Lou Prophet 4

by Peter Brandvold

  With grim determination, he worked on the face for close to a minute. He punched with his clenched, gloved fist, knuckles turned out. He drew the arm back like a piston, then shot it straight forward, over and over, at regularly spaced intervals, opening tear after tear on the already-swollen face of the woodcutter.

  When he was satisfied with his work, Duvall stood and stared down at the unconscious Jack Clawson, whose face gleamed with blood. Duvall brought his boot back, then shot it into Jack’s ribs. Duvall could tell from the snapping sound that he’d broken at least two.

  His chest rising and falling, his eyes round and dark, he turned to the door. The other man was gone.

  Duvall turned to Margie, who stood against the wall with her head in her hands, sobbing. “You see, Margie girl,” he said, “what we have between us is powerful!”

  Chapter Seven

  “NO, I AIN’T seen Handsome Dave Duvall lately,” the bartender said, his dark eyes as big as some of the coins glittering up from the mahogany. “You don’t need to describe him for me. I know what he looks like. Was on a stage he held up outta Deadwood a year or so back. He and his boys raped the three women on board: an old lady, a parson’s wife, and a twelve-year-old girl. We men had to watch or get shot.

  “I got sick and turned away for a second, and got a rifle butt to the back of my head. Cracked my skull. I still have headaches so bad I can’t sleep at night.”

  The barman shook his head, his round face slack and expressionless, eyes filmed with bad memories. “So you don’t need to tell me what that devil looks like. If I woulda seen him in here, I’d have recognized him. I woulda peed down my leg, skinned out the back, and hid in the privy.” He glanced at the sawed-off ten-gauge hanging by the lanyard down the bounty hunter’s back. “I’ll tell you this, though. I hope you get him. I don’t see how it’s likely, but I hope you do, just the same.”

  Prophet nodded and threw back his whiskey. Tossing a silver dollar on the bar, he said, “I appreciate your story. I’ll add it to the others I have in my head and remember it when I take him down.”

  Prophet pushed through the crowd of day drinkers and pleasure girls, and parted the batwings, halting on the boardwalk beside the wide, rutted street. Damn. That must have been the fifteenth person Prophet had asked about Handsome Dave since he and Louisa had ridden into Bismarck yesterday. He’d talked to bartenders, sporting women, liverymen, and even a few traveling drummers he’d stopped on the street or seen in saloons.

  Not one had seen him. And most knew the name, knew who Prophet was talking about. Prophet had seen the consternation and downright fear in their eyes, as though he’d shown them an evil talisman. As though just mentioning the bastard’s name had reminded them of their mortality.

  Prophet turned left and walked over to Gustaffson’s Livery Barn carved into the side of a hill on the south end of town, overlooking the distant blue sweep of the Mighty Mo under a clear Dakota sky. He’d already talked to Gustaffson himself, but the liveryman had told him he might want to speak with the kid who worked on Thursdays and weekends, when Gustaffson went fishing.

  Today, Gustaffson was fishing, and Prophet found the freckle-faced livery boy repairing a harness in the stuffy tack room in a lean-to shed. The kid hadn’t seen Handsome Dave, either.

  “Are you huntin’ him, mister?” the kid inquired after Prophet had turned away, confounded.

  “That’s right.”

  “Are you a bounty hunter?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Oh, boy! If you take down Handsome Dave, will you do me a favor?”

  His frown deepening, Prophet turned back to the pudgy lad. “What’s that?”

  “Cut off one of his ears and give it to me?”

  When Prophet just stared at the child, the boy continued. “Willy Crockett has one of Curly Bill Carlson’s ears. His pa won it off a drummer in a poker game. The drummer won it off the bounty hunter who took Curly Bill down in Milestown. Willy, he’s always showin’ off that ear. I sure would like to have a famous outlaw’s ear for my ownself— so I can show it around like Willy does Curly Bill’s ear, scarin’ all the girls.”

  Prophet grimaced and put his hand on the kid’s shoulder. “Son, that’s pathetic, you wantin’ to show off dead men’s ears to get attention. Don’t you see that?”

  The kid looked up at him dully.

