The Devil's Winchester

by Peter Brandvold

  As Utter’s map indicated, there were a couple of runout springs. Prophet stopped at these to let the horses draw water and to take a short blow before he jerked their heads up from the needlegrass lining the springs and continued on.

  He followed the canyon for mile after mile, and when he finally came out of it, riding up onto a cedar-stippled plateau, the wind was picking up, hazing the air with grit and tumbleweeds. There was the smell of cow shit and rain. The wind was generally mild, but there was an occasional chill edge to it.

  Prophet pulled his hat brim down as he switched horses again and continued riding hard as the wind blasted him with a growing punch.

  It was hard to judge the time, as the sun was obscured by blowing sand and weeds, but he figured it was a little before noon when he followed the track back onto the main trail a little outside of Socorro. The outlying shacks slid back away from him on both sides of the stage road. Few people were about, the wind keeping them inside. A couple of businesses were shuttered. The wind whipped the smell of goat dung, overfilled privies, and rotting trash toward him.

  Holding his head down and squinting his eyes against the wind-driven sand that lashed his face like steel buck-shot, Prophet followed the road past the Wells Fargo office and the Stockman’s Bank and Trust. Suddenly, he jerked his spare mount to a halt.

  Before him, in the middle of the wide street, was a gallows built of lumber that had turned bronze and silver with age. Three bodies twisted and turned as they hung from ropes beneath the platform, three hard-looking men—two in rough range garb, another in black slacks, dusty boots, and a shabby suitcoat.

  Their necks were cocked at weird angles. One man’s mouth was open; his tongue was sticking out like a snake poking its head from its hole to test the weather. The ropes creaked; the boots of the men—one of the punchers had kicked his left boot off as he’d died—nudged the gallows’ undergirders with soft wooden thuds. Around them, Prophet noticed, the wind was gradually covering the fresh tracks of many onlookers.

  Obviously, there’d been quite a turnout for the hangings.

  Prophet’s chest ached. “Ah, shit,” he heard himself mutter against the wind. “Ah, hell—don’t tell me!”

  “Don’t tell ya what?”

  Prophet looked to his right. A beefy, goat-bearded gent in a sugarloaf sombrero stood outside the town marshal’s office, holding his hat on his head with one hand. His leather vest was flapping around his big belly in the wind.

  Prophet booted the gray over to the jailhouse, the shingle of which was swinging on its chain under the peaked porch roof. “The judge make it here already?”

  “Sure did.” The man looked at the hanged men and grinned.

  “I hope he’s still here.”

  “Why, no, no. He came in yesterday. We had the trial for them three rustlers in the saloon last night and hanged ’em this mornin’. The judge and the soldiers was pullin’ out just as them fellas’ necks was snappin’.” The marshal chuckled and rolled a tobacco quid from one side of his mouth to the other. “I’m gonna leave ’em hangin’ there a few days, for an example. Rustlin’ be down for a few weeks, anyway—you can bet the seed bull on that!” He laughed.

  Prophet had barely heard that last. He felt gut sick, stricken. Utter had said the judge pulled into Corazon on Wednesdays without fail. This was Monday. Taking the main stage trail, he was liable to pull in late today or early tomorrow.

  The marshal seemed to be reading Prophet’s mind as he continued to hold his big hat on his head. “He come early on account of him needin’ to get back to Las Cruces by the end of the week for some hoedown with the territorial governor. Say, what’s wrong, sonny? You look a mite off your feed.”

  Prophet looked around at his tired horses, feeling frustrated and helpless. He was tired himself, after that long ride. “He take the main trail?”

  “I doubt that army ambulance he rides in could handle anything but the main trail.”

  “How many men with him?”

  “Six. Same as usual. Six bluebellies from Fort Stockton. Lieutenant Ezekial Lewis is leadin’ ’em up. There’s Clelleant Hamburger and four others.”

  “How good are they?”

  The marshal narrowed one eye. “Say, this doesn’t have anything to do with Sam ‘Man-Killin” Metalious—does it?”

  Ah, shit. “Why do you ask?”

  “’Cause a couple of his men pulled in a couple days ago, been hangin’ around. One rode out last night ... just after the judge’s detail rode in.”

