Staring Down the Devil (A Lou Prophet Western #5)

by Peter Brandvold

  “Guilty as charged, ma’am,” Prophet said, openly embarrassed. “I wrastled a bear. But it was my first one, so that should count for something.”

  The woman frowned. “What happened to your nose?”

  “He bit me.”

  “That doesn’t sound fair,” Sergei said with a trace of irony in his voice.

  “That’s what I said. So I kicked the bastard in the —” Prophet stopped and looked at the woman. “Anyway, they kicked

  me out.”

  Tossing a disdainful glance back at the Slap & Tickle, where behind the two large, brightly lit windows a piano was pounding, men were yelling, and women were laughing, he added, “And they can all go to hell as far as I’m concerned. I’ll do my drinkin’ elsewhere. There’s other girls. Tillie Azure ain’t the only dove in Denver.”

  Regarding the two foreigners unsteadily, he asked, “Who’d you say you were again?”

  “I am Countess Natasha Roskov. This is Sergei Andreyevich. And you, I believe, need a bath.” Her intense blue eyes drifted down his muddy frame and back up again, acquiring a humorous light. “I believe I saw a bathhouse just down the street. . . .”

  Prophet looked down at his sopping, filthy clothes. The stench of manure nearly gagged him. “Yeah, I reckon I could at that. Problem is,” he added with chagrin, “I don’t have any money. Reckon I’ll just head down to Cherry Creek.”

  He gave the Russians a friendly nod. “Pleased to make your acquaintance, Sergei, Countess. . . .” Still disoriented from the beer and bruising, he turned away.

  “Uh, Mr. Prophet, the countess and I would be happy to treat you to a bath.”

  Prophet kept walking. “Thanks for the offer, but I don’t beg money off strangers. Besides, Cherry Creek ain’t that far. I’ve bathed there before; I reckon I can bathe there again. I’ll lick my wounds under the cottonwoods.”

  The countess followed him, her eyes wide with pleading. “But, Mr. Prophet, Mr. Senate sent us here to find you. He said you might be able to help us.”

  “Oh, yeah, I remember. Sorry. I’ve had a few drinks. Just pulled into town.” He grinned devilishly. “Like to kick up my heels a little, whenever I’m in town. Whenever I’m in any town, for that matter,” he added with an exaggerated laugh, throwing back his head.

  He regained his composure and gazed at the countess and Sergei with renewed curiosity. “So you know Dean, eh? What was it he thought I could help you with?”

  The countess smiled patiently. “What do you say we treat you to a bath, and then we will discuss it . . . over coffee?”

  “Coffee, eh?” Prophet thought it over, glancing once more with disdain at the Slap & Tickle. “Make it coffee and whiskey, and you got a deal.”

  “All right.” The countess brightened. “Coffee and whiskey it is.”

  “And we’ll call the bath a loan.”

  “If it pleases you . . .”

  “It pleases me.”

  “Right this way, then.”

  A boiler ticked and groaned at the rear of the bathhouse, on a large cast-iron range. Two of the five wooden washtubs were occupied by burly, red-faced men with fish-belly-white shoulders where their shirts had shielded the sun. The men were talking loudly, drunkenly, as they passed a bottle.

  Boldly, the countess led Prophet and Sergei into the room. The proprietor was hammering a leg on an overturned bench. He looked up at the countess with wary surprise in his washed-out eyes. “Y-yes, ma’am?” He glanced at Prophet and Sergei.

  An earsplitting whoop cut off her reply. “Come here, my sweet, and wash me back!” one of the bathers called to the countess.

  “Mine, too!” yelled the other. “Mine, too!”

  Both men guffawed. The countess ignored them, her nostrils flaring slightly.

  “This man needs a bath,” she told the proprietor sternly, indicating Prophet.

  Regarding Prophet, the proprietor raised his brows and tongued his cheek. “Well, I reckon he does. . . .”

  The countess opened her small beaded reticule. “How much do you charge?”

  “Four bits for four buckets.”

  The countess plucked several coins from the purse and dropped them into the man’s hand. “That should take care of it.”

  She had turned and was about to speak to Prophet when one of the Irishmen said, “Hey, get yourself over here, me little piglet. You haven’t washed me back yet!”

