To Hell on a Fast Horse

by Peter Brandvold

  “Well, he’s already a mockery,” Tanner said and sipped his beer.

  Turning to Tanner, Hunter said, “Why should we have to gang up on him? Why don’t you take care of him, L.J.? You had quite the gun reputation in your day.”

  “Stow it, Hunter.” L.J. glared through his one eye at the hotel owner. He did not add what the others already knew but did not discuss: Tanner could talk a good game, but his shooting skills had gone with his eye.

  He still carried a pistol, but mostly for show, to keep the peace in his saloon after the sun went down and all breeds of man came to town to drink, gamble, carouse, and generally turn his wolf loose.

  Tanner had gone out to Ramsay Creek that night, but only because he had the others to back him. Who’d have thought eight guns could not bring down both bounty hunters? The problem lay in the fact that the bounty hunters had split up, and the gang had only gotten the girl.

  “Well, something needs to be done,” said Glen Carlsruud, slamming a hand down on the table. “Good Christ—didn’t you see him out there?” He hooked a thumb in the general direction of the cemetery.

  “He came in here last night and threatened to blow out my back bar mirror!” Tanner exclaimed.

  “Why?” Campbell asked Tanner. “Does he know you were out at Ramsay Creek?”

  “No,” Tanner said. “I don’t think so.”

  Hunter said with a knowing smile, “L.J. turned a couple of dogs loose, I heard. A couple of incompetent dogs.”

  Campbell turned a fatherly frown on the saloon owner. “Is that true?”

  Tanner scowled into his beer glass, took another sip, and swallowed, gritting his teeth. “Well, shit—it would have looked like a saloon fight. It was a slow night and—oh, what the hell? So I chose the wrong dogs! It didn’t work!”

  A silence descended over the table. In consternated thought, the men smoked and drank. Tanner belched and was cast a reprimanding look by the banker.

  Purdy splashed more whiskey into his shot glass. “Has anyone told . . . you know . . . about what happened?”

  “You mean,” Hunter said, “about our incompetence?”

  Campbell said, “I saw her ride over to the doctor’s place yesterday. I’m sure Whitfield told her what transpired. But it would probably be . . . prudent . . . wise . . . if I rode up and had a talk with her.” The banker arched a brow over his beer mug, which he held to his mouth in the same hand holding the cigar. “What shall I tell her?”

  The others looked around at each other.

  Hunter wore a stricken look. He shook his head. “What nonsense we let ourselves get talked into. What nonsense!”

  “Sounded like a good idea at the time,” Tanner said, chuckling.

  Lars Eriksson, the blacksmith, hadn’t said a word since Hunter had walked into the saloon. Now he said, leaning far back in his chair against the wall and staring blankly off toward the billiard room’s close door, “The consequences—they would have been bad. Real bad.” Now he quirked the corners of his thick-lipped mouth, causing his heavy beard to rise on his big, freckled, sunburned face.

  “Men will do anything for something like that,” Purdy said, raking a sheepish hand across his face. He shook his head and stared at the floor so intently you’d have thought he’d dropped a coin. “Pretty much anything . . .”

  Another silence. Tanner was staring at the floor as well, but he was grinning. He seemed to be the only one in the room who saw any humor in the situation, however.

  Carlsruud poured half his whiskey into his beer and watched it foam. “Gentlemen, we are right where we were when we all came in here. Right now we have a madman on the loose. He’s hunting us. What are we going to do about it? I understand, George, that you don’t want him shot down in the street like a rabid coyote. But you weren’t out there that night. He’s not hunting you, though of course he probably would be if he knew you were in on the planning.”

  Campbell choked on cigar smoke. “What are you implying, Glen? Are you going to tell on me?” He coughed again, leaning forward over his enormous, bulging belly.

  Hunter said, “I think what Glen means, George, is that we all have more to lose than you do.”

  “How is he ever going to find out who was out there?” Campbell asked, spreading his hands. “Let him stomp around here with his tail up all he wants. If we all keep our damn mouths shut and do nothing to expose ourselves, we’ll be fine. Eventually, he’ll have to leave.”

