When they had both horses saddled, they rode about two hundred yards back along the trail they’d taken out from Corazon, then swung right of the trail and into the scrub. The shelf Prophet had spied was a dark hump in the starlit night.
The slow plodding thuds of the horses, the jangle of bridle chains, and the creak of leather sounded crisp and clear in the heavy silence. Occasionally, a breeze would slide over the ground and rustle the brush through which Prophet and Rose wove their horses, but mostly the air was as still as that in a well.
Prophet was glad when he heard the soft, tinny rattle of water as he approached the ridge, which was a shelving volcanic dike with black lava-flow boulders strew about its base. The wall of the dike was composed of layered sandstone and porous, chocolate-colored lava, and there were several deep eroded notches into which Prophet and Rose could seek cover if a storm came up, which, judging by the clear sky, didn’t look likely. But the White Mountains rolled up in the west, and near mountains you could never tell what the weather was going to do.
They stripped the tack from their horses and hobbled both mounts near the runout spring that meandered along the side of the shelf before dropping into a ravine and sending up faint splashing sounds. There was plenty of bunchgrass graze, and the water was cold and sweet, probably bubbling up from deep inside a volcanic vent.
Prophet built a fire and brewed coffee in a tin sauce pan. Rose, who’d laid out her bedroll on the other side of the fire, with the shelf behind her, declined a cup of the hot brew. She also declined the salt pork that Prophet roasted on two sticks over the fire, and his stale baking powder biscuits.
“No offense,” Rose said, reclining on her bedroll and resting her head on the wooly underside of her saddle. “Just not very hungry tonight. I reckon water’ll do me.”
“It’s been a long day,” Prophet said. “You gotta eat somethin’. The biscuits been in my possible bag awhile, I admit, but I bought the salt pork fresh in Corazon.”
“Like I said ...” Rose kicked one of her boots off. “No offense.”
Prophet shrugged. He bit into a hunk of salt pork and chewed hungrily, sitting Indian style beside the fire, one of the roasting sticks resting against his thigh where two biscuits were perched.
“Lou?” Rose stopped. “Is it all right if I call you Lou?”
“I take to ‘mister’ about as well as a dog takes to a snoot full of porcupine quills. What’s on your mind?”
She rolled onto her side to face him, and rested her cheek on the heel of her hand. “What’s that Louisa said about you and the Devil?”
“Oh, that.” Prophet chewed, then swallowed a mouthful. “I done sold my soul to Ole Scratch, as we Southern folk call that green-fanged, fork-tailed demon, just after the war.” He ripped off another chunk of salt pork and spoke as he chewed. “You see, I never expected to make it. Vicksburg, Antietam, Chickamauga—I seen it all, and lost every one of my kin who went along with me when we threw in with Jeff Davis to help turn back Lincoln’s forces of Northern aggression. Ugly things happened. And I mean ugly. Don’t wanna go into it.”
Prophet swallowed another mouthful and, holding the half-eaten chunk of pork down beneath his chin, he stared into the small ring of rocks containing the leaping flames. “Suffice it to say that when Lee finally surrendered to Grant, and none too soon as far as I was concerned, and I headed home to find out I no longer had a home to go home to—the farm burned, Ma and Pap livin’ with relatives and nearly starvin’ to death—I headed west. And along the way I indeed sold my soul, what I had of one to begin with, to Ole Scratch.”
“For what?”
“All the good times one man can possibly have on this side of the sod ... in return for my coal-shoveling abilities down below when it comes time for me to make that long walk through those glowin’, smokin’ gates.”
Rose sat up, looking shocked. “You’re gonna shovel coal for the Devil?”
Prophet tore another chunk of meat off the bone. “I had lots of practice back home of a Blue Mountain winter. We burned lots of coal! He can’t wait to get me.”
Rose stared across the fire at the big bounty hunter hungrily eating the side of pork and wiping his greasy hands on his trousers. “How’s he holdin’ up his end of the bargain?”
Prophet shrugged. “Fair to middlin’. He’s been puttin’ plenty of badmen in my path, but I just wish he’d put a little higher bounty on their heads. On my downtime I do like to have fun, but fun don’t come cheap. And the more you have, the more you want.”
