Lou Prophet 4

by Peter Brandvold

  Deciding to wait, Prophet watched the kid tuck himself back into his underwear, turn with a weary grumble, spit once more, and disappear back inside the cabin.

  “Well, I’ll be goddamned,” Prophet said under his breath. “They really are inside the cabin.”

  He looked around, wondering again if he could have walked into a trap. But the only sound was a cricket and a light stir of leaves at the very top of a nearby tree. If this were a trap, surely Duvall or the other rider would have sprung it by now.

  Doubt lingered in Prophet’s mind as he made his way back to Zeke and Louisa.

  “What did you find?” Zeke asked as Prophet approached.

  “As far as I can tell, they’re all in the cabin.”

  “They didn’t post a watch?” Louisa asked.

  “Not as far as I can tell, and I scoured every inch around the place. I don’t like how it sounds, but I say we go in.”

  Zeke nodded and gripped his rifle. “Sounds good to me.”

  “Sounds too good to me,” Louisa said darkly, lost in thought.

  “Something don’t seem right to me, either,” Prophet said. “But I knew when I started out in this trade there’d be risks involved. I don’t feel like waiting around till daylight. What do you two think?”

  “I say we take them now,” Zeke said.

  Louisa nodded. “I agree. It’s time. It’s long been time.”

  Prophet turned to his horse, which Zeke had tied to a tree with the other two. He slid his Winchester into the saddle boot, as this looked like a close-range operation, and retrieved his Richards from the saddle horn. He slung the lanyard around his neck, holding the short-barreled barn blaster under his arm as he headed out toward the trees and the cabin.

  Zeke and Louisa followed, stepping carefully, making little noise as they walked through the darkness of the woods. The only light was that shed by the crescent moon and a few stars not obstructed by clouds.

  Several times, Prophet stopped, as did the others, and they crouched and listened. Satisfied they were alone, they moved out again, Prophet in the lead’, gripping the Richards before him.

  When they finally approached the bluff behind the cabin, they stopped once more to listen. Then Prophet said softly, “The cabin’s about fifty yards on the other side of this bluff. We’ll skirt around the base of the bluff and approach the cabin from the right rear side. Zeke, you go around behind the cabin to the left. Louisa and I will take the right—after I’ve stopped up their stovepipe.”

  “Smoke ‘em out?” Zeke asked.

  Prophet nodded. “We’ll meet at the front door.”

  “You got it,” Zeke whispered.

  “Let’s do it,” Prophet said, moving forward, around the rocky base of the bluff, pushing quietly through the shrubs.

  When Prophet saw the dark outline of the cabin before him, something moved to his right, screeching. Giving a start, he brought the Richards up, his thumb ready to pull the rabbit-eared hammers back. Then he heard the wind of the beating wings.

  “Owl,” he said to Louisa and the deputy. “Just an owl.”

  Behind him, Zeke gave a relieved sigh.

  Prophet watched the giant owl wing out across the stars and lose itself in the darkness around the butte.

  The three continued on to the cabin. Prophet could hear snores resounding within. Still unable to believe Duvall’s carelessness and hoping he’d tracked the right trio of riders— he’d been sure the hoofprints had matched those of Duvall’s gang—he tore up a handful of grass and motioned to Zeke for a lift.

  The deputy crouched, lacing his hands together. Prophet set his boot in the deputy’s makeshift step, stretched, and grabbed the overhang as Zeke heaved him onto the roof from below.

  Quietly, Prophet crawled forward on hands and knees, testing the weight of the roof lest it should collapse beneath him, which had happened, to his everlasting chagrin, while trying to surprise a group similar to Duvall’s. He’d lived to tell the tale, but things had gotten a mite hairy after he’d plummeted into the badmen’s lair, waking the sleeping crew, and he doubted the good Lord would help him out of another cockamamie jam like that one.

  When he reached the stovepipe from which smoke issued, he quietly stopped it up with the grass, packing it good until not even a hairlike thread of smoke escaped the pipe. Then he carefully crawled back to the rear of the cabin and lowered himself over the side, dropping to the ground with an unavoidable thump. Crouching, he made a face as he listened to the sounds within. One of the snores ceased for a moment, then continued.

