Helldorado

by Peter Brandvold

  “Yeah, that’s so.”

  “I figured these two must work for one of the ranches,” the tall deputy said and hiked a shoulder with a defensive air. “As for them that bushwhacked Miss Bonaventure—I wouldn’t know either o’ them from Adam’s off-ox.”

  “This one here’s still alive, Sheriff,” said the short, blond badge toter standing over Kentucky Earl Watson, who seemed to be trying to lift his head. The bushwhacker’s lips were moving as his chest rose and fell slightly.

  As the short deputy prodded Kentucky Earl with his boot toe, Louisa strolled over, dropped her rifle down from her shoulder, spread her boots about shoulder-width apart, and aimed the Winchester at Kentucky Earl’s head. The blond deputy looked at her, his eyes wide with shock. He opened his mouth, but before he could say anything, Louisa’s Winchester barked.

  Kentucky Earl’s head jerked violently as the bullet went in one ear and out the other, blowing about half of Earl’s brains out with it.

  “Now he’s not.” Louisa shouldered her rifle once more and strode back off in the direction of the Golden Slipper, leaving all three lawmen staring incredulously after her.

  Sheriff Severin looked at Prophet, who looked away, scratching the back of his head. “Can’t blame her for wantin’ to leave the profession in style.”

  After Hell-Bringin’ Hiram Severin sent one of his deputies off to fetch the undertaker for the two dead men, the sheriff asked Prophet with a chagrined air if he’d join him and Jose Encina for supper at Avril Tweet’s Cafe that evening, obviously feeling guilty that he’d been so quick to assume that Prophet had started the lead swap. Not one to hold a grudge, and since he had no one else to sup with, Prophet agreed to join the two men.

  When the sheriff had given Prophet directions to the eatery, the bounty hunter clomped back into the bathhouse to finish dressing and endure more of the Chinaman’s tirade.

  When he’d dressed in relatively clean clothes from his saddlebags—faded denims, powder-blue denim shirt that had shrunk a couple sizes too small for his broad shoulders, and red neckerchief—he lugged his gear over to his second-floor room at the Muleskinner’s Inn. The room was furnished with a lumpy iron bed wedged between the door and the right wall, a rickety wooden washstand, a backless wooden chair, and a few shelves and some hooks for hanging clothes on.

  It was little larger than a cookhouse broom closet. Not only was it sparsely and crudely furnished—the iron bed frame was speckled with chipped white enamel—but it had come with the threat that another lodger might be joining Prophet later that evening if the other twelve rooms filled up, unless Prophet paid an extra twenty-five cents for guaranteed privacy.

  Prophet, who was almost broke and too proud to go on the take from Louisa, who was always flush, told the owner of the place, a shifty-eyed gent with dentures that didn’t fit right, that if anyone disturbed him, the disturber would get a load of buckshot for his trouble. He wasn’t promising the proprietor wouldn’t get a load, as well.

  The proprietor, Henricks, clicked his dentures, curled his nose, and snapped his newspaper as Prophet tramped up the stairs that were missing two entire steps, the whole shebang sloping dangerously to one side.

  Now the bounty hunter dropped his gear on the bed, rearranged the possibles in his saddlebags, and rolled a smoke. He looked at his old Ingersol railroad watch and saw that he had some time before supper. Dropping the watch back into his jeans pocket, he dragged the backless chair up to the bed and, smoking, laid out all his guns—three pistols, shotgun, and Winchester ’73—side by side on the bed’s stained quilt.

  Always good to have clean weapons, and he hadn’t cleaned his in over a week.

  He hadn’t used much of his arsenal in that time, outside of the rifle and shotgun, of course, but they might have collected just enough trail dust or plant seeds or moisture to hamper their actions.

  No bounty man in his right mind—especially one who’d made as many enemies as Prophet had—carried guns with compromised actions. He never knew when said gun might come in handy, which his little run-in with Kentucky Earl Watson and his unknown compadre had so handily reminded him.

  While Prophet worked, taking apart each weapon and carefully cleaning and oiling each part, he sipped from a bottle he’d picked up in a roadhouse along the trail up from Mexico. Nothing like a bottle to quell the frayed nerves on the lee side of a gun battle.

  Nor for clairfying a man’s thoughts.

