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

by Peter Brandvold

  He went outside and led Mean and Ugly off to the corral. Back outside, rifle beside him, he sat on the porch and rolled a smoke. He was thinking of the long ride he had ahead of him through hostile territory, wishing he’d never run into the Russians in Denver. But then he thought of the countess’s bold gaze meeting his, and of her swelling bosom and flushed cheeks, and he felt a little better . . .

  Chapter Ten

  To Prophet’s relief, the night passed uneventfully. In the morning he and the Russians sat down to breakfast feeling relatively fresh.

  It had been nice not sleeping on the ground for a change, and Prophet suspected that, while she never would have admitted it, the countess had enjoyed a night away from the coach’s cramped quarters and lumpy leather seats. Fergus’s cots hadn’t been bad.

  The same did not go for his breakfast, however. The eggs were too runny, the biscuits were burned, and the venison sausage tasted gamy as week-old deer liver, as though the station manager had aged the carcass too long in the sun. Prophet didn’t say anything, however, and was happy that the Russians didn’t, either. They appeared to be acquiring the humbling art of humility, though they didn’t clean their plates — a transgression which would have made Prophet’s mama scowl.

  Just after sunrise Timmy and Jimmy harnessed the bays to the coach, and Prophet and the Russians were off, the fat coyote giving the coach’s wheels a parting bark and nip. Prophet waved at Riley Fergus standing on his dilapidated porch, then cantered ahead of the coach to scout the trail. He figured their attackers of the night before last had given up on them, but it never paid to let your guard down.

  In the coach Natasha Roskov rummaged around in several carpetbags until she found her silver cigarette case. Sitting back in her seat, she adjusted the pillow cushioning her back, opened the case, and removed one of the yellow French cigarettes she loved so well. Sticking the cigarette between her unpainted lips — what good did it do to wear face paint when dust covered it all, anyway? — she struck a match.

  Before she could touch the flame to the cigarette, an arm snaked out of the luggage boot behind her. She gave a start, dropping the match, which died. Before she could cry out, the hand slapped tightly over her mouth and jerked her head back brusquely against the seat.

  “Do you want to die, my lovely?” came a man’s low, breathy voice in her right ear. The hot breath smelled sour. Rolling her eyes around, heart pounding, neck aching, feeling as though she were suffocating, the countess saw the grinning visage of a savage-looking man wearing a black eye patch.

  “Do you?” he asked again, tightening his grip on her mouth and bringing a wide-bladed, blood-crusted knife to her throat. She squeezed her eyes closed and ground her teeth together as she felt the razor-sharp blade slice slowly into her neck.

  Prophet was on his second scouting trip of the morning when he swung left off the trail, keeping an eye skinned on the terrain around him while watching for horse tracks and other signs of recent riders.

  It was a stark, beautiful country they were traversing now, heading south through New Mexico on their way to Lordsburg. The rolling plain was covered with buffalo grass with occasional cedars and greasewood thickets dotting the swales. The benches were spiked with Spanish bayonet, or yucca. In the west rose the velvety slopes of the Chuska Mountains, their higher peaks stippled with cedars and pines.

  Prophet had visited this country several times, on quests for badmen and to escape the northern winters. Still, smelling the greasewood and tangy sage, and seeing this majestic landscape again swept with purple cloud shadows, his heart grew light. It was cold, though, with a bite to the piney breeze, and he raised the collar of his sheepskin and swung Mean and Ugly back north.

  Suddenly he stopped and stared downward. Fresh hoofprints pocked the sandy, sage-tufted ground.

  Frowning, lifting his head to scan the distance, then returning his eyes to the prints, he gigged Mean ahead, following the prints. They led into a shallow, rocky arroyo — a good place to get drygulched.

  Prophet was just releasing the thong over his .45’s hammer when two horseback riders rode out from behind a boulder. Prophet reined Mean to a halt and grabbed the butt of his revolver, but froze when one of the men said, “Unh-unh. Don’t do it, amigo. Less you wanna die quick.”

  He was a big, dark-skinned man with a helmet of tight, curly black hair lying close to his scalp, under a wide-brimmed, dust-colored hat pushed back off his forehead. His eyes were green. He was holding a side-hammered saddlegun in one hand, aimed at Prophet’s belly.

