Stagecoach to Purgatory

by Peter Brandvold

  Prophet depressed his shotgun’s hammers.

  Louisa looked at the dead man lying near her, outside the front door. She looked at the dead man lying half in and half out of his bloody tub beside Prophet. She looked past Prophet toward the third dead assailant lying just beyond the washhouse’s back door.

  Then she looked Prophet’s naked body up and down, glanced at the black water at his ankles, curled one half of her upper lip, lowered her Colt, and said, “You clean up right well, Lou.”

  Prophet turned to the man who’d tried to give him a haircut. “I thought that hombre was sleepin’ just a little too sound!”

  Chapter 6

  Jonas Ford came running toward the bathhouse that reeked of cordite and spilled blood just after Louisa had peeked in.

  Several curious townsmen came, as well. The humpback, Sylvus Taylor, walked up cautiously from where he’d been beating Prophet’s dirty pants and shirt with a willow switch to take a look around at the carnage.

  He peered at the bounty hunter still standing naked in his tub, and said, “Holy jeepers, mister, looks like your day ain’t gettin’ a whole lot better, is it?”

  At first, Prophet thought Taylor might have been in on the ambush. But he believed the man when he said the first time he’d seen the man with the shotgun was when the gent was running out of some brush toward the front of the washhouse, just after the man with the hatchet had screamed following the staccato bark of Prophet’s six-gun.

  Jonas Ford and several other townsmen, including the man from earlier whom Ford had called Dutch, recognized the three dead men as locals. The one who’d wielded the hatchet was—or, had been, rather—Ruben Ramirez. The dearly departed gent with the gut-shredder had been Mortimer Kinsley. The man with the rifle, now attracting ants and flies out back, had been one H. G. Holloway, whom some called “Bud” for reasons that blurred back into the murk of the man’s childhood.

  The three were not known as out-and-out criminals, just local louts who couldn’t hold jobs longer than a few weeks at a time though they intermittently worked as market hunters for local restaurants and the Rio Grande Hotel, teamsters, ranch hands, woodcutters, general odd-jobbers, and anything else that would supply them with enough pocket jingle for a bender now and then. One townsman said he thought they were wanted for rustling down in Mexico but another townsman disagreed, saying, “Those three were too stupid to find their asses with both hands much less their way down to Mexico.”

  Jonas Ford remembered that the Mexican, Ramirez, had cut a whore while drunk and then tried to rob the whorehouse, but after a brief stint in the local hoosegow he’d been given probation.

  The man called Dutch turned to Prophet, who had dressed by now though his balbriggans were still damp, and said accusingly, “All three was friends with Tom Lowry and Lowry’s pa and brothers.” Dutch spat to one side, wiped chaw from his lips with the back of one hand, and turned to Ford. “They was probably tryin’ to kiss the Lowrys’ asses by shooting your man Prophet here for Tom’s sake. I told you there was gonna be a reckonin’!”

  With that, Dutch cut a sneer to Lou, then, biting off another chunk of braided tobacco, turned and walked back in the direction of the saloon he and several others had poured out of when they’d heard the shooting.

  Ford sent a man to fetch the undertaker again.

  Then he turned to Prophet and said, “Well, Lou, I suppose you know this means—”

  “Yeah, I know,” Prophet said. “Another affidavit. I’m already getting writer’s cramp.” He sighed.

  “If you stay on this track,” Louisa told her partner, “you’re going to be spending so much time fending off bushwhackers, you’ll have no time to help me run down Charlie Butters.”

  “Help you run down Butters?” Prophet said with a caustic snort.

  Louisa said, “You must have cleaned out your ears in there. Your hearing is just fine.”

  Prophet raked his indignant gaze from her to Jonas Ford then back to Louisa again. “It does me warm to see you two so worried about me,” he said, donning his hat then leaning down to pick up his gear from where it sat against the front of the washhouse. “Are either one of you at all worried that the next passel of bushwhackers who come armed with croaker sacks in which to take my head to the Lowry clan, might just get ’er done?”

  Ford looked down at the dead man lying a few feet from the washhouse’s front door. Sylvus Taylor stood over the cadaver, admiring the man’s relatively new Justin boots.

