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

by Peter Brandvold

  Prophet frowned. “Why’d you kill him?”

  “He attacked us.”

  “You might have tried to find out why and who the hell he was before you beefed him.”

  The Cossack stood, stuffing the man’s revolver behind his cartridge belt. Dully he looked at Prophet. “Why?”

  Not waiting for an answer, he walked back toward the coach. Watching him go, Prophet had to admit the Russian had a point. Still, it wouldn’t have hurt to try to find out how many were in the group and what exactly they were after.

  Prophet also had to admit that Sergei had sniffed out the trap before he had. Sergei may have dressed like a dude and exhibited a fetish for cleanliness, but the Russian was a warrior to ride the river with. That much was clear.

  Another revolver report shattered the stillness. Prophet snorted and shook his head. The Russian must have finished off the kid who’d ridden into the camp with Jones.

  “Law,” Prophet said, “that Russian’s colder’n the devil at Easter.”

  The bounty hunter walked over to the rocks where he’d hidden the countess. She stood before them now, looking around warily, her chestnut hair framing her pale face. She looked pretty and soft and vulnerable, the bounty hunter thought, his pang of lust coinciding with his memory of what had transpired between them less than an hour ago. She wasn’t nearly as upright and dour as she liked people to believe.

  “It’s all clear,” he told her now.

  “Who were those men?” she asked slowly, watching Sergei crouch down and go through the dead kid’s pockets.

  “I don’t know. Didn’t get a chance to find out,” Prophet said with an edge in his voice. “But I have to hand it to your bodyguard there. He sniffed out the trap before I did.”

  The countess gave Prophet a self-satisfied smile. “Sergei is a warrior as well as a gentleman,” she said meaningfully. “You see, one does not have to exclude the other.”

  “It was you pret’ near jumped down my pants awhile ago, Your Majesty,” Prophet said with a mocking chuckle. “Is that how ladies behave over there in Russia?”

  Cowed, the countess turned away and said softly, “It was a momentary lapse. I didn’t know what I was doing. I do hope, however, that you will forget it ever happened ... as a gentleman would.”

  “Sure, I’ll forget it,” Prophet added with a grin. “As long as you can.”

  She turned in a huff and made her way to the coach.

  After dousing the fire, Prophet and the Russian sat up the rest of the night. Sergei took a position in the trees across the creek, not far from the coach. Prophet sat near the crest of the northern ridge, where he had a good view of the surrounding terrain and would be able to spot any more attackers. He doubted the same group would try two raids in one night, but it never paid to let your guard down. Besides, the gunfire may have attracted Indians.

  He sat on his butt, rifle across his knees, just down from the ridge’s crest. Above him the stars winked and flickered, impossibly clear in the arid sky. Hat tipped back on his head, Prophet smoked and swept his gaze around, keeping the coal cupped in his palm, his ears alive to the slightest unnatural noise.

  What the owlhoots had wanted was obvious — money, valuables, and no doubt the countess. She would have been good for a few hours of fun out here where women were few and far between. She’d bring a nice price down in Mexico, too, where women were bought and sold like cattle.

  “Well, here’s where you earn your money, old son,” the bounty hunter told himself, taking a deep drag off the quirley.

  At first light Prophet built a small fire and boiled coffee. He and Sergei went over Prophet’s map of the Southwest, Prophet pointing out the trail he thought they should take — a trail that joined up with a stage road near the village of Limon, New Mexico.

  The countess appeared from the coach looking as fresh and haughty as always in spite of last night’s festivities. Prophet smiled at her over the rim of his coffee cup. She flushed and turned toward the creek.

  “Tell me,” Prophet said to Sergei. “What made you savvy the trap last night?” The bounty hunter’s pride was bruised.

  The Cossack smiled pridefully and shrugged, inflating his big chest. “I just had a sense, my friend Prophet,” he said, flicking dead ashes off his black cheroot. “Just a sense.”

  “A sense?” Prophet said, irritated. “That was it? You had a sense?”

  “Yes, I had sense. Besides, it is an old trick, no? The Tartars I fought tried such ruses all the time.”

  “Well, I sure am glad your sense proved to be right,” Prophet said wryly. “Otherwise, I reckon we’d be cold-blooded killers.”

