Prophet probed the wound with his knife and fingers. Sweat popped out on Sergei’s forehead. The Cossack grunted and cursed while biting down on the leather. The countess held his head in her hands, watching with a strained expression as Prophet poked around in Sergei’s side, feeling for the slug.
Finally he felt his knife tip nick something solid that did not feel like bone. Wincing, he worked his right index finger and knife point around it, and pulled. He lost it, retrieved it, and carefully slid the bullet out the entrance hole.
“Got it.”
Sergei lifted his head and gazed blearily at the bloody bullet in Prophet’s fingers. He nodded. “So you did. And without killing me. Surprising . . .”
The Russian’s lids slid down over his eyes, and his muscles relaxed. He passed out, his face and hair drenched with sweat.
“That’s gratitude for you,” Prophet groused, flipping the bullet into the brush.
“It is over?” the countess asked.
“My part’s about done, anyway,” Prophet said, threading a needle from his sewing pouch. “I reckon he’ll be out for a while. That bullet was damn deep. We’ll stay here for a time, give him time to rest.”
The countess peered into the unconscious Sergei’s passive, sweat-beaded face. “Will he live?” she asked softly.
“Hard to tell. I’ll know better in a few hours.”
“You have done this before.”
“A few times, during the war. There weren’t many surgeons on our side. If you wanted your friends to live, you had to doctor them yourself.”
“Thank you for saving Sergei,” the countess said, turning her moist brown eyes on Prophet and wrapping her trembling fingers around his arm. “I do not know what I would do without him.” Her previous snobbery was gone. In its place was humility and genuine gratitude. Prophet thought it looked good on her.
“I haven’t saved him yet,” he said. With a reassuring smile, he added, “But I’ll do everything I can.”
Prophet moved the stage off the main trail. He hid it behind rocks up the canyon, near a runout spring, and picketed the bays there, as well.
He hadn’t wanted to move Sergei before, but now that his wounds were tightly stitched and wrapped, Prophet rigged a travois using rawhide straps and canvas. He eased the Russian off the trail, into a pocket of shrubs and deep grass surrounded by boulders. There he made a soft bed of pine boughs and grass, and the countess covered the Cossack with a heavy blanket from the coach.
Prophet considered returning to the stage station, only a few miles away, but nixed the idea. He doubted Sergei could ride even that far. Besides, the Cossack would be nearly as comfortable in the coach as on one of Fergus’s cots.
Prophet buried the dead hardcases in shallow graves, well away from the campsite. His next chore was to picket Mean and Ugly near the bays, though far enough away that Mean couldn’t pick any fights.
By the time the sun had started falling, Prophet and the countess had settled in to wait for Sergei’s fever to break. Prophet didn’t dare move him far until he’d recovered some strength and had made up for his blood loss.
“What happened?” Prophet asked the countess as he washed from a wood basin near the fire. It was the first time he’d mentioned the attack directly.
She was sitting beside Sergei, whose head was resting on the red pillow. She’d drawn a blanket around her shoulders. There was a forlorn, worried cast to her staring eyes.
Slowly she said, “One of the men was in the coach. In the luggage boot. He held a knife to my neck and made me order Sergei to stop. When the coach stopped, Sergei climbed down to see what was wrong, and two of the riders shot him as they rode out from the rocks along the trail. Then the other man, the one-eyed man, took me back into the coach . . .” Her jaws grew taut and her face flushed with anger as she remembered. “They didn’t give Sergei a chance.”
“No, they wouldn’t have.” Prophet told her about the other two who had followed him away from the stage. “They wanted to separate us.”
“They must have wanted us pretty badly, no?”
Prophet nodded.
He saw no reason to add that it had been her they’d wanted, specifically, as well as any valuables she was carrying. He figured she knew that much, and that a rig like this, carrying only two people and half a ton of steamer trunks, was bound to draw attention. No use getting fresh about it again. It was her way, however asinine to him. He hadn’t had to take the job, but now that he had, he couldn’t quit. Finishing jobs he started, the circumstances be damned, was his way.
