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

by Peter Brandvold

  “Yes.”

  He jerked his head up, blinking, surprised. “What?”

  “You heard me.”

  Skirts rustling, she stood and walked to the carved bureau with its vast, ornate mirror, opened a drawer, and removed a sheet of heavy parchment. “I drew the map from memory. It’s all yours. Remember, you promised to let me go when you found the

  treasure.”

  He took the paper and studied it. “I hope you have a good memory,” he said, all vestiges of his playacting gone, his voice teeming with menace. He snapped his head toward the open door behind him. “Benton!”

  After a moment the craggy-faced rider named Liam Benton appeared. He was Gay’s personal secretary of sorts, the oldest man on his roll.

  “Have McKenna take a company of men and follow the map to the X, then report back to me pronto.”

  “You got it, Mr. Gay.” The aging secretary, who had once done time for child molesting, nodded dutifully and accepted the map from Gay.

  The secretary was heading back through the door when Gay said suddenly, “Wait! Give that back to me.”

  Frowning, Benton returned the map to his employer.

  “Thanks — you can go.”

  “Yes, sir.” Warily Liam turned and disappeared down the hall.

  Marya watched Gay with an expression similar to that of the old secretary. Then she realized the problem.

  “What’s the matter?” she asked, barely able to conceal her delight at Gay’s apprehension. “You do not trust your own men?”

  Gay’s horsey, effeminate features betrayed mild embarrassment. “I’m going after it myself, in good time. Or, I should say, we are — you and me. I didn’t get to where I am today by being heedless of men’s basic natures — the first and foremost of which is greed.” He laid the map on the table, then turned to her, standing by the bureau, regarding him with ill-concealed disdain, arms crossed over her breasts as though she’d turned suddenly cold.

  He grinned and yanked off his cravat, tossed it aside, and began unbuttoning his shirt. “The second of which is lust.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Prophet and Sergei studied the town for three days, noting the comings and goings of the town’s main benefactor, Leamon Gay, who never appeared to go anywhere without a contingent of armed guards. While bathing in Metticord’s Tonsorial Parlor, Prophet learned from one of the town’s business proprietors that Gay gambled in a small room at the back of his saloon every Tuesday and Thursday nights.

  “You don’t say,” Prophet said, feigning only mild interest.

  “And this time, by god,” the proprietor exclaimed, bathing in the tub a few feet from Prophet, “I’m not going to let that madman turn my pockets inside out!” A strange expression played over the man’s face, and he looked around suspiciously.

  “You didn’t hear that,” he said.

  “Hear what?” Prophet smiled.

  Thursday night found the bounty hunter strolling down the boardwalk, waving away the dust kicked up by another ubiquitous ore wagon and wishing Gay would grade a road around the damn town, or move the stamping mill closer to the mine. He paused at the batwings of the Gay Inn Saloon, which abutted the hotel.

  A band blared on the balcony while on the dance floor below, bedraggled miners still in their work clothes twirled spangled and war-painted girls in a kaleidoscopic free-for-all of flying hair and colored gowns. Prophet saw Sergei sitting at a table by the piano, drinking alone. The Russian locked eyes with Prophet briefly, gave a furtive nod, then returned his attention to his drink.

  Prophet pushed through the crowd and nudged his way up to the bar, where three harried barmen toiled behind the counter, sweat and pomade running down their faces and soaking their boiled shirts.

  “Give me the good stuff!” he yelled at one who finally gave him the nod.

  The barman produced a bottle of rye and filled a shot glass on the counter. “One dollar!” the man yelled above the din.

  “One dollar!” Prophet exclaimed. “Who do I look like — Jay Gould?”

  “The forty-rod’s two bits.”

  “I’ve tasted the forty-rod in these parts,” Prophet said dryly, remembering the hangovers he’d nursed the past two days running. He had nothing against gunpowder in his ammunition, but he’d never been partial to it in whiskey. He dropped a gold eagle on the counter and said, “Leave the bottle.”

  “You got it, mister,” the barman said, snapping up the gold piece and rushing off to another yelling customer.

