The carriage churned up dust on the wide main drag and swung to a halt before the stage office sitting between a livery barn and a bathhouse.
The carriage door popped open, and out stepped Lou Prophet, cutting a ludicrous image in the widow’s weeds hanging in torn, dusty strips about his six-foot-three-inch bulk. He’d exchanged the pointed, torturous black shoes for his well-worn, undershot boots.
Still, as his feet hit the ground, he winced. The women’s shoes had taken their toll, and he wasn’t sure his feet would ever be the same again.
“Here we are, folks—the end of the line,” he said, holding the door wide.
The young woman with the baby was the first to emerge, still looking wan with relief and holding the child so close to her breast that Prophet worried the kid was going to suffocate.
“I can’t tell you how grateful I am,” she said, clutching his arm. “You, too, miss,” she told Louisa coming out behind her. “Bless you both.” She hugged Louisa, then pulled away, once again looking the young, female bounty hunter up and down. “How did you learn to … do what you do … so well?”
“Practice,” Louisa said, characteristically taciturn.
A man’s voice lifted to Prophet’s right. “Good Lord, what do we have here?”
Turning that way, Prophet saw two middle-aged men standing on the raised boardwalk. The one on the left was balding, clean-shaven, and wearing a green visor and sleeve garters.
The other was several inches taller, bearded, and paunchy. He wore a suit with a five-pointed star pinned to his brown wool vest, but he had the weathered, saddle-seasoned look of a man who’d once ridden the cattle paths, maybe even a few owlhoot trails.
The depot master and the town marshal most likely. They must have been having coffee and doughnuts together. The little depot master had a half-eaten doughnut in one hand, a stone coffee mug in the other. The marshal held a coffee cup as well, and he had crumbs in his beard.
Both men were frowning up at the Concord’s roof. Prophet, the driver, and the shotgun guard had tied the dead owlhoots to the roof, wrapped in their own bedrolls. Their horses were tethered to the luggage boot.
The driver had climbed down and was off-loading luggage for the waiting passengers. “That there’s the Thorson-Mahoney Gang, Mr. Crumb—all laid out like ducks ready for the stew pot!”
The depot master blinked up at the blanket-wrapped bodies. “The Thorson-Mahoney bunch,” he said, glancing at the marshal standing beside him, “is up there!”
“They hit us about ten miles outside town,” the Jehu said, handing the young farmer his carpetbag. “The big hombre there in the widow’s weeds and this young lady here filled ’em so full o’ holes they wouldn’t hold a thimble full of water.”
“These two took on the entire Mahoney Gang?” the marshal asked, shifting his incredulous gaze from Louisa to Prophet, who held the dress’s hem above his boots with one hand as he pulled himself up the side of the stage with the other.
The driver told the depot master and the marshal the whole story, the young farmer and the portly businessman fervently interjecting details. Meanwhile, Prophet produced the Arkansas toothpick from the leather sheath hanging down his back, just below his collar, and began hacking at the ropes tethering the bodies to the brass rails. One by one, he rolled the dead men over the side. They landed with loud thuds, several discharging air upon impact.
The little depot master and the bearded marshal stared, gaping.
As Prophet eased himself into the driver’s box, then down to the right front wheel, the marshal stepped down into the street, kicked over one of the bodies, and opened the blanket. He canted his head this way and that and said, “Sure as hell—this is Little Mike Ensor!”
He glanced at the depot master scowling down from the boardwalk, then moved to another body, and kicked it over onto its back. He gasped. “Pike Thorson!”
Finished off-loading the luggage, the driver was buckling the flaps over the boot. “They hit us about ten miles out, Marshal. That gent there and the girl kinda rattled their cages a might. Took down the whole damn gang.” He grinned big, showing the few coffee-colored teeth remaining in his jaws. “I don’t think we’ll have any more trouble from these sons o’ bitches, unless they come back as ghosts, that is.”
The marshal turned to Prophet. His eyes played over the remains of the widow’s weeds hanging off Prophet’s big frame, as if the dress were part of some joke. “You took down this whole bunch?”
