The Cost of Dying

Book 3: Lou Prophet, Bounty Hunter

by Peter Brandvold

Genres: General Fiction

Synopsis

Of all the legends of the Old West, few are as stained with ink, blood, and bullets as the violent days of bounty hunter Lou Prophet. But what happens when the hunter becomes the hunted? Heaven knows there’ll be hell to pay . . .
 
THE DEVIL RIDES AGAIN
After a hard night with his sometime lover Louisa Bonaventure—“the Vengeance Queen”—Lou Prophet decides to cool his heels at a local honky tonk. Things heat up fast when he defends one of the girls from a sadistic brute who also happens to be the deputy sheriff. And now Prophet is running for his life . . .
 
WITH A BOUNTY ON HIS HEAD
Heading south of the border to Mexico, Prophet isn’t the only man marked for death. The young red-headed pistolero Colter Farrow has made an awful lot of enemies, too—and now practically every bounter hunter south of the Rio Grande is gunning for blood. For money. For fun. And, now, for Lou Prophet . . .
 
“Here’s a writer with  hot, fast violence and the guts to write what he wants.”
—Tom McNulty, Dispatches from the Last Outlaw

Release date: July 30, 2019

Publisher: Pinnacle Books

Print pages: 304

Sample

“Wake up, Lou! Big trouble! Oh, Lou—pleeease wake up! Loo-oooo!”

The voice had entered bounty hunter Lou Prophet’s sleep from a long ways away, but it had quickly grown louder until it was accompanied by the tapping of running feet.

Bare running feet, judging by the slap-slap-slaps.

The voice was a pleasant female voice, lightly Spanish accented. It would have been a whole lot pleasanter if Prophet had heard it later—over breakfast, say, or, even better, over afternoon shots of tarantula juice. He didn’t want to hear any voice when he was dreaming of running buck naked through spring woods near some idyllic mountain stream, trying to catch a pretty Apache princess who, just like himself, was bedecked in only her birthday suit and coaxing him on with her lusty laughter.

Run as the big bounty hunter might, he couldn’t catch up to the girl though he kept catching brief, enticing glimpses of her copper body through the forest’s interwoven branches.

A hand grabbed Prophet’s arm and shook him. Now the formerly pleasant voice was downright unpleasant, originating as it did just off Prophet’s left ear.

“Lou!” The girl shook him again, with both hands now. “Por favor. Wake up! I need your help, muy pronto!”

The Apache princess in Prophet’s dream had just stopped to let him catch up to her when the dream dissolved and Prophet was pulled up out of his fanciful slumber to blink his eyes and smack his lips, watching a small, shabby room take shape around him.

“Wha—huh?” The tendrils of sleep were slow to disentangle themselves from Prophet’s brain while the girl on his left continued to jerk him so that the entire bed was bucking and pitching like an unbroke bronco stallion on the run from a wildfire. “Oh, Jesus . . . leave me . . . leave me alone . . . I’m . . . I’m sleepin’, honey! Ole Lou’s sleep-time now!”

The girl kept shaking him. Oh, why couldn’t she stop?! “Lou, you have to help Dora!”

“Wh-who’s Dora?” he asked, hoping that the question might get the girl to stop her consarned shaking if only for a few blissful seconds.

“A close friend of mine! I am afraid that her life is in danger! Oh, Lou—please wake up!”

Prophet had rested his head back against his pillow. His eyelids, which weighed ten pounds apiece, had dropped shut of their own accord. But now two fingers peeled the left one open, and Prophet found himself staring up into a pair of dark brown eyes set above a fine, pale nose and ruby red lips. Curly, dark brown hair, mussed from sleep and love, framed the girl’s young, pretty face that bore a heart-shaped birthmark just under her left eye.

Jasmin. That was her name, pronounced “Yas-meen.” The handle floated into the bounty hunter’s unconsciousness though how it made it through the gallon or so of rotgut tequila he’d soaked his brain in last night while he and Jasmin had run up one side of town and down the other, dancing to several different bands in a handful of saloons and cantinas before repairing to the puta’s humble crib was beyond him.

