To Hell on a Fast Horse

by Peter Brandvold

  She was a pretty brunette with freckles all over her body, but she was looking tired and worn out.

  “Ow—goddamnit, Laurie, that hurts!” Tanner roared when she’d pressed too hard on his lip, causing blood to bubble up from the gash and sending what felt like a hot, razor-edged stiletto of pain into his jaw. “Go easy, damnit!”

  “I’m tryin’ Mr. Tanner! I’m tryin’!” she cried.

  The gunslinger, Danny-Boy Price, sat across from Tanner, beside the stout banker, George Campbell. Both men were nursing whiskeys and staring at Tanner incredulously. Price grinned, lowered his chin, and chuckled, shaking his head.

  “What’s so goddamn funny, Price?” Tanner spat out with a tooth that went rolling across the table to pile up against the banker’s shot glass.

  Laurie gasped. “Oh, ooooo!”

  Campbell lifted his drink high, staring down in revulsion at the bloody tooth before him.

  Price laughed and shook his head. Tanner was about to give the gunslinger an earful when he heard boots clomping up the porch steps. Two figures appeared on the porch—one taller and broader than the other. The big man, Joe Bastion, stepped through the batwings first, followed by the smaller man, Asa “Slash” Wade.

  Danny-Boy Price turned around in his chair to intone, “Well, look what the cat dragged in! Come on in, boys, and you can watch Miss Laurie try to put our Mr. High and Mighty employer back together again. He fell down and hurt himself!” He clapped his hands together once and laughed.

  The big Bastion scowled down at Tanner. “What in the hell happened to you, L.J? I didn’t know there was still any Injuns to fight out thisaway!”

  The three gunmen laughed.

  Campbell sat in his chair, turning sideways to inspect the two menacing-looking, hard-eyed, trail-dusty newcomers with the wide-eyed fascination of a boy. Both killers wore two pistols apiece. Wade also wore a horn-gripped bowie knife riding beside the Peacemaker positioned for a quick cross-draw over his belly.

  Bastion had a long, folding barlow knife hanging from a leather thong around his neck. A silver, jewel-crusted medallion hung from the same thong. It clacked against the knife when he moved.

  Tanner grabbed Laurie’s wrist and shoved her hand away from his face. Gritting what was left of his teeth with pain and fury, he leaned forward in his chair. At least as far forward as he could without grinding his broken ribs to the point of causing him to pass out. He thrust his hard jaws and spade-shaped chin at the killers sitting or standing before him.

  “You got three now,” he said, flaring his nostrils.

  “Three what?” asked Wade.

  “Three people to kill. The sumbitch across the street. His partner, Bonaventure. And the town marshal of Box Elder Ford—Roscoe Deets!”

  Tanner sat back in his chair, which creaked against his shifting weight, and said, “I’ll pay for Deets out of my own pocket.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Late the next night, Prophet opened his eyes and stared at the dark hotel room ceiling.

  He’d heard something out in the hall. He wasn’t sure what it was, for he’d heard it in his customarily light sleep. But he was relatively sure what it had been.

  He sighed, smacked his lips, groaned, and ran a hand down his face. He wasn’t sure he was in the mood tonight for Mrs. Hunter’s ministrations. He was fairly certain his quarry was close to making its move, and he needed to keep his edge. He also needed his sleep, however shallow.

  He tossed his covers aside and rolled out of bed. He’d just gained his feet when what sounded like the detonation of a dynamite keg in close quarters filled the room. The door of his room burst open, spitting wood from the pumpkin-sized hole in its upper panel. A silhouetted figure stepped forward and there was a bright flash as flames leaped from the barrel of a sawed-off shotgun, the lead pellets causing the bed to leap as they tore into the mattress where Prophet had been lying only two seconds before.

  Prophet stumbled back against the wall, ears ringing. As the gunman stepped farther into the room, Prophet grabbed his Richards off the near bedpost and raked back both heavy hammers.

  “Shit—look out!” the gunman shouted, his shadow wheeling.

