Chapter 3
“Let’s discuss my arm and why I called you both here in my office,” Ford said.
He looked around the street then called to a one-armed man in a shabby suit coat and battered derby standing on the Periwinkle’s veranda. “Danny, get Drucker over here, will you? Have him take Lowry over to his undertaking parlor and fit him for a wooden overcoat.”
“What am I gettin’ out of it?” Danny asked.
“Maybe a day less in jail when you go on your next bender,” Ford said. “As long as you don’t stab or shoot anybody or break any furniture!” Turning to Prophet, the young marshal jerked his chin toward his open office door. “Shall we?”
“How long you been here?” Prophet asked Louisa as they followed Ford into his office.
“I got here three days ago,” Louisa said, striding toward the chair she’d been sitting in before. “I was just passing through, but Jonas asked me to stay and wait for you for a special job he has for us.”
Prophet found himself instinctively disliking the admiring smile Louisa had cast Ford as she’d spoken. He didn’t know why he did. He and Louisa were partners, and sometimes to while away a few hours at night out on the trail and to bleed off some sap, they slept together. They had no more of a future together than did a mongrel dog and a blooded she-cat—a wild, blooded she-cat at that.
For years now Lou had hoped the Vengeance Queen would eventually leave the man-hunting trail, find a good husband, and settle down. Such a husband would be Jonas Ford—a good man from a good family. A man who, with his inherited political connections, would probably run for office soon.
Jonas Ford was the sort of polished, affable, and conscientious fellow who would make a good politician, if there were such a thing. He might even make a good territorial governor in the years ahead. Prophet could see Louisa shedding her trail duds and pistols and Winchester carbine for a frilly ball gown and beautifully as well as charmingly decorating the man’s arm at some Christmas dance.
They’d fill a house with some fine-looking offspring, such a handsome pair would . . .
So why did Prophet feel a tad on the bitter side? Why did he feel as though a rusty dagger were poking his guts?
As Louisa slacked into her chair, Ford walked around behind his desk and sank into his leather swivel chair.
“Pull up that chair there, Lou,” Ford said, gesturing at the old, creaky-looking ladder-back sitting up against the wall right of the door, a couple dusters hanging from a wall hook hanging over it. It looked about as substantial as a house of cards.
Lou doubted it would hold him.
“I’ve been sitting since Lubbock,” Prophet said, leaning against a square-hewn ceiling support post. “I’ll stand.”
He watched Louisa lift the whiskey glass to her lips and take a sip. He thought he detected a slight wince as the tangleleg went down, but she did her best to make it look like she was sipping the sweetest nectar. She glanced at Ford, and they shared a vaguely conspiratorial smile.
Prophet inwardly rolled his eyes.
Christ, will you two stop acting like twelve-year-olds on a school playground? If not, I’m gonna have to rustle up a slop bucket to puke in . . .
“If you won’t sit down, at least have some whiskey,” Ford said, pulling out a desk drawer from which he produced a labeled bottle of bourbon.
“It’s a sin to turn down whiskey,” Prophet said.
Ford chuckled as he splashed bourbon into a water glass that he’d also hauled out of the drawer. Prophet held up the glass, sniffed. He threw it back, taking down the entire quarter glass—roughly two shots of liquor—in two swallows.
Smacking his lips, he set the glass back down on the desk. “Hit me again, will you, Jonas? That stuff ’s too expensive for what I use it for, but it cuts through the trail dust just fine.”
He glanced at Louisa, who returned the favor and rolled her eyes with her own particular brand of haughty disapproval.
When the young marshal had refilled Prophet’s glass, the bounty hunter picked it up and leaned against the ceiling support post once more, absently swirling the whiskey in his big right hand. “All right— let’s get down to brass tacks, Jonas. Why’d you send for us? Or send for me, anyways, as my comely partner was already here.”
Ford sipped his own whiskey and sat back in his chair. “I have a warrant for a man’s arrest here in my desk. Just last week, the day before Miss Bonaventure rode into town, in fact, I and my only two deputies tried to serve it. Both of my deputies were killed. They were good men,” the young marshal added with bitterness. “I was winged, as you can see. This arm will be out of commission for a good two months. The bullet shattered my humerus, traveled over my shoulder, and lodged in my back.
“Anyway, I’ve requested help from the sheriff, but he’s down with a leg wound of his own. He has three deputies, but two of them are also out of commission for various reasons, and for that reason, he can’t spare the third. I’ve inquired with the U.S. marshals and they’ve assured me they’ll send two or three men just as soon as two or three men become available. Same with the Texas Rangers. I’ve tried to form a posse out of the citizenry right here in Carson’s Wash, to help me try to serve the warrant again, but no man in this town wants to ride against Charlie Butters.”
“Butters,” Prophet said as though the name were a curse.
“Ring a bell, Lou?” Louisa asked.
