Stagecoach to Purgatory

by Peter Brandvold

  Butters’s little eyes sparked with anger, and he hardened his jaws. “You two got it all wrong, damnit. I didn’t have nothin’ to do with Dahlstrom’s killin’. I was in McReynolds’s line shack, baiting a panther! I’m gonna be a poppa, damnit! I’m gonna marry Jackie and do it up right!”

  “Even if you didn’t kill Dahlstrom,” Prophet said, raising his voice in frustration, “you blew your chance of that happening when you shot Ford’s two deputies.”

  “I didn’t know they was Ford’s deputies. They didn’t identify themselves. I just heard someone sneakin’ up through the brush, and when I looked out, one of ’em leveled a Winchester on me. So I fired back. What would you do, Lou?”

  He stared at Prophet as though awaiting an answer. When Prophet didn’t have one, Butters just stretched his lips back from his teeth and said, “Oh, goddamnit all, anyway!” His quavering voice cracked with what sounded like genuine emotion.

  A tear oozed out of his right eye and dribbled down his severely, crudely chiseled cheek.

  Prophet studied him for a moment, then reined Mean back around and headed on up the trail. “Let’s go,” he said.

  After a few minutes’ hard pondering, he glanced at Louisa riding beside him. “Tell me I’m a fool for starting to wonder if he’s not tellin’ the truth.”

  “It’s already been established that you’re a fool,” Louisa said, glancing over her shoulder at Charlie riding with his eyes closed beneath the brim of his old hat, head lolling on his shoulders. “And it’s already been established that Butters is a killer. You’ve seen his carnage yourself. He’s working you. Him and that girl were both working you.”

  “Do you think she’s lyin’ for him?”

  Louisa glanced back at Butters once more, a look of disgust on her mouth. “No, I think she believes in him. Which makes me hate that viper even more.”

  She paused as they rode a few more yards along the meandering trail. A deep line of consternation was carved between her brows.

  She said, “What difference does it make, anyway? If he didn’t kill Dahlstrom, he’s killed plenty others.”

  “If he didn’t kill Dahlstrom—who did?”

  “It’s not our jobs to worry about that. Jonas is only paying us to bring in Butters. The rest of it is up to him . . . and a judge and jury.”

  “And an executioner for Butters,” Prophet grumbled.

  “High time.”

  Prophet glanced back once more at Butters, who still rode with his head wobbling as though broken on his shoulders. But now his eyes were open. He stared at Prophet without expression.

  Lou turned his head back forward. “Reckon.”

  Chapter 13

  Prophet, Louisa, and their sullen prisoner rode into Carson’s Wash around noon, the sun high and hammering straight down, blindingly, making Prophet yearn for the Colorado high country and a cool lake to take a dip in.

  Something besides the heat and the sun was bothering him, though.

  This whole thing with Butters was nettling him. It should have been such an easy job. Just bring a man in as a favor for a lawman friend with his wing in a sling. But it was more complicated than that. At least, it was more complicated in Prophet’s head. Maybe it really shouldn’t be.

  But it was.

  What he needed was a drink and a tussle with a woman.

  As they rode down the main street of Carson’s Wash, Prophet looked at Louisa. She glanced back at him and frowned curiously. His ears warmed, and he turned away.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “Nothin’.”

  “Lou, what is it?” she prodded as Ford’s office shifted into view dead ahead and on the street’s south side.

  On both sides of the street, people were stopping what they’d been doing to eye the two bounty hunters riding into town with the alleged killer of one of the county’s most powerful men in tow. Charlie rode sulkily in the saddle, head down, sort of groaning and snarling like a cowed dog that had been caught with a mouthful of chicken feathers.

  “Nothin’,” Prophet said again.

  He pulled Mean and Ugly up in front of the hitchrack fronting the marshal’s office. Louisa pulled up on his right and gave him a direct look.

  “You’re needing a woman . . . or a girl . . . and a bottle,” she said, as though she were merely telling him what time it was. “Suit yourself. Then why don’t you ride on out of here? You have nothing to hold you here. Look for some other owlhoots to chase. Winter’ll be coming on, and you’re gonna need a good stake to get you down to Mexico.”

  Prophet felt a little like how Butters looked—like a bad, cowed dog. Louisa knew him too well.