  Prophet tripped both triggers at nearly the same time, the second blast sounding like the echo of the first. The flash of the flames lapping from the Richards’s maw briefly lit up the room and the back of a man bounding out of Prophet’s open doorway and down the hall.

  Several sets of boots hammered the carpeted floor, fast fading as the gunmen—there must have been two or three—headed for the stairs, shouting.

  Prophet tossed the Richards aside, grabbed his Peacemaker from the holster also hanging from the bedpost, and ran to the door that had bounced off the wall to stand partway open. He could feel the reverberations of the ambushers’ pounding boots through the floor beneath his bare feet.

  The hall was empty. The gunmen were gone.

  Down the hall to Prophet’s right, a door latch clicked. A door opened slightly and Neal Hunter’s voice said, “Good god—what the hell’s going on?”

  Prophet said through a snarl, “You keep your head inside that room unless you want it blown off, Hunter. Your three hired guns just came to finish the job you started, and when I’m done with them I’m gonna come for you. So you just stay there less’n you want me to deal with you right here and now!”

  The door slammed. The key turned with a ratcheting click in the lock.

  Prophet gave a wry snort and started pulling his clothes on. There was a good bit of light in his window, which meant it was later than he’d thought. Dawn pushing close to sunrise, most likely.

  Prophet was betting the three hired guns had been over at the Arkansas River Saloon all night, diddling Tanner’s whore and drinking themselves up into a cold-blooded killing fury.

  An ambusher’s drunken, chicken-livered fury.

  Prophet stomped into his boots, buckled his cartridge belt around his waist, grabbed his hat, and refilled both barrels of the Richards with fresh ten-gauge wads. He clicked the gun closed, strapped it over his head and shoulder, and picked up his Winchester. When he was sure it was fully loaded, he racked a shell into the magazine, off-cocked the hammer, and strode out of his room.

  “Here we go,” he muttered.

  He turned carefully at the top of the stairs, peering cautiously into the lobby below. Spying no movement around the bottom of the stairs, he moved down slowly, holding the Winchester down at an angle from his right hip. He had his index finger drawn snug against the trigger, thumb on the hammer.

  The lobby was empty. It was filled with smoky blue shadows, for the sun was climbing higher.

  A shadow moved in the doorway to the dining room. Prophet swung the Winchester toward it. Helen Hunter gasped and placed a hand to her breast. She was fully dressed and wearing an apron, probably already at work in the kitchen, helping the Chinese cook.

  Prophet turned the rifle back toward the door.

  “Get back in the kitchen,” he said quietly.

  She stepped back and strode quickly across the dining room.

  Prophet moved to the front door, which was open, and peered through the screen. The street was filled with brown-purple shadows touched with pearl. The air was soft and cool. Birds were raising their usual early morning ruckus, darting about the false façades on both sides of the street, flapping wings glinting silver.

  Prophet stepped slowly out through the screen door. He eased it closed and stood on the porch, scrutinizing the street, the alley mouths opening onto it, looking for his would-be killers. They’d tried to kill him the easy way, because that was the kind of spineless killers they were. They probably figured the worst thing that could happen was that they’d lead him out here onto the street, where they could try again.

  Well, here he was . . .

  When he spied no one scuttling around behind rain barrels or stock troughs, he began moving down the porch steps. Movement to his left.

  He turned to ga
ze eastward, where two men were just then striding out into the street from an alley by the bank. Another man walked out from an alley mouth directly across from them, on the south side of the street. They took positions about six feet apart, spread out in a line, casually holding rifles on their shoulders or, in the case of the man on the far right, resting in his crossed arms.

  They stared toward Prophet, who chuckled as he strode out into the street.

  “There you are,” he said. “I thought maybe you’d lost your nerve!”

  The men, just shadows in the dim but quickly intensifying light, glanced at each other. The one on the far left said, “Shut up, you old warhorse. You’re gonna die here this mornin’.”

  “Talk’s cheap, peckerwood.” Prophet grinned.

  He stood waiting, rifle resting on his shoulder.

  The others seemed a tad reluctant to get the ball rolling. Prophet wasn’t reluctant. He was eager to do away with this batch of hired killers so he could get started on the men who’d hired them to do their blood work.

