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

by Peter Brandvold

  “I s’pose a man like that has made a few enemies over the years,” Prophet speculated, touching the match to a candlewick.

  “I reckon he has, but he pays well, and I like the digs here, so I don’t ask questions about it or even think about it much. I just keep one hand on my pistol butt and one eye on my backtrail, if n you know what I’m sayin. Well, I hope you boys are comfortable here.” Clark smiled without humor and left, leaving the door open behind him.

  Sergei shoved the door closed and turned to Prophet, who threw out a hand, shushing the Russian while he listened at the door.

  Confident Clark had drifted off, Prophet said, “Okay.”

  “I cannot bear the thought of Gay . . . and Marya,” Sergei growled, turning and moving slowly, anxiously about the long, narrow room. “I cannot bear the thought of what he does . . . has been doing . . .”

  “Well, he won’t be doin’ it for much longer,” Prophet promised. “I say we don’t waste any time tryin’ to spring her. As soon as everyone in the house has gone to bed, we head upstairs and nab her out of here.”

  “Yes, yes, yes,” Sergei eagerly agreed.

  “Only problem is . . .” Prophet said, running a hand thoughtfully along his jaw, letting the sentence trail off.

  “Is what?”

  “Once we have her, how the hell do we

  get past all these owlhoots?” “We will shoot our way, if we have to!” Prophet winced at the Russian’s foolhardy

  zeal, but he allowed there were few other

  answers. “I reckon. . . .”

  Chapter Twenty

  Prophet and the Russian sat around and smoked for several hours, not talking much. Killing time. Prophet cleaned his guns, then loaded and unloaded them and loaded them again.

  Finally he heard two sets of boots clicking and chinging on the flagstones outside the room. The door of the room abutting theirs opened and closed. That would be Clark and Rosen heading for bed. They’d probably been playing cards at the round table in what had once been a formal dining room.

  Prophet noted that he and “Dick” hadn’t been invited to play. He smiled.

  Later, a single pair of boots clacked in the courtyard, coming from the other direction. Cracking the door, Prophet saw Gay’s dimly lit figure, the man’s shirt open, belt unbuckled, hat in his hand, coming down the far walk. The crime boss stopped at his bedroom door, opened it with a key, and went in.

  Prophet checked his watch. One-thirty.

  “He turned in,” he told Sergei.

  When they’d removed their spurs and stuffed them in their boots, Prophet opened the door and scanned the courtyard. Seeing that all was clear, he and Sergei stepped into the courtyard, and the Russian gently drew the door shut behind them.

  Prophet had been considering the route to Marya’s room, and now turned right, walking on the balls of his feet. They came to the end of the walk and continued through a winding corridor between two rows of doors, through another courtyard. When they were nearly to a short set of steps, the door on their left squawked.

  Prophet grabbed Sergei’s arm and pulled the big Russian into the shadows behind a statue of one of the saints. Holding his breath and feeling his heart pound. Prophet watched the door open, gritting his teeth as the hinges squeaked. A big figure appeared, a Mexican yawning and adjusting his shell belt on his broad hips. The man carried a rifle in his right hand. The handle of a large knife jutted from a sheath strapped behind his left shoulder. Probably a night guard assuming his shift.

  Wearily the man turned and drew the door closed, then ambled back the way Prophet and Sergei had come, throwing his head back and yawning loudly.

  Prophet sighed quietly, glanced at Sergei, and stepped out from behind the saint, again walking on the balls of his feet as he climbed the stone steps, turned, and climbed another, winding set of stairs, disappearing into shadows.

  They scurried past three guards in a small room pillared off from a living room with a giant fireplace. Then they slipped up another set of stairs and down a dark hall.

  “This is the room, isn’t it?” Prophet whispered, stopping before a door.

  Sergei nodded. Leaning close, he listened, then glanced down. “The key,” he said softly but urgently. “It is not in the lock.”

  Soft, quick footsteps rose behind the door, like a person running barefoot. The door clicked, and Prophet tensed as it opened. The girl stood there, eyes wide, wearing a thin wrapper over an ornate nightgown. Behind her, a green lamp burned on a table beside the large bed.

