“Mount your horse,” Louisa ordered the girl.
The girl gave a grunt as she hiked her skirts and poked her left foot into the left stirrup. Holding the horn with her left hand, she swung smoothly up into the leather.
She looked down at Louisa and shook her long red hair back from her face. “You know men right well.”
“Well enough to know the lot of ’em deserve to be gut-shot and left to howl.”
“Wow!” Toni exclaimed. “You really don’t like men. Is it because of what they did to your family?”
“Be quiet.”
Louisa glanced at the rider still moving toward them down the slope of the hill to the northeast.
“I read about that,” the girl persisted. “In a newspaper story about you and Mr. Prophet. I’m sorry about how your whole family was—”
Louisa snapped a sharp-eyed look of pure rage at the girl, hardening her jaws. “Shut up about that!”
The words were like a slap, causing Toni to lurch back in her saddle.
Louisa turned again to the rider. He was coming along slowly, hesitantly, head cocked to one side, holding his reins up close to his chest, clad in a bulky gray winter coat. He wore a broad-brimmed hat tied to his head by a plaid muffler, which was knotted beneath his chin.
Toni turned to follow Louisa’s gaze. She gasped slightly and said, “Who’s that?”
“I don’t know.” Louisa looked sharply up at the girl. “You think you can stay in that saddle, or do I need to tie you to it?”
“I’m going to try!” the girl said in exasperation, her pale cheeks, already rosy from the cold, turning as red as apples. She had a temper almost to match Louisa’s, but the Vengeance Queen stifled any empathy she might have felt for the girl.
“See that you do.”
As Toni gave an enraged chuff, like a young student unduly harassed by her schoolteacher, Louisa swung away and mounted the pinto.
“Come on!” The Vengeance Queen put spurs to her mount and loped up the hill, hearing the girl behind her clucking to her horse.
Fifteen minutes later, Louisa and her charge rode through a fringe of winter-naked trees near the edge of a frozen slough ringed with cattails. Louisa glanced behind. The rider was still on the other side of the last rise they’d crested. He wouldn’t be for long. She’d been keeping a close watch on the man, for he was shadowing them, staying about a city block behind but slowly closing the gap.
Louisa turned to Toni, said, “We’re going to take a little detour,” then swung her mount off the trail’s left side and into the trees.
“What? What’re you—?”
Louisa pressed two fingers to her lips, scowling at the girl, and booted her pinto deeper into the trees, climbing a low hill. Another glance behind her told her that Toni had managed to get the calico off the trail and was shambling along with the packhorses, clinging to her saddle horn but looking as though the next stiff breeze would fling her from her saddle.
When they were roughly thirty feet from the trail, Louisa said, “This is far enough.”
She stopped and curveted the pinto, so that it stood parallel with the hill and the trail below.
Toni stopped her horse several feet down the slope from Louisa.
“Come on,” Louisa said, tossing her chin. “Get behind me.”
“I don’t understand. What’re you—?”
“You don’t need to understand,” Louisa told her sharply. “All you need to do is what I say and keep your mouth shut.”
The girl drew a deep breath, averted her offended gaze, and batted her heels against the calico’s ribs. She put the calico up the slope above and behind Louisa, stopped, and turned the horse back around until it and she were facing Louisa, who was looking down toward the trail and the white expanse of the slough beyond it.
Louisa dropped the reins of the lead packhorse then removed her right mitten and shoved it into her coat pocket. She reached forward with her right hand and shucked her Winchester from its scabbard. Quietly, she pumped a cartridge into the action then off-cocked the hammer and rested the rifle across her saddle horn.
She thrust her index finger through the trigger guard, ignoring the sting of the cold air—it must have been down around ten degrees—and waited.
Shortly, the thuds of horse hooves sounded on the chill air. Growing gradually louder, they came from the right. Louisa saw the rider moving down the hill, just now entering the trees. Horse and rider were obscured by the bur oaks and box elders. The hoof thuds grew louder and louder until the man was nearly directly below where Louisa waited with the girl and the five horses packing the dead cutthroats.
The man had his eyes to the ground. When he reached the place where Louisa and the girl had left the trail, he drew back on the reins of his apple bay and said, “Whoa, now—whoa.” His voice was clear in the crisp, clear air.
