The Devil and Lou Prophet (12 page)

“
Yeah, yeah, nature,” Brown
rasped impatiently, staring at the paper in Baldridge’s hand. “What
do you have?”

Baldridge pulled the ladder-back chair
away from the table, upon which a game of solitaire had been
abandoned, as well as a cup of cold coffee and an ashtray filled
with cigarette butts. The lawyer sat down, the chair creaking
beneath his considerable girth. A cool smile played over his heavy,
shiny face as he handed the papers to his boss.

“
Bannon found the
girl.”

Brown grabbed the cable. “You shittin’
me?”

“
He was the man to send.
Said he has a snitch in Henry’s Crossing. We’ll need to send money
to pay this snitch for his services.”

Billy Brown grinned at the attorney.
He leaned toward the man and pinched Baldridge’s cheeks until the
attorney’s eyes watered. “You were right about Bannon—you lard-ass
son of a bitch!” He released the attorney and rubbed his hands
together eagerly, squealing like a pig. His cheeks were crimson.
“He kill her yet?”

“
No,” Baldridge said,
kneading his sore cheeks. “He cabled from Henry’s Crossing. He’s
hopping the stage with her and some bounty hunter who picked her up
to bring her back here.” Baldridge smiled with his eyes.
“Apparently, McCreedy found her, too.”

“
Well, when’s he gonna kill
her?”

“
Somewhere between Henry’s
Crossing and the first stage stop.”

“
How’s he gonna do
it?”

“
Didn’t say.”

Billy Brown stood and walked to the
window. One tattooed arm on the ledge, he sucked nervously on the
quirley, thinking. His eyes darted around in their tiny sockets,
like blue rats in a cage. “We have any other men in the
area?”

“
Six. Morgan and Price are
at the gold camp in Hutton. Dick Dunbar and three others are in El
Mora.”

“
Send ‘em all over to the
first overnight stop on that stage route. What is it—that the
Backwater Station?”

“
I believe so,” Baldridge
said, watching his boss curiously.

“
Send them over there.”
Brown took a quick, deep drag on the cigarette and turned to his
underling, blowing smoke through his nose and mouth. “I want them
to make sure she’s dead.”

“
I’m sure Bannon
knows—”

“
Yeah, yeah, I’m sure
Bannon knows his job. But Bannon’s only worked for me a few months.
He’s the Missouri gambler, ain’t he? Don’t know him that well. You
know how I am. I just wanna be sure. Okay, Hart? Is that all right
with you?”

The attorney shook his head and held
up his hands placatingly. “Sure. That’s fine, Billy. Whatever you
say.”

“
And tell Morgan and Price to
kill Bannon.” The agitated Brown made a slashing motion across his
throat. He was breathing heavily now, sweat beading his broad,
freckled forehead.

Baldridge feared him when he got this
excited. No telling what the squirrely son of a bitch might do.
Baldridge nodded, making every effort to appease the
man.

“
Absolutely, Billy. You got
it. I’ll cable them tonight.”

It was a reasonable precaution, he had to
admit. Why take a chance on the man getting caught and squawking?
Baldridge didn’t think it possible with Bannon, from what he’d
heard about the gambling gunman, but if Billy wanted him dead, the
man would die.

“
That’s more like it. Now
tell me who she’s with.”

Baldridge frowned. Billy had gotten
him too nervous to follow the broken strands of the conversation.
“Who’s with who?”

“
The girl!”

“
Oh ... uh, some bounty
hunter.” Baldridge glanced at the paper crumpled in Billy’s meaty
fist. The Irishman had been too agitated to read Bannon’s telegram.
“Prophet, I think, is his name.”

“
Prophet, huh?” Billy
grouched, turning back to the window and taking a sharp drag on the
quirley, which was about the size of a thumbnail. He preferred
cheap, hand-rolled cigarettes to the expensive cigars he could
afford. Probably a habit he couldn’t kick from the old,
street-fighting days in the city. One of many, Baldridge
speculated, his mind flashing on the men Brown had beaten to death
with his fists, their faces pummeled to burger.