  “You should be playin’ marbles and snarin’ gophers and carrying girls’ schoolbooks for them, not worryin’ about collectin’ the dried-up old ears of dead outlaws to frighten them with. That’s disgusting.”

  The kid stared at him, sullen. “That mean you won’t do it?”

  Prophet sighed and turned away. Young ’uns, these days. As he stepped through the barn doors into the afternoon glare, he heard the kid mutter behind him, “Old fart.”

  Prophet wandered back up to the main drag, heading for the hotel where Louisa was holed up, sleeping off her gunshot fatigue. He stopped suddenly before the window of a ladies’ clothing shop. Bonnie Rae’s Fine Clothing for Women and Young Ladies, read the shingle over the boardwalk.

  Getting an idea, Prophet went in. He came out fifteen minutes later carrying a paper sack. He looked around, then headed up the boardwalk until he came to a mercantile, and turned through the door. A few minutes later, he appeared on the boardwalk again with another, smaller parcel in his other hand.

  The hotel in which he and Louisa had taken rooms sat on the corner of Main Street and First Avenue, catty-corner from both the Great Northern depot and a lumberyard. Its chipped green paint had faded to a dingy lime, and the rooms offered little more than lumpy beds, but it was a cheap place to bed down when you didn’t know how long you were staying.

  A little boy and a girl dressed in homespun farm clothes were chasing a barking yellow mutt in circles at the foot of the porch steps, and Prophet nearly tripped over them as he turned from the deeply rutted street and headed for the lobby.

  When he’d fetched his key from the surly gent at the front desk, he climbed the creaky stairs and knocked on the door of room eight. Through the door he heard the click of a gun hammer.

  Louisa said, “Who is it?”

  “Santy Claus.”

  Behind the door, bedsprings squawked. Bare feet padded on the floor. The bolt was thrown and the door opened. In only her chemise and pantaloons—she’d stopped feeling shy around Prophet when she’d first been wounded back in Fargo—Louisa stared at him, unamused. Her silver-plated pistol hung slack in her right hand.

  Grinning, Prophet lifted the largest of the two parcels. “Ho-ho-ho!”

  She canted her head to one side and pursed her lips. “Any sign of Duvall?”

  Prophet shook his head. “Not yet. But I’ve put the word out I’m lookin’ for him. In the meantime, get dressed.” He shoved the parcel at her. “We’re goin’ out.”

  “What’s this?”

  “Open it.”

  She looked in the bag, reached in, and pulled out the dress. Dropping the sack, she held the garment up before her, studying it as though it were something Prophet had fished out of a privy hole.

  “What, don’t you like it?”

  She studied it silently, her mouth slackening. ‘This must’ve cost a pretty penny.”

  “Near the last of my poke, but don’t worry. The sheriff here should have a reward waitin’ for me in his safe, for a couple stage robbers I hauled in a few months back.”

  Louisa’s eyes were still on the dress. “What’s it for?”

  “A night on the town. You and me. I thought we’d have supper over at the Bismarck Hotel with the civilized folk. I’m told the Bismarck has the best food in the territory. Yankee generals eat there, including Custer—before the Greasy Grass, that was.” He chuckled.

  Louisa lowered the dress and arched her brows accusingly. “You’ve been drinking. While you were supposed to be out inquiring of the whereabouts of our quarry, you were throwing back spirituous fire in one of the umpteen saloons in this den of ini
quity.”

  “I’m not drunk... yet,” Prophet said, shaking his head and grinning. “But I aim to be right soon. I’ll go down and have the desk clerk send up water for a bath. Let’s meet in the lobby around”—he fished in his pocket for his battered old timepiece and flipped the lid—”say five o’clock? I figured we’d have a couple before-dinner drinks, then—”

  “If you’re not drunk, you’ve gone insane. I will not frolic while Handsome Dave is free to rape, maim, and kill!”

  “There’s nothing to be done till tomorrow, anyway.”

  “It’s not right.”

  “It is right, and what’s more, you’re gonna do it. You’ve been on the blood trail so long, you forgot what it’s like to have fun. Tonight, Miss Bonny-venture, you’re gonna have fun, if I have to hog-tie you and throw you over my shoulder to do it!”

  The desk clerk’s voice rose up the stairwell from the first story. “I don’t allow no arguing or roughhousing on the premises,” the man admonished. “I warned you two before!”

