To Hell on a Fast Horse

by Peter Brandvold

  “For savin’ this worthless old hide.” Prophet took another pull from the bottle and then splashed some of the whiskey on his face, and cursed a blue streak for a good ten seconds.

  He shook his head as though to clear the burning misery, and corked the bottle. “Now, why don’t you get your sewin’ kit out and close up this cheek before I got no more blood left in my head?”

  Something warm and bristly scratched at Prophet’s injured cheek.

  Deep asleep and leaning back against a log, cradling his Winchester in his arms, he waved the bristly thing away.

  Again, the hot, bristled thing scratched at his cheek.

  “Ow,” Prophet heard himself mutter. It was like hearing someone else’s voice from the bottom of a deep well, far away.

  Prophet settled back against the log, wanting only to return to the cradle of sleep, away from the aches and burns in his battered body. A faint warning sounded in his ears, but the warm darkness cradling him away from his pain was more alluring.

  He succumbed to it.

  The bristled thing blew hot, fetid air against his cheek.

  Then there was a sharp, burning sting. That plucked Prophet out of his cradle like a child scooped from a baptismal font into the cold, aching air of reality. The bounty hunter gave a grunt and raised his rifle but eased the tension in his trigger finger when he saw Mean and Ugly pull his bristled lips away from his rider’s face.

  The horse nickered and sidestepped, rolling his customarily jeering eyes.

  “Goddamnit, Mean!” the bounty hunter said, brushing a hand across the cheek rough with the sutures that Louisa had used to close the wound. The fresh, aching burn told him that the horse had been nibbling at the stitches. “You cussed beast. What I told you about that glue factory must not have . . . !”

  Prophet let his voice trail off. He stared, dumbfounded, half wondering if he were still asleep and dreaming.

  Mean and Ugly.

  “Holy shit!” Prophet exclaimed, shrugging out of his blankets and climbing to his feet too fast and staggering as the ground cloaked in the gray light of dawn pitched around him.

  “What is it?” Louisa was instantly awake, pumping a cartridge into her Winchester’s breech as she shrugged out of her own blankets near Prophet.

  “It’s Mean, the old cayuse, returned to his poppa!” Prophet staggered over to the mount and wrapped his thick arms around the dun’s stout neck. “My beautiful Mean and Ugly! He came back to bedevil his rider some more!” He patted the horse’s wither. “Goddamnit, Mean—some habits die hard, don’t they?”

  He laughed and then laughed again when he saw Louisa’s brown and white pinto grazing nearby.

  “Girl,” Prophet said, “I think we’re back on that killer’s trail!”

  Louisa glanced around, still groggy. She looked at Mean and Prophet, reunited like old lovers. She blinked and lowered the Winchester. “I thought for sure we’d find them both dead . . . if we found either one at all.”

  “Savidge must’ve led ’em a ways off and then let ’em go, not thinking they’d make it back to us.” Prophet looked at Louisa. “Don’t look a gift horse—”

  “No, Lou,” said the Vengeance Queen, scowling her distaste for the big man’s jokes. “It’s too early.” She donned her hat, picked up her saddle, and strode to the pinto. “Let’s ride!”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  One month later . . .

  It was cold at night in December in southern Arizona.

  The days were warm. Unseasonably warm, in Prophet’s experience of that vast, rugged territory in winter.

  Now the sun hammered down at him, clear as a lens, out of a broad vault of cerulean sky. He rode Mean and Ugly out between two pale stone escarpments and into a large, hard-packed yard where several corrals of woven ocotillo branches surrounded a two-story, mud-brick building with a brush-roofed front gallery.

  Under the gallery, an olla swayed from its braided leather thong in the dry breeze.

  A dark-haired girl sat on a rope-bottomed chair on the gallery, crouched over a mandolin. As Prophet gigged Mean into the yard, holding the horse to a slow walk while he gained a lay of the land, the girl looked up from watching her brown fingers caressing the mandolin’s strings.

  She had an Indian-dark face with long, raven hair tumbling about her shoulders. She was plump and large-boned, but the bones were nicely rounded and turned. Her severely featured face was made pretty by a long, straight nose and by soulful, coal-colored eyes.

