Blood at Sundown

by Peter Brandvold

  Keeping her hands straight down at her sides, hanging over the twin, pearl-gripped Colts holstered on her thighs, Louisa said with taut menace, “Do it.”

  Slowly, Ralph lowered his arm. He and Mose continued glaring at her over the table.

  Once again, all eyes in the room were on Louisa as well as on both drunk market hunters. Lamplight, shunted by drafts, flickered across the room, sliding back and forth across the hats of the men and Louisa gathered around the table. It flickered across Toni’s curly red hair and across her pale cheeks set with an expression of deep wariness.

  The drummers dropped back into the shadows, out of the line of fire. So did the old sawbones.

  Mose and Nasty Ralph stared at Louisa. Louisa stared back at them, chin low, her hazel eyes cast with dark portent, daring one or both to slap leather so she could hurl them both to hell. She was done with these privy snipes, just as she’d been done with Vink. It was their turn to die. The world would be a better place without them.

  Both men’s ruddy cheeks acquired a light flush, their eyes a vaguely uncertain cast. They knew what would happen if they did not do the Vengeance Queen’s bidding. They were not so drunk that they thought that, in their drunken states, they had a chance of getting their pistols out of their holsters before Louisa did. They’d seen what she’d done to Vink.

  True, she hadn’t given Vink a chance. But even if she had, the result would have been no different. Vink would still be dead with three closely placed slugs in his heart, lying hard as a gravestone out in the woodshed yonder.

  The walls creaked against the moaning wind. Snow pelted the windows. One of the lamps leaked black smoke up through its soot-stained chimney, further tainting the room’s foul air with the smell of burned coal oil.

  Staring at the two men, Toni said with quiet beseeching, “Don’t. She wants to. You know that. Don’t give her the satisfaction.”

  Nearly a full minute passed. A sweat bead broke out on Mose’s left cheek and dribbled down into his thin, patchy beard. Nasty Ralph’s thick, lumpy chest was rising and falling heavily, nervously.

  Finally, the big man’s body slackened. He nudged Mose again with his elbow and said, “Yeah, all right. Let’s take him outside, eh, Mose? Maybe give us a chance to shoot that son of Satan once an’ for all.”

  Mose’s body, too, relaxed though he kept his hard, dark eyes on Louisa. Slowly, he nodded. “Yeah. All right. Sure. If he’s fool enough to come after us, we’ll take him down, all right. Yeah, we’ll bait him in. That’s what you want, ain’t it?” he spat at Louisa. “Sure, sure. We’ll bait him in and kill him!”

  He grabbed the dead man’s arms. “Get over there, Ralph. Take his feet.” To Louisa, he said, “You’d best stay in here so you don’t get your frillies in a twist again and go off half-cocked. You should watch yourself. Runnin’ around out there, scared as hell an’ shootin’ down innocent folks is gonna ruin your reputation, Miss Vengeance Queen!”

  Laughing, Mose and Nasty Ralph hauled the dead man off the table and then down the side of the bar toward the back door.

  When they’d gone out, the draft from the open back door sweeping through the room, Toni turned to Louisa. “Sorry to spoil your fun.”

  Louisa regarded her blandly but didn’t say anything.

  “Don’t you think one crazy person running around killing people is enough?” Toni asked.

  Louisa gave her a slow blink. “I’ll take some more tea.” She plucked her rifle off the chair she’d set it on when she’d entered the saloon with Yardley and the dead man. She walked over toward the table at which Mrs. Emory and Captain Yardley sat regarding her dubiously. “Mrs. Emory will have some more, as well.”

  Toni gave a caustic chuff. She strode down along the bar and into the back of the room. Mose and Nasty Ralph had left the rear door open. Louisa heard the redhead close it with a raking thump. When Toni came back and disappeared into the side room housing the kitchen, Louisa set her rifle on the table and dropped into the chair across from Yardley.

  She removed her muffler and hat, tossed them onto the table, and raked her hands through her hair.

  Yardley sipped from his whiskey glass and canted his head toward the rear of the room. “Well, they’re baiting your trap. Aren’t you going to go and watch for the killer?”

  Louisa shook her head. “I think he’s done for the night. Too cold out there. I think he’s holed up. If he’s as kill-crazy as Clayton thinks he is, he’ll likely start again tomorrow, after a good night’s sleep by a warm fire.”

