Chapter 8
Prophet set the smoking shotgun on the table. As the curly-haired gent flung the howling Moon Face away from him with a shrill curse and reached for his pistols, Prophet leveled his Peacemaker on him and ratcheted back the hammer.
Lou gave a challenging half grin.
The curly-haired gent dropped his half-drawn Remington back into its holster and slowly raised his hands. “Now,” he said, taking a step backward. “ Now . . . just . . .”
“Take them pistols out and drop ’em on the floor. Every one you got, includin’ any aces in the hole.”
Out the window behind the curly-haired gent, Prophet could see Seymour and Plumb and both hostlers running toward the cabin. The jehu and the shotgun messenger had their pistols drawn. Keeping his tense gaze on Prophet, the curly-haired gent slowly slipped both his visible pistols from their holsters and tossed them to the floor.
“Aces, too,” Prophet said, pitching his voice threateningly.
The curly-haired gent reached into his duster and withdrew another revolver from a shoulder holster. When he’d tossed it onto the floor, he lifted his right foot and pulled a small-caliber, pearl-gripped over-and-under pocket popper from the well of his boot. He dropped that down with the others.
“Anything else?” Prophet asked, again with threat.
He had to speak loudly enough to be heard against Moon Face’s wails. The moonfaced brigand was flopping around on the floor near the curly-haired gent’s feet, blood from his ruined right foot pooling on the floor. He was the only one making any noise. The others in the cabin were frozen in place, staring in shock at the wounded outlaw.
Beermeister sat on the floor near his chair, also staring in shock at Moon Face’s bloody foot. The shredded leather of the man’s boot made it apparent that he was now missing most of that foot’s toes.
The curly-haired gent reached up over his head and pulled an Arkansas toothpick from a sheath strapped to the back of his neck. He tossed that down with his guns.
“Who you ridin’ for?” Prophet asked him.
Before the curly-haired gent could respond, Seymour ran into the cabin. Plumb ran in behind him, stepping over the dead man lying outside the front door.
“What the hell... ?” Seymour said, scowling above his long, tangled beard. Stepping sideways around the curly-haired gent, he looked at the howling Moon Face then pointed his cocked .44 at the curly-haired gent and said, “Why, Jimmy Wells . . .”
“Who’s Jimmy Wells?” Prophet asked.
“No-account peckerwood,” Seymour said, flaring his nostrils. “Hind-tit calf who grew up in the badlands, took to the long coulees when he was still knee-high to a short-legged lizard.”
“Drop dead, you old buzzard!”
Seymour raised his pistol at Wells’s head and narrowed one eye.
Wells lurched back in terror, raising his hands higher and yelling, “I ain’t armed, you old fool!”
“Old fool, am I?” Seymour railed, and began tightening his right index finger around his Schofield’s trigger.
“Hold on, hold on,” Prophet said. “Don’t kill him just yet, Mort. I wanna know who he’s ridin’ with.”
“He’s ridin’ with the bunch who killed my brother!”
All eyes turned to Lydia standing by her mother, steam wafting up from the range behind them. She glared at Wells, brown eyes glistening with anger. “I saw you skulking around here that day. Stalking the trail, just like you always are, lookin’ for folks to rob . . . or worse!”
She screamed that last. Her mother grabbed her and pulled her against her, and Lydia sobbed, “Oh, Mother, he killed James!”
Mrs. Van Camp held her daughter’s head taut to her chest and glared at Jimmy Wells, who laughed and said, “I don’t know what she’s talkin’ about. Why, she’s as cork-headed as her fool brother!”
Lydia jerked around and bolted toward Wells, her fists clenched, but Mrs. Van Camp grabbed her and pulled her against her once more.
Wells laughed. “She’s crazy. Look at her. Crazy as a rabid skunk!”
Prophet had risen from his chair. Now he walked up to Wells. As Wells turned toward him, laughter still in the outlaw’s eyes, Prophet slammed the barrel of his Colt against the man’s left temple. Wells yelped and fell, howling.
“Get him outside,” Prophet told Seymour.
While the jehu and J. W. Plumb half carried and half dragged the raging, cursing Wells out the door, Prophet slung his barn blaster over his shoulder and dragged the wailing Moon Face outside by his shirt collar. The hostlers were standing around the dead man, looking baffled and worried. Seymour told them to get back to work on the coach’s wheel, and when both men had jogged back to the barn, where the stage was now parked, Prophet, Seymour, and J. W. Plumb looked around warily.
“The rest of their gang is likely skulkin’ around here somewhere,” Seymour said.