Prophet lounged against the stage’s off wheel, rolling a cigarette from the makings sack he’d produced from the war bag at his feet. His big, brown fingers worked clumsily, but they were getting the job done. He nodded to indicate Louisa leaning against an awning post atop the raised boardwalk. “Me and her did.”
The marshal turned to her and scowled. He looked her up and down. Dressed in her frills, blond, hazel-eyed, and angel-faced, Louisa could have hopped out of some German fairy tale.
“The hell you say!” the marshal grunted.
Prophet grinned and licked the rolling paper.
To the depot master still standing in shock atop the boardwalk, not far from Louisa, Prophet said, “We’d like to collect on the reward, Louisa and me. I think most of the boys only have a couple hundred on ’em, but ole Pike and Brennan each have five. You correct me if I’m wrong.”
The depot master glanced from Prophet to the bodies strewn about the stage and back again. “No ... uh ... that’s right. The express company does indeed have that much on the gang. They’ve been ... uh ...” He chuckled with dry relief, realizing suddenly that the gang that had been a needle in his side for so long was lying here in bloody heaps in the street. “They’ve been giving us trouble about every two months for the past two, three years. Preyin’ on that strongbox that carries the mine company payroll.”
The marshal was moving around the stage, inspecting each body. From the other side of the Concord, he said, “Sure enough, it’s the whole damn gang …”
The depot master glanced at Prophet, still vaguely troubled and puzzled. Then he looked Louisa up and down one more time. “Are you trying to tell me this ... child ... helped you take down the Thorson-Mahoney Gang?” He chuffed. “That I do not believe, sir!”
Prophet regarded Louisa anxiously and muttered, “Uh-oh.”
Expressionless, Louisa lifted her cape over the butt of the pearl-gripped Colt jutting up on her right hip. She glanced around briefly, her gaze lighting on the battered tin cup hanging from a nail in the awning post above the rain barrel. In a blur of motion, she crouched and clawed leather.
The Colt roared, ripping the cup from the nail and tossing it into the street.
The Colt spoke again.
The cup bounced ten feet in the air. As it started down, the Colt barked a third time, throwing the cup even higher.
At the apex of the cup’s climb, Louisa pinked it once more, blowing it out and away from the stage station and onto the stoop of an abandoned shanty across the street.
The stage team had already been led off to the corral, but the two dogs that had been sniffing around the dead owlhoots ran howling off behind the bathhouse.
Louisa straightened from her crouch. She twirled the smoking gun on her finger and dropped it neatly in its holster.
“Show-off,” Prophet said.
The depot master regarded the girl slack-jawed. He glanced at the marshal, who shrugged, then turned to the grinning driver. “Well, if you’ll sign the affidavit, Ham, I reckon I’ll get started on the paperwork.”
With that, he turned and strode into the station.
Prophet started after the man. Behind him, the marshal said, “What’s your name, son?”
Prophet turned. The marshal approached him, stepping around the stage’s lowered tongue, his brows furrowed with wary appraisal.
“Lou Prophet,” he said, throwing up both hands palms out. “Better not get too close, Marshal. I’m a bounty hunter, if’n you couldn’t tell from the
death stench.”
“I could tell. I don’t set much store by your ilk, but the fact is there ain’t enough badge-toters to go around. If it weren’t for bounty men, the West would be overrun with jaspers like these.” He nodded to indicate the dead Thorson-Mahoney Gang. His forehead lined with incredulity, he asked, “The girl hunt bounties too?”
Prophet turned a glance at the raised boardwalk, but Louisa was no longer there. He looked around, frowning. She was nowhere in sight. It was just like her to slip off when there was paperwork to do. Nothing bored her more.
“She does,” Prophet told the marshal. “Louisa got started when her family was murdered—butchered, more like— over in Nebraska. Me and her work together on occasion.”
“How’d you know this stage was gonna get hit?”
“Didn’t.”
Prophet took another deep drag on his quirley and noted several curious locals gathering to appraise his and Louisa’s handiwork around the stage. “But we knew the gang was workin’ this area, and they were due for a strike. We been ridin’ the line between Denver and Cheyenne, and Denver and Lyons, and come up dry.” He shrugged. “Decided to give this dogleg in the line a shot.”
