Stagecoach to Purgatory

by Peter Brandvold

  A man’s voice and a woman’s voice.

  Laughter.

  Prophet rapped twice on the door then turned the knob, poking his head into Ford’s neat office. “Am I, uh, interrupting anything?”

  Immediately, a pang of jealousy pinched his loins.

  Jonas Ford was sitting on the corner of his desk, near Louisa, who sat in a Windsor chair beside the neat and orderly desk outfitted with a green Tiffany lamp. They were sitting close enough to each other that Ford’s left ankle was snugged up against Louisa’s own left ankle, the denim-clad leg of which was crossed over her right knee. They each held glasses of what appeared to be whiskey. The boyishly handsome, brown-haired Ford had been smiling down at Louisa, and Louisa had been smiling up at Ford when Prophet had knocked, but now they both turned to the door and shaped amused expressions of surprise.

  “Well, if that don’t beat all,” Ford said, rising from his desk, grinning, dimples cratering his smooth cheeks. He was a well-set-up, snazzily attired, forthright man in his late twenties, and he’d been born and raised around here, hailing from a prosperous local family headed by a now-deceased father who’d been a Yankee general in the War of Northern Aggression. “We were just talking about you, Lou!”

  “That a fact?” Prophet tried to smile but he knew it probably looked as though his lips were glued together. “What was funny?”

  Ford laughed again as he stuck out his hand. Prophet shook it.

  “Oh, that,” Ford said. “That was nothing . . .”

  Remaining in her chair, Louisa swirled her glass of whiskey and said, “Jonas was just wondering where you were, as he knew it was only a two-day ride down from Lubbock, and I just said that you were probably holed up in some hurdy-gurdy house between here and there.”

  Queen’s snooty tone chafed him as it usually did. “Well, not to worry—there ain’t too many hurdy-gurdy houses between here and Lubbock.”

  He looked at the handsome local lawman, who was still smiling his winning, dimple-cheeked smile though at the moment those cheeks were faintly flushed with chagrin, causing Prophet to wonder what else Ford and Louisa had been saying about him. “I jumped on my hoss as soon as I could, Jonas. I just had to wait for the paperwork to go through on a bounty request I turned in to Uncle Sam.”

  “I’ll be ding-dong-damned—that’s Tom Lowry!”

  The exclamation had come from behind Prophet as he stood in the marshal’s office’s open door. He turned to see three men standing between Mean and Ugly and the dead man’s horse. They’d rolled the saddle blanket up to the dead man’s shoulders, revealing his red-haired head, the cadaver’s freckled, sunburned, right cheek resting against the claybank’s side.

  All three men, burly sorts in calico shirts and canvas trousers stuffed into the tops of mule-eared boots—freighters, most likely—held frothy beer mugs in their fists. The Periwinkle Saloon sat on the far side of the street, and three or four men stood on the watering hole’s front, blue-painted veranda, peering toward the marshal’s office.

  “What do you have out there, Lou?” Ford asked.

  “Tom Lowry, sounds like,” Prophet said, dropping slowly back down the veranda steps.

  “Tom Lowry?” Ford said with nearly as much surprise as the freighter who’d been the first one to mention the name.

  As Prophet walked between the horses, heading for the dead man, Ford brushed past him to stop before the freighters and say, “Henry, Calvin—why don’t you fellas go back and do your drinking in the Periwinkle? You, too, Dutch. This is law business.”

  “Who shot Lowry?” one of the freighters asked. A big, middle-aged man with a large, round belly, he wore a thick, tangled, salt-and-peppered beard and his eyes were shiny from drink. He looked Prophet up and down and asked, “You?”

  “Come on, Dutch,” Ford said, giving the man a gentle shove toward the Periwinkle. “Move along now.”

  Dutch looked at Prophet and shook a rope-burned, sausage-sized finger at him. “If you shot Lowry, you best not let any grass grow under your feet in these parts, mister!”

  “Dutch, damnit, what did I just tell you?” Ford barked. “If you don’t get your ass back across the street pronto, I’m going to arrest you for vagrancy!”

