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

by Peter Brandvold

  “The door was not locked,” he said, standing there, holding the door open and observing the door as if it held the answer to his question.

  Marya turned to the window, where the man called Prophet and Sergei had disappeared. She could hear them scurrying down a trellis pole, making slight scuffing sounds, the wood of the pole creaking with their weight.

  To cover the noise, she said more loudly than normal, “You must have forgotten to lock it when you last went out. Too bad I didn’t know, or I would be gone. Is your friend still here? I have only just now finished my bath.”

  Gay turned to her angrily. “What’s taking so damn long? You should be dressed and ready by now.”

  Marya shrugged. “You know how women

  are. ...

  Out the window, a soft thud rose from below. Gay shuttled his frown to it. “What was that?”

  Marya’s heart leaped. She swallowed it down and fashioned a casual expression. “What was what?”

  Frowning, Gay moved slowly toward the window.

  “I didn’t hear anything,” Marya said.

  With an exaggerated movement, she cast her towel aside and turned to face him. He saw her in the corner of his vision, turned to her. Staring at her naked young body, the pert breasts standing out proudly from her chest, the frown slowly faded from his face, replaced by a vaguely lascivious grin.

  “Ah, you are a lovely specimen!” He stooped to nuzzle her right breast. Straightening, he added, “But don’t think it’s going to keep you from dying if you don’t give up your secret. Now, get dressed. You have five minutes to be downstairs!”

  He wheeled and marched out of the room.

  Marya heaved a relieved sigh, grabbed her towel, and hurried to the window. Looking out, she saw little but the wall and a few dead trees the Mexicans who had once lived here had planted in the cobbled courtyard. A guard was making his slow rounds beyond the wall. Sergei and the man called Prophet must have slipped away safely. From an open window below, she could hear the boisterous voices of Gay’s men playing cards in the dining room.

  She gazed once more across the yard, feeling all the more lonely for having seen Sergei and learning that her beloved sister Natasha was as near as Broken Knee . . .

  Prophet and Sergei were hunkered down behind the wall, under the spread limbs of a dead pecan tree, hidden from Marya’s window as well as the yard. They waited for the guard to make his way along the wall. When the man finally passed, strolling casually and smoking, his footfalls soft in the hard-packed dust. Prophet and the Cossack hurdled the wall and ran crouching across the yard. They were halfway to the corral when Prophet saw movement to their left, in the shadows before a long, low, adobe building he assumed was a bunkhouse. A wagon parked between the bunkhouse and the wall had hidden from view the two men who now appeared standing there casually conversing on the far side of the wagon.

  “Drop!” Prophet whispered.

  He and Sergei flung themselves down and shot looks out to their left. Prophet knew it was too late even before he heard: “Hey, who in the hell is that?” The man’s voice was rough and loud with incredulity.

  Prophet spat a curse. He didn’t have to say anything to Sergei. The Cossack knew the score. If they didn’t claw iron and trigger lead, they’d be dead in seconds.

  Simultaneously they raked their guns from their holsters, aimed from their prone positions, and opened up, cutting the two silhouetted figures down in a blaze of muzzle flashes and an acrid cloud of gun-smoke.

  Gay’s two men were down but still kicking when Prophet and Sergei bounded to their feet and ran like mustangs with cans tied to their tails.

  Prophet was running and breathing so hard he only vaguely heard voices rising behind him. Then came the gunfire, tentative at first. It quickly grew insistent, the bullets whistling in the air around Prophet and Sergei, plunking into the ground around their heels.

  They didn’t take the time to look for the trough they’d taken up the mountain. When they came to the shelf s lip, they bounded straight over the side, losing their footing, dropping and rolling, banging against boulders and tumbling over shrubs.

  Both men were on their feet again in seconds, ignoring the bruises incurred in the fall, still descending, knowing Gay’s long riders were in hot pursuit, hearing the pistol and rifle pops growing louder behind them. Prophet was inclined to stop and return fire but decided against it; his muzzle flashes would signal his position.

