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

by Peter Brandvold

  Prophet thrust the Richards to within six inches of the bulldog’s face. The man recoiled against the privy’s back wall, nudging a small calendar hanging from a nail, and turned his head to one side, blinking fearfully, awaiting the blast.

  “Wales,” he screamed. “I’m Edgar Wales! Please don’t shoot me. My momma’s back in Denver... and I send her money.”

  “Why are you potting for me, Edgar Wales?”

  Prophet thumbed back the Richards’s right trigger and snugged the barrel up to Wales’s jaw. “Looks like your momma’s gonna be diddlin’ drifters for Colfax Avenue pimps.”

  “Ralph Carmody hired me!” Wales yelled, adding in a softer voice, “And ... and several other businessmen from Bitter Creek.”

  Prophet’s blood warmed. “Why?”

  When the man just grunted and pressed his head to the privy’s rear wall, wincing, Prophet poked the barrel hard against his jaw. “Why?”

  “Oh, Lordy,” Wales whined, squeezing his eyes shut and panting. “ ’C-cause they think you throwed in with Crumb. They want you outta the way so’s ... so’s I can ambush Crumb and his new marshal when they ride back to town ... Oh, Lordy, please don’t shoot me. I just work for Mr. Boggs out to the Lazy Z. I’m a good shot with a long gun, but I ain’t no real killer! I reckon I’m as good as they could find since Carmody’s grandson refused to do it, but I’m just a plain ole thirty-an’-found cow waddie!”

  He turned his head. His eyes widened, surprised to see that Prophet had withdrawn the shotgun.

  “Stand and pull your pants up.”

  Wales studied Prophet skeptically. “Wh … what you gonna do?”

  “Haven’t figured that out yet. Get up.”

  Awkwardly, keeping his eyes on the Richards, Wales stood and pulled up his pants, tucking in his shirt. When he’d buttoned his fly, he reached for his pistol belt.

  “Leave it,” Prophet said. “Get those hands raised.”

  Wales sighed with chagrin and raised his hands. Prophet backed up and turned. Still watching the barn-blaster extended from Prophet’s waist, Wales stepped out of the privy.

  “The corral—move,” Prophet said, waving the shotgun toward the horses.

  “Listen, mister,” Wales said. “I was just doin’ what I was told... what they paid me for. Me, I mind my own business mostly, herd cattle for Mr. Boggs. I don’t—”

  Wales jerked around, grabbed Prophet’s shotgun barrel in both hands.

  Prophet didn’t even have time to shout a warning.

  Wales gave the blaster a jerk. The sudden, violent movement thrust Prophet’s finger against the right trigger. Instantly, the Richards bucked.

  The shotgun’s explosion was partially muffled by Wales’s belly. The single barrel of double-aught buck lifted Wales straight up off the ground and back about six feet.

  He hit the turf on his back, offering a strangled cry, hands feeling for his guts, which were no longer there but had been blown through his spine and deposited on the sage and sand behind him.

  Wales kicked his legs, bending his knees against the pain. He stared up at the sky and moved his lips as though trying to speak, lifting one hand, waving one finger as though there were one more thing he wanted to say.

  Prophet crouched over him, hands on his knees. Wales’s deep-sunk blue eyes rolled around in their sockets, turning glassy. “What’s your momma’s name?” Prophet said. “I’ll write her, tell her what happened.”

  Wales’s eyes fluttered. “I don’t... have no ... momma,” he rasped, blood welling up from his chest and throat and dribbling down his chin. “Never did have ... none.”

  His head turned to the side. His chest fell and did not rise again. His feet jerked, and then he lay still.

  Prophet straightened. “Dumb bastard.”

  Feeling bad about taking down the cow waddie, he broke the Richards open, extracted the two spent shells, and replaced them with fresh ones. He glanced down at the dead man again.

  “Dumb bastard,” he repeated. He looked around the cabin, then slung the Richards across his back and tramped over to the corral.

  A quarter hour later, he’d tied Wales to the back of the dead man’s horse and was leading him back to Bitter Creek, Mean and Ugly fidgeting at the smell of blood. “Come on, Mean,” Prophet cajoled as they turned south onto the old mining road. He was in no mood for the horse’s melodrama. “It ain’t like you never smelled blood before.”

