Staring Down the Devil (A Lou Prophet Western #5) (22 page)

Gay
wasn’t swayed in the least. “All the more reason for you to scram.”
The outlaw bent over slightly at the waist.
“Scram! Outta
here! Go!
Vamoose!”

Scowling with
fury at Prophet and Sergei, the two men scuttled like two scolded
dogs down the porch steps.

“Give
your shotguns to these two,” Gay ordered, indicating Prophet and
the Russian.

The men stopped,
glanced at each other. The man with the muttonchops and shoulder
rig tossed his shotgun to Prophet. With a curse, the other man —
the man with his arm in a sling — tossed his two-bore to Sergei,
who grabbed it with one hand. Then both men turned, untied their
horses from the hitch rack, mounted up, and rode away cursing and
shaking their heads, their faces aflame with malice.

Muttonchops hipped around in his saddle. Glaring at Prophet,
he said, “You ain’t seen the last of us, you son of a
bitch!”

He gigged his
horse after the other man, and, passing an oar wagon, they galloped
down the mountain trail, their dust sifting behind them.

“Well,
then,” Gay said, snapping his jacket down and turning to the two
bodyguards sitting in their chairs and eyeing their new colleagues
skeptically. “Dwight Rosen, Mel Clark — meet Lou Pepper and Dick
Lubowski.”

Prophet grinned at the two men, and pinched his hat brim.
“Hidy-ho.”

The guards stared
at him and Sergei with ill-concealed disdain.

The two new and
the two veteran guards loitered around the mine office porch the
rest of the day.

After supper at
the Inn, Gay and the bodyguards rode up the mountain to the
hacienda with its buffer of armed sentinels waving and nodding from
the rocks along the mountain. When the phaeton had pulled up to the
front patio, which was guarded by a beefy gent smoking a cigar and
holding a shotgun, Gay climbed out of the buggy and turned to his
four bodyguards.

“Clark, Rosen — show Pepper and Lubowski where they’ll be
sleeping.” With that, Gay headed inside and promptly disappeared —
either to Marya’s room or his office, Prophet assumed.

“You
do it,” Rosen told Clark when Gay was out of hearing range. “I’m
getting a drink.”

Clark
cussed at his partner’s retreating back, then led Prophet and
Sergei through a side entrance under a deep-set portico.

They
swung down a dimly lit hall around the north side of the house.
They skirted a graveled courtyard with a few benches with rotten
wood and rusty iron frames, and a
dry adobe
fountain with dead leaves and sand piled around its
base.

Clark
stopped before a stout, wood door with chipped green paint and a
tarnished brass latch. The door and five others faced the derelict
courtyard that had probably been the sight of many Mexican
fandangos in the house’s rich Mexican history before Gay and his
outlaws had moved in and trashed the place.

“So
poor ole Dick can’t talk, eh?” Clark asked conversationally, one
hand on the door’s latch.

“You’d
have a longer conversation with a barn wall than ole Dick here, God
bless him,” Prophet said, cutting his eyes at Sergei, whose
nostrils flared disdainfully.

“He
lose his tongue to Injuns, or some pigtailed girl cut it out?”
Clark asked with a mocking chuckle.

Prophet wagged his head. “You best be careful what you say
about ole Dick. Just cause he can’t talk don’t mean he can’t cut
loose with a haymaker that would shatter your jaw like
china.”

They were
clomping down the flagstones, spurs chinging. Clark stopped
abruptly and turned to the Russian. He was an inch or so taller
than Sergei. He puffed up his chest and gritted his
teeth.

“Oh,
yeah? You a tough guy, Dick?”

Sergei
dully returned the man’s stare. Prophet watched uneasily, hoping
the Russian didn’t forget himself and speak.

Sergei knew what
the price of that would be, however. He maintained his composure.
Clark broke the stare.

“Don’t
seem all that tough to me,” he snarled, running his filthy sleeve
across his mouth, turning, and continuing down the courtyard,
chuckling. It seemed to make him feel better after what had
happened last night and then Prophet and Sergei being rewarded for
it with jobs.