  Prophet stood at the bar and gassed with an old-timer named Hardy Groom, a gandy-dancer turned hard-rock miner. Because of the din punctuated by occasional gunshots fired triumphantly into the ceiling, he couldn’t hear much of Groom’s conversation. It didn’t matter, for it was a one-sided conversation, anyway. Prophet was more interested in the arrival of Leamon Gay, who finally showed up around nine o’clock. None too soon, for Prophet was having a hard time nursing his bottle of red-eye, which he shared with old Grooms, who, after several shots chased with beer, clung to the bar as though to the rail of a sinking ship.

  Nestled amongst his brawny bodyguards, the stringy-haired Gay pushed through the batwings, paused to announce one free drink for each customer, and retreated to a back room to the thunder of whoop-punctuated applause.

  “That Leamon Gay?” Prophet asked the miner after the noise had settled back to a steady roar. He knew it was Gay; he wanted to make his act appear genuine.

  “Why, sure it is, mister. Who the hell else would buy drinks for the whole damn house?”

  “I need to talk to him.”

  The miner laughed scornfully. “You need to talk to Mr. Gay?”

  “That’s right.”

  “How come?”

  “I need a job.”

  “Well, sorry to tell you this, sonny, but Mr. Gay don’t do his own hirin’ and firin’. You’ll have to apply at the mine office like everyone else.” Groom slapped Prophet’s shoulder with good-natured derision and laughed.

  “Well, hell, that double-eagle there was the last o’ my roll. I’m lighter than a damn feather and gettin’ a might wolfish. I need a job an’ I need one now — tonight.”

  “Don’t do anything stupid, sonny,” the geezer warned. “Just hole up to the livery and apply at the mine tomorrow. I’m sure they’ll have somethin’ for you. You ever chip rock before?”

  “No, can’t say as I have.”

  “Well, maybe they’ll give ye a job hostlin’ the mules. Watch the black-eared ones. They’re meaner’n a Texas whore with the clap. I know that from experience. . . .”

  But Prophet didn’t wait for Groom to finish. With a high, dramatic flair, he threw back his glass and slammed it on the mahogany. Swallowing, eyes wide with single-minded purpose, he pushed through the crowd, heading for the rear of the long room.

  He gave hard shoves to several miners, who cussed his back. He ignored the come-ons of a red-haired bawd smelling of pilgrim spirits and seemingly oblivious to the plump breast that had flopped free of her incredibly low-cut gown.

  At the back of the room he found a door and knocked thrice, hard.

  After a minute the door opened and a face appeared, hard as an anvil. The coldly glaring eyes took Prophet’s measure. The man lifted his shotgun. “What the hell do you want?”

  “I’d like to talk to Mr. Gay,” Prophet said, slapping his hat from his head with feigned politeness and grinning his best dullard’s grin.

  The man smiled with one side of his mouth and said with mild disgust, “Get the hell out of here.”

  He started pulling the door closed. Prophet jammed his boot in the way. The man’s ruddy face darkened, and a prominent vein in his cheek jumped. “Did you hear what I told you?”

  It wasn’t hard for Prophet to act drunk after all the whiskey he’d consumed with the old miner. “I heard you just fine, but, by golly, I wanna see Mr. Gay, an’ I wanna see him now.”

  “Get the hell out of here, you crazy son of a bitc
h!”

  The man took a step toward Prophet, readying the shotgun for a swing, when a man behind him said, “What is it, Lynch?”

  “Just some drunk, Mr. Gay. I’ll take care of him.”

  “I was wonderin’ if I could have a word with you, sir,” Prophet said over the bodyguard’s right shoulder.

  There was a table in the middle of the small but opulently furnished room, covered with cards, chips, glasses, and bottles. A half dozen men sat around the table. Gay’s bodyguards stood at intervals around the room, and lounged on sofas and upholstered chairs, smoking. A couple girls hovered over the players.

  Everyone in the room frowned at the commotion at the door. A couple of the other guards moved toward Prophet, scowling. All the guards were big men — Prophet’s size and bigger — wearing soiled denims and cotton or buckskin shirts. They were well-armed with pistols and knives and with plenty of shells in their cartridge belts. They were ready for marauding Apaches or bandidos or anyone else gunning for their boss and his gold.

