To Hell on a Fast Horse

by Peter Brandvold

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Prophet spent most of the next three days kicked back in a rocking chair of the Grand View Hotel’s front stoop, facing the street. From here, he had a pretty good view of the entire main street, Hazelton Street, and the comings and goings of the shopkeepers and businessmen.

  It was a quiet three days. Business appeared to be churning as usual, townsfolk strolling in and out of the shops and saloons, the occasional ranch or farm or mine supply wagon clattering into town to pull up to the loading dock of the mercantile. Cowboys from nearby ranches cut the trail dust in the town’s saloons.

  It was late summer, and hot. A slow, heavy, desultory air lay over Box Elder Ford like a cloud of dreamy ease. The dust kicked up by the wagons took a long time to settle. Occasionally a brief windstorm blew dirt and horseshit around, rattling the shingle chains, banging loose shutters, and shepherding tumbleweeds and trash to and fro.

  The local stagecoach came through only once in those three days, carrying only mail and two sullen-looking old women wearing bedraggled mob caps. One stared blankly out the coach’s window as the coach rattled on past Prophet after it had switched teams, continuing west toward the mountains. Two mongrels barked at the coach, giving chase before suddenly stopping to nip playfully at each other and running off down an alley.

  There was no rain. In fact, Prophet could have counted the clouds he’d spied in the near-faultless, broad-arching sky on one hand.

  When the bounty hunter wasn’t on the hotel porch, he was taking a meal, wetting his whistle, strolling about here and there with the Richards hanging down his back, attracting incredulous stares or downright glares from most quarters.

  By now, what he was here for, his beef with the six remaining businessmen, had likely made its way through town and probably across a good chunk of the county, as well. Ladies of the town walked past him, whispering. Occasionally a couple of boys would skulk sheepishly, a little fearfully around the hotel, wanting to get a look at the bounty hunter who had the drawers of so many of the town’s most prominent men tied in knots.

  None of his six quarry made any move to fulfill his demands. It didn’t appear that the town’s young marshal was even on duty to write down their confessions if they chose to confess, which Prophet thought unlikely, anyway. The bounty hunter had seen neither hide nor hair of Deets since the day Prophet had killed Arnell Three-Bears and laid down his own brand of law across the street in the Arkansas River Saloon.

  Several times a day, he checked on Louisa, whose condition was improving to the point that she was starting to talk about getting up and moving around. She wanted to back Prophet’s play when the cyclone hit, which surely it would sooner or later here in Box Elder Ford.

  Likely sooner rather than later. Prophet could tell by the quick, angry glares fired his way that his presence was rattling his six quarry. Soon, they’d feel pressed to the point of doing something about it.

  Prophet assured Louisa that he could handle the matter himself, that what she needed to do was stay in bed and listen to Doc Whitfield.

  Prophet blew a long plume of cigarette smoke over the porch rail. He stared out over the toes of his boots crossed atop the rail and saw L.J. Tanner staring out at him from over the Arkansas River Saloon’s batwing doors, beneath the shake-shingled roof of the saloon’s front gallery.

  Tanner had his arms resting atop the doors, and he was glaring with his one eye across the street toward Prophet. Prophet stared back at him. Tanner held the stare for almost a full minute. Then he curled his nose in disgust, lowered his arms, adjusted his eye patch, and turned back inside.

  Prophet smiled.

  Footsteps sounded inside the hotel lobby, growing louder. The screen door squawked open and Helen Hunter stepped out.

  “Mr. Prophet?”

  Prophet dropped his boots to the floor, doffed his hat, and stood. “Yes, ma’am?”

  “Oh, you don’t need to get up. What a southern gentlemen you are!” Mrs. Hunter smiled, blushing and pressing her pink dress against her left thigh. She held a glass of something sugary in her other hand. She came out and extended the glass to Prophet. “So hot out here, even in the shade—I thought you might like a glass of lemonade.”

  “Oh, Lord o’ mercy!” Prophet intoned, salivating at the sugary concoction. He saw a wedge of lemon floating around inside it. “Thank you, ma’am. Thank you.”

