Stagecoach to Purgatory

by Peter Brandvold

  “No,” Prophet said, punching Mean in the side so the stubborn horse would let out its held breath. Then he tightened the latigo and threaded the strap through the cinch.

  “What do you mean, ‘no’?” Phoebe glanced at him as she approached one of the near stalls. “There are five Lowrys left. They might be headed for Mexico.”

  “I don’t think so,” Prophet said. “They just came back from there. Besides, those five might think I’m dead. They’ll soon know otherwise, but for now they think that nearly every damn lawman in the county is wolf bait.”

  “You’re still going to need help. Even you, Lou!” Phoebe opened the door to her horse’s stall.

  “Forget it.” Prophet glanced over his shoulder. Handy and Gunderson were holding back in the barn alley between Prophet and their employer. Both men looked uncertain, vaguely guilty.

  Prophet turned to both men and said, “Where were you two when Ford and the others were ambushed?”

  “What?” Handy said, though he’d heard the question.

  “Where were you?” Prophet repeated.

  “Mel told you,” Gunderson said. “We were asleep. Had us a long night.”

  “You didn’t hear the gunfire?”

  “Sure we did,” Handy said with a caustic chuff. “But gunfire ain’t all that uncommon in West Texas, amigo!” He was flushed with anger, leaning slightly forward at the waist.

  Prophet continued with: “Who told the Lowrys where I was?”

  Both men studied him in stony, narrow-lidded silence.

  Phoebe stood in the barn alley, holding her cream gelding’s halter rope. “Lou, what’s this about?”

  “I think Handy and Gunderson told the Lowrys where they could find me.” Prophet glanced at Phoebe. “Us.”

  “That’s absurd,” Phoebe said.

  “Yeah,” Handy said, canting his head toward his boss. “What she said.” He laughed. “Why would I pull a stunt like that?” He glanced at Gunderson and laughed again, too loudly and without an ounce of genuine humor.

  Gunderson didn’t laugh. His flush only deepened. The muddy pores in his ruddy face seemed to be opening wider, oozing sweat.

  Prophet had been following a vague suspicion. Judging by both men’s fishy demeanors, he was on the right trail.

  He glanced at Phoebe. “You know what I think? I think your husband’s killer has been under your nose this whole time, Mrs. Dahlstrom.”

  The possibility must have just occurred to Phoebe, as well. She stared suspiciously at Handy, the skin over the bridge of her nose deeply wrinkled. She didn’t say a word. She just stared.

  “Oh, go on!” Handy said, trying to laugh again. “Get out of here with your fool talk! You must’ve had too much of that Mexican’s busthead over to the Five Card Stud!”

  He glanced at his employer and frowned. “You don’t believe a word of that, do you, Phoebe . . . uh . . . Mrs. Dahlstrom . . . ?”

  Prophet kept his voice low, taut, as his own anger began to build. “You shot Dahlstrom out of jealousy. You thought that by killing him, you were making Phoebe your own. You blamed Charlie Butters for the killing, because he was an easy blame. Everyone knows what a killer he is, and that he should have been in prison. But he wasn’t in prison. He was in the county.”

  “Bull!” Handy said, taking one step forward and pointing an arm and enraged finger at Prophet. “That’s pure garbage and you know it. You stop poisonin’ Phoebe’s mind with such accusations!”

  Prophet kept his voice calm while his heart was turning somersaults. “Maybe you figured she’d blame the killings on her father, maybe you didn’t. I’m betting you probably did. And in all the confusion, and with Gunderson backing your play, you figured you’d get off scot-free. Butters would hang for the murder. And the man Phoebe hates the most in this world—George Hill—would swing, too.”

  He smiled angrily. “And you were just stupid enough to believe that with Dahlstrom out of your way, Phoebe would be yours—a forty-a-month-and-found cowpuncher.”

  “And then Lou came along,” Phoebe said in a voice that matched Prophet’s for taut calm. “And you saw that I was attracted to him, because I’ve always been attracted to big, rustic men. Free-living men. And you knew you didn’t stack up.”

  Handy merely stared at her in hang-jawed shock.