  He ran, leaping rocks, twisting around boulders, and bounding through brush. He heard Sergei about fifteen feet to his left, grunting and wheezing, breath raking in and out of his lungs, the Cossack’s boots pounding the ground. In several places, where the boulders were thick, they had to slow down and make their way carefully, but then they ran again, picking out obstacles in the starlight.

  Meanwhile, guns popped behind them, men cursed. Casting occasional glances over his shoulder. Prophet saw the muzzle flashes of the men descending the mountain, spread out to sweep as much ground as possible. Prophet and Sergei had the advantage of the darkness. Still, several shots came close, twanging off boulders, spraying Prophet with shards of gravel and dirt.

  By the time he and the Russian made the foot of the mountain, Prophet’s knees ached, and his feet screamed in his boots. Sleeving sweat from his brow, he paused for a two-second breather and saw that the Cossack did likewise, hands on his knees, blowing and puffing.

  “Come on,” Prophet said, his voice hoarse with exertion.

  He moved off to the left, pushing through greasewood bramble, traversing an arroyo, and finally hearing the startled whinny of Mean and Ugly.

  “No more joyous sound have I ever heard,” he said aloud, his chest on fire.

  He headed for the sound, Sergei following. When they found the horses tied where they’d left them, they toed their stirrups, clawed at their horns, and heaved their exhausted bodies into their saddles.

  Prophet looked back the way he’d come. The gunfire had silenced. Distant, muffled voices rose in anger and confusion.

  “Think we lost ‘em — for now,” he told the Cossack.

  “Yes, for now,” Sergei said, sucking a ragged breath. “I doubt we have time for tea, however.”

  “We can agree on that, at least, ole hoss.”

  Prophet reined Mean around and spurred him into a trot through the broken desert. When he and Sergei made the road, their horses bounded into a ground-eating gallop for a distant jog of hills.

  Knowing that Gay’s men might run them down if they headed directly for town, Prophet and Sergei stayed in the desert for three nights, camping in a different place each night and snaring rabbits for food.

  On the fourth day they made their way back to Broken Knee, avoiding the main road, approaching the livery barn from the rear. They stabled their horses with the Mexican, who laughed when Prophet told him they’d been hunting.

  “What’s so funny?” he asked.

  “Nothing, senor.”

  Prophet glanced at Sergei. They were both sunburned, sweaty, and caked with red desert dust. Prophet’s pulse pricked at his hands and feet. He wondered if somehow the hostler knew that he and Sergei had invaded the hacienda.

  “What is it?”

  The Mexican smiled knowingly. “You’ve been out looking for the Jesuit gold. That is okay — many men have looked for it.” Jorge Assante poked a mocking finger in the air. “But no one has ever found it.”

  Prophet exhaled a relieved breath. He decided to play dumb about the gold. “What Jesuit gold?”

  “You know the gold, senor. The Lost Morales Gold. The gold of many legends. Some men believe, some don’t believe. I, myself, do not believe, but that does not mean it is not out there somewhere.”

  Assante wagged his grinning head as he continued rubbing grease into a cracked strip of dry harness leather.

  “It is none of my business what you do, senores,” he continued. “But beware. If Gay finds you out there, it will go badly for you.”

&nb
sp; “Oh? Why’s that?” Prophet asked, sliding a furtive glance at Sergei.

  “Because he is one of the believers. He wants the treasure for himself, you see.” Assante shook his head again and held Prophet with a dark, admonishing gaze. “And if he does not get it, then no one gets it. No, no — it is best you stay out of the mountains. If I were you, I would go farther south and look for treasure. There is said to be much gold in Mejico.”

  “Thanks for the advice,” Prophet said. “Grain ‘em good, will you?”

  “Si, senor.”

  On the way to the hotel, keeping an eye out for Gay’s men, Sergei said, “The treasure Marya was after.”

  “Yep.” Prophet sleeved sweat-mud from his brow. “I reckon she and her ole friend Bert didn’t know what kind of a ring-tailed varmint they’d be tussling with, when they rode into this country looking for their el Dorado.”

  “Do you believe the gold is really there, Lou?”

  “Hell, I don’t know,” Prophet said. “To tell you the truth, I don’t really care. I just want to get the countess’s sister off that mountain so I can wash my hands of all of you, including Leamon Gay, and head on down to Mejico for a fandango with the

  senoritas.”

