Blood at Sundown

by Peter Brandvold

  Again, Prophet chuckled from where he hovered in that dreamland suspended between wakefulness and slumber. “You’re a playful one, ain’t ya? Say, honey,” he said, shivering, “would you mind closing the windows? I feel a chill comin’ on.”

  He waited.

  The chill grew. Without opening his eyes, he reached for the blankets, wanting to pull them over his cold, naked body, but he couldn’t seem to find them.

  The chill grew until he felt as though he’d been submerged in cold water.

  “Say, honey, I think it must be . . .” He sat up suddenly, looking around. “. . . rainin’,” he finished the sentence only because the word was still sliding across his lips though he could see now that it was not raining.

  No, it wasn’t a Mexican rain vexing him. In fact, he was nowhere near Mexico.

  What was vexing him was the two or three feet of deep, pillowy, freshly fallen snow that lay beneath him and even on top of him. All around him!

  Shivering violently, sensing another presence, he whipped his head to his left. There was no half-dressed señorita here with him, either. The chocolate-eyed beast staring back at him, slowly chewing its cud, was a white-faced beef cow with rubbery black lips bristled with long, coarse whiskers. The cow eyed Prophet curiously, chewing, then lowered its head to pull some wiry, brown grass up from where it jutted above the snow on the other side of the barbed wire fence between itself and the bounty hunter who sat in the deep snow at the base of the railroad bank deep in the frozen bowels of Dakota Territory.

  The beast’s breath frosted in the cold air, heavy with the smell of not south-of-the-border tequila and chili peppers but with the musky smell of summer-cured grass.

  Prophet’s body ached from head to toe. He was a two-hundred-plus-pound exposed nerve. A nerve with frostbite.

  “Oh Lordy,” he groaned, hugging himself. “Oh Lordy, Lordy, Lordy! It’s cold out here, cow! Really, really cold out here!”

  Studying him closely, the bovine stopped chewing for a moment, as though trying to understand what she’d just been told. Then, as though realizing the man was speaking only to himself, it twitched an ear and continued chewing. Several more cows flanked him, also eyeing Prophet curiously, chopping their hooves at the snow to get at the grass below.

  Prophet looked around. He felt as though he were squinting, for his field of vision appeared compromised. Then he realized the problem. His eyes were swelling closed from the pummeling he’d taken aboard the train.

  He wondered if any bones had gotten broken aboard the train, which appeared to be long gone. He wondered if he’d broken any during his tumble down the embankment. Probably not. The snow that had drifted up over the slope had made a good, soft pillow. Most of the damage done to him had been done aboard the train.

  He shifted position in an attempt to stand. Something pinched hard in his belly. He looked down at his coat. Blood had seeped into his buckskin. He remembered Leo’s pretty little stiletto.

  “Ah hell.”

  Had the cold numbed the pain of the stab wound to his midsection?

  He unbuttoned three buttons of his coat from the bottom, an awkward maneuver, given that he could just barely feel his hands. What he could feel of them ached like hell. Dread lay heavy in him. Something told him that when he opened his coat he was going to see his own innards bulging out of the hole that the depraved cuss, Leo, had opened in his belly.

  He pulled the coat open. He frowned. At least, he thought he did. With his eyes so swollen, it was hard to tell. What he could tell, however, was that there were no innards oozing out of him. His wool shirt was torn slightly just above his belly button, but there was only a silver dollar–sized bloodstain around the hole. He poked a numb finger through the hole then glanced at the square buckle of his cartridge belt.

  He grinned. He fingered the nick alongside the large, round, brass buckle.

  “That prissy-boy’s blade skidded off the buckle. It nipped me but no worse than I’ve cut myself shavin’.”

  Prophet chuckled again as he pressed a finger against his belly to make sure he was right and that he wasn’t on death’s doorstep.

  He jerked his head up suddenly.

  He’d heard something.

  Pricking his ears, he studied the snowy, brightly sunlit prairie around him. He heard it again.

  Whooping sounds drifted toward him from ahead and on his left. At first, he thought it must be wolves or coyotes. But then as the sounds continued to roll toward him across the snowy prairie to the southwest, he realized what was making those sounds.