  The Cossack apparently found this one of the funniest things he’d ever heard, for he threw his head back and guffawed loudly. Rising, he slapped Prophet’s back so hard that the bounty hunter nearly tumbled face first into the fire. Strolling off toward the horses, the Russian began singing merrily in his mother tongue.

  Prophet tossed his remaining coffee in the fire and saddled Mean and Ugly. “A sense,” he grumbled.

  A few minutes later they were on the trail, the sun rising over Prophet’s shoulder, extending rock and cactus shadows westward. The stage clattered behind him, the Cossack in the driver’s box urging the four matched bays up grades and around rim-rocks.

  Prophet thought ahead, to when he’d be rid of these loco royals and luxuriating in Phoenix or Tucson or Mexico, enjoying the sun-washed village plazas and buxom senoritas while waiting for the snow to melt up North.

  First he had to find the countess’s sister, which meant he had to find some town called Broken Knee. Since he’d never heard of the place and since the town wasn’t marked on his map, he’d have to ask around — when he found someone to ask, that was.

  “Have you seen anything of our attackers, Mr. Prophet?” the countess called out the stage window later that afternoon.

  Drifting back to ride even with the stage, Prophet was surprised. The countess hadn’t said two words to him since their embarrassing moment on the ridge. She seemed to have recovered from it now, however, for she regarded him directly out the window, squinting against the westering sun.

  “No, ma’am,” Prophet told her. “I’ve ridden ahead and lingered behind and made a big loop around the coach, and I haven’t seen so much as a dust plume. But that isn’t to say those long riders aren’t following us. I’m hoping they’ve decided we’re more trouble than we’re worth.”

  “Yes, it is better to be safe than sorry,” the countess Natasha said. “That is the expression, is it not, Mr. Prophet?”

  “That’s it, ma’am.”

  “What happened to your cheek?”

  “Bullet creased it last night. Just a scratch. Goes with my nose.”

  “Your nose is almost healed,” she said, smiling amusedly at the faint tooth marks. “But your cheek — it should be covered. You’ve gotten dust in it.”

  Prophet shrugged. “Like I said, it’s just a scratch.”

  “Tonight I’ll clean it for you.”

  “Better not, Countess,” Prophet said. “We get too close, I’m liable to get Sergei’s dagger in my hide.”

  She laughed, her face opening beautifully, her cheeks coloring. Her slanty eyes turned downright pretty. “He is a bit overprotective,” she said above the creaking wheels and squeaking leather thorough braces. “We were through a lot together, Serge and my family. On his deathbed, Father made Sergei promise to keep the family safe.”

  “I reckon you couldn’t be in safer hands,” Prophet allowed, remembering the Cossack’s quick, decisive action the night before.

  “Yes, though he does tend to get a bit . . . zealous, shall we say?”

  Prophet smiled. “I reckon he just wants to make sure you and your sister make it home safe, is all.”

  “Nevertheless — I will clean your cheek for you tonight.” She dropped her chin and smiled demurely. “But I promise not to embarrass myself further.”

  Prophet looked at her
, flushing. “That’s all right,” he said. “To be frank, you can throw yourself at me anytime you want . . . as long as he’s not watchin’,” Prophet added, tipping his head to indicate Sergei in the driver’s box, yelling at the horses as they climbed a grade.

  The countess lifted her slanted eyes to him again. Now her timidity was gone, replaced with a brassiness that turned Prophet’s middle to jelly. He noticed that her shirtwaist wasn’t buttoned up so high, revealing a spray of freckles angling down toward her cleavage.

  “I will take that under consideration,” she remarked.

  “That mean you’re not mad anymore?”

  “I am not mad,” she replied. “You were right, Mr. Prophet. The coach is an unforgivable luxury, especially when I should be making haste to reach Broken Knee to find Marya. I am afraid we Roskovs have a lot to learn about humility and practicality.”

  “Looks to me like you’re already learning,” Prophet said with a smile.

  The countess returned the smile, which grew thoughtful. “Do you think Marya is alive?”

  He looked off and pursed his lips, not sure what to say. Then he looked at her again and shrugged, trying not to look too grim. “I don’t rightly know, Countess.”

  She nodded slowly. “Call me Natasha.”

  “If you call me Lou.”