Rose lay back down on her soogan and crossed her arms behind her head, staring up at the stars. Firelight flickered across her heart-shaped face. She was silent for a time, but then she said softly, pensively, “Is Louisa part of what you got from Ole Scratch?”
Prophet had just tossed his pork bone into the brush. Now he turned to Rose and gained a thoughtful, wistful expression of his own. “Didn’t she tell you? Why, Louisa’s the Devil’s mistress her ownself.” Prophet sagged back on one elbow and dunked the biscuit in his coffee. “Yes, ma’am—I ride with the Devil’s mistress. Some might call her the Vengeance Queen. I reckon Scratch sent her to keep me honest and bedevil me more than a little.”
He chuckled at the thought of that, then bit off the soggy end of the biscuit. “And she does do that. She purely does!”
When he’d eaten his biscuit, he put away the leftover food for the next day’s breakfast, then walked into the brush to evacuate his bladder and check on the horses. He came back to the fire, threw a couple of small branches on the waning flames, then kicked out of his boots and curled up in his soogan. Rose lay as she’d been lying before, head resting in the cradle of her crossed hands. The fire was shunting too many shadows for Prophet to tell for sure, but he though her eyes were open, staring at the stars.
“Good night, Miss Rose.”
He flipped his saddle over with a sigh, lay back against it, and tipped his hat over his eyes.
“Lou?”
He tipped his hat up. Rose was sitting up, looking at him expectantly, almost worriedly.
“Mind if I lay over there with you?”
Prophet blinked. Then he chuckled. “I don’t ’spect I’d ever say no to a purty gal who wanted to share my side of any fire.”
Rose got up, brought her blankets over to his side of the fire, and dropped them down beside him. She retrieved her saddle and saddlebags and arranged those too beside Prophet. He tugged his hat brim back down over his eyes but he could hear her removing her cartridge belt, then kicking out of her boots. There was more rustling, as though she were removing more clothes than was sensible on what was sure to be a chilly night, but Prophet kept his eyes closed, giving the girl a little privacy.
“Lou?”
Prophet opened his eyes. She was crouched over him, her face only inches from his. Her shoulders were bare. Not only her shoulders.
As he ran his eyes farther down her torso, he saw that she’d removed her blouse. Her breasts sloped toward him, partly concealed by the shadows between them, her nipples gently caressing his buckskin tunic as she breathed.
He could smell her—salty and horsey with a distinct feminine scent all her own. Strands of her hair curled down the sides of her round breasts. She ran her tongue lightly across her upper lip, staring at him as though trying to read him from a great distance.
Suddenly, she pressed her lips to his, kissing him hungrily.
Prophet was so taken aback that he vaguely wondered if he hadn’t drifted off to sleep and was dreaming. She placed her hands on his face and mashed her lips even harder against his, groaning softly. Her fingernails made a light rasping sound as they gently raked his beard stubble. He placed his hands on her shoulders, and when he finally managed to steel himself against his own automatic desires, he pushed her back away from him and stared up at her, tongue-tied.
She stared down at him, wet lips slightly parted. She was breathing harder than before. Her eyes quickly acquired a troubled cast.
>
“Cripes!”
She straightened her back and slowly crossed her arms over her breasts. Even in the deep shadows, with the fire behind her, he saw the blood rise in her cheeks. “I reckon I have even more to learn about myself than I thought, don’t I?”
She gave her back to him, her fragile spine curving down into the waistband of her denims, and drew her blouse back on. Prophet felt a constriction in his throat and chest, and his heart was shuddering.
“It’s all right,” he said at last, trying to quell her embarrassment as well as his own. “You’re just feelin’ lonely’s all.”
She buttoned her blouse and sat staring into the fire, saying nothing.
Prophet turned onto his other side away from her, crossed his arms on his chest, and closed his eyes. A while later, he heard her lie down beside him, only two or three feet away.
It was a long damn time before sleep overtook him.
