The Devil and Lou Prophet (22 page)

McCreedy had started to rise when his
office door opened. “Knock-knock,” sang Hart Baldridge, who entered
with his customary flare, clasping a fresh shirt for his client and
the new edition of the Johnson City Chronicle in his beringed right
hand. The county judge. Norman Howe, entered behind him—a compact
man with a red face and turkey neck. The judge politely removed his
slouch hat and held it in both hands.

McCreedy sat back down in his chair
and heaved a heavy sigh. Baldridge inhaled deeply, but before he
could speak, McCreedy said, “Yeah, yeah, it’s high noon. You know
where the keys are, Baldy.”

“
Uh ... that’s Baldridge,”
the attorney corrected, heading for the desk.

When he’d gone back into the cell
block, Judge Howe shoved his hands in the pockets of his brown suit
pants and gave McCreedy a sympathetic scowl. “Sorry, Owen,” he
said. “I wish I could’ve given you more time, but the law
says—”

“
I know you do, Judge,”
McCreedy said. “Truth of it is, though, it wouldn’t have mattered
if you’d have given me three weeks to get the girl here. She and
Prophet are dead. I don’t have, and never would have had, a
witness. It’s my own damn fault.”

“
We could still call a trial ...
call Perry to testify ...”

McCreedy shook his head. “We’d never
get a conviction on circumstantial evidence, Judge. You know that
as well as I do. And I’m not willing to lessen the charge. I want
him to hang ... and I want all the trash he has working for him out
of here. That’s the only way this town will ever civilize, become
the place you and me and the rest of the law-abiding citizens want
it to be.”

“
Well ... maybe next time,” Judge
Howe said, turning to gaze troubledly at the cell block
door.

Once more McCreedy shook his head.
“There ain’t gonna be any next time for me, Judge. I’m throwing in
the badge. I’m gonna go get Alice, and we’re gonna gel the hell out
of here.”

The judge turned his scowling eyes
back on McCreedy. “Owen, you’re a good man. You’ll get Brown,
sooner or later. You can’t leave this town. I won’t let you. You’re
the first good sheriff we’ve had here. Why, without you
...”

“
Without me, you might’ve
gotten rid of Billy and his gang by now.”

“
You’re selling yourself
only half a load there, Owen.

This is a tough town ... always has
been. You need to give yourself more time—”

The door to the cell block opened, and
Billy Brown strolled in with his chest puffed out. He was grinning
like a circus clown as he walked up to McCreedy, a cigarette wedged
in the left corner of his mouth. His curly gray hair was combed
back damp, and he wore a wrinkled vest over his fresh silk shirt.
The newspaper Baldridge had brought him was folded under an arm. He
held out his hand for McCreedy to shake.

“
Well, it was a nice try,
anyway, McCreedy. I’ll give you that.” He was fairly exploding with
contained laughter.

McCreedy did not shake the criminal’s
hand. He just gazed grimly, hatefully into Billy Brown’s cunning
eyes.

Billy shrugged. “No? Well, okay, then.
See ya around, McCreedy.”

He glanced at Baldridge, who stood
behind him on his boot heels, proudly fingering his suspenders, and
the two men headed for the door and outside. Apparently, several of
Billy’s men were waiting by the hitch-rack. Loud whoops rose as
Billy and the attorney walked out the office door.

McCreedy sat in his ladder-back chair,
staring at the clock. Judge Howe stood before him and to one side,
fists in his pockets, head bowed as if in prayer. When the whoops
and congratulations faded outside, and Billy Brown and his
entourage had wandered off to a saloon, Howe cleared his throat and
regarded McCreedy soberly.

“
Well, I hope you change
your mind, Owen. I surely do. There’s always another battle...
especially with a man like Brown.”

With that he turned slowly and walked
to the door. Once there, he turned back to McCreedy and opened his
mouth to speak. He stopped, shook his head, and continued outside,
closing the door softly behind him.

McCreedy pushed himself out of his
chair and set his empty coffee cup on his desk. He looked at the
clock, pondering it for several seconds. Finally, he removed his
badge from his vest, tossed it into a drawer, and reached up with
both hands to remove the clock from the wall.

