Chapter 31
Lou woke with a start.
He sat up, staring into the darkness of the canyon beyond the cold ashes of his and Colter’s fire.
“What is it?” He’d awakened the redhead, who’d lifted his head from his own saddle on the other side of the fire. Colter already had his Remington in his hand; he’d already cocked the hammer.
Beyond him, Baja Jack and the little man’s men snored around their own dead fire maybe fifteen to thirty feet away. Lou could barely see them in the canyon’s penetrating darkness. He could, however, see the ridge looming on the canyon’s north side. The stacked mud houses seemed to radiate a very soft, gray-blue glow. The light was probably a reflection of the starlight, for the sky between the ridge walls was peppered with those flickering lights, like snow smeared across black velvet.
“Lou?” Colter said.
“What is it?”
“You hear somethin’?”
“Yeah.” Prophet shook his head. “I mean, no. Go back to sleep. Everything’s all right.”
“Good.” Colter depressed his Remy’s hammer and returned the pistol to its holster. “I was havin’ a nice dream about one very talented young lady.”
He lay back against his saddle, curled onto his side, and in seconds he was breathing deeply again.
Prophet stared up the ridge at those ghostly hovels fairly radiating with unearthly power. A malignant presence, like one of the demons his widowed great-granny used to mutter about and pray against, especially in her later years, when she’d ring her cabin in Dogwood Holler completely with salt, hang goat heads over her door, and lay strings of dried snake skins on her windowsills.
Prophet had heard something. But what he’d heard had been in his head. He’d known it even as he’d heard it, but it had awakened him, anyway.
It was the scream of one of those small children being carried down that stony corridor to the river snaking through the earth’s bowels—a diabolical giant that eats children and old people. He’d heard it, all right, and it had sounded real. So real that he couldn’t help wondering, a little sheepishly, if he hadn’t so much heard it as remembered it . . .
Wait. Remembered it?
“Jesus, you’re gettin’ all woolly-headed, old son.” Lou tossed his bedroll aside and rose. Colter muttered something in his half sleep, and Lou reassured him with a whispered: “Just gonna take a stroll. Go back to that sweet-smellin’ señorita, Red.”
Colter groaned as though in the affirmative, and his breathing was once more slow and regular.
Lou pulled his denims and boots on quietly, buckled his Colt and shell belt around his waist, donned his hat, and trod off down the canyon, toward the mysterious doorway through which he’d been introduced to this mysterious place. He wasn’t sure he was glad to have been introduced. The chasm pestered him something awful. He’d felt a dark force at work here even before Jack had shown him that river, far less peaceful than the one in the Bible he’d heard about, and told him about the little tykes and the old people.
Sacrificial lambs.
“Oh, stop your fool-headed thinkin’,” Lou scolded himself as he walked out through the canyon’s front door, so to speak. He climbed the rise and walked into the main canyon. A cool night breeze blew against him. He turned to face it, removed his hat, and tipped his head back, fully accepting the cool, refreshing air against his cheeks and forehead.
“There, now . . . that’s better.”
He chuckled at his superstitious nature, leaned back against a high rock, and dug his makings out of his pocket. “Much better,” he said. “I’m all through with that crazy thinkin’ now. I’m ole Granny Brindle’s wild child, I am at that, but I gotta resist them crazy thoughts, I purely do, or I’ll go as crazy as she was, and that was as crazy as a tree full of owls!”
He chuckled as he troughed a wheat paper between the index finger and forefinger of his left hand. He’d just started to sprinkle chopped tobacco onto the paper, when a hushed female voice said, “Lou!”
Prophet jerked with a violent start. He dropped the paper and the tobacco he’d sprinkled onto it and looked up, stifling a terrified yell. He looked around wildly, pushing away from the rock and sliding the Peacemaker from its holster, clicking the hammer back.
“Holster the hogleg,” the woman’s voice said as footsteps sounded to his left, accompanied by the soft ring of spur rowels. “I’m not going to kill you. At least, not now.”
“Louisa?” he said, squinting doubtfully into the darkness.
She moved out of the rocks, a slender figure topped with gold-blond hair that glowed softly in the starlight. It hung down from beneath her tan Stetson, the chin thong dangling against her chest clad in a striped wool serape.
Lou could see the pearl grips of her fancy silver Colts holstered on both her narrow but womanly rounded hips, the serape tucked behind the pistols, making them available at a moment’s notice. Her sun-faded denims were tucked into the tops of her brown riding boots.
Louisa Bonaventure stopped before him. She was a head shorter, so she tipped her head back to gaze up at him, lifting the corners of her beautiful, tender mouth with a wry smile. “Surprise, surprise.”
Lou looked her up and down. “This ain’t you.”
Louisa scowled beneath the broad brim of her Stetson. “What?”
“This. This here.” Prophet waved his hand at her, indicating her delightful figure before him. “This ain’t you.”
“What ain’t me?” she asked, mocking his poor grammar. Hers was perfect, of course. And she rarely cursed but when she did, it was usually at him.
