Hatchley spat a wad of phlegm through the open stove door, making the fledgling flames smoke. “Yeah, well, the joke’s gonna be on you. That tumble I took from your cayuse opened me up again. I’m liable to be all bled out by the time I reach Bismarck. You’re gonna cheat the hangman.”
Prophet shoved more kindling into the stove, breaking the longer sticks in his hands. “We don’t have far. A couple hours, is all. First thing after we pull into town, I’ll hustle you up the best sawbones in the county.” He shoved several good-sized split pine logs into the stove then closed the door and latched it.
“Not gonna make it.”
Prophet brushed his hands off on his denims and turned to his prisoner. “You aren’t?”
“We aren’t.” Hatchley dipped his chin to indicate the window facing the open prairie. “Look at that. Damn near impossible to see.”
Prophet turned to look out the window. Hatchley hadn’t been gilding the lily. Snow was once again falling out of a hazy, purple sky hovering low over the train. The cottony flakes were falling at a forty-five-degree angle, the wind pelting them against the side of the passenger coach, like sand.
“Well, I’ll be damned! Where in the hell did that come from? It was clear as a bell just a few minutes ago.”
“That’s the way it does here. Clear as a bell one minute, then a clipper rolls in from Canada, an’ Katy, bar the door!” Hatchley nodded at the window again. “That’s serious business there. Butte country just south of here. The wind’s gonna pile that snow up over the tracks on the backsides o’ them buttes, and we’ll be stuck up to the windows. Happens all the time. By the time we’re dug out, I’ll be gone.”
Hatchley sank back against his seat and shook his head, long, greasy hair dancing over and around his dark eyes. “Kilt by a little Meskin doxie in Dakota . . . middle of winter. Ain’t fair.” He shook his head again. “Just ain’t fair—a man like me, goin’ out like this, hands cuffed behind his back. Ain’t dignified.” He scowled up at Prophet “Ain’t fair!”
“Now, now, Gritch. Rest easy, old son. Save your strength.”
Prophet started striding toward the coach’s front door. He had to get Mean and Ugly aboard the stock car.
“You got any whiskey?”
Prophet paused, glanced back at the prisoner, who appeared near tears with dejection. “Sure, sure, I got whiskey. Bought me a whole bottle just last night for today’s journey.”
“Give me some! I’m hurtin’ bad here, Lou!”
“No, sir.” Prophet shook his head. “That’s labeled stuff. It ain’t no painkiller. Besides, the way you tell it, you’ll be dead soon. I don’t see no reason to waste good liquor on a dead man.”
Prophet winked and went out. Despite the wind that had kicked up outside blowing the snow around violently, he could hear his prisoner cussing him at the tops of his lungs.
Chapter 32
Louisa thrust her Colt straight out through the wind-jostled, snow-dusted tangle of branches and hurled three quick shots back behind her, in the direction of Sundown.
“Take those, Captain!” she bellowed. “I hope you choke on ’em!”
She pulled her head back down behind a broad cottonwood standing between her and the soldier, holding the smoking Colt up close against her chest, the welcome heat from the gun pressing through her coat.
“Jesus—Louisa?” the captain shouted from maybe thirty feet away, his voice obscured by the wind and rattling branches.
“You know it’s me!” Louisa returned, her own voice torn from her lips, nearly drowned by the wind. “Why did you shoot at me, Yardley? What’s your game?”
“There’s no game, Louisa,” Yardley shouted back. “I thought I was firing at the killer.” A slight pause. “Is he still out here? Are you hurt?”
Louisa didn’t reply. She continued crouching behind the tree, pressing the warm Colt taut against her breast, weighing her options, apprehension raking cold witches’ fingers across the nape of her neck.
“Louisa, I’m walking toward you. I’ve holstered my Colt. My hands are in the air.”
Louisa pondered. Could Yardley really have not heard her when she’d called out to him?
Boots thudded, growing louder beneath the wind. Brush snapped under the captain’s feet.
Louisa rose suddenly, extending her Colt straight out in her bare right hand, which was quickly growing numb from frostbite. The tall soldier was silhouetted before her as he moved through the trees, just then turning sideways to step over a blowdown. When he’d crossed the blowdown he turned toward Louisa again and stopped, raising his gloved hands shoulder high.
