Staring Down the Devil (A Lou Prophet Western #5) (2 page)

Prophet grumbled
and cursed, spitting mud and dung. He rose up on his arms, his
hands buried in the mud.

The man before
him squatted down and peered at him skeptically. He was a stocky,
blocky-framed hombre, round-faced, with a carefully trimmed
mustache, goatee, and long sideburns.

“He
does appear to be the one,” the man said in his heavily accented
English. “Are you all right, Mr. Prophet?”

Prophet stared at him, curious, his nose hurting and his eyes
burning from the dung and mud. “Do I know you?”

“I am
Sergei Andreyevich,” the man said. Glancing up at the woman, he
added, “This is Countess Roskov.”

“No
kiddin’,” was the only response that came to the bounty hunter’s
reeling, beer-fogged brain.

“Dean
Senate sent us,” the man called Sergei informed him. “We met him in
Kansas City. He said you might be able to help us.”

Prophet climbed to his knees and scrubbed mud from his left
eye with his right sleeve. He eyed the round, hairy face before
him, his drunken incredulity having been aroused by the name. Dean
Senate was an old friend of Prophet’s — an ex-mountain man who now
owned the plush Ozark Hotel in Kansas City.

“Help
you do what?”

“Sergei,” the woman said, “this is no place to talk.” The
words hadn’t died on her tongue before a phaeton rolled past,
missing them by only a few feet and splashing them all with
mud.

“No,
it is not,” Sergei agreed. He straightened and grabbed Prophet’s
left arm. “Here — let me help you up.”

Prophet felt
rickety and tired and dazed from the alcohol and his bear-bit nose.
His back and neck were sore.

“Goddamn bear,” he groused as they approached the
boardwalk.

“What
bear?”

“The
damn bear that bit me.”

“Oh,
he ain’t a grizzly bear, Lou!”

“Pshaw! Grizzly or no, I never shoulda let that tart talk me
into wrastlin’ a bear.”

“You
wrestled a bear?” the woman asked with surprise. She stood facing
Prophet on the boardwalk, between two lighted windows, one of which
belonged to a hotel, the other a small cafe. Occasional miners and
townsmen swerved around them. Buggies and wagons clattered on the
street, horse hooves and wagon wheels making sucking sounds in the
mud.

Prophet steadied his gaze at the woman, sizing her up. She was
probably in her mid-twenties, her long chestnut hair worn in a
stylish bun, with tendrils framing her heart-shaped face. Her eyes
were rather startling in their blueness and in the way they
slanted, almost like those of an Oriental. Her skin was pale and
smooth as cream. She had a heavy brow, which gave her a severe
look. She could have been the
churchgoing
wife of a politician or a military
man. She
was dressed for it, too, in a conservative purple dress and a black
cape hanging loosely about her shoulders.

“Guilty as charged, ma’am,” Prophet said, openly embarrassed.
“I wrastled a bear. But it was my first one, so that should count
for something.”

The
woman frowned. “What happened to your nose?”

“He
bit me.”

“That
doesn’t sound fair,” Sergei said with a trace of irony in his
voice.

“That’s what I said. So I kicked the bastard in the —” Prophet
stopped and looked at the woman. “Anyway, they kicked

me
out.”

Tossing a disdainful glance back at the Slap & Tickle,
where behind the two large, brightly lit windows a piano was
pounding, men were yelling, and women were laughing, he added, “And
they can all go to hell as far as I’m concerned. I’ll do my
drinkin’ elsewhere. There’s other girls. Tillie Azure ain’t the
only dove in Denver.”

Regarding the two foreigners unsteadily, he asked, “Who’d you
say you were again?”

“I am
Countess Natasha Roskov. This is Sergei Andreyevich. And you, I
believe, need a bath.” Her intense blue eyes drifted down his muddy
frame and back up again, acquiring a humorous light. “I believe I
saw a bathhouse just down the street. . . .”

Prophet looked down at his sopping, filthy clothes. The stench
of manure nearly gagged him. “Yeah, I reckon I could at that.
Problem is,” he added with chagrin, “I don’t have any money. Reckon
I’ll just head down to Cherry Creek.”