  “You’re stayin’, then?” he asked her.

  “Why not test the waters?” she said.

  Ford’s office door opened and the young marshal walked out, his arm in a fresh sling. He donned his black hat and smiled when he saw the two bounty hunters and Butters. “Well, I’ll be doggoned,” he said, sliding his gaze from Butters to Prophet and Louisa. “You found him out at the Lowry ranch, didn’t you?”

  “Sometimes you guess right,” Prophet said, swinging down from his saddle. “Sometimes you don’t.”

  “I couldn’t be more grateful, Lou.” Ford looked at Louisa, and an extra light glinted in his eyes. He dipped his chin and pinched his hat brim. “Louisa.”

  “Jonas, how are you?”

  “Me? Hell, I’m fine. Even better than fine now.”

  He winked, and Prophet thought he was going to have to look around for that slop bucket again. Lou gave a ragged sigh and cut Butters’s feet free, then helped the outlaw out of his saddle. Butters didn’t protest. He didn’t say a word. He knew his ass was in the loop and his head likely would be soon, as well.

  When Prophet had led Charlie into the marshal’s office, nudged him into a cell, and closed the door, Ford turned the key in the lock.

  “Thanks again, Lou.” Ford hung the key ring on a spike in a ceiling support post then opened a desk drawer and removed two slender envelopes. He handed one to Prophet, the other to Louisa. “And here is my thanks to you again—cash on the barrel-head.”

  “Thanks, Jonas,” Prophet said.

  “Yes—thank you, Jonas.”

  “I hope you won’t be running off,” Ford said, hiking a hip on a corner of his desk. He kept his gaze on Louisa. “I could use a deputy . . . at least until I can get a couple more hired.”

  “Hmm, that might be right up my alley,” Louisa said. She leaned back against the support post and lowered her eyes, demure. “About the other night, Jonas . . .”

  Prophet interrupted her with: “If you two will excuse me, I think I’ll pull foot, look for some whiskey that’s in bad need of freein’ from a bottle . . .”

  As he headed for the door, boots thudded on the veranda. There was no knock. The door opened too quickly for Prophet not to slip his Colt half out of its holster before Phoebe Dahlstrom walked in, flanked by Melvin Handy and another man who wore a blond beard and deerskin chaps. He had a long, hooked nose and close-set eyes beneath the brim of his weathered, bullet-crowned black hat.

  He was Handy’s size—around six feet, slightly potbellied, rough and mean-looking. Also like Handy, he wore two pistols and a bowie knife. His sleeves were rolled up to his biceps. His arms were pale and mottled with freckles.

  He and Handy sized up Prophet like the third dog in a possible alley fight.

  Phoebe stopped before Prophet, as well, but her sizing up of the bounty hunter was of another strain entirely. Her coquettish gaze flicked across his broad chest and long, corded arms, and then it brushed across his mouth before sinking into his eyes. A smile stretched her lips. “I saw you bring in my husband’s killer.”

  Her voice was thick, raspy . . . not so vaguely sexual.

  “We brought him in,” Louisa said. She’d turned to face the newcomers, also always alert for a threat. Both her hands were still closed over the pearl grips of her Colts.

  “You her?�
� asked the blond-bearded man standing beside Handy. His lusty eyes raked across Louisa. “The one they call the Vengeance Queen?”

  “Phoebe, would you mind keeping your dogs on their leashes?” Ford said, rising from the corner of his desk and glowering at the pretty young widow.

  Mrs. Dahlstrom glanced at the bearded man and then indicated Butters’s cell with her chin. “This is Lars Gunderson. He was with Handy and my husband when this killer murdered Max.”

  Gunderson brushed past Prophet, who let his Colt slide back down into its holster, and strode over to the jail cell. He stared in at Charlie Butters, who sat on the cot, leaning back against the wall. His eyes showed the pain of his wounds, which had likely been aggravated by the ride from the Lowry ranch. He peered dully through the bars at the stocky man staring in at him.

  “Yep, that’s him,” Gunderson said. “I seen him gallop off with that Winchester right after he blew the boss out of his saddle.” He glanced at Phoebe and added, “Uh . . . sorry, ma’am.”

  “It’s all right, Lars. You’ll testify to that at the trial?”

  “You betcha.”