Louisa strode resolutely toward him, aiming down her Colt’s barrel at him.
“What’s your game?” she asked again, tightly, just loudly enough to be heard above the wind.
Yardley shook his head. “I’m sorry I shot at you. I thought I was shooting at the killer.”
“I called out to you.”
“What can I tell you?” Yardley said, raising his voice in frustration. “I didn’t hear anything except what I thought was a scream. Your scream.” He shrugged, raising his hands slightly higher. “Why would I want to kill you, Louisa? You and I hardly know each other.”
Louisa kept the cocked pistol aimed at his face. Her heart thudded heavily. She wanted to believe him. Maybe she partly did believe him. But part of her did not. Part of her believed that the bullets he’d fired had been meant for her.
“Oh, for chrissakes!” Yardley said. “Look—I heard shooting. I thought I heard you scream. I thought I was shooting at the killer. Go ahead and shoot me. Just make it quick. I’d rather die from a bullet to my brain than freeze slowly out here, which is exactly what I’m doing now.”
He reached toward her, nudged her Colt aside with the back of his hand.
She let him do it. She had no choice. She knew she should shoot him, but not knowing why, she couldn’t do it. Not even her—the uncompromising Vengeance Queen.
Oh hell!
Louisa shoved the Colt into her coat pocket. Keeping a cautious eye on the captain standing before her, she quickly shoved her hand back into her glove, wincing against the sharp teeth of the wind chewing at her flesh. She drew the glove only partway on then clenched her hand into a tight fist inside the glove, trying to force blood into her fingers.
“Since you’re out here, you might as well make yourself useful.” Rapping her gloved fist against her thigh, Louisa looked at him sharply. “Just keep your hands away from your pistol. If you make another move toward it, I will shoot you, Captain. I will not hesitate again.”
Yardley held up his hands again, this time in supplication. “You have my word as an officer and a gentleman. What can I help you with?”
“Over here.” Louisa stepped behind the tree. She stood over the man she’d shot. “This is the man who shot at me.”
“The killer?”
“I don’t know. Do you recognize him?”
Yardley stopped beside her, looking down at the dead man. He dropped to one knee, crouched for a closer look at the man’s face. He looked at Louisa and shook his head. “I don’t recognize him. But as I told you before, I know hardly anyone in Sundown. I’ve just passed through from time to time.”
“All right,” Louisa said. “Let’s get him back to the hotel. I want Edgar Clayton to have a look at him.”
Yardley winced up at her, obviously knowing that her “let’s” had been of the royal variety. He’d be the one carrying the dead man back to the Territorial. “That’s quite a jaunt and this is no small man. Why don’t we bring Clayton out here?”
“Doubtful we’d find the body again. By morning he’d be covered with snow. Come on, Captain. You’re a big, capable man.” Louisa cocked one fur-lined moccasin forward, crossed her arms on her chest, and narrowed a challenging eye. “Aren’t you?”
She knew exactly how to appeal to the fragile male pride and was not above putting that knowledge to practical use.
Yardley g
ave a caustic snort and chuckled wryly. “All right.” He drew a breath then grabbed one of the dead man’s hands. Rising to a crouch, he drew the man forward and turned slightly to one side, pulling the dead man over his right shoulder. Bending his knees, adjusting the dead man’s weight with a grunt, he said, “All right. Lead the way.”
Louisa moved off through the trees and tangled brush. She tried to retrace her own and Yardley’s steps, but already the dark, dimpled tracks were filling in with windblown snow. Twice she found herself thinking she was backtracking herself and Yardley only to end up facing a tangled snag and an impenetrable mass of blowdown trees made even more perilous by the drifting snow.
“Come on, Captain,” she said the second time she stumbled into an impenetrable wall of vines and wood. “Back this way.”
“We just came from that way!”
“Back this way!”
“Hold on, hold on!” Yardley complained. “I need to rest.”
