Stagecoach to Purgatory

by Peter Brandvold

  Then they’d gone back to bed to make love once more and to cuddle and listen to the rain lighten and the storm drift away, leaving only the relaxing sounds of water dripping from the eaves. The horror of the ambush had seemed a million years away.

  Together, they drifted into deep, dreamless slumber.

  Now Prophet blinked as sleep was slow to release him. Gray touched the windows. It was time to rise. He had a lot to do—namely, get a fresh team hitched to the coach and get himself and Mary as well as their cargo of cadavers up the trail to Jubilee.

  He walked naked into the main room, where his clothes hung from chairs near the now-cold range. He dressed quietly, moving around stiffly, so as not to awaken Mary. He’d let her sleep a few more minutes, until he got a fire going. As he stepped into his boots, he wondered why no one from the stage station in Jubilee had come looking for the stage. Obviously, it was overdue. There was no telegraph line on this stretch of the trail.

  Maybe he’d meet a posse on the trail this morning.

  As he got a fire started in the range, he remembered the money he’d found in the coach’s hidden compartment. He lit the lantern on the table then hauled the three money pouches out of his saddlebags. He started a pot of coffee on the range, and while the firebox ticked and snapped and the cabin heated and the coffee began chugging and sighing, he emptied the bags onto the table.

  Freshly minted gold eagles and silver cartwheels glinted up at him in the lantern’s buttery light.

  “I’ll be damned,” he said, running his hands through the coins.

  He got up and poured himself a cup of piping-hot mud, then retook his chair at the table and began counting the coins. Mary came out, yawning and blinking sleep from her eyes. She was dressed in a simple wool traveling skirt, cream blouse, short leather jacket, and high black boots. Her clean, freshly brushed hair shone radiantly in the lantern light, purple highlights threading the black.

  Prophet marveled at her beauty as well as their good time together in Diego’s bed, wishing it hadn’t had to end.

  Despite her aunt’s death, Mary looked good. Vibrant. Not necessarily happy, but strong and ready to confront what could be another challenging day.

  When she’d poured herself a cup of coffee, she sat down at the table and helped Prophet count the coins.

  Fifteen minutes later, they’d returned all the coins to the three bags, and the bounty hunter sat back in his chair, shaking his head. “Thirty thousand dollars.”

  “What do you suppose it’s for?” Mary asked. She was at the range now, stirring the pot of beans and bacon she was reheating from the night before.

  “I got no idea.”

  “Do you think the money is what the outlaws were after?”

  “Must be.” Prophet sipped his coffee and frowned over the rim of the cup at Mary stirring the beans. “But how did they know about it?”

  Mary looked at him and hiked a shoulder. “Does it matter? They’re dead. I suppose we’ll find out who the money belongs to when we get to Jubilee.”

  “Yeah, unless the money’s going to Deadwood or on to Bismarck.”

  “Yes,” Mary said. “Deadwood. That’s probably where it’s going.”

  “Well, we’ll get ourselves and the coach to Jubilee, and we’ll let the stage line worry about getting the money on to wherever it’s going.” Prophet sipped his coffee. “Your pa is probably worried about you. We should have been to Jubilee last night.”

  “Stages are notoriously slow around here,” Mary said. “He’ll probably be there, waiting for me.” Her voice dropped an octave and she frowned as she spooned the beans into a couple of tin bowls. She was thinking about Aunt Grace, Prophet knew. Just as he’d marveled at her beauty, he marveled at her heart. Despite how wretched her aunt and father had been to her—at least, regarding her tryst with the ranch hand’s boy—she still obviously loved them both.

  To think they’d called her a savage . . .

  Inwardly, Prophet shook his head. People never ceased to puzzle and disgust him.

  When they finished eating, Mary put the kitchen in order, scrubbing the pots and bowls they’d used with water she’d hauled from the well and putting everything back in its place. Prophet headed out to the barn and hitched the team to the Concord. He closed the barn doors, saying a solemn good-bye to poor Diego Bernal and his hostlers.