  Indians.

  Warriors on the blood scent.

  The Cut-Head Sioux hunting party.

  Prophet closed his coat and heaved himself to his feet. Balling his bare hands, he shoved them into his coat pockets. He looked around, found a relatively easy way back up to the railbed, and took it. As he climbed, his moccasins slipping and sliding in the shin-deep snow, guns began belching and popping from the same direction from which he’d heard the coyotelike yammering.

  Finally, having fallen onto his hands and knees twice, burying his already-cold hands in the deep snow, he gained the top of the railbed, breathing hard, snot dripping from his nose. His ears were as cold as his hands, for he’d left his hat and muffler aboard the train.

  As he stood atop the railbed, he gazed off in the direction from which the howling and yowling continued to swirl on the harsh wind. The sunlight glinted off the snow like millions of tiny javelins, piercing his retinas. He removed one hand from a pocket to shield his gaze from the sun.

  Another frozen lake, smaller than the other one he’d passed aboard the train, lay to the southwest. Cows grazed along the near shoreline. On the far side of the lake, he saw the stalled train. Or most of it. From his vantage, he couldn’t see the locomotive and tender car. The railroad line ran around the east end of the lake and then around its southwest shore, between the lake and several tall buttes. The train had just started to turn around the western side of one of those buttes and continue south when it had stalled.

  For whatever reason, it sat stalled on the tracks, little larger than a caterpillar from this distance. What appeared a dozen men, the size of ants from this vantage, were milling around it—on top of it and around the near side, some on horseback, howling and yowling and triggering rifles into the coaches’ windows.

  Prophet couldn’t help quirk his mouth corners in a grim smile. “They ran you down, did they?” he said. “Gettin’ even for Little Fawn.”

  The Cut-Head hunting party had taken off across the lake, shortcutting, catching up to the train when it stalled. Prophet didn’t know if the Indians had stopped it or if it had stopped for another reason. It didn’t matter. They had it now.

  Lou couldn’t tell, but it appeared they’d taken the countess’s party by surprise. He didn’t think anyone was returning fire from the train. At least, he couldn’t see any gun flashes in the windows. He couldn’t hear the distinctive pounding of Rawdney Fair weather’s big Scheutzen sporting rifle.

  A scream slashed across the frozen lake, thin and high with agony. It was a girl-like scream but it was not a girl who’d made it. It was a man’s scream. A young, horrified man.

  Prophet fashioned another satisfied half smile. The screams, which continued, high and shrill and desperately beseeching, belonged to none other than Rawdney Fair weather, his own deserving self . . .

  Another scream joined the first.

  Prophet’s heart thudded. When the scream came again, drowning Rawdney’s, Prophet could tell it was a girl’s scream.

  “Ah no.” Slowly, Lou shook his head, eyes widening as he stared across the lake toward the train the Indians were milling around and on top of, like ants on a succulent feast. “Ah no. No,” he said again. He found himself moving back down the slope, wading through the shin-deep snow. “She didn’t . . . she didn’t have nothin’ to do with Little Fawn!” he bellowed into the wind.

  The countess’s scream came again, shorte
r and shriller. It careened toward Prophet again, again, and again, likely through a blasted-out window.

  Prophet stumbled in the deep snow, dropped to a knee. He heaved himself to his feet, a hundred aches and pains lancing him, his head throbbing from the beating the Russians had given him. Still, heart thudding, dread searing him, he found himself breaking into a shambling run out onto the lake, kicking through the finger drifts, sliding on the cracked, lumpy ice between the drifts.

  Several hundred yards stretched between him and the train. Of course, he’d never make it in time to save the countess, but he had to try. Even as incapable as he was of doing much about it . . . of even making it the entire way in his battered condition . . . he had to try.

  In his mind’s eye, he kept seeing Countess Tatiana’s girlishly devilish smile, the mischievous glitter in her eyes . . .

  Again, she screamed in raw torment and horror, and Prophet lurched into a faster run.