  While he cleaned the guns, smoked, and nursed the unlabeled hooch, he couldn’t help wondering if any more of Kentucky Earl Watson’s gang was around. It seemed damn queer that several men from the same gang could have beefs with both Prophet and Louisa, from separate past dustups. But they had to all have been part of Kentucky Earl’s bunch.

  And if they were from the same bunch—and they had to have been—what had they been doing in Juniper? Obviously, they hadn’t merely spotted Prophet and Louisa along the trail and followed them in. Hell-Bringin’ Hiram’s deputy had said he’d seen at least two of the men—Prophet’s bushwhackers—around town.

  What had they been doing here? Kentucky Earl Watson was many things, but a cow nurse was not one of them.

  As Prophet put his rifle back together, caressing the fore-stock with an oily rag, he thought about Louisa.

  A worry pang bit his belly, but the girl could take care of herself. He denied the urge to check on her before heading over to Avril Tweet’s Cafe. Not only was it not necessary, but he didn’t want to interfere with her evening with Miguel Encina. She’d look out for herself and the young banker tonight, and God help anyone who tried dry-gulching her. Unlike Prophet, the girl never took a drink of anything stronger than sarsaparilla—hell, she didn’t even drink coffee!—so her mind was always as clear as Rocky Mountain snowmelt.

  No, she could take care of herself. Prophet had no reason to worry about her. Of course, he had no reason to be jealous of young Miguel, either—since it had been his own idea for the young bounty hunting lass to settle down here in Juniper—but he was.

  He puffed the quirley stub in his lips as he rubbed the rifle down, then tossed it onto the bed beside the others, the bluing of the entire arsenal shiny with fresh oil.

  Christ, he thought. Why don’t I just pull out? I’m going to have to jerk my picket line sometime. I never should have taken the gold-guarding job. The only reason I did was because I wanted to get Louisa settled in here. I always knew I’d leave eventually. If she’s already falling for the young banker, I have no business hanging around here, torturing myself and being a thorn in her side.

  He puffed the quirley and tossed it out the open window, then blew a long, ragged smoke plume after it.

  12

  PROPHET RUBBED WATER into his longish sandy hair and combed it.

  He snugged his battered Stetson onto his head and, reluctantly leaving his ten-gauge in his room and armed with only his Peacemaker, tramped down the deathtrap stairs and out of the Muleskinner’s Inn and over to Avril Tweet’s Cafe. The eatery sat on a meandering side street on the town’s north side near an open sage flat rolling up to distant, brown ridges. It was a wood-frame, two-story house with ginger-bread siding and a simple but tastefully furnished interior, with two separate eating areas divided by a narrow, carpeted staircase.

  The smell of fresh biscuits and gravy nearly flattened Prophet as he stepped through the door, but his enjoyment was tempered by a familiar voice raised in anger.

  Doffing his hat, he followed the voice through a doorway and into the dining room on the house’s left side. Jose Encina sat at a round, linen-covered table in the middle of the room. A cigar smoldered in his right hand as he draped his other arm over the back of his chair, craning his neck to look behind him, where Hell-Bringin’ Hiram Severin stood before a small table against the far wall, under the head of a curly-horned mountain ram.

  A young lady with long, brown braids and wearing a crisp white apron over a green, puffy-sleeved muslin dress stood a ways from the middle
-aged sheriff, wringing her hands and looking worried. Two men dressed in ragged trail garb sat on either side of the table, looking up at Severin with much the same expression as that of the young lady. The two men’s hats were hooked over their chair backs.

  The man on the right had his hands on the table as though he’d been ordered to do so, while the sheriff, his left boot propped on the edge of the chair in which the other cowboy sat, crouched over the other cowboy, barking, “. . . And if you ever say anything like that to a young lady in my town again, you down-at-heel saddle trash, I’ll haul you over to the hoosegow and lock you up for vagrancy!”

  Striding slowly toward the table at which Encina sat, Prophet saw the cowboy whom Severin was confronting staring up at the gray-headed, gray-mustached sheriff indignantly. When the cowboy only glowered, Severin jerked his right hand back behind his shoulder and swung it forward, his open palm connecting loudly with the cowboy’s right cheek, jerking the young man’s head around sharply.