16
PROPHET WOKE DURING the night to the coyotes yipping and mewling in the direction of the ranch, where they’d likely discovered the bodies of the four claim jumpers. He chuckled, pulling his hat brim low once more and smacking his lips wearily. “Cleanup time.”
He closed his eyes but then lifted his head once more and turned to his right. Rose lay curled beside him, her forehead brushing his shoulder, her mouth open as she slept. Her blanket had come down a ways, and Prophet reached over now to pull it back up to her chin. Her lips moved, as though she were trying to speak, but then they stopped moving and she gave a ragged sigh, snuggling down deep against the wooly underside of her saddle.
He was up at the first flush of dawn, loudly cracking branches over his knees. Rose was dead asleep, almost entirely covered by her blankets, only her stocking feet protruding from the bottom. It took the third mesquite branch loudly snapped under Prophet’s boot heel to get her up groaning, smacking her lips, and wiping her hair away from her face before she pulled her boots on, wrapped her gun and shell belt around her waist, and stumbled off into the brush to tend nature.
Over breakfast, which she only picked at, neither said a word about what had happened between them the night before. They broke camp as soon as they’d each scrubbed their plates and coffee cups at the runout spring and were on the trail a few minutes later.
“Look there,” Rose said as they topped a rise two hours later to see Corazon spreading out in the brushy, adobe-colored bowl beneath them.
“Look where?”
Rose pointed to a low, rocky rise north of the town. There were three spindly cottonwoods near the crest of the hill, lined up as though they’d been planted there though they were too old to have been anything but wind- or bird-dropped. Spread out across the hill below the trees were a couple dozen crude wooden crosses with a few cement or rough board slabs thrown in to give the place some semblance of civility. There was even what appeared an iron-pipe rail enclosing a couple of the larger cement slabs, with a splash of color inside bespeaking flowers.
Near the trees, ten or so mourners stood near a freshly mounded grave. Most were dressed in black, but a couple of the women were dressed more colorfully, even gaudily, with what appeared to be feathers in their hair. Whores, most likely.
“Must be the boneyard up yonder.”
Prophet felt a twinge of unease. Corazon was home to nearly five hundred inhabitants, some sick, some old, and one of them could have given up the ghost in ways most natural. Still, a little worm of concern was twitching its tail in his belly.
“Let’s go,” he said and booted Mean and Ugly on down the hill and along the powdery, two-track trail and into the town.
He darkly noted that the street appeared unusually quiet for midday and that there were none of the usual displays—barrels of ax handles and tables heaped with bolt goods and such—arranged on the boardwalks fronting their respective businesses. Even the Mecca Saloon on the town’s north edge was quiet, with only one rangy black gelding with a beat-up saddle tied to its hitchrack, a yellow cur sniffing the weeds in the gap between the saloon and a crumbling adobe shack beside it.
The jailhouse swung up on Prophet and Rose’s left. What he immediately noted about the tumbledown place, burning in the high-desert sun, was the funeral wreath of black voile and artificial red and blue flowers nailed to the drab front door. The worm of dread in his belly turned over, and then calmed a little when he saw the slender figure in the chair beside the door, nearly concealed in the midday shadows under the porch’s brush roof.
Louisa’s blond hair falling down from her felt stock-men’s hat was unmistakable. She sat in a hide-bottom chair, leaning back with one foot propped on the rail in front of her, the hem of her camisole showing beneath her skirt. She’d polished her men’s brown boots, even shined her spurs. She held an open, dark brown bottle of sarsaparilla in her hand, propped on her thigh.
“Any luck?” she said.
Mean blew and tromped over to the stock tank on the other side of the hitchrack. Prophet glanced at Rose, who shook her head.
He looked through the gap between the jailhouse and the harness shop to its right, toward the cemetery where the mourners were now spreading out along the slope and heading back to town, flanked by a priest in flowing black robes and a black cap. They were singing “Bringing in the Sheaves” as they walked, a large woman in a black mourning outfit keeping her head down as she clutched a crucifix in both her hands. A tall, hatless, gray-haired man was pushing the bulky, chair-bound figure of Max Utter down the hill, getting caught up frequently on rocks and grave markers.
