Helldorado

by Peter Brandvold

  Why was that?

  “I’m sorry, Louisa,” Miguel said. “I didn’t mean to be so forward. Good lord, we just met a few hours ago.”

  “That’s all right.” She continued to stare at the town where a few wagons and horseback riders were moving along the streets, glimpsed between the darkening buildings. “Love and a family . . . That’s what I’ve been wanting. Just hearing them now, from you, suddenly gave me a shock. I’m sorry.” She laughed but there was no humor in it, only confusion. “I don’t know why. . . .”

  “I do,” Miguel said, apologetically. “I was moving too fast.”

  Louisa barely heard him. As she stared toward the sprawling settlement, the town faded. It was replaced by the sunblasted Mexican prison nestled in that stark desert valley, surrounded by rocks and cactus, smoke rising from the Rurales’ cook fires. She wasn’t standing near the chuckling creek with a handsome young banker. She was tied to the bed of Major Montoya.

  The major was laughing—roaring—as he threw back another shot of his sour-smelling liquor. He slammed the back of his hand against her face, his expression changing suddenly, and he was castigating her through chipped, gritted teeth: “If you do not perform well for me this evening, puta rubia, I will send you out to the stables for the amusement of my men!” He slapped her again. “How would you like that? Huh?”

  The slap jerked Louisa’s head back and sideways, and her knees hit the ground.

  “Louisa!” Miguel dropped to a knee beside her, wrapped an arm around her shoulders.

  Louisa steadied herself, head reeling from Montoya’s assault. She automatically touched her hand to her cheek as though to prove to herself she’d only imagined it. As she turned to Miguel beside her, the young man’s eyes turned dark with worry.

  Her heart lightened. She glanced beyond him toward the town, relieved to see it really was the town there, the sage glowing a soft green around the dark purple buildings, smoke skeining from chimneys. “Willl-burrrr!” some mother called for her child. “Come on home, now! Time for bed!”

  Louisa had left the prison as well as Montoya back in Mexico.

  Miguel stared at her, frowning, and as her eyes returned to his, he lifted his hand slowly, slid her hair back from her face, and smiled reassuringly. “It’s all right. You’re here now. That’s all over.”

  She frowned. “You knew . . . ?”

  “That you were back in Mexico?” His cheeks dimpled, and his eyes acquired a softer cast of deep understanding. “I’ve been there myself, a time or two.”

  Her brows furrowed still further.

  “Come on.” Wrapping an arm around her waist, he eased her gently to her feet. “Let’s walk, and I’ll tell you about it.”

  14

  “PROPH, I REMEMBER that look,” said Sheriff Hell-Bringin’ Hiram Severin. “What you need is your ashes hauled.”

  “Ah, hell.”

  Prophet, the sheriff, and Jose Encina had spent well over an hour chinning over post-supper whiskey and beer in Tweet’s Cafe, with Prophet and the sheriff reminiscing about their bounty-hunting days. Now they stood outside the Hog’s Head Saloon, bathed in the smoke of cheap tobacco, cheaper perfume, and surprisingly well-played piano music.

  The sheriff said, “May I suggest Miss Maude Allen’s place over yonder, behind the bank a couple of blocks? It’s one of the few whorehouses I didn’t close down, ’cause it’s run by the fine, upstanding Miss Maude, whom you may remember from Hays, Kansas. She keeps only the cleanest, most polite girls in all the territory.”

  “Ah, shit,” Prophet said, reaching behind his head to push the back of his hat up, the brim sliding down his forehead. “That usually means they’re fat and ugly and missing enough teeth to matter even to me.”

  “Chubby is a better word,” said Jose Encina, puffing a freshly lit cigar and hiking a shoulder. “Chubby and happy, with the man’s best interest at heart. Placer del hombre. Senora Maude has taught them well.”

  “No, thanks,” Prophet said. “The long ride and that good meal and hooch ’bout did me in. I think I’ll mosey on back to the Muleskinner’s Inn, maybe meet the boys I’ll be ridin’ with tomorrow, chew a little fat, and turn in.”

  “It’s early yet, Proph,” objected the sheriff. “If you don’t want a girl, how ’bout a game of high-five? Jose and I usually play for an hour or so before we turn in of a night and I let my deputies take over.” Severin hiked a brow enticingly. “I’ll spot ya, if you’re short.”