He’d met her only a few hours ago, depending on what time it was now . . .

“What the hell time is it, anyway?” he rasped.

“I don’t know,” the girl said. “Who cares?” She was tugging on his arm again, making the wild stallion of the bed resume running from imminent danger. “Dora is in big trouble, Lou! Only you can save her! ¡Rápido! Por favor, Lou—there is no time to waste. ¡Rápido!”

Prophet cursed and, merely to get the girl to stop tugging on his arm and making his hungover head pound all the harder, he sat up and dropped his bare feet to the floor. He felt as though he were speaking around a mouthful of jawbreakers. “Where is . . . where is this Dora . . . an’ what trouble’s she in, darlin’?”

A pistol cracked. That cleared a few more of Prophet’s cobwebs, as a pistol crack tended to do for a man like Prophet, who had spent most of his life either hurling or dodging bullets and who never knew from where the next bullets would come but always knowing that there would, indeed, be more bullets on the way . . .

“What was that all about?”

“That was Dora!” Jasmin was running around the small, crudely furnished crib gathering up Prophet’s longhandles, socks, and boots from where she’d tossed them on the floor after she’d helped him undress— a task which, in Prophet’s condition, had required four hands. “Well, not Dora herself . . . but the man who is going to kill her! I just know he is going to kill her this time for sure! He is very drunk and very angry!”

She spat out several lines of unadulterated Spanish only a few words of which Prophet, who had only a crude working knowledge of the border lingo, could decipher.

“Who is this rannie?” Prophet asked, running a big hand down his face as Jasmin tossed the big loose ball of his clothes onto the bed beside him.

“Roscoe Rodane!”

“Who in the hell is Roscoe Rodane?” Another pistol crack issued from the open window in the wall before Lou.

“He is the gringo necio who is going to kill Dora! He is in love with her, or so he claims! He is in the Buzzard Gulch Inn across the street. Oh, Lou—get dressed and hurry! Dora is like a sister to me!”

Yet another pistol report issued from out there in the night somewhere. A cool dark night, judging from the view from the window and the breath of chill desert air wafting through the ragged calico curtain buffeting inward, rife with the smell of trash heaps, woodsmoke, horses, men, and sagebrush. Typical western frontier fare.

Somewhere a dog was barking as though in response to the pistol fire. Beneath the dog’s barking and between pistol shots, Prophet thought he heard a girl scream.

Jasmin sucked an anxious breath while she helped Prophet pull on his longhandles. “Mierda. It might be too late.” The pretty puta sobbed, her upper lip trembling. “I might have just lost my best friend!”

“All right, all right.” The girl’s obvious terror sobered Prophet somewhat. At least, it got his heart going. He heaved himself up off the bed and took over his own dressing, going only as far as the longhandles, boots, and his hat. That’s all he needed.

He intended to be out of bed only long enough to quiet the infernal commotion over there across the street at the Buzzard Gulch Inn, so he could return to bed in peace and catch a few more hours of shut-eye before the hot Arizona sun reared its rosy head and cast its summer rays and debilitating heat through the window, rendering further slumber impossible.

When he’d cinched his Colt Peacemaker and cartridge belt around his waist, Lou grabbed his twelve-gauge Richards coach gun, slinging its wide leather lanyard over his head and shoulder, positioning the savage double-bore gut-shredder against his back. Making his way none too steadily to the door, which Jasmin held open for him, regarding him anxiously, Prophet stepped out into the dingy hall, hearing the girl mutter a prayer in hushed, quick Spanish behind him.

She added in English for his benefit, calling cheerfully behind him, “Thank you, Lou! I will make it up to you—I promise!”

He heard her blow him a kiss.

Grumbling moodily, Prophet made his way downstairs and across the small, earthen-floored saloon called Cantina Perro de Tres Patas, or the Three-Legged Dog, taking the name from the proprietor’s three-legged cur that wandered the premises all day, performing tricks for chugs of cheap ale and nibbles of beef and ham from Jimmy Rodriquez’s free-lunch counter.