  “I always make up a batch early in the morning and then store it in our springhouse, so when I bring it up in the afternoon, it’s nice and cool. I do so love a glass of lemonade on a hot summer after—”

  Her husband’s voice barked from the bowels of the lobby behind her: “Helen!” Angry footsteps stomped toward the porch.

  Mrs. Hunter whipped her head around. “What is it, Neal!” she barked back at the man. “Can’t you see I’m having a conversation?”

  Hunter pushed through the door and stepped out onto the gallery. When he saw Prophet, he hardened his jaws. “What in the hell are you talking to him for? He’s a goddamned killer, for chrissakes!”

  Hunter grabbed his wife’s wrist and jerked her back into the lobby.

  “Neal, unhand me!” Mrs. Hunter demanded, though apparently without favorable result, for the screen door slapped shut. Then Prophet heard the two stomping off into the hotel, Hunter barking angrily and Helen complaining against his grip on her wrist.

  Prophet donned his hat, slacked down into his chair, sipped the lemonade, and smacked his lips. “Damn—that’s good.”

  Later that night, lying in his bed on the hotel’s second floor, Prophet opened his eyes. He’d heard something.

  The soft squawk of the floor outside his room.

  He’d heard it before—last night, in fact. It had sounded as though someone had been out there, skulking around. But when Prophet had grabbed his Richards and gone to the door, there’d been no more sounds. When he’d opened the door and investigated the hall, the hall had been empty. Now he waited, ears pricked, listening.

  There it was again, the faint squawk of a floorboard.

  Prophet grabbed the Richards hanging by its lanyard from a front bedpost. He threw the single sheet back and stepped out of bed and out of the line of any possible fire that might come bursting through the door. He pressed his left shoulder against the wall and crept toward the door.

  There was a soft, single tap on the panel.

  Prophet froze, scowling.

  He had the Richards aimed at the door. His thumb was hooked over both hammers but he did not peel them back.

  Two taps sounded on the door.

  Then a woman’s raspy voice, “Mr. Prophet . . . ?”

  Prophet stepped up to the door, still wary. He wasn’t about to be lured into another trap. For all he knew, there were six would-be shooters waiting outside his door with Winchesters cocked and ready.

  The woman’s voice came again, louder this time: “Mr. Prophet?” It was Helen Hunter.

  Prophet stepped a little closer to the door but did not step in front of it. “What is it?” he said.

  “Could you open the door, please?”

  “What for?”

  Slight pause. “Please open the door, Mr. Prophet. I assure you that my husband is asleep. It’s only me out here . . . Lou.”

  Prophet turned the key in the lock. The bolt made a metallic grinding sound as it retreated into the door. Prophet stepped back and took the Richards in both hands. “It’s open.”

  The door clicked, opened, hinges whining. Wan yellow light emanated from the candle she held in one hand, on a little tray. It lit her face but the rest of her was in shadow. She had a lacy wrap of some kind around her shoulders.

  She looked down at the shotgun in Prophet’s hands. “No need for that, Lou.”

  As she stepped into the room, Prophet looked into the hall behind her, which was lit with the milky glow of the moon. He could see no other shadows out there. Mrs. Hunter quietly closed the door behind her and turned to Prophet, who lowered the sh
otgun to his side.

  She looked up at him. Her head came only to his bare chest. He wore only summer-weight longhandles, the legs of which dropped midway down his bulging thighs.

  “Can I help you, Mrs. Hunter?”

  She slid the wrap off one shoulder and then off of the other shoulder, and it fell to the floor, leaving her standing naked before him save a gold necklace with a fob of some kind hanging down into the valley between her heavy breasts.

  “Indeed you can, Mr. Prophet.”

  She moved toward him, raising a hand.

  “Hold on, Mrs. Hunter.”

  “Oh, really?” she tittered, placing her hand on his bare chest, over his bulging left pectoral.

  “You’re a married woman.” It sounded like a foolish thing to say, but it was true, and Prophet did not make a habit of sleeping with married women. Not only was it dangerous, it wasn’t the way he’d been raised by Ma and Pa Prophet back in the Blue Ridge Mountains of northern Georgia.