He
gave the Russians a friendly nod. “Pleased to make your
acquaintance, Sergei, Countess. . . .” Still disoriented from the
beer and bruising, he turned away.

“Uh,
Mr. Prophet, the countess and I would be happy to treat you to a
bath.”

Prophet kept walking. “Thanks for the offer, but I don’t beg
money off strangers. Besides, Cherry Creek ain’t that far. I’ve
bathed there before; I reckon I can bathe there again. I’ll lick my
wounds under the cottonwoods.”

The
countess followed him, her eyes wide with pleading. “But, Mr.
Prophet, Mr. Senate sent us here to find you. He said you might be
able to help us.”

“Oh,
yeah, I remember. Sorry. I’ve had a few drinks. Just pulled into
town.” He grinned devilishly. “Like to kick up my heels a little,
whenever I’m in town. Whenever I’m in any town, for that matter,”
he added with an exaggerated laugh, throwing back his
head.

He
regained his composure and gazed at the countess and Sergei with
renewed curiosity. “So you know Dean, eh? What was it he thought I
could help you with?”

The
countess smiled patiently. “What do you say we treat you to a bath,
and then we will discuss it . . . over coffee?”

“Coffee, eh?” Prophet thought it over, glancing once more with
disdain at the Slap & Tickle. “Make it coffee and whiskey, and
you got a deal.”

“All
right.” The countess brightened. “Coffee and whiskey it
is.”

“And
we’ll call the bath a loan.”

“If it
pleases you . . .”

“It
pleases me.”

“Right
this way, then.”

A boiler ticked
and groaned at the rear of the bathhouse, on a large cast-iron
range. Two of the five wooden washtubs were occupied by burly,
red-faced men with fish-belly-white shoulders where their shirts
had shielded the sun. The men were talking loudly, drunkenly, as
they passed a bottle.

Boldly, the countess led Prophet and Sergei into the room. The
proprietor was hammering a leg on an overturned bench. He looked up
at the countess with wary surprise in his washed-out eyes. “Y-yes,
ma’am?” He glanced at Prophet and Sergei.

An
earsplitting whoop cut off her reply. “Come here, my sweet, and
wash me back!” one of the bathers called to the
countess.

“Mine,
too!” yelled the other. “Mine, too!”

Both men
guffawed. The countess ignored them, her nostrils flaring
slightly.

“This
man needs a bath,” she told the proprietor sternly, indicating
Prophet.

Regarding Prophet, the proprietor raised his brows and tongued
his cheek. “Well, I reckon he does. . . .”

The
countess opened her small beaded reticule. “How much do you
charge?”

“Four
bits for four buckets.”

The
countess plucked several coins from the purse and dropped them into
the man’s hand. “That should take care of it.”

She
had turned and was about to speak to Prophet when one of the
Irishmen said,
“Hey, get yourself over
here, me little piglet.
You haven’t washed
me back yet!”

The
countess wheeled to the man, and in a tone of strained tolerance,
she said, “I have no intention of washing your back, sir. Now, if
you’ll please, I’ve business to attend.”

One of
the men turned to the other. “Hey, ain’t that a Dutch
accent?”

The
other man shook his head. “Nah, sounds more like Polack to me,
Pat.”

“You
know what they say about them Polack women, Joe.”

“Ahhh,
but I do, me friend. But I do!” Lifting his florid gaze to the
countess, Pat dropped his hand between his legs and said with a
lusty leer, “Come on over here, me little Polack. Me dong needs
ascrubbin’!”

Sergei, who had been regarding the men with the same strained
tolerance as the countess, strolled casually over to the Irishmen,
who watched him approach with a jovial cast to their eyes. Sergei
stepped between the two round wooden tubs, crouched down, and
hooked the index fingers of both hands.

The Irishmen
regarded each other, wary. Frowning, they leaned toward Sergei,
each cocking an ear.