Prophet stumbled across the saloon occupied now by only two Mexicans, one of whom was conscious, and the three-legged cur now snoring peacefully on a straw mat beneath the pine-plank bar. Only a couple of candles burned in wall brackets, so the saloon was in more shadow than light, and Prophet rapped his knee painfully against a chair before he finally made it through the batwings.

Cursing roundly and limping, he crossed the street at a slant, making his way toward the Buzzard Gulch Inn, which was a slightly tonier place than the Cantina Perro de Tres Patas, which sat on the south side of Buzzard Gulch’s main street, known as the Mexican side, while the north side of the street was known as the gringo side. Prophet preferred the south side for the simple reason that the Mexicans tended to have more fun.

“I’m gonna ask y’all one more time,” a man bellowed inside the Buzzard Gulch Inn, his voice badly slurred from drink. He punctuated the statement with another pistol shot. “I’m gonna ask you one-more-time,” he bellowed, louder, “who’s been makin’ time with ole Roscoe’s girl when I been away?”

A girl’s voice rose shrilly: “Roscoe, I told you, I am not your girl!”

She’d barely gotten that out before she screamed.

The scream was followed by another pistol report.

“Liar!” Roscoe bellowed.

Another pistol crack rocketed around inside the saloon.

“Christalmighty—ain’t there any law in this jerkwater?” Prophet asked himself, glancing both ways up and down the short main street and seeing no one.

Not that he could have seen anyone if anyone were out there. The night was as black as the inside of a glove save for a sky dusted with twinkling stars. Somehow, the light from the stars didn’t seem to make it down to Buzzard Gulch. It was dark, all right. The only place showing any life at all was the Buzzard Gulch Inn, and the inn was showing too much life.

Way too much life for a fella to get a decent night’s rest anywhere nearby.

Prophet hurried up the inn’s three porch steps then, not wanting to waste any time, bulled quickly through the batwings, and stepped to the right, extending the Richards coach gun straight out in front of him, ready to silence Roscoe Rodane with a fist-sized wad of double-ought buck.

Lou blinked into the heavy shadows of the room before him. The Buzzard Gulch’s main drinking hall was only a little better lit than the Three-Legged Dog had been, with a couple of bracket lamps and candles.

The bar ran down the wall to Prophet’s left. To his right were tables and chairs. Three or four gents were crouched down behind one overturned table and a couple of chairs. An old man and a blond young woman in a red and black corset and bustier, and with feathers in her hair, were crouched behind the piano abutting the wall to Prophet’s right.

Prophet could see several other men pressed up against the saloon’s rear wall, raising their eyes to gaze up toward the man standing slumped on the second-story balcony directly above them. The man up there was leaning forward over the rail.

He had three pistols resting atop the rail, and he was fumbling fresh shells into one of them. As he leaned forward, his longish, sandy hair hung in his eyes, so Prophet couldn’t see his face. But the bounty hunter could hear the man sobbing and quietly mewling like a gut-shot coyote taking his last few breaths.

Everybody on the saloon’s main floor was being quiet as a church mouse with the reverend on a tear until a man raised his head above the bar to Prophet’s left and said, “Roscoe, won’t you please leave those damn guns alone and listen to reason?”

The speaker was a craggy-faced gent with wavy, dark, pomaded hair and a thick dark mustache.

“I been listenin’ to reason,” Roscoe said up where he was reloading his pistols on the second-floor balcony. “An’ reason, she been tellin’ me my purty girl, Miss Dora May, has been two-timin’ ole Roscoe with a coupla the boys from the Triple-Six-Connected. An’ now, lessen I don’t hear which ones she been makin’ time with right quick, I’m gonna kill ’em all right here an’ now—tonight!”

Prophet hardened his jaws as he pushed away from the wall behind him and said, “You ain’t gonna kill anybody here tonight, Rodane! Now put them pistols down an’ stop this nonsense!”

Prophet glanced quickly at the man poking his craggy head above the bar. “Ain’t there a lawman in town?” he asked.