The
hardcase stopped and threw open a door. “This is it, boys. Home
sweet home — for as long as you’re gonna be here, anyway.” He
chuckled again with meaning. “Me and Rosen bunk in the next room
there. When he ain’t upstairs with his little honey, Mr. Gay stays
in that room yonder.” Clark gestured to a door just around a corner
of the courtyard. A broken sculpture of a Spanish conquistador
stood to the door’s left, chipped saber raised.

“Gay
has a woman here?” Prophet asked, fashioning a curious
frown.

“Sure
he does. Always keeps at least one around. Sometimes two. He’s had
as many as three in the house at a time, but it don’t work too well
with this many men around, if n you get my drift.”

“Who’s
the girl?”

“That,
my friend,” Clark said, “is none of your business. She don’t wanna
be here, though — he keeps her locked in a room upstairs — so if
you see her tryin’ to sneak out, stop her. Those are orders
straight from the boss hisself.”

Prophet sensed Sergei’s muscles tightening. Ignoring him,
Prophet said, “I don’t reckon I care what Gay does with his women,
as long as I get paid. . . .”

“That’s right,” Clark agreed. “Just do your job and keep your
mouth shut. And you see any strangers around, shoot first and ask
questions later. Someone tried sneakin’ in the other
night.”

“That
right?” Prophet asked, moving into the room and scraping a match
alight on his pistol belt. “Bandits?”

“Prob’ly,” Clark said, nibbling his scarred upper lip.
“There’s always someone out gunnin’ for Mr. Gay. But your main job
is to guard him when he leaves the hacienda. Inside the house, he’s
well protected by the other guards spread out across the mountain.
But it never hurts to keep your ears pricked and your eyes
skinned.”

“I
s’pose a man like that has made a few enemies over the years,”
Prophet speculated, touching the match to a candlewick.

“I
reckon he has, but he pays well, and I like the digs here, so I
don’t ask questions about it or even think about it much. I just
keep one hand on my pistol butt and one eye on my backtrail, if n
you know what I’m sayin. Well, I hope you boys are comfortable
here.” Clark smiled without humor and left, leaving the door open
behind him.

Sergei shoved the
door closed and turned to Prophet, who threw out a hand, shushing
the Russian while he listened at the door.

Confident Clark had drifted off, Prophet said,
“Okay.”

“I
cannot bear the thought of Gay . . . and Marya,” Sergei growled,
turning and moving slowly, anxiously about the long, narrow room.
“I cannot bear the thought of what he does . . . has been doing . .
.”

“Well,
he won’t be doin’ it for much longer,” Prophet promised. “I say we
don’t waste any time tryin’ to spring her. As soon as everyone in
the house has gone to bed, we head upstairs and nab her out of
here.”

“Yes,
yes, yes,” Sergei eagerly agreed.

“Only
problem is . . .” Prophet said, running a hand thoughtfully along
his jaw, letting the sentence trail off.

“Is
what?”

“Once
we have her, how the hell do we

get
past all these owlhoots?” “We will shoot our way, if we have to!”
Prophet winced at the Russian’s foolhardy

zeal, but he
allowed there were few other

answers. “I reckon. . . .”

Prophet and the
Russian sat around and smoked for several hours, not talking much.
Killing time. Prophet cleaned his guns, then loaded and unloaded
them and loaded them again.

Finally he heard two sets of boots clicking and chinging on
the flagstones outside the room. The door of the room abutting
theirs opened and closed. That would be Clark and Rosen heading for
bed. They’d probably been playing cards at the round table in what
had once been a formal dining room.

Prophet noted that he and “Dick” hadn’t been invited to play.
He smiled.

Later,
a single pair of boots clacked in the courtyard, coming from the
other direction. Cracking the door, Prophet saw Gay’s dimly lit
figure, the man’s shirt open, belt unbuckled, hat in his hand,
coming down the far walk. The crime boss stopped at his bedroom
door, opened it with a key, and went in.