“Are you . . . okay?” he asked her timidly.
“He did not rape me,” she told Prophet, gazing at him with candor. “But he would have if you had not shown up when you did. And Sergei would be dead. . . .”
Prophet toweled his face dry and donned his hat. “I’m just sorry I didn’t check the stage out before you boarded. I should have been expecting something like that.”
“You can’t think of everything, Mr. Prophet.” It was the first time he’d seen what passed for a smile on her face in hours. “You are a good man to have around, as they say, in a fight.”
Prophet grunted self-deprecatingly and poured a cup of coffee.
They sat around the fire for the rest of the night, the countess swabbing Sergei’s sweat-burning face with a wet cloth, Prophet changing the bloody dressings every few hours.
They were sitting there the next night and the next night, too.
Finally the Cossack drifted back to consciousness the following morning, looking sheepish about how long he’d slept and asking for food. The Russian’s appetite was a good sign, Prophet figured, and the countess fed him several spoonfuls of oatmeal, which he promptly vomited and then apologized for vomiting.
“Don’t be silly, Serge,” the countess said.
“A Cossack doesn’t vomit in the presence of women,” Sergei growled.
“What’s wrong with that?” Prophet said, trying to lighten the mood. “American bounty hunters do it all the time.”
They let the Russian doze the rest of the day. The next morning Prophet decided Sergei was ready to ride in the coach, on the countess’s bed. After dousing the breakfast fire and situating Sergei in the coach. Prophet tied Mean to the luggage boot and climbed into the driver’s box.
“You know how to drive this thing, Lou?” Sergei called up from inside the coach.
“Well, if it was a six-mule team, I might have a problem,” Prophet called back. “But since it’s just these four bays, I reckon I can keep us on the trail. Hold on. You ready, Countess?”
“Ready, Mr. Prophet.”
“Lou.”
“Pardon?”
“Thought we agreed to first names?” Prophet released the brake and turned the bays onto the trail.
“Oh, yes,” the countess called. “Lou.”
“When did you agree to first names?” Sergei asked suspiciously.
“Never mind, Russian,” Prophet said.
He grinned and clucked the bays into a trot.
Slowly the coach wound its way south through New Mexico, avoiding the major mountain ranges. Just as slowly, Sergei regained his strength, until he was finally able to sit up.
That night he insisted he sleep on the ground, vacating the coach for the countess. Prophet figured that sleeping in the coach while a woman slept outside was just too much for the Cossack’s pride to bear any longer.
Several days later, near the Arizona border, they stopped for the night in the yard of an adobe trading post run by a fat Mexican and his two buxom daughters, Nedra and Paulina. The man, whose name was Juan Santos, was a sloppy, good-natured gent who welcomed the company to his lonely outpost by roasting a whole javelina over an outdoor fire.
The daughters were pretty and smoky-eyed if a little heavy in the hips. Paulina hovered around Sergei during the meal, which they ate at a rough-hewn table near the fire. The girl was obviously enamored of the big Cossack, whose accent and military bearing sh
e found amusing.
Several times she asked Sergei if she could caress his goatee, for she’d never seen one so thick and black and neatly trimmed. While Prophet had seen the Cossack appraising the girl lustily, he denied her request, flushing with embarrassment.
“If you want to sleep with one of my daughters, or even both,” Juan Santos told the Cossack as he sipped from his wineglass, “it will cost you only one dollar for the oldest, Paulina, and two dollars for Nedra.”
Prophet and the countess glanced at Sergei. The countess arched her eyebrows. Prophet grinned and nudged the Cossack with an elbow.
Formal as always, Sergei cleared his throat and lowered his eyes to his plate. “Uh . . . no. I thank you, sir.”
Across the table the girls squealed with laughter.
Later that night, drunk on the Mexican’s wine. Prophet and Sergei sacked out in the adobe barn while the countess made her bed, as usual, in the coach. Prophet had just drifted off to sleep despite the bleating goats, when he heard rustling near him in the stall which he and the Cossack shared. Moonlight slanted through the crumbling adobe walls, revealing the Cossack bent over and quietly stepping into his boots.