With the clock under his left arm, he
left the office and headed west up Main Street, which was choked
with carts and wagons loaded with dry goods and mining equipment.
The boom was on—had been for a good two years now, which made the
pickings ripe for a man like Billy Brown.

McCreedy had walked two blocks toward
his house when commotion on the street behind him made him stop and
turn around. About a block away, a man on horseback was yelling at
a buckboard driver to get out of his way. When the buckboard had
moved out from the loading dock before Metzenbaum’s Mercantile, the
rider gigged his horse into a gallop past McCreedy.

Horse and rider, both sweat-lathered
and out of breath, looked as though they’d come a long way at a
killing pace. At first, McCreedy thought the man was a ranch hand
fetching a doctor. But the man did not ride up to Doc Kyle’s place
on the corner of First Avenue. He stopped instead before the
Nuremberg, the most expensive hotel in town. Climbing swiftly out
of his saddle, he gave his reins a few cursory loops over the
hitch-rack, took the porch steps two at a time, and ran through the
hotel’s double glass doors, nearly busting the glass out of one in
the process.

McCreedy stood scowling suspiciously
at the Nuremberg’s brick facade. It was in the Nuremberg that Billy
Brown had his headquarters, in a posh, pile-carpeted office on the
third floor. McCreedy often saw the crime boss standing out on his
balcony, smoking cigarettes as he gazed down at “his” town, like
some thick-necked, round-bellied lord, his pudgy hands on the
wrought-iron railing, a self-satisfied cast to his arrogant
gaze.

The rider had to be one of Billy’s
men. If so, where had he come from in such a hurry, bearing what
urgent news for Billy?

After about a minute and a quarter,
the man reappeared through the double doors, turned left, and ran
east down the boardwalk, tracing a circuitous route through the
throng of shoppers and businessmen. When he’d run a block, he
turned into Billy Brown’s favorite saloon— where Billy was no doubt
celebrating his release from the hoosegow.

McCreedy stood there staring eastward
down the street for several seconds, his brows furrowed with
contemplation. Finally, he walked over to Miller’s Livery Barn, and
got Miller’s son Fred to take a ride into the mountains looking for
Perry Moon.

“
Tell him I need him here
pronto,” McCreedy told the raw-boned kid with a wavy thatch of
bone-white hair. When he gave the kid directions to his deputy’s
hunting shack, the kid said, “What’s the matter, Sheriff?
Trouble?”

“
Maybe,” McCreedy said,
thoughtfully prodding a molar with his tongue. “Maybe
not.”

He left the kid saddling a stout
gelding, and headed back to the jailhouse with his
clock.

“
Mr. Brown! Mr.
Brown!”

Billy had just tossed back a shot of
Spanish brandy and was about to chase it with beer when he heard
the refrain, and saw the man run toward him from the door, weaving
between tables. The voice was so loud that everyone at Billy’s
table—Baldridge, Billy’s segundo, Clive Russo, and several others
including a few card dealers and pleasure girls Billy kept on
retainers—turned to watch the man approach.

It was Dick Dunbar, looking wrung out
and peaked, his bowler ready to fall off his head. Hadn’t he been
sent out after Prophet and the girl?

Dunbar stopped and grabbed Baldridge’s
chair back for support, staring across the table at Billy. “Mr.
Brown ... we got trouble.” He was huffing and puffing like an old
woman, and his unshaven face was drawn, eyes wild. It was a
distasteful display. Billy didn’t like to see his men lose their
composure like this, no matter what kind of trouble they’d gotten
themselves into.

Grimacing like he’d swallowed camphor,
Billy turned to Clive Russo and jerked his head to indicate one of
the private rooms on the second floor. Scraping his chair back.
Billy grabbed his half-smoked cigarette from the ash tray, and
headed for the stairs at the back of the saloon. Dick Dunbar and
Clive Russo followed Billy up the stairs and into one of the
gambling rooms.