  Prophet pondered this quickly, feeling his brows becoming a miniature mountain range. Metalious had apparently posted men here to watch for the judge, in case his other tactics for springing his son failed.

  Which they had.

  “How far is Metalious’s ranch from here?”

  “Straight north, on the other side of the San Mateos.”

  “Shit!” Prophet looked northward as if judging the distance between Metalious’s owlhoot camp and the stage road. Too damn close, he concluded. He could have men on the trail right now, waiting for the judge’s detail.

  “Point me to a good livery stable. I’m gonna need another horse!”

  The marshal did, his own gray brows bunching curiously.

  Prophet headed for the San Mateo Livery and Feed, where he exchanged the gray for a willowy sorrel. Mean had enough bottom to continue traveling, since he hadn’t been ridden for a good hour or so. But Prophet needed at least one fresh mount for relieving the lineback dun farther up the trail.

  He wasted no time switching saddles while the liveryman worried aloud about how Prophet was going to get the gray back to Corazon, as the man didn’t want to get hanged for a rustler. When Prophet had assured the man that he’d get the horse returned to its rightful owner in due time, and had paid for a day’s rent of the sorrel, he climbed onto Mean’s back and headed out along the stage road, riding hard.

  The wind had picked up, making it so impossible for Prophet to keep his hat on his head that he finally gave up and stuffed it into one of his saddlebag pouches. He continued past the place where he’d entered the stage road less than an hour ago and urged as much speed as he could from Mean and Ugly.

  The horse didn’t like the weather any better than Prophet did; the big, ugly dun kept shaking his head and blowing against the dust pelting his eyes.

  The trail traced a slow arc from southeast to due north, swinging wide of a spur outcropping of the southernmost San Mateos. It crossed an old lakebed, with black mounds of lava rock jutting up like dinosaur spines from the chalky white alkali dust, though it seemed that most of the dust was in the air, making it so hard for Prophet to see that he squeezed his eyes closed for long intervals and let Mean and Ugly find his own way.

  Once they were past the lakebed with its alkali floor, the dust storm seemed to lighten considerably, and Mean gave a relieved whinny and lunged into a faster gallop.

  Prophet wasn’t an hour beyond the lakebed before he spied the first dead soldier.

  22

  JUDGING BY THE sergeant’s stripes on the soldier’s wool-clad forearms, the man lying along the edge of the stage road was Sergeant Hamburger. The big man with a thick, bushy, ginger-colored beard lay on his back, stout legs crossed at the ankles. His hat was gone, and his thin, white-blond hair was blowing in the wind around his freckled pate.

  A bloody hole shone in his right temple.

  The man’s Colt Army .44 was still in its holster, which likely meant he’d been taken by surprise. Beyond him to the right of the trail, two army bay horses stood facing downwind, their tails blowing up under their bellies. One’s McClellan saddle hung down the animal’s side.

  Prophet looked around wildly, dread in his eyes. He continued ahead along the trail until he found another dead soldier, a private, amongst deep hoof scuffs that the wind had not yet covered. Just beyond the dead private deep wheel ruts showed where a wagon had recently turned suddenly off the trail’s left side and churned up sage as it plowe
d west over rocks and cedars.

  Prophet followed the tracks, finding three more dead soldiers lying twisted and bloody along the ground. One had smashed his head to a red-and-white pulp when he’d apparently been thrown from his horse and onto a rock. He’d been shot once in the chest; another ragged, bloody hole shone in his outthrust right hand.

  He’d at least gotten his revolver out, though it was nowhere in sight. His black holster was empty, the flap hanging loose.

  Prophet dismounted and let Mean and the sorrel turn downwind as the bounty hunter automatically reached around to grab his sawed-off ten-gauge as he continued following the wheel ruts on foot. The ruts descended a slight grade, turned around a sandstone outcropping, and then continued down the grade once more, where the incline became steeper.

  Prophet stopped in his own tracks and stared downhill. The army ambulance lay broken and twisted at the bottom of a sandy wash, two dead horses still in the traces.

