Blood at Sundown

by Peter Brandvold

She turned her glance to see Cully standing by one of the two windows at the front of the building, hands raised toward the rafters, eyes squeezed shut, shaking his head resolutely from one side to the other and back again.

  Louisa looked down at French. Blood welled from two bullets in the man’s back, spaced about eight inches apart. More blood welled from a hole in his side, six inches below his armpit. Another wound oozed the thick, dark red fluid from the back of the man’s raised right arm.

  “Oh God, oh God!” French cried, trying to crawl forward but not having the strength to rise onto his hands and knees. He just flopped on his belly like a fish in the grass.

  Jerry howled as he stared stricken-eyed up at Louisa, his eyes widening as she turned to him, raising the twin, smoking Colts in her hands.

  “Oh God,” Jerry pleaded. “Please . . . stop!”

  Louisa stared mildly down at him. “I begged you to stop, Jerry.”

  “I know you did,” he said, sobbing. “I’m sorry!”

  Louisa shot him in the right kneecap. Then she shot him in the left kneecap.

  Now he was really bellowing and sobbing, thrashing like a bug on a pin, his face a crimson mask of pure, wailing agony.

  “Now you’re sorry,” Louisa said. “And now you have every right to be.”

  She looked at French. The big, bearded man stared in horror over his left shoulder at her, eyes bright with misery. “No!”

  He turned his head away from her and began squirming across the floor as though trying to make it to the rear door. He was moving only a couple of inches at a time, however, leaving a broad swath of blood in his wake. He’d never make it to the door before he ran out of blood and strength.

  Louisa turned to Cully, who stood as before, slowly shaking his head, eyes squeezed shut.

  “How ’bout you?” Louisa asked, aiming down her raised Colt at him. “Do you want some of this?”

  He drew his head back. “No! Now . . . please!” He kept his eyes squeezed shut. There was a soft ticking sound that Louisa could barely hear against the sound of the wind outside. She glanced down to see water dribbling down from the inside of the man’s right pant leg to patter onto his boot before rolling onto the floor, a small pool of urine growing there beneath him.

  He opened his eyes, turned his head slightly to the window. “I looked out the window to see what you was ridin’ an’ I seen the hosses. I seen the pinto an’ . . . an I seen the five hosses packin’ dead men. It was then that I realized who you was. From the stories. You know—the one folks tell about you, the ones I heard about in the papers. I don’t read myself, but . . .”

  Keeping his hands in the air high above his head, his fingertips raking the ceiling, Cully gave a slight, knowing smile. “Shoulda . . . shoulda known . . . it was you—the Vengeance Queen her own self.” He smiled again.

  Louisa kept her guns aimed at him. She kept one eye narrowed threateningly at him, as well. Above the men still howling behind him not quite as loudly as before, she said, “You’re the new station agent.”

  He frowned, his gaze becoming dubious.

  “That’s right. Congratulations. You’ll be selling the tickets now, manning this place.”

  “Uh . . .” Cully looked around, turned his gaze back to Louisa. “Really?”

  Louisa tossed a glance over her shoulder. “Jerry’s not long for this world. You leave him as he is, though, you hear? Don’t tend him. Don’t fetch a doctor for him. You don’t tend French, either. You let them both die slowly, howling. Even that is too good for them.”

  Cully winced, a muscle leaping in his cheek beneath his right eye.

  “I’m going to show a rare bit of mercy here tonight. But you leave them alone, you hear?”

  “Yes, ma’am—I hear you.”

  “And when they’re dead, you drag them out into the cold. You leave them out there in the snow and the cold, to the wolves. That’s what they would have done to me—after you three had finished with me.”

  “All right. I will. Yes, ma’am. It’s what they deserve, all right.”

  “It’s better than what they deserve.”

  “Yes, it is. It’s better.”

  “Take your hands down.”

  Obediently, Cully lowered his hands. “Am I really the station agent now?”

  “Yes, you are. Once you learn how it all works, you can write me out a ticket. I’ll fetch it in the morning, before the train arrives. I’m going to have a free ride to Bismarck—understand?”

  “Oh yes, ma’am. I understand. Of course!”

  Louisa lowered her Colts, off-cocking the hammers with soft clicking sounds. “Good. Now, before I go, I have a question for you.”

  “All right.”