  The countess wheeled to the man, and in a tone of strained tolerance, she said, “I have no intention of washing your back, sir. Now, if you’ll please, I’ve business to attend.”

  One of the men turned to the other. “Hey, ain’t that a Dutch accent?”

  The other man shook his head. “Nah, sounds more like Polack to me, Pat.”

  “You know what they say about them Polack women, Joe.”

  “Ahhh, but I do, me friend. But I do!” Lifting his florid gaze to the countess, Pat dropped his hand between his legs and said with a lusty leer, “Come on over here, me little Polack. Me dong needs ascrubbin’!”

  Sergei, who had been regarding the men with the same strained tolerance as the countess, strolled casually over to the Irishmen, who watched him approach with a jovial cast to their eyes. Sergei stepped between the two round wooden tubs, crouched down, and hooked the index fingers of both hands.

  The Irishmen regarded each other, wary. Frowning, they leaned toward Sergei, each cocking an ear.

  The stocky Russian crouched between the two men, smiling, and then in a blur of movement, he grabbed each man by his neck and smacked their heads together with an audible crack.

  Pat and Joe were out like blown candles, sagging like rag dolls in their tubs.

  Sergei stood, casually flicked water from his coat, and strolled back to the countess, Prophet, and the bathhouse proprietor. The latter two had watched the proceedings with mute amazement. The proprietor’s jaw hung slack. The countess had acquired the expression of a vaguely amused spectator at an event staged for her entertainment.

  Now she turned to Prophet, continuing where she’d left off. “When you are finished here, Mr. Prophet, have a cab take you over to the Denver House Hotel. A room will be waiting for you there. Sergei and I will be in the saloon. I will leave money in the office here for your cab.” She turned to the bathhouse man. “Have his clothes cleaned, as well. I will send a clean suit over from the hotel.”

  She turned to her companion. “Let us depart, Sergei.”

  Prophet stared at the figures retreating through the steam. “Hey, wait a minute!” A vague indignation had swum up through the alcohol and body aches. It was one thing to buy him a bath and a whiskey, but a room in the poshest hotel in town? He was beginning to feel like a puppet.

  Sergei glanced back at Prophet, gave a funny little half smile, touched his hat brim, and followed the countess outside. The door closed behind them.

  “Hey, wait just a goddamn minute!” Prophet yelled again, but with less vehemence this time. The couple was gone. It was just the proprietor, the two unconscious Irishmen, and himself, sopping wet and stinking to high heaven, his vision blurry from too much beer and whiskey and an ill-fated fight with a drunk bear.

  And he’d spoiled his chance for a night with the prettiest dove in town. . . .

  “Goddamnit,” he groused under his breath.

  “Well, what do you say, mister?” the bath-house proprietor said. He’d limped over to the boiler and indicated one of the steaming copper kettles with a grin. “The Polacks are buyin’, and I’d say if anyone ever needed a bath, it was you.”

  “Yeah,” Prophet said. “But what’s it gonna cost me?”

  A quarter hour later Prophet climbed out of the tub.

  “These are the duds that Polack gal sent over,” the bathhouse manager told him. The man set the clothes on the bench and checked on the two Irishman still out cold in their tubs.

  When Prophet had toweled dry, he turned to the clothes — a charcoal suit of the same cut Sergei had been wearing. The
underwear and socks were silk. Prophet cursed. He hated suits. He could count the times he’d worn one on his left hand.

  As soon as he’d climbed into the underwear, he saw there were going to be problems, and things didn’t get any better until he was standing before the mirror, the coat and frilly puff-sleeved shirt stretched so taut across his frame that the gold buttons bulged, threatening to pop. The pants hung three inches above his ankles but sagged across his ass and through his hips. The bowler hat looked just as ridiculous, perched as it was atop his broad, sun-wizened face, two sizes too small.

  Only the shoes fit, soft as lamb’s skin.

  “Goddamn them to hell, anyway,” he groused in the mirror. The uppity foreigners were becoming sharper and sharper thorns in his side. He wanted to rip the ridiculous clothes off his back, but what else could he do? His own trail duds wouldn’t be washed and ready to wear again till morning, and he doubted the proprietor had any spares that would fit.