  As he ran, slipping on the lumpy ice between drifts, more yowls and hoof thuds rose from the direction of the train. He turned his swollen-eyed gaze toward the far end of the lake now maybe a half a mile away. The Sioux were pouring from the train, leaping off the platforms between coaches, and swinging up onto their waiting horses. They were hauling out loot in burlap sacks, which they hastily draped from their saddle horns.

  Prophet stopped, dropped to a knee. He was glad to find that his Peacemaker was still in his coat pocket. There was a good bit of snow in the pocket, as well. He pulled the gun out of the pocket, brushed the snow away with his numb hands, and wrapped his right hand around the neck. He was as ready as he could be if the Indians saw him out here and rode toward him, intending to clean this white-eye’s clock, as well.

  Relief touched his anxious heart. The Indians went galloping straight up along the train, following the tracks around the butte to the south. They were soon out of sight.

  “Tatiana,” Prophet said to himself, a little taken aback by the wariness he heard in his own voice.

  He stuffed the pistol back into his coat pocket, stuffed his hands into his pockets, as well, and continued running, if you could call his shuffling, slipping-and-sliding amble a run . . .

  * * *

  When you’re as sore, cold, and exhausted as Prophet was, time somehow speeds up and slows down at the same time. The bounty hunter had no idea how much time had passed, or even what time of day it was, when he finally gained the far lakeshore. He scrambled over rocks abutting the steep bank and gained the railbed, having to drop to his knees beside the caboose to catch his breath.

  The ground pitched around him. He was queasy, dizzy. Every bone and muscle barked out in anguish. A cracked bell tolled in his ears, every ring thrusting a sharp lance into the exposed nerve of his brain.

  He gave a great grunt of rallied energy as he heaved himself back to his feet.

  He shuffled up alongside the rear coach car—the passenger coach in which he’d been riding with his prisoner, Gritch Hatchley. He fumbled his way up onto the rear platform, stumbled through the rear door, and staggered to where he’d left Hatchley on the seat near the woodstove.

  His prisoner was where he’d left him.

  But now Hatchley’s blood mingled on the floor with the blood of his old pard Henri Shambeau. Hatchley sat in the plush-covered seat, hands still cuffed behind his back. He leaned forward slightly, attached to the seat back by the cuffs. His eyes and mouth were drawn wide in bald horror.

  The prisoner stared sightlessly. His throat had been cut and the blood had run down to form a thick, red bib over his chest. He’d also been scalped, leaving a grisly, bloody mess at the top of his head. His scalp rested bloody side up on his lap.

  “Well, there goes another five hundred dollars,” Prophet said.

  The stove was still warm. Lou groaned as he dropped to his knees beside it, holding his hands out to it, grimacing as he entwined his fingers, working blood back into the half-frozen flesh. As he did, he looked around for his Winchester. Surely, the Indians would have taken it.

  No.

  It lay on the floor with the rest of his gear, likely thrown there when the train had stopped. The Cut-Heads must have gotten so much more valuable plunder from the Russians’ cars that they hadn’t bothered with Prophet’s prized Winchester ’73. Or maybe they hadn’t seen it over there.

  For whatever reason, the rifle remained in his possession.

  When he had worked some feeling into his fingers, he reached over for the trusty long gun, picked it up, and caressed it lovingly as he heaved himself to his feet with another weary groan.

  “Come on, old buddy,” he told the rifle, staggering toward the front of the car, where the door hung open. “Let’s go see what we can do fer the girl . . .”

  He doubted there would be anything he could do. He’d arrived at the train too late.

  Still, he had to investigate. There was a chance she might still be alive.

  He stumbled down off the passenger coach, past the two stock cars in which he could hear the horses shuffling nervously, and shambled up to the first of the fancily appointed cars in the senator’s combination. He stopped suddenly, his half-frozen and swollen face shaping a grimace.

  “Well, hello there, Rawdney,” he muttered. “We meet again.”

  The fancy Dan had been stripped naked and hung by his bent legs upside down from the vestibule’s brass rail, facing outward. He was a bloody mess. Prophet wasn’t sure how much of that mess was the result of his work and how much was the result of the Cut-Heads’ work, but Rawdney was a mess, all right. The senator’s dead son stared up at Prophet in silent pleading.

