The Devil's Lair (A Lou Prophet Western #6)

by Peter Brandvold

  His smile revealed both front teeth capped with gold. “Evenin’, Marshal,” he said coolly, in a faint Irish accent. “The boys’re just lettin’ their wolves run off their leashes a bit. Better run along and see if any dogs have treed any cats.”

  At the room’s rear a man yelled, “No, goddamn ye ... I can’t... !”

  There was more, but it was drowned out when the piano suddenly sprang to life with an overly energetic waltz. Prophet rose on his tiptoes to peer over the crowd, but the Irishman moved to block his view, his smile losing its luster. The big man shook his head and held out a big, freckled paw for Prophet’s weaponry.

  “If you wanna come in, you’ll have to turn over the irons.”

  Prophet looked at him icily, anger tightening his jaw. Then he smiled and shrugged. “I reckon I’ll find me a different party. Looks like fun, but thanks.”

  The Irishman smiled, the large, gold caps flashing in the gaslight emanating from the bracket lamps on both side of the doors.

  When the bounty hunter had walked ten feet, he stopped and turned around. The Irishman had returned his attention to the show at the saloon’s rear; Prophet could see only his grinning profile over the left batwing.

  Quickly, hearing the girl crying beneath the clattering piano, Prophet turned left down the gap between the Mother Lode and the log shack housing a harness shop. He wended his way through the tumbleweeds and trash, took another left, and found himself looking up a set of stairs to the saloon’s second story.

  Hearing two more pistol shots followed by the girl’s scream, he hurriedly climbed the stairs, clutching the shotgun before him, eyeing the door at the top of the stairs for possible trouble. The gunslicks might have posted a guard there too.

  Finding the top landing clear, Prophet turned the doorknob and stepped quickly inside and right, pressing his back against the wall. A narrow hall opened before him, smelling musty and smoky. A single bracket lamp at the other end offered a weak, guttering light.

  Men’s laughter and a girl’s cries rose from the first floor, along with the piano’s frantic clatter and an occasional pistol crack. Prophet moved down the hall, holding the shotgun out before him, walking slowly but purposefully, chewing his cheek with concentration.

  A few doors away from the door that probably led to the stairs leading to the saloon’s first floor, Prophet paused. A girl was crying up here as well as down there.

  “Don’t hit me no more, Lars,” the girl pleaded. “Please, I can’t take it!”

  “Shut up, goddamn your eyes!” the man called Lars yelled. A sharp crack, like that of a hard slap, rose from behind the door on Prophet’s left. Lars laughed tightly. “Tonight, you listen to me, bitch! If I want you to cluck like a damn turkey, by God you’ll cluck!”

  He slapped her again.

  Lips bunched with fury, Prophet swung the shotgun behind his back and unholstered his .45. Revolver in hand, he turned to the door, swung his leg back and forward, planting his right boot just below the knob. The door exploded inward with a crash, slamming against the wall as wood shards sprayed from the frame.

  On the edge of the bed before him lay a naked girl, spread knees facing the opposite wall. A naked, soft-bellied man stood between her legs, facing Prophet over the width of the bed. He was poking the barrel of six-shooter into the girl’s mouth, pinning her head to the mussed, bloody sheets.

  The man snapped his head up at Prophet wide-eyed, face flushed with fury.

  He yelled something incoherent as he jerked his revolver toward Prophet, snapping off a shot that clipped the bounty hunter’s collar before thumping into the wall behind him.

  Coolly, Prophet raised his own revolver, fired, and watched the naked man stumble back from between the girl’s spread legs, dropping his six-shooter and grabbing his chest with both hands.

  Blood gushed through the man’s hands as he pressed his back against the wall and, mouth drawn wide in a silent scream, sank slowly down to the floor.

  Quickly, Prophet turned back into the hall and paused, listening. Another shot cracked below, and the piano continued its crazy patter. There was a thumping sound, and the laughter of several men, the hoots and guffaws of several more.

  Taking a deep breath, Prophet quickly replaced the spent shell in his Peacemaker and moved cautiously forward, heart pumping ... well aware that all hell was about to break loose.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Prophet opened the door at the end of the hall and found himself on the balcony over the saloon. He turned right, crouched low, and moved to the rail, the piano’s clatter now making his eardrums ache.