  Gritting his teeth against the flying dust and weeds, Prophet ran down the grade, leaped the four-foot cutbank to land flat-footed on the wash’s floor, then crouched to look inside the ambulance that had been crushed like a cardboard matchbox under a heavy foot. No sign of the judge. Just beyond the wagon, though, a blue-clad body—probably that of the driver—lay between the two dead horses.

  Prophet spied a blood trail leading away from the ambulance and followed it to where an elderly man in a conservative though now torn and bloody black suit lay on the other side of a scrub and boulder snag. The man lay belly down in the sand. He’d been shot through the backs of both knees, through the middle of his back, and then through the back of his bald head.

  The tails of his clawhammer coat blew in the wind.

  He’d survived the wreck. As he’d tried to crawl away from it, he’d been shot so he’d die slowly, for the amusement of his wolflike killers. Beyond him lay an open black valise, and beyond the valise, downwind, papers rolled, danced, and fluttered about the sage.

  Prophet stared at the papers. He looked down at the judge. Dread was a railroad spike being driven slowly through his stomach to his spine.

  Metalious had struck. And he’d had fun doing it. Likely, when he and his gang of kill-crazy cutthroats arrived in Corazon, they’d have an even grander time.

  And in their conditions, there was little that Marshal Utter or even the Vengeance Queen could do to stop them.

  “Windy night,” said the barman of the Mecca Saloon, looking over the polished surface of his mahogany bar at Utter looking up at him from his chair. Utter had a thick, white bandage attached to the back of his head where the Tawlin girl had laid the butt of her old cap-and-ball revolver across it.

  The marshal’s eyes were sharp from agitation. This whole thing with Blanco had him so far off his feed he didn’t think he’d ever be hungry again.

  “So it is. Give me a bottle, C. J.”

  “Tennessee stuff?”

  “Why the hell not?”

  Utter looked around. The saloon’s broad, long hall was empty, all the tables sponged, chairs pushed neatly beneath them. Brass spittoons glistened here and there beneath the softly chuffing and sighing oil lamps.

  “The wind keepin’ everyone away?” the marshal asked as the barman rummaged around amongst the shelves beneath the bar.

  When he straightened with a grunt and set a corked, amber bottle with the familiar label of etched southern hills on its belly, he smoothed a lock of chestnut hair back from his forehead with a beringed hand.

  “Nothin’ like the wind for killin’ business. Cowpunchers hate wind. I reckon it’s because they’re in it all day. Even the town fellas stay to home when the wind blows. It depresses my girls.”

  He cocked his head toward the stairs runnin’ up the right side of the room’s rear wall. “Both of ’em are piled up in bed with either a headache or stomach cramps.”

  “Don’t bother me.” Utter flipped the man two silver dollars, which the bartender grabbed as though he were catching flies. “When I was runnin’ down in Mexico with two good legs about a hundred and one years ago, an old Mexican told me that we hate wind so bad because it reminds us of time’s passing and our eventual deaths.”

  Utter leaned forward in his chair to grab the bottle that the barman held over the edge of the bar to him.

  “Used to nettle me. Don’t no more.” Utter stuffed the bottle down between his skinny thighs and began to turn the chair toward the doors. “Let her blow.”

  He wheeled himself around the tables to the front doors, both of which were closed against the wind, which he could hear moaning out there.

  “You want help, Max?” the barman asked behind him.

  Utter shoved one of the doors open, which the wind grabbed and slammed back against the wall. “No. Best stay inside, C. J.”

  “You still got Blanco locked up over there?”

  “Of course I damn do!”

  The barman leaned over the counter, giving the marshal a thoughtful look as he awkwardly maneuvered himself out the open door and into the blasting wind.

  “Why don’t you just let him go? Hell, he’s headed for a bad end. It’ll come to him soon enough. Let him go, and go on home to bed, Max!”

  Utter stopped, his chair slanted in the doorway, one front wheel caught on the threshold. The marshal’s eyes were big as ’dobe dollars, and his nostrils were pinched. “If I did that, you fool, it’d be like hangin’ a big wooden placard around my neck announcin’ Corazon is a haven to the wicked and lawless of every stripe. Come one, come all! Rob our bank, and rape our women! And, oh, by the way—free girls and drinks over to the Mecca Saloon, courtesy of C. J. Boone!”