“
At least Prophet was his
name—right, Billy?” Baldridge said, pulling a funny.

When Brown only grunted, staring out at
the side street where horsemen and wagons passed and store owners
closed their doors and started home for supper, Baldridge stood.
“Well, I’ll go and fire a cable off to Morgan and Price, tell ’em
you want Bannon dead—if you’re sure that’s what you want. He’s a
good man.”

“
I want him dead!” Brown
barked.

“
Then he’s dead,
Billy.”

“
And Prophet and the
girl!”

“
And Prophet and the
girl—of course, Billy.”

Baldridge turned to the door. He swung
it open and stepped through. Locking it, he regarded his boss
guiltily, cursing McCreedy for making him lock the door himself.
The sheriff knew that Billy Brown, simple barbarian that he was,
would hold it against him, never mind that Baldridge had no other
choice in the matter.

And that’s just how Billy stared at
him now, too, his bulldog’s nose wrinkling, brows lowering,
cigarette stub smoldering in the corner of his mouth.

Baldridge tried a smile, tipped his
hat, and hurried back toward the office. The hair on the nape of
his neck stood straight up in the air.

The sun had been down for an hour, the
sky awash with stars, when the stage wheeled around a butte and
several pole corrals. It pulled to a halt before the station, an
inky black, two-story smudge around four lantern-lit
windows.

A dog had run out from the shadows to nip
at the wheels and bark. Now it ran excitedly under the idle coach,
panting, tail-wagging, waiting for the door to open and the
passengers to climb out.

“
Well, that was an
entertaining ride,” Prophet told the jehu wryly, casting a cautious
glance at the building looming on his right. If one gunman had been
sent, so could two, three, and who knew how many more?

“
Yeah ... thanks to you and
that girl,” Clatsop said sourly, wrapping the reins around the
brake.

“
Sorry, Mike.”

“
Not that I ever took a
shine to ole Frank, but shotgun riders ain’t easy to find in this
hell-for-leather country.” He called down to the passengers, “Night
stop!”

Gripping the shotgun in both hands,
Prophet climbed down from the driver’s box and opened the coach
door. He offered his hand to Miss Diamond, but she ignored him and
headed for the luggage boot. He was still helping Mrs. Phelps when
the showgirl mounted the porch steps with her carpetbag.

“
Wait,” he told her. “Why
don’t you let me check it out first?”

While Clatsop helped the others find
their bags in the luggage boot, Prophet mounted the steps, on which
Miss Diamond had stepped to one side and froze. Prophet opened the
door and went in. He was met in the long front room crowded with
oilcloth-covered tables by a heavy-set woman in an apron. The air
smelled like beef and biscuits.

“
The stage is late this
evenin’,” the woman said, wiping her hands on the apron. Her hair
was falling out of its bun. “The roast is cooked dry.”

An old, scarecrow man in coveralls and
two stringbean boys sat at one of the tables, pie and coffee before
them. They watched Prophet expectantly. He turned to the woman.
“Any strangers here?”

The woman wrinkled her brows
curiously, then laughed. “Just you!”

“
You have a room for a
young lady?”

“
There’s five rooms
upstairs. She can take her pick.”

“
Obliged,” Prophet
said.

As he turned back to the door, the old
man said, “You ridin’ shotgun? Where’s Frank?”

“
Dead,” Prophet said, too
tired to explain.

The door opened, and Clatsop sauntered
in. Behind him were Mrs. Phelps, the boy, and the old
miner.

“
Upstairs with your bags,
folks,” the woman scolded. “Then come back down for food. It’s
pret’ near cooked to leather, though. I don’t know what in the
world Mike Clatsop was doin’ out there!”

Prophet stepped outside. “It looks
safe,” he told the girl, still standing on the steps. “Rooms are
upstairs.”