  “I was wondering if I could have a word with you about a job, Mr. Gay. I know this ain’t exac’ly the right time, but I’m flat broke, sir. And I wouldn’t normally be this brassy, but I’ve oiled my craw a little, if you know what I mean.”

  The guard at the door turned his head toward the table. “It’s all right, Mr. Gay. I’ll get rid of this dimwit.” As he turned back to Prophet, again preparing the shotgun for a swing. Prophet stepped toward him, pulling back his fist before swinging it forward and burying it wrist-deep in the bodyguard’s gut.

  The man’s head plunged forward as he bellowed like a pole axed bull. Immediately the three other bodyguards sprang toward Prophet, who went to work, kicking one in the balls, ducking a swing from another and swinging his fist into a jutting jaw. As the third man grabbed him from behind, Prophet bent forward and heaved the man over his shoulder and smashed him into the floor with a thunderous bark, making the lanterns tingle.

  The first man had climbed painfully to his feet, prying his knees away from his wounded oysters, and grabbed his shotgun off the floor. Prophet kicked the shotgun out of the man’s hands and belted him twice in the jaw, throwing him back against the wall.

  He was a tough hombre and would not go down. As Prophet swung on him again, the other two grabbed him from behind, each taking an arm and wrestling Prophet across the room and against the wall.

  Prophet cursed and raged and flailed his arms exaggeratedly.

  “I just wanna talk to Mr. Gay about a job!” he yelled. “I need a job . . . I’ll do anything . . . I’m flat broke . . . !”

  With that, Prophet flung off one of the bodyguards, sent him tumbling over the gambling table and scattering the cards and players. One of the girls screamed as Prophet belted the other bodyguard with a right haymaker, bouncing the man’s head off the wall and dimming the light in his eyes.

  He was turning to the third man — the man with the shotgun — when something hard slammed his left temple. He staggered backward, blinking. Before his eyes lost total focus, he saw the man with the shotgun standing before him, a savage smile on his face, holding the greener butt-forward toward Prophet.

  He jabbed the butt forward once more, wincing with satisfaction as the brass plate tattooed Prophet’s forehead, sending the bounty hunter sprawling across a fainting couch, where one of the girls had taken refuge. She now scurried away in her high heels, shrieking.

  In Prophet’s ears the girl’s screams along with every other sound slowly died until he heard nothing at all. His lids fluttered like a dove’s wings over his aching eyes.

  “Damn,” the bodyguard said, setting his shotgun on the floor and crouching over his aching crotch. “That hurts.”

  Behind him, Gay stood with his gambling companions, smoking and observing the destruction, looks of keen exasperation mantling their brows. Gay glanced at his men, all in various stages of dishevelment, and yelled, “Get him out of here! What the hell do I pay you for?”

  He turned his head to the door, where two men with badges appeared. Behind them, the saloon had grown quiet, and the crowd had gathered around the door, peeking in as though at a street accident.

  “What happened here, Mr. Gay?” Sheriff Phil Booth asked, eyeing the human wreckage as well as the demolished poker table with its hodgepodge of chips and cards spread across the rug. The sheriff was a short, gray-haired man with an old Remington on his hip, wearing a cheap frock coat and string tie.

  “What’s it look like, Phil? This man stormed in here and put the kibosh to four of my best men.” Gay raked his angry gaze at his bodyguards, two of whom had climbed to their feet. The other two were still testing their land legs.

  “Who is he?” It was Booth’s first deputy, Charlie Reed.

  “I don’t know, but get him the hell out of here!” To the bodyguards. Gay yelled, “You men get this place cleaned up. Good God — look at this mess! We were in the middle of a game!”

  While the beleaguered bodyguards gazed around, getting their bearings before slowly moving to clean up the mess, the sheriff and the deputy each grabbed Prophet by an arm, yanked him to his feet, and half-dragged, half-walked him out the door.

  “Bodyguards, you call yourselves!” Gay groused at his men. He crouched to retrieve a glass and a bottle from the floor, and turned to his gambling partners. “Who was that son of a bitch, anyway? Anybody here ever seen him before?”