  She wore a cotton, Mexican-style dress, one strap hanging down off her brown shoulder. Her legs were tightly crossed and her bare feet rested, one atop the other, beneath the chair.

  Now as the girl gazed toward Prophet, she absently reached over and pulled the strap of her dress back up on her shoulder, but as soon as she returned her hand to the mandolin, the strap slid off her shoulder once more. She left it there, though the dress hung down to just above the nipple of her small, brown left breast.

  She continued to strum the mandolin very softly as Prophet reined the dun up in front of a hitch rack, and swung down from the saddle. A half-dozen other horses, all dusty, desert-bred mustangs, slouched at the two hitch racks fronting the place.

  Prophet studied the shabby, sun-and heat-blasted building carefully. Its warped windows were darkly opaque.

  This was border country, and no place here was safe, not that anyplace anywhere was safe for a man who’d been collecting bounties on outlaws for the past twelve years. Prophet had many enemies across the frontier, but especially in the southwest, to which men with bounties on their heads tended to gravitate.

  Especially in the wintertime.

  A slight breeze lifted dust from the ground at the base of the cantina’s stone steps, swirled it, and hurled it against the front wall with a soft whoosh and with light, breathy ticking sounds as the dust met the windows.

  Much of the dust disappeared over and under the batwing doors to the right of the girl, causing the doors to swing back and forth, as though a ghost had passed through them. The hinges squawked.

  Prophet adjusted the coach gun’s sling on his shoulder and slowly climbed the gallery’s steps. He pinched his hat brim to the girl, offering a sunburned smile. The girl did not return the smile, but she removed her hands from the mandolin to let her dark eyes crawl up and down the big, tall man before her.

  “You want Mexican girl or gringa?” she said in a thick Spanish accent. “I am Abella.” She quirked her mouth corners with a flirtatious smile. “I make you feel good, senor. The charge is only three pesos for me, and that includes a bath and a glass of cerveza. I am good. Better than any gringa.”

  “That’s a damn steal, chiquita,” Prophet said, scowling as though deeply offended for her. “Three pesos for a pretty girl and a bath and a glass of cerveza? Why, you’re worth six, seven times that alone—never mind that bath and the beer!”

  She smiled curiously, skeptically, at the big, dusty rider before her. Prophet went to the olla and used the wooden ladle to dipper water out of the clay pot, and to take a cool, refreshing drink. As he did, he saw the girl studying him. The cut on Prophet’s cheek had only partly healed, but he’d plucked the stiches out while drinking whiskey one night around his and Louisa’s cook fire.

  As he drank, the Mexican girl canted her head to one side, studying him as though trying to puzzle him out. She’d likely never run into a gringo like this one before—concerned about a puta’s well-being.

  Prophet and Louisa had been in Arizona for the past two weeks, hunting Savidge. That was long enough for even the winter sun to have turned him an Indian-like reddish bronze, and for his light-blue eyes to stand out in sharp contrast against it.

  He and Louisa had forked trails just after leaving the railroad at Belen, New Mexico Territory, each investigating possible routes that, based on only slightly conflicting accounts of a rancher and a whiskey drummer, a man and a young woman fitting the descriptions of Savidge and Josephina Hawkins might have taken
.

  Prophet and Louisa had picked up the pair’s trail in Denver nearly two weeks after losing them in Dakota Territory. They’d learned from several witnesses that the two had spent five days in that dusty cow town nestled at the base of the Front Range, while Savidge had played poker for several long nights in a row, apparently building a stake for himself.

  A traveling stake.

  Prophet had inquired at Union Station for them one day after he’d learned from a ticket agent that they’d hopped an Atchison, Topeka, & Santa Fe flier for the sun-blasted south.

  Why? Was the killer just hoping to cool his heels in the land of sunshine and Gila monsters, like so many others of his ilk?

  What was he still doing with the girl? Prophet was surprised he hadn’t found Josephina’s body along the trail. Had Savidge’s story about his “retirement” treasure been more than a story, after all? Was he really intending on sharing it with Josephina?

  Or was he just enjoying the nice-looking girl’s company for as long as she sated his desires, stringing her along to amuse himself?

