The Devil and Lou Prophet (17 page)

It looked as though, for the moment at
least, she was stuck with the uncouth Prophet. Unless she could
persuade him that taking her to Johnson City meant certain death
for them both …

They’d been riding for fifteen minutes
when she made her move.

“
You want to know what
happened?”

Prophet rode ahead of her, moving
lightly with his horse, swinging his head this way and that as he
surveyed the terrain around them.

“
What’s that?”

“
Back in Johnson City. You
want to know what I saw?”

“
I don’t know—is it going
to frighten me?”

She’d started to respond seriously
when she saw his head turn and saw the wry expression creasing his
ruddy cheeks. She stopped herself and scowled, realizing she was
being teased. She went ahead with the story, anyway.

“
Billy Brown killed a
saloon owner in Johnson City— the owner of the saloon where my
troupe was staying. And I saw it happen.” She paused, frowning,
eyes acquiring a haunted cast as she remembered. “That night I went
downstairs for some water and heard a commotion. I cracked a
back-room door just in time to see Billy Brown slit Hoyt Farley’s
throat with a knife.”

She watched Prophet’s sweat-stained
back expectantly as they rode. Much to her annoyance, he didn’t say
anything for nearly a minute. “What was it about?”

She shrugged. “Who knows? Billy Brown
has a stranglehold on the town. What matters is that he did do it,
and I saw it with my own eyes.”

“
And he saw
you?”

She nodded. “I gasped when I saw the
knife.... They heard me—him and the two men with him. I ran out the
back and they chased me. but it was dark and I hid in a root cellar
until morning. I knew I couldn’t go back to my troupe. They’d be
laying for me. So I went to another troupe I knew was leaving town
that morning, and Dan Walthrop signed me on.”

“
How did Brown get
caught?”

“
I don’t know. I heard
shooting and yelling behind me, but I didn’t stop to check it out.
Even if someone saw him and his men chase me out of the saloon,
there’s nothing the sheriff could do about it. Like I said, Billy
Brown has a stranglehold on the town. His enemies have a way of
disappearing and turning up dead in trash heaps. I was only in town
four nights, but Billy Brown was the main topic of conversation
everywhere I went. Whispered conversation, that is. I even heard a
child threatened in the mercantile with ‘You be good or Billy Brown
will get you.’ “

She shuddered, and it was not entirely
staged. She watched Prophet, gauging his reaction. “It was awful
... just awful.”

Prophet sighed. “Sounds to me like
Billy Brown needs to be taken down a notch.”

“
I doubt there’s anyone in
the territory who can do that, Mr. Prophet. And anyone who tries is
going to end up dead.”

He turned around in his saddle to
regard her slyly. “Like me?”

“
If you intend to tangle
with him, yes. And escorting me to Johnson City is definitely
tangling with him.”

Prophet slowed his horse so Miss
Diamond’s could catch up. When it did, they rode stirrup to stirrup
along the cutbank of a wide creek bed.

“
I don’t only intend to
escort you to Johnson City, Miss Diamond. I intend to have a little
chat with the man. I don’t much appreciate having gunmen sicced on
me. Never have, never will.”

She laughed without mirth, lifting her
head. “You’re a brave man, Mr. Prophet. I’m impressed. You’re also
a dead man. Very dead. Do you hear? Dead!”

“
It sounds like my ole pal
Owen McCreedy has his hands tied, on account of him wearin’ a badge
and all,” the bounty hunter continued, as though he hadn’t heard
her. “Well, my hands aren’t tied by any badge.” He flashed her a
shrewd smile.

Her face became rigid, and her eyes
blazed as she regarded him directly. Once again she was reminded
that the man was too stupid to know fear. His reckless disregard
for his own safety would get them both killed. “Why, you moron!
You—!”

The unmistakable bark of a rifle cut
her off. She gave a scream and tumbled against Prophet, who grabbed
her under both arms. He saw where the bullet had grazed her
shoulder, tearing her dress. Awkwardly, both horses shuffling with
fright, Prophet pulled her out of her saddle, then eased her to the
ground. As another rifle barked in the north, he swung out of the
leather and grabbed the girl’s good arm.