  “Eeeee-nowwwwwwwwwwwr a man screeched, clapping his hands. “Ride that horse, Janice. That’s a girl!”

  Spare chairs were stacked along the balcony’s edge, offering cover. Through the chair legs and balcony rails, Prophet peered down through cigarette and gun smoke to the main floor.

  His eyes slitted and his stomach did a somersault.

  “Come on, Janice—hold on, girl!” a man’s voice roared again, then admonished, “Keep movin’, Burt. You stop, and I shoot off another finger!”

  Directly beneath Prophet, within a semicircle of four seated gunmen, the saloon’s owner, Burt Carr, was down on all fours, crawling around the floor. Janice, the blond whore with the heart-shaped face, was straddling his back.

  She wore not a single stitch of clothes. She was crying and clinging to the barman’s collar, her pale knees pressed to his sides for support, her pear-shaped breasts swaying and bouncing.

  Carr didn’t look any happier than the girl. It was hard to tell from this distance, but he appeared to have lost a finger from his left hand, and the stump left a smeared path of blood on the floor as he crawled. The hardcases lounged back in their chairs, legs crossed, with cigarettes and soapy beer mugs in their fists. They laughed at the spectacle. They cheered, elbowed each other, pointed, slapped their thighs.

  Thoroughly enjoying themselves.

  Prophet’s nostrils flared, and his chest burned with rage. The dogs indeed were off their leashes…

  Meanwhile, the ex-ranch cook and odd-job man, Sorley Kitchen, was playing the piano shoved up against the far right wall, his back to the room. His derby boasted two bullet holes in its crown, and there were two similar holes in the piano.

  Kitchen ran his hands nervously over the keys, hitting as many sour notes as good ones while jerking nervous glances over his shoulder. Nervous sweat formed a broad, dark line down the back of his denim shirt.

  Behind the semicircle of hooting gun toughs, several townsmen sat stiffly at their tables. Prophet saw the portly banker, Ralph Carmody, sitting with the lumberman, Milt Emory. Farther back, near the big front window, stood Wallace Polk, separate, alone, hands in his trouser pockets. His brown bowler was pulled low over his eyes as he worriedly chewed his cheek.

  Several other townsmen stood about the room, observing the gunmen’s bizarre festival with looks ranging from awful fascination to fearful repugnance. Behind them, the big Irishman stood guard at the batwings, grinning red-faced over the room, guarding his companions’ backs.

  “Come on, Burt—buck! I wanna see her titties jiggle!” ordered the man with the hard green eyes.

  Prophet curled a nostril and grunted quietly through gritted teeth, “Now, that ain’t sportin’.”

  The gang’s leader extended a revolver over his boot resting on his knee, and fired. The piano player paused for half a second as the bullet drilled into the punchions near Carr’s right knee.

  The girl wailed.

  The exhausted bartender, hair soaked with sweat, lifted his hands only about six inches before falling back to the floor, nearly collapsing as his elbows bent.

  “Ah, come on, Burt!” the green-eyed gunman complained. “That ain’t no buck!”

  Casually, he thumbed the hammer back and extended the rifle over his boot, squinting down the barrel at the bartender’s hand. Cursing under his breath, Prophet poked his Peacemaker through the railing an
d fired.

  The slug smacked the extended gun with a metallic shriek, ripping it from the hand and tossing it halfway across the room, making several men duck from its path.

  The gunman loosed a howl, grabbing his bullet-nicked hand and snapping his eyes up at Prophet. “You... !” he raged, spittle spraying from his lips, nostrils flaring.

  “The rodeo’s over,” Prophet said, standing behind the rail, extending the Peacemaker in his right hand, the sawed-off shotgun in his left.

  The hall had fallen silent. All eyes had turned to him,

  tense, waiting

  It took about five seconds for the others in the hall to realize what had happened. The man to the green-eyed gunman’s left made the first move, bolting to his feet and clawing his Beaumont-Adams revolver from his holster.