  “Sorry,” Prophet said, pushing Louisa into the room.

  “I knew you two were gonna be trouble,” retorted the clerk as Prophet shut the door behind him.

  In the room, Louisa crossed her arms over her breasts again, cocked her head suspiciously, and squinted her right eye at the bounty hunter. “Are you trying to romance me, Lou Prophet?”

  Staring down at the girl, who held the dress in one hand, his eyes turned thoughtful. Through a smoky grin, he drawled, “I ain’t sayin’ I am or I ain’t, but I will tell you this. I’d give my right arm to see a girl who looks like you in a dress that looks like that.”

  Louisa stared back at him hard. But then, as his words reached her brain, her expression softened. She blinked as though waking from a daydream, and the lines in her forehead planed out: She parted her lips as if about to speak. She did not speak, however. Instead, she lowered her chin and dropped her befuddled eyes to the floor, her ears and neck turning rosy.

  “Well,” she murmured at last, giving a little shrug and turning the dress in her hand. “It is a nice dress, and since you bought it for me ... I guess I could—”

  Prophet’s grin widened, and he turned to the door. “I’ll go down and tell the clerk you want some bathwater,” he said, his hand on the knob. “I’m gonna find me a barber with a sharp razor and a hot tub. See you in an hour or so.”

  He went out and began closing the door, then hesitated and poked his head back in. She still stood there, staring at the dress. “Oh, there’s some blue hair ribbons in the sack,” Prophet said. ‘The lady at the shop said they’d look good with the dress.”

  Prophet winked, pulled his head out of the room, and closed the door behind him. Entering his own room next door, he tossed the shotgun on the bed, grabbed his saddlebags, and left the hotel. He found a barbershop ten minutes later, and soaked in water so hot it nearly peeled the skin from his trail-weary bones.

  When he’d climbed out of the tub, he donned the relatively clean denims and pin-striped cotton shirt in his saddlebags, then fished the string tie out of the small parcel he’d purchased at the mercantile. In a chipped mirror nailed to a joist, he looped the tie around his neck, and, after a half-dozen missteps, finally worked it into a passable knot.

  ‘There, that should do it,” he said, patting the knot flat against his throat but stretching his neck against the restriction. The blood burning in his head, he felt as though he had a noose around his neck. Who in the hell came up with the idea that a man would look tricky wearing a noose around his neck? Probably the Eastern dandy who invented the damn things.

  When he’d lost a good half-inch of his straight, sandy hair, and his jaws were scraped clean and scented with tonic water, he paid the barber, bade him good evening, and started back to the hotel. He wore only half-clean trail garb and his scuffed boots, but the string tie, shave, and haircut made him feel spiffy. So spiffy, in fact, that he even caught himself bowing with a flourish to the ladies he met on the street.

  When he knocked on Louisa’s door, she yelled that she needed a few more minutes, as her hair wasn’t dry. Smiling at that—at how much like any ordinary girl she suddenly sounded—Prophet told her he’d meet her downstairs in the lobby, and headed that way.

  He’d smoked one and a half cigars before she appeared on the stairs, the folds of the aquamarine dress brushing against her legs. She’d brushed her honey blonde hair back and tied the ribbons in it, and it hung down past her shoulders. Her skin, tan from the trail, fairly gleamed with the recent scrubbing. She smelled good, too, like lavender and sage. Her eyes were bright with a subdued, girlish charm, an expression Prophet had never seen there before.

  He was relieved to see it there now. Suddenly, she was just a kid like every other kid her age, feeling fresh and pretty and ready for a night with the boy who’d been sparking her. Only Prophet wasn’t sparking her. Or was he? He himself wasn’t sure. All he knew was that he wanted to see her in a nice dress for a change—without a gun and a knife on her waist and a murderous light in her eye.

  “Why, Miss Louisa, I do declare!” he exclaimed, running his eyes up and down her sweet, supple frame. “You look ravishing.”

  A girlish blush spread over her face, and Prophet offered his arm. “Shall we?”

  With a noncommittal shrug, she said, “Have it your way,” and looped her arm through his.