  “Jonas, that ain’t no way to talk to your elders an’ you know it!” Dutch retorted, vaguely sheepish, as he turned slowly, reluctantly away to follow the other two men back toward the saloon. Glancing over his shoulder at Ford, he said, “I was friends with the General!”

  Prophet knew that Ford’s father was known throughout West Texas not by his given name of Hannibal Ford, but simply as “the General.” And pretty much everyone north of rubber pants was aware of who “the General” was, too.

  “I know you an’ Pa was friends, Dutch,” Ford said, his voice vaguely wheedling, “and I know Pa would appreciate you giving me room to do my job.”

  Dutch merely threw up a thick, dismissive arm.

  Ford sighed and shook his head.

  Prophet just now consciously noted that the young marshal’s left arm was hooked over his chest in a black flannel sling. But at the moment, Prophet had a more pressing topic of discussion: “This fella dry-gulched me back along the trail a ways, Jonas. Tried to shoot me out of my saddle. If I hadn’t spied his shadow atop an escarpment and got the drop on him, I’d be crowbait.”

  “You just can’t stay out of trouble, can you?” Louisa said from where she stood atop the veranda, holding her whiskey glass up against her shoulder. She wore a saucy expression on her full, rose lips, one boot cocked forward, one hand on the grips of one of her pretty, pearl-gripped Colts.

  Prophet looked at the glass in her other hand. “Since when did you start drinkin’ whiskey? Whenever I’ve offered you tarantula juice, you clouded up like I was offering you skunk stink. I thought you were strictly a sarsaparilla or cold milk gal.”

  Louisa glanced quickly at Ford, her cheeks flushing slightly. She lifted the glass to her lips. “This isn’t the coffin varnish you drink, Lou.” She took a small sip. “Very smooth.”

  Prophet gave a caustic chuff then turned back to Jonas Ford, who was sliding his gaze between the two bounty hunters skeptically. “Never mind her, Jonas. Gettin’ back to this bushwhacker . . .”

  “Yes, getting back to this bushwhacker, Lou—this is indeed Tom Lowry.” Ford looked down at Lowry’s pale face and half-open eyes. Flies buzzed around the man’s coarse, wavy red hair. “We should probably have a coroner’s hearing, just to make sure I don’t leave any loose ends. But, under the circumstances, since only two men know what happened out there, and one of them is dead, I’ll write up an affidavit, have you sign it, and file it with the sheriff in the county seat.”

  “Everything by the book—eh, Jonas?”

  “’Fraid so, Lou. And I’m also afraid that . . .” Ford’s face acquired a constipated expression as he glanced around at the men and a few women looking on from both sides of the street, including the half-dozen men now standing outside of the Periwinkle. “I’m afraid what Dutch said is right about Lowry. He’s got quite a few friends as well as family in these parts.”

  “Just who was this Tom Lowry, Jonas?”

  “He was a hard tail. A no-account. His old man, Emmett, runs a ranch of sorts south of town with a half dozen of Tom’s brothers. No-accounts, all. Tom’s especially good with a long gun. He’s known to hire it out from time to time though I’ve never been able to prove his guilt in any of the killings that occur from time to time out here.”

  “That Henry’s his weapon of choice, eh?”

  “That’s right. Most men with money around here who also have an itch they can’t scratch—meaning a man . . . or in one case even a woman . . . they want to see turned toe down—turn to Tom. I’m told he was relatively cheap and very effective from long range. Back-shooter, mostly.”

  “Yeah, well, somethin’ in the back of my ugly head told me he might be a back-shooter. That’s what did him in.”

  “The county prosecu
tor and I tried for two years to make a case against him, but we just could never get enough evidence. Anyone who has any doings with any of the Lowrys have enough healthy fear of the clan to keep their mouths shut unless they want that Henry . . . and the other Lowrys . . . turned on them.”

  Prophet looked around the street, pensive. “I wonder who wanted it turned on me.”

  “Nothin’ personal between you and Tom Lowry, Lou?”

  “I’ve never met the man. Leastways, don’t remember ever doin’ so.”

  “So he was hired to bring you down.”

  “Who else in these parts knew you summoned me here, Jonas?”

  Ford shrugged. “I might have discussed it with the mayor and a couple of city council members at breakfast one day last week. And, of course, the telegrapher at the Western Union office knows about it. Any one of them might have mentioned it, and . . .”