Wells was on his hands and knees, one hand clamped to his bloody left temple. He laughed jeeringly as he looked up and slid his glance from Prophet to the jehu and the messenger. “You fellas is sooo dead for what you just done to me an’ Moon Face. I mean, you’re so dead the coyotes that’s gonna feed on you might as well break out the forks and knives right now!”
Prophet looked around. The sun-splashed relay station yard was eerily quiet. There was no movement in the chalky buttes surrounding the place, nor in the scattered, stunted cottonwoods standing hunched at their bases, the breeze making the leaves flash silver and gold.
Lou turned to Mort Seymour. “What’re you carryin’?”
“Not a damn thing except you, Mr. Beermeister, and the ladies.”
“No strongbox?”
“Nope,” said Plumb, shaking his head.
Prophet turned to Wells. “That’s what you were wondering, weren’t you? That’s why you and your two friends came skulking around. You were scouting the coach and passengers to see if there was anything worth hitting the stage for, farther on down the line, most likely.”
“A pox on you!!” Wells raged, climbing awkwardly to his feet. He’d lost his hat inside the cabin, and his curly chestnut hair hung in his eyes. Blood glistened on his torn left temple. “You had no cause to pistol-whip me like that. No cause at all.” He pointed at Prophet. “You’re gonna pay for that, big fella!”
Prophet raised his Colt once more as he lunged at Wells.
Wells gave a yelp as he stumbled backward. He tripped over the groaning Moon Face and hit the dirt with another shrill curse.
Prophet turned to Seymour. “That’s what they were doing. They were scouting us. The rest of the gang is likely on the lurk in them buttes yonder. They’re probably glassing us right now.”
“No doubt,” Seymour said.
“Really? You think so?” Plumb stomped around, lifting both hands and waving his middle fingers at the buttes. “There—take that, you son of bitches!” He laughed caustically. “There you go—them birdies is for you!”
Prophet looked at the shotgun messenger skeptically.
Seymour looked down at Wells. “What’re we gonna do with him?”
“We’ll take him,” Prophet said. “Maybe the gang won’t hit us if we got one of their own aboard. Of course, they probably don’t care if he lives or dies any more than we do, but it’s worth a shot. No point in lettin’ him go. We’ll use him for leverage and then you can turn him over to the law when you get to Deadwood.”
Plumb jerked his chin at Moon Face. “What about him?”
Prophet looked at Moon Face just as the big man was lifting his right fist. The barrel of a little gun flashed between his fingers.
“He’s got an ace!” Plumb yelled, leaping a foot in the air.
Prophet still had his Colt in his right hand. He whipped it up toward Moon Face and drilled a neat, round, .45 caliber hole in the man’s broad forehead. Moon Face’s head jerked back. His eyes rolled up in their sockets, showing only the whites. His hideout popper dropped in the dirt.
Moon Face sagged slowly backward till he lay flat on his back, quivering crazily.
“Jesus Christ!” Wells said, staring incredulously at his partner.
Prophet lowered his smoking Colt. “That takes care of that.” He looked at Wells. “Let’s find some rope and tie this son of a bitch up.”
“There’s some in the barn,” Plumb said. “I’ll fetch it.”
He walked away.
Something moved in the shack’s open doorway.
Prophet turned to see Mary staring out, nibbling speculatively on her right index finger.
“Mary, come away from there this instant!” Aunt Grace yelled from behind her.
Mary’s flat, expressionless gaze met Prophet’s. After a few seconds, she removed her finger from her mouth, turned slowly, and retreated back into the shack’s murky shadows.
Seymour looked down at the two dead men. “What’re we gonna do with the fresh beef here?”
Prophet was staring cautiously off toward the buttes rising in the west. Something told him they were being glassed from that direction. “Let’s send ’em back to where they came from.”
“How we gonna do that, Lou? As you can see, they’re in no condition to walk very far.”
“They must have horses.” Prophet looked at Wells sitting on his butt in the dirt, between the bounty hunter and the old jehu. “Where are they?”
Wells sneered up at him, squinting against the sunlight. “Go to blazes, you rebel devil!”
Prophet stepped forward and smacked his pistol against the brigand’s left temple again, making the cut a little deeper and bloodier. The outlaw howled.
“Now, where were they again?” Prophet asked.
Pressing the heels of both hands to his bloody head, Wells jerked his chin to the south, toward where three dusty cottonwoods separated a narrow dry wash from the base of a broad-based haystack butte. “Over there! Over there, for chrissakes! Oh, Jesus hell, you’re gonna die slow and hard!”