  They found the countess anxiously waiting for them in her room, where she’d obviously been doing little but smoking, reading, and drinking coffee for the past two days while she worried. Her room was a mess and her features were drawn.

  When Prophet and Sergei had filled her in on what had happened at Gay’s hacienda, and why they’d been gone so long, Prophet left and found a bathhouse. Bathed, he returned to his hotel room and slept until he heard someone probing his door lock.

  He grabbed his Colt from the bedpost, thumbed back the hammer, and waited. The door opened, and the countess appeared, moving stealthily. Seeing the gun aimed at her, she said, “It is only I.”

  Prophet depressed the Colt’s hammer and returned the gun to its holster. “Where’d you get a key?”

  “The desk clerk.”

  Prophet smiled. “That was rather bold, wasn’t it?”

  “I told him it was for you, that you had lost yours.”

  His head resting in his hand, he watched as she stripped before him, tossing her clothes on the floor, then removed her barrette, letting her hair spill about her shoulders.

  She shook her head, tossing her hair down her back, and lay beside Prophet, who lay on the bed naked, for it was as hot as a shallow desert grave in the room, even with the two windows open. She smiled at him warmly and snuggled against him, curling her legs in his. Her skin shone umber in the slanting afternoon light, her body fine and long.

  She kissed him and buried her face in his chest. He caressed her back, nuzzling her neck. Absently she fondled his stiffening member.

  “Oh, Lou,” she said longingly, “how will you ever be able to bring Marya back to me?”

  “I’ve been wondering the same thing,” Prophet said as he softly kissed her shoulder. “But I think I know a way.”

  She jerked away from him and lifted her startled gaze to his. “What is it?”

  He told her.

  And then they made love.

  Leamon Gay’s canopied phaeton clattered up the mountain behind the black Thoroughbred, the canopy’s beaded tassels dancing this way and that. Four horseback riders surrounded the buggy, all holding shotguns or rifles.

  Leaning back on the reins, the driver pulled the phaeton up to the hacienda’s front patio shaded by a vast brush arbor. This late in the day the sprawling adobe structure with its protruding vega poles threw a bleak, vast shadow over the yard, in startling contrast to the rust-colored desert below the mountain.

  “We’re home, Mr. Gay,” the driver said, a big blond German in ratty, dusty clothes, and with a short-barreled shotgun sheathed on his hip.

  Behind him, the sleeping Gay stirred in the leather seats. He lifted his head and gazed around, smacking his lips. “Ah, yes, we are at that.”

  He looked around for his black slouch hat, which had fallen to the floor while he’d slept. It had been a long ride from Tucson, where he’d met yesterday with prospective investors in another mining operation. Finding the hat, he donned it, straightened his cravat, and stepped gracefully down from the buggy, the door of which had already been opened by one of the shotgun-wielding bodyguards who had accompanied him to Tucson.

  The guards accompanied him everywhere. The downside of being a wealthy man in this lawless land was that everyone and their brother had it out for you. And that wasn’t even taking the ferocious Apaches and Mexican bandidos into consideration.

  What he’d enjoyed most about being a simple bandit himself, in those long-ago days, was that you at least knew who your enemies were. These days he could never be sure — thus the need for guards everywhere he went.

  He was walking across the groomed gravel yard when the hacienda’s heavy front door opened and his first lieutenant, Brian Delgado, stepped out, clad in his customary bull hide vest and black gunbelt. Delgado was tall and narrow, like his employer. Unlike Gay, his belly was flat, his face and shoulders broad. His right eye wandered in its socket — a little reminder of Apache Pass.

  “Welcome back, jefe” he said, pensively twisting a waxed end of his full, black mustache.

  “Yeah, yeah,” Gay said, impatient. “How did the tracking go? Did you find them?” He was referring to the two men who had invaded — or had tried to invade — the hacienda three nights ago.

  He’d sent out a contingent of men to hunt them down, find out who they were, and then drag them through town as an example to anyone else who considered making an unannounced visit to the hacienda, and kill them.

  “Sorry, jefe.” Delgado threw his arms defeatedly.

