The Graves at Seven Devils (15 page)

Prophet cut through the leather binding the man's right wrist, then reached toward the man's right ankle. “Nebraska.”

The burly prospector sat up, rubbing his wrists and turning his head to regard Louisa, who stood grimly reloading her second Colt once more. “I coulda used her 'bout an hour ago when those heathens jumped my diggin's. They was about to hack off my eyelids and sundry other parts when you two rode in. . . .”

“Buster!” Hans drew the wagon up beside Prophet and Davis.

As the wagon lurched and creaked and the mule hee-hawed at the smell of blood, the big blond leaped heavily from the driver's seat, the springs giving a raucous squawk of released tension. He bolted over to where Davis was sitting up and drawing his untied ankles in. “What the hell happened, Buster? I thought you made peace with ole Three-Toe!”

“I reckon that was last month's agreement,” the prospector said, fishing a handkerchief from his pocket and dabbing at his bloody ear from which, Prophet now saw, the lobe had been hacked away.

Davis swept his green-eyed gaze from Louisa to Prophet and back again. “Who's these Injun killers and”—the paunchy, middle-aged gent wheezed a laugh as he continued dabbing at what was left of his ear—“do ya work for free?”

“This is Lou Prophet and Louisa Bonaventure,” Big Hans said. He spread his lips back from his big teeth, grinning. “We're goin' after the Three of a Kind Gang, and we're gonna clean their clocks just like these Chiricowies here!”

“PLEASED TO MAKE your acquaintance, Davis.” Prophet shook the burly prospector's big, skinned-up hand and glanced at Big Hans still grinning at him. “But I don't know's we made any plans—the boy and me and Louisa—to ride together after the Three of a Kind Gang.”

As Louisa walked off, apparently in search of her and Prophet's horses, both of whom had vamoosed when the Apaches had charged, Big Hans said, “We was just gettin' to that when Buster yelled.”

Holding the handkerchief to his ear, Davis looked at the kid skeptically. “I thought you didn't wanna have nuthin' to do with them mountains again, Hans.”

“That was before that gang burned the town, Buster. Criminy-craw, they killed Uncle Alphonse, and I stood around like a dog cowerin' under a boardwalk!”

“Wait a minute,” Prophet said, on one knee beside the big blond. “I know how you feel about your uncle an' all, but, son, you said yourself them mountains are crawlin' with fork-tailed demons. You ain't got no business—”

“Sure I do! They killed my uncle, burned my town. And I know them mountains better'n anyone around. Better'n Buster here even.” Big Hans glanced around at the dead Apaches lying as though they'd fallen from the sky. “Just as good as these Chiricowies here, matter of bonded fact!”

“How?”

“That's a bonded fact.” Buster Davis began pushing himself up off the ground, and the kid rose and grabbed his shoulder to help him. “For nigh on two years, him and ole Alphonse chased about every vein in the Seven Devils. The north slopes of the Seven Devils anyway.”

“A good chunk of the Mexican side, too,” Big Hans put in.

Prophet draped Davis's right arm around his neck. “I reckon this conversation can wait till later. That ear of yours needs tendin'.”

Prophet and Big Hans helped the prospector, who was still fairly weak on his legs after the beating the Apaches had given him, over to the gray-weathered shack. Davis grunted and groaned and winced, stepping lightly on his right foot. “That scar-faced demon—drunk on
my
hooch!—whacked my knee good with the blunt end of a war hatchet. I'm just glad you and that girl of yours blew their wicks for me, Prophet. Wish I coulda kicked one off my own self. I'd go to my grave grinnin' about it—I'll tell you that!”

Mounting the shack's gallery, the posts trimmed with elk and deer horns, and several bobcat pelts nailed to the cabin's front wall, Prophet kicked the half-open door wide. Something moved in the musty shadows before him, and as his eyes picked the black-and-white varmint out of the cabin's gloom, he lurched back and sucked a startled breath.

“Kee-
rist
, Davis—you gotta
skunk
in here!”

As if in response, the critter glared through the doweled back of the chair it was standing on and gave a raucous chitter, reaching between the dowels to slash a little, black-clawed paw at Prophet.