  Something had been stuffed into his mouth. Prophet didn’t look too closely. He didn’t need to. He knew what the Cut-Heads had stuffed into Rawdney’s mouth.

  Prophet jerked his head up when he heard voices from inside the coach. Voices and shuffling sounds. Someone was still alive in there, moving around.

  Prophet clambered up onto the vestibule. The door was closed. He crouched to gaze through the glass pane in the upper panel. Anger flared in him as he stared through the glass. Several braves remained in the car. They were lounging around, smoking fat cigars and drinking expensive firewater straight out of cut glass decanters.

  One of them had Tatiana on the floor in the middle of the car while the others watched, laughing and yelling encouragement.

  Prophet stepped back. He rammed a live round into the Winchester’s action. He pushed the door open and rushed into the car, roaring, “She had nothin’ to do with Little Fawn’s killin’, you gutless savages!”

  He went to work with the Winchester.

  For nearly a minute, the inside of the fancy coach car sounded like a pitched battle. But only one man was shooting.

  By the time the Winchester’s trigger pinged benignly against the firing pin, all nine rounds having found the flesh of the drunken Cut-Head braves, five rapists lay strewn about the car, dead, while two more staggered out the front door, each dropping to an opposite side of the car to run, stumbling and bleeding and screaming, before they dropped to the ground and bled out their lives in the snow beside the train.

  Prophet tossed the empty Winchester onto a fainting couch and fell to a knee beside the poor battered girl. She groaned, shook her head, opened her eyes.

  Recognition showed in those chocolate orbs.

  “Lou . . . ?”

  Prophet picked her up, held her taut against him. “I’m here, darlin’. I’m here. Ole Lou’s here. You’re safe now, honey.”

  “Oh, Lou!” the countess sobbed into his chest.

  Footsteps sounded at the far end of the car.

  Prophet jerked his head up with a start, dropping his right hand to his coat pocket, wrapping his fingers around the handle of his Colt.

  “Easy, easy,” said the man moving through the front door.

  He was a stocky, heavy-shouldered white man in heavy, cold-weather gear and sporting an enormous, handlebar mustache. Frost bathed his face. A l
eather-billed watch cap was tied to his head with a thick, cream muffler.

  “I’m Will Decker, the engineer.” He stepped to one side to indicate the slightly shorter man moving into the car behind him. “This is Bart Stonecraft, my fireman.”

  The men looked around the blood-drenched car, wide-eyed. Twice as many Russians as Indians lay strewn about the car. The senator was here, as well, draped across a card table to Prophet’s left. What was left of him, that was.

  The old count sat in a chair against the window to Prophet’s right. He’d been shot so many times he probably weighed more in lead than in gristle and bone. Leo lay at his feet in much the same condition.

  Lou returned his gaze to the shocked faces of the engineer and the fireman.

  “We was holed up in the tender car . . . hidin’,” said the fireman, Stonecraft.

  “We only had a single pistol between the two of us,” Decker said a little defensively.

  “Besides . . . there was so many of ’em,” added Stonecraft. “Twenty, at least.”

  Prophet removed his hand from his coat pocket and wrapped that arm around the countess, sobbing against his chest. “Are there any other survivors?”

  Decker shook his head. “We been through the whole train. The senator’s whole party . . .” He shook his head again slowly, darkly. “Dead.”

  “That was Leaps High’s bunch,” Stonecraft said. “They lit a shuck.”

  “Yeah, well, they had every right to be piss-burned,” Prophet said, rocking the countess gently. “But they done went a little too kill-crazy. This poor girl had nothin’ to do with Little Fawn’s death.”

  “Poor Little Fawn,” Stonecraft said. “He was a good kid.”

  “How’d the train stall?” Prophet asked.

  “Snowdrift broke away from the top of the butte,” Decker said. “Covered the tracks. Not a whole lot but enough to get us stuck.”

  Stonecraft said, “We’ll get ’er shoveled out in an hour.”

  “We’ll pull out then,” Decker said, looking at the countess in Prophet’s arms. “Get that girl to a warm bed in Sundown. They got ’em a good hotel there.”