  He had the pistol chest-high when his head took the blast from the sawed-off’s left barrel. The distance was great enough, the spread of the buckshot wide enough, that the blast didn’t blow the head off the man’s shoulders, only turned it tomato-red and sprayed blood across the two men sitting on either side of him.

  As the man stumbled backward, shrieking, his revolver popped, the wayward slug tearing into the green-eyed gunman’s right boot toe, evoking another raucous bellow.

  Now the three other gunmen, including the big Irishman by the batwings—had filled their hands with iron. Down on one knee, his face splattered with blood and wincing against the pain in his hand and toe, the green-eyed man shouted, “Kill that son of a bitch!”

  Two pistols cracked, the slugs whistling past Prophet’s head and burying themselves in the wall behind him.

  Another gunman stepped behind a ceiling joist, his frock coat swirling about his holsters. He extended his revolver, fired two quick, errant shots, and ran for the stairs, taking three steps at a time as he headed for the balcony. Straightening from a crouch behind the railing, Prophet extended the barn-blaster straight out in his left hand, and fired.

  “Gee-awww!” the man screamed as the double-aught buck took him through the chest and shoulders, blowing him back against the wall in mid-stride.

  He bounced off the wall, dislodging a gaudy painting of a naked Indian girl riding a white horse. He stumbled forward and fell headfirst over the rail, somersaulting to the main floor.

  He landed with a thud buried in the yelling and the pistol shots directed at Prophet, who’d dropped to his side, behind the railing, letting the slugs sail over him and into the wall or snap widgets from the scrolled rail supports. He cast aside the coach gun and extended the Peacemaker.

  As a slug tore through a support post six inches to the right of his head, he fired two quick rounds. One clipped an empty chair while the other took the big Irishman, who was bolting around the tables holding a Winchester across his chest, through the shoulder.

  The man cursed as the bullet spun him around and into a table, tossing the Winchester out before him.

  As several more shots wracked the room, Prophet grabbed his shotgun and rolled back against the balcony’s rear wall. Quickly, his hands working automatically, he broke open the shotgun and replaced the spent shells with new. Snapping the gun back together, he rose to a crouch, bolted forward ten feet, then ran to the railing.

  As he extended the shotgun and thumbed back the rabbit-ear hammers, he saw that two tables had been overturned. The fourth gunman and the green-eyed man, who’d produced another pistol, were hunkered down behind them.

  To the table overturned on his left, he offered both barrels, the report sounding like a Napoleon cannon in the wood-lined room. The buckshot blew the table nearly in two, evoking pained cries from behind it. But Prophet didn’t have time to survey his damage.

  Dropping the empty shotgun, he crouched, ran back to his left, and extended the Peacemaker, thumbing back the hammer as the Irishman bolted out from behind a chair, yelling, “You’re a dead son of a bitch now, me boy!”

  He extended his own six-shooter, aiming toward the balcony. He and Prophet fired at the same time. The Irishman’s shot nipped Prophet’s left arm, just above the elbow. Prophet’s shot crunched through the Irishman’s brisket. Wailing and raging, flailing his arms for balance, the big man stumbled backward and crashed through an overturned table.

  Spying movement to his right, Prophet turned to see one of the gunmen jerk Janice out from behind an overturned table in the room’s southeast corner. “No!” she cried. She folded her arms protectively over her naked breasts and clutched her head. “Please don’t shoot me! Stop!”

  Burt Carr’s head appeared above the table. He reached for the girl, but the gunman jerked her out of his grasp, thrusting her shield like out before him. Janice’s face paint was smeared by perspiration and tears as she stared up at Prophet, beseeching.

  Her light-blond hair hung in tangles along her face. Her pale, plump body looked terribly fragile against the tall gunman standing behind her, one arm crooked around her neck, the other holding a long-barreled Remington to her head.

  Her lips trembled.

  “Throw those irons down here,” the man shouted through gritted teeth barely visible behind his soup-strainer mustache. “Or I drill daylight through this bitch’s skull!”

  Prophet straightened slowly, his pistol in one hand, the shotgun in the other, keeping them raised just above the balcony rail and extended only halfway.

  “Now, why would you wanna go and do a thing like that?”

