The Devil and Lou Prophet (16 page)

“
I’m here for my prisoner’s
supper, Eunice,” McCreedy said, letting the louvered doors swing
shut behind him.

“
In a minute, Owen,” Mrs.
Dornan said, turning toward him with a tray of bowls. “It got so
busy today, I plum forgot.” She disappeared through the louvered
doors, where a dozen or so businessmen, miners, and railroad
surveyors were awaiting their meals. Their talk was loud and
boisterous, and the cigar and cigarette smoke was thick.

“
No hurry,” Owen called
after her.

Flipping steaks, Johnny Dornan glanced
at him. He was tall and spare, with thinning brown hair and a large
birthmark on his long neck. His apron was splashed with blood and
grease. “Still got ole Billy Brown locked up over there, eh,
Owen?”

“
Of course, I do. Johnny.
What’d you think—I set him loose on good behavior?” Billy Brown had
gotten to be a touchy subject for McCreedy, since almost everyone
he knew thought he was a fool for tangling with the man. He knew
they were only worried about his safety, but he could have used a
little encouragement.

“
Just seems like a mighty
big chunk to chew, if you ask me,” Johnny said, shaking his head
slowly.

Mrs. Dornan walked through the doors
and set down her tray. Moving quickly, she retrieved a plate from a
high slack by the range. “Put a steak on that for Billy, Johnny,”
she said.

“
How’s he like his steaks,
Owen?” Johnny asked.

“
I don’t care, but probably
rare,” McCreedy said dryly.

“
There, that should do it,”
Johnny said, dropping a steak on the plate.

Mrs. Dornan forked a potato beside the
steak, added a spoonful of green beans, and covered it all with a
napkin. Handing the plate to McCreedy, she said, “If you’d only let
me add a good dose of strychnine, Owen, your job would be
finished.”

“
Now, now,
Eunice.”

“
How’s Alice—have you seen
her?”

McCreedy shook his head, a tired,
drawn look stealing over his features. “No—I can’t leave the jail
unattended. Besides, someone might follow me.”

Eunice Dornan acquired a pained look,
shaking her head and squinting her eyes. The hair on her forehead
was slick with perspiration. “Are you sure you want to do this,
Owen?”

“
It’s not a choice for me,
Eunice. I have him on suspicion of murder. What do you want me to
do, turn him loose because I’m afraid one of his gunslicks is going
to shoot me in the back?”

“
Yes!”

“
I can’t do that,
Eunice.”

“
I’m so afraid for you,
Owen. I’ve heard talk in here, late at night, among his men.
They’re so ... brash! The things they say about you, what they’d
like to do to keep him from going to trial—”

“
They won’t do anything,
Eunice. They know that if they did they’d have U.S. marshals in
here in a heartbeat.” Not confident that were true—the nearest
marshal was nearly two hundred miles away—he turned for the door.
“Well, I’d better get this to my prisoner.”

She stopped him with a hand on his
shoulder. “You be careful, Owen. You and Alice ... you’re such good
people.”

He forced a smile, inwardly resenting
her apparent lack of confidence in his abilities. ‘Thanks,
Eunice.”

“
See ya, Owen,” Johnny
called after him.

On his way through the dining area,
faces turned his way. and he saw three distinct expressions:
admiration, worry, and disdain. Outside he was met with more
disdain as a gun fired to his right, so loudly it numbed his ears
and set them ringing. He jumped, dropping the plate and reaching
for the Colt Army on his hip.

“
It’s all right, Sheriff—I
think I got him,” said a man to his right, walking toward him on
the boardwalk.

It was one of Billy Brown’s
firebrands—a tall man in a cream duster, checked shirt, and wool
vest, a pair of matched Colts tied low on his thighs. He grinned
maliciously. “A rattlesnake slinking around under the boardwalk,
ready to poke his head through a knot and bite you.”