  “Did you really send Lowry’s men to the Stud hoping they’d kill both of us, Melvin?” she asked in a voice teeming with hushed awe.

  Handy stared at her for several seconds without saying anything.

  Then, slowly, he nodded. “Yeah,” he whispered. “I was hoping they’d kill both him and his whore!”

  With that, he slapped leather.

  Handy didn’t get his pistol even half out of its holster before Prophet’s own Colt came up. It bucked and roared. The bullet took Handy through the neck and threw him back against a stall partition. As it did, Gunderson bellowed a curse and raised his own Russian revolver but not before Prophet’s Colt spoke once more.

  Both men piled up at the base of a stall on the opposite side of the barn alley, groaning, dying hard and fast.

  Up and down the barn, horses whinnied fearfully and stomped the stall partitions.

  Prophet lowered his smoking Peacemaker and glanced to his right. Phoebe held her hands to her head in shock, staring at the fast-dying ranch hands. “What have I done?” she rasped. “Oh, good Lord in heaven . . . what have I done?”

  She turned to Prophet.

  “Jonas . . . the judge . . . all those men . . .” she said, saying the words slowly and with utter disbelief in their meaning, “. . . dead because of me.”

  What could Prophet say?

  He holstered his Colt and walked out to where Mean had bolted when Prophet’s gun had roared and the men had died. He grabbed his reins, mounted up, and galloped east out of town, keeping a close eye on the tracks etched into the sand and gravel beneath him, slowing occasionally when he lost the sign.

  Quickly, his keen man-hunter’s eyes picked it up again.

  When the tracks told him the horses had slowed, which meant the gang might have been preparing to stop, he turned Mean into a notch between two low hills and swung down from the saddle. The tracks had led him first east and then south. He ground-tied Mean, pulled his spyglass out of his saddlebags, slid the Winchester from its sheath, and climbed the hillock rising in the southeast, dropping down well before the crest and doffing his hat.

  He crabbed to within a few feet of the crest.

  Keeping his head low, he stared straight out away from the rise, into a shallow bowl of desert in which lay a few scattered rocks and three mesquites growing up around three boulders half the size of wagons. The first thing he saw of the Lowrys was the nervous switch of a horse’s tail among the mesquite branches.

  He raised the spyglass, adjusted the focus.

  The boulders and the three mesquites clarified in the sphere of magnified vision. Several men in rough trail garb were milling around the mesquites. More horses milled, as well, grazing on mesquite beans, tugging at the branches. One person sat on the ground, her back against one of the boulders. The blond hair and slender figure with all the right curves told Prophet he was looking at his partner.

  He tightened the focus a tad. A red bandanna was wrapped around Louisa’s upper-left thigh. She wasn’t wearing her hat. She’d probably lost it during the dustup in town.

  Now she raised her right knee, rested her arm atop it, leaning forward to inspect the bandage.

  One of the Lowrys stepped away from the others. He had his arm in a sling. Charlie Butters moved better than Prophet had remembered. Butters stood in front of Louisa. He was looking down at her, saying something. Probably taunting her, threatening her.

  Leaning forward, he grabbed his crotch. His head was jerking. He was giving Louisa an earful, probably telling her how much fun he and she were going to have later.

  Louisa slumped casually back against the rock, having none of it.

  Prophet ground
his molars.

  He resisted the urge to pick up the Winchester and plant a bead between Butters’s shoulder blades. It would be a long shot, almost an impossible one, but he could hit him from here. It would have been easier with a Henry or a Sharps. A Big Fifty, for sure. But he’d made a Winchester shot that long before.

  Once or twice . . .

  Blowing a chunk of lead through Butters’s spine would make Prophet feel a whole lot better but it would likely only get his partner killed.

  The others kept glancing along their back trail as though waiting for someone. As though to confirm the speculation, hoof thuds rose from over Prophet’s left shoulder.

  He jerked a startled glance behind him. Phoebe rode her cream gelding into the notch where Mean stood ground-tied and craning his neck to look back at the newcomer, twitching his ears and giving his tail an incredulous thrash.

  “Goddamnit!” Prophet bit out.