Prophet checked
his watch. One-thirty.

“He
turned in,” he told Sergei.

When
they’d removed their spurs and stuffed them in their boots, Prophet
opened the door and scanned the courtyard. Seeing that all was
clear, he and Sergei stepped into the courtyard, and the Russian
gently drew the door shut behind them.

Prophet had been considering the route to Marya’s room, and
now turned right, walking on the balls of his feet. They came to
the end of the walk and continued through a winding corridor
between two rows of doors, through another courtyard. When they
were nearly to a short set of steps, the door on their left
squawked.

Prophet grabbed Sergei’s arm and pulled the big Russian into
the shadows behind a statue of one of the saints. Holding his
breath and feeling his heart pound. Prophet watched the door open,
gritting his teeth as the hinges squeaked. A big figure appeared, a
Mexican yawning and adjusting his shell belt on his broad hips. The
man carried a rifle in his right hand. The handle of a large knife
jutted from a sheath strapped behind his left shoulder. Probably a
night guard assuming his shift.

Wearily the man
turned and drew the door closed, then ambled back the way Prophet
and Sergei had come, throwing his head back and yawning
loudly.

Prophet sighed
quietly, glanced at Sergei, and stepped out from behind the saint,
again walking on the balls of his feet as he climbed the stone
steps, turned, and climbed another, winding set of stairs,
disappearing into shadows.

They scurried
past three guards in a small room pillared off from a living room
with a giant fireplace. Then they slipped up another set of stairs
and down a dark hall.

“This
is the room, isn’t it?” Prophet whispered, stopping before a
door.

Sergei
nodded. Leaning close, he listened, then glanced down. “The key,”
he said softly but urgently. “It is not in the lock.”

Soft, quick
footsteps rose behind the door, like a person running barefoot. The
door clicked, and Prophet tensed as it opened. The girl stood
there, eyes wide, wearing a thin wrapper over an ornate nightgown.
Behind her, a green lamp burned on a table beside the large
bed.

“Marya!” Sergei exclaimed under his breath.

“Sergei!” she cried, throwing her arms around the big
Cossack’s neck, hugging him. “I am so glad you are all right. I
thought you might have been injured the other night. I heard the
shooting.”

“We
are fine, my girl,” Sergei assured her.

She
drew the door wide and beckoned them in, then closed the door. “He
took the key, but I fixed the lock so he could not lock it,” she
explained.

“How
in the heck did you manage that?” Prophet asked with an amazed
chuckle.

“Marya
is a most industrious young lady,” Sergei told him, adding dryly,
“Sometimes more industrious than what is healthy for a pretty young
countess.”

The
girl shushed them. “Guards pass the door regularly,” she said.
“After the other night, he tightened the security around the
hacienda. How did you get back in?”

“We’re
on his payroll,” Prophet said.

She arched a brow
at him.

“Our
good Prophet got us positions on Gay’s staff,” Sergei explained to
her. “We are protecting him now.” He smiled wryly. “We thought it
would be the easiest way to get to you.”

She
turned to Prophet, an admiring light entering her gaze. “That was a
good idea.” She sounded surprised.

Prophet gave an ironic grunt. “I’ve had one or two in the
past. We best get a move on.”

“No.”
Marya shook her head. “I have another way — a safer
way.”

Prophet frowned, hoping they hadn’t risked their necks getting
to the girl’s room for nothing. “What way is that?”

“The
night after next, when the moon is full, I am showing Gay where
Bert found the Spanish gold. With your help, I will slip away from
him on the trail. Now that you are guards, it should be even
easier.”

Prophet glanced at Sergei, considering it. He turned to the
girl. “Are you sure he’s going to take you with him? Why won’t he
just make you draw him a map?”

“Because he won’t trust me. But on the trail, if I don’t show
him where the treasure is, he can threaten to kill me.”

“Which
brings me to another question,” Prophet said, narrowing his eyes
critically. “Why didn’t you just go ahead and give the man the
gold, for chrissakes? I mean, is it really worth losing your life
over?”