  “Marya!” Sergei exclaimed under his breath.

  “Sergei!” she cried, throwing her arms around the big Cossack’s neck, hugging him. “I am so glad you are all right. I thought you might have been injured the other night. I heard the shooting.”

  “We are fine, my girl,” Sergei assured her.

  She drew the door wide and beckoned them in, then closed the door. “He took the key, but I fixed the lock so he could not lock it,” she explained.

  “How in the heck did you manage that?” Prophet asked with an amazed chuckle.

  “Marya is a most industrious young lady,” Sergei told him, adding dryly, “Sometimes more industrious than what is healthy for a pretty young countess.”

  The girl shushed them. “Guards pass the door regularly,” she said. “After the other night, he tightened the security around the hacienda. How did you get back in?”

  “We’re on his payroll,” Prophet said.

  She arched a brow at him.

  “Our good Prophet got us positions on Gay’s staff,” Sergei explained to her. “We are protecting him now.” He smiled wryly. “We thought it would be the easiest way to get to you.”

  She turned to Prophet, an admiring light entering her gaze. “That was a good idea.” She sounded surprised.

  Prophet gave an ironic grunt. “I’ve had one or two in the past. We best get a move on.”

  “No.” Marya shook her head. “I have another way — a safer way.”

  Prophet frowned, hoping they hadn’t risked their necks getting to the girl’s room for nothing. “What way is that?”

  “The night after next, when the moon is full, I am showing Gay where Bert found the Spanish gold. With your help, I will slip away from him on the trail. Now that you are guards, it should be even easier.”

  Prophet glanced at Sergei, considering it. He turned to the girl. “Are you sure he’s going to take you with him? Why won’t he just make you draw him a map?”

  “Because he won’t trust me. But on the trail, if I don’t show him where the treasure is, he can threaten to kill me.”

  “Which brings me to another question,” Prophet said, narrowing his eyes critically. “Why didn’t you just go ahead and give the man the gold, for chrissakes? I mean, is it really worth losing your life over?”

  The pretty blonde glared at him as though awestruck. “He killed Bert! I couldn’t let him get away with killing Bert and stealing his gold!” She crossed her arms defensively. “Besides, he would have killed me as soon as he found it. By not telling him, I was extending my life . . . and increasing my chances of getting away.”

  She smiled smugly.

  Prophet shook his head. Another loco royal. That made three. Sergei was guilty by association. “Miss, you’re somethin’.”

  “Yes, she is definitely that,” Sergei agreed, frowning, not at all happy about what she had put himself and her family through. Turning to Prophet, he asked, “Do you think her plan will work, or shall we, uh . . . spring her now?”

  “Considering all the guards on this mountain, I’d say we’d have a better shot if we waited till they left town together. He might take half his army, but half s better than facing them all right here on their own ground.”

  Sergei put his hand on her arm. “I do not like leaving you here again, ma cherie. I do not like leaving you here at the mercy of that man for another night.”

  “It is all right, Serge,” she assured him. “I know wha
t you are talking about, but I am all right. In my mind I just slip away. . . .”

  He stared at her with deep emotion, then engulfed her in his arms. “Soon, my dear countess Marya, you will be free once and for all.”

  “Night after next,” Prophet assured her. “Now let’s break a leg, Russian.”

  Sergei frowned at him curiously, moving his lips over the expression.

  “Never mind,” Prophet whispered, and carefully opened the door.

  The next morning Prophet, Sergei, and the other two bodyguards escorted the polished phaeton down the mountain and pulled up before Gay’s saloon in Broken Knee. Gay had a meeting with several of his business partners in the saloon’s back room. He ordered the bodyguards to wait in the main room for him — and to drink nothing but coffee.

  So, sipping coffee, playing a few rounds of poker and billiards with the other bodyguards, including the two men who guarded Bill Braddock, who owned another saloon in town and was one of Gay’s business partners, the men whiled away a couple of hours.

