To Hell on a Fast Horse

by Peter Brandvold

  The Richards marked him as a bounty hunter, of course. And the nasty gash on his rough-hewn cheek likely told them he wasn’t a deacon in the Lutheran church. Maybe they just didn’t like bounty hunters. Maybe they all had prices on their heads and they were just naturally skittish about sharing a cantina with a man who made his living running their kind to ground.

  In that case, their demeanors would be entirely reasonable and understandable.

  Prophet threw back the rest of the mescal in his glass, and splashed out more from the jug. Damned good stuff. Really took the edge off a hard ride and a less than friendly situation. He knew from experience to go easy, though, for mescal would start going down like water after the third or four shot.

  Over the next half a bottle you’d swear you were stone-cold sober, and could even win a few rounds of stud or ’jack, or take a girl to bed and enjoy yourself. But then it would slap you as hard as a deeply offended puta when you least expected, and send you crawling toward the nearest slop bucket with your eyes swimming and your guts on fire.

  Prophet took only a small sip of the second shot, and then dug out his makings sack and began building a quirley.

  He’d fired the quirley and was sitting back in his chair, smoking and conservatively sipping the mescal, enjoying himself for a short while before he’d hit the trail again, when the man sitting across from the familiar-looking gringo slid his chair back from their table, stood, stretched, and said with a laugh, “Time to shake the dew from my lily.”

  He did not turn toward Prophet but merely gave him his profile as he moved out away from the table before turning to tramp into the shadows at the back of the cantina—a broad-shouldered hombre in a sheepskin vest over a dark calico shirt. He also wore a necklace of what appeared dyed grizzly teeth—something he’d likely taken in trade from an Indian.

  He had two cartridge belts crisscrossed on his waist, with one hogleg in a beaded holster thonged on his right thigh. When he’d gained his feet and turned away from his table, Prophet had glimpsed another pistol riding in a belly holster. Walking with an ever-so-slight limp, he pushed through the plank-board door at the back of the room, slipped out into the brassy sunlight, and closed the door behind him.

  Before the door had closed, Prophet had glimpsed a privy leaning back there behind the cantina.

  Now there was no one to obscure the nervous gringo facing Prophet. The man glanced up at Prophet briefly, furtively, then casually puffed his cheeks out and began rolling a quirley of his own. He and his friend had been playing red dog, and two decks of cards and a few coins were scattered on the table before him, around an earthen jug like Prophet’s.

  The mescal had oiled the bounty hunter’s brain enough that the man’s name slipped out like fresh plop from under a cow’s arched tail:

  Buck Stinson.

  A small-fry criminal wanted in several territories for mostly petty crimes including saloon robberies and stock and hay thievery. He may or may not have been involved in a range war up in Nevada, but he was wanted for questioning by the marshals up there. Prophet thought the price on his head wasn’t worth trifling over.

  Stinson licked his quirley closed and glanced fleetingly at Prophet once more.

  Prophet raised his shot glass to him. “Hidy, Buck.”

  Stinson stared at him, hairy-eyed.

  Prophet shook his head. “Pull your horns in. I ain’t here for you.” He glanced at the Mexicans. “Or any of these other hombres. I’m lookin’ for another fellow, Chaz Savidge. Nasty bastard. Makes you look like an aged nun, Buck. Just now, however, I’m enjoyin’ this here—”

  He stopped talking suddenly.

  The hair at the back of his neck was flicking around like an entire field of wheat in a prairie wind.

  A shadow slid across the floor off his right shoulder. He dropped his shot glass onto the table, spilling mescal, and grabbed the Richards as he threw himself hard right from his chair. Just before he hit the floor, a pistol barked and there was a loud, shrill scream of breaking glass.

  The pistol kept barking and the glass kept shattering.

  Prophet hit the floor on his right shoulder, rolled twice, then twisted back onto his butt, spun, and looked behind him and through a window to see a man firing two pistols from out front of the cantina. Stinson’s red dog partner was firing through a large patch of jagged-edged window he’d broken out with his first few shots.

  Glass flew in all directions. Powder smoke wafted in the sunshine. Stinson’s partner was bellowing and laughing as he fired each pistol in turn through the window.