She let him rest only a minute or so then berated him until he crouched beneath the dead man’s weight once more and they were headed again through the murk of the storm, in the general direction of Sundown. Or so Louisa thought. With the wind and the snow and the trees and bramble all looking alike, it was very easy to get disoriented.
After what must have been over a half hour of hard walking and bushwhacking, they drew up before the hotel’s southwestern rear corner. The back door was locked—likely barred from the inside for good reason—so Louisa led the captain around to the front. That door was locked, too, but Toni quickly answered Louisa’s knock and let them in on a gale of brittle wind and snow.
“Who the hell’s that?” Toni asked, stepping back out of the wind and the snow, now wearing a stained apron around her slender waist. Her frightened eyes were on the dead man draped over the captain’s right shoulder.
“Did he get another one!” asked the tall drummer in the gaudy orange suit, rising quickly from his chair where he was still playing poker with the other two traveling salesmen. His eyes were bright from drink, and he wobbled more than a little on his feet.
Every eye in the room was on Louisa, Yardley, and the newcomer as Louisa led Yardley over to a table near where Edgar Clayton sat, hipped around in his chair, also watching the newcomers with hang-jawed interest.
“Is this your man, Clayton?” Louisa asked as Yardley dropped the dead man onto the table, which groaned and squawked beneath the cadaver’s weight. “Is this Ramsay Willis?”
Clayton lurched up out of his chair so fast, twisting around to see the dead man’s face, that he got a boot tangled up in his chair leg. He knocked the chair over and dropped to a knee. “Damn!” He rose from his knee and stood over the dead man, staring down at him.
Quickly, scowling, he turned to Louisa. “Hell, no. That ain’t Ramsay Willis.”
Louisa cursed under her breath.
“Who is it?” Yardley asked Clayton.
By now, almost everyone in the room had gathered around the table—Toni, Mose, Nasty Ralph, and the three drummers. Even Mrs. Emory, a blanket draped around her shoulders, stood staring down at the dead man.
“I don’t know who it is,” Clayton said. “I wouldn’t know him from Adam’s off ox. Who shot him?”
He was looking at Yardley, who didn’t say anything.
Louisa said, “I did.”
“Why’d you shoot him?”
Ignoring the question, Louisa looked around at the others. “Does anyone know who he is?”
Mose and Nasty Ralph looked at each other and shrugged.
Staring down at the dead man, the drummers bunched their lips and wagged their heads.
“Wayne Skogstrum.”
All eyes, including Louisa’s, turned to where the little wizened man who’d sat alone on the far side of the bar now stood to Louisa’s right, about six feet away from the table, peering between Mose and Nasty Ralph at the dead man.
“Look who rose from the dead,” said Mose.
“Shut up,” Louisa snarled at him.
Mose’s eyes blazed at her, and he tightened his jaws but held his tongue.
To the old doctor, Louisa said, “Who’d you say he was?”
“Wayne Skogstrum,” the sawbones repeated. He did, indeed, look as though he’d risen from the grave. Or had clawed his way up out of one, maybe hunting for a fresh bottle.
The rims around his eyes looked like freshly ground beef. He reeked of sweat and whiskey. “Lived down the hill to the south, across the creek. With his old man, Zeke, an old buffalo hunter an’ wolfer. Zeke died a few years back. Wayne’s been livin’ there alone. A hermit. Hardly anyone ever sees him less’n he’s coming around town to beg for coins or tangleleg. He’s got it worse even than I do—the bottle fever.”
He’d said that last sentence slowly, with a keen air of self-recrimination and shame, rubbing the palms of his hands down the front of his grimy wool shirt.
“I’ve caught him stealing wood from our pile,” Mrs. Emory said in a low, strange voice, as though she were half dreaming. “Caught him stealing wash off our line . . . my husband’s trousers, his shirts. Once he stole an apple pie out of my kitchen window, when I set it there to cool.”
“Do you think he could have put that ax—” Louisa stopped, cleared her throat. “Do you think he could have killed your husband, Mrs. Emory? Had you seen Mr. Skogstrum around your house earlier today?”
The woman bowed her head and her shoulders quivered.