  Prophet feared the latter. He doubted that Savidge could be amused by the same girl for long.

  In Denver, the bounty hunters had built small stakes of their own—Louisa by riding a hotel desk for a few nights, and Prophet by swamping out the Larimer Street Saloon by day and bouncing at night.

  A hornswoggled bounty hunter had to earn a living one way or another.

  To the puta now, Prophet pinched his hat brim and said, “Maybe I’ll take you up on your offer later. For now, I got business inside. In fact, maybe you can help me.”

  “Si, of course.”

  “Have you seen an ugly gringo around here lately, maybe stopping for a drink? Besides myself, I’m sayin.” Prophet grinned, fingering the stiches on his cheek. “This hombre might have taken a poke. Or not. He’s got a girl with him—a brown-eyed, brown-haired girl with a round, pretty face. When I say ugly, I mean this fellow is ugly as last year’s sin. Feo!”

  The girl flushed behind her natural dark complexion, and lowered her eyes to her mandolin. She started strumming the instrument once more as she shook her head quickly, her hair tumbling down to hide her face. “No, no, senor. I don’t know about . . . anything like that.”

  Prophet studied her, puzzled by her reaction. Had she seen Savidge and just didn’t want to speak about him, knowing he was dangerous? Or had she learned—probably wisely so—not to relay information about anyone to anyone, lest she wanted her tongue cut out?

  Prophet felt bad about having asked her the question. He should have known you didn’t ask whores questions like that, especially when someone might have overheard her response and taken umbrage.

  “I beg your pardon, senorita,” he said, pinching his hat brim again.

  He pushed through the batwings and stopped just inside the cantina.

  It was a crude, smelly layout, a plank-board bar to the right. Crude shelves lined the wall behind the bar, around a four-by-four, fly-stained mirror that had a long, jagged crack running through it.

  There were ten or so tables to the left of the bar. Only two were occupied, by men as rough-hewn as their surroundings—dirty, long-haired, raggedly dressed hombres, most sporting several shooting irons apiece. Four of the men were Mexican. Two were gringos less colorfully but just as roughly attired as the Mexicans.

  Another, small Mexican sat at a table against the wall to Prophet’s right, near the end of the makeshift bar. He had a crock jug on the table before him. A matchstick protruded from between his thick, blistered lips.

  He was sharpening more matchsticks with a knife three times larger than needed for the job, and setting the sharpened sticks in a neat pile beside a stone ashtray in which a half-smoked, cornhusk quirley smoldered. A fat, black cat lay on the other side of the table from the man, its green eyes riveted on Prophet.

  The cat curled and uncurled the end of its tail. An empty tin plate lay just beyond its white-tipped front paws.

  All eyes in the room had turned to Prophet, lingering on him. The two gringos shifted slightly in their chairs. The Mexicans muttered things Prophet couldn’t hear. The air was rife with tobacco smoke and the smell of rotgut tequila or mescal.

  Prophet turned to the lone Mexican, who just then poked his right index finger through the handle of the jug and lifted the jug to his mouth, hooking it over his right shoulder and taking two sizeable pulls. Some of the tangle-leg dribbled down the corners of his mouth, soaking his brushy mustache that had a white line, like a lightning bolt, running through it.

  The little Mexican sighed as he set the bottle back down on the table. He said loudly, slurring his words liberally, “Come in, senor. Take a load off. Have a drink.” He glanced at a table where the other Mexicans in the room were playing cards. “Play some poker, if you like. If you need to bleed off your loins, Abella is at your service.”

  “So I heard,” Prophet said, walking over to the little Mexican’s table. He glanced at the others in the room, cautiously, and hiked a boot onto an empty chair.

  He patted the cat, which continued to curl its tail, and asked, “I’m looking for an ugly son of a bitch who might have rode through here with a pretty, brown-haired girl. They’re both gringos.”

  The little Mexican glanced at the others and then hiked a shoulder. “Many men ride through here, amigo. Many Mejicanos, many gringos. I had a Negro ride through here last week, and a fat hombre in a very nice suit. A city suit. The kind you buy in a store. He was from back east somewhere, I think.”