Lou gestured again. “This ain’t you. You ain’t standin’ here. Either I’m dreaming, or . . .” He turned toward the door to the secondary canyon in which the cliff dwellings lay. “It’s this place . . . this crazy haunted place . . .”
“What crazy haunted place?”
“The place . . . in there . . .”
“Oh, for Pete’s sake!” Louisa stepped up in front of him, grabbed his shoulders, rose onto the toes of her boots, and pressed her lips to his.
When she pulled away, she dropped to her heels and smiled up at him.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” Prophet said, astonished. “It is you!”
“It’s me, all right.”
“What are you doin’ here? How’d you get here? How in the holy blazes did you know where I was? Baja Jack said no one but him . . . and now his men and me and Colter Farrow . . . know about this place.”
“I followed you.”
Lou scowled down at her in disbelief. “Followed me? How far?”
“Ever since you left Silver City.” Outside Silver City was where they’d had their falling-out over his snoring. Not just his snoring. The argument had multiplied the way arguments usually do, to include her slurs against his hygiene, his horse, and his ancestors and a few more things.
Lou continued to scowl down at her in disbelief.
Louisa shrugged. “I had a premonition about something bad happening to you down here. About you getting yourself into a situation that . . . well, a situation you didn’t have full control of.” Her right eye glistened wetly. “I had a dream that you came down here to Baja, fouled up, and got yourself killed, you big galoot!”
She gave a rare sniff of sadness.
Again, she shrugged—a single shoulder this time. “So I followed you. I stayed back because I was still angry. Besides, I knew you were still angry with me . . . and didn’t want you to see me . . . so . . . I held back.”
“You been shadowing me ever since Silver City?” Prophet couldn’t believe it. Had he gotten so old and feeble that he didn’t know when he was being trailed? What if she’d been someone out to snuff his wick . . . which she had been a time or two in the past . . .
“Don’t get your neck in a hump,” Louisa scolded him in his own colorful language. “I kept well back. An Apache wouldn’t have known I was back there.”
“I doubt that.” Prophet renewed his accusatory scowl. “Hey, what about when them rurales buried us up to our necks in . . . ?”
“I was about to take them down when your little friend and his mongrel cutthroats stepped in and saved your bacon.”
“Ah, I see.” Prophet raked a pensive thumb along his jawline then fired off another accusing glare. “Boy, you were close then, weren’t ya?”
“Well, you were a little distracted by that time. Really, Lou—drinking hopped-up mezcal and letting rurales waltz into your camp to bury you neck deep in the desert! You see why I followed you?”
“We all make mistakes, Miss Persnickety Bloomers!” Lou leaned back against the rock he’d leaned against a moment ago, when he’d thought he was alone out here. He pulled out his makings sack again and started to build another quirley.
Louisa moved up close to him again, spread her feet, and crossed her arms on her chest, confrontationally. “Where are you headed, Lou?”
“Don’t you know?”
“Ciaran Yeats?”
Again, he scowled with deep annoyance. “You’ve gotten close more than a coupla times. Close enough to overhear me and the younker gassin’ over our plans!”
“Everyone in this part of Baja knows that Alejandra de la Paz was kidnapped by Yeats. After you visited Hacienda de la Paz, I figured you were after Yeats . . . sicced on him by the don.” Louisa paused, canted her head to one side with even more accusing. “By the way, how was your evening with Señorita de la Paz? The beautiful Marisol . . .”
She tapped the toe of one cocked boot against the ground and wrinkled her nose at him.
Prophet looked at her again angrily, ready to cut loose with another tirade. But he stopped himself, poked the quirley into his mouth, and sealed it with his spit. He popped a lucifer to life on his thumbnail, touched the flame to the quirley, and said, “Wouldn’t you like to know.”
He blew smoke at her.
She waved it away. “You’re an animal.”
Lou smiled smugly as he puffed the cigarette. “That’s what she said.” He frowned. “Say . . . what were you doing while I was . . . you know . . . otherwise involved at Hacienda de la Paz?”
“Never mind that. What I want to know is how in the world do you think you’re going to be able to kill Yeats and squirrel his daughter out of that old Spanish fort? You do know how many men he has riding for him, don’t you? And how savage they all are?”
“Yeah, I know a few things, Miss Smarty. What I want to know is how do you know all this about Yeats?”
“I’ve known about Yeats for years. He kidnaps young women . . . young peon women, mostly. He takes them from their families and turns them into slaves for his and his men’s diabolical desires. When he tires of them, or they get sick or pregnant, he sends them across the Sea of Cortez to work for pimps in the slums of Mexico City where they cater to the ugly needs of men even more squalid than himself.”
“Yeah, you would know about him, wouldn’t you?” Louisa specialized in such men as Ciaran Yeats, who committed crimes against girls and families, similar to the way the Handsome Dave Duvall bunch had devastated Louisa’s own family, leaving her an orphan. Now she rode the long lonely bloody western trails, scouring the frontier of men just like Handsome Dave . . . and Ciaran Yeats.
“I reckon it’s right surprising you haven’t hunted Yeats down by now,” Prophet remarked, then took another deep drag off his quirley.
“Oh, I’ve thought about it. Unlike some, I make use of my winter vacations.” She’d spouted that out in true Vengeance Queen–uppity fashion.