  Prophet breathed a sigh of relief and turned to Louisa, who stood at the cabin’s corner with her revolver raised.

  “In a few minutes, the smoke should get pretty thick in there,” he whispered with a smirk, brushing past Louisa toward the front door.

  He, Zeke, and Louisa had stood around the front door, backs pressed to the cabin, for nearly two minutes before one of the snorers sputtered. “Hey,” he said. “What’s goin’ on?”

  Another snorer ceased snoring and gave a sigh. “What... what the ... what the hell’s all the smoke about?”

  He coughed. “Goddamn—my eyes! Open the damn door for chrissakes!”

  “Open the door?” the other man said. “Hell, let’s get the hell outta here. Somethin’s burnin’!”

  “Grab your gun, Howard! It could be a trap!”

  Feet pounded the board floor, shaking the walls. The door burst open, and two men ran out in a gauzy shroud of eye-watering smoke.

  “Hold it there!” Prophet and Zeke yelled at nearly the same time.

  The two men heard the yells, but they did not heed the warning. They twisted around, revolvers in their hands, but before either could fire, Prophet cut one down with the Richards, and Zeke fired two rounds into the other with his Winchester.

  Prophet’s man was dead before he hit the ground.

  Zeke’s man rolled around, groaning and kicking his legs.

  Surprised and confounded to see only two men, and neither one Duvall, Louisa bounded into the cabin a second before Prophet had the same idea. He stepped in behind her, gazing through the smoke.

  “How could he not be here?” Louisa said, cupping her mouth and nose with her left hand as she peered through the smoke wafting from the sheet-iron stove in the room’s center.

  “Well, that explains the missing horses,” Prophet said.

  He turned and went out. Zeke was standing over the wounded rider. Prophet walked over and crouched down.

  “Where’s Duvall?” he asked the wiry lad with two holes in his chest.

  The kid only spat curses, fuming as blood spurted from his wounds.

  “You’re dyin’. Might as well come clean and give us Duvall,” Prophet urged.

  The kid fell silent, and a befuddled expression arranged itself on his face as he slid his eyes around as if looking for something ... someone. Then a thought appeared to dawn on the lad, and he cursed once more.

  “That son ... that son of a ... bitch,” he said, and died.

  Prophet and Zeke looked around. Louisa stood by the smoky front door, doing likewise.

  “What do you think?” the deputy asked Prophet after a while.

  “I think he gave us all the slip, his partners here included,” Prophet said. “Made off with all three horses.”

  “Shit.”

  “Yeah, I’ll say shit,” Prophet agreed. “Three horses means he can ride all day and all night. He’s probably got a good three hours on us, to boot.”

  “We’ll never catch him now,” Louisa said thinly, staring at the ground. “We’ll never catch him now.”

  Prophet looked at her. “Yes, we will.” Then he gazed off through the smoke billowing against the stars.

  “Yes, we will,” he repeated, though it sounded hollow even to himself.

  Chapter Seventeen

  DUVALL RODE HIS three horses hard through Nebraska and into Kansas, avoiding settlements where someone might recognize him. He slept only t
hree hours a night and kept his cook fires small. That’s how badly he wanted to lose the pursuers.

  He’d never seen such a formidable trio of trackers in his life. Not only had they wiped out his entire gang, they’d tracked him relentlessly from up near the Canadian border, even rooting him out of Jack Clawson’s sawmill south of Bismarck.

  He knew why the lawman wanted him, and he supposed the bounty man wanted the reward money several express companies had offered for his head. But what about the girl? Why in the hell was she after him, for chrissakes? He usually got along with women.

  Duvall didn’t know if the three trackers were still on his trail. He hadn’t slowed up enough since deserting Clyde and Harold in the shack to find out. He didn’t really want to know, because he had a feeling they were back there, all three of them sniffing out his scent like supernatural hounds straight from the devil’s hell.

  He just hoped he could finally get shed of them once and for all in the Indian nations. If not, he’d have to head to Mexico, and he really didn’t want to head to Mexico. He was still young, and he had several good, hell-raising years left in the States—if those three would leave him be, that was.