  Yardley frowned at her. “Then . . . why send out Mose an’ Nasty Ralph?”

  Louisa frowned back at him, incredulous. “To haul Skogstrum out of here. Who wants to stare at a dead man all night?”

  * * *

  “We’re back, Miss Vengeance Queen!” Mose bellowed ten minutes later, as he and Nasty Ralph strode up from the rear of the saloon, ensconced in a fresh draft of chill air, slapping their snowy hats against their thighs. “Hope you warn’t too worried about us!”

  “Didn’t see hide nor hair of that killer,” said Nasty Ralph, bellying up to the bar.

  “No, I figured you hadn’t,” Louisa said, drolly, laying out a game of solitaire on the table before her. “I hadn’t heard any girl-like screams.”

  A drummer who had just taken a sip of whiskey blew the mouthful over his table. He and the other two drummers howled.

  Mose and Nasty Ralph snapped sharp looks at Louisa.

  She continued to calmly lay out her solitaire hand.

  “Give me a bottle,” Nasty Ralph barked at Toni, who was snickering behind her hand. “And stop laughin’. She ain’t one bit funny.”

  Mose whipped around to cast his baleful gaze at the howling drummers. “You three shut up, too, gallblastit!”

  The drummers could only muffle their laughter, snorting into their hands.

  When Mose and Nasty Ralph had a bottle, they strode tensely over to their table, continuing to glare at Louisa, who didn’t bother to look at them but continued to study only the cards laid out before her now. Soon, Nasty Ralph and Mose were involved in another poker game, which they played for matchsticks. They went through the fresh bottle of whiskey as though it were water and they were crossing a blazing desert.

  Mose passed out first, simply laying his head down on his arm with a deep groan. He began snoring softly at first but then loudly.

  Nasty Ralph was vocally lamenting his partner’s midgame slumber just when he himself had finally gotten a red-hot hand going. He didn’t lament it long. Just after pouring a fresh drink but before he could take a sip from the glass, his own head smacked the table with a sharp thud.

  He groaned, broke wind, and began snoring, hands dropping straight down toward the floor.

  Louisa looked over at the man. Then her gaze swept the room.

  Nearly everyone else was similarly asleep—the drummers, Captain Yardley, and even Mrs. Emory, who was curled up in her brocade armchair to Louisa’s left, her feet drawn up beneath her skirt, snoring softly beneath her blanket.

  Toni lay atop the bar, on her side, using her coat for a blanket, a flour sack for a pillow. The only people awake besides Louisa were Edgar Clayton and the old sawbones. Clayton sat in a chair facing the door, ten feet away from it, his rifle resting across his thighs. His head drooped toward his chest. When his chin brushed his shirt, he snapped it up with a startled grunt.

  The old sawbones sat at his table on the far side of the bar, remote and alone, sitting straight-backed in his chair, staring off into space while taking frequent sips from the shot glass in his age-gnarled hand. It was so quiet save for the wind and the snow and the occasional sputtering of the lanterns and the ticking of the woodstove that Louisa could hear the old sawbones sipping and swallowing his whiskey. After each sip, he set the glass back down on the table with a weary sigh and resumed staring off into nothingness.

  Louisa didn’t sense any fear in the man. Not of Ramsay Willis, anyway. Maybe, in fact, he was a
ctually waiting for the killer’s hatchet.

  Louisa lifted her cup to her lips, not realizing she’d already finished her tea spiked with whiskey. She set the cup back down, gathered her cards into a neat deck, set it aside, and rose from her chair.

  She went over and banked the stove against the cold she could feel pressing in from all four walls and even from the ceiling. The smoking and guttering lanterns attested to the multiple drafts slithering about the room like invisible snakes. She closed the stove door quietly, so as not to awaken the others, then stole quietly about the room, peering out through the windows though able to see little because of the darkness and the thick layer of frost obscuring the glass like mold.

  There were spots on the walls that showed frost, as well, and the front door was nearly white with the stuff. Snow had slithered in beneath the door to form a downy layer on the inside of the threshold, melting a little on the inside edge, where the heat from the fire found it.

  Louisa looked at Clayton. Now even the rancher had lost the war against the sandman. He sat slumped straight forward in his chair, head sagging toward his lap.