  When he had the team buckled into place, Mary walked out from the cabin. The morning was cool. She wore a hooded wool cape over her vest, and black gloves. She’d drawn up the cape’s hood. Strands of her long hair slithered out of the hood to dance around her head in the chill breeze that was still damp from last night’s rain.

  Prophet adjusted the harness on the right wheeler then walked out to meet Mary as she approached the coach. “You wanna ride inside or up top? Kind of bloody inside, what with all Jimmy Wells’s rollin’ around in there. But up top is Aunt Grace and Seymour an’ Plumb. It ain’t gonna be a pleasant ride into Jubilee, I’m afraid, no matter where you ride.”

  “I didn’t figure it would be, Lou,” Mary said. “I’d like to ride up top with you. Despite Aunt Grace.” A tear shone in her right eye. She smiled and flicked it away with her finger.

  “Up top it is.” Prophet took her hand and held it, steadying her, as she stepped onto the iron rung by the front wheel. He released her hand as she climbed from the rung into the driver’s boot.

  Prophet walked around to the opposite side of the coach and climbed into the boot. Then they were off, the team jogging free and easy, leaning into their collars and hames, stretching their necks, the chill breeze making them toss their heads friskily, their manes dancing. Prophet saw Mary glance over her left shoulder at where the bodies of Aunt Grace, Seymour, and Plumb were tied in tightly wrapped and bound bundles, shivering a little as the stage rocked and rattled its way along the trail.

  She turned her head forward, drawing the corners of her mouth down slightly.

  “We’ll be to Jubilee in no time, Mary,” Prophet said. “Then you and your pa can take Aunt Grace back to the ranch and bury her.”

  “I hope he doesn’t regret calling me home, after all that’s happened.”

  “What do you mean—calling you home? Weren’t you finished back at Mrs. Devine’s?”

  Mary shook her head. “I wasn’t going to be finished until Christmas.”

  Prophet looked at her. “Do you know why he called you home so early?”

  Mary shook her head, hiked a shoulder. “I assume—maybe it’s just wishful thinking—that my letters convinced him I didn’t need to be there. While I valued my lessons and appreciated learning how to play the piano and the violin, and I came to like Mrs. Devine herself, I felt I’d learned all she could teach me. I wanted to go home. That’s where I belong. I feel out of place around most people.”

  She turned to Prophet. “I love the ranch. I was raised there around the men and the horses and the open spaces. I suppose that’s still the savage in me, though I don’t remember anything of my life before Father adopted me. The ranch is where I want to be. That’s where I’d like to live my life.”

  “I reckon I must have some savage in me, too, then,” Prophet said, staring straight ahead at the gauzy black mounds of the Black Hills humping up along the eastern horizon.

  “How’s that, Lou?”

  “I like horses and open spaces my ownself.”

  She gazed at Prophet, soft-eyed. “I’m going to miss you, Lou.”

  “I’m going to miss you, too, Mary.”

  “What brings you to Jubilee?”

  “An old friend wrote me a letter.” Prophet frowned as he turned to her. “You wouldn’t know her, would you? The name’s Margaret Knudsen.”

  Mary shook her head. “Sorry, Lou. I don’t know the name. I’ve been gone from Jubilee for two years and even when I was growing up out at the ranch, I rarely got to town. My father and Aunt Grace were very protective and didn’t think that towns and young girls mixed.”

  “I see,”
Prophet said, turning his head to stare over the team’s twitching ears once more. “Worth a shot.”

  They rolled through a jog of low hills peppered with cedars and post oaks, the gullies between the hills choked with juneberry, chokecherry, and hawthorn from which white-tailed deer bounded at the thunder of the approaching coach. When they’d climbed to the highest point in the hills, Prophet could see Jubilee on the prairie below though he wouldn’t have spotted the town if he hadn’t been looking for it, hadn’t known it was there.

  Jubilee wasn’t much. Never had been. It had started out as a watering and overnighting spot for freight and immigrant trains and army patrols as well as a hiders’ camp back when buffalo were still plentiful on the plains around the Black Hills. This had been dangerous country for white buffalo hunters and, later, for gold prospectors. The Sioux had been bound and determined to keep out the white hordes. Prophet couldn’t blame them, knowing now how rooted into this country they’d been, how dependent they’d been on the buffalo, and how badly the Great Father back in Washington had double-crossed them.