  “And we’ll have failed,” Hunter said, rolling his eyes to indicate the north end of town.

  “I’ll explain it,” Campbell said. “I’ll explain how it happened. All will be well.”

  “How can you be so sure?” Purdy asked. “You don’t hold a note on that little house up there, George. Do you? I heard it was paid for.”

  “Pssst!”

  Hunter and the others turned to Eriksson, who’d gotten up out of his chair and strolled over to the window nearest the table. The big blacksmith beckoned and pointed to indicate that the window was open a good six inches.

  Hunter was the first one to the window. He stood beside Eriksson, following the big man’s gaze outside. His heart skipped a beat when he saw the butt of the half-smoked cigarette still smoldering in the dirt nearly directly below the window.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Prophet moved around the saloon’s front corner and mounted the gallery. He pushed through the batwings and strode toward the door at the back of the room.

  “Hey, where you goin’?” demanded the big half-breed standing behind the bar.

  Prophet kept walking.

  “Hey!” The half-breed pounded both fists atop the bar, scowling, red-faced.

  “Stay there and you won’t get hurt,” Prophet said.

  The door ahead of him opened. Prophet slid the Richards around from behind his back and took it in both hands, the lanyard still around his neck and shoulder. He aimed the barn blaster straight out in front of him and drew both rabbit-eared hammers back to full cock.

  The square-jawed, handsome gent who ran the hotel stood in the doorway, staring at him. The others stood behind him, looking over his shoulders at the bounty hunter. The square-jawed man, whose name Prophet believed was Hunter, looked at the shotgun in the bounty hunter’s hands, and then he took one step back, opening his hands before him.

  The others, to a man, looked as though they were filling their drawers.

  “I’ll put an end to this right now!” came the half-breed’s voice behind Prophet.

  Hunter slammed the door in Prophet’s face. Hearing heavy footsteps behind him and seeing the big half-breed’s shadow slide across the floor to his left, Prophet dodged right.

  As he did, there was a thundering blast.

  Prophet whipped around. The half-breed was crouched over the double-barreled shotgun smoking in his hands, and he was staring in wide-eyed shock at what he’d done to the billiard room door.

  The shotgun blast had taken a fist-sized chunk out of the door’s top panel and peppered the rest of it with pellets. That was just one barrel. As the big man slid the gun toward Prophet, Prophet squeezed the left trigger of his barn blaster.

  The blast from the ten-gauge rocked the room.

  The buckshot ripped through the half-breed’s chest and belly, lifted him two feet off the floor, and hurled him five feet straight back.

  He hit the floor on his ass, rolled backward then sideways, and piled up near the batwings where he lay shivering and dying on the floor.

  Shouting erupted behind the closed door. A man’s horrified face—the hotel man’s face—appeared in the fist-sized hole in the top panel. The face disappeared as Prophet turned to the door and brought his right leg back. He thrust it forward, hammering his right boot against the door, just beneath the knob. The door exploded inward. Prophet stepped into the room and caught the door’s bounce off the wall with his left foot.

  He aimed the Richards straight out from his right hip.

  “That’s too bad,” he s
aid. “Somethin’ tells me him and me coulda been pals under different circumstances.” His tone belied the friendly words. Anger was a hot iron laid against the back of his neck. “How ’bout you stupid bastards? You wanna be my pals?”

  Five of the small group stood in a ragged semicircle about ten feet in front of him. The bartender, L.J. Tanner, was one of them, standing to Prophet’s far right. He held his open hand over the butt of his holstered Schofield revolver. When Prophet’s gaze dropped to that hand, Tanner slowly raised it, palm out, in supplication.

  “Easy, now, big man,” he said. “Easy, now . . .”

  Three of the eight-man group stood behind the five. Two were standing, that was. A third man—the fat, impeccably dressed man with an egg-shaped head whom Prophet had seen going to and from the bank—was just now rising from where he’d been hunkered beneath the table they’d all been sitting at when Prophet had overheard their meeting from outside the window a few minutes earlier.

  The fat man was red-faced. Sweat streamed down his cheeks. He was wheezing like a landed fish, his thin-lipped mouth forming a small O on his clean-shaven face.