Holding his reins taut, he leaned out slightly from his saddle’s left side, eyes scouring the trail. He turned his head toward the slope rising with the trees, following the scuff marks Louisa’s horses had left in the freshly fallen snow.
When he turned his face up toward where Louisa waited on her pinto, rifle resting on her saddle horn, surprise flickered across the stranger’s eyes behind a pair of small, steel-framed spectacles. “Oh, uh . . . hello, there.”
Chapter 9
Louisa caressed her Winchester’s hammer with her cold, bare thumb as she studied the stranger staring up at her from the trail.
He appeared an older man—late fifties, early sixties—with a thick, light gray beard and a long, slender, hawk’s nose. The round, steel-framed spectacles perched on that nose slightly obscured his close-set, pale blue eyes. A rifle jutted from a saddle scabbard on the far side of the apple bay. Louisa thought she glimpsed a bulge on the other side of the man’s coat, indicating a holstered hogleg.
As his eyes flitted to Louisa’s carbine, which was generally aimed at him, his right, mittened hand began to slide up his thigh toward the bulge beneath his coat.
“It’s a losing proposition,” Louisa said matter-of-factly. “One, it’s too far under your coat. Two, you’re wearing a heavy mitten. Three, I don’t need any more encouragement than I’ve already received to blow you out of that saddle, you tinhorn peckerwood.”
“Holy cripes!” the man exclaimed. “That some way for a girl to talk!”
“I know of only one other.” Louisa lifted her Winchester slightly above the pommel of her saddle.
The man held up a hand, palm out. “Don’t get an itchy trigger finger, pretty lady. I’m not a bad person.”
“What kind of a person are you?”
“I’m not sure how to answer such a question. The name’s Clayton. Edgar Clayton.”
“Why are you shadowing us?”
“I wasn’t, uh . . . shadowing you, pretty one.”
“Stop calling me that. It’s annoying. For that alone, I’m liable to trim your wick.” Louisa nudged the barrel of the carbine up from her saddle horn again, this time resting it over the top of her left arm.
“Christ, you’re contrary!”
“Bein’ shadowed makes me more than contrary.”
“I wasn’t shadowing you,” said Edgar Clayton, raising his voice in frustration. “We happen to be headed in the same direction, is all. I spied you from Bear Butte when I was makin’ my way cross-country to the main trail. Saw your packhorses from a distance. They made me curious. My curiosity was welcome, for this is rather dull country. There ain’t much to occupy a man’s thoughts while traveling through it, so I occupied myself by wondering what you could be packing over them horses—five in a row.
“As I gradually closed the gap between us, I saw that you were . . . well”—he gave an ironic smile—“two young women. Pretty young women, at that. One a blonde, one a redhead. And that you were packing”—now he frowned as he turned his gaze to the five packhorses flanking Louisa and the girl—“dead men. True enough, I see now. I’ll be damned. Two pretty young women tr
ailing five dead men. Hmmm.”
Clayton returned his frowning, curious gaze to Louisa and scratched his chin. “How could that be?”
“None of your business.” Louisa jerked her head. “Ride on.”
“I was only trying to make polite conversation.”
Louisa gave a caustic chuff and booted the pinto on down the hill, the packhorses lunging into awkward motion behind her, the dead men jerking stiffly down their sides, their hair sliding around in the breeze.
Louisa steered the pinto through the trees. When she bottomed out on the trail, she turned her mount to face the stranger, who eyed her warily from beneath the floppy brim of his dark felt hat. Louisa saw now that a thin, tightly bound gray braid slithered out from beneath his hat to hang down the back of his coat. Either his cheek was swollen or he had chaw tucked against his jaw.
“Who are you, Mr. Clayton?” Louisa asked pointedly, keeping her carbine aimed at the annoying stranger.
“What do you mean?”
“What do you do for a living? Maybe you’re a bounty hunter.”
“What?” Clayton widened his eyes in shock. “A bounty hunter? No, no!”
“Are you sure about that?” Louisa kept after him. “Maybe you saw five dead men . . . five men from the Gritch Hatchley bunch . . . and were sort of wondering if you might be able to wrangle them away from the two pretty females whose possession they are in. Perhaps you considered turning them in for the bounties yourself.”
