Staring Down the Devil (A Lou Prophet Western #5) (19 page)

Leamon
Gay
’s canopied phaeton clattered up the
mountain behind the black Thoroughbred, the canopy’s beaded tassels
dancing this way and that. Four horseback riders surrounded the
buggy, all holding shotguns or rifles.

Leaning back on the reins, the driver pulled the phaeton up to
the hacienda’s front patio shaded by a vast brush arbor. This late
in the day the sprawling adobe structure with its protruding vega
poles threw a bleak, vast shadow over the yard, in startling
contrast to the rust-colored desert below the mountain.

“We’re
home, Mr. Gay,” the driver said, a big blond German in ratty, dusty
clothes, and with a short-barreled shotgun sheathed on his
hip.

Behind
him, the sleeping Gay stirred in the leather seats. He lifted his
head and gazed around, smacking his lips. “Ah, yes, we are at
that.”

He
looked around for his black slouch hat, which had fallen to the
floor while he’d slept. It had been a long ride from Tucson, where
he’d met yesterday with prospective investors in another mining
operation. Finding the hat, he donned it, straightened his cravat,
and stepped gracefully down from the buggy, the door of which had
already been opened by one of the shotgun-wielding bodyguards who
had accompanied him to Tucson.

The
guards accompanied him everywhere. The downside of being a wealthy
man in
this lawless land was that everyone
and their
brother had it out for you. And
that wasn’t even taking the ferocious Apaches and Mexican
bandidos
into
consideration.

What
he’d enjoyed most about being a simple bandit himself, in those
long-ago days, was that you at least knew who your enemies were.
These days he could never be sure — thus the need for guards
everywhere he went.

He was
walking across the groomed gravel yard when the hacienda’s heavy
front door opened and his first lieutenant, Brian Delgado, stepped
out, clad in his customary bull hide vest and black gunbelt.
Delgado was tall and narrow, like his employer. Unlike Gay, his
belly was flat, his face and shoulders broad. His right eye
wandered in its socket — a little reminder of Apache
Pass.

“Welcome back,
jefe”
he said, pensively twisting a waxed end of his
full, black mustache.

“Yeah,
yeah,” Gay said, impatient. “How did the tracking go? Did you find
them?” He was referring to the two men who had invaded — or had
tried to invade — the hacienda three nights ago.

He’d
sent out a contingent of men to hunt them down, find out who they
were, and then drag them through town as an example to anyone else
who considered making an unannounced visit to the hacienda, and
kill them.

“Sorry,
jefe.”
Delgado threw his arms defeatedly.

“You
lost ‘em?”

Delgado shook his head. “We tracked them into the Pasqualante
Hills, and they lost us in a creek bed.”

“They
lost us in a creek bed.” Gay’s voice was dully mocking. His eyes
bored into his lieutenant’s like fire-tipped daggers.

Delgado stared back. His own eyes slitted slightly, wary. He
swallowed. “Sorry, yefe.”

“Sorry, yefe,” Gay mocked again.

He
stood staring at his lieutenant for a full fifteen seconds, the
other men looking on, silently tense. Then Gay turned, throwing an
arm over Delgado’s shoulders and leading the man out into the yard,
away from the buggy upon which the driver still sat, slumped, the
reins dangling in his hands. He watched Gay and Delgado with flat,
knowing eyes, the corners of his mouth turned up
slightly.

“Delgado,” Gay said, stopping when they were about twenty feet
from the buggy and in view of all the men in the yard, including
those smoking under the bunkhouse arbor, “I made you my first
lieutenant because I thought you would be effective.”

Delgado’s eyes flickered. He swallowed, tried a smile, and let
it go. Flies buzzed about his lips, but he ignored them.
“Look,
jefe,
I can
track a snake across a flat rock .. . usually. But,
dios,
you cannot expect .
. . you cannot expect . . .”

“No, I
guess I can’t expect you to run down two men who tried invading my
hacienda, can I? I see that now.” Gay’s arm was still draped across
Delgado’s slumped shoulders. He turned his gaze around the yard,
where his roughly dressed battalion of hardcases stared on — some
frowning, some smiling, some just smoking and staring with mute
interest.

Delgado’s eyes dropped to Gay’s right hand, which had lowered
to the crime boss’s pistol butt.