  With a parting grin and a pinch of his hat brim, he gigged Mean and Ugly past Sergei and the team. He scouted the trail ahead for half an hour, then rode back to the coach. Riding abreast of the big Russian smoking a black cheroot in the driver’s box, Prophet said, “There’s a stage stop ahead.”

  “A what? A stop?”

  “We’re on a stage road. Stage companies have lodges here and there along the road, where coaches can stop for the night and to switch teams. They call these lodges stops or way stations. We’ll stay there for the night, if the station agent will have us. It’ll be safer than the trail, and I’m sure the countess wouldn’t mind sleeping in a bed for a night.”

  “No, I am sure she would not,” the Cossack agreed. “To be honest, Mr. Prophet, I would not mind a bed myself. This old Russian has gotten spoiled since coming to your country.”

  “It’s settled, then.”

  Before Prophet could ride ahead, Sergei held up a hand to waylay him. “I feel I must remind you, my friend Lou, that the countess is . . . how do you say . . . ?”

  “Off limits?” Prophet asked with a tight smile.

  “Yes,” Sergei said, returning the smile as cold as a Russian winter. “Off limits.”

  “Isn’t that rather up to the countess?”

  “No,” was the Russian’s taut reply.

  “I see,” Prophet said. Heeling the dun into a lope, he added under his breath, “I just wonder if she does.”

  “How you doin’, Barstow?” Bobby St. John asked the wounded rider as he pushed off his hands into a sitting position. St. John had been drinking in Two-Boulder Creek, and now he adjusted his eye patch over the empty socket and loosened his bandanna.

  “My knee’s all shot to hell,” Barstow complained. “Look at me bleed! I’m like to bleed dry!”

  Barstow was a hefty lad with straight brown hair cut high around his scalp. His face was flushed and perspiring, his eyes bloodshot, from the pain of his bullet-shattered knee.

  “Just hold on, Bar,” Ned Jamison said. He was sitting with his back to a rock, cleaning his Winchester.

  Two other survivors of their failed attack last night sat nearby. “Squirrely” Jack Nye was tending a flesh wound in his arm, and the other man, the huge, green-eyed mulatto, Kevin Kimbreau, was drinking coffee and eating jerky.

  Counting Bobby St. John, a total of five men had survived the attack.

  “Hold on?” Barstow raged, wincing through his pain. “You hold on, damn your hide anyway! This hurts like hell. I need a doctor.”

  “We ain’t got no time for a doctor,” Bobby St. John said. “We got a job to do.”

  “Leave the damn coach!” Jamison said. “Can’t you see Barstow’s bleedin’ dry?”

  “Squirrely” Jack Nye, always cool as a November breeze, chuckled. “Hell, he’s gonna die, anyway. Why waste time gettin’ him to a sawbones? I’m with Bobby. I say we overtake that friggin’ coach. I ain’t passin’ up that much money, not to mention that much woman.”

  Nye looked around the group. The others looked back at him. St. John was grinning. In spite of his earlier sentiment to the contrary, Jamison appeared to be considering it. Like St. John, the olive-skinned Kevin Kimbreau had already made up his mind. He sipped his coffee and chewed his jerky, blinking dully at Nye.

  “No, goddamn you!” Barstow said. “You can’t leave me here to die! Ole Ed wouldn’t o’ left one o’ his boys to die!”

  “Champion’s dead,” St. John growled.

  “Yeah, he’s dead,” Kimbreau agreed.

  “Stupid asshole fouled up good and true,” St. John continued. “He an’ that damn kid. Liked to get us all kilt.”

  “Goddamn you sons o’ bitches!” Barstow raged. “You can’t do this to me. Me and Ed — we was the ones who started this group in the first place! You can’t leave me here to die!”

  Ignoring his friend Barstow, Jamison turned to St. John. “That Russian and that bounty hunter — they’re a tough tangle.

  “So you’re sayin’ we should let ‘em go? Nye asked accusingly.

  “Yes!” Barstow yelled.

  Ignoring the wounded man, Jamison shrugged his shoulders.

  “I say we get the Russian lady,” Kimbreau said. He grabbed his crotch and flashed his big, white teeth, his green eyes flashing.

  Barstow turned over on his side, grabbing his bleeding knee and panting. “You can’t leave me,” he intoned, his voice growing weaker.