The barman opened his mouth to speak but stopped when Roscoe Rodane lifted his head abruptly, tossed his long, sandy hair back from his eyes, and cast Prophet a mean-eyed stare. “Who in the hell are you and where did you come from?”

“I’m Lou Prophet, bounty hunter. Now put them pistols down and go sleep it off, amigo. The town’s done tired of hearin’ your caterwaulin’ foolishness not to mention your infernal pistols. Don’t you realize what time it is?”

“You butt out of this!” Rodane bellowed, closing the loading gate of the Colt he’d just reloaded and raising the gun to his shoulder, barrel-up. “This ain’t none of your business, Mr. Bounty Hunter!”

He started to aim the pistol toward Prophet.

“Oh, Roscoe, please!” the blonde begged where she crouched with the old man behind the piano, snugged up taut against the wall. “I’m sorry if I made you think that I was your girl. I am not any one man’s girl, Roscoe. I’m a whore!”

One of the two men crouching behind the overturned table just ahead of Prophet and to his right snorted an ironic laugh.

“You think it’s funny, Norm?” Rodane yelled, shuttling his enraged gaze toward the man behind the table. “You think it’s funny?”

He triggered a shot over the rail. The bullet plunked into the table and nearly blasted through to the other side. Prophet saw the crack it made, showing its snub nose through the crack and making both men crouching there jerk with horrified starts.

“Christ, Roscoe!” shouted the man behind the table—the one who hadn’t snorted. “This is insane. It’s just insane, I tell you! And it’s all because you started drinkin’ again, an’ you know you can’t hold your lightnin’!”

“Was it you, Rod?” Roscoe aimed his pistol over the rail again, narrowing one eye as he aimed down the barrel.

“Hold on!” Prophet bellowed. “Put that gun down or I’m gonna paint the wall with you, you drunken tinhorn!”

Prophet started walking across the saloon, weaving between tables and chairs, kicking a few chairs out of his way, keeping the Richards aimed at the gun-wielding drunk on the balcony.

“Look out, mister,” one of the men warned him. “He’s crazy when he drinks, an’ he don’t care who he shoots!”

Prophet just then saw that the man wasn’t exaggerating. He stopped and looked to his right. A man lay on the floor, in a pool of his own blood. He’d taken a bullet through his forehead. He was tall and lean, with long, washed-out blond hair, and his vaguely startled blue eyes stared up at Prophet.

He was dressed in crude, weathered range gear, like most of the other men in the place.

Prophet muttered a curse then looked up at the man on the balcony, who was grinning down at him, aiming his pistol at Prophet’s head. He, too, had blue eyes. Cobalt blue. The light of madness glinted in them. A two- or three-day growth of beard stubble bristled on his round, puffy face with thin yellow lips. His eyes were deep set and his nose was long and broad and splotched red and blue from burst blood vessels, a testament to too much drink.

“Drop the Greener, mister,” Roscoe said through his devious grin. “Or I’ll drop you right where you stand.”

“Roscoe!” screamed the girl who’d been crouching behind the piano. “Stop this! Stop this right now! You know I’m not your girl! I’m not anyone’s girl lessen they got the jingle for an hour’s tussle!”

She came out from behind the piano and holding her hands up, palms out, placatingly, she began moving down the room toward the balcony, tripping occasionally on chair legs. “I’m sorry if you got the wrong idea about me . . . us . . . but that’s how it is!”

“No, it ain’t how it is!” Roscoe bellowed at her, angling his pistol away from Prophet now. He aimed at the girl and the fire of rage burned in his cheeks and eyes. “I told you you was mine, Dora May! When I was in Tucson you was supposed to stay true. I told you I’d marry you . . . make an honest woman out of you . . . soon as I built up a grubstake! You told me you’d stay true, Dora! Damnit, you did, an’ then I find out from Blue Nelson you was gigglin’ an’ carryin’ on with a pair of fellas from the Triple-Six-Connected! Both at the same time! Upstairs!”

He aimed his pistol at the dead man on the floor to Prophet’s right and yelled, “And Lonnie Hanks was one of ’em!”

He triggered another shot into the dead man. The dad man jerked with the impact.