The tall man was singing with the others, his jaws moving, but Utter just looked silent and grim.
“Rubriz,” Louisa explained. “Last night. Triple 6 men.” Just then, Blanco’s muffled voice rose from inside the jailhouse, joining along with the hymn though lagging several notes behind the singers on the hill. His voice owned a mocking, jeering pitch. Louisa ignored it.
“They shot him,” Louisa said. “Then they hanged him.”
“They get away?”
Louisa regarded him without expression. “What do you think?”
She lifted her chin slightly, and Prophet turned to regard Lester Hedges’s undertaking and knife-sharpening establishment, housed in a two-story shed, on the other side of the street.
The shed had two large, barnlike front doors. One of the doors was closed, and three open coffins were propped against it. Prophet could see that a dead man lay in each coffin, each one with his hands clasped over his chest.
Prophet jerked Mean’s head up from the water trough and rode over. The dead men had been dressed nicely for burial, though the clothes were obviously hand-me-downs that the undertaker had taken off previous clients. Their hair and mustaches were neatly combed.
Flies buzzed around the ragged bullet hole in one cadaver’s waxy blue forehead.
Prophet rode back up to the jailhouse, before which Rose sat staring toward the dead men fronting the undertaker’s. Louisa sat as before, sipping her sarsaparilla. Blanco had ratcheted his rendition of the funeral hymn up a couple of octaves, though the dispersing mourners had broken the song off completely. Prophet could tell by the pitch of the man’s voice that he was lying down, probably lounging on his cot with his feet kicked up on the wall.
Feeling very satisfied with himself.
“Only three rode in for that yellow dog?” Prophet asked Louisa.
“They asked Utter very politely to let him go, and when Utter declined, they rode Rubriz down and hanged him over yonder. Utter went over to help Rubriz. This was all after dark, but I’d been keeping my eye on the street from my hotel window and got over here before the three about-to-be-dead men rode back to spring Blanco from what they figured would be an unguarded lockbox.”
Prophet jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Was that Dwight Beaudry?”
“It was.”
“Shit, haven’t seen him for years. A gun thrower from Alabama. Fought with him during the Little Misunderstandin’. One of the few I
knew who didn’t want the war to be over. Never wanted any war to be over.” Prophet had turned to look back at the mustached dead man on whom no wounds were visible. “Heard he went up to Wyoming with the Texas herds and started a couple of range wars just for kicks and giggles.”
“Well, he’s dead now.” It was the first sentence that Rose had uttered since they’d ridden into town.
Prophet looked at her. The girl didn’t look well. But who would look well, not knowing who they were? Not remembering a thing beyond two days ago.
“Why don’t you go on over to the hotel there, get yourself a room and a hot meal.”
“I don’t have any money,” she said boldly, shaking her hair from her eyes.
Prophet reached into his pants pocket, but Rose threw up a hand. “No. I don’t take handouts. At least, I don’t think I do. I’ll work for my keep. Saw a sign in their window yesterday.” With that, Rose turned her horse around and heeled it hard for the French Hotel two doors down from the jailhouse, back the way she and Prophet had come.
Prophet watched her go, then turned to Louisa, who eyed him curiously.
“Just graves out at the Tawlin place. Apache attack.”
“No marker for Rose?”
“None.”
Louisa sighed, knowing they were little closer to discovering the girl’s true identity than they were before Prophet and Rose had ridden out to the Tawlins’. Prophet swung down from the saddle and unbuckled Mean’s belly strap. As he slipped the bit from the horse’s mount but kept him away from the water tank till he cooled, a wooden rattling rose from the gap between the jailhouse and the building beside it.
Shortly, Max Utter appeared at the mouth of the gap, a tall, gray-haired gent pushing his chair. The tall man stopped and looked sharply at Prophet, narrowing a wary eye.
“It’s all right, Henry. Bounty hunter.” Utter spat the words out distastefully. He shifted his gaze between Prophet and Louisa, who still sat in the chair atop the porch. “I suppose she told you all about it. Got your chest all puffed out?”
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