  Twenty minutes later, a red-jacketed waiter led them across the Bismarck Hotel’s carpeted dining room, through a sea of tables draped with linen and set with silver. Although he doubted he’d know anyone in these venerable digs, Prophet’s eyes instinctively swept the room for friend or foe. The other diners appeared to be wealthy cattlemen or horse buyers from Chicago or farther east. Some were seated with either their wives or painted ladies decked out in the conservative tones and cuts of Libby Custer. Prophet knew for a fact that one such “lady” had a murky past, as he’d wallowed in her murk one blissful night a year ago, in Council Bluffs, Iowa.

  She grinned as Prophet and Louisa passed her table, her liquid brown eyes catching the windows’ fading light. Prophet gave a discreet nod, then sank into the chair the waiter held out for him, and noticed Louisa’s critical gaze across the table.

  When the waiter had given them menus and left, Louisa said, “Who’s that?”

  Prophet pretended to be lost in the menu. “Hmm?”

  “The lady who lit up like a Christmas tree when she saw you.”

  Prophet flushed but kept his eyes on the menu. “Just an old friend,” he said, as though bored. He glanced around the room at the drapes and chandeliers and hissing gas jets, and let his eyes fall on Louisa. “So, what do you think?”

  Louisa was staring at Prophet’s old friend. “I think she’s a shameless harlot masquerading as that man’s respectable wife. She didn’t fool me for a second. I suppose the reprobate’s poor wife is back home, cleaning his house and tending his children, while he cavorts with fallen women.”

  “I meant the digs.”

  Reluctantly, Louisa tore her eyes from the woman and let her gaze wander the room briefly. Shrugging, she said, “I guess it isn’t too bad—for this backwater perdition.”

  Prophet sighed and returned to his menu. When the waiter returned, Louisa ordered the roast beef with new potatoes and baby peas and carrots. Prophet ordered a T-bone, charred.

  “And we’d like a bottle of wine. The best you have for under five dollars.”

  “I’ll have a sarsaparilla,” Louisa piped up with a smug set to her mouth, her hands clasped before her on the table.

  While the waiter hovered over him nervously, Prophet said, “Louisa, you can’t come to a place like this and order sarsaparilla. Tonight, we’ll have wine.”

  “I’ve told you before, Lou, I do not imbibe.” She slid her eyes to Prophet’s “friend” across the room. “Look what the devil’s brew has done to her!”

  Both Prophet and the waiter glanced at the young lady, who sat holding her long
-stemmed wineglass while listening dutifully as her gray-haired companion in a stylish suit and bolo tie gassed over his porterhouse.

  To Louisa, Prophet said with a chuckle, “You could do a hell of a lot worse than her, my friend.”

  “Ha! At the cost of my dignity and self-respect. No, thank you. Sarsaparilla will be great plenty for me.”

  Prophet looked at the waiter, who returned the look with brows raised expectantly, his eyes vaguely troubled.

  “Just bring me a double shot of rye,” Prophet grunted. “Sarsaparilla for the girl.”

  When their food arrived, Prophet set to work hungrily, forgetting his surroundings and reverting to the trail custom of wolfing his food. He was gnawing on the T-bone with the contentment of an old dog under a wagon, when, suddenly feeling self-conscious, he looked around and saw several other diners staring at him.

  Prophet froze, then dropped the bone on his plate. Wiping his greasy hands on his cloth napkin, he glanced up at Louisa, who regarded him with amusement, then lifted her sarsaparilla to her lips and drank.

  When the waiter had taken their plates and brought apple pie and coffee, Prophet glanced at his companion. Louisa appeared content as she sipped her coffee and ate her pie. Not only that, but she appeared to be enjoying herself, her previous reservations having faded. There was a serene flush in her cheeks and a rare sparkle in her eyes.

  She looked like a girl who would go home later, stop on her porch to admire the stars, play a few bars on the piano, kiss her parents good night, and fall blissfully asleep on a soft feather mattress. Indeed, she looked downright civilized.

  Deciding this was as good a time as any to broach the subject he’d been meaning to broach for days, Prophet took the bull by the horns.

  “Louisa,” he said, then sipped his coffee and cleared his throat. “I think you should stay here in Bismarck while I track Handsome Dave alone.”

  She regarded him deadpan from across the table.

  “Did you hear me?”