Stagecoach to Purgatory

by Peter Brandvold

  “Gran thinks you’re the law, and she hates the law. The law has never been kind to a West Texas Lowry. When it comes to us Lowrys, the law always shoots first and asks questions later.”

  “Oh, why is that?”

  “You tell me.”

  Prophet sighed. That angle of the conversation wasn’t getting him anywhere. He already knew the Lowrys were considered a bad bunch, which they no doubt were. Border toughs who only played at ranching. What they mainly did was survive any way they knew how, many of those ways being illegal as hell.

  Charlie Butters smacked his lips and muttered in his sleep. Prophet looked at him. “How much older is he than you?”

  “Twelve years. That ain’t much. My pa is eighteen years older’n my ma . . . may the good Lord have mercy on her soul.”

  “So, Charlie came back here, to the country around Carson’s Wash, right after that fool judge set him free. And you took up with him.”

  “That’s right. But that judge weren’t no fool. He knew the law. He set Charlie free because it was the right thing to do. He gave Charlie a second chance, and Charlie was makin’ good on that chance. He was workin’ for Mr. McReynolds out to the Rockin’ R spread, huntin’ wolves an’ mountain lions, Charlie was. Makin’ good wages. Then that damn fool Marshal Ford and his two damn fool deputies rode out there to arrest him.”

  “They rode out there to arrest him for shooting a high roller in these parts—Max Dahlstrom.”

  “Charlie done told you he didn’t shoot Max Dahlstrom. He was tellin’ you the truth, Mr. Prophet.”

  Prophet struck a lucifer to light on the bottom of the oilcloth-covered eating table and touched the flame to the quirley. “Charlie’s a killer, Miss Lowry. He started killin’ when he was thirteen years old. Robbin’, rapin’, holdin’ up stagecoaches and trains. He killed every poor soul in that bank up in Alva just so no one could identify him. Thank God his partner did!”

  “All that is true,” Jackie said, defiantly holding her chin aloft. She had a round, waifish face with eyes the same color as her grandmother’s but without the cataracts. “But Charlie saw the judge’s ruling as a chance to turn over a new leaf. To live a better life. So he found him good, honest work . . . and me,” she added with a smile.

  “Have you ever seen him with George Hill?”

  “Never.”

  “Has he ever talked about Hill to you?”

  “No. Why would he?”

  “Because some folks in Carson’s Wash believe Hill hired Charlie to kill Dahlstrom. In fact, two of Dahlstrom’s men saw the whole thing. They identified Charlie.”

  “That’s an out-and-out lie!” Jackie intoned, slapping the table and rising to her feet.

  On the settee, Charlie groaned and shifted but kept his eyes closed. Louisa was sitting in a leather chair opposite Butters. She’d kicked out of her boots and curled her long legs beneath her hip. Her hat was hooked over her left knee. She’d been reading a little book with a yellow pasteboard cover, seemingly captivated by the yarn, but now she lowered the book and looked at Jackie skeptically.

  Jackie glanced at Charlie and Louisa and then returned her passionate gaze to Prophet and repeated, lowering her voice, “That is an out-and-out lie, Mr. Prophet. Charlie would never do such a thing. Maybe earlier in his life he would have. But Charlie’s a different man now, like I’ve been tryin’ to tell you. He is not that man anymore. He is a good man. Bad men can become good men, Mr. Prophet, though I know you’re too jaded to be convinced!”

  “You’re right—I am too jaded,” Prophet said, taking a deep drag from his quirley.

  Louisa raised the book again to her face, frowning in concentration at the page before her. Vaguely, Prophet wondered what story had her so absorbed. She hadn’t said a word for over an hour, since they’d dared let Jackie serve them bowls of beans cooked with onions and bacon.

  “I been in this business long enough that zebras don’t change their stripes, and men like Charlie don’t become good Christian men.” Prophet dropped his gaze to the bulging belly of the girl standing across the table from him. “Or good fathers, let alone good husbands. Sorry to bust your bubble. But there it is.”

  “You’re wrong,” Jackie said tightly, shaking her head slowly and easing down into her chair.

  “If Charlie didn’t shoot Dahlstrom, why did he start shootin’ at Ford and the deputies when they rode out to that line shack he was holed up in on McReynolds’s range?”

