Helldorado (12 page)

The smell of fresh biscuits and gravy nearly flattened Prophet as he stepped through the door, but his enjoyment was tempered by a familiar voice raised in anger.

Doffing his hat, he followed the voice through a doorway and into the dining room on the house’s left side. Jose Encina sat at a round, linen-covered table in the middle of the room. A cigar smoldered in his right hand as he draped his other arm over the back of his chair, craning his neck to look behind him, where Hell-Bringin’ Hiram Severin stood before a small table against the far wall, under the head of a curly-horned mountain ram.

A young lady with long, brown braids and wearing a crisp white apron over a green, puffy-sleeved muslin dress stood a ways from the middle-aged sheriff, wringing her hands and looking worried. Two men dressed in ragged trail garb sat on either side of the table, looking up at Severin with much the same expression as that of the young lady. The two men’s hats were hooked over their chair backs.

The man on the right had his hands on the table as though he’d been ordered to do so, while the sheriff, his left boot propped on the edge of the chair in which the other cowboy sat, crouched over the other cowboy, barking, “. . . And if you
ever
say anything like that to a young lady in my town again, you down-at-heel saddle trash, I’ll haul you over to the hoosegow and lock you up for vagrancy!”

Striding slowly toward the table at which Encina sat, Prophet saw the cowboy whom Severin was confronting staring up at the gray-headed, gray-mustached sheriff indignantly. When the cowboy only glowered, Severin jerked his right hand back behind his shoulder and swung it forward, his open palm connecting loudly with the cowboy’s right cheek, jerking the young man’s head around sharply.

The crack of the slap sounded like a pistol shot. The cowboy’s cheek turned white as parchment, then quickly blazed as his jaws hardened in anger.

The girl, obviously a waitress, gasped with a start. The slapped cowboy jerked his right arm.

“You sure you wanna do that, you scrawny little devil?” Severin had his coat flap peeled back behind the jutting grip of the ivory-handled Colt holstered butt forward on his right hip. “I say, you sure you wanna pull iron on me, slick?”

The cowboy’s left eye twitched. He slid his gaze to his friend, who sat in his chair stone-faced, like a chastised schoolboy, then back and up to the menacing squint of the sheriff of Juniper. He said something too softly for Prophet to hear.

“That’s right—you don’t,” the sheriff growled. “Now, I want you to apologize to this young lady.”

He glanced at the waitress who stood as though nailed to the polished wood floor, her eyes bright with fear. The cowboy swung his head to the girl then, too. He sniffed, cleared his throat, and said thickly, “Miss Dolly, I do apologize for sayin’ you got nice ankles.”

The girl’s brows raveled and unraveled as she looked between the sheriff and the young cowboy, both regarding her expectantly. She didn’t seem sure about how to respond. Finally, she pursed her lips, glanced at the floor, blushing brightly, and said, “I reckon that’s all right, Mr. Fletcher,” in a voice just barely audible.

“Th—thank you, ma’am,” the cowboy said, returning his gaze to the sheriff.

The girl licked her lips nervously, then, still wringing her hands together, turned and fled through a door at the back of the room through which rose the occasional clatter of pots and pans.

“Now,” Severin said, lifting his right fist from the cowboy’s table and straightening, falling back on the heels of his polished, black, high-heeled boots, “I want you boys to leave them pistols and shell belts right there in your chairs, and I want you to get the hell out of here. I ain’t sayin’ you gotta leave town, but don’t let me catch you over here at Mr. Tweet’s place again—not until you’ve learned better manners.”

The two looked at each other. Then, glowering, faces mottled with both chagrin and frustration, the two young drovers gained their feet, unbuckled their shell belts, and let them drop to their chairs with their holstered six-shooters. Casting indignant looks over their shoulders, they stomped out of the house and into the street where two dun cow ponies were tied at the hitchrail.

Prophet, who had slumped down in a chair across from Jose Encina, watched the still-glowering, red-faced lawman stride angrily over to the table and reclaim the chair he’d obviously been sitting in before. A nearly full glass of beer and a whiskey shot stood on the table in front of it.

“Damn, Hiram,” the bounty hunter said, hooking his hat over his chair back, “I see you ain’t softened any with age.”

“Can’t get soft, Proph,” the sheriff said, easing into his chair. “Not when you got a town to keep on its leash, and one that’s as far off the beaten path as Juniper. You know, they used to call it Helldorado.”