  He shook his head slowly, smiling. “But I see damn few gringos ride through here with women. The reason they stop here is because they don’t have a woman.”

  “You sure?” Prophet asked him pointedly.

  “Si, si, senor,” the Mexican said, nodding and pooching out his lips. “I am sure. I do apologize. How ’bout if I make it up to you with a drink on the house, huh?”

  Prophet studied the man. He glanced at the others. Only a few sets of eyes were on him now, but the other eyes were too busily trying to avoid him.

  Why?

  Apprehension tugged at the ends of Prophet’s nerves.

  With a slow sigh and a nod, Prophet said, “Sure I’ll take a drink. I could use one.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Prophet tramped over to a table near the barman’s, kicked a chair out, and doffed his hat. Giving a quick, furtive study of the others in the room—one gringo looked vaguely familiar—he ran his elbow around inside his hat, soaking up the sweat from the band with his sleeve.

  As the Mexican came out with a jug and a filmy shot glass, Prophet tossed his hat onto the table, hooked the Richards over the table’s near right corner, within easy reach, and slacked into his chair. By his own design, the batwings were not directly behind him but sort of off his left shoulder, seven feet away.

  He faced all of the other customers in the cantina. The barman’s table was six feet away on his right.

  The cat still studied Prophet but it was no longer curling its tail. More even than the others, the cat was making Prophet feel self-conscious.

  The Mexican set the shot glass on the table. His quirley drooped between his lips, and he blinked against the smoke wandering up into his eyes as he filled the glass with unfiltered mescal. The aroma of the astringent liquor itself was intoxicating, as it wafted up against Prophet’s nose.

  The Mexican glanced at the Richards, then twisted the cork into the jug’s lip as he turned toward the bar.

  “Leave it,” Prophet said. “I’m a might thirsty.”

  “Come far, senor? Not that it’s any of my business, but . . .”

  “We all got a curious streak,” Prophet said. “Yeah, you could say I’ve come far. Boy, it was cold up in Dakota. I’d hate to get stuck up there all winter!”

  He chuckled and glanced around the room, but no one else seemed to find the comment in the least bit amusing. Maybe they’d never spent a winter in Dakota Territory. Or maybe their thoughts wer
e elsewhere.

  The gringo he thought he’d recognized sat about ten feet ahead and right, near the bar. Long, dark-red hair hung to his shoulders. He had a thin, scraggly beard and long mustaches damp from the forty-rod he was drinking. The top of his bulbous head was nearly bald, but Prophet judged he was only twenty-six, twenty-seven.

  He was damned familiar, all right. Most likely, Prophet had seen that ugly visage on a wanted dodger or two . . .

  He faced Prophet and kept casting owlish glances over the left shoulder of the man he shared his table with, whose back faced the bounty hunter.

  The Mexican set the jug down on the table, on the Richards’s wide leather lanyard. He blinked sleepily down at Prophet once more, then removed the quirley from between his lips, blew smoke out his mouth and nostrils, and strode back over to his own table, where the cat was now washing itself.

  Prophet nudged the jug off the lanyard. He picked up the shot glass and studied the cloudy liquid through the filmy glass, then tossed back half the shot, stretching his lips back from his teeth and raking out a heavy sigh as the mescal stoked a frenzied fire inside him.

  His eyes watered.

  Whenever he drank mescal down here in the southwestern territories, he felt like a kid partaking for the first time of his old man’s skull pop.

  It usually took him a shot or two to get used to the vigor of the tangle-leg all over again.

  He looked up quickly and caught the gringo glaring at him again over his friend’s left shoulder. The gringo averted his gaze quickly, and his mouth moved as he said something to the man across from him. The Mexicans gathered around the table to the gringo’s left, against the left wall, weren’t saying anything. They were busily keeping their eyes off of Prophet.

  Occasionally, they cut their eyes over to the fidgety gringo.

  They were a surly bunch—the whole lot of them. There was no denying it. They likely never did much singing and dancing, but was there some particular reason they were looking so sullen just now?

  Did they know something about Savidge, or did they know who Prophet was and were taking umbrage about his possible past transgressions against them or against those they knew? Prophet had done plenty of work down here in the past, so he wouldn’t doubt that his reputation preceded him.