Staring Down the Devil (A Lou Prophet Western #5) (18 page)
Read Staring Down the Devil (A Lou Prophet Western #5) Online
Authors: Peter Brandvold
Tags: #pulp fiction, #wild west, #cowboys, #old west, #outlaws, #western frontier, #peter brandvold, #frontier fiction, #piccadilly publishing, #lou prophet
“Why’s
Gay holding you here?” Prophet had just finished the question when
he heard a spur ching softly outside the door. He turned,
listening. Faintly he heard footsteps.
He
sidled up to the door and said, just above a whisper,
“Sergei?”
“Lou?”
came the Russian’s lowered voice.
Prophet threw open the door, beckoned the Cossack in, and shut
it softly behind him. He turned as Sergei and Marya locked gazes.
The girl’s eyes widened with relief and joy, and she bounded into
the Cossack’s arms.
“Oh,
Marya!” Sergei exclaimed under his breath, wrapping the girl in his
broad-shouldered hug and holding her tightly, gently rocking her
from side to side. She’d buried her face in his chest. Her
shoulders jerked as she sobbed.
The
Cossack said, “I was beginning to wonder if we would ever find you
alive.”
When
she looked up at him, her lovely face was filled with fear and
sorrow. “He killed Bert, and he has been holding me for over a
month now, locked in this room.”
Sergei
smoothed a wing of blond hair back from her brow. “But why,
ma cherie? Why
is he
holding you here?”
“He
wants the treasure Bert discovered — Bert, my prospector friend.
Did Natasha get my map?”
Sergei
nodded, but his eyes were puzzled. “We did not understand. It is a
map to what?”
“To
the gold,” Marya said. “I sent it just after we arrived in Broken
Knee, in case anything should happen to Bert and me.”
Prophet was dubious. “What gold?”
Marya
turned to him, still enmeshed in Sergei’s arms. “The Lost Morales
Gold Cache,” she said. “Bert had found it a few years ago, when he
was in the cavalry. The Apaches were too thick in the area to
retrieve it then, however. When I met Bert, he had just retired
from the army and was gathering supplies to retrieve the gold.
That’s when Gay found us. His men brought us here. He killed Bert.
. . .” She squeezed her eyes closed.
“How
did he know Bert was going after the gold?” Prophet asked. He stood
by the door, an ear cocked toward the corridor. His nerves twanged
in every appendage.
Marya
shook her head, half-sad, half-disgusted. “It had been rumored that
Bert knew where the gold was. He was not sure how the rumor got
started, but Bert was a drinker, you see. He sometimes bragged when
he drank. He suspected that he must have bragged about having found
the gold one time when he was drinking in one of the cantinas. Word
must have gotten back to Gay. When he showed up in Broken Knee . .
.”
“Gay
figured, correctly, that he was here to retrieve the gold,” Sergei
finished for her.
“What
does Gay need with the gold?” Prophet asked with an incredulous
grunt. “I mean, he has a whole mine full.”
Marya
turned to him again, gave her head a single shake. “The gold is
disappearing from the ore. I heard him talking to one of his men
outside my window. The vein is playing out.”
“Ah,”
Prophet said, nodding. “He’s about to go belly up.”
Sergei
turned to him, curious. “Belly up?”
“Broke.”
“Broke?”
Prophet shook his head. “I’d love to explain” — he looked at
the girl critically — “and I’d love to know why in the hell you
just didn’t go ahead and turn over the gold and be on your way, but
there’s no time. Miss, why don’t you get dressed — and I mean fast
— and —”
Prophet stopped and turned his ear back to the door. “Shit!”
he exclaimed. “Someone’s coming.”
“It’s
him,” Marya said, meaning Gay. “He’s coming for me, to show me off
to his senator friend.”
“Quick!” Prophet said. “Throw something on.
“No —
it’s too late. If I go with you now, he’ll see that I’m gone too
soon. We won’t get away.” She stared at Sergei, her cheeks drawn
down with disappointment. “You both go. Out the window. Come for me
another time.”
“Marya, no!” Sergei said, his face bunching with frustration,
showing his teeth.
Prophet listened
at the door. Boots clomped up the stairs, growing
louder.
Prophet shook his head and bounded past Sergei, nudging the
Cossack’s shoulder as he made for the large casement window,
open to the night air. “She’s right. We’ll
have
to spring her some other
time.”
Sergei
stood staring with red-faced frustra
tion at
the girl, refusing to move.
Boots thumped in
the hall.
“Sergei — go!” she pleaded, jerking his arm toward the window.
Prophet was already straddling the casement, one leg
outside.
“I
cannot leave you,” the Russian insisted.
“If
you don’t leave me now, we will
all
die,” she insisted, jerking on his arm, leading
him toward the window. “I have been here this long, I can wait
longer.”
The
boots stopped outside the door. The doorknob turned. Marya watched
it, her heart in her throat. The door opened, and Leamon Gay’s
frowning visage appeared. He wore a bowler hat, and his stringy
white hair brushed the tops of his shoulders. His face was pink
from the sun; a pair of steel-rimmed glasses perched on his
nose.