  One of the others, the man who ran the mercantile, hurried over to him, took one of his arms, and helped him to his feet.

  “Good Lord,” the fat banker wheezed, staring in horror at Prophet’s coach gun aimed at the group.

  “Oh, I don’t think the Good Lord’d have much to do with you boys. Ole Scratch is more your style. Mine, too, but for other reasons than lurin’ folks into a bushwhackin’.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” Hunter said.

  “It was you boys that was talkin’ about it . . . only you forgot to close the window yonder. Now, I didn’t hear all of it, but I heard enough to know seven of the eight of you was the ones who threw that lead into my partner and likely would have killed both of us if you weren’t such a bunch of cork-headed fools, not to mention lousy shots.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Hunter said, giving a short chuckle severely lacking in sincerity. He had his hands raised to his shoulders, fingers curled toward the palms.

  “Shut up, Neal,” Tanner said out the side of his mouth, flaring a nostril at the hotel man. To Prophet, he said, “So . . . what’re you gonna do about it? You gonna gun us all down right here . . . in cold blood? Now, you mighta had cause to shoot ole Arnell there . . . the damn fool . . . but none of us here is armed.”

  Very slowly, Tanner lowered his right hand to the butt of his Schofield. “Easy, now,” he said as with two fingers he unsnapped the thong from over the hammer and lifted the gun from its holster. He held the revolver up high and gave a mocking half-smile as he opened his fingers.

  The gun dropped to the floor with a dull thud.

  Several of the others jumped at the noise.

  “Good Lord!” wheezed the fat man, standing with the mercantile owner behind the others, before the table they’d all been sitting at.

  “Fat man,” Prophet said, “since you’re here with them, I’m assumin’ you’re in with them. Please inform me if that’s a mistaken assumption on my part.”

  The fat man also had his pudgy hands raised. He looked dubiously around at the others. The others looked back at him. He cleared his throat and moved his lips, as though trying to say something. Unable to come up with the right words, he slid his eyes around again, self-consciously, then lowered his gaze to the floor and pressed his thin, pink lips together.

  From outside rose the sound of running footsteps. They grew louder until boots pounded on the saloon’s front gallery.

  “Jesus Christ!” exclaimed the young marshal, Roscoe Deets. “What in God’s name . . . ?”

  Prophet turned his head to one side and said over his shoulder, “Like I told these others, Marshal, I don’t think God or Christ would have much to do with this bunch.”

  “Prophet?”

  “Party’s back here, in the billiard room.” Prophet smiled over his shoulder at the marshal standing in the open batwings and staring down in horror at the lumpy figure of the dead bartender.

  Deets looked at Prophet. The young marshal held his pistol down low over his empty holster.

  “Come on back,” Prophet urged. “I do apologize for the mess I made in there, but I shot the barman in self-defense. I was just walkin’ through the saloon all innocent-like, wantin’ only to have a chat with these seven bushwhackers. The devil’s seven, I call ’em. And the banker who, it seems, was also in on the bloody deal.”

  “Arrest him, Deets!” barked Hunter. “Arrest him now! He shot Three-Bears and he’s threatening us with a shotgun.”

  “Now, that ain’t gonna happen,” Prophet said, turning his head back toward the sheepish crowd gathered before him. “But you can come on back and join the party, just the same, Marshal. I’d appreciate it if you’d holster that six-shooter, though. If it were to accidentally go off it might cause me to jerk one of my two hair-triggers here and the blast from the ten-gauge would likely blow at least two of these fellas’ heads clean off their shoulders.”

  “Oh, Jesus,” wheezed the fat man under his breath, sweating profusely.

  Deets stepped over the dead bartender and strode slowly, apprehensively through the saloon’s main drinking hall. As he approached the billiard room, he said, “What’s going on?”

  “These here are the remaining seven that bushwhacked me and my partner,” Prophet said, his voice pitched menacingly soft. “I eavesdropped on their little meeting from outside that open window. Oh, I didn’t hear it all due to wagon traffic and the wind and whatnot, but I heard enough to know it was them. Minus the fat banker back there. He’s likely too fat to straddle a horse. But he was in on it, too. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have been part of the meeting.”