  “I appreciate that,” Prophet said, nudging his old friend’s shoulder with his own then pinching his hat brim at the banker. “And it has been a pleasure. But I’m pooped and tuckered as a coon hound with the Georgia sun on the rise. I’m gonna wander on over and tumble in.”

  He hiked his shell belt higher on his lean hips and moseyed on up the street, both the sheriff and the banker calling their “good-nights” and “sleep-tights” behind him. Soon the Hog’s Head piano music was swallowed by the soft strumming of a guitar in a smaller, darker cantina from which also emanated soft, soulful lyrics sung by a husky-voiced Spanish woman. He stepped around several sets of subdued revelers clumped along the street—white men, half-breeds, blacks, and a few Mexicans dressed in the ragged garb of sheep men—near horses standing hang-headed at hitchracks.

  Suddenly, he realized that several men were moving up around him from all sides, closing on him fast. Especially paranoid in light of recent events, Prophet slowed his pace and touched his pistol grips with the intention of swinging around, pulling the piece, and rocking the hammer back to forestall another dry-gulching.

  But then a couple of the men brushed past him, and so did another and another—all heading away from him and angling off toward the big opera house in front of which two tall gas lamps burned like beacons. Prophet turned full around as he walked slowly, cautiously, in the same direction.

  There were a dozen or so men—some in ragged trail gear, others in cheap drummer’s suits—behind him, and they were all talking loudly and smoking as they headed in the direction of the opera house. Others were angling into the street from the saloons and cantinas on the street’s other side, seemingly headed in the same direction.

  As he continued strolling, dropping his hand from his pistol grips, Prophet could make out above the crowd’s din a man barking: “Come one, come all! Come one, come all! It’s Miss Gleneanne O’Shay tonight, fellas, performing Claudette: Portrait of a Chambermaid! Come on over to the opera house tonight, gentlemen! Show starts in fifteen minutes! Only seventy-five lousy cents for a show that must not be missed!”

  When Prophet was a couple of buildings away from the opera house that was lit up like a Dodge City whorehouse on the Fourth of July, he stopped and leaned against an awning support post, digging into his shirt pocket for his makings sack. The crowd rippled around him, smoking and talking, spurs ringing. The barker, the top-hat clad silhouette of whom Prophet could see standing in front of the gas lamps fronting the opera house, continued to hail the many and sundry away from the hitchracks and saloons.

  They were heading for the ornate building’s open doors like the doomed seeking sanctuary.

  As he slowly, thoughtfully built a smoke, Prophet considered heading that way himself. He was feeling out of sorts about Louisa and young Miguel and vaguely, unconsciously testy about meeting up with his old town-taming pal and the banker who obviously felt the sun rose and set on the old hell bringer’s shoulders. A good opera show might be just the distraction Prophet needed.

  He’d just twisted the quirley closed and licked it sealed and was about to scrape a match to life on his shell belt when movement up the street caught his eye. He stayed his match hand and looked past the opera house’s right side, from where several horseback riders clomped along the main street.

  As the riders passed the opera house and came on along the street at a spanking trot, Prophet saw that they were all dressed in suits, one wearing a bowler hat, the other two wearing Stetsons. Five-pointed stars on their coa
t lapels flashed in the dusky light as they made their way toward Prophet, who could also see now that the third deputy, riding slightly behind the other two, was trailing four horses, tied tail to tail, by a single lead rope.

  The third deputy, a black man with a short beard, held one arm out behind him, the tan-gloved hand of that arm clutching the rope. He glanced back occasionally at the four blanket-wrapped bundles tied across each horse’s saddle.

  Dead men, Prophet saw as the three deputies rode up even with him and continued on past before angling away down a southern side street. As the four packhorses made the turn, Prophet saw long, stringy red hair hanging down from the blanket-wrapped bundle of the last horse in the string, a high-stepping blue roan with one notched ear and a roached mane.

  Flies buzzed around the dead man’s hair that, even from Prophet’s distance, appeared blood-matted.

  Men along both sides of the street were gesturing at the deputies, one man near Prophet whistling and shaking his head and muttering, “Well, I reckon they run down them claim jumpers, eh?”