“There, now,” Captain Yardley said, walking around behind the grieving widow, placing his hands on her shoulders. “Let’s get you upstairs, Mrs. Emory. You should be in—”
“No!” The woman pleaded with Louisa, eyes round with horror. “I don’t want to be alone! I want to stay down here with you all!”
Louisa glanced at Yardley. With her chin she indicated the brocade chair at which the widow had been sitting. Yardley guided the sobbing woman back over to the chair and helped her down into it.
The town drunk/doctor continued staring down at Wayne Skogstrum as he said, “He was bad for stealin’ firewood. He used to come up here from his cabin and steal wood from Tutwiler. Morris caught him more than a few times and threatened him with a thrashing. Wayne, he’d drop the wood and run. Kept close to home, mostly. Trapped a little. Cut wood a little, when he wasn’t drinking. Didn’t allow no one on his place. I went down there to visit him after Zeke died—Zeke an’ me was friends—and he took a shot at me, told me to never come around again or I’d get a bullet for my trouble.”
The sawbones lifted his watery gaze from the dead man to Louisa. “He probably shot at you because he thought you was Tutwiler out to catch him stealin’ his firewood. Or maybe you was gettin’ too close to his cabin. He never let anyone come on his place, no, sir.”
The sawbones shook his head and moved his jaws like a cow chewing his cud.
Louisa stared at the little wizened man, but what she was seeing were the several chunks of split wood she’d spied on the snowy ground near Skogstrum’s lifeless body.
“That there’s your ax killer.” Nasty Ralph pointed down at the dead man on the table. “Sure enough, the banker caught this sick old coon stealing firewood from him and got an ax in his back for his trouble. Same with Tutwiler!”
“Nope.” Edgar Clayton shook his head certainly.
He turned, walked over to the front window left of the door, and stared out at the cold, stormy night. “The killer’s still out there. He’s Ramsay Willis, an’ he ain’t out to steal firewood or a man’s breeches off a clothesline. He’s got the winter fever. He’s turned his wolf loose. He’s out to kill every single one of us here tonight, if we don’t get him first.”
Clayton turned around slowly and stared darkly at Louisa.
“An’ you know what?” he asked the Vengeance Queen.
“No,” Louisa said. “What?”
“At this point, my money’s on him.”
Chapter 33
Louisa and the others in the room
studied Clayton.
The rancher poured himself a fresh drink then picked up his makings sack and began rolling a smoke.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” Nasty Ralph said, standing on the other side of the table from Louisa, beside Mose. “We still got us a killer on the loose, don’t we?”
He turned his head to stare at the door against which the moaning wind flung snow like intermittent shovelfuls of sand.
Mose looked at Louisa, his eyes bright and rheumy from drink. “An’ you just popped another pill into another poor hombre who didn’t deserve it. No more than Vink did.”
He closed his hand around one of his holstered .44s.
Louisa smiled. “Go ahead, Mose. Try it.”
Mose stared back at her. All eyes in the room now shuttled between the two. Mose appeared to have stopped breathing. His lips were pursed and white.
“Stop,” Toni said. “Stop it.” She came up to stand to Louisa’s left, beside the table with the dead man on it, shifting her gaze from Mose to Louisa and back again. “We can’t turn on each other. If there’s a crazy man out there, an ax-wielding killer, we need to keep our heads. Stand down, Mose!”
Nasty Ralph snorted a laugh and nudged Mose with his elbow. “Come on, now, Mose. She’s too purty to kill.”
Mose curled his upper lip at that. It was the excuse he was needing, wanting, to pull his horns in. He chuckled and dropped his hand from the walnut grips of his .44.
“Pshaw,” Mose said, leering at Louisa. “Don’t get your bloomers in a twist. I was just funnin’ with ya.” He tipped his head back and gave a jeering laugh.
“Well, I’m not funnin’ with you, Mose. You an’ your nasty friend here take Mr. Skogstrum out to the woodshed with the others.”
Mose stopped laughing. He and Nasty Ralph stared again at Louisa, their eyes hard with self-righteous indignation.
Nasty Ralph lifted a thick arm and pointed a finger across the dead man at Louisa. “You go to hell!”
Blood at Sundown Page 26
