The Graves at Seven Devils by Peter Brandvold

Prophet as he polished his right fist against his left hand. “I like it real good.”
    â€œI was just passin’ through, fellas,” Prophet said, desperately fishing for any way to free himself from this bear trap. “I was thinkin’ about havin’ me a little soak in the river my own self.” He chuckled. “Good thing I scouted it out first. We coulda had us an embarrassin’ situation. Now, then, if you’ll just let me collect my weapons, I’ll—”
    â€œA little soak, my ass,” said the fourth man, whose name was Wally “Cisco” Wood, from Milestown in the Montana Territory. He was a dumb-looking, straight-nosed, straight-necked stringbean who didn’t look like he’d started shaving yet, though according to the paper on him he’d killed a school-teacher and three children on a playground near Pine Bluff, Utah, when the teacher had refused him a drink of water. He stood barefoot, holding his boots and socks in one hand, his ivory-handled Smith & Wesson in the other. “Why, he’s been trailin’ us, boys! He knows about the bounty on our heads, and he’s been trailin’ us!”
    â€œDamn, Cisco,” sneered Rodney Hayes. “Nothin’ gits past you, does it?”
    Emmitt stood grinning up at Prophet. His two front teeth were yellow and square, with a thick layer of coffee-colored grime caked between teeth and gum. “Lou Prophet. Damn, it sure is gonna be a pleasure to kill you. Yessir!” He turned as if to step away, but then he jerked back, swinging Prophet’s own Colt around, grip forward, and rammed the butt into the dead center of Prophet’s belly.
    The breath left Prophet’s lungs in a loud “Uhfff!” He stumbled back up the hill, getting his boots tangled beneath him and falling hard on his butt. His hat tumbled off his shoulder. Sucking air and holding one arm across his gut, he rolled onto his right elbow and straightened his legs slightly, trying to unknot his midsection to get some air back into his lungs. Sanderson was a scrawny little bastard, but he packed a hell of a gut-stoving, rib-splintering punch.
    Emmitt’s mother threw her head back on her shoulders and laughed as though at the funniest joke she’d ever seen. “Good one, boy! The bigger they are the harder they fall!”
    Emmitt shuffled around like a rooster, crowing along with his mother. He stepped up to Prophet once more, grabbed a handful of Prophet’s sandy hair. “If you think that was somethin’, Ma, watch thi—”
    â€œHold on,” Horton Whipple said, grabbing Sanderson’s arm as the outlaw leader was about to ram his knee against Prophet’s forehead.
    Emmitt frowned up at the big man, red-faced. Whipple must have stood just a few inches under seven feet. He had a big, bushy red mustache and blue eyes with what appeared to be flecks of gold steel in them.
    Emmitt snarled, “Goddamnit, Whipple. I told you never touch me!”
    Whipple stared down at Prophet. The big man looked like a bizarrely mottled mountain wall standing there, with his lewd tattoos and egg-shaped head and flat blue eyes. “He killed an old pard of mine in Missouri a few years back. I wanna shot at this four-flushin’, bounty-huntin’ son of a bitch.” He scowled challengingly down at the pint-sized Sanderson, opening and closing his hands. “And I aim to git it.”
    Frowning angrily, Sanderson opened his mouth to object, then closed his mouth suddenly. The wrinkles above the bridge of his nose planed out as he shuttled his gaze between Prophet and Whipple and back again, a slow, cunning smile building on his lips.
    â€œWhy not?” Chuckling, he backed away and glanced at the other men standing in a semicircle behind him. “We might even take bets on it, eh, boys?”
    His mother was grinning delightedly, three or four crooked teeth showing in her rotten gums.