  “Listen,” he told the bathhouse man on his way out, “I want my duds shipped over to the Black Stallion Livery Barn as soon as they’re done, understand? Don’t tarry. Goin’ out at night like this is one thing, but I will not — repeat will not — be seen like this in daylight.”

  He frowned at the bathhouse proprietor, who was guffawing in his desk chair as he ran his eyes from the bowler down to the hemmed trouser cuffs riding Prophet’s shins, then back up to the ruffled shirt and jacket, the sleeves of which were practically gathered about the sunburned bounty hunter’s elbows.

  “Understand?” Prophet repeated.

  Shoulders jerking as he laughed, the man flicked his left hand in acknowledgment and bounced back in his chair, wheezing.

  “Glad ye think it’s so damn funny,” Prophet groused as he opened the door and stepped cautiously onto the boardwalk.

  He stayed back in the shadows against the bathhouse until a cab appeared. He waved it down and crawled in, keeping his hat over his eyes and slouching down in the seat.

  “The Denver House,” he called to the driver. “Pronto, for chrissakes!”

  Chapter Three

  The Countess Natasha Roskov and Sergei Andreyevich regarded Prophet bemusedly as he marched across the dining room, an indignant set to his jaw. He removed his hat and chucked it on the table.

  The countess arched her brow, a humorous light in her frosty blue eyes. “I didn’t realize how much taller you were than Sergei.”

  Sergei chuckled into his napkin.

  Ignoring them, Prophet pulled out a chair and dropped into it. “Just out of curiosity, you understand, what in the hell do you two want from me?”

  The countess had removed her cape to reveal a purple satin traveling dress with white stitching at the seams. The dress was buttoned all the way up to her throat and then some, and was secured at her long, aristocratic neck with an ivory brooch. “Would you like a drink? The liquor here is very good — for a frontier town.”

  “No, thanks.”

  She turned to Sergei. “Tell him, would you, Serg? It might sound better coming from you. Mr. Prophet is apparently aroused by women.”

  Prophet doubted that aroused was the word she’d meant to use. In spite of himself, he chuckled and turned to Sergei, who ran his thumb and index finger through his shiny, raven goatee and sipped his brandy.

  Setting the glass down before him, he entwined his stubby fingers around it and leaned over the table. “As I mentioned before, this is the Countess Roskov. I am Sergei Andreyevich, her manservant and bodyguard. We are from Russia originally but now reside in Boston. We have come west in search of the countess’s sister, Marya.”

  “We met your friend Mr. Senate in Kansas City,” the countess said. “He told us that you might be able to help us. He told us, in fact,” she added, with a trace of patronizing humor, “that if anyone could, it is you.” She glanced at Sergei, as if wondering if Senate had been off his rocker.

  “I’m a bounty hunter,” Prophet said, giving the cravat an irritated jerk. “I only go after people with bounties on their heads.”

  The countess studied him coolly. “Mr. Senate said that you would probably be in Denver in the early winter. We’ve been waiting for you for several weeks. I hope we have not waited in vain.”

  Prophet scowled. “You have. I’m a might later than I expected. How did you find me, anyway? Denver’s become a pretty big berg.”

  “We asked around at the — how do you say? — cathouses.” The countess’s expression was matter-of-fact, but the knobs of her cheeks flushed slightly. “A helpful young lady said that sooner or later we could find you at the house where she works or in the Slap & Tickle Saloon.”

  Prophet’s cheeks warmed with chagrin as the countess continued. “We just happened to check there after dinner this evening, and there you were, flying out the door.”

  A smile tugged at her lips, and she glanced at Sergei Andreyevich, whose hairy hands were still entwined around his glass. He had a ruggedly handsome face. The carefully trimmed goatee lent a formal, almost military touch. A humorous light shone in the broad Russian’s lustrous brown gaze.

  “Mr. Senate described you perfectly,” the countess said, a note of admiration tempering her amusement.

  Prophet finally removed the annoying cravat and tossed it on the table with the hat. “Sorry, I can’t help you.” He slid his chair back and stood.

  “Can’t?” she asked. “Or won’t?”

  “Both.”

  “Why?”