The stocky
Russian crouched between the two men, smiling, and then in a blur
of movement, he grabbed each man by his neck and smacked their
heads together with an audible crack.

Pat and Joe were
out like blown candles, sagging like rag dolls in their
tubs.

Sergei
stood, casually flicked water from his coat, and strolled back to
the countess, Prophet, and the bathhouse proprietor. The latter two
had watched the proceedings with mute amazement. The proprietor’s
jaw hung slack. The countess had acquired the expression of a
vaguely amused spectator at an event staged for her
entertainment.

Now
she turned to Prophet, continuing where she’d left off. “When you
are finished here, Mr. Prophet, have a cab take you over to the
Denver House Hotel. A room will be waiting for you there. Sergei
and I will be in the saloon. I will leave money in the
office
here for your cab.” She turned to
the bathhouse man. “Have his clothes cleaned, as well. I will send
a clean suit over from the hotel.”

She
turned to her companion. “Let us depart, Sergei.”

Prophet stared at the figures retreating through the steam.
“Hey, wait a minute!” A vague indignation had swum up through the
alcohol and body aches. It was one thing to buy him a bath and a
whiskey, but a room in the poshest hotel in town? He was beginning
to feel like a puppet.

Sergei glanced
back at Prophet, gave a funny little half smile, touched his hat
brim, and followed the countess outside. The door closed behind
them.

“Hey,
wait just a goddamn minute!” Prophet yelled again, but with less
vehemence this time. The couple was gone. It was just the
proprietor, the two unconscious Irishmen, and himself, sopping wet
and stinking to high heaven, his vision blurry from too much beer
and whiskey and an ill-fated fight with a drunk bear.

And
he’d spoiled his chance for a night with the prettiest dove in
town. . . .

“Goddamnit,” he groused under his breath.

“Well,
what do you say, mister?” the bath-
house
proprietor said. He’d limped over to the boiler and indicated one
of the steaming copper kettles with a grin. “The Polacks are
buyin’, and I’d say if anyone ever needed a bath, it was
you.”

“Yeah,” Prophet said. “But what’s it gonna cost
me?”

A quarter hour
later Prophet climbed out of the tub.

“These
are the duds that Polack gal sent over,” the bathhouse manager told
him. The man set the clothes on the bench and checked on the two
Irishman still out cold in their tubs.

When
Prophet had toweled dry, he turned to the clothes — a charcoal suit
of the same cut Sergei had been wearing. The underwear and socks
were silk. Prophet cursed. He hated suits. He could count the times
he’d worn one on his left hand.

As
soon as he’d climbed into the underwear, he saw there were going to
be problems, and things didn’t get any better until he was standing
before the mirror, the coat and frilly puff-sleeved shirt stretched
so taut across his frame that the gold buttons bulged, threatening
to pop. The pants hung three inches above his ankles but sagged
across his ass and through his hips. The bowler hat looked just as
ridiculous, perched as it was atop his broad, sun-wizened face, two
sizes too small.

Only
the shoes fit, soft as lamb’s skin.

“Goddamn them to hell, anyway,” he groused in the mirror. The
uppity foreigners were becoming sharper and sharper thorns in his
side. He wanted to rip the ridiculous clothes off his back, but
what else could he do? His own trail duds wouldn’t be washed and
ready to wear again till morning, and he doubted the proprietor had
any spares that would fit.

“Listen,” he told the bathhouse man on his way out, “I want my
duds shipped over to the Black Stallion Livery Barn as soon as
they’re done, understand? Don’t tarry. Goin’ out at night like this
is one thing, but I will not — repeat
will
not
— be seen like this in
daylight.”

He
frowned at the bathhouse proprietor, who was guffawing in his desk
chair as he ran his eyes from the bowler down to the hemmed trouser
cuffs riding Prophet’s shins, then back up to the ruffled shirt
and
jacket, the sleeves of which were
practically
gathered about the sunburned
bounty hunter’s elbows.

“Understand?” Prophet repeated.

Shoulders jerking as he laughed, the man flicked his left hand
in acknowledgment and bounced back in his chair,
wheezing.