  “You lost ‘em?”

  Delgado shook his head. “We tracked them into the Pasqualante Hills, and they lost us in a creek bed.”

  “They lost us in a creek bed.” Gay’s voice was dully mocking. His eyes bored into his lieutenant’s like fire-tipped daggers.

  Delgado stared back. His own eyes slitted slightly, wary. He swallowed. “Sorry, yefe.”

  “Sorry, yefe,” Gay mocked again.

  He stood staring at his lieutenant for a full fifteen seconds, the other men looking on, silently tense. Then Gay turned, throwing an arm over Delgado’s shoulders and leading the man out into the yard, away from the buggy upon which the driver still sat, slumped, the reins dangling in his hands. He watched Gay and Delgado with flat, knowing eyes, the corners of his mouth turned up slightly.

  “Delgado,” Gay said, stopping when they were about twenty feet from the buggy and in view of all the men in the yard, including those smoking under the bunkhouse arbor, “I made you my first lieutenant because I thought you would be effective.”

  Delgado’s eyes flickered. He swallowed, tried a smile, and let it go. Flies buzzed about his lips, but he ignored them. “Look, jefe, I can track a snake across a flat rock .. . usually. But, dios, you cannot expect . . . you cannot expect . . .”

  “No, I guess I can’t expect you to run down two men who tried invading my hacienda, can I? I see that now.” Gay’s arm was still draped across Delgado’s slumped shoulders. He turned his gaze around the yard, where his roughly dressed battalion of hardcases stared on — some frowning, some smiling, some just smoking and staring with mute interest.

  Delgado’s eyes dropped to Gay’s right hand, which had lowered to the crime boss’s pistol butt.

  “Now, hold on, jefe,” Delgado said, wrenching himself free of Gay’s right arm. “Just hold on. You can’t —”

  “Sorry, Brian,” Gay said, drawing the Colt from his holster.

  Delgado took several steps back. As he did, he clawed his own pistol from its holster. The gun had just cleared leather when Gay’s Colt barked, slinging a bullet through Delgado’s face, just under his left eye. The lieutenant gave a shriek and twisted around, falling to his hands and knees.

  Casually Gay stepped toward h
is lieutenant, lowered the pistol to the back of the man’s head, and drilled another bullet through his hat crown. Delgado jerked and slumped forward on his face, his hat tumbling away, knees curled beneath him, blood and brains trickling from the hole in the back of his head.

  A disgusted look on his skeletal face. Gay sheathed his pistol and swung a look around at his men. “You all saw that!” he yelled. “That’s how I deal with ineffective riders. Remember it.”

  He swung his gaze toward the bunkhouse, where a big-gutted man in greasy buckskins and with long salt-and-pepper hair stood smoking with two others. “Mackenna!” Gay yelled to the man. “Delgado’s job is now yours. Move your things into the house.”

  The man standing beside Coon Mackenna grinned and gave Mackenna a chiding elbow. “Just make sure you ain’t ineffective. Coon,” he jeered.

  Mackenna just stared grimly, his face flushing slightly, as Gay swung around and headed past the buggy, leaving Delgado a heaped, dead mass in the yard for all his men to consider.

  In the house Gay hurried up the winding stone stairs to the second story. Without knocking, he threw open the door to the girl’s room and stood there, puffing the stogie and grinning.

  “Ah, there you are.”

  She sat in an upholstered chair at a round table by the window, dressed in one of the pink gowns he’d ordered from New Orleans. She stared at him now, her face appearing drawn and weary.

  She tried a smile, but it didn’t touch those slanted eyes. “Here I am, right where you left me.”

  He took the stogie in his right hand, strolled over to her, and placed his hands on her naked shoulders. “How wonderful it is to have a woman awaiting my return from my tawdry business dealings.” He knelt like a royal suitor and lightly kissed her forehead. “I’ve never had a more beautiful woman than you. You are a treat, do you know that, Marya?”

  She smiled, trying her best to play along with his bizarre charade, his ludicrous pantomime, his mockery of genuine love-making. He fingered the arm strap of her gown, slowly jerking it down while he nuzzled her neck. “Decide to share your secret?”