  Jubilee, named after Jubilee Springs bubbling up in the rocks at its southern edge, had been a dying town since the first time Prophet had ridden through it. The last time he’d visited, maybe three years ago, there had been only around thirty remaining residents inhabiting the fifty or so remaining shacks and log cabins and sod-roofed mud huts. Most had been over the age of forty.

  One of the more colorful residents, an elderly black man named Charlie Royals who ran the town’s only hotel and sported only one leg, courtesy the Sioux, had claimed there’d been thirty-five and one half residents and three coyotes. The half resident had been the bun in the oven of one of the three remaining whores.

  Prophet wondered idly how many fewer folks there would be now. He wondered again what had brought Lola there, to a dying town. The former Margaret Jane Olson, presently Mrs. Margaret Knudsen.

  He didn’t run the team overly hard, just enough to let them stretch out their strides before checking them down. He wasn’t in any hurry, as he had no timetable to keep. He might as well make the last leg of the trip as pleasant for himself and Mary as possible. He’d been expecting to meet searchers for the stage along the trail but had given up hope until, dropping down out of the hills, he spied riders galloping toward the trail from the north.

  They were four men coming hard and fast, crouched low over their horses’ necks.

  Prophet didn’t like the hard-driving, determined way they were coming at him. They could be a worried group sent out by the stage station. On the other hand, they could be men like those rotting in the yard of Porcupine Station.

  Prophet glanced at Mary. She’d spied the riders, as well, and was gazing at them apprehensively as they galloped across the prairie, pulling a thick dust cloud above and behind them.

  “Don’t worry,” Prophet said as he slid his Winchester from its sheath and rested it across his thighs. “Probably just men from town looking for the stage.”

  “Yeah,” Mary said almost too softly for Prophet to hear above the thunder of the team. “Probably.”

  Chapter 14

  The four riders reached the trail about fifty yards ahead of Prophet and checked their mounts down, their dust catching up to them.

  They turned their horses toward the stage, blocking the trail. Prophet cursed under his breath and caressed the repeater resting across his thighs. As he slowed the team gradually, he sized up the four men facing him.

  Clad in dusty trail clothes, including brush-scratched chaps, they were obviously range riders. Only one man was holding a gun—a Sharps carbine—but he didn’t look like he was eagerly anticipating using it. The other three were content to leave their pistols and rifles in their scabbards.

  Prophet left his rifle in his lap as he continued pulling back on the team’s ribbons until the horses finally stopped and the coach creaked to a halt, silence settling over the trail.

  The four riders sized up Prophet, their gazes flicking to the dark-skinned girl sitting beside him. Prophet returned the men’s interested stares. Dust sifted. Red-winged blackbirds screeched in the brush off both sides of the trail. The team blew and switched their tails.

  “Mr. Leonard?” Mary said, leaning forward, frowning. “John Leonard?”

  One of the four men nodded. He appeared to be the group’s leader, as the other three cast frequent, deferring glances at him. He was tall and mustached, with dark brown eyes set in deep, shaded sockets. Around forty, Prophet judged, he wore a low-crowned black hat, and black beard stubble carpeted his craggy, hollow cheeks.

  He dipped his cleft chin cordially. “Hello, Miss Mary.” He tipped his head a little to one side, glancing over Prophet and Mary at the grisly cargo tied behind them. “We were expecting you last night out at the ranch. Your father sent a buggy for you. When you didn’t show, your father grew worried. We were heading out to locate you.”

  “We ran into trouble,” Mary said in a regretful tone, glancing at the coach roof behind her. “Aunt Grace is dead.”

  “What kind of trouble?” Leonard had directed the question at Prophet, as though he were somehow better qualified to answer it.

  “A bushwhack at the Porcupine Station. Bloodbath, more like it. Me an’ Miss Mary here are the only survivors. Mort Seymour and J. W. Plumb are resting behind us with Mary’s aunt.”

  “You two are the only survivors, eh?” said Leonard, as though he were skeptical of the information. “Who were the bushwhackers?”

