilee, in the Dakota Territory? If you remember me at all you probably remember me well enough to know that I would not ask such an enormous favor unless I was in desperate need.
I hope this letter somehow finds its way to you posthaste, and finds you alive and well and in better spirits than I—
Your friend,
Lola
Prophet recited her name again, “Lola,” as he lowered the paper. A smile of fond remembrance touched his lips. “Of course I remember you, girl.”
Longer ago than he wanted to remember, he’d met the showgirl Lola Diamond in Montana Territory. She’d witnessed a murder, and an old lawman friend of Prophet’s, Owen McCreedy, had deputized Prophet. He’d also armed him with a subpoena that he was to use to fetch Lola from where her traveling acting troupe, Big Dan Walthrop’s Traveling Dolls and Roadhouse Show, had been playing in the little mining town of Henry’s Crossing. McCreedy had wanted Prophet to escort the showgirl back to Johnson City, where she’d witnessed a murder, so that she could testify against the accused—the notorious brigand Billy Brown.
It had been supposed to be a routine favor that Prophet was doing for a friend for very little money, but, because Lola had not wanted to testify and incur the wrath of the infamous Brown, Prophet and Lola had not started off on the right foot. In fact, on their initial meeting in the hotel where she and her troupe had been holed up, she’d tried to shoot him with a 41 caliber pocket pistol. When that hadn’t worked, she’d buried her right foot so deep in Prophet’s crotch that he could have sworn he’d felt her toes tickle his windpipe!
The bounty hunter chuckled at that now, though it had been nothing to chuckle about at the time. His oysters had been sore for days. Finally, however, he’d gotten her away from her angry troupe, including Big Dan Walthrop himself, and on the trail headed to Johnson City . . . and things had gone from bad to worse.
Billy Brown had sent his henchmen after Prophet and Lola. They’d been under orders to do everything in their power to keep the showgirl from testifying at their boss’s trial. Brown had sent wave after wave of kill-crazy men until, for a time, alone and on the run in the middle of nowhere, it had seemed that Prophet and Lola were pitted together against the entire world.
There had been no way that a perilous journey like that wouldn’t bring two people close together. In more ways than one. Even two people who couldn’t have started out any farther apart than Prophet and Lola had. But by the end of the trip, Lou was sure that he’d tumbled for the snooty but beautiful, blond, blue-eyed actress, and he had a feeling that she’d tumbled for him, as well.
Of course, they couldn’t have remained together. They’d had no future. He’d been, as he was now, a rough, ex-Confederate frontiersman. A bounty hunter. Margaret Jane Olson, hailing from an upper-class family from Utica, New York, had not only been a rare flower to look at—she’d had the face and eyes of an angel and the body of the most ravishing, irresistible temptress ever to corrupt a red-blooded rebel bounty hunter—but she’d aspired to the greatness of the world’s largest stages.
Apparently, something had happened to prevent her from fulfilling her dream. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have ended up in the tall-and-uncut country of the Dakota Territory. She wouldn’t have become Margaret Knudsen now residing in Jubilee, about thirty miles west of Deadwood. For whatever reason she’d ventured so far off her original path, her luck in Dakota had obviously soured.
Now she needed Prophet’s help.
And in light of his current situation, on the run from a rape accusation in Denver, which would no doubt spread beyond Colorado Territory in days if it hadn’t via telegraph already, his old friend Lola had unknowingly flung him a lifeline.
Sure, he’d ride up to Dakota. He couldn’t think of a better place for him to be right now. Surely, no one would expect him to flee that far to the north. South, maybe. New Mexico or Arizona or Old Mexico, for sure. But not Dakota Territory, where even the summers could be chilly and the opportunity for licentiousness and debauchery, two of the bounty hunter’s favorite pursuits, were few and far between. Dakota was still relatively unsettled. Civilization was slow to stretch its tentacles up that close to Canada. Hell, pockets of Sioux still ran wild up thataway . . .
Making it the perfect place for Prophet to cool his heels.
He neatly folded Lola’s note but not before giving it a sniff and detecting the remembered raspberry scent of the girl, and giving another smile of fond remembrance. He returned the missive to its envelope and stowed it for safekeeping in his saddlebags.
He spent the rest of the night sipping coffee laced with cheap whiskey, nibbling jerky, and building and smoking cigarettes. He stared out across the starlit prairie to the north, remembering his bittersweet time with Lola Diamond, wondering what kind of a woman the former Margaret Jane Olson and current Margaret Knudsen had turned out to be . . . and what brand of trouble she was in now.
“I’ll be there soon,” he said after he’d kicked dirt on his fire and rolled up in his soogan, laying his weary head down on the woolen underside of his saddle. “Don’t you worry your pretty head, Miss Lola Diamond. Ole Lou will be there soon.”
He yawned and drifted asleep with remembered images of the pretty young actress dancing behind his eyelids.