He identified a few more spots to keep an eye on during the day, a few to avoid at night, and several horse trails a drygulcher might use for escape routes.
As the fast-falling sun gilded the Main Street storefronts, he headed back down the hill, loosing gravel behind his softly singing spurs, one hand on the butt of his .45, Mad Mary’s shrill warning echoing in his ears.
He walked around the north end of town, then the south, pondering the situation here while keeping a close eye on his back trail.
He stopped by a small cabin before which an old lady was removing wash from a line, her blue gingham dress blowing about her heavy legs as the evening breeze kicked up. An old man smoked a pipe on the porch while a mule cropped grass under a nearby ash.
“Ma’am, I’m wonderin’ if you could point me to the Whitman home.”
The old woman stared at Prophet dully, several ratty sheets clamped under an arm, a few clothespins in her teeth. The corners of her mouth pinched and her eyes narrowed, as if he’d just asked her where he could get his ashes hauled. Silently, she extended her free arm, indicating a white frame house on the other side of a cabin to the west.
“Much obliged,” he said, pinching his hat brim to her.
The Whitman place was one of the biggest he’d seen in Bitter Creek so far—a neat, two-and-a-half-story, clapboard-and-frame house with a stone chimney abutting the east wall. There was a large, screened porch, a buggy shed and a stable out back, and a big yard with flowers and transplanted trees.
All in all, it was a nice setup for a lawman and a schoolteacher. Too nice and damn odd. Prophet wondered if Whitman had blasted a few nuggets out of the mountains, or if there was some other reason he could afford such digs.
A black-and-white cat slinked under the porch as the bounty hunter walked through the rickety gate, mounted the brick steps, opened the screen door, and stepped onto the porch.
It was a full minute after he’d knocked on the inside door before slow footsteps sounded within.
Fianna Whitman didn’t say anything when she opened the door, just stood there in the dark foyer, arching an eyebrow bemusedly, one hand on the knob. She’d changed from the black dress she’d worn to the funeral to a long, slitted nightgown over which she wore a blue silk wrapper.
She was prettier than he’d remembered, with big, brown eyes and a wide mouth. Her eyes were a little glassy and boldly insinuating.
She’d let her hair down, the auburn curls curving over her shoulder to hang down beside her right breast, the top of which was revealed by the low-cut gown and the wrapper curving open at her chest.
The way she regarded Prophet, as though she’d been expecting him, made him half-wonder if he’d taken a wrong turn and found himself at a whorehouse.
“Ma’am,” Prophet said, his hat in his hands, uncertain what to say now that he was here.
He’d come because he honestly felt sorry for her, having seen how few mourners had shown up at the funeral. But he was also hoping to find out why so few of Bitter Creek’s citizens had seen fit to attend the ceremony. He thought it might have something to do with the apprehension Whitman had voiced about the town.
“I thought I’d pay my respects. I saw the funeral was today, and—”
“Yes, I saw you on the hill, Mr. Prophet. Why didn’t you join us? The more the merrier.”
She smiled wryly, stepped back, and drew the door wide. “Won’t you come in?”
“Thank you.” But as he stepped into the foyer, he saw that she was barefoot, and he suddenly felt out of place. The lady wasn’t dressed for company. He looked at her. “Are you sure, ma’am? Looks like you’re ready for bed.”
A loud clock ticked somewhere. A plush runner lay beneath his boots, the wood floor on either side of it polished to a high, oak gloss.
“Of course I’m sure, Mr. Prophet.” He detected a thickness to her voice, as though she’d been drinking. When she closed the door, she leaned a little too far toward it. She had to steady herself against it before she turned to him with that funny smile still quirking her lips, lending a leer to her eyes. “I don’t get many visitors.”
Taken aback by her tipsy boldness, he took a moment to formulate his question. “On a day like this, ma’am? I’d have thought...”
“Don’t think, Mr. Prophet. That’s rule one when working for Henry Crumb.”
“I don’t exactly work for Crumb,” he said, her tone having set him back on his heels. “As a matter of fact, I was pretty much tricked into the job.”