  “I saw him in the bathhouse yesterday,” piped up the owner of the drugstore, Bill Knott, as he righted his chair and brushed spilled whiskey from his sleeve. “Just a drifter, I reckon. Just like he said here, he was lookin’ for a job.”

  “Looking for a bullet, more like,” Gay snapped. He looked at one of the girls — a willowy blonde named Dixie. He sat down and patted his knee. “Come here, my sweet little Dixie peach. Come to your daddy. You didn’t get hurt when the table fell, did you?”

  “I broke a nail,” Dixie said, pouting and wagging the hand as though she’d burned it.

  “Let me kiss it,” Gay cooed as the blonde scooted onto his lap.

  Chapter Eighteen

  “Boy, you got yourself in a whole heap of trouble!”

  The voice came from far away, from deep in a tunnel or the bottom of a well. Prophet could barely hear it above the fireworks in his head. There was another sound, like keys jingling, and then a lock rattled. Hinges squawked. He opened his eyes, found himself before a jail cell that stunk of piss and old sweat.

  The door was pulled open by a tall young man in a frock coat and wielding a shotgun. He scowled at Prophet as someone else shoved him through the door.

  Falling forward on the cot — a strap-iron shelf hanging from the wall by chains — Prophet drew his lips back from his teeth and groaned. He turned his head to the door. A short, gray-haired man with close-set blue eyes and wearing a sheriffs star stood in the open cell door. He wore a hat a shade darker gray than his hair, and his coat had been washed so many times it appeared white in places, its collar frayed.

  The old badge-toter took one step forward. “Now, I don’t know who in the hell you are or what in the hell you wanted with Mr. Gay, but tomorrow mornin’, two of my deputies are going to escort you a mile out of town. From there, you’re gonna head east, out of the Territory. Understand? If I catch you back in Broken Knee again, I’ll turn you over to Gay himself — and believe me, he won’t be near as charitable as yours truly.”

  There was a short pause.

  “You comprendo my lingo, cowboy?” the sheriff asked, his voice sharp with anger.

  Apparently it was his job to keep the town free of cutthroats — especially those who might trouble Broken Knee’s infamous father and primary booster. Prophet’s little fandango at the saloon must have made the sheriff look negligent, and it piss-burned the old man good. He no doubt lived very deep in Gay’s pocket and was hoping to stay there, snug as a worm in the dirt.

  Prophet grunted.

  “What’s that?”

  Prophet
turned his head on the pillow. “I hear you, Sheriff,” he said, continuing his down-at-the-heel grub liner routine. “I was just lookin’ for a job’s all. Didn’t mean no harm. Sure am sorry.”

  “Just you understand you’re gettin’ the hell out of town tomorrow, and you’re never comin’ back!”

  The door slammed with an iron clatter, and Prophet lifted his head against the reenergized inner explosion, which seemed to vibrate through the pillow. The key clattered in the lock, the light in the cell block died, and Prophet rested his chin on the pillow with a sigh.

  “Lou?”

  Another, different voice. Prophet only growled at it, his face buried in the pillow that stank of old puke.

  “Pssst — Lou?”

  The voice was familiar, Prophet realized now. Lifting his head, he opened his eyes. The darkness had given way to a wan, gray light. He turned to the cell door, but no one was there.

  “Lou — here,” came the voice again, the voice of a Russian speaking stilted, precise English. “At the window.”

  Noting that the pounding in his head had abated somewhat, and that he must have slept for several hours — the light told him it was nearly dawn — Prophet stood and stepped over to the window. It held no glass, only bars. Just beyond the bars stood the dusky shape of Sergei Andreyevich looking customarily peculiar with his western hat and Russian mustaches and goatee.

  “What happened?” the Russian asked. The pearly dawn light lined his frowning eyes under the hat brim.

  “Things didn’t exactly turn out the way we figured,” Prophet confessed. He’d thought that if he could take Gay’s bodyguards to the dance, so to speak, he could beat a shortcut to the crime boss’s payroll and eventually get close enough to Marya to spring her from the hacienda.

  “Gay was not impressed, eh?” Sergei asked glumly.

  Prophet winced at the pain in his head. His tone was defensive. “I gave ‘em a pretty good fight. It was four against one, for chrissakes.”