  In town, Prophet inquired at the bank for Carmody, then rode over to the Mother Lode. He tied Mean to the hitch rack, cut Wales’s blanket-draped body free from its rawhide ties, and slung the cadaver over his shoulder.

  He pushed through the batwings and looked around the dim tavern. Burt Carr was swabbing the bar with his left hand, the bandaged right hanging at his side.

  Janice lounged against the bar in a crimson dress, black feathers in her hair, a matching bruise sheathing her left eye. Both turned to watch Prophet, as did Sorley Kitchen, hunkered over a beer at the other end of the mahogany.

  Seeing Carmody, Prophet crossed to the table around which the banker and several other businessmen were taking a beer and poker break, cigars smoldering in ashtrays. Prophet paused before the table.

  The men looked up at him and seemed startled.

  “What the …?” Milt Emory drawled around the cheroot in his teeth.

  Prophet bent his knees slightly and gave the body a heave. It hit the table with a crash, cards scattering, beer mugs hitting the floor and shattering. The blanket fell from Wales’s body, revealing the glazed eyes and gaping, ragged wound. Blood smeared the table.

  Carmody leapt from his chair, a fan of cards in one hand, a cigar in the other, a scowl on his red face. “What’s the meaning of this?” he bellowed, shuttling his exasperated gaze to the dead man. The banker’s jaw dropped.

  “Your assassin done got his lights blown out... not to mention his guts,” Prophet said.

  Carmody’s eyes grew wary.

  “I’m not on Crumb’s side, you wooden-headed shoat,” Prophet said. “You got this dumb bastard cored for nothin’.”

  Face creased with disgust, he turned and was walking toward the door when Carmody said, “What about the reward money?”

  Prophet turned back, frowning. “What reward money?”

  “The money the express company wired here. Crumb said he was holding it for you. It’s in my vault.” Carmody glanced at the other businessmen, who looked confused. “I thought you’d bought in with Crumb…”

  “Like Polk,” Emory said.

  Prophet stared at the men and scratched his ear. His money had come in. Crumb had duped him into staying.

  In spite of himself, he chuckled, plucked a previously rolled quirley from his shirt pocket, stuck it between his teeth, and grabbed Carmody’s cigar.

  He glowered at each man in turn as he touched the cigar to his quirley. Puffing smoke from the side of his mouth, he tossed the cigar back to the banker, who fumbled with it, brushing hot ash from his suit.

  “If I had any brains,” Prophet said, “I’d ride out of here and keep on ridin’. But my ma always said I didn’t have the good sense I was born with, so I reckon I’m gonna stay long enough to throw Crumb and Polk in their own jail. What happens to Bitter Creek after that is up to you.”

  Quirley smoldering between his teeth, Prophet turned and pushed through the batwings. He walked across the street, scaled the raised boardwalk before POLK’S HEALTH TONIC AND DRUG EMPORIUM in a single bound, turned the doorknob, and frowned.

  Locked.

  He backed up and peered in a window.

  “He didn’t open today,” said an elderly, heavy-set woman passing on the boardwalk behind him.

  Prophet stood back and peered at the building, puffing the quirley in his teeth with consternation. “Well, I’ll be—”

  A shrill scream rose in the south. It died only to rise again, so horror-pitched that it pricked the hair on the back of Prophet’s neck and ran chills up and down his spi
ne.

  Letting the quirley drop from his teeth, he turned around, grabbed his Colt, and ran. Boots pounding, he lurched past the Mother Lode and jogged down the space between buildings.

  The scream rose again, trilling throatily. Homing in on it, Prophet dashed through a yard, scattering chickens and startling two horses in an open stable. Behind a board shack, a tall, skinny man in coveralls stood peering south.

  Prophet stopped and followed the tall man’s gaze.

  Mad Mary cowered in the yard before the Whitman house, about fifteen feet from the front porch. Suddenly, her head rose and her mouth drew wide. She loosed a scream like a Blackfoot witch conjuring evil Sioux-bedeviling spirits.

  Prophet walked slowly toward her, gazing around, seeing nothing but the surrounding shacks, privies, stables, and a few neighbors who’d been drawn by the screams. Hearing the squawk of a screen door, he raised his eyes to the Whitman porch.

  The screen door opened slowly.