  The other man was somewhat smaller than the mulatto, with a wispy blond mustache and greasy, sandy hair spilling out from under his curl-brimmed hat. A white man, he wore a Mexican poncho, and two tied-down Colts with ivory grips. One of the Colts was in his hand, the polished gun-metal winking in the bright sun.

  Prophet raised his hands halfheartedly, squinting against the sun, which the men had been shifty enough to get behind them. Prophet didn’t say anything. Neither did the others for several seconds. Then the mulatto stretched a grin, flashing big teeth with a gap in the right side of his mouth.

  “My friend, Prophet. Don’t you remember me?”

  Prophet studied him.

  The mulatto, whose name Prophet remembered was Kevin Kimbreau, chuckled. “Oh, yeah, you remember.”

  “Remember what?” Kimbreau’s partner asked him.

  Kimbreau nodded at Prophet, his grin dying on his lips. “He run me down in a little roadhouse in Wyoming last year. Found me drunk after a night o’ whorin’. Slapped the shackles on me and took me to see the judge in Whitestone.”

  “They shoulda stretched your neck, Kevin,” Prophet said, canting his head so his hat brim blocked the sun, “for what you did to that poor schoolteacher and that kid.”

  “They were going to,” Kimbreau said, laughing. “Had the gallows all built and everything. Then I tunneled out. Killed a farmer and stole his horse.” He grinned crazily at Prophet, taunting him. “Cut his throat.”

  “That wasn’t nice.”

  “Look who’s talkin’ nice. You wasn’t nice, sneakin’ up on me like that, then punchin’ me after you had me shackled.”

  “You tried to make a run for it.”

  “I don’t cotton to bein’ punched, ‘specially by a stinkin’ Rebel.”

  Kimbreau’s friend said, “Just shoot the son of a bitch.”

  “Maybe he’d like to punch me,” Prophet said. “Is that it, Kevin? You wanna fight with fists?” Prophet smiled a challenge, buying time as well as an edge.

  “Sounds good to me,” Kimbreau said. He tossed his reins to the other man and slipped easily out of his saddle. “Make me feel real good to beat the holy hell out of you, Reb. Then I’m gonna go get me some o’ that Russian gal.” He lifted his carbine toward Prophet again and said, with all humor wrung from his flat-featured face, “Get off that there ugly horse and take off your gunbelt.”

  “Now, you can insult me all you want, Kevin, but it piss-burns me good when I hear my poor, defenseless horse slammed,” Prophet said, his wry tone belying his concern for the countess and Sergei. He had a feeling the other cutthroats in the gang had stopped the stage. “He can’t help how he looks.” With no quick movements, Prophet dismounted, dropped his reins, and unbuckled his cartridge belt.

  “Toss it over there,” Kimbreau ordered.

  Prophet tossed the cartridge belt with gun and bowie knife several feet to his right. “Now what about your own belt?” he asked Kimbreau.

  “You ain’t exactly in any position to set terms, are you?”

  Prophet shrugged regretfully and fashioned a lopsided grin. “I reckon not.”

  Kimbreau tossed his carbine to his partner, who smiled over the neck of his buckskin horse, enjoying the show. Leaving his cartridge belt on his hips, Kimbreau shucked off his hat and buffalo coat, and rolled up his shirtsleeves. Meanwhile, Prophet removed his own hat and coat.

  Kimbreau stepped forward and raised his mallet-sized fi
sts, grinning. “This is sure gonna be fun.”

  Prophet stepped forward and raised his own fists. He and the mulatto circled each other several times. Prophet jabbed the air, feinting, shuffling his feet and staring deep into Kimbreau’s eyes. The mulatto followed in a circle, feinting and jabbing, as though testing the air between them.

  Kimbreau grinned. “You gonna throw a punch or just dance?”

  “Well, I reckon,” Prophet said. He stepped toward the big mulatto, bringing his right arm back as if for a haymaker. He checked the swing, stopped, and lifted his right boot instead, bringing it up and forward with venom, soundly burying the toe in Kimbreau’s crotch.

  The mulatto bent forward, wailing and covering his crotch with his forearms.

  “Why, you — ” Kimbreau’s partner raged.

  “Sorry, Kevin, but I don’t have time for a fair fight,” Prophet said.