“
Come on—down the bank!” he
yelled, drawing his revolver and firing blindly northward, hoping
to put the shooters on the defensive long enough for him and the
girl to gain shelter behind the cutbank.

As they jumped down the bank, sliding
in the loose clay, he heard their horses gallop away, and he hoped
they ran beyond rifle range. All he needed was for one or both of
the horses to go down. That would fix him and the girl
good.

Reprimanding himself for getting
careless and not keeping an eye on their surroundings, leading them
into an ambush, he released the girl, removed his hat, and gentled
a look over the lip of the cutbank. About a hundred yards away, a
horse stood ground-hitched near a grassy knoll. On the knoll,
Prophet could make out a prone gunman aiming a rifle.

Spotting movement to the man’s right,
Prophet turned and saw three riders fanning out, as though to
circle Prophet and the girl’s position, but were in no hurry to get
within range of Prophet’s Peacemaker. They didn’t have to be. If
they surrounded Prophet, getting behind him in the creek bed, they
could fling rifle slugs from a hundred yards away and hit their
targets quite effectively. Like ducks in a shooting
gallery.

The bounty hunter’s thoughts flickered
with doubt. Maybe he should have set the girl on her way, after
all. Maybe these men really were too much for him.

Damn! If he’d only had time to grab
his Winchester from his saddle boot! Still... it was four against
one, and the men were moving to acquire the positions Prophet had
feared.

He looked around. There was no
cover—no shrubs or boulders—anywhere near. The only cover within a
hundred yards was the brush tracing the very center of the creek
bed, beyond the sand, gravel, and driftwood that accumulated when
the creek swelled each spring and was left high and dry when the
water retreated.

The girl sobbed as she clutched her
shoulder. Prophet turned to her. “How bad is it?”

She lifted her face, flushed with
anger. “What does it look like? They shot me, you—!”

“
It’s just a burn. You can
make it.”

“
Where?”

“
There.”

She followed his pointing finger to
the cattails and saw grass behind them. Not having seen the three
men surrounding them, she couldn’t fathom what Prophet was up to.
He had no time to explain.

“
Huh?” she said, wrinkling
up her face.

He grabbed her arm and jerked her to
her feet. “Come on.”

They hadn’t run ten yards before the
lead started to fly like lightning from Zeus.

The slugs pocked the ground
around them, spanging off rocks with shrill, echoing rings. The
three horsemen had dismounted when they saw Prophet and the girl
heading for the weeds. Trying to head them off
, they knelt and cut loose with
their rifles.

It was a barrage like Prophet hadn’t
experienced since he and his buddy, Trav Davis, were bushwacked by
a small Union patrol when they’d lit out from a barn in which
they’d spent the night and where Prophet had tended Trav’s wounds
inflicted by an exploding cannon ball.

Trav had lasted only another day,
dying in Prophet’s arms before the next moon was up. Prophet wasn’t
sure he and the girl would make it, either, as close as those slugs
were humming around their tender flesh.

“
Run, run, run!” Prophet
shouted as a slug buzzed viciously past his ear.

They were halfway to the weeds, nearly
breaking their ankles on the small rocks of the creek bed, nearly
tripping over driftwood and a bison’s bleached carcass, when
Prophet took a bullet in his calf. It felt like the nip of a large
horsefly, and he forced himself to ignore it until that foot gave
and he fell to one knee.

“
No! Keep going!” he raged when
the girl stopped and turned to him, terrified.

She did as he’d told her, and he
pushed back on both feet, fighting the pain of the bullet in his
calf, and ran in spite of the fire shooting up past his knee and
into his thigh.

He followed the girl deep into the
weeds, until they came to the brackish, foul-smelling water. It was
black as molasses and barely moving. Something scratched in a heavy
cattail patch. Nervy from the barrage. Prophet gave a start. Only a
small beaver or muskrat, he knew. Maybe a duck that hadn’t flown
when the gunfire had started.