  Around eleven o’clock several buxom women entered the saloon, making eyes at the bodyguards and giggling, the feathers in their hats swaying. A full-hipped brunette greeted Clark lustily and pulled his hat down over his eyes. Then she strolled with the other women into the back room, where the high rollers were meeting.

  Prophet glanced at Sergei, arching his brow curiously.

  “Right on time, just like always,” one of Braddock’s men said with a chuckle.

  Clark said, “Yeah, Miss Jenny over at the High-Time, she don’t let the big shots wait. She sends the girls over at eleven o’clock sharp every Friday!”

  A few minutes later the door opened and Gay appeared. The hippy brunette was on his arm, smiling as though she were having the time of her life. A good actress, Prophet thought. The other four men — all with women on their arms — followed Gay out of the room.

  As they passed through the tables toward the door, Gay said, “You men stay put. We’ll be back in an hour. And remember — nothing but coffee!”

  Then he parted the batwings and led the chuckling, giggling procession out of the building. They turned left, apparently headed for the Gay Inn next door, where Gay probably reserved a few rooms.

  Prophet looked at Sergei as he lifted his coffee cup and curled his nose. Sergei returned the glance, his gaze dark with understanding. Taking Gay down was going to be a pleasure for them both.

  Prophet was about to stroll to the bar for the free lunch the bartender had just spread out, when a man dressed like a mule skinner entered the saloon, his face flushed with gravity.

  “Hey, there’s been an accident down the street. Someone come quick, will ye? A man needs help!”

  “What happened?” Clark asked.

  “A man was hit by an ore wagon. He’s in a bad way. The sheriff and his deputies ain’t in their office. I thought maybe someone here could help.”

  Imagining the havoc an ore wagon could wreak on a body. Prophet hurried through the batwings and outside. He followed the mule skinner down the boardwalk and around the corner, heading west.

  Gazing down the side street, he saw nothing but crates and barrels stacked along the street, and bits of trash scuttling in the breeze. This wasn’t really even a street, just a wide space between buildings. Straight ahead lay the rocky desert spotted with sage and greasewood and windblown trash, bald mountains rising in the distance.

  The sound of a door slamming jerked his gaze back right, to a closed door at the rear of a tobacco shop. The mule skinner was nowhere in sight. He must have gone through that door and slammed it behind him.

  Baffled, Prophet looked around, feeling the hair on the nape of his neck rise. Hearing footsteps behind him, he turned. Sergei was moving toward him, looking around with a baffled gaze similar to Prophet’s. Prophet noticed that none of the other bodyguards from the saloon had joined them. He and Sergei were alone.

  “Where is this injured man?” Sergei said skeptically, turning his head slowly from left to right.

  Prophet’s right hand went to the butt of his .45 as his eyes scanned the rooftops. Before he could say anything, a man stepped out from the rear of the store across the empty lot. Another moved out from around a small goat stable, swerved to avoid a pile of fresh manure, and moved toward Prophet and Sergei.

  It was Harland. The other man, also moving toward Prophet and Sergei, was DeBocha. The fired bodyguards were smiling easily now, throwing their dusters back from their gun butts. Their eyes were shaded slits beneath their hat brims.

  “I reckon we been duped,” Prophet said, glancing behind him again, making sure the other bodyguards weren’t back there preparing to catch him and Sergei in a crossfire. Nope. It was just Harland and DeBocha. The others must have gotten word of the ploy and remained in the saloon, not wanting to buy trouble with their boss.

  Prophet swung his gaze back to the fired bodyguards. To Sergei, he said, “How’s your fast draw?”

  They were flanked by the north side of the Gay Inn, and several windows were open. In case anyone inside the hotel was listening, Sergei gave only a grunt, which Prophet took for a restrained Cossack war cry.

  “You sons o’bitches ready to die?” Harland asked, his bright green neckerchief blowing up around his chin.

  “Today’s as good a day as any — that’s what me and the Injuns always say,” Prophet said with a wry grin, belying his misgivings. He’d never been Billy the Kid with a handgun. But he was willing and accurate, and often that counted for more than speed.