  Before the man could level his six-shooter, Prophet reached behind his head for the Arkansas toothpick he wore in a slender sheath down his back. He sent the wicked-looking weapon tumbling end over end until the rider’s chest impeded its flight, swallowing it right up to its leather-wrapped hilt.

  The rider dropped his Colt and grabbed at the toothpick with both hands, grunting and cursing and trying to dislodge the weapon from his breastbone.

  Meanwhile, Prophet swung his leg toward Kimbreau again, bringing the toe of his boot up savagely to the underside of Kimbreau’s chin. The raging mulatto flew backward with another deafening cry and hit the ground on his back. He lay there like a landed fish, his neck broken, kicking his feet and swiping a hand toward the six-shooter on his hip.

  Knowing he needed to hurry — the countess and Sergei were no doubt under attack by the other hardcases — Prophet stooped to grab his gun from his holster and shot the mulatto twice in the chest. He looked at Kimbreau’s partner, who still sat his buckskin horse stiffly, both hands wrapped around the handle of Prophet’s Arkansas toothpick, the poncho around the buried blade slick with gushing blood.

  The light was leaving the man’s eyes as his head fell slowly to his chest.

  “If you’ll excuse me,” Prophet said, reaching up and yanking the knife from the man’s chest, “I gotta run.”

  When he’d cleaned the blade on the man’s denim-clad thigh, Prophet ran to Mean and Ugly and mounted up. He galloped off, hearing the thud of Kimbreau’s partner hitting the ground.

  Prophet had just spurred Mean into a wind-splitting gallop when several pistol and rifle shots echoed in the north, back where the stage would be. The bounty hunter cursed and spurred Mean even faster, hoping he wouldn’t be too late to lend Sergei a hand.

  But then the shooting stopped, an eerie silence descended, and Prophet had a bad feeling. . . .

  He rode to the base of a stony ridge, swung down from the saddle, and shucked his Winchester ‘73. He scrambled up the ridge, using his hands to push himself up the steep incline, slipping several times in the shale. Near the top, he doffed his hat, then crawled to the ridge, easing a look over the lip and down the other side.

  He drew his lips back from his teeth when he saw the stage halted on the trail below, behind the four sweat-shiny bays. One man in trail garb stood around Sergei, who was on his knees, one hand extended for support. The Cossack’s bare head was tipped toward the ground. His free hand clutched his side, dark with blood, as was his right shoulder.

  Holding a rifle in the crook of his arm, the hardcase was smoking and grinning up at the stage roof, where another man was cutting the ropes securing the Russians’ luggage to the brass rails. Prophet couldn’t see the countess, but he heard her screaming in Russian from inside the coach, which rocked and shivered and caused the bays to look back at it, ears twitching. One of them whinnied.

  Sergei lifted his head and turned toward the coach. “Countess!” he shouted. The hardcase stepped toward him and casually swung his rifle butt against the Cossack’s head, laying Sergei out on his back.

  “You sons o’ bitches,” Prophet growled.

  He levered a round in the Winchester’s chamber, rested the barrel on the lip of the ridge, and planted a bead on the man nearest Sergei. He fired, and the bullet took the man through the back of his head, throwing him forward, limbs akimbo.

  The man atop the stage looked up, clawing at the revolver on his hip. Prophet squeezed the Winchester’s trigger. The man flew backward off the roof with a clipped shriek.

  The Winchester’s two reports echoed as one around the narrow canyon in which the stage was stopped. The echo finally died as Prophet hurried down the other side of the ridge, arms thrust out for balance.

  He realized someone was screaming.

  He’d just bottomed out on the canyon floor when a man burst through the stage door. He wore a patch over his right eye, and he clutched the other eye now with his hands. Blood was oozing from that eye and streaming down his face.

  “You whore!” he raged. “You blinded me, you whore!”

  He cursed and cried as he danced around blindly, clutching what had been his one good eye. Finally he stopped, clawed his revolver from his cross-draw holster and squeezed off two shots, swinging the gun around, trying to get his bearings.

  “You whore! You blinded me, you goddamn whore!”

  He was about to squeeze off a third shot when Prophet jacked a round, lifted the rifle to his cheek, and shot the man through the neck. The blinded hardcase flew off his feet and landed hard on his back. He gurgled and spat for several more seconds before his limbs relaxed and he gave a long, final sigh.