  Prophet didn’t like Leonard’s tone. “They didn’t introduce themselves,” he said in a curt tone of his own.

  “What did they take?” Leonard asked.

  “Beside lives? Nothing.”

  Leonard looked mildly relieved by the response.

  “Who are you?” asked one of the others flanking Leonard. He was younger than Leonard, and he had a confrontational cast to his gaze. He held a gloved hand over the grips of the Schofield riding in its holster strapped to the young rider’s right thigh.

  “Prophet.”

  “Prophet, huh?” said the younger rider in a disbelieving tone, cutting his gaze at Leonard.

  “Lou saved me,” Mary said, placing her left hand on Prophet’s forearm. “If it hadn’t been for him, I’d be dead like Aunt Grace.”

  “Lou,” the younger rider said in a sneering tone to Leonard, wrinkling a nostril. “You hear that?”

  Leonard ignored him.

  “I see,” the lead rider said, his tone lightening and his grave expression brightening somewhat though Prophet doubted that John Leonard’s granitelike features ever cracked a real smile. “The good news is, you’re alive, Miss Mary. Your father sent us for you. Why don’t you climb down from there and climb up here with me? We’ll get you back to the ranch. Your father has been worried.”

  “Oh,” Mary said, glancing uncertainly at Prophet. “All . . . right. But what about Aunt Grace?”

  “Your father will likely send a wagon for Aunt Grace and your luggage,” Leonard said. He held out a gloved hand. “Come, now, Mary. Your father is worried.”

  The girl rose from her seat. Prophet grabbed her arm. “Are you sure you want to go with these men, Mary?”

  Mary hesitated, but then she turned from Prophet to the group’s leader and said, “Yes. I know Mr. Leonard. He’s my father’s foreman.” She smiled at Prophet, dark cheeks turning a little darker as she obviously reflected a little sheepishly but not without fondness, as well, upon their previous night at Porcupine Relay Station. “Good-bye, Lou.”

  “All right, then,” Prophet said, releasing the girl’s arm. “I’ll help you down.”

  “I can manage.”

  Mary carefully stepped down from the stage. She glanced again at Prophet as she walked up alongside the team to where Leonard was extending his hand to her. She offered the bounty hunter another fleeting smile then accepted the foreman’s hand. John Leonard drew her up onto his horse, and she settled her weight behind the man’s
saddle.

  “Are you comfortable, Mary?” Leonard asked her.

  “Reasonably,” Mary said, looking over the man’s shoulder at Prophet. To the bounty hunter, she said, “Please pay me a visit before you leave Jubilee, Lou. My father will want to thank you for saving my life.”

  Prophet smiled as he pinched his hat brim to the girl. “I might just do that.”

  Leonard gave Prophet a cordial nod as he turned his horse, nudged the mount with his spurs, and galloped off to the south. The three other riders galloped their own mounts after him, the younger rider casting several sneering looks behind at Prophet before the bunch disappeared over a hogback.

  Their hoof thuds dwindled to silence.

  Prophet sat staring after them. They reappeared a minute later, riding up over the crest of another, higher, more distant hogback before disappearing down the far side of that rise, too. A nettling apprehension walked cold fingers along the back of his neck.

  But she’d recognized the foreman, he told himself.

  Disregarding his foreboding as merely a reluctance to have Mary part ways with him so suddenly and unexpectedly—he’d taken a liking to more than just the girl’s bewitching ways in the mattress sack—he clucked and shook the ribbons over the horses’ backs. The team lunged forward, and then they were trotting eastward along the trail, following a long curve, Jubilee taking shape a half a mile ahead.

  Prophet frowned as he stared out over the bobbing heads of the team. More riders were riding toward him, trotting their horses along the trail.

  “Now, what?” Prophet muttered, brushing his right hand across the Winchester still resting in his lap.

  The riders kept moving toward him. They were roughly two hundred yards from Jubilee and heading toward Prophet at a slow but purposeful clip. There were five of them. Each held a rifle as though ready to use it. Prophet kept the stage moving but he slowed the team to a walk. The nettling apprehension walking cold fingers along the back of his neck grew more nettling, the fingers colder.