  Utter jerked his chair loose and turned his back to the room. “Damn fool!”

  He slammed the door shut behind him.

  He sat there for a time, looking slowly up and down the street that was already dark though it was not yet six o’clock. Clouds had blown in earlier, spitting rain. The rain had stopped for now, but the wind was still whipping around and howling like the Devil’s hounds. There was a wan, pink-and-lemon glow low in the east, and the few puddles along Brush reflected the light eerily.

  No one was out. All that moved was dust and horse shit and the occasional bits of wind-whipped trash and tumbleweeds.

  Cursing under his breath—he’d lied about the wind; it still graveled him—Utter wheeled himself to the edge of the saloon’s porch, leaned back to lift his front wheels, and eased himself ahead until his big back wheels dropped with a thud down the porch’s first step.

  Thud! Thud! Thud!

  And then he was in the street and grunting with the labor of wheeling himself at an angle across the rutted trace toward the jailhouse on the other side.

  His windows glowed with nearly the same color as the feeble sunset. Halfway between the saloon and the jail, Utter stopped, looking south along Brush Street.

  A figure, silhouetted against the east light, had moved out from an alley mouth, stopped, then moved back into the alley. Utter stared at the gap between Hackson’s Drugstore and Pedro’s Barbershop. After a time, he looked around him cautiously. Deciding that his jangled nerves were causing him to see gunmen where there was probably only trash blowing around, he closed his hands around his india-rubber-shod wheels and continued pushing himself toward the jailhouse.

  He couldn’t help wishing, in the back of his mind, that Prophet were here. But someone needed to ride down to Socorro and warn the judge about a possible ambush, which, he’d finally agreed with the bounty hunter, was fully in the realm of Sam “Man-Killin’” Metalious’s capabilities. (Supposedly, there’d soon be a telegraph line connecting Corazon to the outside world, but the stringing of the line kept getting delayed.) If the judge didn’t make it to Corazon, this whole thing was pointless. Nothing and no one shy of half an army could get Blanco to the court up in Albuquerque.

  Utter wouldn’t let the killer free, though. He’d kill him before he’d do that.

  Likely, Prophet woul
d get through to Socorro. Just as likely, Metalious’s bunch of man-killers was holed up along the stage road somewhere, waiting for the judge’s contingent. If Prophet accomplished his mission, Lieutenant Lewis and Sergeant Hamburger would be ready for the ambush, and they’d turn old Sam and his border toughs out with cavalry-grade shovels.

  They’d be snuggling with diamondbacks by noon the day after tomorrow, and the judge would be along a few hours later. Potentially, by the end of Wednesday, Blanco could be hanging from one of the jury limbs down along the creek. No need for a gallows! A few hours after that, coyotes would be standing on their hind legs to chew his feet.

  Utter smiled at that image as he used the rope to hoist himself up the jail office porch steps.

  When he’d hauled himself inside and closed the door on the wind, Doc Blanchard was just stepping out of Blanco’s open cell and setting his top hat on his gray head at a learned-man’s angle. The doctor closed the cell door with a resounding bang.

  “Will he make it till Wednesday, Doc?” Utter wheeled himself over to his desk atop which he set the whiskey bottle.

  “That young firebrand has nine lives, I swear. Between him and Miss Bonaventure, I don’t know who’s luckier. She’s been hit in both legs and seems to be doing fine. Blanco’s lost about half of all his blood, and I’ll be damned if it doesn’t seem he’ll make it. That bullet in his chest sort of caromed around his ribs and exited under his arm, striking little more than sinew. A rib’s broken, but he’ll get over that.”

  “Glad he’s on the mend. I want him at least healthy enough to hang. Healthy enough so he’s wide awake when he sees Ole Scratch sauntering toward him with his forked tail curled in greeting.” Utter laughed as he grabbed the coffeepot off the potbelly stove’s warming rack, and filled a stone mug on his desk.

  The doctor set his black kit on the desk, in front of Utter, and began buttoning his long, black greatcoat. “That’ll be four dollars.”