McCreedy looked down at the fresh
bullet hole in the board about a foot wide of his right foot. He
had his hand on his revolver’s grips, but he had not drawn the gun.
Looking around, he saw four more of Brown’s firebrands facing him
around the street and on the boardwalks, heads tilted rakishly,
mouths stretching grins.

“
The only snakes I see are
you and them,” McCreedy growled, aware of the restaurant’s open
door behind him, and the faces crowded in the doorway.

Citizens up and down the street had
stopped to see what the gunfire was about, and they were watching
McCreedy expectantly, wondering what he would do. His face was
flushed with anger, but he knew there was no action he could take.
He felt weak and cornered, like a rabid coon trapped by dogs in a
woodshed.

The firebrand who’d shot into the
boardwalk shook his head mockingly. “No, I seen him ... a snake
about to poke his head through a knot. Ain’t it somethin’.
though—all the ways a man can die?”

McCreedy glowered at the man, wanting
to shoot him, knowing he wouldn’t. “Why don’t you just come out and
say what you mean?”

“
That’s all I mean,
Sheriff. Ain’t it awful to think about—all the ways there is to get
killed around here?” With that, the man sauntered off the
boardwalk, crossed the street, and pushed through the louvered
doors of a saloon. Slowly, the other men followed him, several
mockingly tipping their hats at the sheriff.

McCreedy stood on the boardwalk.
Several townsmen stood around watching him.

“
Why don’t you just go on
about your business!” he grouched.

Then he kicked the overturned plate
aside, damned if he’d get another for Billy Brown, and headed back
to the jail. He slammed the door and stood with his back to it. He
tried to quell the shaking in his knees to no avail.

He hoped Prophet got here before
Brown’s men made good on their threat.

Prophet woke before dawn. He
looked around, listening to the first birds, noting the fading
stars, then stretched and rolled his blanket. He removed his knife
from his belt sheath and walked over to the girl. She stirred as he
cut the
ropes
tethering her wrists to her saddle horn.

“
I hate you,” she said
without heat. She stared at him dully, sleep-mussed hair in her
eyes. “I really hate you.”

“
I know that. And to tell
you the truth, I don’t blame you.” He sheathed the knife. “But I
have a job to do, and I’m going to do it.”

“
I’m an actress,
goddamnit,” she said through a sob. “I worked with some of the best
actors in the East. Now ... look where I am.” She lifted her
outraged eyes to his. “Being carted through the wilderness like
some ... some ... fatted calf to the slaughter.”

“
I know you’re an actress,
and I know these are rather humbling circumstances,
but—”

“
Oh, I know—you’ve got a
job to do.”

He squatted down beside her. She was
rubbing the circulation back into her wrists. “Aren’t you tired of
running?”

She only looked at him through puffy,
teary eyes.

He continued, “That’s what you’ve been
doing, isn’t it? Runnin’ from this Billy Brown, because you saw
what he did and you know if he ever catches you, he’ll kill
you.”

“
Of course I’m running. Who
wouldn’t run from him?”

“
Well, how long you going
to run?” Prophet asked her.

He stood when he saw she wasn’t going
to respond. “I’ll saddle the horses. We’ll ride for an hour or so
before breakfast. That way we’ll know if they’re behind us or
not.”

He grabbed the bridles and started
away, then stopped and faced her again. “If you try to run out on
me again, I’ll catch you, and I’ll leave you tied all day to your
saddle.”

He wheeled and walked out to where the
horses were tied in the grass. When he had them bridled, he led
them into the camp. As he finished saddling the Appaloosa, the girl
returned from tending nature and washing at the spring, and knelt
to roll her blanket. She tied the ends and stood. Prophet took the
blanket roll, tied it behind her saddle, and helped her
mount.

“
How much farther?” she
said.

“
Two-, three-day ride ...
if we don’t get held up, that is.”

“
How long do we
have?”

“
Five days starting day
before yesterday.”

“
They’re going to let him
go after the fifth day?”

“
That’s what I understand,”
Prophet said, mounting the speckle-gray.