“Oh?” she said, as though she didn’t believe it, making him feel even more resentful. “How much money did he offer?”
He told her.
“There’ll be more where that came from.”
He was about to tell her there would be no more money, because he’d be on the trail out of here as soon as Crumb returned with his new lawman, but before he could open his mouth to respond, she said, “Join me for a drink?”
Her tone had changed, her voice suddenly soft and velvety, the smile no longer as much leering as coquettish. He’d always been a sucker for whiskey and coquettes, especially underdressed coquettes.
He glanced at her bare feet, at the robe she did little to keep closed. “I’d have one as long as I’m not intrudin’. I really just stopped to pay my respects and to see if you needed any help. I know how it must be, your pa suddenly gone…”
She’d started moving into the foyer’s dusky shadows. She turned her head and looked at him, smiling again, subtly devilish, running her gaze up and down his tall, broad frame, making him self-conscious.
“What I need, Mr. Prophet,” she said, pausing, then continuing as she turned and began moving down the foyer again, “is another drink. Come ... right this way ...”
He followed her a few feet down the hall and into the parlor opening off to the left. No lights had been lit in here either. She strolled to a table on which sat several bottles and tumblers. She turned one of the tumblers right side up.
“Bourbon or rye?”
“What are you drinking?” He’d seen the glass on a low table beside a damask-covered rocker. An open cigar box sat beside it, but it didn’t look like cigars inside.
“Bourbon. It’s the best—a gift from Dad’s employer last Christmas.”
Fianna’s voice acquired a sarcastic, flippant tone. “Dad’s taste always ran to beer or the coffin varnish Burt Carr serves at the Mother Lode.” She smiled. “So I drink Henry Crumb’s bourbon. Acquired quite a taste for it, in fact,” she added with a throaty laugh.
She held up the bottle to Prophet, gave it a little jiggle, sloshing the liquid around. He stood just inside the door, his hat in his hands, watching the girl with interest.
When he’d seen her earlier, he hadn’t taken her for a drinker. He’d thought schoolteachers, like ministers, didn’t imbibe. But in the soft light through the open window behind her, he saw that only a few fingers of bourbon remained in the bottle.
“Since you recommend it, I’ll try the bourbon,” he said, though his tastes ran more to beer and rye.
He glanced around at the soft sofa against the opposite wall, the several comfortable chairs and fancy lamps sitting on the expensive wooden tables that must have been shipped in from Denver or Cheyenne. To his left stood a bookcase crammed with books.
Again, he was impressed and puzzled by the house. It was the kind of home a well-to-do businessman might own.
“Nice place you have here,” he observed when, after handing him his drink, she’d directed him to a chair near hers.
She dropped into her own chair, curling one leg beneath her. Her robe and nightgown parted to reveal a long, creamy thigh and knee—too much skin to make the revelation an accident. “I can light a lamp if you want,” she said. “I guess it would be proper.”
Prophet quirked a brow at the thigh, feeling his tongue grow thick. He cleared his throat. “Only ... only if you want one, ma’am.”
“No,” she said, sipping her drink. “I
like the dark. Did my neighbor, Mrs. Dane, see you? She’d think it totally improper for me to be entertaining a man alone and not even lighting a lamp.”
“I reckon,” Prophet said, feeling as out of place as a bear in a millinery shop, wishing he hadn’t come.
She was drunk and lonely, and her blood was running high. He had a feeling it always ran a little high, but her father’s death must have turned up the heat. Before he came, he’d thought he’d drink some coffee with her, maybe cut some wood for her, move some boxes, get some questions answered, and leave.
But it was already a more complicated visit—with that thigh and fully half of one breast staring at him boldly, daring him to move in on her.
In that regard, it was like everything else in this damn town. Complicated, bewildering, hard to refuse. It was like quicksand, sucking you down.
He couldn’t wait to ride Mean and Ugly along some remote mountain trail, far away from this devil’s lair. Towns—even normal towns—were too damn complicated.
“Yes, it is a nice place,” she finally responded to his remark, glancing around thoughtfully. “You’ll have a place like it soon. You’ll need a woman to dress it up for you. Do you have one of those yet, Mr. Prophet?”
