Turning quickly onto his back, Prophet fired around the three fresh holes in the ceiling boards, emptying his cylinder and filling the air around him with the stink of burned powder.
The calf bawled madly, and its mother bawled back.
After his gun hammer had clicked on a spent chamber, Prophet lay gazing up at the bullet-riddled ceiling, hoping he’d hit his mark.
Five tense seconds passed. Nothing happened.
Then a dark substance seeped through the bullet holes and the cracks between the ceiling boards. Nearly as thick as molasses, it dripped and stringed to the floor below a few feet beyond Prophet’s outstretched boots. It found the sun angling through a window, and shone dark red.
Prophet exhaled heavily. He removed his hat from his head and ran his hands through his damp hair as he heard footsteps running toward him. Layla was calling his name.
Chapter Nineteen
EARLIER THAT MORNING, Gerard Loomis awoke in the Pyramid Park Hotel in Little Missouri. He blinked his eyes and smacked his mouth, wincing at the hammer pounding at his brain.
Too much of the Forty-Mile Red-Eye again. But it was the only thing that gave him any relief from the anger and frustration he felt over the murder of his son. Over the fact that the man who’d murdered Stuart was still alive and that his men couldn’t catch him. Over the fact the man had made a fool out of him by stealing onto his own ranch headquarters and burning his barn.
Staring at the rough ceiling boards, Loomis’s jaw tightened with the old anger. If it weren’t for the Forty-Mile, he’d probably have imploded by now. The Forty-Mile and the girls, that was ...
He turned his head to see last night’s girl sleeping beside him. She lay on her back, the single sheet they’d slept with pulled down to expose her breasts. Nice little filly. Black Irish with chocolate hair. The face was a little raw featured, but then she’d been a farmer’s daughter, after all. She’d run away from her family in Missouri and come west to make a name for herself. Only fifteen years old.
Loomis grinned. If she kept performing like she had last night, she’d make a name for herself right quick. He wondered if all her screaming had been an act. If it was, it had been one hell of an act.
Proud of himself, wanting to give it another go, Loomis rolled onto his side and leaned toward her, intending to kiss her breasts until she woke. The hammer in his head increased its pounding, however, and he stopped, scowling against the pain. He rolled back and stared at the ceiling for another several minutes, until he’d decided that what he really needed was to ride back to the Crosshatch and see if any of his men had returned with information about Prophet.
Tenderly, he tossed the sheet off his nude body and dropped his legs to the floor. Rising slowly, wincing against the pain, he gathered his clothes strewn here and there about the room, and dressed.
He was sitting on the bed pulling on his boots when he froze suddenly, and, frowning, he regarded the girl over his shoulder. She hadn’t so much as stirred.
“Hey,” he said. “Wake up.”
The girl just lay there, like a statue, facing the ceiling.
He stomped into the second boot and walked around the bed. Bending over the girl—he couldn’t remember her name—he said, “Hey, wake up.”
He was about to nudge her shoulder when he saw through the pale light from the window that her eyes were open. The morning light shone in them with a ghostly gleam.
He put his head down next to her face and listened. No breath. He lowered an ear to her chest. No heartbeat.
“Good lord,” he mused, “she’s dead.”
The realization was not so much startling as a disappointment that he would not have her again. The mulatto had been his favorite, but she’d disappeared after his last visit to the Pyramid Park. Last night, this girl had exhibited the talent needed to take her place. You didn’t find many good whores in this neck of the woods.
Shit.
Inspecting her closely, Loomis saw the bruise marks on her neck. He couldn’t remember doing so, but he must have strangled her during their coupling. Bringing his hands to his face, he saw the deep nail marks, like cat scratches, above the knuckles. Rolling up his shirt sleeves, he saw several deep gouges in his forearms. She’d given a good fight, but for the life of him, he couldn’t remember a moment of it.
He shook his head, buttoning his cuffs. The screams had been for real, after all.
He donned his hat and went downstairs. The proprietor of the Pyramid Park was sweeping the boardwalk as Loomis walked outside.
“Mort, I killed the Irish girl.”