  Prophet glanced over his shoulder at Deets standing four feet behind him, staring into the room. He was still holding his revolver straight down over his right hip.

  “Holster it,” Prophet said mildly. “And come on in. You might as well hear what I have to say to these boys. You’re part of it. You got a big part in it, you bein’ the local law an’ all.”

  Prophet stepped to his right, giving the marshal some room.

  Deets studied Prophet. Then he looked at the men standing like cowed children in the room before him. He holstered his Remington and moved into the billiard room, stepping toward Prophet’s left and turning to face him. “What’s all this about?”

  “Some lawman you are, Deets,” said Tanner. “Worthless piece of—”

  “Shut up, Tanner!” Hunter said.

  “My sentiments exactly,” Prophet said to Tanner. “Besides, if he’d tried to take me down, your shoulders would look awful damn funny, seein’ as how they’d be minus your head.”

  Tanner narrowed his eyes at the big bounty hunter.

  Hunter’s gaze flicked toward the double bores of Prophet’s coach gun, and he swallowed. “What’re you gonna do, Prophet?”

  “Me? Nah, I ain’t gonna do nothin’. It’s you boys that’s gonna do all the doin’. First thing you’re gonna need to do is pray real hard that that young lady over there at Doc Whitfield’s place don’t die. If she does die, all bets are off. You fellas are wolf bait. In the meantime, what you’re gonna do is go home and think over the mistake you made out there at Ramsay Creek. Then what I hope you’ll do next is go on over to Marshal Deets’s office and confess what you done. And why you done it.”

  Prophet looked at Deets, who was frowning at him, puzzled, wary.

  A low muttering rose from the crowd. They were speaking out the sides of their mouths to each other.

  Prophet grinned.

  “That’s right,” he said to Deets. “I’m gonna turn it over to you, young marshal. I got faith that you’ll do the right thing. You’ll lock ’em up for attempted murder and assault, and you’ll call a judge in and have a trial. It’ll be all legal-like. If that happens, I’ll wash my hands of the whole affair, comforted by the fact that the wheels of justice are turnin’ smoothly in
the right direction.”

  Tanner said, “You’re full o’ shit, Prophet!”

  “It’s been said before,” the bounty hunter allowed.

  He moved forward, stopped in front of Tanner, and looked down at the man, who was about three inches shorter. Tanner glared up at him but his eyes flickered faintly with apprehension. Prophet whipped the Richards around and slammed the butt into Tanner’s belly.

  Tanner grunted loudly and jackknifed, dropping to his knees and clutching his belly. He fell over on his left shoulder and drew his knees toward his gut, groaning and writhing and wheezing raucously as he tried to draw a breath.

  “Like I said—it’s been said before. But until now I never run into anyone stupid enough to say it when I’ve been holdin’ a gun on ’im.” Prophet chuckled. “Consider that a lesson, free of charge.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  “That’s all you fellas have to do,” Prophet said as Tanner continued to writhe and groan on the floor. “Go on home and have a little heart-to-heart with yourselves, possibly your wives”—he chuckled wryly—“if you got the cojones for it, and then saunter on over to the jail and confess your sins to Marshal Deets.”

  “And if we don’t?” asked the big blacksmith standing near the window, his nostrils flaring.

  “Then the marshal’s gonna have to arrest you.”

  Deets said, “It’s their words against yours, Prophet. There’s seven of them. How do I know who’s telling the truth?”

  “Oh, come on—look at ’em,” Prophet intoned, raking his scowling gaze across the room. “Do those look like the faces of men that don’t have blood on their hands?”

  Deets looked around. Slowly, he turned his head back to Prophet. He looked as though he’d taken a bite out of an extra tart lemon.

  “What if the girl dies?” he asked.

  Prophet turned to the others, narrowed one eye, and said gravely, “If she dies and they’re not behind bars and charged with murder, then I take it out of your hands, Marshal.”

  He backed toward the door, keeping the Richards aimed straight out from his right hip. “If she dies, there won’t be a one of them left alive to see the next sun come up.”