“That don’t count, Harold,” Clyde said. He looked at Duvall. “He caught a preacher diddlin’ his ma at a church picnic and shot him with his pa’s old Patterson Colt. Shot him in the ass.” Clyde wheezed with laughter, his face turning crimson. “You shot a preacher in the ass, Harold. That don’t count!” Clyde guffawed.
“Why don’t it count?” Harold wanted to know.
When Clyde only laughed and wagged his head, Harold turned to Duvall. “I’d say that counts, wouldn’t you, Mr. Duvall?”
“Well, I don’t know,” Duvall said, scratching his head with mock consideration. “I guess it would count if you were aimin’ at his ass. If not”—Duvall shrugged—”I guess I’d have to say no.”
Harold frowned.
“See, Harold?” Clyde mocked.
Harold scrunched his face up at Clyde angrily, but before he could say anything, Duvall said, “Hold on, hold on, boys! On the basis of your obviously questionable characters and clear determination to walk a crooked path, wreaking pain and havoc wherever you go, I would indeed make you probationary members of my gang—if I could.”
Clyde wrinkled his brow. “If you could?”
“If I could,” Dave said. “But I can’t. I’m sorry, boys, but as you can see, the rest of the Red River Gang isn’t here. Due to circumstances beyond our control, we had to split up for a while. We won’t be back together for... uh ... for some time, I’m afraid. And it just wouldn’t be right if I brought in new members without giving the others a say in the matter.”
Clyde was about to object, but Duvall held up his hand, stopping him. “I’m sorry, Clyde. Truly, I am. But that’s the way the Red River Gang operates. Every gang has to have rules, and that’s one of our rules. It’s inviolable, I’m afraid.”
Duvall raised his hands and dropped them with futility and shook his head. The three lads sat the saddles of their fidgeting mounts with grim expressions on their dusty faces. Harold and Danny cut their eyes at Clyde accusingly. Clyde was staring at his saddle horn, sheepish.
“Well, if that’s the way it is, I guess that’s the way it is,” Clyde allowed quietly.
“Goddamn you, Clyde,” Danny admonished. “You said for sure he’d let us join.”
“Yeah, goddamn you, Clyde,” Harold intoned. “Now we’re gonna have to go back to the fort.”
“We can’t go back to the fort, you moron,” Danny said. “Not after all that money Clyde stole.”
Clyde sighed and began reining his mount toward the east side of the yard. “Yeah, I guess we’ll just have to head south. Maybe disappear in the Black Hills for a while.”
Duvall’s ears had pricked at the mention of money. He’d lost every penny he’d owned when the bounty hunter had surprised his gang at their hideout in the northern part of the territory. He didn’t have a cent—beyond the few dollars he intended to take from Jack and Margie, that was— and he desperately needed cash for his long trip south, to the Indian nations, where he intended to hide until the law forgot about him and he could put together another gang.
If he traveled like most men, living off the land, jerked beef, and coffee, he might have gotten by on what he intended to steal from Jack and Margie. But Dave Duvall did not, could not, travel like most men. His previous lifestyle had conditioned him to luxury, which included sporting women and whiskey at the very least, even on the desperation trail.
“What money?” Duvall asked, trying not to sound too eager.
Clyde checked his bay back down and glanced at Duvall over his shoulder. “Oh, we ran into the three fellas that sold remounts to the fort earlier today. I recognized ‘em from a distance and got a wild hair up my ass. Next thing we knew, we was sneakin’ up on their camp. We shot ‘em all as they snoozed around their coffee fire—”
“And made off with pret’ near a thousand dollars!” Danny added, lifting his head to the purple sky and giving a grand coyote hoot.
“I know that ain’t very much to a man like you, Mr. Duvall,” Clyde said. “But that’s more money than the three of has ever even dreamed about. I reckon we’ll be on the lam for a while. Well, it was nice meetin’ you, and maybe we’ll run into you again sometime.”
“Uh, hold on, boys,” Duvall said, feigning a considering air, crossing his arms on his chest and propping one finger against his chin. “Maybe I’ve been too hasty in my decision.”
The boys sawed back on their reins and turned to Duvall expectantly.
“What’s that, Mr. Duvall?” Clyde said.
