33

GUNS BLASTED TO Prophet’s left, bullets screaming around his head and tearing into the wall at the end of the hall on his left. He fired his pistol twice from his hip just before ramming his shoulder into the door of the room opposite the dwarf’s.

The door burst open and slammed against the wall with a bang that was nearly drowned by the blasts and shouts from the direction of the stairs.

The naked girl on the bed screamed. The man who’d been pumping away on top of her turned toward Prophet and shouted, “What in the name of . . . ?”

“Don’t mind me!” Prophet leaped onto the bed, took one step, and leaped to the floor on the other side.

He looked out the open window and nearly sobbed at his good luck. A shake-shingled roof slanted just below him. Making a mental note to stop getting himself run out of hotels, he wheeled, saw several men scurrying around the room’s open door, and fired three quick rounds to hold them at bay.

The girl screamed. Her jake cursed him roundly.

Prophet leaped onto the window casing and without a second thought, sent himself hurling straight down toward the roof below. This roof was considerably sturdier than the last one he’d piled up on, the one in San Simon, with Ramonna screaming and Campa cussing and firing from above. Prophet did not bust through this roof, though judging by the sound, he cracked a few shingles as he landed feetfirst.

He rolled over the edge and saw the charcoal-colored ground come up fast before it smashed into his head and shoulders. He grunted loudly, stretching his lips back from his teeth and rolling onto his side and clutching his right shoulder with his left hand.

“Shit!”

Above, men shouted. Pistols popped. He was shielded by the roof, and the bullets plunked into the shingles, flinging slivers. Prophet stared up at the roof edge and caught a whiff of cigar smoke. He saw a dark-clad figure hunkered on his haunches on the small rear gallery.

The cigar coal glowed in the darkness. Smoke wafted around the black-hatted head. A man chuckled.

“Prophet, you sure burn it from both ends.” It was Mortimer. “You best get your ass up and light a shuck, Reb!”

Prophet had grabbed his pistol but did not click the hammer back. He heaved himself to his feet. Mortimer said, “Catch!”

He swung his arm back and forward, and Prophet watched his rifle come hurling toward him. He grabbed it out of the air and switched it to his left hand in time to catch his coach gun with its leather lanyard flapping out to one side.

“Figured you could use those.”

Prophet was stunned. “Thanks,” was the only word he could find.

Then he stepped back away from the hotel until he could see the window above the roof. A gun flashed in the dark square, briefly lighting a hatted head. The slug thudded into the ground over Prophet’s left shoulder.

Prophet raised the gut shredder and tripped a trigger, hearing a man scream as the buckshot pelted his face. Hearing more shouting throughout the hotel now, and the thunder of running feet as the dwarf’s men and likely his savage customers rushed to the doors to give chase, the bounty hunter turned and ran straight back toward the barns and corrals.

He’d run maybe thirty yards before guns resumed blasting behind him. He headed past a barn and a covered wagon and stopped suddenly. He looked back at the wagon.

The maw of a Gatling gun protruded from the rear pucker.

Prophet looked behind, a wistful look on his crude-featured face. Several slugs plumed the dust around him and caused the horses and mules to dance around inside the corrals. He ran over to the wagon and leaped over the tailgate and inside. He set his rifle down beside what appeared an old 1862 model Gatling gun modified for contemporary cartridges and glanced out the back of the wagon.

At least a dozen men were sprinting toward him from the rear of the dwarf’s House, jostling shadows in the purple night.

Several wooden cartridge crates flanked the big, fire-belching cannon. Prophet quickly dropped a box of cartridges down the Gatling gun’s loading rail and cut loose with a quick burst of what was probably ten .45-caliber, one-inch slugs.

The gun turned on its swivel, hiccupping madly, savagely, stabbing orange flames back toward Moon’s place and filling the wagon with a heavy, eye-stinging plume of fetid powder smoke.

He grinned again as the jostling figures were plowed down as though by an unseen scythe. Men screamed and triggered their pistols or rifles into the ground.

Prophet dropped another ten-round box down the Gatling gun’s rail and, turning the crank, opened up on the dwarf’s house and the men continuing to run out from behind it. Several more shadows dropped, screaming and groaning, while others dashed to safety behind the hulking building.

Prophet waited a couple of seconds.

Silence had fallen like the pall after a bad storm. Smoke wafted grayly in the darkness. Windows in the House’s rear wall wore the soft umber of flickering lamplight. Several silhouetted figures dashed around behind them.

Seeing no more men running toward him, only one triggering wild shots from behind a front corner of the House, Prophet grabbed his shotgun and looped it over his shoulder. He took his rifle, hurried to the front of the wagon, climbed over the driver’s box, and dropped to the ground.

Trying to keep the wagon between him and the House, he ran between the two stables in which horses and mules and several oxen whickered, brayed, and bellowed against the commotion, including the Gatling’s raucous fire. He crossed a wash and ran up a slope, raking breath in and out of his lungs. When he’d run up the next, higher slope, he stopped near the crest and glanced back over his shoulder.

He couldn’t see much because of the darkness, but he heard men shouting and running around, though none seemed to be running toward Prophet. They were all likely so drunk and taken aback by the sudden outburst of violence that had left more than a few of them dead that they’d decided to ponder the situation before endangering themselves further.

Prophet picked up a rock with his left hand, tossed it underhanded away from him, and gave another frustrated curse.

The dwarf was still alive. The slave girls were still in the House of a Thousand Delights.

Prophet stood and walked up and over the slope. Hooves thudded ahead of him. He saw shadows moving toward him, milky dust rising behind them. He walked out onto the curving trail that led up into the Chisos, and stopped and watched as the rider crested the next hill and came toward him. Starlight revealed a pinto as well as blond hair bouncing on slender shoulders.

Louisa reined up suddenly, curveted the pinto in the trail fifty yards from Prophet. Mean and Ugly stopped in the trail behind her, blowing and stomping and chewing his bit. Starlight flashed on silver chasing, and in the quiet night Prophet heard the click of a gun hammer.

“I had enough bein’ shot at, damnit,” Prophet said.

“Lou?”

“Yeah,” he growled and walked toward her.

She galloped up to him, stopped, and tossed him Mean and Ugly’s reins. As usual, her tone was snooty. “Did you get the lay of the land?”

“Said I would, didn’t I?”

Prophet swung up onto Mean’s back, the horse feeling good and familiar beneath him. It was so quiet now that all he could hear was the ringing in his ears from the Gatling gun.

“What was all the shooting?” Louisa asked.

Prophet reined Mean around and headed back in the direction from which Louisa had come and in which he knew that Colter and Ruth were waiting. “The dwarf—he didn’t like me gettin’ it.”