The man looked up from his work. “What’s that, Mr. Loomis?”
“I said I killed the Irish girl. It was an accident. Must’ve gotten a little rough. It’s your goddamn red-eye. I’m surprised it doesn’t happen more often.” He tossed the man a double eagle, and the astonished barman dropped his broom to catch the coin. “Get rid of her, will you?”
Loomis walked off down the street, heading for the stable. He stopped and turned around. “Try to get another Irish girl, huh? She was good.”
Then he walked over to the stable, retrieved his horse, and headed home.
The sun was about halfway up, the heat intense, when he passed through the Crosshatch gate. He rode toward the house but halted his horse when he saw the three men he’d stationed here at the headquarters standing around two horses by the main corral. Something appeared strapped to the animals’ backs.
Loomis rode over, frowning. It didn’t take him long to see that two dead men were draped facedown over the saddles, their wrists roped to their ankles. Their clothes were blood-soaked, and their holsters and saddle boots were empty. Loomis’s eyes drifted to the horses’ rumps, in which the Crosshatch brand was scorched.
It was obvious what had happened. Prophet. He’d spanked the horses home to show Loomis his handiwork.
“Who are they?” he asked through a growl, his head pounding anew.
“Kinch and Gerber,” one of the men said. All three faded him with sheepish expressions on their faces. They were each armed with a Winchester.
Loomis stared at the bodies, nodding slowly, lips pursed.
“All right,” he said calmly. “Green, Lloyd, mount up. Crowley, you stay here in case he tries to burn another one of my barns.”
“What are we gonna do, Mr. Loomis?” Green asked.
Loomis was already heading toward the stables for a fresh mount. “We’re gonna backtrack those horses.”
An hour after they left the ranch, they lost the tracks in the breaks along Prickly Pear Creek and split up to find them again, Loomis going west, Tate Green and Vernon Lloyd heading downstream along the creek’s southeastern curve.
Twenty minutes after that, Green drew his horse to a halt, frowning at the ground, and said, “Hey, Lloyd, over here.”
It was past noon, and the sun was bright and hot. Grasshoppers hummed in the pockets of dry sage, and black flies buzzed, annoying the horses.
Lloyd, a rangy cowboy with dirty blond hair poking out from a worn slouch hat, was letting his horse drink from a spring run out. “What do you have?”
‘Tracks.”
“’Bout goddamn time.” Lloyd yanked the lineback’s head up and rode over to his partner, who studied the ground with a glint in his small, deep-set eyes.
When Lloyd saw the hoof prints in the hard sand between a yucca plant and a large anthill, he climbed out of the saddle and bent down for a closer look. “Still fresh.”
“And they lead through there,” Green said, pointing to a crease in the willows lining the creek. “I’m gonna follow ‘em. Why don’t you cross upstream, in case the son of a bitch is settin’ a trap for us. Meet you on the other side.”
“Watch yourself. He’s wily.”
“I ‘tend to.”
Green kneed his horse ahead. Hearing his partner ride away behind him, he reached back and shucked his Winchester from the boot, jacked a shell in the chamber, depressed the hammer, and held t
he barrel across the pommel of his saddle.
Moving through the willows, he gazed around cautiously. When he came to the stream, he paused, fingering his trigger guard as he scoured the muddy ground. Seeing that the tracks disappeared in the brackish water, he jogged the horse ahead, the hooves making sucking sounds in the mud, the water splashing his stirrups.
The horse moved out of the stream, across the dry, rocky riverbed, and onto the opposite bank. Following the tracks, Green reined the horse to the left and rode along a cattle trail behind the willows screening the shore. The path, littered here and there with cow pies and deer scat, rose and fell, angling along the creek for nearly two hundred yards before Green discovered fresh tracks mingling with the old.
The new ones had to be those of Lloyd’s horse, entering the trail from the creek.
Green jogged his own mount ahead until a spur canyon opened on his right. The cow path did not fork here, but both sets of tracks turned into the canyon, which was about fifty yards wide and stirrup deep with buckbrush, scattered cedars, and rocks. Afternoon shadows tilted out from the east-facing wall and pooled into the chasm like blue ink drops rolling down a bottle.