  “Oh, but he’s such a little man, Lou.” She lowered her hand, sliding it ever so slowly down his belly, tickling his lightly haired skin with her fingertips, until she’d found what she’d been looking for.

  She hefted, gently squeezed.

  The blood in Prophet’s loins instantly quickened.

  “A very tiny, little man.” She stepped closer, gently nibbling Prophet’s chin. The tips of her breasts pressed against his belly. “Besides, does it really matter . . . given our circumstances?”

  Her hand felt good down there.

  “Nah,” Prophet said. “I reckon not.”

  He leaned the Richards against the wall, peeled his underwear off, and then took the candle out of her hand and set it on the bureau. He stepped to her. Her lips parted as she gazed up at him, her eyes raking his large, tall, rugged body. Her hair was down. He could hear her breathing. He took her in his arms and kissed her before picking her up, laying her down on his bed, and mounting her.

  She laughed and then groaned as the bedsprings began to sigh.

  Down at the other end of the hall, Neal Hunter stood staring through his half-open door at the room into which Helen had disappeared. His heart thudded slowly, the burn of anger rising and spreading from his buttocks into his back. The back of his neck chafed.

  Slowly, he closed the door and turned the key, locking it.

  Helen returned to their room around ninety minutes later. When she rattled the doorknob, finding the door locked, she gave a laugh and walked away.

  Hunter didn’t sleep all night. His heart hammered like a war hatchet against his breastbone. First thing the next morning he walked across the street to the Arkansas River Saloon. L.J. Tanner was drawing a beer from one of his kegs while his friend, Lars Eriksson, was hauling another one in from the back room.

  He carried the big keg over his right shoulder, leaning forward and grunting, his broad face as red as raw beef, veins forking in his freckled forehead.

  “How you doin’, Neal?” Tanner said as he cracked an egg into his beer.

  “Give me one of those,” Hunter said.

  Tanner looked at him. “Never knew you to imbibe before noon before, Neal.” He grinned and cast a glance at Eriksson coming up behind the bar from the far end.

  Turning his faintly mocking gaze to Hunter, he said, “What’s the matter—that guest of yours over there starting to smell like rotten fish? I’ve noticed that Helen’s been sportin’ a rosy glow lately. She doesn’t seem to mind.”

  Hunter threw the punch before he even knew he was going to throw it. Tanner caught his fist atop the bar and held it, scowling at its thrower. “Holy shit, Neal,” he laughed. “I never knew you to throw a punch before noon, either. In fact, I never knew you to throw a punch at all!”

  He laughed again and shared another snide glance with the big Norwegian, who’d just placed the beer keg onto its rack. Eriksson regarded the hotel owner with wide-eyed surprise.

  Hunter withdrew his fist. He felt even more deflated than he had before he’d walked in here. “Just give me the beer and the egg. And we gotta talk about . . .” He turned to thrust his arm and angry finger at his hotel. “Him!”

  Tanner filled a mug. “It’s done.”

  “What?”

  Tanner swept the head off the beer with a stick, set the mug onto the counter, and cracked an egg into it. “Two days ago, Danny-Boy Price from Kansas came in here. He was lookin’ for work, wondering if I knew if any of the ranchers had anything.”

  “Wait a minute, wait a minute,” Hunter said, holding his beer on the bar’s zinc top. “Who’s Danny-Boy Price? You must remember, L.J., I don’t run in your circles.”

  “Oh, that’s right,” Tanner said with a sardonic snort. “I forgot. Forgive me all to hell, Neal. Danny-Boy’s a gun-for-hire. Him an’ me once scouted for the army together, before I lost my eye. Anyway, I told him about the situation, and when he heard the names Prophet and Bonaventure, he said it’s going to cost us, and he wants to bring in two more men. I agreed to his price . . . on yours and everybody else’s behalf since I don’t see as we have any choice . . . and he sent out a couple of telegrams. He’s upstairs, waiting for the other two to show up. Laurie’s showin’ him a time . . . free of charge, of course.”

  “Who’re the other two?”

  “Joe Bastion and Asa Wade, commonly known as ‘Slash.’ In fact, don’t call him Asa. I once did that, and . . . well, anyway, they’re gonna cost us five hundred apiece.”