  The Mexicans were screaming as they dove for cover, and so was Buck Stinson, cursing loudly. “Hold it, Powell, you crazy bastard—you’re killin’ everybody but Prophet!”

  Prophet raised the Richards up off the floor, clicked the left rabbit ear hammer back, and squeezed the corresponding trigger.

  A much larger patch of glass was blown out of the window, the shattering noises drowned by the ten-gauge’s booming thunder. Powell screamed as he disappeared in the rain of flying glass.

  Behind Prophet, Stinson bellowed incoherently. Boots thumped loudly. Prophet swung around in time to see the small-fry owlhoot staggering toward him, blood oozing from his right, shredded ear.

  Stinson’s eyes were bright with fury as he raised both of his own Schofield revolvers. He got one shot off before Prophet tripped the Richards’s second trigger and watched Stinson get blown straight back as though by a sudden cyclone ripping through the saloon.

  Stinson landed on a table and rolled heels-over-jaw down the other side and out of sight, landing with a raucous thump.

  One of the Mexicans had been hit in the mescal-inspired barrage by Powell, and the others were stumbling around, yelling in Spanish and pulling six-shooters. Since there was no one else in the room to shoot at, they began swinging their hoglegs toward Prophet, who tossed away the smoking Richards and palmed his .45.

  Bang! Bang! Bang-Bang-Bang!

  Only two of the Mexicans managed to squeeze off shots in Prophet’s general direction, the bullets plunking into the floor wide of him, before the bounty hunter’s bullets sent them pirouetting into the wall and over tables and chairs, screaming as they died. One hit the floor and tried raising his pearl-gripped Bisley, bellowing a less than polite insult against Prophet’s mother.

  The bounty hunter aimed carefully, knowing he had only one more round left in the Peacemaker, and drilled a blue, puckered hole in the raging Mex’s forehead, just above the bridge of his nose.

  Movement to Prophet’s right.

  He swung in that direction to see the barman aiming an ancient, double-barreled shotgun at him from over the bar.

  “Oh, shit!” Prophet muttered to himself, automatically swinging his empty Colt at the snarling barkeep.

  Seeing the big Colt aimed in his direction, the Mexican dropped the shotgun atop the bar, screaming, “No, por favor— you’re too much killer for me, amigo!”

  He swung around and, holding his arms over his head, ran through a door behind the bar, leaving the door open behind him. He obviously hadn’t counted Prophet’s shots. The cat, which must have taken cover under the barkeep’s table, gave an indignant meow from somewhere behind the bar.

  A few seconds later, Prophet saw the cat running tail-up after its master beyond the open door, both man and cat running toward a fringe of dusty willows and palo verdes some distance away.

  Prophet rose, blinking against the wafting powder smoke. He looked around quickly, then, shaking the spent cartridges out of his Colt and replacing them with fresh from his cartridge belt, walked to the broken window.

  Powell lay outside on his back. He looked as though his head and upper torso had been doused with red paint from which bits of window glass protruded. His eyes were gone.

  Prophet strode back through the saloon.

  None of the Mexicans were moving. He turned to Stinson, whose chest was rising and falling shallowly where he lay on his back, on the other side o
f the table he’d tumbled over. The buckshot had taken him in the upper chest, but somehow he was still breathing. Buckshot peppered his lower face and his neck, as well. Blood dribbled from the small wounds.

  He stared straight up at the ceiling, blinking.

  Prophet crouched over the outlaw. “Now, what the hell was that all about? I told you I wasn’t after you.”

  “Wish you woulda told Powell,” Stinson said, and chuckled briefly. Then he stretched his lips back from his teeth as pain lanced him. “We . . . thought you was gonna take . . . the girl. We was . . . havin’ fun . . . with her.”

  Prophet frowned. “What girl?”

  Stinson swallowed. He was sucking air now like a landed fish, his eyes growing wider as he clung more desperately to the life that was fast leaving him. “The . . . one . . . upstairs. Savidge—he’s pimpin’ her out up there . . . buildin’ a stake.”

  Outside, hoof thuds rose.

  “Hy-ahhh!” a man shouted as the thudding grew louder.