  “You seem to be doing okay so far, Lou,” the marshal said. “Just keep that third eye of yours skinned, and I reckon in time you’ll whittle away so many badmen from these parts I can start taking a day off now and then and go fishing.”

  Ford and Louisa laughed.

  Ford held his arm out to her as he swung around to face the heart of town. “May I chaperone you back to the Rio Grande, Miss Bonaventure?”

  “Not if you’re going to call me Miss Bonaventure, Jonas,” she jokingly chided the man.

  “All right, then . . . Louisa, may I . . . ?”

  “Of course you may, Jonas,” Louisa said, dipping her chin then beaming up at the handsome young lawman.

  They walked away without so much as another glance at Prophet, who stood slumped beneath his gear, flaring his nostrils at them. “That’s all right,” he grumbled to the pair’s backs. “No need to help me with my burden here. I’ll get it just fine over to the hotel my ownself !”

  He slumped after them.

  Behind him, Sylvus Taylor asked sheepishly, “Uh . . . do you think it would be all right if I take Kinsley’s boots? My heels are shot and Fred Simmons’ll charge me an’ arm an’ a leg to sew another one on.”

  “Why not?” Prophet said, continuing toward the hotel. “I expect Kinsley’s done all the walkin’ in them boots he’s gonna do.”

  * * *

  When Prophet had secured a room in the hotel, he tossed his gear into a corner then stripped down to his birthday suit.

  He hung his still-damp longhandles over a chair near an open window to let the desert air finish drying them, then lay down on the bed. He rolled a quirley and smoked it, leaning back against the bed’s two pillows. All he wore was his hat, tipped down low on his forehead. He had his shotgun and Peacemaker on the bed beside him, in case any more owlhoots decided to try to kick him out with a cold shovel.

  Prophet’s nerves were normally like steel. It took a lot to shoot them. But they were shot now. Understandably, to his way of thinking. After all, he’d just ridden into this country around Carson’s Wash and already four men had tried to blow his head off. At least, three had tried to blow it off. One had tried to cleave it in two, like a pumpkin, with a rusty hatchet!

  Not only that, but he’d ridden into town to find his girl cozying up with a handsome young town marshal.

  His girl?

  Frowning, Prophet studied the coal of his smoldering quirley.

  Now, you know she ain’t yours, old son. Just like you ain’t hers.

  Got it?

  “Yeah, I got it,” he muttered, startled by the befuddlement he heard in his own voice.

  He was glad when someone knocked on his door. That would be the bottle he’d asked the desk clerk to have sent to his room. Just in case it wasn’t, he carried his Colt over to the door. He covered his privates with his hat and said through the door, “That my whiskey?”

  When a high-pitched female voice said it was, Prophet set his gun on the dresser and opened the door, keeping his privates covered with his hat. A young girl, all of sixteen, her hair in braids, stood in the hall holding a labeled bottle of bourbon. Prophet had decided to go for a labeled bottle so he didn’t feel so inferior to Jonas Ford.

  He grabbed a quarter off the dresser, handed it through the door to the girl as a tip, then took the bottle. Her young eyes swept his bare chest and then dropped to the hat. They widened in shock.

  “I’m, uh, dryin’ out my balbriggans, little one,” he said, sheepish, adding,
“Much obliged for the jump juice,” and closed the door.

  The girl burst into self-conscious laughter and ran off down the hall.

  “Old son, you don’t have a damn bit of dignity,” he muttered to himself, splashing bourbon into a water glass on the dresser. “Jonas Ford wouldn’t go to the door in only his hat, you blasted fool. No wonder she fancies him more than you. And you can bet she wasn’t just accidentally passin’ through here, either, when the trouble with Butters erupted. She’d come here. To see Jonas.”

  He raised the glass, stared at it for a moment, said, “Ah, hell—so what?” And threw back the shot.

  He refilled the glass, returned to the bed, and sat there and smoked and drank another few fingers of bourbon before he dressed, gave his hat a cursory brushing though it did little good—those ancient weather and crusted salt stains were there for the duration—and went downstairs. He walked into the dining room off the lobby, the carpet cushioning his foot thuds and muffling the ringing of his spurs.

  He stopped a few feet inside the room, staring toward the table at which Louisa and Jonas Ford were already sitting.