  “I told you, I’m a bounty hunter. If your sister don’t have legal paper on her, I won’t mess with it. Just simpler that way. I like things simple. I’ll leave the clothes at the Black Stallion Livery Barn in the morning. It’s by the Cherry Creek bridge.”

  Before he could turn away, the countess nodded at Sergei, who removed a fat, brown envelope from his jacket and set it on Prophet’s side of the table.

  “I can offer you one thousand dollars at this moment,” she said. “Another thousand when we’ve found Marya.”

  Prophet looked at the envelope. As much as he needed the money, he couldn’t do it. He didn’t work for people, only wanted dodgers. Life was just more livable that way. Besides, these people took too much for granted.

  “Sorry,” he said again. Leaving the hat and cravat on the table, he headed for the door.

  As he headed east toward the livery barn, he stopped in a tavern for a bottle. Back in the fresh night air, he dug the cork from the bottle with his pocketknife and drank, enjoying the burn of the whiskey in his throat.

  Two thousand dollars. Damn.

  He took another drink, corked the bottle, and continued walking east along Denver’s downtown flats. He was halfway down the block when a string of horses appeared, walking slowly around a closed leather goods shop, heads hanging with fatigue. At the head of the string was a short, longhaired hombre on a tall, black horse. All four horses behind him carried riders draped belly down across their saddles, their heads, arms, and feet jerking stiffly as the horses tramped through the mud.

  Prophet frowned at the man on the lead horse. In the darkness compromised by only the buttery glow from saloon windows, he couldn’t see the man’s face, but something about the man — the set of his narrow shoulders and the way his hands gripped the bridle reins, chin in the air — looked familiar.

  “Well, I’ll be goddamned,” Prophet said aloud to himself, his face cracking a grin. “That ain’t no man at all!” Stepping off the boardwalk as the rider approached, he yelled, “Hey, you there! Where the hell you think you’re goin’?”

  Faster than Prophet could blink, the rider brought her horse to a halt and clawed her six-gun from her holster. Thumbing back the hammer, she brought the revolver to bear on the bounty hunter, aiming down the bore with one eye squinted. “Wherever I please, sir, and what are you going to do about it?”

  Prophet lifted his hands and bottle above his head, and grinned. “Don’t shoot, Louisa. It’s Lou.”

  The girl frowned and leane
d forward, her blond hair falling across her shoulders. She wore a man’s flannel shirt, sheepskin vest, tight jeans, and plainsman hat thonged beneath her chin. They were a man’s clothes, all right, but the slender curves and high bosom were all woman. Or those of a well-built eighteen-year-old girl.

  She was close enough that Prophet could see her gazing at him, surprised. “Lou?”

  “In the flesh, little darlin’,” Prophet said with a chuckle, dropping his arms. “What in the hell brings you to Denver?”

  “Lou!” the girl cried, depressing the hammer of her six-gun and sliding the pistol back in her holster. “I didn’t recognize you in that suit.”

  Quickly she slipped out of her saddle, dropped her reins, and ran to Prophet, wrapping her arms around him and burying her face in his chest. Her hat slid off her head and hung down her back by the thong. “Oh, Lou, it is you!”

  Prophet hugged her. “Sure is good to see you again, girl. Yes, siree . . . mighty fine. I been worried ever since we split up back in Nebraska.” He looked at the horses strung out behind her black Morgan, all tied tail-to-tail. “But I guess I don’t have to ask you what you’ve been up to.”

  She pulled away from him and followed his gaze to the dead men on the horses. “That’s the Kelly Gang,” she said, her sonorous schoolgirl’s voice turning hard. “Or what’s left of them. They held up a stage near Cheyenne. They massacred all the passengers, including the father of five children and a mother of two. I tracked them to just north of Denver, caught them all bathing in Stony Butte Creek.”

  “They decided not to come peaceful, I take it.”

  Louisa Bonaventure, whom Prophet had once dubbed the Vengeance Queen on account of her quest for the gang that had murdered her family, shook her head. “I couldn’t convince them I was serious, in spite of the fact I had my Winchester on them and they were all standing naked as jaybirds in the water. They just laughed and went for the guns they’d left on the bank.” She shook her head as she regarded the dead men thoughtfully. “It was just like shooting ducks on a millpond.”