Dora screamed and stopped, burying her face in her hands. “I’m a whore, Roscoe! A whore!”

“You’re a dead whore—you two-timin’, four-flushin’ bitch!” Roscoe tightened his index finger around the Colt’s trigger, his iron-hard jaws dimpling with rage as he aimed at the girl.

Prophet didn’t see that he had any choice. It was either the girl or Roscoe Rodane.

He tripped both of the Richards’s triggers and Rodane was picked straight up and thrown back against the wall behind him but not before he triggered a bullet into the table near Dora. The girl screamed, leaped to one side, tripped over a chair, and fell to the floor.

The blast from Prophet’s shotgun echoed around the room.

Silence fell in behind it, thick and intimate with the funereal weight of death.

“There.” Prophet lowered the smoking barn-blaster and swung around, muttering oaths under his breath as he retraced his path to the door. “Now, maybe the whole town can get some decent shut-eye . . . includin’ me.”

“He, uh . . . he dead?” asked one of the ranch hands, rising from behind the overturned table. He looked up and down the big man before him clad in only longhandles so badly faded they were a washed-out pink, boots, cartridge belt, and hat.

“Oh yeah,” Prophet grumbled, chuckling his satisfaction. “The only place he’ll be caterwaulin’ from here on in is in the devil’s own hell. I just hope Ole Scratch can shut him up before I arrive . . .” he added with a wry curl of his nose.

He glanced at the men and the girl, including the man behind the bar, slowly gaining their feet around him. They were all looking at him as though he were a two-headed panther. “You folks really oughta get some decent law in this town. No lawdog worth a good pair of socks would let a man raise that kinda hob at this time o’ night.”

“Mister?”

Prophet had turned back to the batwings, putting his left hand atop the left door, about to push it open, but now he turned back to the craggy-faced gent standing behind the bar, regarding the big bounty hunter in hang-jawed, brow-furled dismay.

“What is it?” Prophet asked grumpily.

The barman looked at Prophet, nervously fingering a button on his wool waistcoat, then turned away to uncertainly regard the others. “Nothin’,” he said weakly.

Prophet gave a satisfied chuff then pushed through the batwings and walked out into the now-silent street. The dog wasn’t barking anymore. The night, finally, was silent. Just as a night should be.

The big bounty hunter clomped back through the Three-Legged Dog, under the bar of which the dog, who was not only three-legged but apparently deaf, as well, was still sleeping on its straw mat beneath the bar. Now both remaining customers were sound asleep on their folded arms. Prophet could hear the proprietor, Jimmy Rodriguez, sawing logs in his bedroom partition behind the bar.

“You’re welcome, fellas,” Prophet said with another wry chuff, congratulating himself once more at rendering the night fit for slumber.

He climbed the creaky stairs and returned to Jasmin’s crib. A candle burned, showing the girl piled beneath the sheet and thin quilt, in the room’s dense shadows. She was a long lump capped with a spray of thick, chocolate hair concealing her pillow. The pretty puta lay curled on her side, apparently sound asleep.

Prophet skinned out of his duds, wrapped his cartridge belt and .45 around a front bedpost, within easy reach as was his custom, then crawled beneath the covers. The puta stirred, rolled toward him, blinking her eyes.

In a sleep-raspy voice, she said, “Did you take care of Dora’s problem, Lou?”

“I took care of Dora’s problem, all right.” Prophet kissed the girl’s bare shoulder then gazed down at her, incredulous. “You been sleepin’?”

She smiled serenely, closed her eyes. “Mhmm. I knew you would take care of the problem, Lou. A big, capable man like yourself.” She wrapped her arms around him, kissed his lips. She opened her eyes, smiled into his. “Now, about that reward I promised you.”

Giggling, she pulled her head down beneath the covers.

“Oh, you don’t have to go to any troub . . .” Prophet’s resolve waned. “You don’t have to . . . well . . . what the hell?” he added with a heavy sigh and a dry laugh.