  “All right, we won’t leave you,” St. John said. Casually, the one-eyed Texan removed his revolver from his holster and hefted it in his hand. He glanced at Nye, who smiled agreeably. Then St. John thumbed back the Remington’s hammer and extended the gun toward Barstow.

  “Jesus, Bobby,” Jamison cautioned.

  Barstow turned to St. John. Seeing the gun, his eyes widened and flashed with terror. “No! What are you doin’?”

  “Don’t worry, Bar,” St. John said. “We ain’t gonna leave ye here. Leastways, not alive. I’ll put a forty-five slug right between your eyes.”

  “Better move closer,” Kimbreau advised. “Might hit his other knee.” The mulatto grinned.

  Jamison turned his face away, wagging his head. “Jesus Christ . . .”

  “I can get him from here,” St. John said as Barstow slid clumsily away, digging the heel of his good foot into the sandy ground and holding his arms over his face. He screamed and pleaded for his life.

  “Put your goddamn hands down, Bar,” St. John urged. “I can’t get a clean shot with you waving your arms all over the damn place.”

  “Noooo!” cried Barstow.

  St. John aimed down the Remington’s barrel, his good eye hard as steel. Finally the gun jumped and barked. A neat round hole appeared in Barstow’s forehead, above his right eye. Barstow collapsed, dead.

  For several seconds silence hung heavy over the group as each man studied the dead Barstow, blood trickling from the neat hole a half inch above his half-open eye.

  “Didn’t get him between the eyes,” Nye said. “Got him above the right eye.”

  “Yeah, you did, Bobby,” Kimbreau agreed.

  “He shut up, didn’t he?” St. John growled, flipping the loading gate open and replacing the spent shell. “Get off your lazy asses,” he ordered. “We got a coach to run down.”

  Chapter Nine

  Prophet rode up to the stage station at nearly six-thirty that evening. Behind him clattered the stage coated with seeds and gray dust, the equally dust-coated Cossack smoking his cheroot in the driver’s box.

  As Prophet was climbing out of the saddle, a portly, gray-haired gent stepped from the cabin onto the rickety porch. He had large, rheumy eyes and a kno
b-shaped, pockmarked nose. He carried a double-barreled greener down low at his side.

  To Prophet’s left, the barn was quiet, its doors closed. From the log shed beside the barn rose the tinny barks of a blacksmith’s hammer. Sooty black smoke poured from the shed’s tin stovepipe, flattening out against the roof. In the corral directly across the trail from the cabin, a half-dozen horses hung their heads over the top rail and twitched their ears at the strangers.

  “Evenin’,” Prophet said to the man.

  The portly gent was giving the stage the twice-over. “Ellison-Daniels Stage and Express Company?” he read, scowling.

  “Private coach,” Prophet said. “We were wondering if we might impose on you for the night.”

  “Whose coach?”

  “The Countess Natasha Roskov,” Sergei said from the driver’s box, reins hanging loose in his gloved hands. His sunburned face was clay-colored by dust, as was his hat, a tan plainsman to which he’d switched when the weather got warmer.

  “Countess?” the old man said, wrinkling one nostril. “What in hell’s a countess?”

  “A Russian noblewoman,” Prophet answered for Sergei, just to keep things simple. “This is Sergei, uh —”

  “Andreyevich,” Sergei answered for Prophet, who had not yet mastered the pronunciation of the Cossack’s last name. “I am the countess’s assistant.”

  Prophet said, “We’ve all been on the trail for over a week and sure could use a bed and some table food.”

  The old man gave Sergei a slow, suspicious appraisal, then slid his eyes back to Prophet, studying the bounty hunter cautiously. “Who in the hell are you? You don’t look like no Russian. Why you ridin’ with them?”

  “I’m their guide,” Prophet said. “I’m friendly enough. Lou Prophet’s my handle. If we can stay, say so, Mr. uh —”

  “Fergus.”

  “Mr. Fergus. If no, we’ll fog it on down the trail.”

  The man studied the coach, Sergei, and Prophet once more, twitching his bulb nose. He shrugged. “I reckon it’d be all right,” the man grumbled. “I don’t have another coach due for two days. I have five cots in the cabin and a couple more in the barn.”