“Yes, well, I was just thinking,” Dave said, “I guess the gang could vote on you three after we’ve all gotten together again. I mean, I really wouldn’t be bringing you into the gang if I just let you ride with me for a few months.”
Clyde shrugged; his eyes growing large. “No, I reckon not.”
“We could even look at it as your trial period,” Duvall speculated. “If you boys always did as I said and learned what I had to teach you, the gang might just be inclined to welcome you into its fold.”
Clyde grinned. “I sure as hell bet they would, Mr. Duvall!”
Duvall nodded objectively, studying the ground as if looking for coins he’d dropped, finger still propped on his chin. “Yes... yes. That might work.” He looked at the eager lads and smiled. “All right, I’m game to give it a shot. You can bed down in the barn yonder. I’ll have Margie haul you out some grub. We’re leaving for the Indian nations first thing in the morning. You can switch your army mounts with any of those you see in that corral on the other side of the barn. Comprende, amigos?”
All three heartily agreed, and headed off to the barn, thanking Duvall over their shoulders and assuring him he’d made the right decision.
Duvall watched them disappear in the darkness. If they got on his nerves, he could always shoot them and take their money. That wouldn’t be any big chore. On the positive side, he now had three more sets of eyes on his back trail. And you couldn’t have too many eyes where he was going, into the fiery bowels of the Indian nations, where he’d be only one more desperado on the lam and at odds with others just like him.
“Hi, Jack,” he greeted the beaten man now as he stepped onto the porch. He squeezed Jack’s shoulder and said with a quiet, mocking air, “Where’s your wife?”
Jack rumbled like a volcano, his chair creaking beneath him.
“Oh, I forgot you can’t speak on account of your broken jaw,” Dave said with an air of understanding. “That’s all right. Don’t trouble yourself. I’ll just go in and find her myself.”
He laughed and went inside the cabin.
Behind him, Jack boiled in his chair, red-faced and sweating.
Chapter Ten
“DAVE, I’M A married lady,” Margie protested.
“So, what are you sayin’?” Dave asked as he grunted between her knees.
“It ain’t... it ain’t right, Dave, us carryin’ on with Jack sittin’ right out there on the porch.” She sighed and groaned and wagged her head from side to side on the pillow.
“Well, all right, Margie girl,” Dave said heavily. “If you want me to stop, I’ll stop.”
She scissored his back with her legs and threw her arms around his neck. “Don’t you dare!”
A few minutes later, a tap sounded on the door.
“Go away!” Dave barked, still at work, sweating between Margie’s knees.
Another tap on the door. A throat was cleared. “Dave? It’s Bill. Bill Maggs.”
Margie lifted her head and jerked an exasperated gaze at the door lit by the lamp on the dresser. “For the love of God, Bill, go away!”
“Shut up,” Dave scolded Margie, clamping a hand over her mouth. Glancing at the door and raising his voice, he said, “Is he dead?”
“Uh...” the man said through the door, tentative. “I don’t think so, Dave.”
“What!” Duvall exclaimed, rolling angrily off Margie and grabbing his pants from a chair. He hopped into the breeches, cursing, and opened the door.
Bill Maggs stood in the doorway, looking crestfallen and scared. He was Jack Clawson’s woodcutting partner— or had been before Dave had beaten Jack senseless. Fearful for his own life, Bill had quickly become Dave’s truckling servant. Dave had sent Bill to Bismarck to see if anyone was looking for Dave.
Sure enough, Bill had heard a tall man with a sawed-off shotgun had been asking around the saloons and brothels. Hearing this, Dave had sent Bill and Bill’s stepson, Edgar, to dry-gulch the man. They’d assured Dave they could do it, and Dave reminded the wizened little man of that now, drawing him up by the collar of his grimy undershirt.
“I know, I know. Jeepers, I sure am sorry, Dave, but it wasn’t my fault. Edgar—he took the first shot at him and missed!”
“Goddamn, you, Bill!” Dave seethed in the little man’s face, tearing the undershirt bunched in his fists.
“I’m sorry, Dave. But it wasn’t my fault. It was Edgar’s! That boy’s just like his mother! Doesn’t amount to a speck o’ fly shit!”