  “I wouldn’t know this ugly galoot from Adam’s off-ox,” Butters said, snarling. “Never seen him before in my life. He’s lyin’.” He raised his voice in bitter frustration, squeezing his eyes closed. “I never shot Dahlstrom, an’ if you hang me for it, you’re hangin’ an innocent man!”

  The man’s voice echoed around inside the office.

  “No, no—that’s him, all right,” Gunderson said, smiling mockingly at Charlie through the bars.

  “Sure is,” Handy said, determined not to be left out, hooking his thumbs behind his cartridge belt. “I was there, too. Seen the whole thing.”

  Butters glowered at Phoebe’s foreman. “Yeah, well, you’re a liar, then, too, Handy—you lip-peckered son of a bitch! You come from a whole family of liars!”

  “Why, you—!”

  Handy lunged at the cell, gripping the bars of the door in his fists as though he thought he could rip them from their moorings.

  “Hey, hey, hey!” Ford said, grabbing Handy’s left arm.

  “That’s enough, Mel!” Phoebe yelled.

  Ford said, “The sheriff, the county prosecutor, the judge, and the public defender are all on their way. Should be here day after tomorrow. Butters will have his day in court.”

  Prophet sighed, opened the door, and stepped out onto the veranda. He’d had enough. He had his five hundred dollars. Now it was time to see about a cheap whore and a cheap drink, maybe a little poker. After a good night’s sleep, he’d pull his picket pin. He’d start makin’ his slow way down to Mexico before the first chill winds of winter blew over the Rockies.

  First, he’d stable his horse, grain and feed the ugly mug.

  He dropped morosely down the veranda steps and untied the dun’s reins from the hitchrack. He turned the horse into the street and was about to toe his stirrup when a voice rose behind him: “You get him?”

  Prophet dropped his left boot into the street and turned to see George Hill and his four beefy bruisers walking toward him, in the same formation as before—Hill inside the box the four hardtails formed the corners of.

  “Did you bring in Butters?” Hill said, clad in his top hat and shabby ice-cream suit that made him look like a well-dressed ape.

  Prophet loosed a wry breath. Here we go again.

  “You know I did or you wouldn’t be here.”

  Prophet raised his foot to toe a stirrup again but stopped again when the marshal’s office door opened and Phoebe Dahlstrom walked out onto the veranda. Handy and Gunderson were right behind her.

  Prophet set his foot back down in the street and groaned.

  Hill turned to Phoebe and snarled around the fat stogie clamped in his teeth. “So your dog fetched your bone for you, did he?”

  “He’s a reliable dog,” Phoebe said, turning her taut, vaguely taunting smile on Prophet. Sliding her gaze back to Hill, she said, “He did, indeed. You and your, uh, bone will be swinging together soon. Jonas tells me that the mucky-mucks from the county seat are on their way as we speak.”

  Hill turned to Prophet, his flat eyes hard and angry. “Did Butters tell you he did what this polecat says he did?” He jerked his chin toward his daughter glaring down at him from the veranda.

  “No,” the bounty hunter said. “He said he was in McReynolds’s line shack at the time, baiting a calf-eatin’ wildcat.”

  “Don’t worry,” Hill said sarcastically, “his story will change. Jonas will change it for him. He’ll offer Butters a deal. Ford is another of Phoebe’s loyal dogs. She has a lot of loyal dogs in these parts. With a pair of breasts like that, and her husband’s bankroll, a girl gets a whole pack of loyal dogs hot on her heels, sniffin’ an’ snarlin’ and grovelin’ like curs in a trash heap.”

  Hill threw his head back and laughed briefly before glaring at the men flanking his daughter, including Jonas Ford, who had walked out onto the veranda, Louisa at his side. “Look at ’em all!”

  “Shut up!” Melvin Handy barked, pushing past Phoebe and dropping down into the street, his fists bunched at his sides. “You got no call to talk to her that way. I won’t have it!”

  “Ha!” Hill roared. “There’s one of ’em now, showin’ his teeth and raisin’ his hackles!”

  “How dare you talk about your daughter like that!”

  As Handy lunged toward Hill, the bruiser nearest Prophet leveled his sawed-off shotgun at him. Automatically, Prophet took one step toward the bruiser and smashed his right arm down against the shotgun, which exploded.

