Free Hell's Angel by Peter Brandvold

giants behind the dwarf and the girl.
    Nevertheless, Prophet couldn’t keep the anger from his voice as he said, “You’re the one chargin’ for water?”
    â€œThat’s right. I’m the one chargin’ for water,” the dwarf said in his frog-like croak from between gritted teeth. “It’s my well, see? It’s on my land. So I’m chargin’. Now, kindly pay the box.”
    Prophet dropped the ladle in the dust at his feet. The thud caused Mean to jerk his head up out of the water bucket, drops tumbling from his snout and beading the dust at his hooves. The horse swished his tail angrily as he stared back at the little man standing atop the porch with the three hard-faced gunmen flanking him. The girl stepped out to one side of the dwarf to have a better view of the stranger at the well.
    Prophet’s voice sounded hard and flat and strange even to him. “If it ain’t against the law, chargin’ for water in the desert, especially when you obviously don’t need the money, and especially when there ain’t no other water around, besides the muddy Rio Grande, outside of a two-day ride, it oughta be.”
    It wasn’t that Prophet couldn’t pay it. He had a fair-sized pouch of gold coins in his saddlebags. What galled him was the moral injustice of charging for drinking water in the desert. The little man might have had a hard life, being so small and ugly, but he obviously didn’t need the money. Not if the gaudy saloon was his, and something told Prophet it was.
    Chisos La Grange had dug the well and never charged a dime for anything but grub, tequila, and his half-dozen beds. Everyone from the Mexicans who lived in the shacks around his place to the bull and mule trains passing through on regular runs to and from Mexico drank for free.
    Just like they breathed the air. For free.
    The man standing before Prophet now was just a greedy little bastard who thought he could throw his proverbial weight around.
    The dwarf glanced over his shoulder at the men behind him, and jerked his head forward. He limped down off the steps, slung the flap of his clawhammer coat back behind the Colt Lightning holstered on his left hip, and stomped toward Prophet, his little boots pluming the dust around his hemmed trouser cuffs. The girl held back, her faintly delighted grin remaining on her red lips, arms crossed on her chest.
    The three obvious gunmen tramped leisurely down off the steps and followed the little man with the airs of overgrown attack dogs awaiting the command to kill.
    Prophet stood facing the group, his back to the well, head canted to one side, squinting against the red sunset bleeding in over the western mountains and the big hotel flanking the dwarf, the girl, and the dwarf’s lackeys.
    The dwarf shook his head sadly. “Mister, I sure am sorry it’s come to this, but . . .”
    Faster than Prophet thought the little man capable, the dwarf filled his fist with the short-barreled Colt. A hair faster, Prophet snapped his own Peacemaker from its holster and squeezed the trigger.
    The shot exploded the somnolent, late-afternoon silence, and the dwarf stopped in his tracks and gave an indignant scream as his hat went sailing off his head as Prophet’s slug caromed between two of the men flanking the little man to plow into a porch post behind them.
    All three gunmen stopped suddenly, dropping their hands to their holsters but apparently knowing instinctively that if they started to raise the weapons, it would be them stopping the next bullets and not the dwarf’s porch.
    â€œDrop it, mister,” Prophet snarled, glaring through his own wafting powder smoke as he aimed his Colt straight out from his right side at the satyr-like creature still holding the Lightning.
    The dwarf returned the glare, his pasty face mottled red with exasperation. His head was almost bald; only a few strands of dead-looking hair straggled across