“That’s where I thought you said,” Prophet said. “I reckon my hearin’ ain’t as good as it used to be.” To Seymour, he said, “Stay with him, Mort.”
Prophet went into the shack to retrieve his shotgun. The passengers sat in shock at their tables. They had eaten only half their food but they no longer seemed hungry. Mrs. Van Camp and Lydia had retreated to a back room, behind a curtained doorway. Prophet could hear Lydia sobbing back there.
He walked back outside, breaking open his gut-shredder and replacing the spent twelve-gauge wads with fresh. Plumb had returned from the barn and was down on both knees, tying Wells’s hands behind his back while Seymour aimed his old Schofield at the brigand’s head. Wells was cursing like an Irish gandy dancer on Monday morning.
Prophet snapped his shotgun closed and said, “Tie him good and tight. His ankles, too, but leave enough slack between his feet so he can walk.”
Plumb glared up at Prophet. “You wanna do it?”
Prophet didn’t take offense at that. Everybody’s nerves were frayed, his included. Taking one more glance toward the western buttes, which were hard to look at with the harsh sunlight reflecting off them, he started walking south, resting the Richards atop his right shoulder. He shuttled his glance carefully around him, wary of an ambush.
He found all three horses just where Wells had indicated, in the wash behind the screen of cottonwoods and a few pale boulders. He looked carefully around the wash and then into a notch in the haystack butte, making sure none of the rest of the gang was sneaking up on him. Then he untied the horses’ reins from the spidery branches of the cottonwoods and led them back to the cabin.
Looking toward the barn, he was glad to see that the hostlers were now back-and-bellying the wheel onto the coach’s axle. They’d be on their way soon. Wells lay belly down in the dirt beside Moon Face. Plumb had craftily hog-tied him.
Prophet chuckled and, dropping the horses’ reins, said to their prisoner, “You sure walked into one.”
Wells gave his customary response.
Prophet, Seymour, and Plumb hefted the two dead men over two of the horses and tied them in place. Prophet led both horses to the west side of the yard and fired his pistol over their heads. They galloped straight west, noses in the air, likely sniffing the horses of the other riders hidden away in the buttes beyond.
The crack of Prophet’s Peacemaker echoed around the station yard and off the surrounding bluffs. The other curly wolves were out there somewhere. They’d likely heard the shot. Prophet hoped they’d taken the pistol shot as a warning. If they came calling, they’d get what their friends got.
It was probably too much to hope for. Men of their apparent stripe weren’t deterred by much, and they’d likely want to avenge Moon Face and the other gent whom Prophet had nearly cut in half with his gut-shredder. Maybe Prophet’s having taken Jimmy Wells hostage would be another deterrent.
Maybe not.
Probably not.
The bounty hunter stared up at the rise of buttes before him. The horses ran out away from him, through a thin, ragged stand of trees and brush. They disappeared for a moment and then reappeared a moment later, lunging up a crooked crease angling between the formations, heading west.
He could see no sign of men up there. But the others were watching him. He could sense it. His senses had been honed to a razor’s edge over the years.
He walked back to the cabin. The new six-horse hitch had been buckled into place in the Concord’s harness, and the coach was drawn up in front of the shack. Seymour called the passengers out, and Aunt Grace, Mary, and Beermeister boarded. They all looked weary and edgy. Prophet shoved Wells into the coach and thrust him onto the rear seat where Prophet had been riding.
Prophet sat down beside him, between Wells and Beermeister. Wells faced Mary, and already Prophet saw that the brigand was ogling the girl.
“Knock it off,” Prophet told him.
Seymour cracked his blacksnake over the team, and the coach lunged forward, throwing Prophet, Wells, and Beermeister back in their seat and the women slightly forward.
“Knock what off?” Wells said. He smiled at Mary, lasciviously ran his tongue across the underside of his upper lip.
“Oh!” cried Aunt Grace. “You’re an animal!”
Mary merely dipped her chin and curled her upper lip at the devil.
Prophet smashed his .44 against Wells’s ear.
The brigand yelped and cursed and then fell silent, cowering against the outside wall when he saw Prophet’s look of arch-browed, imminent threat.
Prophet glanced at Mary. She’d been looking at him, but now she jerked her eyes away from his and let fade the half smile that had touched her lips.
As the stage rocked and pitched, Prophet settled his coach gun against the padded wall behind him and rested his Winchester across his thighs. He looked out the window, at the passing terrain, and waited for the trouble that he could feel brewing in the rolling hills around him.
Nasty luck, running into Wells’s brigands.
Prophet just wanted to get to Jubilee and find his old pal Lola . . .