A few seconds later Sergei donned his hat, went to the barn’s main door, opened it quietly, and stepped out. He closed the door softly behind him.
Prophet bit his cheeky curious. Where in the hell was the Russian off to? He wouldn’t have needed his boots and hat just to relieve himself.
His curiosity getting the best of him, as well as his suspicions. Prophet went to the door and cracked it. Sergei was walking toward the trading post huddled in the moonlight, the milky light reflecting off the brush arbor out front. Nearby, the cook fire sputtered and sighed as it died.
Sergei mounted the porch steps and slipped furtively into the cabin.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” Prophet said through a grin. “He’s going after that pretty Mex girl. Or both of ‘em.” Prophet’s grin widened as he stared at the dark trading post and shook his head. “That Russian dog.”
Then a thought occurred to him. He turned his gaze right, where the coach sat before the brush corral in which their horses as well as several of Santos’s cayuses milled. The stage was dark, which meant the countess had finished her nightly reading and gone to bed.
Prophet grabbed his hat from the stall and dressed in his jeans. Bare-chested and -footed, he left the barn and headed for the coach, avoiding the chicken and goat dung littering the hay-strewn yard.
He tapped on the coach door.
No answer.
He tapped harder. “Countess?”
Rustling sounded within; the thorough-braces squawked as the coach rocked slightly. “What is it? Who is there?”
“The tooth fairy.”
“Lou? What do you want?”
“Same thing you want.”
Prophet opened the door and climbed into the coach. He pulled the door closed behind him. Then he turned to where he could vaguely see the dark shape of the countess reclining on her bed heaped with tasseled pillows and gold-trimmed blankets.
He sat on the edge of the bed and began removing his jeans, an awkward maneuver in such close quarters.
“What are you . . . what are you doing?” the countess asked with quiet bewilderment.
“I’m about to give you what you been wantin’ and I been needin’,” Prophet said with a grunt as he finally got his left leg free of the jeans. He turned to the countess. “Slide over.”
“You are drunk.”
“I been drunker. Slide over.”
She didn’t say anything for several seconds. Then she whispered, “Where is Sergei?”
“In the trading post.”
“What?” It sounded like she was smiling.
“He went to visit those Mexican gals, I reckon. I think we’ll be safe for a little while.”
“Lou Prophet, what makes you think you can barge your way into a lady’s boudoir and order her to make love with you?”
“The way you’re lookin’ at me now,” he said, standing nude before the bed. He grinned. His eyes had adjusted to the darkness inside the coach, and he saw her smile.
“You could take off your hat,” she said, throwing the blanket back and sliding over a few inches.
Prophet tossed his hat away with a quiet victory whoop and crawled into the bed. He wasted no time peeling the straps of her nightgown down her shoulders, planting his lips on her round breasts, and kissing the stiffening nipples hungrily.
She stifled a scream, throwing her head back, shivering beneath his touch, rubbing her hands brusquely through his hair.
He massaged and kissed her breasts and ran his tongue down her legs, pausing to explore her nooks and crannies, taking his time. When she fairly growled with passion and kicked the nightgown away, he mounted her and nuzzled her neck. She clutched at his back with her arms and legs and groaned as he entered her, mumbling something he thought was Russian though he wasn’t paying much attention to anything but their ravenous coupling.
This was a hungry woman — a Russian thoroughbred — who hadn’t had a man in a long time. As the thorough braces rocked beneath him, he had a feeling he wouldn’t be leaving the coach anytime soon . . . and that didn’t bother him a bit.
The next couple of hours passed as if in a heady, erotic dream. Then he slept like the dead, the countess’s long, sweaty limbs entwined with his.
When he opened his eyes, it was still dark. He heard the thorough braces creak and realized what had awakened him. The countess was kneeling before the window facing the trading post, peering through the half-raised shade. Her hair fell down her slender back.
He was reaching out to run his fingers lightly down her spine to her buttocks, when she turned her head sharply toward him.