Clayton glanced behind Louisa at the packhorses. “Gritch Hatchley, you say? Those men are from his bunch, eh?” He whistled his amazement, shaking his head. “Imagine that!”
“Don’t act so surprised. You keep up the charade, Mr. Clayton, and I’ll blow you out of your saddle.”
“You sure are eager to blow another man out of his saddle!”
“Don’t worry, Mr. Clayton—it’s not personal with her.” Toni was riding down the slope, clinging to her saddle horn. When the calico stepped onto the trail, the girl pulled it up to where Louisa sat facing Clayton. “It’s how she communicates regular, that’s all.”
Clayton raised his shaggy eyebrows in surprise at the girl. “Toni? What in tarnation are you doin’ out here? You’re a fair piece from Jiggs’s place!”
Toni glanced at Louisa. “He is who he says he is. He’s not a bounty hunter. He’s not after your bounty money, Miss Bonaventure. Stand down.”
Clayton shifted his gaze back to Louisa. “Bonnyventure, Bonnyventure. Where have I heard that name?”
“If not in the newspapers, then maybe in your nightmares,” Toni said with subtle irony. “Some call her the Vengeance Queen. She is that and more. She rides with Lou Prophet.”
“Prophet rides with me.”
Toni said to Clayton, “Her and Prophet cleaned those vermin back there out of Jiggs’s place but only after they’d killed Greta an’ Grace and blew out Jiggs’s lights because he balked at servin’ up free whiskey and mattress dances.”
“Burt Jiggs is dead?” Clayton’s bearded face acquired a pained look. “Ah, that grieves me. Purely, it does.” He shook his head then looked at the doxie. “Where are you off to, Miss Toni?”
“Sundown. I don’t want to stay at the roadhouse. Not with Jiggs dead. He may have had his faults, but he gave me a home when no one else would. Now I reckon I have to find another roof, but I’ll be damned if I’ll ever work the line again.”
“I don’t blame you a bit.”
“I didn’t mean no offense, Mr. Clayton.”
“None taken, none taken,” Clayton said, flushing sheepishly. “I realize those times with you an’ me at Jiggs’s place was just business arrangements.”
“You were nicer than most, Mr. Clayton.”
“Why, thank you, Toni. I hope I always treated you respectful-like.”
“You did. Say, how is Rose, anyways?”
“Listen, I’d love to sit here and listen to you two chin the morning away,” Louisa said, cutting off Clayton’s response, “but I’ll be heading up the trail.” She glanced at Toni. “If you’re comin’ with me, get your horse turned around.”
Louisa started to rein the pinto around then stopped when Clayton said, “You headin’ for Sundown, too, Miss Bonnyventure?”
Turning her mouth corners down, Louisa said, “It’s Bonaventure. If you’d listen closely, you wouldn’t hear a y in it. And . . . so what if I was heading for Sundown?”
Clayton held up his mittened hands in supplication. “Please don’t shoot me for askin’. I was just making polite conversation.”
“I don’t care for conversation—polite or otherwise.”
“Jesus!” Clayton said.
“There you have it.” Louisa booted the pinto on up the trail, jerking the packhorses into line behind her.
Toni shrugged at Clayton and then batted her heels against the calico’s ribs, urging the feisty mount along behind the Vengeance Queen.
Clayton spurred his horse up beside Louisa. He rode in silence for a time. Louisa didn’t look at him. She didn’t want to encourage any more of his so-called polite conversation. She couldn’t get rid of him short of shooting him, but she didn’t have to talk to him.
Clayton drew a deep breath, filling up his chest beneath his coat. “I am hunting a man.”
Louisa glanced at him sidelong. “But you’re not a bounty hunter . . .”
“No, no, no. I’m hunting no bounty. Just the man. The no-account Ramsay Willis isn’t worth a damn cent either alive or dead.”
“You’re hunting Ramsay Willis, your hired man?” Toni’s eyes widened in shock as she rode behind Louisa and Edgar Clayton. “You two must’ve had one nasty fallin’-out, Mr. Clayton.”
Clayton dipped his chin and bunched his lips. He narrowed his eyes until a sudden light in them shone like miniature bayonets. “We did, indeed,” he said slowly, letting the words hang ominously in the chill air around his head.