  Prophet turned to a dust-streaked window in time to see a rider galloping away from a small adobe stable on the other side of the yard. Chaz Savidge whipped his rein ends across his dappled gray’s right wither and shouted, “Hy-ahhh, you cayuse. Hy-ahhhh!”

  Horse and rider galloped across the yard, passing from Prophet’s left to his right, and then swinging around the ocotillo corral and heading west.

  “Shit!”

  Prophet ran to the front of the saloon and out the batwing doors. He shucked his Winchester from his saddle boot, racked a shell into the chamber, and planted a bead on Savidge’s jostling back as horse and rider galloped straight out away from the cantina.

  Prophet fired three quick rounds. He cursed again as his bullets plumed dust to either side of the fleeing killer. He aimed once more, carefully, but held fire when the outlaw gave a wild, victorious whoop and dashed around a bend in the trail, the bristling desert swallowing him.

  “Goddamnit!” Prophet shouted.

  He was tempted to mount Mean and Ugly and give chase. But Savidge would keep. His trail was fresh.

  The girl . . .

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  “What room’s she in?” Prophet asked Stinson as he ran toward the back of the cantina.

  But a single glance showed him Stinson lying still in death now, gazing heavy-lidded, mouth slack, at the ceiling. Prophet took the stairs three steps at a time, turned at the top, and ran down a dingy, musty hall.

  There were three curtained doorways on each side. Prophet pulled the first curtain on the left aside, peered into the room, and then turned to the opposite curtain.

  He pulled that aside, as well, and then continued to the next curtain on the hall’s right side.

  He swept it away, and froze.

  “No,” a small voice said. “Please . . . no more.”

  Prophet moved slowly, haltingly into the room.

  Josephina Hawkins lay on a small, low bed with a green wooden frame. The bottom middle of the bed sagged nearly to the floor. The room smelled of slop buckets, tobacco, and whiskey. Josephina lay naked spread-eagled on the bed, her wrists and ankles tied with ropes to frame posts. Her mussed hair screened her eyes. Her lower lip was split and one eye was discolored.

  “Please,” she begged in that same small voice. “No . . . more.” Her voiced pinched off with a sob.

  Prophet unsheathed his bowie, and cut the rope tying her right ankle to a bedpost. “It’s Prophet.” He walked over and cut the rope lashing her other ankle to another bedpost.

  As he walked up the side of the bed to cut the rope securing Josephina’s right wrist, she opened her eyes to stare up at him through the screen of her brown hair. She didn’t say anything. She just watched him cut her wrist free and then lean over the bed to cut the other one free.

  Tears rolled down her cheeks.

  Prophet straightened as he sheathed the bowie, and stared down at her. “Everything’s going to be all right.”

  Josephina shook her head slightly and then rolled onto her side, facing away from him, raising her knees and crossing her arms to cover her breasts. Her voice sounded thin and far away. “There was no cache, like Savidge said.”

  “I don’t doubt it.”

  Prophet harbored no ill will toward the girl. Desperate folks did desperate things. He walked to the door, stopped, and glanced back at her. She lay staring at the stained mattress.

  “I’ll get him,” he said.

  He moved out into the hall and stopped suddenly. He started to raise the Winchester but lowered it when he saw the young puta standing at the far end of the hall, near the top of the stairs. Lines cut across her dark forehead with fear and chagrin.

  “They pay more for gringo putas here,” she said softly, shaking her hair back out of her eyes. “Senor Stinson was going to buy her from the ugly gringo, Savidge, and take her down to Mexico.”

  “Yeah, I bet she’d make even more down there.” Prophet moved to the girl, placing a hand on her shoulder. “See to her, will you, senorita?”

  The girl nodded. Prophet shouldered the Winchester, dropped quickly down the stairs, and strode across the saloon. He scooped up the Richards and pushed through the batwings, stopping suddenly on the gallery and gazing east. Again, he started to bring the rifle to bear, but left it on his shoulder.

  Louisa rode her brown and white pinto into the yard, the pinto’s hooves lifting small puffs of dust as it cantered toward the cantina. Prophet stepped down off the gallery, slid his Winchester into its saddle sheath, and broke open the Richards.