  “Half the county might know by now.”

  “Could be anyone who has a grudge against you.”

  “Yeah.” Prophet looked around again, scratching his chin and turning his mouth corners down. “And that breed’s thicker than tics on a south Georgia coon hound.”

  Ford sighed. “Well, complications aside, I feel compelled to thank you for taking him down for me, Lou. I’m sure it was self-defense and all, but I will have to have your John Henry on an affidavit. I’ll write it up later this evening.”

  “I understand, Jonas. You’re a good lawman. I know you have to cross your t’s and dot your i’s. It’s my word against Lowry’s and, well, cat’s got his tongue.”

  Both men looked down at Lowry.

  “The Lowrys will learn of this soon, Lou. They’re a bunch of bad apples from the same basket this one crawled out of. You’ll want to keep that third eye in the back of your head skinned. I’d hate to have anything happen to you”—Ford smiled again and gave a wry wink—“since I’m the one who summoned you here.”

  “Yeah, what about that, Jonas?” Prophet hooked a thumb at Louisa. “And why is this she-cat here? Don’t you know she carries the rabies?” Before Louisa could give a cheeky retort, he continued with: “And one more question—what in the hell happened to your arm, old son?”

  Chapter 3

  “Let’s discuss my arm and why I called you both here in my office,” Ford said.

  He looked around the street then called to a one-armed man in a shabby suit coat and battered derby standing on the Periwinkle’s veranda. “Danny, get Drucker over here, will you? Have him take Lowry over to his undertaking parlor and fit him for a wooden overcoat.”

  “What am I gettin’ out of it?” Danny asked.

  “Maybe a day less in jail when you go on your next bender,” Ford said. “As long as you don’t stab or shoot anybody or break any furniture!” Turning to Prophet, the young marshal jerked his chin toward his open office door. “Shall we?”

  “How long you been here?” Prophet asked Louisa as they followed Ford into his office.

  “I got here three days ago,” Louisa said, striding toward the chair she’d been sitting in before. “I was just passing through, but Jonas asked me to stay and wait for you for a special job he has for us.”

  Prophet found himself instinctively disliking the admiring smile Louisa had cast Ford as she’d spoken. He didn’t know why he did. He and Louisa were partners, and sometimes to while away a few hours at night out on the trail and to bleed off some sap, they slept together. They had no more of a future together than did a mongrel dog and a blooded she-cat—a wild, blooded she-cat at that.

  For years now Lou had hoped the Vengeance Queen would eventually leave the man-hunting trail, find a good husband, and settle down. Such a husband would be Jonas Ford—a good man from a good family. A man who, with his inherited political connections, would probably run for office soon.

  Jonas Ford was the sort of polished, affable, and conscientious fellow who would make a good politician, if there were such a thing. He might even make a good territorial governor in the years ahead. Prophet could see Louisa shedding her trail duds and pistols and Winchester carbine for a frilly ball gown and beautifully as well as charmingly decorating the man’s arm at some Christmas dance.

  They’d fill a house with some fine-looking offspring, such a handsome pair would . . .

  So why did Prophet feel a tad on the bitter side? Why did he feel as though a rusty dagger were poking his guts?

  As Louisa slacked into her chair, Ford walked around behind his desk and sank into his leather swivel chair.

  “Pull up that chair there, Lou,” Ford said, gesturing at the old, creaky-looking ladder-back sitting up against the wall right of the door, a couple dusters hanging from a wall hook hanging over it. It looked about as substantial as a house of cards.

  Lou doubted it would hold him.

  “I’ve been sitting since Lubbock,” Prophet said, leaning against a square-hewn ceiling support post. “I’ll stand.”

  He watched Louisa lift the whiskey glass to her lips and take a sip. He thought he detected a slight wince as the tangleleg went down, but she did her best to make it look like she was sipping the sweetest nectar. She glanced at Ford, and they shared a vaguely conspiratorial smile.

  Prophet inwardly rolled his eyes.

  Christ, will you two stop acting like twelve-year-olds on a school playground? If not, I’m gonna have to rustle up a slop bucket to puke in . . .