  “Charlie said Ford’s men fired first. Charlie was just protectin’ himself. Besides, he knows that Jonas Ford isn’t going to listen to a word Charlie had to say. Ford already had Charlie convicted of Dahlstrom’s murder and hangin’ from a gallows. Everyone in West Texas knows how close the General and Dahlstrom were, and that Dahlstrom . . .”

  She let her voice trail off, flushing slightly and lowering her gaze to the table.

  “Dahlstrom what?” Prophet asked.

  “Never mind.”

  Prophet glanced at Louisa. She was so involved in her book that she hadn’t heard one word of his and Jackie’s conversation. Just now she slowly turned a page, sliding her eyes from the previous one to the new one. She shook her hair back and continued reading, pink lips slightly parted.

  Of course, she probably wouldn’t have listened to anything Jackie had to say even if she hadn’t found the book in one of the back bedrooms. Louisa wasn’t one to listen to excuses espoused by the lovers of killers. Louisa was as pretty as any debutante, but over the years since her family’s massacre, her skin had grown as thick as that of a wild bull pawing the scrub in the south Texas Brasada country.

  Jackie placed one hand atop the other atop the table and leaned over them, pinning Prophet with a direct look. “If you take Charlie back to town, he’s going to end up dead. One way or another. They’ll kill him.”

  “Who’ll kill him?”

  “You just mark my words. Someone’s gonna have to take the blame for Dahlstrom’s killing. Charlie just happens to be handy. Now she can finally run George Hill out of this country for good—or watch him hang.”

  “Who do you mean by ‘she’?”

  “You know who I mean by ‘she.’”

  “You know a lot about Carson’s Wash, Miss Lowry. How so, livin’ way out here?”

  “Everybody within a thousand squared miles knows everything about Carson’s Wash, Mr. Prophet. Word spreads fast. Especially those words. Carson’s Wash is a favorite topic of conversation from El Paso clear up to Amarillo. Especially after how everybody knows that . . .”

  Again, Jackie let her voice trail off. Her country-pretty, heart-shaped face acquired that sheepish look again.

  “Doggone it, will you stop bein’ so damn mysterious, Miss Lowry?” Prophet said in frustration, mashing out his quirley in his empty coffee cup. “You’re obviously no shrinking violet, so why don’t you stop pretending to be one and say what’s on your mind? No one here is gonna wash your mouth out with soap. I can hear Gran snorin’ in the room way over yonder.”

  Jackie looked at Gran’s door, almost as though the girl really were scared the old woman would hear her talking out of school. She looked at Charlie. Then at Louisa, who had lowered her book and was staring with interest at Jackie. She’d apparently heard enough of the conversation to have gotten interested in something other than the yarn.

  Jackie turned back to Prophet, crossed her arms on the table, and leaned over them. She spoke to the table as she said, “Phoebe’s father nearly killed her lover. Dahlstrom’s son. Later, he went to Mexico and was shot by rurales.”

  Prophet scowled at her. “Well, hell, I know that much myself !”

  “I don’t,” Louisa said from her leather chair.

  “Yeah, well, my date last night must’ve been a little more informative than yours.” Prophet turned to Jackie. “Besides, I don’t see what—”

  “That ain’t all of it,” Jackie said.

  Prophet studied her, waiting.

  She let him wait, obvio
usly relishing the drama she was building. There probably wasn’t much drama out here. At least, not the kind to keep a girl entertained when she wasn’t cavorting with the likes of Charlie Butters.

  Jackie said in a devilish, conspiratorial tone, “Did Mrs. Dahlstrom also tell you that after George Hill beat Erik Dahlstrom nearly to death, he raped her?”

  A three-second pause as Prophet absorbed the word rape.

  “Raped who?” Prophet and Louisa said at the same time, in tones of hushed awe.

  “Her,” Jackie said. “Phoebe.”

  Prophet sank back in his chair, knees turning to putty from shock. He glanced at Louisa, who had lowered her book to her thigh. “Hill raped his own daughter?” Prophet said.

  “That ain’t all, neither.” Jackie turned her head slightly and gave a teasing little half smile.

  “Pray tell,” Prophet said, half ironically.

  Jackie glanced darkly at Gran’s door once more. Then, hearing the old woman’s muffled snores, she turned back to Prophet. “She had a baby. That ain’t just a rumor. The old woman who works with Doc Collins in Carson’s Wash let it slip to someone who let it slip to someone else.”