  “Wonder what kind of a chance they give ’em?” asked a short, rangy, curly-haired Mexican standing with his back against the front wall of a cantina, smoking a brown paper cigarette, a shabby sombrero tipped back off his forehead. “Probably about as much as the ones they gave the Haskell boys, huh, amigos?”

  “Shut up, ya damn pepperbelly,” intoned a well-dressed man with an Irish accent as he passed the Mexican with another man, similarly attired. Both were heading toward the opera house. “Them Haskell boys got what they deserved.” He glanced back at the Mex to add, “At least they didn’t get any more than what they gave those poor freighters up from Alfred.”

  He turned forward and continued on to the opera house, where the barker was still loudly summoning one and all to the show.

  The Mexican lifted a dirty middle finger at the man’s retreating back.

  “Don’t be an idiot, Casol,” said one of the other men standing outside the cantina who appeared uninterested in the opera house. He was hatless, with tangled pewter hair curling over his ears, dressed in ragged trail garb and shit-stained boots with Texas spurs. He slapped the back of his hand against the Mexican’s chest as he nonchalantly lifted his beer schooner to his lips.

  The Mex turned to him and stuck the finger with which he’d saluted the well-dressed man up his nose, regarding the pewter-haired drover flat-eyed. Then he removed his finger, turned a little unsteadily on his undershot, high-topped boots, and ambled through the louvered cantina doors behind him, grabbing the bare arm of a young Mexican girl who’d been standing there, looking bored.

  Prophet heard the thumps of fast-moving feet and the raucous ringing of spurs moving up behind him on the hard-packed street. “Break it up, now, fellas,” said an authoritative voice. “No lingerin’ around outside after dark. Either go on over and enjoy the show at the opry house or get into a saloon. Better yet . . .”

  The man’s voice trailed off as Prophet turned to look at the deputy he’d met earlier after he’d blown Kentucky Earl Watson back to hell. Frank Dryden—at least, that’s what he thought Hell-Bringin’ Hiram had called this blond-headed fireplug of a man with a pinched-up face and narrow-set green eyes.

  He was carrying a double-barreled shotgun like Prophet’s from a lanyard around his neck, and he wore two pistols low on his black-clad thighs. On his head sat a small, crisp, black Stetson stitched with white leather.

  His eyes met Prophet’s, brightening with recognition, his thin lips forming a customarily belligerent, arrogant smile. Holding Prophet’s gaze with his own, he continued, “. . . Better yet, get on to home or your favorite flophouse, get a good night’s sleep. Nights are nice up here, real cool and starry. Man sleeps right good . . . when he ain’t out shootin’ up the town.”

  Keeping his expression bland, Prophet tipped his hat brim at the wiry blond. “Deputy Dryden is it?”

  “Sure is, Prophet. I do apologize, but even gold guards ain’t allowed to roam the streets directionless after dark.” Dryden winked. “That’s what you call a city ordinance.”

  “I call it horseshit.”

  The man who’d swatted the Mexican chuckled, then dropped his chin to his chest in chagrin. Dryden’s right cheek twitched, and his eye narrowed at Prophet. “How’s that?”

  “A man can move around as he pleases, as long as he ain’t breakin’ any laws.” Prophet stared at the belligerent little deputy, keeping an eye on the double bores of the deputy’s shotgun, which the man held carelessly in his folded arms.

  Prophet kept his voice affable but rimmed it with a slight, menacing edge. “And I’d just as soon them twin barrels didn’t slide no farther in my direction. Me, I got an ordinance about havin’ guns pointed at me. ’Specially since I know what a gut-shredder like that ten gauge of yours can do to a man.”

  Dryden’s cheeks flushed, his jaws hard. He slid his gaze to the man standing with his back to the cantina, boots crossed, chin down as though he were sleeping. He and Prophet were the only two men on the street who were not striding for the opera house.

  The deputy slid his stony green gaze back to Prophet but spoke out the side of his mouth to the pewter-haired man slumped against the cantina. “You goin’ to the show, Sawrod?”

  “Nah,” came the almost inaudible reply.

  “Then go on in and have a drink.”

  “You buyin’, Frank?”