  He brought the rifle down quickly, aimed, and clicked the hammer back. His sudden movement seemed to startle the other three, who sort of jerked with starts as they began bringing their own weapons to bear.

  Prophet aimed quickly, fired, and saw through his powder smoke the middle shooter, a big man who he thought might be Joe Bastion out of Kansas City, twist around and stumble back as he fired his own weapon through a window to Prophet’s left.

  Bastion grunted.

  The other two cut loose with their carbines, the bullets screeching over and around Prophet and blowing up dirt at his feet. He returned fire, but both men were jostling around now, moving toward Prophet and cocking and firing their Winchesters, making poor targets.

  Prophet fired and pumped, fired and pumped.

  The smallest of the three shooters yowled and then hobbled quickly off to his left, throwing himself down behind a stock trough.

  Bastion was down and crawling off toward the right side of the street. As he passed the third man, who Prophet recognized as Danny-Boy Price, also out of Kansas—his family had been Jayhawkers—Prophet drilled Price through his left shoulder.

  Price jerked back with a shrill curse and triggered his carbine into the street as he dropped to one knee, his back now facing the bounty hunter. Screaming shrilly, Price reached for his two pistols, heaved himself to his feet with another shrill scream, and extended both revolvers straight out from his shoulders.

  Prophet triggered his rifle three more times, sending all three shots into Price’s chest, causing dust to billow from his dirty clothes.

  Each shot sent Price stumbling backward and nodding his head sharply as though in drunken agreement with something, firing each pistol wildly around the street. As he fell, Prophet’s own Winchester pinged on an empty chamber. As the other two shooters sent lead hurling toward the bounty hunter, Prophet ran crouching toward the Arkansas River Saloon.

  Bullets hammered the street round him. They hammered stock troughs and the saloon’s awning support posts. One carved a hot, shallow line across the back of Prophet’s right leg, and another carved a similar line across the side of his neck. He ran up onto the porch and fell flat, facing the direction from which the two shooters had now, suddenly, stopped shooting.

  He aimed his Peacemaker straight out in front of him, hammer cocked.

  He was having trouble picking out a target. The sun was on the rise, spreading light and shadows.

  He could see one man crouched behind the far end of a stock trough a half a block away from him and on the same side of the street. That would be Bastion. The other, shorter man had disappeared, probably hunkered down in the alley mouth by the bank.

  Silence had fallen over the street. Dogs barked in the distance, and somewhere a baby cried.

  Bastion was keeping his head down. Prophet could see the crown of his Stetson moving. He was probably reloading his pistols, preparing for another onslaught. Prophet glanced toward that alley mouth by the bank.

  The street in front of it was touched with salmon light from the east.

  Prophet crabbed back along the saloon’s front porch. He slipped through the rail at the far end and leaped to the ground. Quickly, he stole around behind the saloon and made his way down the alley that paralleled the main street. He holstered the Peacemaker and swung the Richards around in front of him, thumb on the hammers.

  When he’d gained the far end of what he thought was a millinery, he stole up alongside it, heading back toward the main street.

  He stopped when the tall gunman, Bastion, appeared ahead of him, hunkered down behind the stock trough. Bastion had doffed his hat, and he was edging looks up over the trough toward the saloon, looking for his quarry. He had one pistol in his left hand. He had clamped his other hand over his thigh, and he was grunting and groaning softly, obviously in pain.

  Bastion glanced toward the other side of the street, turning his head right and left and back again, looking for the other shooter. Beyond him, near the other side of the street, Danny-Boy Price lay spread-eagle on his back.

  Prophet wanted to get a little closer for the coach gun.

  He’d taken two more steps when his left spur dragged on some scrap lumber. Bastion turned quickly toward Prophet. Prophet squeezed the Richards’s left trigger. He watched Bastion blow back away from him as though on a stiff wind to pile up in the middle of the street, quivering.

  Holding the smoking Richards down low by his belly in one hand, closing his other hand around the grips of his holstered Peacemaker, Prophet stepped up to the mouth of the alley. He poked his head out of it, looking around.

  No sign of the third shooter.