  One barrel of buckshot blew a foot-sized crater out of the street. Prophet smashed his left fist into the man’s face, laying his nose sideways. The bruiser screamed and staggered backward, holding both hands over his nose. Blood ran out from between his fingers.

  He tripped over his own feet and fell to his butt, cursing and spitting blood out his nose and mouth.

  The shotgun blast had caused everyone, including Handy, to freeze. They stared toward Prophet, who shucked his Colt, clicked the hammer back, and aimed it straight out from his right side. Hill’s other three men were all aiming something—either a pistol or another sawed-off shotgun—at him, waiting for their boss to give the order.

  Hill glowered at Prophet.

  “What the hell did you come over here for, Hill? You tryin’ to start a war on the street? Who in the hell you think’s gonna win that war?”

  Hill extended an enraged finger at his daughter, curling a delighted half smile from where she stood atop the veranda. “She’s here, ain’t she? Spewin’ her lies! That’s all she does is spew lies, and he and everyone else around here listens, because the General was well liked in Carson’s Wash, and Ford’s the General’s son!”

  “That’s enough, Hill!” Ford stepped around Phoebe to hurry down the steps. He stood in front of Hill and said with quiet equanimity, “What would you have me do? Those two men saw Charlie Butters gun down their boss.”

  “And what does Butters say about who put him up to it?”

  Hill probed the vaguely sheepish Jonas Ford with his gaze.

  Hill chuckled, rolling his cold cigar from one corner of his mouth to the other. “Denies it, don’t he? Well, if he denies it, it’s his word against theirs. And, without Butters involved, you can’t prove I was involved.”

  He glared at Phoebe, who returned the glare with an even more hateful one of her own. “Always listenin’ to her lies—aren’t ya, Jonas? After all these years, still listenin’ to her lies . . .” He took special care to emphasize that last.

  Meaning what? Prophet wondered.

  A particular lie?

  Hill removed his cigar from between his teeth, spat in the dirt to his right, then wheeled and lumbered back in the direction from which he’d come. The three uninjured bruisers followed.

  The other one glared at Prophet from over his bloody hands. He cursed loudly, angrily, spat blood in the street, and gained his fee
t heavily. Holding one hand over his nose, he started toward his shotgun, which he’d left near the crater it had blown in the street.

  “Leave it,” Prophet said.

  “The hell I will,” intoned the bruiser, squaring his shoulders at Prophet.

  Mean and Ugly, who’d been flanking its owner, gave an angry whinny and lunged forward, bulling the man over. The bruiser gave another shrill scream, hit the street on his back, and rolled. Mean lowered his head before the enraged man and pawed the dirt like a bull.

  “Come on, Mean,” Prophet said, walking over and grabbing the horse’s bridle. “He’s finished for today.” He looked at the bruiser staring up in silent fury and more than a little fear at the horse. “Ain’t ya, pard?”

  “Yeah.” The man climbed heavily to his feet. As he slogged away, he shot a furious glare over his thick right shoulder, blood still dripping from his smashed nose. “For today.”

  Prophet plucked the bruiser’s shotgun out of the street. He tossed it over to Ford.

  “Thanks, Lou,” Jonas said.

  “Don’t mention it.”

  He glanced at Louisa. She stood beside Phoebe, regarding him dubiously, one fist on her hip, head canted to one side. Phoebe glanced at Louisa then walked down the veranda steps to stand before Prophet.

  She ran her hand down Mean and Ugly’s scarred snout. “At least someone’s looking out for you.”

  “A good hoss . . . even a mean and ugly one . . . is all a man needs.”

  “A hoss can’t buy a man a drink. I can.”

  “Nah,” Prophet said. “I got me five hundred dollars here in my pocket, and it’ll just burn a hole if I don’t spend it on a cheap woman and some cheap whiskey.” Prophet finally managed to swing up onto his horse without further delay. He pinched his hat brim to Phoebe Dahlstrom, who frowned up at him skeptically. “Obliged, though.”

  He touched spurs to Mean’s flanks and headed for the livery barn and the oblivion of store-bought love and who-hit-John.

  Chapter 14

  The Five Card Stud was a seedy, rat-infested watering hole that sat on the far northern outskirts of Carson’s Wash. It catered mainly to Mexicans, but gringos favoring a brief walk on the wild side frequented the place, as well.