  Snores rising all around her—some louder than others—Louisa returned to her chair. She wrapped herself in her bedroll, laid her head down on the table, atop her crossed arms, and let the warm darkness of sleep steal over her. She had no idea how much time had passed when she opened her eyes to see a small pool of drool on the table near her lips.

  She sat up with a start, blinking, swiping a hand across her mouth, looking around.

  She was amazed to see a pearl wash of light touching the eastern windows, weakly illuminating the room. All of the lamps had gone out.

  She looked to her left. Mrs. Emory was still asleep in her chair though she’d turned around to face the opposite direction from the one Louisa had last seen her in. Captain Yardley was gone, his chair sitting at an angle to the table, vacant. He appeared to be nowhere in the room.

  Louisa looked toward the drummers’ table by the bar. All three men were still asleep, one curled up on a table near where the other two sat in their chairs. Mose and Nasty Ralph slept in the same positions as last night.

  Toni lay on the bar. She’d rolled onto her back. The old sawbones sat on the bar’s far side, chin dipped to his chest.

  Edgar Clayton snored with his head down on his own table, arms stretched out before him, fingers clutching his Spencer repeating rifle as though even in sleep he was ready to snap up the weapon and shoot down the low-down, dirty, ax-wielding dog that was his hired hand, Ramsay Willis.

  Louisa shivered. She just realized that she’d been shivering for a long time, dreaming she’d been wandering only half-clothed in a terrible storm, seeking shelter.

  Now she rose from her chair, clutching her blankets tightly about her shoulders, and walked over to the woodstove. By the time she had it roaring once more, several others in the room were rousing from their own stupors, having been awakened by the stove door’s opening and the wood being chunked inside.

  They groaned, grunted, hacked phlegm from their throats.

  “Ah hell,” said one of the drummers.

  Louisa knew how he felt. Like her, he’d obviously awakened to find himself in the same nightmare from which he’d tried to escape into sleep.

  Shivering inside her blankets, putting her backside to the luxurious heat of the ticking, sighing woodstove, Louisa looked at Captain Yardley’s empty chair. She walked to the door. With her thumbnail, she scraped a hole large enough in the quarter-inch frost that she could peer into the snowy street that was gradually growing lighter as the sun rose.

  She could see Yardley’s footprints dropping down off the boardwalk fronting the saloon and angling off to the left, to the south.

  “Strange,” Louisa muttered to herself, her suspicions aroused. “Where are you off to so early in the morning, Captain?”

  Chapter 34

  Prophet’s bones were clattering like those of a skeleton hung out to dry in the wind when he returned to the shabby passenger coach.

  He’d stabled Mean and Ugly in one of the two stock cars mostly populated with the blooded horses of the countess’s party, tying Mean on a short line so he didn’t try to harass any of those stallions who, in contrast, made him look like the lone, unruly mutt in a kennel of pedigreed hunting dogs.

  In the short time Lou had been in the stock car, the wind had increased, and it was one hell of a cold wind. The snow was coming down even harder. Shivering, Prophet climbed up onto the passenger coach’s vestibule. He placed his hand on the doorknob, then, remembering the French Canadian ami of Hatchley’s, with the fast pistols, he stopped. He tried to peer through the glass pane in the door’s upper half but it was opaque with frost.

  He bit off his thick mitten and his glove, stuffed both into his coat pocket, then took his Winchester in both hands. He’d left the Richards with Mean and Ugly, its lanyard hooked over a nail in the stock car. He levered a round into the Winchester’s action, opened the door of the passenger coach, shoved it wide, and took one long, resolute step into the car. Kicking the door closed on the cold wind and the snow, he swung the Winchester toward where he’d last seen Henri Shambeau, expecting the man to be aiming those pistols at him again with the intention of cleaning his clock and freeing his friend Hatchley.

  Nope. This time the Canadian didn’t even stir at Prophet’s entrance. He lay beneath his blanket across the front-most seats on the aisle’s right side, his head propped atop his folded saddlebags. He stopped snoring, grunted, swiped a fist across his nose, then dropped his arm back toward the floor and resumed snoring, pooching out his lips inside his thick beard with every exhalation.