  Prophet and Louisa shared another dark glance.

  “What happened to the baby?” Louisa asked Jackie.

  “That’s what everybody east of Lubbock would like to know,” Jackie said.

  Chapter 12

  When Prophet had absorbed that last piece of grisly information from Jackie, he said, “I don’t see what any of that has to do with your boyfriend over there not killing Dahlstrom.”

  “How do you know it wasn’t Phoebe who killed her own husband . . . that old, dried-up gourd of a man, Dahlstrom . . . and then blamed Charlie because he was an easy one to blame? After all, everybody knows about what Charlie did up in Alva and the second judge turning him loose. Everybody around here’s been layin’ for Charlie ever since. All except his own kin and Mr. McReynolds, that is.”

  Prophet shook his head. “I know you believe in Charlie, Miss Lowry. But you’re buildin’ way too big of a story to support him. Phoebe’s foreman and one other man saw Charlie shoot Dahlstrom.”

  “Oh, and you can say for sure they ain’t lyin’!” the girl castigated him, planting a fist on her hip and firing lightninglike daggers at him with her gaze.

  Charlie Butters lifted his head from his pillow with a start, his eyes wide and fearful. “Wha . . . huh?”

  “Oh, easy, darlin’, easy!” Jackie said, rising from her chair and hurrying over to where Butters lay on the settee. “I’m sorry I raised my voice and gave you such a start. That was so inconsiderate of me. You go back to sleep, sweet Charlie.”

  She sat on the edge of the settee, cradled Butters’s ugly head in her arms like some grisly infant, and smoothed his short hair back from his temples, rocking him, cooing to him gently. “There, there . . . hush, hush, sweet Charlie.”

  Prophet rolled his eyes as he slid his chair back and gained his feet.

  He looked at Louisa. She’d gone back to reading her book.

  Prophet opened the front door and stepped out onto the front veranda and looked around. The rain had turned to a spitting mist. The storm’s rumbling was growing fainter, the lightning more distant, its brief umber flashes silhouetting clouds in the far northeast. If Butters’s relatives were on their way back from Mexico, they were likely holed up out of the rain. Every arroyo in the storm’s path would be flooded until morning.

  Still, Prophet wouldn’t be getting much sleep. Any one of the three in the cabin was a threat, and Prophet didn’t have it in him to tie up the old woman and Jackie. He supposed he could tie Butters but what was the point if he didn’t tie the women, too?

  He might catch a few winks, but he and Louisa would have to take turns staying awake so they didn’t end up with a knitting needle or anything else embedded in their persons.

  Prophet yawned and went back inside. Jackie was still cradling Butters’s head in her arms. She sat back against the wall, her eyes closed, one leg outstretched along the edge of the settee. On the opposite side of the room, Louisa slowly turned a page of her book.

  Prophet walked over to her. “What the hell you readin’, anyways?”

  She kept the front of the book pressed up against her raised knee. “Nothing.”

  “Let me see.”

  “No.” She was about to pull the book away, but he grabbed her right hand and held the book at an angle he could read it by.

  Across the top of the cover were the words BEADLE’S DIME NOVELS.

  Beneath those words was a detailed sketch of a pretty, saucy-looking, long-haired young woman dressed entirely in buckskins and with fringed buckskin boots and two pearl-gripped Colt revolvers in her hands.

  She was shooting one of the Colts at a big, burly gent hulking up before her. He had a hatchet in his hand and a look of shock on his bearded face. The girl was slashing the barrel of her second Colt toward the man’s left temple. The two were in a saloon, men and painted ladies sitting or standing around, watching the festivities.

  Beneath the sketch was the title of the featured yarn: LOUISA BONAVENTURE.

  Beneath that was the tale’s subtitle: THE VENGEANCE QUEEN GIVES NO QUARTER!

  Louisa jerked the book from Prophet’s grip. Her cheeks colored a little as she looked vaguely sheepishly up at him, curling a wry smile.

  Prophet snorted.

  “Give no quarter, huh?” he said.

  “They got that part right, anyway.”

  “They mention me in there?”

  “Not one time,” Louisa said smugly.