Again, before he could draw responsive air across his vocal cords, she said, “Miss Schwartzenberger perhaps?” She smiled. “She’s a very good cook, just like her grandmother.”
Prophet’s ears warmed again, and his chest drew taut. He scowled. “Miss Whitman—”
“Call me Fianna.”
“Fianna, I’m sorry if I’m bein’ too forward, but can I ask you just what in the hell you’re talking about?”
She smiled as though enjoying his vexation, but asked coyly, “What do you mean?”
“How could a small-town lawman possibly afford a house like this? I assume you and your father brought money from back East, or you found gold up in the mountains.”
As she studied him from fifteen feet away, her playful smirk gradually faded. She threw back the last of her drink. As she lowered the glass in her right hand, her smile was replaced by a shrewd expression, her eyes narrowing. “If Mr. Crumb hasn’t told you, he will soon enough.”
“Are you suggesting I’d do something illegal?”
“I’m suggesting you’re made of the same flesh and blood as my father.”
Her eyes hardened. Her shoulders slumped and she exhaled a long draft of air. A sob carried on it, or what sounded like a sob. A soft, mournful wail. She was an unexpectedly pricked balloon. Her face crumpled, her mouth quivering. She lowered her head, not making any sound until she lifted it again. She inhaled and sniffed.
“Oh, damnit!” she said and struggled up from her seat. More unsteadily than before, letting the wrapper flap around her long legs, she walked to the table, tipped several more fingers of bourbon into her glass, and set the empty bottle down hard.
She straightened, stiffened, threw her head back, and sobbed louder this time. She grabbed her shoulders as if chilled to the bone and lowered her chin to her chest. She stood there, shuddering and sobbing, making soft crying sounds.
Prophet sat wondering what to do, wondering what he should say, feeling like he’d just wandered into some drama halfway through the last act.
Finally, cursing under his breath, he set his drink down, stood, and walked over to her. He regarded the back of her head indecisively, feeling even more awkward than before, not sure how much of her emotion was genuine and how much was the bourbon.
Either way, he’d always had a hard time comforting distraught women. Whatever he said always seemed to be the wrong thing.
When he placed his hands on her shoulders, she instantly quit sobbing and melted back against him, canting her head against his chest. Her body was warm and soft beneath the wrapper and nightgown, and it seemed to mold to his, as if wanting to draw his large body around her like a quilt.
She smelled of bourbon and summer rain. When she turned her head to press her cheek against his chest, he felt the dampness of her tears through his shirt.
“Miss Fianna,” he said, shaking his head and wincing, “I really just wanted—”
Prophet heard the squawk of a floorboard a second before he saw a gun barrel glint in the doorway. A man’s voice rose with exasperation. “Fianna!”
Chapter Fourteen
With a gasp, the girl jerked her head toward the door.
A man stood silhouetted against the frame, a pistol extended in his right hand. In the murky light, Prophet couldn’t make out his face. But he was slender and wore a cream shirt, brown vest, and dark trousers. Garters ringed his arms just above his elbows.
Fianna snapped, “Wallace!”
Prophet scowled, befuddled. Wallace Polk?
The man mumbled incoherently as, stepping slowly forward, he kept the pistol extended at Prophet—a snub-nosed Bisley, it appeared. Probably a .38.
Prophet turned toward him, keeping his left hand on the girl, ready to jerk her behind him. Sure enough—Wallace Polk, the town druggist, had a .38 pointed right at his head. As the man approached, Prophet saw the rheumy blue eyes of Wallace Polk, minus their mildness. Snarling and shivering before him, like Polk’s evil twin, the man extended the pistol and thumbed back the hammer.
Prophet stared down the bore, wide-eyed. “Easy, Polk. Better give that to me. Don’t want no one gettin’ hurt here now, do we?”
Prophet extended his right hand half-defensively, only half-hoping Polk would give him the gun.
“I saw you walking this way,” Polk spit through gritted teeth. His voice had lost its customary timidity and politeness. “Just knew what you had on your sexually depraved mind.”
Prophet’s brow arched. “Sexually depraved?”