“Rings a couple,” Prophet mused. “I rode him down last year up in Oklahoma. Butters is a bank robber and regulator with a half-dozen federal warrants on his head. He and another son of a bronzed bitch robbed a bank up in Alva. When his bandanna slipped down his face, revealing his ugly features, Butters shot everyone in the bank—all the bank personnel as well as all six customers, including a six-year-old boy and an eighty-year-old retired schoolmarm—to make sure no one could identify him.”
“But one did,” Louisa said, taking another dainty sip of her whiskey. “His partner. Roy Todd was wounded by a deputy town marshal while leaving the bank. Only Butters himself got away . . . until Lou rode him down.” The Vengeance Queen arched a brow at her partner. “How did you ever manage to catch him without my help, Lou?”
She and Prophet had had another one of their verbal dustups the week previous to the holdup, when they’d been on the hunt for another pair of badmen, and had forked trails. Two days later, Prophet had ridden into Alva, Oklahoma, the day after Butters’s visit to the Merchants Territorial Bank & Trust, and had gone after him.
To Louisa, Prophet quipped, “Amazing what a fella can do when no henpecking females are around to chew his ears down to fine nubs an’ he can concentrate on his task.” He turned to Ford. “What the hell is Butters doing out of the federal lockup, Jonas? The jury was out only twenty minutes and they came back with not just a guilty verdict, but a guilty as hell verdict! I thought they’d hanged the rat by now!”
Ford smiled without humor. “An appeals judge turned him loose. After the trial it was learned that the judge presiding over the first trial was a relative of someone Butters had been accused of murdering. The second judge decided not to retry Butters, believing that after the debacle of the first trial, there was no way Butters could get a fair second trial.”
“A man like that don’t deserve a fair trial!”
“I tend to agree with you there, Lou,” Ford said. “At least when it comes to killers like Butters. But the law says different.”
“So, now you’re out two good deputies and an arm.”
“There you have it.”
“What got you on Butters’s stinky trail in the first place, Jonas?” Prophet asked.
“The widow of a local rancher believes . . .” Ford let his words trail to silence as footsteps rose in the street, growing louder. More than one person was approaching the marshal’s office.
Ford peered past Prophet to the window flanking the bounty hunter and said, “Speak of the devil,” as he rose from his chair.
“What is it?” Prophet said, instinctively closing his hand over the butt of his Colt as he stepped to the window. More than one person was approaching in a hurry.
As Prophet peered out the window, seeing several rough-hewn men in trail garb climbing the veranda steps, there was a single, loud knock on the door. Ford was just moving out from behind his desk when the door latch clicked and the door was pushed open.
A woman in a purple, pleated gown edged with white lace strode resolutely through the door, collapsing the parasol she held in her right hand. “Hello, Jonas,” she said, taking three of those resolute steps straight up to Ford’s desk and swinging toward him as though she were about to challenge him to a fistfight. She swung the thick waves of her dark brown hair back from her olive cheeks and continued with, “I thought I’d stop by to see what progress you’re making, if any, on . . .”
She stopped talking as her glance slid toward Prophet standing by the window flanking her. She turned away from him, turned quickly back. Was it Prophet’s goatish imagination, or did a small fire flicker briefly far back in her copper eyes?
A flush rose into her cheeks. For a second Lou thought she must have recognized him from somewhere, or thought she had, but then she gestured to him quickly with her open hand and said to Ford, “Who’s this?”
Prophet wasn’t given to cursory niceties, but this woman rocked him almost literally back on his heels. He doffed his hat and held it in both hands before him and said after clearing a sudden small knot in his throat, “Lou Prophet . . . Miss . . . ?”
His heart thudded as his eyes took her in quickly, not wanting to openly ogle the young woman but having a hard time not doing just that. She must have been all of twenty-one, possibly twenty-two, with a bosom half-exposed by the deep dip of her gown’s corset. She wore a black silk choker around her long, fine neck, and it was trimmed with a square diamond set in gold.
While her breasts were full, they were not overly large. Her waist was narrow, her hips gently rounded. While she was dressed like a West Texas queen, and was probably the wife or daughter of a powerful man—a rich man, judging by the fineness of her attire—something told Prophet she felt just as at home in the rough trail gear Louisa was wearing, firmly in a Texas saddle.
Her face was delicately sculpted, almost doll-like, but her eyes, nose, and chin were as resolute as her walk. Her jaws were set for hard commands, her gaze for cajoling.
“The bounty hunter,” she said, fighting back the flush that had risen into her cheeks and was the only sign of unrestraint. She looked him up, then down, then up again, her gaze brushing across the Colt he had his gloved right hand on.
She glanced at Louisa. “Miss Bonaventure’s partner. I see you’re finally here.”
“You see right, Miss . . . ?” Prophet tried again.
Since she didn’t seem in any hurry to introduce herself, Ford did it for her. “This is Mrs. Dahlstrom, Lou. As I was about to explain, Mrs. Dahlstrom’s—”
“Oh, call me Phoebe, Jonas,” the young woman said. “We’ve known each other all our lives, for heaven sakes!”
Ford smiled stiffly, cleared his throat tolerantly. “As I was about to explain, Phoebe Dahlstrom’s husband was killed recently.”