  Phoebe swung down from her saddle and jogged up the low rise. Prophet gestured to her anxiously with his arm, and she dropped to her hands and knees, swiping her hat from her head. She crabbed up beside him.

  “They might have seen you, goddamnit!” he wheezed at her.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, looking at him gravely, eyes grief stricken but also determined. “I had to do something. I had to do something . . . helpful.”

  “You’re not helping me.”

  “Goddamnit,” she hissed, hardening her jaws. “Let me try!” Her voice broke. “I couldn’t stay back there . . . with all that carnage I caused!”

  Prophet picked up the spyglass again, stared through it.

  Butters stood leaning against the same boulder Louisa sat against. Charlie appeared to be rolling a quirley from a makings sack. The others were milling about, conversing. Prophet could see their jaws moving.

  Relief touched him. They hadn’t seen Phoebe.

  “What are they doing?” she asked Prophet as he continued to stare through the glass.

  “Waiting.”

  “For what?”

  “Those two rats I exterminated back at the Stud.”

  “What happens when they don’t show?”

  “That’s what I’m waiting to find out.” Prophet lowered the glass and stared into the bowl with his naked eyes, squinting against the sun. “They’re too out in the open for me to try getting Louisa away from them. They’d see me comin’ as soon as I left this hill. They’d have plenty of time to shoot her.”

  When the other two Lowrys didn’t show, they’d probably figure Prophet would show up sooner or later.

  What would they do then? Where would they go?

  “Lou?” Phoebe’s voice was small beside him.

  She was staring at the ground in front of her.

  “What is it?”

  “I need someone to apologize to and . . . you’re all I have.”

  “I’ll tell you you’re forgiven when I have my partner back.”

  “Why don’t you call her what she is? Your lover.”

  “Whatever,” he said, annoyed.

  Prophet turned to her. He no longer considered the question nearly as impertinent as he had before. “Did Hill really rape you? Did you have his baby?”

  All the color drained out of her face. She stared at the ground again.

  “He did rape me. But I didn’t have his baby. I told people it was his, because he’d raped me in the past. And no one has felt so much anger toward any man as that which I have felt toward George Hill.” Shaking her head slowly, Phoebe looked demurely up at Prophet. “It was Erik’s baby boy. When it was born dead, I wanted it to be my father’s . . . to help take away the pain of losing it . . . of losing Erik.”

  “Did Dahlstrom believe it was your father’s?”

  “Yes. He would have believed anything I told him.”

  “I got a feeling there’s a lot of men around here who would believe anything you told them. You got a way about you that goes deeper than your pretty face and well-filled blouse. I got a feeling there’s a lot of men in these parts in love with you. Including Jonas Ford.”

  Phoebe drew a deep breath. When she released it, it rattled in her throat. A sob bubbled out, as well, though her blanched face was averted, expressionless. “Poor Jonas.”

  “Yeah,” Prophet said, returning his attention to where the killers milled among the mesquites. “Poor Jonas . . . and six other men back in Carson’s Wash.”

  “Are you going to kill Butters?”

  “Of course I am.”

  “Even though I’m responsible for all the bloodshed?”

  “Ah, Phoebe,” Prophet said, grimacing. “You’re not responsible for all this bloodshed. Melvin Handy got the ball rollin’. Your father or whatever you want to call George Hill got it rollin’ before that. He’s as much to blame as anyone. Butters was, is, and always will be a killer, and so’s his Lowry kinfolk. Charlie’s the one I’m sure sent the first Lowry after me with that Henry rifle. Innocent folks got caught in the whipsaw. It’s the way of life. The way of people. Been happening since we beat each other with clubs and lived in caves. We can cry over it all we want and berate ourselves for our own parts in it, but all we can really do is vow to live better in the future. We probably won’t but we can say we will, and that’s something, anyway.”

  A distance-muffled but all-too-familiar voice came to Prophet’s ears on the sandpaper breeze: “Proph-et?”

  Chapter 18

  “Shit!”

  Prophet dropped his head. He shoved Phoebe’s down as well.

  “Prophet, you out there?” Butters shouted. His voice, thin with distance, was pitched with mockery. “Oh, come on—I know ya are! You gotta be! My cousins didn’t show. So you had to!”