  “I said—”

  The crack of Prophet’s revolver stopped the man only two words into his sentence, drilling a small, round hole through the left corner of his mustache. The man’s head whipped back on his shoulders. Janice screamed and dropped to her knees as the Remington drilled a bullet into a rafter.

  Prophet waited, Colt extended, to see if another shot would be necessary.

  But then he saw the hardcase drop his Remington as he crumpled up beside the piano, near where Sorley Kitchen was cowering behind the overturned bench. The man panted like a dying dog, jerking both legs wildly.

  Prophet slid his gaze through the smoke haze, looking around for more threats. What he saw resembled the aftermath of an Eastern hurricane. Tables and chairs were overturned, glass and bottles strewn about the floor, blood painting the sawdust, brass spittoons, square-hewn ceiling joists, and chairs.

  Prophet caught only glimpses of patrons cowering behind overturned tables. One man had dived behind the bar; now he peered over the mahogany, only his scalp and eyes visible.

  The only sound was Janice sobbing quietly where she had fallen onto her knees.

  Three of the five gunslicks could be written off. The one Prophet had blasted from behind the table was questionable, hidden as he was beneath the rubble of the shotgun-blasted table.

  The green-eyed man, lying under a broken chair, grunted and wheezed. Cursing, he flung the chair aside, heaved himself onto a knee, and grabbed a pistol off the floor. Grunting and wheezing, he climbed to his feet and hopped on one foot toward the batwings.

  “Hold it,” Prophet said, leveling his Peacemaker.

  The man stopped, wobbled on his left foot, nearly fell, and turned, raising the revolver.

  Wanting the man alive to answer questions, Prophet shot him through his left thigh. The hardcase screamed, fired a stray shot, twisted around, and dropped to both knees. Prophet hurried downstairs, keeping the Colt extended before him.

  He was halfway across the room, kicking overturned chairs and tables out of his way, when the hardcase scooped the pistol off the floor. He turned toward Prophet, who stopped and said, “Don’t do it, damnit!”

  The hardcase grinned with savage defiance and extended his .44.

  “Ah, shit,” Prophet said.

  He shot the man through the forehead, spraying the batwings with blood. The man flew onto his back, legs curled beneath his butt. His arms flopped like the wings of a wounded bird trying to take flight, then lay still.

  Prophet lowered the Colt and walked to the gunslick, now staring up throug
h his half-open, death-glazed eyes, the snarl still curling his mustache.

  Blood dribbled down the batwings behind him, through which one of the saloon’s disheveled customers slipped with a distasteful expression, and hurried off down the boardwalk.

  Prophet looked around the room. Sorley Kitchen had crawled from his hiding spot and was bending over the hardcase lying under the table. The banker, Ralph Carmody, inspected the Irishman.

  Prophet said, “He dead, Sorley?”

  Kitchen nodded. “Just took his last breath.”

  Prophet turned to the banker. “What about yours, Carmody?”

  “Deader’n hell.” The banker gazed around the room, wincing and clearing the smoke from his face with his hand and regarding Prophet anxiously. “You killed ’em all, deader’n Hell …”

  “Better them than me. Who were they anyway?”

  Carmody glanced at Kitchen.

  “Just owlhoots, I reckon,” the banker said, avoiding Prophet’s eyes. He looked at the five men who’d crawled out from behind their poker table near the front of the room. “One of you men fetch the undertaker, will you?”

  As one of the five scrambled through the batwings, Carmody turned, looked around the blood and wreckage, grabbed his hat from under a chair, and headed for the batwings.

  “Hey,” Prophet called to the banker, wrinkling his brows. “Who were these men ... and what in the hell were they doing here?”

  Without turning, Carmody shrugged, paused before the doors, and wrinkled his nose at the blood. He jabbed the right batwing open with a finger, and slipped through the crack, careful not to spoil his fine, gray suit.

  The other poker players regarded Prophet sheepishly and, worrying their hat brims in their hands, headed for the door. “Frank, Shep,” Prophet called to two of them, his voice raised with impatience, “who were these men?”

  The two shrugged and filed outside.

  Prophet turned to the back of the room. Several other customers had crawled out from their hiding places and were making for the door, avoiding Prophet’s eyes.