“I ain’t exactly whistlin’ ‘Dixie’ down here, you know.”
“No, but you’re going after Yeats for money.”
“Yeah, well, I’m sorry not all of us are bleedin’ hearts. I do like to eat a meal now and then, and so does Mean and Ugly.”
“That horse should be fed a bullet.”
“Be that as it may, you gonna shadow me to Yeats or do you wanna ride along?” Prophet smiled ironically at the pretty blonde. “Shall I introduce you to my pards in yonder?”
“I’ll make my own friends, if you don’t mind.”
“Uppity!”
“Besides, I don’t trust Baja Jack and neither should you.”
“How do you know Jack?”
“Like I said, I make use of my winter vacations. Nasty little bandito. He grows locoweed for Yeats. Everybody knows that, and you would, too, if when you came down here you didn’t just—”
“I’ll do what I want on my own time, if you don’t mind! And get your snooty tongue off Baja Jack. He pulled me and Colter out of a bad situation.”
“Yes, didn’t he?” Louisa gave an ironic snort.
Prophet studied the coal of his cigarette, which had burned down to a nub. “What don’t you trust about Jack?”
Louisa gave a weary sigh, doffed her hat, and ran her hand back through her long, thick, gold-blond hair. “Think about it, Lou. He grows that vile weed for Yeats.”
“I hear it keeps him alive.”
“It’s turned him into a madman. Him and his army of degenerates. They’re all addicted to the stuff.”
“You can’t blame Baja Jack for turnin’ a nickel.”
Louisa stuffed her hat back onto her head, gave another tolerant sigh, and crossed her arms on her chest. “Do you really think he’s going to let you and your redheaded friend just waltz into Baluarte Santiago and drill a couple of rounds into Yeats, his best customer?”
It was Prophet’s turn to give an ironic chuff. “He doesn’t know that’s what we’re gonna do, silly child!”
“Oh, please!” Louisa threw her pretty head back and trilled out a sarcastic laugh in true Louisa fashion.
Prophet stared at her. Chagrin buzzed around his ears like a pesky fly. He didn’t say anything but only studied on the notion she’d planted in his brain.
“He knows you’re a bounty hunter, doesn’t he?” Louisa asked though it was obvious she knew the answer.
“Of course he does. I’m right famous, don’t ya know.” Of course, Louisa might even be more famous but he wasn’t about to remind her of that.
“Lou, do you really think Baja Jack, who knows you’re a bounty hunter, doesn’t at least suspect that you’re in this part of Baja because you’re out to kill Ciaran Yeats, a man with multiple, high-dollar bounties on his head north of the border?”
Again, Prophet just stared at her. That pesky fly was joined by another . . . and another.
Louisa said in that annoyingly confident way of hers, “I have a pretty good notion that Baja Jack is leading you to Ciaran Yeats to—”
“Kill me?”
“Or to let Yeats do it.”
Prophet flicked the quirley stub away. It bounced, red cinders flying before glinting out. He stared at where he’d thrown it, suspicion building in him, poking at his belly like a dull stick.
Louisa placed a hand on his right cheek, near his jawline. “You’re bleeding, you idiot.
“Huh?”
“Your face looks like ground beef left out in the sun.”
Lou fingered the cut over his swollen right eye. It left a faint smear of blood on his index finger. He shrugged. “It’s been a hard ride.” He gave a droll chuckle. “I think I’ll spend next winter in Dakota.”
Louisa pulled a lace-edged pink hankie out of her back pocket then rose up on her boot toes again. She dabbed the hankie at the cut over his swollen eye. She touched it to her tongue, gave him a vaguely coquettish sidelong glance, then went to work on the cut again.
“I swear,” she said as she worked, “I don’t know how you get along without me.”
“I manage.”
“Yes . . . the lovely Marisol.”
“Jealous?”
“Not at all. I just feel sorry for her. There’s obviously such a paucity of men around Hacienda de la Paz that she—”
Prophet grabbed her, drew her to him, and kissed her. She resisted at first then returned the kiss, groaning as they ground their lips together.
Finally, she pulled away from him, staring up at him, breathing hard.
“I’ve missed you,” he confessed.
“I know.” Louisa smiled, already back to her old tricks. She looked at the bloodstained hankie, wrinkled her nose, and held it out to him. “Here. You can have that.”
Prophet took it without looking at it. He stared at her, desiring her the way he always desired her—with a surging, hammering, nearly overpowering need.
She backed away from him, smiling.
“Where you going?”
“Back to my camp.”
“Why don’t you ride with us?”
“Into that trap?” Louisa shook her head. “No thanks. I’ll keep an eye on you, though, you big galoot—for all the good it’ll do you with as many men as Yeats has riding for him.”
She shook her head, giving a dark sigh.
She blew him a kiss, swung around, and tramped off into the night.
Just like that, she was gone, and Prophet stood staring after her. As though to reassure himself she’d really been here, and he hadn’t just dreamed her, he looked at the pink handkerchief in his hand.
He clenched it in his fist then started back to his bedroll. “Miss Uppity Bloomers!”