“The
door was not locked,” he said, standing there, holding the door
open and observing the door as if it held the answer to his
question.
Marya turned to
the window, where the man called Prophet and Sergei had
disappeared. She could hear them scurrying down a trellis pole,
making slight scuffing sounds, the wood of the pole creaking with
their weight.
To
cover the noise, she said more loudly than normal, “You must have
forgotten to lock it when you last went out. Too bad I didn’t know,
or I would be gone. Is your friend still here? I have only just now
finished my bath.”
Gay
turned to her angrily. “What’s taking so damn long? You should be
dressed and ready by now.”
Marya
shrugged. “You know how women
are.
...
Out
the window, a soft thud rose from below. Gay shuttled his frown to
it. “What was that?”
Marya’s heart leaped. She swallowed it down and fashioned a
casual expression. “What was what?”
Frowning, Gay
moved slowly toward the window.
“I
didn’t hear anything,” Marya said.
With an
exaggerated movement, she cast her towel aside and turned to face
him. He saw her in the corner of his vision, turned to her. Staring
at her naked young body, the pert breasts standing out proudly from
her chest, the frown slowly faded from his face, replaced by a
vaguely lascivious grin.
“Ah,
you are a lovely specimen!” He stooped to nuzzle her right breast.
Straightening, he added, “But don’t think it’s going to keep you
from dying if you don’t give up
your
secret. Now, get dressed. You have five
minutes to be downstairs!”
He wheeled and
marched out of the room.
Marya
heaved a relieved sigh, grabbed her towel, and hurried to the
window. Looking out, she saw little but the wall and a few dead
trees the Mexicans who had once lived here had planted in the
cobbled courtyard.
A guard was making his
slow rounds beyond
the wall. Sergei and the
man called Prophet must have slipped away safely. From an open
window below, she could hear the boisterous voices of Gay’s men
playing cards in the dining room.
She gazed once
more across the yard, feeling all the more lonely for having seen
Sergei and learning that her beloved sister Natasha was as near as
Broken Knee . . .
Prophet and Sergei were hunkered down behind the wall, under
the spread limbs of a dead pecan tree, hidden from
Marya
’s window as well as the yard. They
waited for the guard to make his way along the wall. When the man
finally passed, strolling casually and smoking, his footfalls soft
in the hard-packed dust. Prophet and the Cossack hurdled the wall
and ran crouching across the yard. They were halfway to the corral
when Prophet saw movement to their left, in the shadows before a
long, low, adobe building he assumed was a bunkhouse. A wagon
parked between the bunkhouse and the wall had hidden from view the
two men who now appeared standing there casually conversing on the
far side of the wagon.
“Drop!” Prophet whispered.
He and
Sergei flung themselves down and shot looks out to their left.
Prophet knew it was too late even before he heard: “Hey, who in the
hell is that?” The man’s voice was rough and loud with
incredulity.
Prophet spat a curse. He didn’t have to say anything to
Sergei. The Cossack knew the score. If they didn’t claw iron and
trigger lead, they’d be dead in seconds.
Simultaneously
they raked their guns from their holsters, aimed from their prone
positions, and opened up, cutting the two silhouetted figures down
in a blaze of muzzle flashes and an acrid cloud of
gun-smoke.
Gay’s
two men were down but still kicking when Prophet and Sergei bounded
to their feet and ran like mustangs with cans tied to their
tails.
Prophet was
running and breathing so hard he only vaguely heard voices rising
behind him. Then came the gunfire, tentative at first. It quickly
grew insistent, the bullets whistling in the air around Prophet and
Sergei, plunking into the ground around their heels.
They
didn’t take the time to look for the trough they’d taken up the
mountain. When they came to the shelf s lip, they bounded straight
over the side, losing their footing, dropping and rolling, banging
against boulders and tumbling over shrubs.
Both
men were on their feet again in seconds, ignoring the bruises
incurred in the fall, still descending, knowing Gay’s long riders
were in hot pursuit, hearing the pistol and rifle pops growing
louder behind them. Prophet was inclined to stop and return fire
but decided against it; his muzzle flashes would signal his
position.
He
ran, leaping rocks, twisting around boulders, and bounding through
brush. He heard Sergei about fifteen feet to his left, grunting and
wheezing, breath raking in and out of his lungs, the Cossack’s
boots pounding the ground. In several places, where the boulders
were thick, they had to slow down and make their way carefully, but
then they ran again, picking out obstacles in the
starlight.
Meanwhile, guns popped behind them, men cursed. Casting
occasional glances over
his shoulder.
Prophet saw the muzzle flashes
of the men
descending the mountain, spread out to sweep as much ground as
possible. Prophet and Sergei had the advantage of
the darkness. Still, several shots came
close,
twanging off boulders, spraying
Prophet with shards of gravel and dirt.
By the
time he and the Russian made the foot of the mountain, Prophet’s
knees ached, and his feet screamed in his boots. Sleeving sweat
from his brow, he paused for a two-second breather and saw that the
Cossack did likewise, hands on his knees, blowing and
puffing.
“Come
on,” Prophet said, his voice hoarse with exertion.