“I seen the sign when we rode in.”

“The name fit. We changed it about three years ago, when it stopped fittin’. I don’t ever want it to fit again. Leastways, not while I’m wearin’ this sheriff’s star. My actions might have seemed a little harsh with that younker. But ‘the Kid,’ as he likes to be called, stirs up trouble, or tries to. Starts by ogling the girls and making nasty comments, and the boot-stomping spreads to the other punchers, and before you know it you got a rowdy bunch tearing apart saloons or running wild in the streets, and the young ladies are afraid to show themselves after dark.”

The old town tamer threw back half his whiskey shot and followed it up with a healthy pull from his beer glass. Smacking his lips and lowering the glass to the table, he added, “That ain’t the kinda town I run, Lou.”

“Si,”
said Jose Encina, regarding the sheriff sitting across from him with an admiring cast to his coffee-brown gaze. “Before Senor Hiram, my bank was robbed at least three times a year. I was ready to close up shop and move back to Mejico even with the revolutionarios running rampant over my rancho. I have the good sheriff to thank for my livelihood, as do most of the other business owners in town.”

The young waitress, Dolly, approached the table to take Prophet’s drink order, and when she had it, she muttered her thanks to Hiram.

“Just doin’ my job, Dolly. And I do apologize for the Kid’s behavior.”

She smiled nervously. “He don’t really mean nothin’ by it, Sheriff. He comes around, now and then, and says things. . . .”

“Well, from now on, he won’t be comin’ around,” the sheriff said as he regarded the girl with gravity, turning his shot glass in his fingers. “And I suggest, young lady, you avoid that boy. He’s trash.”

“Yessir,” Dolly said quickly and hurried back into the kitchen.

Prophet said, “I got me a feelin’ the Kid’s sparkin’ that girl, Hiram. And I got me another feelin’ she don’t mind.”

“Well, she should mind,” the sheriff said gruffly. “I know the so-called Kid’s family. His mother was a whore, his father a pig farmer who drank himself to death down New Mexico way. Knew some of his other kin in another town I tamed down there, and believe me, they weren’t nothin’ you’d want your daughter seen with, neither.”

The men fell silent when Dolly returned with Prophet’s beer and shot. She did not look at the sheriff and only raked her troubled gaze briefly across Prophet before she said, “You gentlemen be eatin’ tonight, will you?”

When they’d each ordered the night’s special of pork roast with fried potatoes and green beans, Dolly again disappeared sullenly into the kitchen. Prophet sipped his beer and, feeling uneasy but not being able to put his finger on why, asked, “How was it you came up this way, Hiram? Last I knew, you was still bounty huntin’, and that was after your hide-huntin’ days.”

The sheriff took a small sip from his whiskey, holding the glass almost daintily between his thumb and index finger, both of which were the red-brown of old, weathered brick, and chuckled. “Yessir, I hunted buffalo from up around Winnipeg, Canada, clear down to Mesilla, New Mexico. Them were the days, though they plum took some starch outta me, what with fightin’ the Comanche every winter.” The nostalgic smile left the man’s face when, sliding across the table to Prophet, he said in a deep, serious tone, “Left bounty hunting when I killed the wrong man, Lou—or who I was told was the wrong man—and spent three years in the Kansas pen for it.”

“Ah, hell, Hiram.”

The sheriff nodded gravely. “I shot a young man I’d been tracking for nigh on two months through the Indian Nations. He bushwhacked me, and I drilled him through his right eye. Hauled him back to Alva over his horse, and that’s when I was told I’d killed the wrong man. Prominent rancher’s son. No way the young man could have robbed that stagecoach and killed the shotgun guard, by god, because he just wasn’t that kind of boy!”

“You catch him with the money?” Prophet asked, rolling a smoke while regarding the sheriff with mantled brows.

“Caught him with half of it. The other half was gone. Probably spent on whores in Clancyville or Ortega. The rancher claimed the money was from cattle the young firebrand had sold in Fort Smith. Of course, I couldn’t prove it wasn’t, and the kid did have a receipt for sold cattle on him. And with most of the county, including the lawmen, backing the rancher merely because he owned most of the town and half the county, the jury of twelve convicted me of manslaughter.”