“Murdered,” Phoebe corrected for Prophet’s benefit. “By George Hill.”
“Allegedly,” Ford corrected the young woman for her own benefit.
“You’re reading for the law, now, Jonas?” she snorted. Turning to Prophet, she said, “It is my firm belief that George Hill, a prominent businessman here in Carson’s Wash, hired Charlie Butters to murder my husband.”
“Just to play devil’s advocate,” Prophet said, “why would Mr. Hill do such a dirty low-down thing, and why do you think it was Charlie Butters who did it for him?”
“I seen him. I was there. I know what Butters looks like.”
This from one of the five men who’d either followed Mrs. Dahlstrom into the marshal’s office or were hanging back, as two were, arms crossed as they held up both sides of the doorframe. They were all dressed like ranch hands in wool shirts, billowy neckerchiefs, battered Stetsons, and brush-scarred chaps. To a man they wore at least two pistols.
The man who’d spoken was roughly six feet, with wide shoulders and a modest gut. He had long, sandy red hair and matching mustache and spade beard. His blue eyes were small and flat beneath thick, sun-bleached brows.
“This is my foreman, Melvin Handy,” said Phoebe Dahlstrom. “He and Lars Gunderson were leading my father out to where a mountain lion had killed two steers. They’d stopped to drink from a spring when a man fired a rifle from a stand of mesquites.”
“It was Butters,” insisted Handy. “I know what Butters looks like. I seen him in Dodge City back a few years ago, and it was him, all right. Little pinched-up face, short, greasy yellow hair. Got a bull-horn tattoo on his throat, the name Audrina written inside it, and a silly braid hangin’ down his chin.”
“Charming,” Louisa said, coolly ironic as always. “I’ve always wanted to have my name inside a bull-horn tattoo on a man’s neck.”
Ford chuckled as he and Louisa shared an amused glance.
Phoebe Dahlstrom was staring up at Prophet. She had to tilt her head back to do so. She held her lids ever so slightly closed, giving her an insouciant, vaguely sneering look, as though she were looking up at some barbaric creature of the wild but was doing her level best at lowering herself to make conversation with it. “There you have it, Mr. Prophet. Butters is why you are here”—she slid an accusatory glance toward the marshal—“since Jonas got himself shot by Butters. And two of his deputies killed.”
“Now, Phoebe!” Ford said.
Not letting him continue, and returning her haughty gaze to Prophet, she hurried forward with: “I understand you captured that killer once before. It is my hope that, with Miss Bonaventure’s help, you can do so again. I want Butters and George Hill brought to justice for murdering my husband.”
“Why do I feel like a dog just sicced on a calf-killin’ coyote?” Prophet said, smiling ironically, offended by her tone and demeanor and mesmerized by her eyes and a couple of other attributes he was in prime position, tall as he was, to have a full, downward-slanting view of.
She gave an ironic smile of her own, revealing even white teeth behind sensuous lips. “If you bring Butters to justice, Mr. Prophet, I am in a position to reward you most generously.”
Louisa snorted.
Mrs. Dahlstrom looked at her sharply, with exasperation. “I meant a monetary reward!”
Louisa gave her an arched brow.
Mrs. Dahlstrom’s entire face turned the red of an expensive French wine. Flustered, she said, “A monetary reward for both of you. Five hundred dollars.”
“I accept,” Prophet said. “After all, I do this for a living.” He glanced at Ford. “Although I’d do it as a favor to you, Jonas.”
“As would I,” Louisa said. “But I hunt killers for a living, as well, and I, too, accept your offer, Mrs. Dahlstrom.”
The rancher’s young widow gave her chin a cordial dip.
“Now, I’d like to repeat a question I asked before,” Prophet said after throwing back the last of his whiskey and setting the glass on Ford’s desk. “Why do you think George Hill wanted your husband killed, Mrs. Dahlstrom?”
Again, the conversation was interrupted by commotion from the street. The crunch of footsteps rose, and a man’s deep voice yelled, “Ford? Marshal Ford? If you’re holding a meeting concerning the murder of Max Dahlstrom . . . and his poor, grieving widow is present . . . how dare you not make sure I’m in attendance, as well?”
Prophet turned toward the open doorway, as did everyone else in the marshal’s office. Between the two Dahlstrom men standing on the veranda, their backs now facing Prophet, Lou could see a beefy gent in an ice-cream suit, checked vest, and brown top hat moving toward them. He walked down the center of the dusty street inside an evenly spaced procession of four other gents—burly fellows armed with shotguns and what appeared to be hide-covered bung starters.
All four of the burly gents in the entourage were Prophet’s size or larger. To a man, they looked like bare-knuckle fighters—the kind of men Prophet had seen on the waterfronts of coastal cities or rollicking river towns like Kansas City.
Prophet turned to Jonas Ford, who was making his way to the door, his expression that of a man who’d just eaten an entire lemon.
“George Hill, I presume?” Prophet said.
“Oh, nuts,” was Ford’s only reply.