  He dragged the “had to” out like the last words of a long refrain. The way his voice changed pitch ever so slightly, at times growing reedier and thinner, told Prophet that he was turning his head, looking around as he yelled. Which meant they hadn’t spotted Prophet and Phoebe up here.

  Butters was guessing.

  Of course, he was guessing right. But guessing just the same.

  Butters’s voice rose louder, angrier. “You show yourself, Prophet, or we’ll cut her throat right now!”

  To Prophet’s left, Phoebe gasped.

  “It’s all right,” he said. “They don’t know we’re here. They won’t kill her. Not yet. They’ll use her to draw me in so they can kill me. Then they’ll kill her,” he added, mostly to himself, trying to figure out what to do.

  Phoebe turned her head to look up at him, keeping her left cheek pressed against the ground. “What are you going to do?”

  He jerked his head slightly and began snaking his body back down the slope. Phoebe did the same. Ten yards from the crest, Prophet rose to his knees and donned his hat.

  He said, “They’ll pull out soon. When they do, I’m gonna follow ’em. I’ll wait till dark to make my move. Me an’ Louisa have been through this before. She knows I’m here. She senses it. And she can take care of herself . . . until I get there.”

  Despite the certainty of the bounty hunter’s words, he was far from certain. His heart thudded heavily, by turns racing and slowing. The anxiety must have been written on his face. Phoebe pulled up close to him, sandwiched his face in her hands, and pressed her lips to his.

  “I want to go with you,” she said. “Maybe there’s nothing I can do to help. But I’d like to be there, just the same. If only to tend your wounds, if it comes to that.” She paused, then urged quietly, almost desperately, “Please, Lou . . . ?”

  Prophet looked at her, thought it through. It couldn’t hurt to have her there. Like she’d said, he . . . or Louisa . . . might need someone to tend their wounds.

  Prophet nodded once. “All right. You stay here with the horses, try to keep ’em quiet. I’m gonna go back up and keep an eye on them killers. I want to know when they pull out, and I want to know which direction they head.”

  “I will,” Phoebe said, nodding. “I’ll keep
the horses quiet.”

  Prophet doffed his hat again and snaked back up to within a few feet of the crest of the rise. Again, he raised the spyglass. The gang was milling around the mesquites, conversing. Prophet could tell by their quick, fidgety movements that they were nervous. They were angry about the two men, cousins to Butters, brothers and sons to the Lowrys, they’d left in town.

  Prophet identified the Lowry patriarch by his stooped shoulders, heavy gut, and gray sideburns dropping down from the frayed brim of his canvas hat. He wore a red calico shirt with the tails out, a brace of pistols belted around his impressive girth. At the moment, he stood staring into the distance over Prophet’s left shoulder, along the gang’s back trail toward town.

  His feet were spread wide, fists on his hips. Long, gray hair danced across his shoulders.

  He was grieved, angry.

  He stood like that for nearly five more minutes while the others kowtowed around behind him, glancing at him skeptically.

  Finally, Emmett Lowry turned and walked back toward the others. As though with a quick second thought, he switched course over to Louisa, leaned down, and cracked the back of his right hand against her right cheek. The blow jerked the Vengeance Queen’s head sharply to her left, hair flying.

  Prophet jerked as though with the force of the blow. He must have imagined it, but he thought he could hear the smack of the man’s hand against his partner’s face.

  He ground his teeth, felt the blood boil in his cheeks. “You’re gonna pay dearly for that one, Lowry,” he raked out. “In spades!”

  Louisa righted herself, leaned back against the boulder, holding her hand to her bruised cheek. Suddenly, her left leg shot upward. Prophet couldn’t tell for sure, but he suspected she’d buried her right, pointed-toed boot into the old man’s crotch. Emmett Lowry hadn’t seen it coming. The fool.

  “Ooh!” Prophet grunted, grinning, as Lowry crouched forward over his smashed oysters, taking mincing steps backward. “Now, you see,” Prophet said to himself, “you don’t mess with the Vengeance Queen. When she’s wounded, she’s even more dangerous than when she’s healthy. I coulda told you that.”