  Again, that snaggletoothed demon, jealousy, nipped the bounty hunter’s innards.

  Louisa had brushed her hair till it shone. It spilled prettily across her shoulders, one side tucked behind her ear. Early-evening sunlight made it sparkle like spun honey. She wore a dressy leather jacket over her other customary attire, which never seemed as trail-worn as Prophet’s duds.

  Jonas sat across from her, dressed in his standard three-piece suit but this time with a paisley vest and glistening gold watch chain. The suit looked new and expensive. He’d recently combed his hair. It, too, shone in the light from the window, as did his thick mustache of the same chocolate brown.

  Ford was leaning forward over the table, talking intimately with Louisa, smiling, showing his perfect teeth. They were drinking wine. Prophet could tell that Jonas was relating a humorous story. Suddenly the young marshal lifted his head and laughed, and Louisa did the same, throwing her head far back on her shoulders. Prophet could hear the music of her laughter. He realized suddenly how few times he’d ever heard her laugh.

  It was a pretty laugh. As pretty as the rest of her.

  Lou turned around. He’d find another place to dine this evening. Three would obviously be a crowd at Ford and Louisa’s table. He’d nearly made it to the door when a female voice said, “You’re leaving, Mr. Prophet?”

  He stopped and turned to his left. Phoebe Dahlstrom stood at a near table, which, like the others, was covered in white satin. Her foreman, Melvin Handy, sat at the same table, a napkin over his right, denim-and-chap-clad thigh. He was looking doubtfully up at Prophet. His sandy red hair had been neatly pomaded and combed. On the table was a bottle of wine and a basket of bread. Phoebe held a glass of red wine. A half-filled schooner of beer sat before Handy.

  His hat was hooked over the back of a chair to his left.

  “Oh, uh . . . Hello, Mrs. Dahlstrom,” Prophet said, keeping his voice low so neither Ford nor Louisa would hear him. He didn’t turn to look at them again. He hoped they hadn’t seen him. He desperately wanted to leave the dining room before they did. “Uh . . . yeah . . . a change of plans.”

  He smiled cordially, pinched his hat brim, and took another step forward.

  “Would you consider yet another change of plans?” Mrs. Dahlstrom said, halting Prophet once more. She glanced over at Ford and Louisa and then returned her gaze to Prophet, the twinkle of understanding in her eyes. A soft smile grabbed at her full, sensual lips. “One that involved dining with me this evening?”

  Prophet frowned, a little taken aback by the offer. He looked at Handy, who returned his frown though Handy’s was more like that of a dog with a bone.

  “Melvin was just leaving,” Phoebe said, a tightness in her voice, a just as tight smile on her lips. “Weren’t you, Melvin?”

  A flush rose in the foreman’s cheeks. His frown turned to a hateful glare at Prophet, and then he tossed his napkin down on the table, slid his chair back awkwardly, and rose. “Sure. Why not?”

  He doffed his hat and grabbed his beer. He glanced once more, pugnaciously, at Prophet and then at his pretty employer as he stomped out of the dining room.

  “That man ain’t happy,” Prophet said.

  She gave a devious little smile then indicated Handy’s chair with her open hand. “Please . . .”

  Prophet dared another glance at Ford and Louisa, the dagger of jealousy twisting again in his gut. “Sure,” he said, peevishness deepening his voice. “Sure. Don’t mind if I do.”

  Phoebe followed his gaze to the marshal and the Vengeance Queen’s table. “They seem to be quite involved,” she mused.

  “Don’t they, though?” Prophet heard himself snarl, casting another glance across the room.

  Mrs. Dahlstrom arched a brow. “I meant they seem to be quite involved in a conversation.”

  “Call it what you like,” Prophet said, his ear trips warming slightly with chagrin. He slid his chair up closer to the table. “I mean . . . that’s what I meant, too.”

  She studied him until he grew self-conscious. Again, his ears warmed. “Would you like a glass of wine?” she asked. “Or are you more of a beer-and-bourbon man?”

  Prophet hadn’t quite heard her, for just then, as he’d glanced across the room again, he saw that Louisa had spotted him. She was looking toward him, a smile quickly fading from her lips. It was like a cloud passing over the sun.