Green halted his horse and stared up the canyon, feeling the hairs prick along his spine. He wanted to call out to Lloyd but knew that doing so would only give away his position. Sitting there, composing himself, he fingered the stock of his carbine with one hand and the shoulder rig which held his well-oiled thirty-eight Remington with the other, thinking it over.
All he could see were the rocky walls of the canyon, the rocks littering the canyon floor, and the blond grass through which a recently etched line had been traced between boulders.
Finally, he sighed and urged his horse slowly forward, following the trail through the bent brush. A few minutes later, he rode around a thumb of yellow rock streaked with lignite and stopped, looking straight ahead and frowning.
Vernon Lloyd stood about twenty yards before him, staring back at him with a funny, unreadable expression on his face. Beyond him stood his horse, reins dangling, cropping brush.
“What’s goin’ on?” Green called.
Lloyd opened his mouth to speak, but no words came. Green saw that the holster on Lloyd’s hip was empty and that there was a red streak across his partner’s neck—the streak he hadn’t seen at first because it was nearly the same color as the man’s neckerchief.
Lloyd’s eyes flickered and closed. His knees bent, and he fell with a groan.
Filling the space he had just vacated, a big man in a cream Stetson stepped out from a niche in the rock wall, a bloody knife in one hand, a sawed-off shotgun on a leather lanyard in the other. Green froze, his chest and throat flooding with bile as he watched the man bring the shotgun up.
Smoke and flames mushroomed from both barrels, and Green’s world went black.
Gerard Loomis had just picked up the horse tracks on the other side of the creek when he heard the shot. It sounded more like an explosion, trapped as it was in that spur canyon yonder, and he lifted his head sharply, eyes wide and fierce, black mustache twitching.
Drawing one of his gold-plated revolvers, he spurred his steeldust through the willows, across the muddy creek bed, and up the other side, turning sharply east. He galloped full out, urging the gelding with angry commands, his head down, the brim of his black hat flattened against his forehead. As he rode, he kept one eye skinned on the several sets of horse prints beneath him, keying as much on them as on the explosion.
He wasn’t surprised to see the tracks curve into the canyon. Following them, he slowed the steeldust to a halt, looking around, the revolver in his right hand held up close to his shoulder, barrel raised.
“Green?” he called. “Lloyd?”
No reply. High above the canyon, a floating hawk screeched.
With a cautious air, Loomis urged his horse slowly forward, following the serpentine trail through the bent grass. Like an animal, he sniffed the air, smelling burning buck-brush, sage, and fresh horse droppings. Green and Lloyd and no doubt Prophet were in this canyon. At least, they had been.
Loomis’s heart beat a persistent rhythm up high in his chest.
Coming around a thumb protruding from the canyon wall, he drew his horse to a sudden halt, lowering his eyes. Green lay slumped in the brush—what was left of him, that was. The smell of the blood was heavy in the hot air, and the flies were already having a field day with the corpse.
Loomis lifted his head and saw another body about thirty yards farther on, up a slight rise along the base of the canyon wall. Prophet or Lloyd?
As if to answer his question, a sudden whoop cut the silence. It was as raucous and as ear-numbing a rebel yell as Loomis had ever heard.
“EEEEEEeeeei-yi-haaaaaaa! “
Loomis jerked his eyes to the brow of the opposite canyon wall. A man stood there, both arms and a sawed-off shotgun raised high above his head. The gun came down as the man turned around, his back facing Loomis. Suddenly, the man’s trousers fell below his knees. He bent sharply forward, giving Loomis a full view of his nude, sunlit ass.
The mottled scars on Loomis’s cheeks grew livid as the blood darkened his rawboned face. Raising his revolver, he fired. When the entire cylinder was empty, he lowered the gun and peered through the smoke wafting around his head.
Prophet was gone.