  She stuffed her pistols into her coat pockets, turning the butts forward and then lowering the pocket flaps over them, concealing them. She touched a finger to her lip, glanced at the blood.

  Turning to Cully, she said, “Did a man and a woman ride into town recently? Say, yesterday sometime?”

  Cully rolled his eyes around, pondering the question. “Well, yes. Yes, they did. A man and a woman. Late yesterday afternoon.” Realization dawned on him. “Ohhh,” he said, “you’re after them, ain’t ya? Sweets DuPree and Pima Quarrels.” He gave an eager, expectant smile, and whistled.

  “You know them?”

  “Not me. French did. He recognized ’em. He rode with Quarrels once down in Texas. He knew Quarrels’s woman, Sweets DuPree, by her description an’ reputation. Got a long, white streak running through her hair”—he lifted a finger to his left eye—“and a scar over her eye. They say Quarrels himself gave it to her.”

  Cully chuckled.

  “Yeah,” Louisa said. “I’ve heard they have a real sweet relationship.”

  Cully chuckled again, louder, nervously.

  “Where are they?”

  “Over to the Territorial. They came in when me an’ French was just leavin’.” He gave a fated, defeated expression and a sigh. “They’re probably holed up in one of the rooms upstairs, waitin’ out the storm, waitin’ for the train, most like.”

  Louisa considered the information. She glanced behind her at Jerry, who was sobbing and gasping. The blood pool around him had doubled in size over the past few minutes. French was still trying to crawl to the door, but he was making even slower progress than the last time Louisa had looked. He was still six feet away from it.

  Even if he made it outside, where could he go?

  “Well,” Louisa said, jauntily, turning back to Cully. “Congratulations on the new job.”

  She flashed an affable smile, retrieved her gloves and mittens from the ticket counter, then strode to the door and went out.

  Through the door behind her, Cully said, “Th-thank, you, ma’am!”

  Chapter 15

  SCRAW! SCRAW! SCRAW!

  The cry same so suddenly and loudly out of the forest that Lou Prophet’s heart nearly burst out of his chest and heavy buckskin mackinaw.

  “What in thunder?” exclaimed Sheldon Coffer, drawing sharply back on his mare’s reins, just off Prophet’s right stirrup.

  “Owl,” Prophet said, stopping Mean and Ugly and staring up at the big, winged creature beating upward through the skeletal aspen branches, a black silhouette against the dark charcoal sky. Something dropped to the trail about twenty feet ahead of Prophet and Coffer.

  The owl’s wings made a windy, rushing sound. It gave another piercing scraw and then flapped on over the trees and out of sight.

  “Hoot owl,” Prophet said, staring ahead along the trail. His heart had hammered his ribs so hard they ached. Now it was slowing but he could still feel the lightning in his blood.

  “Great gray,” said Coffer, staring at the gray tops of the trees where the bird had disappeared.

  Prophet glanced at the local lawman. “That’s what I said.”

  Coffer snorted, his breath frosting the air before his bearded face, beneath the black brim of his big Stetson trimmed with a braide
d rawhide band into which a square chunk of turquoise had been woven, snugged against the front of the crown.

  “Let’s see what it dropped.” Prophet gigged Mean and Ugly ahead a ways then stopped again and swung down from the saddle.

  Holding his reins in one hand he walked ahead. He could see a small object lying in the snow, in the middle of the two-track trail. It had rolled after it had hit the ground, leaving a three- or four-inch track to its left. That small a track wouldn’t have been noticeable if the snow hadn’t been fresh, and if it were just fifteen minutes later in the afternoon.

  Prophet frowned down at the object, which resembled a bauble of some kind, then chewed off his mitten and glove, dropped to his haunches, and picked the curious article up between his right thumb and index finger. A couple inches of what appeared to be a ragged, red thread was attached to the object. Prophet held it up in front of his face.

  “I sure wish I would have known what this was before I picked it up,” he said, stretching his lips back from his teeth distastefully, continuing to stare at the round object, which was roughly the size of a pullet egg, in his hand.

  “Why’s that?” Coffer asked, riding up behind Prophet.

  “Because I never would have picked it up.”

  “Why not?”