“Weren’t satisfied with Frieda Schwartzenberger, eh? Decided to comfort the sheriff’s grieving daughter?”
Prophet winced as one part of his brain wondered if his bath with Frieda was known throughout the entire county, while the other tried to grasp Polk’s presence here in Fianna’s parlor, snarling like a wolf over a deer bone.
Wallace Polk with his liquid blue eyes and timid grin.
Prophet’s brain revolted at the image.
Was this whole town crazy? Maybe the place really had been hexed by an Indian spirit, as Mad Mary had insinuated.
Meanwhile, he tore his eyes from. Polk’s crazed face to stare down the Bisley’s gaping bore, awaiting and dreading the blossoming report, the bullet carving a messy hole through his brain.
So this was where it ended. After all the badmen he’d hauled to justice, he was going to be taken down by a mild-mannered, crazed druggist with a burr under his saddle for a crazed brunette.
Who would tell Louisa? She would sure be disgusted with him, after she got over the heartbreak.
Prophet’s brain recoiled again. Was he getting as crazy as everyone else around here? He wasn’t going to just stand here and get shot by a druggist.
“Polk, goddamnit, there’s nothing goin’ on between me and Fianna. Put down that gun!”
“Wallace, you put that gun down this instant!” Fianna ordered, her voice quaking slightly.
Polk didn’t seem to hear them. Eyes so wide the whites glowed, he moved toward Prophet across the room, one slow step at a time. He kept the gun extended at Prophet’s face, his hand shaking. Behind the gun, his thin lips formed a snarl. Sweat dribbled down his cheeks.
He stopped ten feet away. “I should’ve known you’d prey on our women. That’s what men like you do, isn’t it? Lone wolf, come to town. Come to take all the women. I tried to tell Henry—”
“Wallace—”
Polk’s pinched voice cut her off. “He’s just taking advantage of your sorrow. I’d have been at the funeral, but you know how people talk.”
“Wallace I didn’t want you at the funeral. I’ve told you, whatever there might have been between us ... it’s over now…”
He hadn’t heard a word of it. He jerked the gun at Prophet, but spok
e to her. “I won’t hold this against you ... at a time like this. I know it’s me you love.”
He paused, sniffed as though he had pepper in his nose, then shifted his eerily bright, narrowed eyes back to Prophet. He steadied the gun. His hand shook.
“Polk, no!” shouted Prophet.
“You bastard
The gun barked. In the close quarters, it sounded like a cannon. Instinctively, Prophet threw himself against the girl. She cried out as she slammed into the table, knocking over glasses and bottles.
Though fired from only ten feet away, the bullet had somehow missed him.
Prophet swung his left arm toward Polk. His hand closed on the man’s forearm, then slid to the gun. As he wrenched it free of the druggist’s grip, he straightened and leveled a left jab at the man’s face, connecting solidly with cheekbone.
Polk gave a cry and stumbled sideways and back before dropping to his knees. He lunged forward, as though trying to bolt to his feet, but reconsidered and cowered on his haunches. His shoulders fell as he lowered his head in defeat, brought his hands to his face, and sobbed.
“Goddamn you!”
‘Took the words right out of my mouth,” Prophet said, breathing hard, adrenaline still raging in his veins.
His glance found the small, round hole in the wall behind where he’d been standing when Polk had fired. Polk’s quivering hand had nudged the bullet a hair left.
Prophet turned to Fianna. She too was on her knees, leaning on one arm against the table. Her hair hung down along her face. Several bottles and tumblers had fallen from the table and lay strewn about the spread folds of her nightgown and wrapper.
“Goddamn you, Wallace,” she said, her voice low and hard. She swept her hair from her face with one hand and sniffed. The movement caused her to lose her balance, and she had to grab the table again. “I told you there was nothing between us ... could never be anything between us!”
Polk dropped his head even lower, then jerked it up, regarding her with crazy-bright eyes—the eyes of a dope-head, like those Prophet had seen in opium dens. Obviously, the druggist had been dipping into his own goodies behind the counter. “You goddamn bitch! You whore!”
The Devil's Lair (A Lou Prophet Western #6) Page 12