Prophet had no idea how long he’d been asleep again when, again, he was pulled out of a deep sleep by Jasmin’s urgent voice. Again, the girl shook him and said, “Lou, wake up! Wake up, Lou! ¡Mierda! You have to wake up!”

“Ah, Jesus—now what?” Prophet opened his eyes and saw that the sky out the window behind the pretty puta was awash in the gray light of dawn. “Ah hell,” he added. “It’s mornin’, I reckon, ain’t it?” He raked a big paw down his sleep-worn face. “That had to be the shortest night’s sleep—”

“Lou!”

“What is it, darlin’?”

Jasmin’s wide-eyed face was only inches from his, where she knelt there on the floor beside the bed. “You didn’t tell me you killed Roscoe Rodane, you crazy gringo!”

“Didn’t I? Well, you asked me if I took care of Dora’s problem, and, yeah”—Prophet chuckled and scrubbed his hand down his face once more—“I took care of her problem, all right. I reckon I just assumed—”

“Lou!”

“What?”

“Don’t you know who Roscoe Rodane is? Was?”

“A caterwauling fool is what he was. And I reckon if I didn’t blow some daylight through him, Dora would be snugglin’ with the diamondbacks and you’d be out one best friend!”

“Oh, Lou—you sweet stupid gringo cabrón!” Jasmin rose from her knees and again began scrambling around the room, gathering Prophet’s clothes. “Out! You must go! You must go now, or you will not live to see another sunrise. Sunrise? Hah!” She spread her arms and threw a caustic laugh at the ceiling. “You won’t live to see high noon of this very day!”

“Wha—huh?” Prophet said, scowling at her from the bed.

The pretty puta threw his longhandles and socks at him. She stopped off the near corner of the bed and, clad in only a thin cream nightgown and spruce green wrap, bent forward at the waist and thrust an arm out to indicate the Buzzard Gulch Inn. “The man you killed last night . . . when I only wanted you to slap him around a little or punch his lights out and send him to bed . . . was the law here in town! He was a deputy sheriff—none other than the son of the sheriff of Pima County. The very prized and precious son of Sheriff Dan Rodane, Lou, you big crazy gringo! ”

The name cut through the last fog of sleep slithering around behind Prophet’s eyes. He stiffened. “Dan Rodane . . .”

“Dan Rodane!”

“Damn, I knew that name rang a bell.” Prophet tossed the covers aside and dropped his feet to the floor. “I reckon I was too drunk last night to ponder on it overmuch . . . or even to recognize it. But, yeah, now I recognize it, all right.”

He looked at Jasmin still glaring down at him urgently, bent forward at the waist, every muscle in her lithe, buxom body drawn taut as freshly stretched Glidden wire. “Are you sure ole Roscoe is the son of Dan Rodane?” Prophet asked her.

The pretty puta swallowed tolerantly and spoke with strained patience. “Lou, there is no question. When I found out you had killed Roscoe last night, you fool, I also learned that one of Rodane’s cronies rode to Tucson to alert the sheriff. You can bet that if Sheriff Rodane is not already in town ransacking Buzzard Gulch for the man who killed his precious son, he will be here soon!”

She scooped one of his boots off the floor and threw it at him. “Go!” She grabbed his other boot and threw that one at him, too. “Go, you big galoot! He will hang you from the nearest cottonwood in Buzzard Gulch!”

Prophet heaved himself to his feet and scratched the back of his head. “Yeah, yeah, I reckon he will, all right.”

Jasmin threw his pants at him. As his boots had done, they bounced off his broad, hairy chest to land on the floor at his feet. “Hurry, Lou! There is no time to lose! You are too good a man . . . and too much fun . . . to get your neck stretched for killing such a scalawag as Roscoe Rodane. Now, I sent a boy for your horse. He is to meet you in the back alley.”

“Ah, you shouldn’t have done that,” Prophet said, stumbling around now, pulling on his longhandles.

“Why not?” the girl fairly screamed at him.

“Mean an’ Ugly was aptly named, Jasmin. He’s liable to tear that poor boy’s arm off or, leastways, rip a seam or two out of his shirt. I hope he has at least one ear left after Mean’s done with him!”