“
Oh, my god! Oh, my god!”
the girl cried, staring at the blood welling out of Prophet’s calf,
soaking his jeans. She cupped her hands to her face. He knew she
wasn’t worried so much about him as about what she’d do if she were
suddenly alone out here.

“
Just a scratch,” Prophet
said, trying for calm in both himself and her. “Stay
low.”

They were on their knees, the tops of
the cattails and saw grass waving a good three feet above their
heads. Prophet held his Peacemaker in his right hand. He peered
through the weeds, lifting his head slightly for a better look.
When the breeze parted the weeds, he saw the three horsemen walking
this way. They’d left their horses behind and were holding their
rifles before them in both hands.

Turning northward, he saw the fourth
gunman—the man who’d fired at them from the knoll—hunkered down on
his haunches atop the cutbank, not far from where Prophet and the
girl had been. Prophet recognized the Big Fifty in his arms—a
Sharp’s buffalo gun accurate up to seven hundred yards. The sun
winked off the brass breech and butt plate. Prophet was just glad
the shooter wasn’t as accurate as the rifle, or it would’ve been
taps for the girl.

“
You boys flush ‘em and
I’ll shoot ‘em!” the man with the Big Fifty called, his voice
muffled by distance.

“
Why don’t you come down
here and flush ’em?” one of the others returned. “You can’t hit
anything with that cannon anyways.”

The man with the buffalo gun didn’t
say anything, but Prophet saw him raise the gun to his shoulder,
evidently drawing a bead on the man who’d mouthed off at him. That
was enough to silence the others while they kicked around in the
weeds, spread about ten paces apart, trying to flush Prophet and
the girl like deer. They’d either shoot them themselves or feed
them to the Sharp’s.

Prophet’s chest and throat filled with
bile. He turned to the girl kneeling beside him, who clutched her
bloody left shoulder with her right hand and stared wide-eyed
through the weeds, her face blanched with fear. There was no longer
any anger there. Only fear. She suddenly looked so girlish and
innocent that Prophet felt sorry for her. He felt like even more of
a heel than he had before.

If it wasn’t for him, she might still
be running, but she’d at least be safe....

He turned back toward the faint sounds
of the three gunmen walking through the weeds along the creek,
moving steadily this way. He didn’t dare lift his head very high,
for the man with the Big Fifty might see him and alert the others
... or go ahead and take it off with his buffalo gun.

Damn, what a mess!

He turned and considered the water. He
and the girl could try to wade across the creek and hide on the
other side, but the three gunmen were approaching too quickly.
Prophet could hear their movements growing louder— could even hear
their harsh breathing and occasional throat clearings. They’d
probably hear Prophet and the girl in the water, and really pin
them down.

No ... they’d have to stay put and fight
it out. There was no other way.

Prophet looked at the girl. Her eyes
slid up to meet his. He tried to steel her with a look, and she
seemed to understand. To his surprise—maybe she had more sand than
he’d given her credit for—a faint smile nipped at the very corners
of her lips. Then her gaze returned to the direction from which the
three gunmen were approaching.

“
That’s about where they
went into the weeds!” the man with the Big Fifty called from atop
the cutbank. “Be careful.”

None of the others replied, but
Prophet could tell from the sudden silence that they’d stopped in
their tracks. Prophet’s heart beat harshly against his sternum, and
his mouth went dry. He strained his ears to listen—only the faint
scratching of the breeze-bending weeds, the faint sucking of the
creek. On the bank across the water, a prairie dog
chortled.

“
You in here, friend?” one
of the men called, tentative, as though his own pulse were
racing.

Prophet figured he was about thirty
feet away. The bounty hunter slowly thumbed back the hammer of his
forty-five. When it locked, he left his thumb on it, taking an
unconscious comfort in the grooved grip. He sensed the girl tense,
heard her give a barely audible gasp. But something told him she
wouldn’t break down and give them away. He didn’t try to shush her
with a look.