  Fianna Whitman stepped onto the porch in a dark blue dress with white lace around the collar and sleeves, her hair pulled back in a bun. Holding her stomach with her right hand, she moved stiffly forward and slowly descended the steps.

  She faltered, grabbed an awning post, teetered as though buffeted by a stiff breeze, then sank slowly down to the steps.

  Prophet ran into the Whitman yard.

  “Fianna?” He crouched down beside her, saw the blood matting her left breast.

  Her eyes were soft and rheumy from shock.

  Prophet turned to the men trailing over from the saloon, drawn by Mary’s screams, and yelled, “Get the doctor!” He turned to Fianna and, his voice low, asked, “What happened? Who did this?”

  Her eyes narrowed briefly, as though against a sudden pain spasm. “Wallace,” she said just above a whisper. “He couldn’t get it through his thick head that we ... never …” She swallowed, panting. “Lou, he’s gone to warn Crumb.”

  She winced. Sweat beaded her forehead, pasting her hair to her cheeks. Then the pain spasm passed, and her eyes found Prophet’s again, her full lips quirking another half smile. “Lou?”

  Prophet slipped his right arm behind her head, cushioning it from the step. He slid up close beside her, to keep her warm. Blood oozed from her left breast.

  “Shhh. Doc’s on the way.”

  “Thanks ... for the other night.”

  He beat away a bitter frown with a smile. “My pleasure.”

  “I didn’t deserve such sweetness.”

  She smiled balefully and winced. Her eyes rolled up, and the light left them. The lids drooped. Her head canted against his shoulder.

  Tenderly, Prophet smoothed the hair back from her cheek. Someone moved up on his left, and he turned to see Ralph Carmody approaching, his features drawn, his hat in his hands. The others from the saloon stood at the edge of the yard, not knowing what to do.

  “What happened?”

  “Polk,” Prophet said.

  Carmody shook his head, befuddled. “You seen him?”

  “No, but Mary must’ve seen it all. Miss Whitman told me she offered her food and the bed in her back room from time to time.”

  Prophet slipped out from beneath Fianna and walked over to Mary. He crouched, grasped the withered woman’s shoulders in his hands, and shook her gently.

  “Polk,” Prophet said. “Which way did he go?”

  Mary sobbed, lifted her head as if to scream, then closed her mouth and extended her right arm west.

  Prophet released her, straightened, and tramped through the scattered crowd toward Main Street.

  “Proph, can I ride with you?” It was Ronnie Williams running up beside him.

  The kid knew this country better than Prophet did.

  “Get your horse.”

  Chapter Twenty

  It wasn’t hard to cut the relatively fresh sign of Wallace Polk’s galloping horse from the wheel ruts along the mining and mail road leading west from Bitter Creek.

  As Prophet and Ronnie alternately loped and walked their horses through the sage-tufted hogbacks and sandy rimrocks, Prophet hoped to gain sight of Polk before dark, about four hours distant, and let the druggist lead Prophet to Crumb and Crumb’s new “lawman”—all of whom he hoped to throw in the Bitter Creek jailhouse.

  But he’d not hesitate to kill if it came to that. Crumb and Polk were two of the most cowardly killers he’d ever known.

  It was a good plan, and it should have worked.

  Only, Prophet didn’t count on Polk being able to stay ahead of him until dark. The druggist, probably knowing Prophet would be trailing him, and taking the livery’s fastest horse, had done just that.

  The sun was a bright, bloody blossom behind the dark western peaks when Prophet and Ronnie stood on a low butte, their horses’ reins in their hands, a sage-spiced breeze wafting against their faces. Prophet stared dully southwest, knowing he could ride no farther without risking losing Polk’s trail in the darkness.

  He and Ronnie would have to bivouac for the night and begin following Polk’s sign again in the morning.

  They made a cold camp, saying little. Lying in his blanket roll, Prophet watched in his mind’s eye as Fianna Whitman walked out of her house again, hand across her stomach, and slouched down to her porch steps. He thought of Frieda. He’d had to leave town without telling her the reason; when she didn’t see him tonight, she’d wonder.

  He and Ronnie were in the saddle again as soon as the dawn showed them Polk’s hoofprints traversing an old trapper’s trail known as the Medicine Bow cutoff.

  “Crumb must’ve met his lawman fella somewhere around Broken Lance,” Ronnie said as they trotted their horses through a pine forest, chickadees chirping in the branches. “Must’ve come up from western Colorado.”