“Where is he?” Dave said, savagely jerking at Bill’s shirt, flecks of spittle flying from his quivering lips.
“Dead,” Bill said. “He ... that bounty hunter shot him.”
Dave sighed and released Bill’s shirt. “Good,” he growled. His angry eyes turned pensive. “So he is a bounty hunter, eh?”
“That’s what Muriel Pierce over at the Pink Lady told me. A Southern bounty hunter, one o’ the best in the business.”
“What’s his name?”
“Prophet, I believe Muriel said. Lou Prophet.” Bill smiled. “Rides a big, mean horse, but the girls like him.”
Duvall turned away, nervously scratching his jaw. “Prophet, eh? I’ve heard that name. Lou Prophet. Yeah, I’ve heard of him a time or two. Damn you, Bill!”
“I sure am sorry, Dave, but like I said—”
“I know, I know. It’s not your fault,” Duvall groused, grabbing his shirt and shrugging into it. “Go out to the barn and tell them three boys camped out there to get their horses saddled, and one for me—and not that old paint I rode in on. We’re pullin’ out in fifteen minutes!”
Bill stood in the doorway looking puzzled. “Boys ... barn?”
“You heard me, you moron. Any one of ‘em is more man now than you’ll ever be! Move!”
“R-right away, Dave!” Bill said as he dashed for the door.
“Dave, where are you going?” Margie lay nude on the bed, propped on an elbow and curling a wisp of disheveled hair with a finger.
“I gotta go, Margie girl,” Dave said breathlessly as he tucked his shirt in his pants. “One thing I learned here tonight is to never send fools to do a man’s work.”
He found his socks and sat on the bed to pull them on. “I knew I should have gone after that Prophet fella myself, but I didn’t want the law to catch me in town. Then I’d really be up shit creek. But I’m up shit creek anyway, because now—on account of that dumbass Maggs and his dumbass stepson—Prophet knows I’m around. And no doubt he’ll figure out I’ve been holed up here. Sooner or later. It’s just a matter of time for a cussed bounty man like that one there.”
“He won’t find you here, Dave.”
“Won’t he?” Dave said as he reached for his boots. “You’ve had a lot of travelers pass through here the last few days. No tellin’ if one or two might’ve recognized me. My handsome mug’s right famous, you know, Margie girl.”
“I reckon you got a point there, Dave. Still, though, I sure hate to see you go. I mean, it wasn’t right how you treated Jack, but before you came”—Margie rolled her eyes, glancing around the stark room—”it was so boring around here.”
“I’m sure it was, Margie,” Dave said with a laugh, standing and stomping his heels into his boots. He reached for his gun belt coiled around a bedpost and strapped it on, adjusting the holster on his thigh and tying the thong just above his knee. “But I think I can do something to keep things from being quite so boring around here from now on, Margie.”
“What do you mean, Dave?”
“I mean, Margie,” Dave said, sitting beside her on the bed and regarding her sympathetically, brushing a lock of hair from her face. “I mean, I think I can take the boredom away, for good.”
She stared at him, concern growing in her large eyes. “What are you talkin’ about, Dave?”
Dave pinched her right breast like he would a melon, checking for ripeness. Then he ran the fingers of his right hand lightly along her plump thigh. Her skin quivered slightly at his touch, goose bumps rising.
“I mean, I sure am sorry I have to do this, Margie, but damn, if you ain’t too purty not to shoot.”
Slowly, he drew his revolver and clicked back the hammer.
Margie’s eyes widened as she pushed up on her elbows, lifting her knees before her. “What? Dave, what are you doing?”
“Thanks for the good time, Margie,” Dave said, smiling with glassy-eyed insanity. “But you know what the preachers always say: good times don’t last forever. No, they sure don’t. The grim reaper comes callin’ sooner or later. It’s just a little sooner for you, I’m afraid.”
“Dave, no!” Margie pleaded, her eyes on the gun Duvall swung toward her. “No, Dave, please! Why? Oh, my—”
The sharp crack of the forty-five finished the sentence for her. Her head flaw back against the wall, the hole in her forehead gleaming wetly. Slowly, she sagged to the side and lay limp across both pillows.