  The crack of the slap sounded like a pistol shot. The cowboy’s cheek turned white as parchment, then quickly blazed as his jaws hardened in anger.

  The girl, obviously a waitress, gasped with a start. The slapped cowboy jerked his right arm.

  “You sure you wanna do that, you scrawny little devil?” Severin had his coat flap peeled back behind the jutting grip of the ivory-handled Colt holstered butt forward on his right hip. “I say, you sure you wanna pull iron on me, slick?”

  The cowboy’s left eye twitched. He slid his gaze to his friend, who sat in his chair stone-faced, like a chastised schoolboy, then back and up to the menacing squint of the sheriff of Juniper. He said something too softly for Prophet to hear.

  “That’s right—you don’t,” the sheriff growled. “Now, I want you to apologize to this young lady.”

  He glanced at the waitress who stood as though nailed to the polished wood floor, her eyes bright with fear. The cowboy swung his head to the girl then, too. He sniffed, cleared his throat, and said thickly, “Miss Dolly, I do apologize for sayin’ you got nice ankles.”

  The girl’s brows raveled and unraveled as she looked between the sheriff and the young cowboy, both regarding her expectantly. She didn’t seem sure about how to respond. Finally, she pursed her lips, glanced at the floor, blushing brightly, and said, “I reckon that’s all right, Mr. Fletcher,” in a voice just barely audible.

  “Th—thank you, ma’am,” the cowboy said, returning his gaze to the sheriff.

  The girl licked her lips nervously, then, still wringing her hands together, turned and fled through a door at the back of the room through which rose the occasional clatter of pots and pans.

  “Now,” Severin said, lifting his right fist from the cowboy’s table and straightening, falling back on the heels of his polished, black, high-heeled boots, “I want you boys to leave them pistols and shell belts right there in your chairs, and I want you to get the hell out of here. I ain’t sayin’ you gotta leave town, but don’t let me catch you over here at Mr. Tweet’s place again—not until you’ve learned better manners.”

  The two looked at each other. Then, glowering, faces mottled with both chagrin and frustration, the two young drovers gained their feet, unbuckled their shell belts, and let them drop to their chairs with their holstered six-shooters. Casting indignant looks over their shoulders, they stomped out of the house and into the street where two dun cow ponies were tied at the hitchrail.

  Prophet, who had slumped down in a chair across from Jose Encina, watched the still-glowering, red-faced lawman stride angrily over to the table and reclaim the chair he’d obviously been sitting in before. A nearly full glass of beer and a whiskey shot stood on the table in front of it.

  “Damn, Hiram,” the bounty hunter said, hooking his hat over his chair back, “I see you ain’t softened any with age.”

  “Can’t get soft, Proph,” the sheriff said, easing into his chair. “Not when you got a town to keep on its leash, and one that’s as far off the beaten path as Juniper. You know, they used to call it Helldorado.”

  “I seen the sign when we rode in.”

  “The name fit. We changed it about three years ago, when it stopped fittin’. I don’t ever want it to fit again. Leastways, not while I’m wearin’ this sheriff’s star. My actions might have seemed a little harsh with that younker. But ‘the Kid,’ as he likes to be called, stirs up trouble, or tries to. Starts by ogling the girls and making nasty comments, and the boot-stomping spreads to the other punchers, and before you know it you got a rowdy bunch tearing apart saloons or running wild in the streets, and the young ladies are afraid to show themselves after dark.”

  The old town tamer threw back half his whiskey shot and followed it up with a healthy pull from his beer glass. Smacking his lips and lowering the glass to the table, he added, “That ain’t the kinda town I run, Lou.”

  “Si,” said Jose Encina, regarding the sheriff sitting across from him with an admiring cast to his coffee-brown gaze. “Before Senor Hiram, my bank was robbed at least three times a year. I was ready to close up shop and move back to Mejico even with the revolutionarios running rampant over my rancho. I have the good sheriff to thank for my livelihood, as do most of the other business owners in town.”

  The young waitress, Dolly, approached the table to take Prophet’s drink order, and when she had it, she muttered her thanks to Hiram.

  “Just doin’ my job, Dolly. And I do apologize for the Kid’s behavior.”