  “I wonder if it’s Grant Schaeffer,” Prophet said.

  “Who’s he?”

  “Lawman and hired gun. Shirttail relative of Wes Hardin. They call him the Eagle ’cause he’s got the glassiest pale blue eyes, and they say he can shoot a spider off a fence post from a hundred yards. He wore a badge in Deadwood and Leadville, then got caught rigging faro games and selling hooch to Injuns. Last I heard he was in Utah. He’s the only man of his ilk I can think of who Crumb might’ve found out this way. Bitter Creek would be a fine remote place for the Eagle to hide out a few years ... and make some money in the process.”

  Prophet turned to Ronnie, who flinched under his dark gaze.

  “If it’s him, you stay clear. Been enough folks killed in Bitter Creek without the ole Eagle addin’ you to the bone-yard.”

  Late that afternoon, they found a cold fire pit in a narrow mountain valley, where Polk had met up with two riders who’d ridden in from the southwest, Crumb on his way back from wherever he’d picked up the new marshal of Bitter Creek.

  “Why didn’t we meet ’em on the trail?” Ronnie asked, looking around the fire ring at the cropped grass where three horses had been picketed last night.

  Prophet was walking west through the brush, eyes on the ground.

  He walked several yards away from the fire ring, lifted his head, and peered straight west. Finally, he threw out an arm and said without turning, “Looks like they headed through that gap in those hills yonder.”

  “Trying to get around us?”

  Prophet slowly shook his head. Scowling, he tramped back to the fire ring, grabbed Mean’s reins, and climbed into the saddle. “We’ll see. Keep your eyes peeled. Polk’s told ’em the whole story by now, and they might try to bushwhack us.”

  They followed the gap through the sunburnt hills, and rode for a good hour through rolling sagebrush and high, craggy rimrocks. The trail of Polk and the other two men followed a creek, which Ronnie told Prophet was the Jackrabbit, feeding the Sweetwater up near the Buffalo Buttes. They spotted a few rangy cows on the hillsides and occasional dry pies littered the stream bank.

  “It’s been a while since I rode out this far from town, but I’m pretty sure we’re on Jackrabbi
t range,” Ronnie said, eyeing one such cluster of cow pies.

  “What’s that mean?”

  “It means we’re in trouble,” Ronnie said, cutting his eyes around. “The Jackrabbit’s run by Jedediah Spillane. He’s business partners with Crumb; Spillane’s half owner of both Bitter Creek saloons and both brothels.”

  “So Crumb’s headin’ for the Jackrabbit for help.” He paused, thinking it over. Polk had found Crumb and the gunman, told them how Prophet had wiped out the Lovell bunch, so they’d headed for the Spillane spread to recruit a few of the rancher’s best shooters.

  “How many men does this Spillane have on his roll, Ronnie?”

  The kid shrugged. “It ain’t a real big spread, and I heard since Spillane’s old, he ain’t been adding to it. I’d guess no more than ten. But most of ’em are fightin’ men.”

  “This far off the beaten path, and in Ute and Cheyenne country, they probably have to be.”

  Prophet looked around, made sure his pistol and shotgun were loaded, then snugged his hat down and kneed Mean into a trot.

  Late afternoon found them dismounted and lying prone behind the lip of a high ridge, their horses ground-hitched at the base of the butte behind them. Keeping his head low to the grassy lip, Prophet stared through his field glasses at the ranch headquarters nestled in the brushy hollow below.

  The compound consisted of a weathered, L-shaped cabin, two hay barns, several corrals, a windmill, and a simple log bunkhouse beside a blacksmith shop. Horses milled in the corrals, and several men were working the rough-string broncs near a snubbing post.

  The mustachioed Mexican blacksmith hammered the hub of a big Murphy hay wagon while two collie dogs sat behind him, staring at the black-and-white cat cowering at the edge of the shop roof, tail curled over its back. The dogs wagged their own tails and eagerly shifted their front paws.

  Prophet focused on the main house, before which three horses were tethered to a hitch rack. Two drank water from a stock trough. The third lowered its head and shook itself, making the stirrups of its saddle flap like wings. The coats of all three horses shone with sweat.

  Prophet lowered the glasses and turned to Ronnie. “That’s what they’ve done, all right. They’ve gone for help.”