  Goddamn them, anyway! If it hadn’t been for them, he and his gang would be living high on the hog about now. He wouldn’t be out here alone, running for his life and having to possibly fritter his best years away south of the border.

  His was a long, hard ride through some of the emptiest country he’d ever seen, crossing one river after another: the Missouri, the Niobrara, the Platte, and the Republican. He had to laugh in spite of his trouble, however, whenever he thought of how he’d duped Clyde and Harold that night in the hideout cabin, telling them he’d keep the first watch while they got some shut-eye. He’d wake one of them in a couple hours, he’d said. Instead, he’d swiped their thousand dollars from Clyde’s saddlebags and lit out with their horses, leaving them sound asleep in their bunks!

  Duvall grinned as he rode now, pondering the look that must have been on that big-talking Clyde’s mug when the bounty hunter had poked his gun in his sleepy face, and Clyde had realized he’d been duped.

  If that little, no-account kid had diddled the president’s niece in Omaha, Dave Duvall was a monkey’s uncle. No siree, it hadn’t happened. Couldn’t have ... no way.

  Duvall was six days into his journey from the cabin and was deep into Kansas—or so he reckoned from the amount of country he’d covered. He crossed a shallow stream, splashed up the opposite bank, and decided it was time to camp. The sun was nearly down, and all three horses were lathered and hanging their heads.

  After picketing the horses in deep grass in willows near the stream, Duvall threw down his tack and bedroll and gathered kindling for a fire. He’d shot a jackrabbit earlier, and he skinned the animal now as the fire took and his coffee began to sputter and steam.

  The rabbit was roasting on the spit when his horse whinnied. Duvall was sitting back away from the fire, to preserve his night vision. He reached for his rifle and shucked a shell in the chamber, his heart beating rhythmically against his chest. He heaved himself to his feet and stepped into the willows, hunkering low and looking out through the spindly branches.

  His horse whinnied several more times and danced around in the grass, pulling against its rope. Finally, Duvall heard the clomp of a hoof on his right, from somewhere upstream. He waited. More hoof clomps grew until a man called, “Hello the camp. Harlan Doolittle here, just a harmless old preacher lookin’ for a brother and fellow Christian to break bread with.”

  Duvall frowned, wary. “Come on in,” he said finally, turning his rifle toward the sound of the hoof clomps. “I have a rabbit on the spit.”

  “Thank you, friend. Don’t mind if I do.”

  The mouse-brown, blaze-faced horse appeared at the edge of the firelight. A dark-clad figure sat the saddle, the white preacher’s collar glowing against the wrinkled, leathery neck. The man wore a round-brimmed, bullet-crowned hat. His face was long, with a goosey nose and deep-set eyes capped with bushy, gray brows.

  The man sawed back on the horse’s reins and glanced around. “Brother? I say, brother?”

  Duvall scanned the area, making sure no one was behind this man who called himself a preacher, and no one was approaching from behind Duvall. You didn’t get far in Duvall’s business by overly trusting anyone, even men of the cloth.

  “Step down from the leather, Reverend,” Duvall called. “Call me skittish, but a man can’t be too careful in these parts. I just wanna make sure you’re not a road agent bent on robbin’ poor saddle tramps like myself.”

  “Ah, I see,” Reverend Doolittle said with a reasonable nod. Stiffly, he climbed out of the saddle.

  “Now, would you mind throwing both tails of your coat back?” Duvall called.

  “Certainly,” the preacher agreed, doing as instructed. He wasn’t carrying a gun. It didn’t look like he was even packing a rifle on his saddle. Doolittle stared at the rabbit roasting on the spit, turning a succulent golden brown. “That varmint you got there sure looks tasty.”

  Satisfied the man was harmless and alone, Duvall stepped out of the willows, holding his rifle across his chest. He grinned. “Sorry, Preacher, but like I said, a man can’t be too careful in these parts.” He extended his hand. “Name’s Dave.”