  Dryden’s cheek twitched again. Soundlessly, though Prophet sensed his silent amusement, the man called Sawrod leaned away from the cantina’s front wall, turned lazily, and pushed through the batwings and into the low hum of conversations inside.

  Dryden’s lips barely moved as he told Prophet, “I’ll let your friend Sheriff Severin know how you feel about his laws.”

  “You do that.”

  “You goin’ inside?” Dryden canted his head toward the batwings that were still vibrating behind Sawrod.

  “Nah.” Prophet wanted to punch the ring-tailed varmint before him. But in deference to Hell-Bringin’ Hiram, he merely slipped his quirley between his lips and drew deep. “I think I’ll saunter over and take in the show.”

  “It’s a good one.” Dryden smiled. “If that lead actress filly is drunk enough, she might even show her titties.”

  “Good to hear.” Prophet turned and began tramping toward the opera house whose gas lamps had grown brighter against the thickening darkness.

  “One more thing.”

  Prophet glanced back at Dryden, whose nostrils flared. “I ain’t afraid of you, big man.”

  Prophet grinned. “Ain’t this a coincidence? I ain’t afraid of you, neither.” He pinched his hat brim at the little man, turned, and walked away.

  15

  PROPHET COULDN’T AFFORD the seventy-five-cent ticket to see Claudette: Portrait of a Chambermaid, but he paid the money, anyway, leaving about two dimes in his pocket. He took the handbill a young usher gave him as he passed from the opera house’s marble-floored lobby through an arched doorway of varnished wood and between two bronzed knights holding flambeaus and drifted with the crowd into the main auditorium.

  He wasn’t sure what had driven him into this castle-like construction filled with smoking, sweating, half-drunk townsmen and drovers. Maybe just a general unease and a feeling that if he tumbled into bed now he’d be in for some miserable tossing and turning before sleep got ahold of him. Or maybe he needed distraction, to let go of this crazy town that his old friend Hell-Bringin’ Hiram Severin had in his crazy iron grip and forget that he’d brought Louisa to settle down here.

  He’d never been in an opera house before, though he’d seen a few from the outside. But he’d heard that you could get lucky and, between actual operas that were exercises in mind-tearing, eye-gouging tedium, run into dance shows where feather-haired girls ran around in circles, taking their clothes off and kicking their legs.

  That’s what Prophet needed now—pretty girls showing their tits and high-stepping in red
shoes.

  He made his way down the center aisle in the main auditorium, tripping over his own boots as well as the spurs of the gent in front of him as he gaped at the massive vaulted ceiling and the plush, scroll-back chairs around him and at the stage with a burgundy, gold-trimmed velvet curtain at the back of the place. The stage was about five feet higher than the main floor, and there was a mural, too dim for Prophet to make out clearly, painted on the wall above the curtain.

  Gas lamps at regular intervals along the walls and the cigarettes and cigars nearly every man in the place was puffing made the place as foggy as Chickamauga after four days of hard fighting. Through this haze and from his plush seat, boot hiked on a knee, Prophet enjoyed the program just the same, though he couldn’t make heads or tails out of the plot of what turned out to be, to his dismay, a theater play with a lot of serious chatter instead of dancing and titty-jiggling.

  He might have been able to fathom a little of what was going on if nearly every man in the auditorium hadn’t been hooting and hollering at the main actress, a stygian-haired, willow-limbed, big-breasted gal—Miss Gleneanne O’Shay, Prophet assumed—who frequently turned to the audience to shriek and cry and drop to her knees before slamming her head against the floor, quivering.

  At one point, having been admonished by an old, gray-haired gal in a gray cape who didn’t want the chambermaid making time with her rich young son any longer and kicked her out of the village, she tried to hang herself. She was about to put her head into the noose only to be saved by the tony-looking son with a waxed handlebar mustache, whom one of the cowboys threw a beer bottle at when he refused the chambermaid’s kiss on account of his mother.

  The play finally ended with the chambermaid, scorned by a rich old gent with curly silver hair, finally ending her miserable, heartbroken existence by downing poison from a small, green bottle. When she’d dropped into her bed after another long rambling cry complete with arm throwing and head wagging, her bed was lifted into a wool cloud by ropes and pulleys that Prophet could hear squawking even above the crowd’s harangues.