  She smiled nervously. “He don’t really mean nothin’ by it, Sheriff. He comes around, now and then, and says things. . . .”

  “Well, from now on, he won’t be comin’ around,” the sheriff said as he regarded the girl with gravity, turning his shot glass in his fingers. “And I suggest, young lady, you avoid that boy. He’s trash.”

  “Yessir,” Dolly said quickly and hurried back into the kitchen.

  Prophet said, “I got me a feelin’ the Kid’s sparkin’ that girl, Hiram. And I got me another feelin’ she don’t mind.”

  “Well, she should mind,” the sheriff said gruffly. “I know the so-called Kid’s family. His mother was a whore, his father a pig farmer who drank himself to death down New Mexico way. Knew some of his other kin in another town I tamed down there, and believe me, they weren’t nothin’ you’d want your daughter seen with, neither.”

  The men fell silent when Dolly returned with Prophet’s beer and shot. She did not look at the sheriff and only raked her troubled gaze briefly across Prophet before she said, “You gentlemen be eatin’ tonight, will you?”

  When they’d each ordered the night’s special of pork roast with fried potatoes and green beans, Dolly again disappeared sullenly into the kitchen. Prophet sipped his beer and, feeling uneasy but not being able to put his finger on why, asked, “How was it you came up this way, Hiram? Last I knew, you was still bounty huntin’, and that was after your hide-huntin’ days.”

  The sheriff took a small sip from his whiskey, holding the glass almost daintily between his thumb and index finger, both of which were the red-brown of old, weathered brick, and chuckled. “Yessir, I hunted buffalo from up around Winnipeg, Canada, clear down to Mesilla, New Mexico. Them were the days, though they plum took some starch outta me, what with fightin’ the Comanche every winter.” The nostalgic smile left the man’s face when, sliding across the table to Prophet, he said in a deep, serious tone, “Left bounty hunting when I killed the wrong man, Lou—or who I was told was the wrong man—and spent three years in the Kansas pen for it.”

  “Ah, hell, Hiram.”

  The sheriff nodded gravely. “I shot a young man I’d been tracking for nigh on two months through the Indian Nations. He bushwhacked me, and I drilled him through his right eye. Hauled him back to Alva over his horse, and that’s when I was told I’d killed the wrong man. Prominent rancher’s son. No way the young man could have robbed that stagecoach and killed the shotgun guard, by god, because he just wasn’t that kind of boy!”

&
nbsp; “You catch him with the money?” Prophet asked, rolling a smoke while regarding the sheriff with mantled brows.

  “Caught him with half of it. The other half was gone. Probably spent on whores in Clancyville or Ortega. The rancher claimed the money was from cattle the young firebrand had sold in Fort Smith. Of course, I couldn’t prove it wasn’t, and the kid did have a receipt for sold cattle on him. And with most of the county, including the lawmen, backing the rancher merely because he owned most of the town and half the county, the jury of twelve convicted me of manslaughter.”

  He chuckled ruefully and shook his head, staring down at the whiskey he continued to turn in his fingers. “I reckon I got off lucky. I was sentenced to five years but got out in two for good behavior. Reckoned the parole board figured I was gettin’ too old to blast any more trails out of the limestone hills they had us workin’, and they let me go. I figure they knew the kid I shot was bad seed and saw no reason I oughta be punished for doin’ what his old man shoulda done a long time ago.”

  “Shit, Hiram,” Prophet said. “I never heard about that.”

  “I never spread it around, Lou. Thing like that’s hard on a man’s reputation. Suffice it to say, my heart wasn’t in bounty huntin’ anymore. The only reason I pinned a badge on my coat was because I was asked to help a deputy U.S. marshal friend up in Montana file down the horns on Miles City. Hell, I had nothin’ better to do than lug a shotgun up and down the street of that dusty cow town, and, after a few months, hell . . . the murderin’ and robbin’ had all but died off, and I found more folks from around the West wantin’ me to come and help get their own towns on short leashes.”

  Sheriff Severin tossed back the last of his whiskey and ran the back of a hand across his mustache. “One o’ them was Senor Encina here, and several other fine gentlemen from the Helldorado city council—all at their wits’ end with bandits runnin’ wild and claim jumpers and rustlers galore—and here I sit, wearin’ a county sheriff’s star!”