  Hunter raised his mug and downed half of his beer in a single draught. He lowered the glass and licked the foam and egg off his upper lip. “Is that for both of ’em?”

  “Yep. They’re gonna burn Prophet down first. Then the Vengeance Queen.” Tanner sipped his own beer.

  “How? You know Whitfield’s rules.”

  Tanner chuckled. “Price, Bastion, and Wade don’t follow anyone’s rules, much less the rules of a crippled sawbones.” He smiled at Eriksson and took another sip of his beer. “Now, we just gotta wait for Bastion and Slash to get here.”

  He looked up as the sound of straining bedsprings carried through the ceiling. A girl moaned.

  Tanner frowned. “Sure hope ole Danny-Boy don’t wear Laurie plumb out before his friends get here!”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  The next day, L.J. Tanner was sweeping the floor of his saloon and grumbling under his breath about no longer having his swamper, Arnell Three-Bears, around to perform such lowly chores. Instead, Arnell was pushing up rocks and snuggling with diamondbacks on the little bluff across the river known as Potter’s Field.

  Good help was hard to find, but Tanner wasn’t about to pay for the half-breed’s funeral.

  All that was left of Arnell were the bloodstains on Tanner’s floor. Though L.J. had scrubbed and scrubbed at the stains, he couldn’t seem to get them out of the wood. Maybe in time they’d fade, but at the moment they were a grisly reminder of Lou Prophet’s barn blaster.

  Hearing his only whore groaning again upstairs to the accompaniment of her worn-out bedsprings, Tanner lifted his head to yell, “Goddamnit, Danny-Boy—how many free pokes are you . . . ?”

  Tanner let his voice trail off when sharp slapping sounds rose from out in the street. He turned to see Roscoe Deets’s pretty little Mexican wife shuffling by in rope-soled sandals, carrying a small crate of grocery goods up high against her comely, brown bosoms. She wore a straw sombrero and the low-cut red dress she nearly always wore, as though it were maybe one of only two or three dresses she owned. The skirt of the dress danced against her long, slender legs, and her straight, dark-brown hair fluttered out behind her shoulders as she strode on past the Arkansas River Saloon, heading east, the sandals slapping her heels.

  Tanner moved to the door and called, “Hey, there, Senorita. I mean, Senora Deets!” He chuckled at his purposeful mistake.

  Lupita Deets stopped and glanced back at him. She looked sad, crestfallen. Without much heart, she said, “Hello, Senor Tanner.”

  She tur
ned and continued shuffling away but stopped again when Tanner said, “Hey, where’s your husband, the marshal? Ain’t seen him around much lately.”

  “He is sick,” said the girl.

  “Sick, huh?”

  “Si.”

  “That’s too bad.”

  Her head and shoulders bowed, she said unconvincingly, “He will be all right in time. I will tell him you asked, Senor Tanner.”

  She started walking away again.

  Tanner called, “Anything I can do to help?”

  Without stopping or even glancing back at the saloon owner, Lupita merely shook her head. Tanner watched as she shuffled away, dust rising from around her sandals and brown feet, admiring the way the dress clung to her legs. A pretty girl, Lupita. But then, Tanner had always been fond of young Mexican women. There was something undeniably alluring about those dark eyes and that dark hair and smooth, nut-brown skin.

  He’d once had a Mexican whore working for him, but she hadn’t liked the way he’d treated her. She’d slipped out on him only two weeks after she’d started.

  Tanner grimaced at the ceiling through which he could hear his current whore groaning. Knowing what Danny-Boy was doing up there, and having seen Lupita Deets out in the street, looking so sad, caused a burn of desire to rise up into Tanner’s belly.

  He leaned his broom against the wall, removed his apron, tossed it onto a table, and then stepped out through the batwings and onto the gallery. Lifting his black slouch hat trimmed with a conch band, he smoothed his thin hair back from his temples.

  He dropped down the gallery steps and walked out into the street, swinging right and following the girl’s scuffed sandal tracks. He could see her a half a block ahead. Pulling his hat down snug on his forehead, Tanner jogged forward as two horseback riders passed on his left. They were the only two others on the street, as it was hot and bright and most folks were sticking to the shade.