“Sergei,” she said, her whisper shrill with alarm. “He is coming!”
“Huh?” Prophet said, blinking groggily as he gently massaged her smoothly curving hip. “So?”
“Please, Lou — you must go!”
“Hey, we’re all grown-ups here, ain’t we?”
“No, you do not understand,” she said, tugging on his arm. “My mother made Sergei promise to keep me chaste until I married. He must kill any man who dishonors me!”
“Oh, shit.” What was it with Russians and honor? Prophet jumped up, grabbed his clothes, and scrambled out the door. Keeping the coach between himself and the trading post, he ran through the corral and entered the barn through the rear door.
The startled goats bleated and kicked their stalls as Prophet jogged, wearing only his hat and clutching his jeans in his arms, to the stall containing his bedroll.
Outside, Sergei glanced at the stage, dark under a milky sheen of moonlight on its roof. The countess slept peacefully. Sergei smiled. In spite of the ache of his healing bullet wound, aggravated by the rambunctious Mexican girls, he felt not only content but fulfilled. The images of the two lovely senoritas danced in his head as they had danced over and under him for the past two hours — all breasts and hair and legs and lips — while Juan Carlos snored in his lean-to room off the kitchen.
The Cossack had always thought the women of his own blood were the most bewitching lovers, but he didn’t mind giving credit where credit was due. A Mexican girl could, as they said out here in the West, “haul his ashes” anytime.
He paused to scrutinize the coach, remembering that, in his desire, he had left the countess and Lou Prophet unattended. Shame pricked at the Cossack. Who knows what the American bounty hunter might have tried in his absence. Remembering the oath he had sworn to the countess’s mother, he listened for telltale noises within the coach. Hearing nothing, he strode quickly to the barn. If Prophet was not in the barn, where Sergei had left him . . .
Jaws clenched tightly and his blood hammering in his temples, Sergei placed one hand on his dagger and made for the barn. Quietly he tripped the leather latch on the barn door, and stole inside. Just as quietly, he closed the door behind him. Blindly he fumbled
through the darkness until he’d found the stall where he and the bounty hunter had bedded down.
He stopped and listened. His chest lightened when he heard Prophet’s raspy breathing and low, muffled snores. He heaved a silent sigh of relief.
He was kicking out of his boots when Prophet’s snores ceased. “Sergei?”
The Cossack muttered a Russian curse. He’d hoped the bounty hunter wouldn’t wake up and discover Serge’s shameful tryst with the Mexican girls. “Yes ... it is only I.”
“What are you doin’ up at this hour?” Prophet asked.
The Russian’s heart quickened with embarrassment. His mind raced for an excuse. “I was just — how do you always say? — ‘shaking the dew from my lily.’ “
“Oh, I see,” Prophet said, rolling over on his blanket. Grinning, he added under his breath, “I bet it was one hell of a shake.”
Chapter Twelve
Young Marya Roskov awoke with a start as her bedroom door flew open. Opening her eyes, blinking sleepily, she saw him standing there in the open doorway, wearing nothing.
Morning light washing through the room’s two windows set deep in the adobe wall revealed him in all his repugnance and horror — a tall, long-boned man with a bulging paunch. The top of his head was nearly bald, but the stringy, cloud-white hair on the sides hung to his shoulders. His heavy lids flapped over his eyes. He stepped into the room and closed the door.
“I’m back. Did you miss me?”
“Why would you ever doubt it?” she said, with enough playfulness to keep from raising his ire, but with enough scorn to tell him how she really felt.
He threw the covers back, revealing her in a silky lace gown he’d bought her in Broken Knee. His eyes raked her young, firm body, and she gave a shudder of revulsion.
“I met a man who plans to run for Territorial governor in the next election. He’s investing in the mine and going to open a general mercantile in Broken Knee. Soon I will be the richest man in the Southwest.” He crawled onto the bed, snuggled against her, stroked her tawny hair, and kissed her very gently on the lips.
Staring Down the Devil (A Lou Prophet Western #5) Page 9