“
I hope they let him
go.”

Prophet shook his head and led off at
a walk. “You sure must like running.”

They followed the riverbed for a
quarter mile, then traced a game trail onto a hilly prairie pocked
with low, chalky buttes and yucca. It was a low, dry area, and
Prophet knew they were getting close to the badlands they would
have to traverse—about fifteen miles of deep canyons carved by
prehistoric rivers and creeks. There would be little water, Prophet
knew, having heard stories of men who’d traversed the area. He had
never done so himself, preferring to take the extra day or two to
circumvent the rough country by trails.

It was a deep-cut country, hard to
traverse, but those behind them would have trouble traversing it,
as well. Prophet thought he might even be able to hold up and lure
them into his rifle sights, pick them off one at a
lime....

About an hour after they’d started
riding, Prophet motioned the girl to slop. Reining his horse
northward, he gigged the animal halfway up a butte and dismounted.
The sun was up, hitting the layered terrain at a slant, drawing
deep shadows relieved by swaths of golden, dew-dappled
sun.

After surveying the country and
deciding those following—if they were still following—were not
close, he mounted the speckle-gray and rode back down to the
girl.

“
I think it’s safe to stop
here for a bite,” he said.

“
What’s there to eat?” she
asked.

“
Rabbit from last
night.”

Prophet dismounted and fished around
in his saddlebags, producing a red bandanna in which he’d tied the
leftovers. He held up the pouch, offered a smile, walked over to a
rock, and sat down. He hiked a boot on a knee.

“
It’s old,” she said,
making no move to dismount.

“
Only a few hours,” Prophet
replied, chewing a chunk of the meat. “Won’t hurt ye.”

“
Our neighbor in New York
got sick eating old meat.”

“
You from New
York?”

“
That’s what I just said,
didn’t I?”

He glanced at her wryly. “All the
girls in New York have as much charm as you?”

She wrinkled her nose. “Only those
hauled kicking and screaming by bounty hunters to Billy Brown.” She
swung her leg over the Appaloosa’s rump, dismounting. “Here ...
give me a chunk of that. Might as well die by spoiled meat as a
bullet.”

He gave her the pouch and wiped his
greasy hands on his jeans. “Now you’re talkin’.”

He got up, stretched his back and
shoulder, and walked around. She sat on the rock, eating the
rabbit, and watched him.

He was a big, sun-seared hombre, not
unlike a lot of other men she had met on the frontier. Big. dirty,
crude, good with his weapons and animals—he couldn’t have been much
less different from her than night was from day, but even after all
the pain he’d caused her—was causing her—she found that she could
not totally hate him. True, she’d tried to put him out with a rock
last night, but only because she’d been afraid for her life and had
wanted to run.

But there was something about him that
she almost found herself admiring. His cunning and directness? The
way he always averted his eyes—very gentlemanly— from the slit
she’d torn in her dress? The way he also never made her feel
threatened sexually, as a woman could out here, alone with a man of
his obviously ignoble breeding?

She suspected she approved of all
those things about him. But there were things she hated about him,
too.

His arrogance for one. And his
single-mindedness. It was as though when he got headed in one
direction, it would take a veritable act of God to sway him, if
indeed he could be swayed. Lola thought he probably couldn’t. The
problem was, he was simple. When someone told him to do something,
and gave him money to do it, he simply did it. No questions asked.
Forget any others who might get hurt in the process.

And there had been plenty of others hurt
thus far. And there would most likely be more …

Simple men like Prophet were no doubt
invaluable in the building of the West, just like soldiers were
invaluable in waging war. Lola just wished she had not crossed
paths with such a man.

Now that she had, and now that they
were out here in the middle of nowhere, she didn’t know what she
was going to do. Running seemed out of the question. She could kill
Prophet with the gun strapped to her leg, but then she’d be out
here alone, and she had no idea where she could go to find safety.
She’d probably starve to death, if Brown’s men didn’t find her
first. Or Indians.