  He crept out into the street where Bastion was gurgling and shivering, the sunlight now glistening in the large, gaping hole in his chest. The sun was half up, and there was now more light than shadows. There was no one on the street. At least, no one that Prophet could see.

  Looking around, he moved slowly down the middle of the street toward the west, occasionally stopping to turn full around and make sure the third shooter wasn’t sneaking up behind him.

  As he approached the hotel on his right and the saloon on his left, there was a quiet, wooden scraping sound. He looked around. He spied the rifle aimed at him from a second-story hotel window and had just started to pull his Peacemaker, knowing he was too late, when a rifle cracked hollowly to his left.

  Roscoe Deets stood on the saloon’s front porch, aiming a Sharps carbine toward the hotel, slanted upward. Smoke curled from the rifle’s barrel. There was a groaning sound, and Prophet followed it to the second-floor window, out of which a man and a rifle fell.

  Man and rifle hit the hotel roof simultaneously. The man rolled down the slanting roof and over the side to land with a heavy thud in the street ten feet in front of Prophet.

  Prophet looked around cautiously and then walked forward to stand over Neal Hunter, who lay on his back with a puckered blue hole in the middle of his forehead. Blood trickled up out of the hole to run down into his wide-open right eye.

  Movement ahead.

  Prophet looked up to see the big blacksmith, Lars Eriksson, striding toward him, a rifle in his hands, the mule ears of his boots dancing in the morning breeze. As Eriksson stopped and jerked his rifle to his shoulder, Prophet started to raise his Peacemaker.

  He hadn’t gotten the revolver even half up before something hammered the back of his left leg, just above the knee. The knee buckled as the bark of the gun behind him reached his ears, and he dropped, twisting around and yelling, “Ah, shit!”

  They were all going to swarm on him now like buzzards.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Prophet saw the short, mustached killer poke his head out from around the hotel’s far front corner. He grinned and stepped out, leveling his carbine for a killing shot.

  The thunder of a rifle on the saloon porch distracted him for the half-second Prophet needed to raise his sawed-off and trip both triggers
.

  The short, mustached killer’s head turned bright red in the morning sun as it flew back off his shoulders to roll up against the saddle shop behind him. The killer’s headless body, spewing blood, dropped to its knees and fell belly down in the street.

  Prophet swung back around to face west, where Lars Eriksson lay on his side in the middle of the street, stretching his right hand out toward his old Spencer repeater.

  Marshal Roscoe Deets was moving down off the saloon’s front porch, aiming his Sharps rifle at Eriksson.

  “I said hold it,” the kid warned, loudly racking another shell into his rifle’s chamber.

  Eriksson turned his flushed, sweating face toward the town marshal, flaring his nostrils and curling his upper lip. “You go to hell!”

  He lunged for the rifle.

  Deets raised his carbine, aimed down the barrel, and drilled a slug through the side of the blacksmith’s head, just above his right ear. Eriksson gave a sigh and rolled over, blood pooling in the street beneath him.

  Boots thundered on the saloon’s front porch. L.J. Tanner burst through the batwings, raising a Winchester and bellowing, “Oh, no! Oh, no you don’t!”

  Deets spun around toward the saloon owner, racking another cartridge into his carbine’s chamber. Prophet whipped up his Peacemaker and before Tanner could get a single shot off, the bounty hunter and town marshal ripped several rounds each into Tanner’s chest, causing him to fire his rifle into the porch ceiling and dance a bizarre two-step, turning two complete circles before tumbling backward over the porch’s front rail, bouncing off a hitch rack with a snapping crack and piling up on his back in the street.

  Prophet glanced at Deets. Lowering his smoking rifle, Deets glance back at him. Then Deets frowned and stared past Prophet toward the east. A clattering rose from that direction. A woman was loudly hurrrahing a galloping horse.

  Prophet turned to see Verna McQueen’s Morgan pull the chaise onto the main street from the north, moving so fast that the chaise’s two right wheels left the ground and nearly dumped Verna McQueen herself into the street. The chaise dropped back onto all four wheels, jostling the woman violently. She recovered quickly and whipped her reins against the Morgan’s back.