Holding his buckskin tunic, Jasmin frowned at him. “That big ugly cayuse of yours doesn’t cotton to strangers?”

“That big ugly broomtail of mine don’t cotton to me!”

Prophet gave a wry chuckle then leaned forward as Jasmin wrestled the tunic over his head, having to rise up on the toes of her bare feet to do so, for the pretty puta stood a whole two heads shorter than Prophet’s six feet four.

Prophet was glad his hangover had all but dissipated overnight. His head ached dully, and his mouth was dry, but a few breaths of fresh air and a canteen of water would set him back right again. So, scrambling around the room, getting back into his clothes, and buckling his cartridge belt around his waist, went far smoother than it would have otherwise.

Jasmin met Prophet at the door and rose up on her toes again to smooth his short, sandy brown hair and to set his battered, bullet-torn, bleached-out, funnel-brimmed Stetson on his head. She pinched his nose and kissed his lips. “Go with God, Lou! Ride to the border and keep riding and don’t come back for a good long time!”

“Mexico, huh? Yeah, well, I reckon another winter’s comin’ on up north, so I reckon it’s a good time to go. Just wish it was under better circumstances, though. I like crossin’ the border when I want to, not when I have to!”

“When are your circumstances ever good, Lou?”

Prophet winced. “You got a point.” He grabbed the girl, drew her to him, and kissed her passionately. “Take care of yourself, Jasmin.”

Quickly, she drew the door open and waved him through it. “Go, Lou! ¡Rápido!”

“I’m goin’, I’m goin’.”

Crouching beneath the weight of his saddlebags, ancient gray Confederate war bag, Winchester ’73, and Richards twelve-gauge, his Colt Peacemaker thonged on his right thigh, his bone-handled bowie knife sheathed on his left hip, Prophet hurried down the stairs. He paused when the puta called from her room’s open door, “Lou?”

“What is it, honey?”

“Thanks for killing that drunken bastardo!” she rasped out from the side of the hand she held over her mouth. She winked and gave a throaty laugh.

“Anytime,” Prophet said with a snort. He hurried downstairs and out through the rear door.

Just as Jasmin had said he would be, Prophet’s mulish but loyal line-back dun stood in the rear alley, reins drooping to the trash-littered ground. Prophet looked around for the boy who’d fetched him. That must be him, running down the alley to Prophet’s right, rope-soled sandals slapping his feet. The boy, a young Mexican, cast a wary glance behind him then disappeared around the side of one of the main street buildings.

Prophet looked at Mean and Ugly, who regarded his rider with a sheepish cast to his eyes.

“You devil—I hope you didn’t hurt that kid!”

As Prophet tossed his saddlebags over the mount’s back, behind the saddle, Mean pawed the ground and gave a self-satisfied whicker.

Quickly, Prophet slid his Winchester into the scabbard strapped to the saddle. He hooked his war bag over the saddle horn then swung up into the leather.

He froze, looked around, frowning.

A low thunder was building. At first it seemed to be coming from his right, then his left—the rataplan of many galloping horses. The din grew quickly, injecting ice into the bounty hunter’s veins. The growing din seemed to be coming from all around him until a horse and rider bounded out from around a building fifty yards away to the north, on Prophet’s right.

The rider was a big man in a calico shirt and suspenders and a big Boss of the Plains hat. He wore a thick, gray mustache on his Indian-dark face, and a shiny silver star on his shirt.

“There!” he barked, jerking his chin toward Prophet.

Several other riders bounded around from behind the same building, and they all galloped toward Prophet behind the badge-toter, Dan Rodane himself.

Prophet jerked Mean to the right. Instantly, he drew back on the reins as more riders exploded out from behind another building to the south, about thirty yards away.

“Holy crap in the nun’s privy!” Prophet wailed at his horse. “We’re surrounded, Mean!”

He jerked the reins hard right again and put the spurs to the hammerhead’s flanks. Mean and Ugly gave a shrill whinny and exploded off his rear hooves, leaping into an instant gallop straight west, first cleaving a break between a cow pen and a board-and-ba