  Prophet looked toward where he’d left Hatchley. The killer remained where he’d left him, all right. It didn’t appear that the mice had played while the cat was tending his horse. Hatchley sat on a left-side aisle seat near the stove, in the middle of the car. He sat stiffly on the thinly padded, stiff-backed wooden seat, head thrown back, gritting his teeth against the burning, well-deserved pain in his leg. He looked at Prophet and kept his head resting back against the seat but croaked out a jeering laugh.

  “Did my friend spook you, Lou?”

  The bounty hunter depressed his Winchester’s hammer and rested the long gun on his shoulder. He strode down the aisle, his saddlebags draped over his left shoulder. The train had given its long, wailing whistle and was pulling out now, leaving the station with a series of shuddering jerks. Prophet grabbed seat backs as he moved down the aisle toward Hatchley.

  “I gotta admit,” he said, sitting on the other side of the woodstove from Hatchley, also in an aisle seat, facing the front, where Shambeau continued sawing wood, “I was a might impressed by that Canuck’s fast draw. Never knew a Canadian to move that fast less’n they was skinnin’ out of a married woman’s house.”

  He set the Winchester and his saddlebags on the seat to his left.

  “Oh, we can move pretty fast, Lou.” Hatchley glanced over at Prophet and winked. “You just watch us.” He cast a vaguely threatening gaze in Shambeau’s direction.

  Prophet opened a pouch of his saddlebags and withdrew the bottle he’d purchased at the Indian Butte Saloon and had wrapped in burlap. “You obviously weren’t moving fast enough to skin back over the Canadian line before I ran you down in that woodcutters’ camp. That was one fool, Canuck move, Gritch.”

  “Yeah, well, it was cold. I could feel this storm brewin’ as far back as last week. Me an’ Weed would probably still be holed up at old Jiggs’s place if that damn Sweets DuPree hadn’t gotten all doughy eyed over me and caused a big blowout with Pima.” Again, he chuckled. “Oh boy—did them two have ’em a fight over ole Gritch! Me an’ Weed thought we’d best see that as our omen to split tail for the border . . . till we seen them storm clouds roarin’ in. That’s why we held up in the woodcutters’ camp. Leave it to a crazy rebel devil like yourself to find us there . . . where damn few lawmen ever dare to tread!”

  He
shook his head without mirth.

  “Leave it to a woman to mess things up for a feller.”

  “Ain’t that the truth, though?”

  “I could tell you stories.” Prophet was thinking about Louisa. He hoped the persnickety Vengeance Queen’s hunt was going better than his own though it was probably just as cold if not colder and stormier forty miles southwest of here, in Sundown. Knowing how good luck always seemed to ride with Louisa, she’d probably taken down Sweets DuPree and Pima Quarrels ten minutes after she’d first ridden into town and was now soaking in a hot, soapy tub, awaiting the train.

  Hatchley leaned out from his seat so he could peer around the stove at Prophet. “Why don’t you go ahead and pop the cork on that busthead, Lou? What you waitin’ for—Christmas? We’ll sit here an’ share the bottle and swap lies. The trip will go all that much faster!”

  The outlaw had nudged Prophet out of his reverie. Lou looked down at the whiskey bottle resting on his thigh. He popped the cork on the fresh bottle and grinned around the stove at Hatchley eyeing the bottle hungrily. He glanced out the window beyond the outlaw, through a clear patch in the frost, to see the snowy countryside sliding by at about fifteen, sixteen miles per hour. “Oh, it’s goin’ fast enough, Gritch. Me—I’m gonna enjoy this warm stove . . . and this fresh bottle of prime, top-shelf tangleleg. Cheers!”

  He winked, raised the bottle to his lips, and took several long pulls.

  Hatchley cursed him roundly and told him to do something physically impossible to himself.

  Laughter rose from the front of the car. Prophet just realized that Shambeau’s snores had ceased. Now as Prophet poked the cork back into the bottle he saw Shambeau sitting up and smiling over the back of his seat toward Prophet and Hatchley.

  The Canadian laughed again, chuckling. He turned forward, dropped his feet to the floor, then rose, holding his blanket about his shoulders though he was wearing a heavy fur coat, and hurried, shivering, back toward where Prophet and Hatchley sat near the woodstove.

  “Cold up there! Le ciel, m’aide, mes amis! You don’t mind if I join you back here by the fire—do you, pards?”