“Why the ... uh ... getup?” the marshal inquired, flicking a hand out to indicate Prophet’s tattered dress.
“We heard Thorson was putting a gang member on the stages he struck, before he struck ’em, to make the passengers all nice and agreeable.” The bounty hunter shrugged, flushing and wanting nothing more than to climb out of the dress and into a hot bath.
The marshal fingered his beard, nodding slowly. “You were afraid you might be recognized?”
“You got it.” Prophet smiled affably. He usually resented being interrogated by local lawmen. Understandably, most resented him for doing their jobs for a lot more money, and they used their authority to complicate his life. But this badge-toter seemed harmlessly curious.
No more questions seemed forthcoming, however, so Prophet said, “Well, if you’ll excuse me, Marshal. I reckon I probably have some forms to fill out …”
Hefting his war bag, Prophet mounted the steps, wincing against the pain in his forever-pinched feet, and ambled into the station house.
When, twenty minutes later, he’d penciled out a report, and the depot master, Mr. Crumb, had wired his bounty claim to the stage company headquarters in Denver City, Prophet walked back outside, letting the screen door slam behind him.
“Hey, there he is,” a man on the street shouted. “There’s the bounty hunter that blew the gang’s lights out!”
Prophet stopped on the boardwalk, casting his beleaguered gaze into the street. The Concord had disappeared. In its place, a crowd had gathered—twenty or thirty townsfolk with children, babies, and dogs.
Having hunted men for nearly ten years, Prophet wasn’t surprised to see the dead owlhoots all laid out, shoulder to shoulder, to get their pictures taken by a man in a shabby checked suit.
The crowd had formed a wedge around the festivities, and several station hostlers hunkered around the dead owl-hoots, mugging for the camera. The pistols held dramatically across their chests looked as though they hadn’t been fired since Gettysburg.
“Sir!” the photographer called, throwing up an arm. “Would you like to pose with your quarry?”
The hostlers turned their heads to regard Prophet, crestfallen. They didn’t want the bounty hunter pissing on their fire.
“Nah,” Prophet said. “These boys’ll make a better tintype than I would.”
Brightening, the hostlers turned to face the camera.
Prophet donned his hat, hefted his war bag, and turned toward the bathhouse. He was crossing the weedy lot where two mutts were growling over a raccoon carcass when a voice sounded behind him.
“Mr. Prophet?”
The bounty hunter stopped and turned. The marshal ambled out of the crowd gathered around the photographer’s subjects and approached Prophet with a slight limp.
“What’s the matter, Marshal? Don’t you want your picture taken?”
“I don’t have no use for that stuff,” the bearded man said with a dismissive wave. “I have a job for you.”
Prophet’s forehead lined. “I gotta job.”
“Bounty hunting ain’t gonna get you far—even with that sharp-shootin’ blonde backin’ your play.” The lawman hooked his thumbs in his pistol belt, canted his head, and frowned with scrutiny. “Tell me, son, how old are you?”
Prophet shrugged. “Thirty-three, thirty-four. Don’t know for sure. Ma and Pa Prophet had so damn many kids in them Georgia hills, they couldn’t keep track of birthdays.”
“Thirty-three, thirty-four’s old for bounty hunters. Come to work for me as my night deputy. I already got a kid workin’ nights, but I’ve caught him sleepin’ on the job. I’ll demote him to weekends.”
“I told you, Marshal, I—”
The lawman shook his head. “Not so fast, son. Don’t be hasty. This here ain’t exactly a civilized town, but I’m makin’ some headway with the owlhoots. With the help of a big, capable man like yourself, it could be a nice place to settle down in a few years.” He paused, glancing eastward along the street. “You and that blonde, uh, close!”
“We’re business associates,” Prophet said, as if it were any of the marshal’s business.
The marshal winked wolfishly. “We got some damn nice-lookin’ gals in this here basin. There’s a young lady that runs a cafe. A little large, but she sure can cook, and I have a feelin’ cookin’ ain’t all she does well.” The lawman winked and grinned with only one side of his mouth.