He moved off to
the left, pushing through greasewood bramble, traversing an arroyo,
and finally hearing the startled whinny of Mean and
Ugly.
“No
more joyous sound have I ever heard,” he said aloud, his chest on
fire.
He
headed for the sound, Sergei following. When they found the horses
tied where they’d left them, they toed their stirrups, clawed at
their horns, and heaved their exhausted bodies into their
saddles.
Prophet looked back the way he’d come. The gunfire had
silenced. Distant, muffled voices rose in anger and
confusion.
“Think
we lost ‘em — for now,” he told the Cossack.
“Yes,
for now,” Sergei said, sucking a ragged breath. “I doubt we have
time for tea, however.”
“We
can agree on that, at least, ole hoss.”
Prophet reined
Mean around and spurred him into a trot through the broken desert.
When he and Sergei made the road, their horses bounded into a
ground-eating gallop for a distant jog of hills.
Knowing that Gay
’s men might run them
down if they headed directly for town, Prophet and Sergei stayed in
the desert for three nights, camping in a different place each
night and snaring rabbits for food.
On the
fourth day they made their way back to Broken Knee, avoiding the
main road, approaching the livery barn from the rear. They stabled
their horses with the Mexican, who laughed when Prophet told him
they’d been hunting.
“What’s so funny?” he asked.
“Nothing, senor.”
Prophet glanced at Sergei. They were both sunburned, sweaty,
and caked with red desert dust. Prophet’s pulse pricked at his
hands and feet. He wondered if somehow the hostler knew that he and
Sergei had invaded the hacienda.
“What
is it?”
The
Mexican smiled knowingly. “You’ve been out looking for the Jesuit
gold. That is okay — many men have looked for it.” Jorge Assante
poked a mocking finger in the air. “But no one has ever found
it.”
Prophet exhaled a relieved breath. He decided to play dumb
about the gold. “What Jesuit gold?”
“You
know the gold, senor. The Lost Morales Gold. The gold of many
legends. Some men believe, some don’t believe. I, myself, do not
believe, but that does not mean it is not out there
somewhere.”
Assante wagged
his grinning head as he continued rubbing grease into a cracked
strip of dry harness leather.
“It is
none of my business what you do, senores,” he continued. “But
beware. If Gay finds you out there, it will go badly for
you.”
“Oh?
Why’s that?” Prophet asked, sliding a furtive glance at
Sergei.
“Because he is one of the believers. He wants the treasure for
himself, you see.” Assante shook his head again and held Prophet
with a dark, admonishing gaze. “And if he does not get it, then no
one gets it. No, no — it is best you stay out of the mountains. If
I were you, I would go farther south and look for treasure. There
is said to be much
gold in
Mejico.”
“Thanks for the advice,” Prophet said. “Grain ‘em good, will
you?”
“Si,
senor.”
On the
way to the hotel, keeping an eye out for Gay’s men, Sergei said,
“The treasure Marya was after.”
“Yep.”
Prophet sleeved sweat-mud from his brow. “I reckon she and her ole
friend Bert didn’t know what kind of a ring-tailed varmint they’d
be tussling with, when they rode into this country looking for
their el Dorado.”
“Do
you believe the gold is really there, Lou?”
“Hell,
I don’t know,” Prophet said. “To tell you the truth, I don’t really
care. I just want to get the countess’s sister off that mountain so
I can wash my hands of all of you, including Leamon Gay, and head
on down to
Mejico
for a fandango with the
senoritas.”
They
found the countess anxiously waiting for them in her room, where
she’d obviously been doing little but smoking, reading, and
drinking coffee for the past two days while she worried. Her room
was a mess and her features were drawn.
When
Prophet and Sergei had filled her in on what had happened at Gay’s
hacienda, and why they’d been gone so long, Prophet left and found
a bathhouse. Bathed, he returned to his hotel room and slept until
he heard someone probing his door lock.
He
grabbed his Colt from the bedpost, thumbed back the hammer, and
waited. The door opened, and the countess appeared, moving
stealthily. Seeing the gun aimed at her, she said, “It is only
I.”
Prophet depressed the Colt’s hammer and returned the gun to
its holster. “Where’d you get a key?”
“The
desk clerk.”
Prophet smiled. “That was rather bold, wasn’t it?”
“I
told him it was for you, that you had lost yours.”
His
head resting in his hand, he watched as she stripped before him,
tossing her clothes on the floor, then removed her barrette,
letting her hair spill about her shoulders.
She
shook her head, tossing her hair down her back, and lay beside
Prophet, who lay on the bed naked, for it was as hot as a shallow
desert grave in the room, even with the two windows open. She
smiled at him warmly and snuggled against him, curling her legs in
his. Her skin shone umber in the slanting afternoon light, her body
fine and long.
She kissed him
and buried her face in his chest. He caressed her back, nuzzling
her neck. Absently she fondled his stiffening member.
“Oh,
Lou,” she said longingly, “how will you ever be able to bring Marya
back to me?”
“I’ve
been wondering the same thing,” Prophet said as he softly kissed
her shoulder. “But I think I know a way.”
She
jerked away from him and lifted her startled gaze to his. “What is
it?”
He told
her.
And then they
made love.