  Also, there was his Confederate battle cry — “Eeeeeee-hyah!” The piercing yell froze the bodyguards for the split second it took Prophet to draw his revolver, raise it, and level it at Harland. The bodyguard was only raising his own pistol, a look of consternation furling his brow and widening his eyes, as Prophet triggered the Colt and watched the bullet plunk dust from Harland’s shirt on its way through his breastbone to his heart and then out the other side, where it chipped wood from the store wall behind him.

  Before Harland hit the ground. Prophet swung his gaze to his left. DeBocha was crouching over the bloody wound in his belly, his hat tumbling forward off his head. The wounded man cussed and began raising his gun again when Sergei fired his shiny Colt again, planting a blood blossom in DeBocha’s forehead. The ex-bodyguard twisted around with another cry and fell, kicking dust.

  Prophet looked again at Harland, who lay sprawled on his back, arms flung out, dead. There was a long silence.

  “Good shootin’,” he told Sergei at last.

  “Your yell — it froze them,” the Russian said quietly.

  “Yep.”

  “Was that fair fighting, Lou?”

  Prophet turned and started back for the saloon. He grinned as he passed Sergei. “Nope.”

  The other bodyguards had gathered at the corner of the boardwalk to watch the festivities. None of them looked very pleased at the outcome. “Sorry, boys,” Prophet said as he pushed through the crowd and headed for the batwings.

  Above the vacant lot, in a second-story window, Leamon Gay stood naked, the brunette beside him, resting her chin on his shoulder. She was nude, as well. Staring down at the two dead men in the empty lot. Gay grinned.

  “Those two might prove worthy of the salary I’m paying them yet,” he told the whore.

  In the next room to Gay’s right. Gay’s business partner, Bill Braddock, sat on the edge of his bed. He, too, was staring out the window, down at the two men in the lot. Unlike Gay, Braddock was frowning.

  “I can’t stand looking at that stuff — all that shooting,” the naked whore said behind him. “This is a savage town.” She’d turned away from the grisly scene and was facing the wall.

  “Shut up,” Braddock told her. “I’m trying to think.”

  “About what?”

  Braddock’s voice rose with impatience. “Shut up, will you?”

  He watched the stocky, black-haired gent, Gay’s mute bodyguard, stroll back toward Mai
n Street. But his mind was on the other man who’d already left the alley — the tall, sandy-haired hombre with the easy stride and careless manner. Braddock had recognized him — or thought he had. He’d seen that catlike stroll before, the easy set of those broad shoulders. The off-putting grin that only slightly camouflaged the man’s kill-devil nature.

  Braddock lowered his head and ran his hand through his thinning gray hair. Where, oh where, had he seen that man before? It was right at the tip of his tongue. . . .

  Braddock raised his head, a slow grin drawing at his thin lips capped with a pencil-thin mustache. Oh, yes. Oh, yes . . .

  He remembered the bounty hunter who’d tracked him and his partner, Edwin Harrol, into Idaho several years ago, after they’d robbed a bank in Bannock, Montana Territory. He’d been a relentless son of a bitch, tracking them through a winter storm in the mountains. He’d killed Edwin with a short-barreled shotgun. Cut him in half when Edwin had drawn on him in a farmer’s barn outside Idaho Falls.

  Braddock had spent a year in prison after that . . . before he and two others had dug their way out. . . .

  “Who’s who?” the whore said, still facing the wall.

  “That man who was down there. The big, grinning bastard with the sandy hair.”

  “What about him?”

  “I just figured out who he is.”

  “Who?”

  “Prophet,” Braddock said, smiling out the window. “Lou Prophet.” Braddock chuckled, thoroughly delighted with himself. “Gay’s new guard, Lou Pepper, is a goddamn Rebel bounty hunter!”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  The next morning, in her room in the Gay Inn, the countess penned a note to her mother back in Boston, informing the widow about the search for Marya. Describing the roguish westerner she and Sergei had hired to guide them to Arizona, she smiled devilishly, leaving out the parts about her and Prophet’s mad couplings, which would not only have scandalized the elder noblewoman but probably given her a heart stroke, as well.