  “If you won’t sit down, at least have some whiskey,” Ford said, pulling out a desk drawer from which he produced a labeled bottle of bourbon.

  “It’s a sin to turn down whiskey,” Prophet said.

  Ford chuckled as he splashed bourbon into a water glass that he’d also hauled out of the drawer. Prophet held up the glass, sniffed. He threw it back, taking down the entire quarter glass—roughly two shots of liquor—in two swallows.

  Smacking his lips, he set the glass back down on the desk. “Hit me again, will you, Jonas? That stuff ’s too expensive for what I use it for, but it cuts through the trail dust just fine.”

  He glanced at Louisa, who returned the favor and rolled her eyes with her own particular brand of haughty disapproval.

  When the young marshal had refilled Prophet’s glass, the bounty hunter picked it up and leaned against the ceiling support post once more, absently swirling the whiskey in his big right hand. “All right— let’s get down to brass tacks, Jonas. Why’d you send for us? Or send for me, anyways, as my comely partner was already here.”

  Ford sipped his own whiskey and sat back in his chair. “I have a warrant for a man’s arrest here in my desk. Just last week, the day before Miss Bonaventure rode into town, in fact, I and my only two deputies tried to serve it. Both of my deputies were killed. They were good men,” the young marshal added with bitterness. “I was winged, as you can see. This arm will be out of commission for a good two months. The bullet shattered my humerus, traveled over my shoulder, and lodged in my back.

  “Anyway, I’ve requested help from the sheriff, but he’s down with a leg wound of his own. He has three deputies, but two of them are also out of commission for various reasons, and for that reason, he can’t spare the third. I’ve inquired with the U.S. marshals and they’ve assured me they’ll send two or three men just as soon as two or three men become available. Same with the Texas Rangers. I’ve tried to form a posse out of the citizenry right here in Carson’s Wash, to help me try to serve the warrant again, but no man in this town wants to ride against Charlie Butters.”

  “Butters,” Prophet said as though the name were a curse.

  “Ring a bell, Lou?” Louisa asked.

  “Rings a couple,” Prophet mused. “I rode him down last year up in Oklahoma. Butters is a bank robber and regulator with a half-dozen federal warrants on his head. He and another son of a bronzed bitch robbed a bank up in Alva. When his bandanna slipped down his face, revealing his ugly features, Butters shot everyone in the bank—all the bank personnel as well as all six customers, including a six-year-old
boy and an eighty-year-old retired schoolmarm—to make sure no one could identify him.”

  “But one did,” Louisa said, taking another dainty sip of her whiskey. “His partner. Roy Todd was wounded by a deputy town marshal while leaving the bank. Only Butters himself got away . . . until Lou rode him down.” The Vengeance Queen arched a brow at her partner. “How did you ever manage to catch him without my help, Lou?”

  She and Prophet had had another one of their verbal dustups the week previous to the holdup, when they’d been on the hunt for another pair of badmen, and had forked trails. Two days later, Prophet had ridden into Alva, Oklahoma, the day after Butters’s visit to the Merchants Territorial Bank & Trust, and had gone after him.

  To Louisa, Prophet quipped, “Amazing what a fella can do when no henpecking females are around to chew his ears down to fine nubs an’ he can concentrate on his task.” He turned to Ford. “What the hell is Butters doing out of the federal lockup, Jonas? The jury was out only twenty minutes and they came back with not just a guilty verdict, but a guilty as hell verdict! I thought they’d hanged the rat by now!”

  Ford smiled without humor. “An appeals judge turned him loose. After the trial it was learned that the judge presiding over the first trial was a relative of someone Butters had been accused of murdering. The second judge decided not to retry Butters, believing that after the debacle of the first trial, there was no way Butters could get a fair second trial.”

  “A man like that don’t deserve a fair trial!”

  “I tend to agree with you there, Lou,” Ford said. “At least when it comes to killers like Butters. But the law says different.”

  “So, now you’re out two good deputies and an arm.”

  “There you have it.”

  “What got you on Butters’s stinky trail in the first place, Jonas?” Prophet asked.

  “The widow of a local rancher believes . . .” Ford let his words trail to silence as footsteps rose in the street, growing louder. More than one person was approaching the marshal’s office.