“Oh, now you show your mangy carcass, eh, Curtis?” Davis growled. “When them Apaches was ransacking my digs, lookin' for my notorious hooch, I bet you was cowerin' under the stove. Weren't you? Ha!”

Prophet glanced at Davis as he and Hans continued guiding the man into the cabin, most of the crude furnishings of which had been either smashed or scattered as if by a heavy wind. “I take it you know each other?”

“Yeah, Curtis adopted me when I first moved in.” Davis grunted as Prophet and Big Hans deposited the prospector into a chair near the overturned kitchen table beside a sheet-iron woodstove. “Come and goes as he pleases, but he usually
pleases
around supper time!”

The skunk scolded the newcomers, then dropped down and, chittering and holding its tail up, scuttled off under a plank-board cabinet against the far wall.

“Mind your manners, Curtis,” Davis groused as Prophet tipped the man's head to one side, inspecting his bloody ear. “Sorry, there, Mr. Prophet. Aside from your occasional Chiricowy and bobcat, we don't get many visitors.”

The lobe was hanging by what looked like a bloody thread, blood dribbling darkly from the ragged cut.

Grimacing at the prospector's ear over Prophet's shoulder, Big Hans said, “You got any doctorin' skills, Mr. Prophet?”

“No, but I reckon I can sew a lobe back onto an ear. Won't guarantee it won't fall off in a day or two, but I'll do my best with needle and catgut.”

Outside, slow hoof clomps rose, and Prophet glanced out the open door to see Louisa leading both horses into the yard, Mean eyeing the pinto owlishly.

“Louisa, bring in my saddlebags!” The bounty hunter glanced at Big Hans. “Kid, start a fire and boil some water. Then you best head out, load them Apaches into your wagon, and haul 'em a good ways away. Throw some dirt and rocks on'em, just enough to keep the smell down. I heard tell Apaches could smell their own dead from five miles away.”

“You've done some traveling in these parts, Prophet,” Davis said. “I've heard that my own self.”

“I've traveled in most parts. Been welcome in damn few.”

“They're bounty trackers, Buster.” Big Hans had opened the stove door and was rummaging around in the wood box built from several Magic black-powder crates for kindling—old newspapers and pinecones. “Both him and Miss Louisa.”

Just then, Louisa stepped through the door, Prophet's saddlebags draped over her shoulder. Davis turned to her, his earlobe dangling like a grisly ornament. Whistling with appreciation, he gave the girl the thrice-over.

“Bounty tracker—you don't say! Well, I could tell by the way she dispatched them 'Paches she wasn't no Sunday-school teacher.”

With characteristic indifference to flattery, Louisa picked the table up off the floor with one hand, then dropped the saddlebags onto it, puffing dust. Kicking a tin coffee cup across the earthen floor, she moved over beside Prophet, who was easing the lobe back into place beneath the ear.

“How bad?”

“He'll live. Dig out my whiskey bottle.”

“Ah, Christ,” Davis said. “I'd just as soon you hacked the damn thing off.”

Prophet chuckled dryly. “I'd still have to sterilize it, less'n you want your whole head to turn black.”

When Louisa had pulled the bottle out of the saddlebags, as well as Prophet's small canvas pouch of needle and thread, the bounty hunter popped the cork with his teeth and, keeping Davis's earlobe in position with the thumb and index finger of his right hand, offered the bottle to the prospector with the other.

“There you go, Davis. Have you a good pull. You're gonna need it.”

Bunching his cheeks, carving deep dimples inside his shaggy, sweat-damp beard, Davis tipped the bottle back a couple of times, making the bubble in the bottle rise and fall with a loud chug. Finally, sighing and smacking his lips, his green eyes watering, he returned the bottle to Prophet.

Prophet said, “Ready?”

Davis growled, then tipped his head to one side, his torn, bloody ear facing the low rafters. “No.”

Prophet tipped the bottle over the man's ear.

“Yeee-
owwww
!” Davis bellowed, his face blanching and his shoulders quivering as the whiskey hit his ear.

Curtis poked his black, white-striped head out from beneath the cupboard and chittered like a rabid squirrel.

 

By the time Prophet had finished sewing Buster Davis's ear back together, albeit raggedly, the prospector was feeling little pain and had even taken to humming several parts of several saloon songs including “Little Brown Jug,” “Clap-Carryin' Kate,” and “Whiskey Jack and Old Leonard.” Occasionally, he'd slap the table and howl, keeping time.