  Louisa rode up beside him, staring curiously down at him. He didn’t look at her as he plucked the spent wads from the shotgun’s barrels and replaced them with fresh shells from his cartridge belt.

  “I didn’t have any luck,” Louisa said. “I assume you did?”

  “If you could call it that.” Prophet snapped the shotgun closed and slung it over his right shoulder. He stepped up onto Mean’s back, and glanced at Louisa. “Josephina’s inside. She’s beat up. The bastard was pimping her. Check in on her, will you?”

  “You’re going after him, I take it?”

  “You got that right.”

  “I should go with you.”

  “No.” Prophet shook his head. “I wanna do it this way.” He glanced at the cantina. “Stay with her. She’s in a bad way.”

  He reined Mean around, touched spurs to the gelding’s flanks, and bounded off in a ground-eating gallop, following Savidge’s fresh tracks across the dusty yard and into the desert beyond. The man’s tracks followed no trail but headed cross-country, weaving through the chaparral. They seemed to be leading toward a red, stone ridge wall looming in the northwest.

  Prophet pushed Mean hard, slowing only now and then to make sure he was still on Savidge’s trail. He wasn’t going to lose the killer again.

  When he’d ridden for a good fifteen minutes, he reined Mean to a sudden, skidding stop, and stared at the ground, frowning.

  “What the hell?”

  Another set of horse tracks angled in from the south, from between two dusty mesquites. They overlaid Savidge’s tracks. Another rider was now on Savidge’s trail.

  Thunder rumbled in the northern distance.

  Prophet jerked his head up. He looked at the sky over the tall, craggy ridge. Not a cloud in that massive Arizona vault.

  The thunder could be only one thing.

  “Shit!”

  Prophet spurred Mean into another instant, ground-chewing gallop. Horse and rider weaved through the chaparral and around cabin-sized boulders that had long ago tumbled from the northern ridge. The ridge itself grew larger and taller before Prophet, so that he could soon see every cleft and fissure, every pale splash of bird shit, every shadow. A gap opened in the massive wall. The two sets of tracks that Prophet was following led toward the gap.

  Prophet galloped around a one-armed saguaro, and reined Mean to another skidding stop. The ridge wall bulged on his right. The gap was nearly straight ahead a
nd slightly left. It was the mouth of a narrow canyon. The two sets of horse tracks led into the canyon.

  Prophet swung down from Mean’s back, and dropped the reins. Securing the Richards on his right shoulder, he slid his Winchester out of the saddle sheath, and pumped a cartridge into the chamber.

  Slowly, he strode around the bulge in the ridge wall and into the twenty-foot gap that was the canyon’s mouth. The wall still bulged out from his right, so he couldn’t see more than a few feet ahead of him.

  He took another two slow, careful steps, wary of an ambush. Something shiny lay on the red caliche before him, just beyond the bulge in the ridge. Prophet stooped and plucked the empty cartridge casing off the ground. He held it up between his thumb and index finger.

  The three-inch .50-90 Sharps black powder cartridge glinted in the sun washing off the ridge. The brass was still warm.

  Prophet tossed the cartridge down and walked farther but even more slowly into the canyon, his heart beating insistently against his breastbone. The bulge started pulling back away from him, revealing more of the narrow canyon beyond. The cleft was littered with rocks and driftwood likely deposited by monsoon rains, for the canyon was probably a creek bed in the wet seasons. Occasional clumps of brown grass and cactus grew between the rocks.

  Prophet took four more slow steps, his spurs ringing faintly, and stopped once more. He looked down, grimacing.

  A man lay belly down before him. The man wore faded denims with ragged cuffs, a brown leather vest over a striped shirt, and a cartridge belt. Two pistols were holstered on his hips. Two knives were sheathed at the back of his shell belt, the Spanish-style obsidian, silver-capped handles jutting over each kidney. His hands lay on the ground near where his ears would have been if he’d still had ears, which he didn’t.

  In fact, the man didn’t even have a head.

  Only ragged bits of bone and blood marked where the man’s head had been hastily chopped off, likely with a hatchet. A hole the size of a silver dollar had been blown through the middle of his back between his shoulder blades.