Wordlessly, she brushed by him,
stepped inside, and crossed the room toward the stairs. Prophet
followed her in and saw the woman, the old man, and the boys do
double-takes, staring at the pretty, red-haired young woman who
kept her head down as she made for the stairs, up which she
disappeared, lifting the hem of her dress above her ankles. The
boys, both unkempt towheads, one with a fuzzy mustache, the other
with a mustache and sparse muttonchops, glanced at each other with
faint, lewd lights in their otherwise dull eyes.

Prophet sat at a table across from
Mike Clatsop. The woman brought him a plate of food—roast beef as
tough as shoe leather, boiled potatoes, canned corn, and a cold
biscuit. He washed it all down with several cups of hot, black
coffee, then dug into a piece of rhubarb pie the woman had brought
when she’d seen him swabbing his plate with the biscuit.

The pie made up for the lackluster
main course—good and sweet, with a greasy, sugary crust. Not tart,
the way some rhubarb pies could be, depending on the cook. Rhubarb
wasn’t grown down south, and it was one of the few good things he’d
found in the North. He’d vowed for years that if he married a
Yankee, she’d have to bake one hell of a good rhubarb
pie.

When the woman returned to take his
dessert plate, she said, “Is that girl of yours gonna come down
here and eat? I don’t serve in the rooms—no matter how uppity they
are.”

“
She’s not my girl,”
Prophet said, finishing his coffee.

“
She had a bad time on the
trail. Why don’t you fill a plate, and I’ll bring it up to
her?”

“
She the reason Frank was
killed?” the woman asked him, tilting her head to one side, a fist
on her hip.

“
Yeah, but it’s not what
you’re thinkin’,” Prophet said.

“
I bet it’s not,” the woman
said, then wheeled and headed back to the kitchen.

When she returned with a plate and a
cup of coffee, Prophet took it upstairs, leaving his shotgun
propped against the table. In the hall, lit by a single wall lamp,
were five doors, two on each side, one at the end. Bed-springs
squeaked briefly behind the second door on the right.

He knocked.

“
Go away.”

“
It’s Prophet.”

“
Go to hell!”

“
I’ve got a plate for
you.”

“
I’m not
hungry.”

“
Roast beef,” Prophet said
enticingly.

There was no reply.

“
Coffee?” he
said.

After a few seconds, the bedsprings
complained behind the door. Floorboards squawked. The door opened.
The girl appeared. She grabbed the coffee from Prophet’s hand,
spilling a little, and started closing the door. Midway, she
stopped. She looked down and saw her hideout gun in Prophet’s hand,
butt forward.

“
Take it,” he said. “If you
use it on me, you’ll be cuttin’ off your nose to spite your
face.”

She looked at him, grabbed the gun,
and slammed the door.

“
Listen,” he said, bowing
his head at the closed door, trying to think of something to say.
“I’m ... I’m sorry about all this. I didn’t know what kind of
trouble you were in. McCreedy didn’t tell me.”

The bed sang again. The door opened a
foot.

“
Well, now you know, don’t
you?”

“
You have any idea if any
others are going to come?”

She smirked, her eyes almost crossing.
“Oh, they’ll come.”

“
How many?”

“
However many it
takes.”

Prophet nodded
thoughtfully.

“
Going to let me go?” she
asked him, lovely eyebrows arched hopefully.

“
No, I—”

The door closed in his face. Doubting
it would open again this evening, he went back downstairs and gave
the plate to the woman, saying, “She wasn’t hungry, after all.”
Then he grabbed his shotgun, went outside, and stood on the
gallery.

He dug in his coat pocket for his
makings pouch. The coach sat before him, but the horses were gone,
the old man and the two boys having led them off to the barn, which
hulked across the road. Light peered between the doors.

A sickle moon hung just above the
peaked roof. It was butter yellow, and two bright stars hovered
nearby, one of them winking like a guttering candle. The night was
so still that Prophet could hear the stomping and blowing of the
horses in the barn, the tin clatter of feed buckets, and the old
man’s gruff commands. The dog sniffed in the weeds left of the
barn, making rustling noises and soft snorts as it hunted for
mice.