He chuckled ruefully and shook his head, staring down at the whiskey he continued to turn in his fingers. “I reckon I got off lucky. I was sentenced to five years but got out in two for good behavior. Reckoned the parole board figured I was gettin’ too old to blast any more trails out of the limestone hills they had us workin’, and they let me go. I figure they knew the kid I shot was bad seed and saw no reason I oughta be punished for doin’ what his old man shoulda done a long time ago.”

“Shit, Hiram,” Prophet said. “I never heard about that.”

“I never spread it around, Lou. Thing like that’s hard on a man’s reputation. Suffice it to say, my heart wasn’t in bounty huntin’ anymore. The only reason I pinned a badge on my coat was because I was asked to help a deputy U.S. marshal friend up in Montana file down the horns on Miles City. Hell, I had nothin’ better to do than lug a shotgun up and down the street of that dusty cow town, and, after a few months, hell . . . the murderin’ and robbin’ had all but died off, and I found more folks from around the West wantin’ me to come and help get their own towns on short leashes.”

Sheriff Severin tossed back the last of his whiskey and ran the back of a hand across his mustache. “One o’ them was Senor Encina here, and several other fine gentlemen from the Helldorado city council—all at their wits’ end with bandits runnin’ wild and claim jumpers and rustlers galore—and here I sit, wearin’ a county sheriff’s star!”

“Well, hell,” Prophet said, lifting his beer glass. “Here’s to you, Hiram. Looks like you’ve done a real fine job.”

“Si, si!”
said Jose Encina, clinking his brandy goblet against Prophet’s and the sheriff’s beer schooners.

“And I do apologize for the foofaraw earlier.” Prophet sipped his beer and, swallowing, shook his head. “And, Louisa . . . hell, sometimes I don’t know what gets into that girl’s head.”

“Why?” Severin frowned at Prophet. “Because she merely shot a man even lower than a chicken-stealing coyote?”

“Well . . .” Prophet shrugged.

He sort of saw it the sheriff’s way. But that wasn’t necessarily the
right
way. As a bounty hunter, he’d always tried to keep the hunting and judging separate. If he didn’t, he’d likely end up in a state pen, like Severin himself had.

“Speakin’ of them,” Prophet said, sitting back from the table as Dolly brought three steaming platters of roast pork, with rich brown, peppery gravy smothering the fried potatoes, and a liberal portion of garden beans. He made a conscious effort to keep from drooling as his stomach kicked like a stallion against his rib cage. “I got to thinkin’, Hiram,” he continued as the steam from the plate bathed his face, “it seems damn odd that four men gunnin’ for both me and Louisa woulda showed up in town at the same time. Three of whom were known hard cases, the third probably known, too, though not by me.”

Hiram ordered another round of drinks for the table then, tucking an oilcloth bib into the neck of his pin-striped, collarless shirt. He cleared his throat and scooted his chair toward his own heaping platter. “What’re you sayin’, Lou? You think I suddenly had the damn wool pulled over my eyes and become overrun with border toughs?”

Jose Encina chuckled as he gazed with delight at his plate and picked up fork and knife like a surgeon preparing for work.

Prophet hesitated, looking askance at his stubborn old friend. “All I’m sayin, Hiram, is that many bad boys at one time in one place could mean trouble. More than just one back-shot-old-bounty-hunter kinda trouble. Now, I realize you done scooped the shit out of what was once a privy pit here in Juniper. But there are regular gold runs from the mines to the bank here in town.”

He glanced at Encina, who arched a brow at him as he cut into his gravy-covered pork slab.

“I know, cause I’m one of the guards now,” the bounty hunter added wryly. “And not to consider the possibility that they’re here for the gold would be just plum—”

“You’re right.” The sheriff was hunkered down over his plate, chewing a mouthful of potatoes and gravy. “You’re damn right, like you always were, Proph.” He swallowed, and as he buried his fork into his fried potatoes after forking a charred-edged chunk of meat, he added, “Sometimes I get cocky and muleheaded, and that ain’t good. You’re right, Lou. To not even consider that those gents might have been here for the gold would be right foolish. And to make sure there ain’t any more skulkin’ around, waiting for another team to head out on another run, maybe follow ’em and buschwack ’em somewhere in the mountains when they got a wagonload of ingots, I’m gonna turn my wolves loose.”

“How’s that?” Prophet said with a mouthful of the delicious food. He couldn’t remember tasting gravy that good—but then, he never could remember the taste of good gravy after a long pull without a proper feed sack hooked over his ears.