Curtis scratched and sniffed about the cabin, adding a few cackling chitters to a chorus or two.

Prophet began sharing the bottle with the man after he'd effected his last stitch and started cleaning the blood from the man's ear with hot water and whiskey. When he'd finished, Louisa had thrown a meal together—beans and antelope steaks from the carcass she'd found hanging in the lean-to stable and which the Apaches had left alone, distracted by the prospector's hooch and preferring mule meat anyway.

The three of them dug in, eating at the crude plank table, Prophet and Buster Davis washing the food down with whiskey while Louisa, who'd killed nearly fifty men in her short career but disapproved of spirituous liquids, drank coffee. When Big Hans returned, tired and sweaty from hauling away the dead Apaches and hazing away their horses, she filled him a bowl, and he sat up to table with the rest.

Outside, good dark fell. The little cabin, which had a loft and two cots and was cluttered with tack and every mining implement imaginable, became filled with inky shadows jostling and shifting when a freshening breeze pushed through the open door to nudge the room's single hurricane lantern hanging from a ceiling beam.

When Louisa finished her meal, she slid her plate and cup toward Prophet. “I cooked. You can clean.”

She hauled her pistols out of her holsters, set them on the table, and reached into the saddlebags draped over her chair for a cloth and a tin of Hambly's gun oil. Prophet curled his lip at her. Setting his half-rolled quirley down on the table before him, he slid his chair back, stood, and began stacking bowls and cups.

Buster Davis chuckled as he fed Curtis, who'd crawled onto his lap midway through the meal, some bits of crusty bread. “Reckon a girl who can shoot like that could have a man dancin' quite a jig around her.”

“She thinks so,” Prophet growled.

Big Hans shoveled his last bite of beans and meat into his mouth and dropped his spoon in his bowl. Rising, doffing his hat, and heading for the door, he said, “I got me a fast mustang in the corral. I'm gonna tend his hooves and grain him, get him ready for tomorrow.”

Balancing dishes in both hands as he headed for a washtub, Prophet glanced at the kid. “Hold on there, Junior. You might be good with that buffalo gun, but it ain't buffalo we'll be goin' after.”

Big Hans wheeled at the open door, a grieved look on his big, fleshy, sunburned face, his blue eyes flashing fervently beneath his shading hat brim. “Look here, Mr. Prophet, I know them mountains like the back o' my hand. There ain't no way in hell you're gonna find that bunch of killers without my help. Besides . . .” He frowned and looked around as though searching for words. “Besides, I want a shot at 'em. The one I didn't take when they were burnin' up the town. . . .”

He lifted his injured, defiant gaze to Prophet.

Prophet held the kid's eyes and glanced at Davis. The prospector stared over his shoulder at Big Hans for a good five seconds before he turned to Prophet with an arched brow.

Prophet looked at Louisa. She was letting the bullets fall from the wheel of one of her Colts. They clinked to the table and wobbled in half circles.

“Well, Miss Pistolera,” Prophet grunted at the self-absorbed girl. “Don't you got an opinion?”

Louisa hiked a shoulder as she slipped the cylinder free of the Colt's barrel and set it on the table with the still-dancing cartridges. “It's his neck. And I don't care to go fishing without knowing where the fish are feeding.”

Still balancing the dishes in his hands, Prophet thought it over. Finally he looked back at the kid staring at him expectantly from the door, the starlit desert yawning behind him, a coyote yipping somewhere in the buttes south of the cabin.

Standing on Buster Davis's right thigh, Curtis sniffed the table edge and growled deep in his throat.

“Tend your horse, kid,” Prophet growled and dropped the dishes in the washtub with a tinny clatter.

 

When Prophet had finished the dishes, and while Louisa continued to quietly clean her Colt and her rifle at the kitchen table, the bounty hunter sat on the stoop with Buster Davis and Big Hans. They chatted quietly, keeping their ears peeled for threat.

It was doubtful that more Chiricahuas would show up tonight, as Apaches didn't like to travel after dark, much less fight, but you never let your guard down in Apache country unless you wanted to risk being slow-roasted over a hot fire or buried chin deep in a honey-slathered anthill.