“Now,
hold on,
jefe,”
Delgado said, wrenching himself free of Gay’s right arm. “Just
hold on. You can’t —”

“Sorry, Brian,” Gay said, drawing the Colt from his
holster.

Delgado took several steps back. As he did, he clawed his own
pistol from its holster. The gun had just cleared leather when
Gay’s Colt barked, slinging a bullet through Delgado’s face, just
under his left eye. The lieutenant gave a shriek and twisted
around, falling to his hands and knees.

Casually Gay stepped toward his lieutenant, lowered the pistol
to the back of the man’s head, and drilled another bullet through
his hat crown. Delgado jerked and slumped forward on his face, his
hat tumbling away, knees curled beneath him, blood and brains
trickling from the hole in the back of his head.

A
disgusted look on his skeletal face. Gay sheathed his pistol and
swung a look around at his men. “You all saw that!” he yelled.
“That’s how I deal with ineffective riders. Remember
it.”

He
swung his gaze toward the bunkhouse,
where
a big-gutted man in greasy buckskins
and
with long salt-and-pepper hair stood smoking with two others.
“Mackenna!” Gay yelled to the man. “Delgado’s job is now yours.
Move your things into the house.”

The
man standing beside Coon Mackenna grinned and gave Mackenna a
chiding
elbow. “Just make sure you ain’t
ineffective.
Coon,” he jeered.

Mackenna just
stared grimly, his face flushing slightly, as Gay swung around and
headed past the buggy, leaving Delgado a heaped, dead mass in the
yard for all his men to consider.

In the
house Gay hurried up the winding stone stairs to the second story.
Without knocking, he threw open the door to the girl’s room and
stood there, puffing the stogie and grinning.

“Ah,
there you are.”

She
sat in an upholstered chair at a round table by the window, dressed
in one of the pink gowns he’d ordered from New Orleans. She stared
at him now, her face appearing drawn and weary.

She
tried a smile, but it didn’t touch those slanted eyes. “Here I am,
right where you left me.”

He
took the stogie in his right hand, strolled over to her, and placed
his hands on her naked shoulders. “How wonderful it is to have a
woman awaiting my return from my tawdry business dealings.” He
knelt like a royal suitor and lightly kissed her forehead. “I’ve
never had a more beautiful woman than you. You are a treat, do you
know that, Marya?”

She
smiled, trying her best to play along with his bizarre charade, his
ludicrous pantomime, his mockery of genuine love-making. He
fingered the arm strap of her gown, slowly jerking it down while he
nuzzled her neck. “Decide to share your secret?”

“Yes.”

He
jerked his head up, blinking, surprised. “What?”

“You
heard me.”

Skirts
rustling, she stood and walked to the carved bureau with its vast,
ornate mirror, opened a drawer, and removed a sheet of heavy
parchment. “I drew the map from memory. It’s all yours. Remember,
you promised to let me go when you found the

treasure.”

He
took the paper and studied it. “I hope you have a good memory,” he
said, all vestiges of his playacting gone, his voice teeming with
menace. He snapped his head toward the open door behind him.
“Benton!”

After
a moment the craggy-faced rider named Liam Benton appeared. He was
Gay’s personal secretary of sorts, the oldest man on his
roll.

“Have
McKenna take a company of men and follow the map to the
X,
then report back to me
pronto.”

“You
got it, Mr. Gay.” The aging secretary,
who
had once done time for child molesting, nodded dutifully and
accepted the map from Gay.

The
secretary was heading back through the door when Gay said suddenly,
“Wait! Give that back to me.”

Frowning, Benton
returned the map to his employer.

“Thanks — you can go.”

“Yes,
sir.” Warily Liam turned and disappeared down the hall.

Marya
watched Gay with an expression similar to that of the old
secretary. Then she realized the problem.

“What’s the matter?” she asked, barely able to conceal her
delight at Gay’s apprehension. “You do not trust your own
men?”

Gay’s
horsey, effeminate features betrayed mild embarrassment. “I’m going
after it myself, in good time. Or, I should say,
we
are — you and me. I
didn’t get to where I am today by being heedless of men’s basic
natures — the first and foremost of which is greed.” He laid the
map on the table, then turned to her, standing by the bureau,
regarding him with ill-concealed disdain, arms crossed over her
breasts as though she’d turned suddenly cold.

He
grinned and yanked off his cravat, tossed it aside, and began
unbuttoning his shirt. “The second of which is lust.”