Prophet opened his mouth to speak, but the lawman cut in again. “Fifty a month and found,” he offered. “Now, it probably don’t look as good as that reward money you rake in, but then you have to get awful tired of trail food. Not to mention the prospect of gettin’ drygulched every time you round a bend, or gettin’ your throat cut after wrappin’ up in your soogan at night.”
Prophet waited to make sure the man was through. “You see, Marshal—”
“Whitman.”
“You see, Marshal Whitman, I made a pact with the devil a few years back, just after I mustered outta the War for Southern Liberty. I told Ole Scratch that if he showed me a real good time here atop the sod for the rest of my days, I’d shovel all the coal he wanted down below. Now, ridin’ down owlhoots for two-fifty, five hundred, sometimes even a thousand dollars a head, for two, three weeks work, gives me plenty of lucre for my real good times. And believe me, Marshal, after what I seen durin’ the war, I’ve learned to have real good times!”
Whitman opened his mouth to speak, but Prophet cut him off. “And those times are expensive, Marshal. Fifty dollars a month is a right generous offer—especially for a town the size of Bitter Creek. It could even get me through a single night’s celebration ... but what would I do after that?”
Whitman stared at Prophet, lips pursed. He shuffled his polished boots and cursed. Finally, he nodded. “I reckon I see your point. And I reckon I ain’t been totally square with you, Mr. Prophet. Fact is, this is a dangerous town. We’re very remote, but lots of folks pass through here on their way farther west. Bad folks.”
“You’re in prime owlhoot country—I’ll give you that, Marshal. I’d like to give you a hand, but like I said ...”
Whitman waved him off. “No. It wouldn’t be right— bringin’ an outsider into the kind of bailiwick we have here. It ain’t just the drifters that’s settin’ off firecrackers beneath my saddle blanket.”
Prophet canted his head, studying the man, who looked off as if seeing his own dark destiny in the wheel ruts along Main. “Bailiwick?”
Whitman turned to Prophet and blinked, obviously distracted ... worried. “Never mind. Thanks anyway, Mr. Prophet. I hope you have a good time before you drift.”
Suddenly, the man smiled his wolfish smile and tugged on his beard. “You might want to take a look at Miss Schwartzenberger over to Gertrude’s cafe, though. She’s�
��”
This time it was a pistol shot that interrupted the sentence. The report was followed by a scream.
The marshal whipped his gaze toward a saloon up the street, before which a half-dozen horses stood tethered to the hitch rack. A man’s laugh cut the air.
Whitman’s face creased with disgust. “Ah, shit!”
“What is it, Marshal?” Prophet asked, following the lawman’s gaze.
The pistol spoke again, causing the horses before the hitch rack to start and pull at their reins. The girl screamed again.
Whitman shook his head angrily and began walking toward the saloon. “Just one of them firecrackers goin’ off under my saddle blanket,” the marshal said with a taut sigh. As he angled across the street, Prophet saw that while the man had grown paunchy on town food, his shoulders were still wide, the arms thick, his gait certain despite a slight hitch in his right knee. The marshal unholstered his six-shooter and flipped it butt-forward in his hand.
“Need any help?” Prophet called behind him.
The marshal threw an arm out dismissively, mounted the opposite boardwalk, and limped toward the saloon, swinging the six-shooter like a club.
Prophet stared after the man for a moment, then shrugged and turned into the bathhouse.
Chapter Four
Marshal Whitman opened his eyes with a start, his breath catching in his throat. He lay on the cot in the empty jail cell, staring at the low timbered ceiling, listening.
Satisfied he’d only dreamt the clomp of horse hooves and sudden blasts of gunfire, he lifted his head to peer through the open cell door into the main office. His deputy, Eddie Phipps, sat at the desk that Whitman had hammered together from the bed of an old Texas seed wagon.
A single bull’s-eye lantern glowed dimly. The deputy leaned back in the swivel chair, arms folded across his chest, boots propped on the desktop. His hatless, carrot-topped head drooped toward his chest.
“Eddie, goddamnit!” Whitman yelled, his voice caroming off the chinked log walls. “Wake up!”
The Devil's Lair (A Lou Prophet Western #6) Page 3