  Prophet heard the thorough braces groan, and turned to the stage. The countess stood crouched in the doorway, her torn basque covered in blood, her cheeks smeared. In her hand she held a small dagger. From the slender blade, blood strung to the ground.

  Seeing Sergei, she dropped the dagger, jumped to the ground, and ran to the Cossack who lay unconscious on his back.

  “Sergei!” she cried. “Oh, Sergei — please don’t die!”

  Chapter Eleven

  Prophet made sure all the attackers were dead, then hurried over to Sergei, who was conscious now and groaning painfully as the countess knelt beside him, squeezing his hand and begging him not to die.

  “Let me have a look,” Prophet said as he knelt across from the countess and inspected the Russian’s wounds.

  “How does it look?” Sergei asked, lifting his head to study the blood on his shirt.

  “I’ve seen worse,” Prophet said. “The one in the shoulder doesn’t look too bad; the bullet must have gone straight through. But there’s one down low here in your side. It’ll have to come out pronto.”

  The countess groaned, her face bleached with worry. Sergei squeezed her hand.

  “Come out?” Sergei blinked at Prophet, groggy but dubious. “What do you mean it will have to come out?”

  “Just what I said. Don’t worry, I’m no sawbones, but I’ve mixed lead before.”

  He told the countess to gather wood and build a fire. “I’m going to get my horse.” He had a good surgical knife in his saddlebags, plus a bottle of whiskey.

  “The countess does not build fires,” Sergei objected as Prophet stood and started up the ridge for his horse.

  “Oh, Serge, shut up!” the countess retorted, worry quaking her voice. “I can build a fire as well as any Cossack!”

  In spite of the circumstances, Prophet grinned as he climbed the ridge, slipping and clawing at sage tufts.

  When he’d led Mean and Ugly to the canyon floor, the countess had a small fire burning not far from Sergei, whose head now rested on a red satin pillow the countess had apparently retrieved from the coach. Prophet didn’t like the Cossack’s pale features and dilated pupils — he’d obviously lost a lot of blood and was probably in shock — but Sergei managed some wrath.

  “Russian royalty does not build camp-fires!”

  “Out here everyone is equal,” Prophet said as he knelt down by the fire and spread out his possibles bag. “That’s
what I like about the frontier.”

  The countess fed a slender branch to the growing flame she’d coaxed to life using pine cones and dead grass. “I am not as spoiled as you have tried to spoil me, Serge,” she said, lifting her long straight nose as she babied the guttering fire.

  Prophet smiled thinly as he knelt beside the Cossack and produced a slender skinning knife from an oiled leather sheath that bore a small silver disk in which the Southern cross had been engraved. The sheath had been with him since the war. He swept the blade through the fire several times, then offered Sergei a bottle and a chunk of rawhide.

  “There you go, Serge. Take you a few drinks of that busthead there, and bite down on that leather when I start cuttin’.”

  “What does the leather do?” the countess asked, moving near to inspect the procedure.

  “It will keep me from shattering my teeth when I lock my jaws,” the Cossack growled. He grabbed Prophet’s forearm in his meaty fist and heaved up off his shoulders, giving the bounty hunter a sinister glare. “If I die, it will be your duty to protect the countess from any and all evils she may encounter on your precious frontier. Do you hear?”

  “I understand,” Prophet said with a solemn nod.

  “And keep your lusty frontiersman’s hands off of her!”

  Prophet nodded again, slipping the countess a furtive grin. “I’ll give it my best shot, ole hoss.”

  Releasing Prophet’s arm, the Cossack collapsed with a sigh and a groan. Panting, he said, “All right, cut away if you must.” He shuttled his gaze to the countess. “Do not worry, ma cherie. I am not going to leave you. I just wanted him to understand ... as a precaution.”

  The countess nodded, her face in her hands, her frightened eyes peering at Sergei through her fingers.

  Prophet cut the Cossack’s shirt away from the wound.

  “You ready, Russian?” he asked, his knife poised above the bloody wound from which dark blood bubbled.

  Sergei bit down on the leather and tipped his head back. He gave the countess a comforting wink and said tightly, “Yes, American, I am ready.”