  Prophet knew that it was not to his credit that he suddenly felt a thrill of satisfaction. He slid his gaze from Louisa to Phoebe, who regarded him with both lovely brows winged curiously.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I was just a little distracted. What did you say, Mrs. Dahlstrom?” It was time to give the lovely woman before him his full attention.

  “I said, please do call me Phoebe,” she said, brightening, the fading, lemon-colored light from the windows dancing in her glossy brown eyes. “And let’s get you a stiff glass of bourbon and some beer, shall we? Oh, waiter!”

  Chapter 7

  When Prophet’s beer and double bourbon arrived, Phoebe Dahlstrom lifted her wineglass. “Let’s have a toast, shall we?”

  “A toast,” Prophet said, lifting his bourbon glass. “To what?”

  “To your bringing Charlie Butters to town in handcuffs.” She arched a brow and dipped her chin, like a gently admonishing schoolmarm. “Sooner rather than later.”

  “I’ll drink to that.” Prophet couldn’t help casting one more quick glance toward Louisa and Ford, who were now ordering, the dining room’s single waiter scribbling on a small pad.

  He clinked his glass to Phoebe’s and sipped his bourbon.

  “And how about if we make a little agreement, Mr. Prophet?”

  “Only if you call me Lou, Phoebe.”

  “All right, then. Lou it is. Let’s you and I agree to give each other our full attention this evening, shall we? I mean, it does look like we’re all each other has.” Phoebe gave a smoky half grin, glanced around, then leaned intimately forward. “And, if you won’t think me too forward for saying so, I think I have the pick of the crop. At least, as far as this dining room is concerned.”

  Prophet smiled, feeling a flush in his cheeks. Now that he was giving this woman his full attention, having put Louisa where she belonged—on the back burner of the range in his mind—he saw again, as he’d seen in Ford’s office, how pretty and sensual Phoebe Dahlstrom was. Every bit as alluring as Louisa, though in her own unique way.

  Prophet followed the woman’s gaze around the room. There were about twelve other diners, including Ford and Louisa. Most were men—businessmen and three or four fellas who appeared freighters. Maybe a stock buyer or two, whom you could distinguish from range men by their large, soft bellies and pasty complexions. Two of them sat with a gaudily dressed woman who Prophet assumed was a doxie. She laughed a little too loudly, and her late-middle-aged dinner companions didn
’t seem to care.

  By far the handsomest man in the room was also the youngest—Jonas Ford.

  “The marshal has me all beat to hell,” Prophet said. “If you’ll forgive my farm manners and blue tongue.” He sipped his frothy ale, which was surprisingly cool for these parts. The hotel must have a deep cellar.

  “If you like well-groomed men,” Phoebe said. “If you like men who have as good a taste in clothes as I do.”

  “You don’t?”

  “Nothing against Jonas,” Phoebe said, a fleeting, deprecating smile twitching across her mouth. “He and I grew up together. I know him well. A nice man; a learned man as well as an ambitious man. But he’s always had a bit of the dude in him. Maybe because of my own crude upbringing, I’ve always been attracted to large, masculine men. Men who could wield a filthy tongue when one was necessary, and know how to swing their fists when words won’t settle the debate. That’s the kind of man Carson’s Wash needs for its lawman.”

  Prophet compared the woman’s fragile beauty to her words, and the contrast was stark. As well as more than slightly arousing . . .

  “You don’t approve of Jonas’s law-bringing skills?” he asked.

  “I did before . . . well, before Butters murdered my husband and Jonas and his deputies did nothing to bring him in except to get two of them killed and Jonas with his arm in a sling.”

  Prophet didn’t want to talk about Jonas Ford anymore. He felt funny about the topic, because he saw Jonas as a friend. He couldn’t also help seeing him as competition, though he didn’t want to see him that way. It was a nasty feeling. A boyishly immature one. If he’d been a few years younger, he might have thrown a punch or two by now and made a total ass out of himself.

  No, he didn’t want to talk about Jonas Ford.

  By way of switching the topic of the conversation, he angled toward the thing about Phoebe Dahlstrom that had been percolating in the back of his brain.

  “Speaking of your so-called crude upbringing, Mrs. . . . I mean, Phoebe . . .”

  “Yes?”