He drew a deep, calming breath. “Well, I’ll ride on ahead.” He glanced at Louisa. “Don’t want to nettle the Vengeance Queen with all my polite conversation.” He glanced back at Toni, pinched his hat brim to the girl. “Be seein’ you, Miss Toni.”
“See you, Mr. Clayton.”
“Be well, now.”
“You, too.”
He touched spurs to the apple bay’s ribs and galloped up the trail.
“I wonder what they had words over,” Toni wondered aloud behind Louisa.
“They must’ve been some loud words,” Louisa opined with an ironic snort.
When Clayton was nearly out of sight around the far side of the slough, riding through thick timber, Toni urge the calico up beside Louisa. She looked at the Vengeance Queen and turned down her mouth corners.
“Well, now I know it ain’t just me, anyways,” she said.
“What isn’t just you?”
“It ain’t just me you got it in for. You hate everybody equal.”
Louisa glanced at her. “I don’t hate you. I just . . .” She paused and stared ahead, as though searching the distance for the right words. “There’s only so much one person can do for another, is all. Each one of us is alone in this world, and we might as well face up to that cold fact.”
“We’re alone, maybe, but that don’t mean we can’t be friends.”
Louisa turned to her again, her face expressionless. “Most of my friends are dead. Except for Prophet. But even he has one foot in the grave.”
She glanced at the sky across which low, gray clouds were sliding again, blotting out the sun. It looked as though more bad weather was on the way. She spurred the pinto into a rocking lope. “Come on,” she called. “We’re—!”
“I know, I know,” Toni said. “We’re burning daylight!”
* * *
At the same time but roughly thirty miles northeast of Louisa and Toni, Lou Prophet followed a two-track wagon trail up into a crease between two haystack bluffs and halted Mean and Ugly.
The hammerheaded dun turned his head sligh
tly to one side, sliding an incredulous glance at the big rider on its back. Mean rippled his withers, whickering, his breath frosting in the air before his leather-tipped, whisker-bristling snout.
“Get your neck out of a hump,” Prophet growled, leaning back to pull a spyglass from a saddlebag pouch. “I know you got your hat set on hay and oats and a nice warm barn. Hell, I got mine set on beer and grub and a nice warm girl. But, me?” He slid the brass spyglass from its leather sheath, dropped the sheath to his lap, and raised the glass to his right eye. “I like to look a town over before I ride in.”
Slowly, Prophet adjusted the focus, bringing the little town of Indian Butte gradually into magnified view before him. “A fella—especially one like myself, who’s acquired him plenty of enemies over the years—never knows what he’s gonna ride into.”
In the circular field of magnified vision, the town clarified in the broad hollow about a quarter mile away from the rise upon which the bounty hunter sat. Prophet had found himself in this neck of the upper Midwest before, so he knew a little about the place. Indian Butte, named after the rise itself, had originated as a hide hunters’ camp back before the War of Northern Aggression.
When the buffalo herds had been turned to little more than piles of bleached bone and baled hides stacked along western railheads, or natty coats sheathing the figures of eastern dandies, the hiders had disappeared from Indian Butte. A saloon/hotel remained, serving mainly wandering pilgrims and occasional cavalry patrols. It remained down there now, at a curve in the wide main drag of the small town that had grown up around it when the country outlying the town had been homesteaded off into a scattering of large and small ranches, which the town now supplied and which gave it its sole reason for existence.
Now there were a half-dozen business establishments—most either log or wood-frame affairs, hunkering close to the saloon/hotel, a sprawling, hodgepodge of a place—part log, part wood frame, part mud brick—which unoriginally was called Indian Butte Saloon & Hotel. The name was announced proudly in large, red, ornate letters brightly painted across its second story.
The hotel gave its back to the twin iron rails that curved into the town from the south, bisecting the flat area between the town and a sharply twisting creek choked in scrub brush and deciduous, winter-naked trees. The rails came from the blur of nowhere in the south and disappeared into a similar blur to the north, ending just twenty miles up the line, in a town called Devil’s Lake, near which lay an Indian agency to which beef and other supplies were shipped by the new spur rail line.
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