  Prophet tossed the object up to the marshal, who caught it awkwardly against his chest, leaning back in his saddle. Coffer held the object in his gloved right hand, angling the piece to catch the last, dirty light from the cloudy sky, and looked at it closely.

  “Jesus!” He tossed it away like a hot potato. “Christalmighty, why’d you give me that damn thing, Lou? Why, it’s a human eye!”

  Prophet rose from his haunches, turning his head to peer into the fast-darkening woods to his left. “Smells to high heaven out here.” He sniffed the sickly sweet fetor emanating from the woods.

  “Yeah, I smell it,” Coffer said. “Helkatoot—that’s a might whiffy on the lee side!”

  Prophet dropped Mean’s reins and moved slowly into the woods, stepping carefully through the snow-dusted brush and bramble. He wended his way through the trees for about twenty feet, the stench growing stronger, before he stopped. The brush had been knocked around just ahead of him, the new-fallen snow scuffed. Animals had been moving around here recently. Just ahead and to his right lay something that didn’t appear natural.

  Prophet stepped over to it, dropped to a knee beside it, and stared down at it.

  He picked it up. It was a man’s badly scuffed leather boot crusted with dried blood.

  Prophet dropped the boot when something else caught his eye. He walked over to the second object, dropped to a knee beside it. From recent experience, he knew not to pick it up. Clearly it was a man’s hand and part of an arm to the elbow. Bits of a blue shirtsleeve clung to it. On the man’s hand, which was badly swollen, was a small, flat-faced gold ring, on the pinky finger. To either side of the bauble the finger itself was swollen to nearly the size of a small breakfast sausage.

  Yet another object caught Prophet’s eye. This thing was shiny, glistening in the last rays of the sun concealed by the low, stormy gray clouds from which a light, breeze-whipped snow continued to fall. Prophet stepped over to the shiny thing, snow-dusted vines and branches snapping beneath his boots. This object he picked up and scrutinized.

  A five-pointed chunk of nickeled tin into which the words DEPUTY SHERIFF GRANT COUNTY had been engraved.

  “I’ll be switched!” said a voice behind Prophet.

  The bounty hunter’s heart thumped with a start, and he dropped the badge. He whipped his head around to see Sheldon Coffer standing behind him, bent over to inspect the badge.

  “Christalmighty!” Prophet exclaimed indignantly. “You sure move quiet for a fat old geezer!”

  Coffer smiled at Prophet’s dismay. “What—this fat old geezer sneak up on you, man-hunter?”

  “I was deep in contemplation,” Prophet said. “Otherwise you’d be tryin’ to digest a .45 round about now.”

  Coffer gave a fateful sigh and glanced around. “I do believe we done found Chester Thom.”

  Prophet looked around at the other scattered remains of a man—mostly predator-gnawed bones and bits of torn, bloody clothing, much of it well concealed by the snowy shrubs and fallen tree limbs.

  “Who’s Chester Thom?”

  “One of Dwight Pierson’s deputies. Pierson’s the sheriff over in Devil’s Lake. He rode out to Indian Butte last week, lookin’ for Thom. Said he’d sent Thom out to investigate whiskey peddlers who may or may not have been makin’ an’ sellin’ busthead to the Injuns on the reservation. Pierson told me to keep an eye out for Thom. Thom passed through Indian Butte a couple weeks ago.

  “He always felt like he was too good to check in with me, a lowly town marshal. So he laid up with the girls in a local cathouse, drinking the bar dry, and left early the next morning—with one hell of a hangover, no doubt. When Pierson said he was missing, I had me a suspicion he might have rode out here to snoop around that woodcutters’ camp where I believe them toughnuts of yours, Gritch Hatchley an’ Weed Brougham, is probably holed up, since I ain’t seen ’em in town.”

  Coffer shook his head darkly as he stared down at Chester Thom’s pinky ring. “Bad element out here, Lou. French Canadian misfits. Half-breeds. Outlaws of a very bad stripe. It was like that even before Hatchley an’ Brougham came, if they’re out here, that is. I’m just glad the place, bein’ out of town, is also out of my jurisdiction, so I don’t have to mess with it. I’m too old for that kind of savage business. Whoever’s holed up out here must’ve killed Thom and left his carcass to the coyotes an’ wolves an’ that big gray owl.”

  Prophet rose from his haunches and tugged his mitten and glove on over his right hand. “Well, I didn’t think I was ridin’ out here to a Saturday-night hoedown.”