  “Pleasure to meet you, Dave,” Doolittle said, accepting Dave’s hand with his own, gnarled as an old root. “I don’t blame you for being cautious. Why, two nights ago I met up with three fellas that seemed right peaceable when they rode into my camp. I shared my coffee and stew with them and even recited a few words from the Bible. The next morning I woke to three gun barrels poking my face. Those rapscallions took my last two dollars and thirty-five cents, and rode off and left me poor ... a vagabond.”

  The old man shook his head sadly, his shoulders sagging wearily. “I don’t have a gun to shoot game, so, well, I’d be mighty obliged if you’d share that jack in exchange for a few lines from the Book.”

  Doolittle looked at Duvall hopefully.

  “No problem, Preacher,” Duvall said. “You can hold on to your recitation, though.”

  Doolittle frowned.

  “I mean, might as well save it for someone who don’t know his Maker as well as I do. Me and the good Lord, we’re like this.” Grinning, Duvall held up two crossed fingers. He lifted his chin proudly as he recited, “ ‘Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful. But his delight is in the law of the Lord; and in his law doth he meditate day and night.’” Duvall raised his voice and his chin about two more notches, shoving his right hand knuckle deep between the buttons of his vest.” ‘And he shall not be like a tree planted by the rivers of the water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper. The ungodly are not so: but are like the chaff which the wind driveth away.’” Duvall grinned. “That’s from the Book of Psalms, chapter one, verses one through four.”

  Doolittle stared agape at Duvall, his old eyes rheumy with emotion. “A God-fearin’ man,” he said with hushed astonishment. He wagged his head slowly from side to side. “Just when my faith had been tested, my purpose unclear, my destiny in question ...” Doolittle shook his head again and choked back a sob. “You don’t know how refreshing it is to find a man like you, Dave.”

  “Oh, likewise, Preacher,” Duvall said. “Believe me, I feel just as refreshed as you do! Why don’t you go picket your horse next to mine over there and fill your plate. That jack’s about done.”

  “Thank you, Brother Dave. Thank you.”

  “No, thank you, Reverend. You don’t know how blessed I feel, havin’ a man of the cloth ride into my camp, this lonely summer’s eve.”

  The preacher nodded solemnly, then turned and led his horse into the willows. Duvall watched him go, his smile diminishing, his expression turning cold as a January morn.

&nb
sp; Later, when the two men were sitting around the fire, drinking coffee after wolfing down the jack and tossing the bones into the willows, Duvall rolled a smoke. When he’d snapped a lucifer ablaze on his thumbnail and lit the quirley, he blew smoke out the side of his mouth and reclined against his saddle. “So tell me, Preacher, where you headed, anyway?”

  The old man blew on his coffee and sipped. In his low, tremulous voice, he told Duvall that he. was heading for his new congregation in a small Kansas town named Green-burg, about forty miles south. He’d never been there before, but he’d heard it was a nice, quiet little town, and that the parishioners had recently built their first Lutheran church. They were eager for a full-time preacher instead of the itinerant clerics that happened through only once or twice a month, delivering sermons in the town’s only hotel or in the town hall.

  “Yes, the good people of Greenburg will be quite happy to see me, and I them. The last town I was in, Coffeyville, was, if you’ll pardon the expression, Dave, a hellhole.” Doolittle shook his head and stared into his coffee. “Damned place. Truly damned. I was there for five years and couldn’t make a dent in that wall of sin they’d built through the heart and soul of that town.”

  Duvall hadn’t heard a word since Doolittle had said he hadn’t yet visited Greenburg. “So, you mean, you don’t know anyone in the town?” he asked the preacher.

  “No,” Doolittle said. “But I’m not worried. I’ve heard from other ministers that it’s a nice little place, not at all like Coffeyville. If the citizens are half as eager for a full-time preacher as I am to settle in a God-fearin’ town, I know everything will work out fine.” He looked at Dave sincerely. “It always does, you know, Dave ... in the end.”

  He smiled smugly and tossed back his coffee. Then he tossed his cup aside and rolled up in his blankets. “Well, time for this old sinner to turn in. Good night, Dave, and thanks once again for your warm hospitality.”

  “No problem, Reverend,” Dave said. He was leaning back against his saddle, smoking his cigarette, arms crossed against his chest. He stared at the stars thoughtfully, his mind toiling over a new plan.