  “Since you’re so involved in your own story, you can keep the first watch. I’m gonna catch thirty winks. Wake me when you get sleepy.”

  “The Vengeance Queen will never rest until she has attained the justice she rides for, Lou.”

  Prophet gave another snort and then walked back to the table. He sat down and rolled another smoke. When he finished the quirley, he dropped it into his coffee cup, doffed his hat, and laid his head down on the table. Instantly, soothing slumber washed over him. He woke later to what felt like a large, hot hand squeezing the back of his neck.

  He lifted his head from the table with a groan, and, blinking, saw the Vengeance Queen sitting across the table from him, raising a cup of steaming coffee to her lips. Pale light shone in her hazel eyes and painted the steam rising from the coal black surface of her coffee.

  “Ow,” Prophet groaned again, rubbing the back of his neck and hipping around to peer out the windows. “You mean to tell me it’s mornin’?”

  “Close.”

  He turned back to Louisa. “Why didn’t you wake me?”

  She hiked a shoulder as she sipped her coffee. “You were dead out. I thought you needed sleep more than I did.”

  Prophet groaned again as he rubbed the fist-sized knots out of his neck. “Yeah, I know—the Vengeance Queen don’t need sleep. All she needs is justice.”

  He looked around. The cabin was all smeared shadows and blurred gray edges. A ray of pale light streamed over Butters and his girl on the settee. Jackie was curled up close against Charlie’s side. Charlie snored softly. Jackie had one arm draped over his belly.

  “Look at them two lovebirds,” Prophet said, yawning and scrubbing a hand down his face, trying to get awake.

  Louisa followed his gaze. “What about ’em?”

  Prophet frowned at her. “You think there’s any chance she might be right about Charlie?”

  Louisa sipped her coffee again and set the cup down. “You saw what he did in Alva. You tell me.”

  “You think a zebra can change his stripes?”

  Louisa glanced at Charlie again. “Not that zebra.”

  Prophet slid his chair back, rose, hearing the bones in his back and knees pop. He yawned as he headed for the big coffeepot steaming on a warming rack of the range. “I’m gonna have a cup of mud. Then I’ll fetch the horses.”

  * * *

  “Arrest
in’ the son of Emmett Lowry’s cousin is one thing,” Charlie Butters said. “But killin’ his boy is somethin’ else altogether. When you killed Tom Lowry, you really grabbed the devil by the tail, Proph.”

  “I been grabbin’ it a lot lately, Charlie.”

  Prophet, Louisa, and Butters were riding between two eroded buttes, following the trail back north, toward Carson’s Wash. It was midmorning, the sun high and hot, gradually burning off the humidity after last night’s downpour.

  All of the arroyos that Prophet’s threesome had crossed so far had been merely muddy. Water drained fast in this sandy country.

  Prophet stopped Mean and Ugly. Butters’s blue roan, which the bounty hunter was leading by its bridle reins, stopped just behind him. Prophet turned Mean and rode back until he sat stirrup to stirrup with Butters, who rode with his boots tied together beneath the roan’s broad barrel.

  “You sent Lowry after me, Charlie,” he said. “You got word that Ford had sent for me. So you sent your cousin out to wait for me. To bushwhack me. I put them bullets in him, sure. He was needin’ ’em, sure enough, a long time ago. But you’re the one who killed him when you sicced him on me, Charlie. So don’t sit there like you don’t have as much of Tom’s blood on your hands as I do.”

  “Nuh-uh,” Butters said, shaking his head slowly. “You got it wrong, Proph. I didn’t send Tom after you. I didn’t know nothin’ about Ford sendin’ you after me. Hell, I didn’t even know your purtier half was in this country.” He smiled seedily at Louisa. “Hell, why wouldn’t I have sent Tom after her, then, too?”

  “Maybe I was next,” Louisa said.

  “Maybe,” Butters said. “Maybe not. No, sir, Prophet. You grabbed the devil by the tail when you shot Tom. Tom was Emmett’s favorite boy. Him and the other half dozen—Cal, Randall, Bad Frank, Les, Willie, and Little Steve—will be ridin’ into Carson’s Wash just as soon as they return from Mexico. Should have been back by now, matter of fact. They’ll be gunnin’ for you soon.” He looked at Louisa. “Both of you.”

  “Stop, Charlie,” Louisa said. “You’re scaring me.”