Dave gave her thigh one last appreciative pat, then donned his hat and walked into the main room, where only one bracket lamp was lit, sending a weak, liquid light wavering over two tables while leaving the rest of the room in semidarkness. He took one step forward and heard a commotion on the porch. He hurried to the porch door and drew his gun.
Turning to his right, he saw the overturned rocking chair and the dark figure of Jack Clawson trying to crawl to the other end of the porch, making hoarse, fearful rasping sounds as he scuttled bug like on his hands and knees, trying to escape his fate.
“Oh, no you don’t, Jack,” Duvall said with a menacing chuckle. “You ain’t goin’ nowhere.” With that he raised the gun and fired, and Jack fell on his face with a guttural sigh.
Turning toward the barn, Dave saw something move in the darkness about halfway across the yard.
“Bill, that you?” he called.
The figure stood still, on the other side of a horse trough.
“What’s all the shootin’ about, Dave?”
Dave stepped off the porch and moved fluidly across the yard, toward the stocky, dark, hatted figure of Bill Maggs. “I just shot Margie and Jack,” he said matter-of-factly. “And I’m afraid I’m going to have to shoot you, too, Bill.”
“Huh? What?” Bill said, frozen there in the shadows.
As Duvall approached him, he extended his gun and blew a hole in the man’s head, just above his left ear. Bill hadn’t dropped before Dave had resumed his purposeful stride toward the barn, before which the three lads were standing and staring, looking jittery.
“What’s all the shootin’ about?” Clyde asked.
“Just tyin’ up some loose ends,” Duvall said. “You boys have those horses saddled yet?”
“Well, no,” Clyde reported. “We heard the shootin’ and we—”
“Boys, if you’re gonna ride with me, you have to do as you’re told, shootin’ or no shootin’. Now get those horses saddled before I change my mind about lettin’ you throw in with me.”
With that, the three young men scurried back into the barn, and Duvall followed them. Ten minutes later, they were all mounted on fresh horses and galloping south toward the buttes along the river.
Behind them, Bill Maggs gurgled and died.
Chapter Eleven
LOUISA BONAVENTURE WOKE much later in the morning than she was used to—before she was wounded, that was. Blinking her eyes and lifting her head from her pillow, she saw that full golden sunlight angled through her room’s single, fly-specked window. On the street below
she heard voices and the squawk and clatter of freight wagons and the whinnies and snorts of the teams.
She reached for her timepiece on the nightstand, and flipped it open. Eight forty-five. She’d slept half the morning away!
She’d decided last night it was time to take the search for Handsome Dave Duvall into her own hands, if only to spite the cunning Prophet. As she got up and started her toilet, she burned at the nerve of the man, trying to sweet-talk her into letting him track Duvall down alone!
Who did Prophet think he was, trying to tell her what to do? It hadn’t been his family that maniac had murdered! And to think she’d actually started to trust the big man, and to even rather sort of enjoy his earthy, if uncouth, company!
Harumph! No more! From now on she wouldn’t let him ride with her!
She had to smile, though, at the thought of the look that must have been on his face when he’d turned around last night to find her gone. Vanished into thin air! Actually, when she’d seen the sheriff, she’d just slipped off down the side street and made her way back to the hotel via alleys, hoping Prophet got what he deserved for making a fool out of her with that fancy dress and his tricky charms.
A night in the hoosegow. Yes, that’s exactly what the man deserved.
Louisa dressed in her trail clothes: her simple gray farm dress and ratty poncho, which concealed her silver-plated, short-barreled revolver and her sheathed knife honed to a razor edge. She snugged her hat on her blonde head, letting the acorn fastener hang beneath her chin. When she’d packed up her saddlebags, she grabbed her Winchester and headed out, halting at Prophet’s door to hook the fancy dress he’d bought her over the knob.
She found a simple cafe run by a buxom old German woman just up the street, and sat down to a meal of eggs, potato pancakes, and bratwurst. When the woman returned to refill Louisa’s empty coffee cup, Louisa wiped her mouth with her napkin and said, “Ma’am, may I inquire as to where the worst part of this village might lie? I mean, I know it’s all bad, and if all were right with the world the Missouri would swell up and take it all asunder, but I mean the really terrible part of town.”
Lou Prophet 4 Page 8