Chapter Twenty
TWO DAYS LATER, Prophet walked through an early morning mist, scouring the bottom of a brushy draw for firewood. Finding a fallen branch, he stooped, picked up one end, and started dragging it back toward his camp, keeping an eye skinned for predators.
He’d eluded the Crosshatch men for two days now, since he’d trapped the two men in the spur canyon off Little Porcupine Creek and had mooned Loomis from the ridge. He knew they’d be closing soon. None seemed to be able to track, but even a city boy would be able to follow the tracks he’d left yesterday and the day before.
He just hoped they didn’t find him before he was ready.
Nearing his small, smoking fire, upon which a coffeepot gurgled and chugged, he gave a smile and wagged his head. He couldn’t help laughing at the mooning he’d given Loomis. It hadn’t been a calculated maneuver; it had come to him spur of the moment, and down went his denims and drawers. It would have served him right if he’d been plugged for such a reckless indulgence, but he hadn’t been able to help himself. He’d wanted to rub Loomis’s nose in the trap he’d set for his men, and he couldn’t have thought of a better way if he’d sat down and mulled it over beforehand.
Prophet knew he should have trained his rifle on the man and finished the whole mess right then and there. But the rifle had been in his saddle boot, and his horse had been too far away to make retrieving it feasible. So he’d indulged in a little fun. No real harm done. He’d get Loomis soon enough. Loomis and his whole goddamn crew.
Using the small ax he routinely carried in his saddlebags, he chopped the branch into sections and added several to his fire, which sputtered and hissed in the fine rain falling through the aspens towering over him. He adjusted the coffeepot in the coals, then laid several strips of the antelope he’d shot yesterday in his frying pan, and set the pan on a rock in the fire. When he’d poured a cup of coffee and rolled his first smoke of the day, he sat back against his saddle, trying to ignore the annoying mist dampening his clothes, and thought about Layla.
It wasn’t the first time he’d thought of her since leaving her the day he’d shot Kinch and Gerber and left her ranch with the bodies draped over their mounts. In fact, she’d been a constant image in the back of his mind, making him feel sort of itchy inside, like he’d inhaled poison ivy fumes. He wondered constantly, albeit half consciously, what she was up to, and he felt a heady eagerness to see her again. It was an urge he needed to resist, however, lest he put her and her brothers in danger.
No, he wouldn’t see her again until this was over. If it was ever over, that was. And if he survived it.
He still wasn’t sure
what would happen if he did survive. He’d never for a second in his entire life thought himself a marrying man, but Layla Carr had him wondering.
Exhaling a long plume of cigarette smoke, he grinned again, imagining how Layla would react to his story about mooning Gerard Loomis from that ridge top. No hothouse flower was that girl. She could appreciate a story like that, and would no doubt laugh as hard as he.
Reaching forward to give the antelope steaks a poke, he froze at the sound of tin cans rattling. Something or someone had kicked the trap line he had strung around his camp to alert him of intruders. He hesitated for only half a second before throwing himself backward over the saddle. As he hit the ground on his back, a gun popped twice, the slugs cutting the air around him with raspy whistles.
Prophet bounced to his haunches, his forty-five in his hand and pivoting in the direction from which the shots had originated. Not seeing anything but knowing he didn’t have a second to waste, he fired blindly into the surrounding shrubs and rocks of the arroyo, snapping branches from the cottonwoods.
Between his fourth and fifth shots, he heard a groan, and ceased firing. Peering through the smoke and mist, he watched a man stumble out from a bullberry shrub, heading away from Prophet, and drop to his knees.
Still crouched, gun extended, Prophet jerked around, expecting more shots. The only sound was his meat burning in the pan and the rain sizzling in the fire. Among the surrounding rocks, trees, and shrubs, he saw no more movement than a crow lighting on a branch, cawing.
Finally, he straightened, releasing a weary breath. He stood silently for several minutes, watching and listening. He couldn’t understand why there wasn’t more shooting. Certainly the man he’d shot hadn’t come alone.
But when he’d stood there, forty-five cocked, for nearly five minutes and no more gunfire erupted around him, he started walking slowly toward the wounded man, gun extended, not letting his guard down.
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