  Coffer gave a dark laugh and shook his head.

  Prophet looked at him. “What‘s funny?”

  “Sheriff Pierson told me he investigated out here, didn’t find Thom. I don’t think he came out here at all. Just told me he did. He plays the big cock of the walk of the whole county, ole Dwight does. But the only reason he’s sheriff is because no one else was stupid enough to run for the office. Not out here. There’s more outlaws up here than law-abidin’ citizens. Besides, Dwight’s damn near as old as I am and twice as fat!”

  Coffer spat a wad of chaw to one side. “No, sir—I don’t believe he even came as near to the place as you an’ me are right now. Thom must’ve been foolhardy enough to investigate the camp. Prob’ly found a couple stills and had his candle snuffed in the process.”

  Coffer looked around at the grisly mess before him and Prophet. “And everything else . . .”

  “Looks that way.”

  Prophet walked back out to the trail. He stared off up the two-track trace, which curved just ahead and was lost in the growing murk of dusk and falling snow. He glanced at Coffer, who was breathing hard now as the old marshal trudged out of the snowy brush and ambled over to where his mare stood beside Mean and Ugly. The hammerheaded dun, who didn’t realize he’d been gelded, was making eyes at the mare, who was having none of it.

  “How much farther is that camp?” Prophet asked him.

  “Less than a mile. Straight on. The trail dips into a hollow. There’s a big shack and a barn and a corral by Little Sioux Creek. It’s run by a French Canadian half-breed. There’s a half-dozen woodcutters’ cabins nearby. The woodcutters are likely also peddlin’ whiskey, which probably pays better than firewood, even when the spur line’s buyin’.”

  Coffer shook his head. “Forget it, Lou. If Hatchley and Brougham are out there, there’s gonna be a whole lot more of their stripe out there with ’em. You won’t have a chance.”

  “I’m gonna check it out,” Prophet said, grabbing Mean and Ugly’s reins.

  “Hell, there ain’t no point. Hatchley an’ Brougham’ll probably catch the train tomorrow. You can take ’em both down then when
they won’t have no one else backin’ their play.”

  “I don’t know that they’re gonna catch the train,” Prophet said, swinging up into his saddle. “They’re both Canadians themselves. I heard they might be headed for Canada. Now, Sweets an’ Pima Quarrels—I think they’re headed south.” He shook his head. “I don’t know about Hatchley and Brougham. Those two hardtails ain’t gettin’ away. They got too big a bounty on their heads, an’ . . . besides . . .”

  He let his voice trail off as he stared up the trail, a sheepish set to his shoulders.

  “Besides what?” Coffer asked, settling his heavy bulk in his saddle.

  Prophet winced, gave the old marshal a sidelong glance. “What would I tell Louisa?”

  “You’d be alive to tell her somethin’!”

  Prophet pondered on that, chuckled. “Nah,” he drawled. “That girl can shame a man worse than any preacher. Besides, I need the money them two got on their heads. In a month, I wanna be in Mexico, and there ain’t no way unless I bring them two to the U.S. marshal in Bismarck first—dead or alive. I hope alive, because they’re worth more alive, but I’ll perforate ’em if I have to an’ haul ’em back like the others.”

  He glanced at Coffer. “You go on back to town, Shell. You showed me where the camp is. You’ve done your duty. Go on back home an’ let Brandy warm your feet.” He winked and grinned. “And you know what flavor of brandy I’m talkin’ about, you old reprobate.”

  “I’m gonna do just that!” Coffer began to rein his horse around, casting Prophet a defiant gaze.

  “There you go.”

  “I am goin’. Back to town. You’re gonna be alone out here, Lou.”

  “See you back in Injun Butte,” Prophet said, touching spurs to Mean’s loins and moving ahead along the trail. “I hope to be over to the jailhouse later with my prisoners in tow.”

  Coffer continued to turn his horse back in the direction of town. “No, you won’t, neither. You’ll be out there keepin’ Chester Thom company!”

  “I’m gonna miss you, Shell,” Prophet said, chuckling softly as he trotted Mean in the direction of Little Sioux Creek. He’d spoken too quietly for the marshal to hear. It was time to be quiet. Time to watch his back. Time to have his Winchester handy.