Billy dropped into an arm chair at the
baize-covered poker table, holding his cigarette over an ash tray,
and waited for Clive Russo to close the door. Dick Dunbar stood
facing Billy demurely. Sweat and dust streaked his face. Suddenly
remembering, he removed his hat from his head, and held it
awkwardly before him.

“
Okay, what’s this about?”
Billy snapped when Russo had closed the door.

“
I found the girl and
Prophet,” Dunbar said. “But”— he sighed and shook his head, unable
to meet Billy’s searing gaze—”you ain’t gonna like it.”

“
Where’s your gunbelt?”
Billy asked him, exhaling smoke through his nostrils. Immediately,
he knew it was the wrong question to ask. It threw the man off.
Obviously, he’d been relieved of the damn thing. “Forget it— what
about the girl?”

Dunbar swallowed. He was thinking he
should’ve just taken off after he’d run into Prophet, headed to
Texas or California. Never should’ve gone back to Billy after he’d
been bested by Prophet. It was just that the money was so damn
good....

He licked his lips. “Well, me and
Ralph and Donna, we was trailin’ Prophet back in the—”

“
Skip ahead, skip ahead,”
Billy snarled with an impatient wave of his hand.

“
Well... I was the only one
who made it out of there alive, on account of I’m right handy with
my long gun, an—”

“
Skip ahead!” Billy roared.
“I have a beer, a bottle of Spanish brandy, and a plump whore
waiting for me downstairs?’

Visibly shaken, Dunbar shook his head as
if to clear the cobwebs. He stared at the table, the midday light
reflected off the baize. “Prophet ... said he’ll turn the girl over
to you ... for two thousand five hundred.”

Billy sneered, anger mottling his
face. “He did, did he?”

“
That’s what he said,
sir.”

“
Where is this exchange
supposed to take place?”

“
The old miner’s cabin in
Miner’s Gulch tomorrow at noon. He said no sooner and no
later.”

Billy raised his eyebrows, indignant.
“Oh, he did. did he?” He looked at Russo.

Clive shrugged. “Thinks he can get
more from you than he was getting from McCreedy.”

“
Yeah, well ..
. he’s a bounty hunter,” Billy
muttered distastefully. He sucked on his cigarette, narrowing his
eyes thoughtfully. “Miner’s Gulch, eh?” he asked Dunbar.

“
That’s right, sir. Miner’s
Gulch.”

“
Noon tomorrow.”

“
Yes, sir.”

Billy was nodding.

“
What do you want to do,
Billy?” Clive asked through his Custer-style mustache. “Could be
Prophet and the sheriff are in cahoots. Could be a
trap.”

Billy shook his head. “Nah. I just
left the sheriff. He’s ready to quit. And even if Prophet’s got
somethin’ up his sleeve, he’s only one man, with a
girl.”

Billy sat back in his chair, smoking
his cigarette and staring at the wall above the door, his tiny eyes
darting this way and that.

“
We meet him,” he said with
an air of finality, through the smoke hovering about his head. “And
just in case it is a trap, we meet him with all the men we
have—armed with Winchesters. Can you gather them all by
tomorrow?”

“
No problem,
Billy.”

Billy got up and stubbed out his
cigarette in the ash tray. Sidling up to Dunbar, he threw a
brotherly arm over the man’s shoulders, and grinned in his
sweat-beaded face. “Dick, tell me ... how’d he get your
gun?”

Dunbar shifted uncomfortably, glanced
at Billy, then at Clive, the corners of his mouth twitching a grin.
“Well... I was creeping into his camp this mornin’, you see, an’
... an’ somehow the son of a bitch winded me, an—”

Billy patted the man’s shoulder, cutting
him off. “That’s okay, Dick. ’Nough said.”

He turned and grabbed the doorknob. On
his way out, he glanced at Clive, then at Dunbar, and made a
slashing motion across his throat.

“
Who are you, anyway, Prophet?”
It was high noon, and they’d been riding leisurely for most of the
morning, climbing gradually out of the badlands and into foothills,
the air gradually cooling, drying the sweat on horses and riders.
Pin
es and
firs loomed around them on mountain slopes, and here and there they
came upon ravines, deep with buffalo grass and dotted with
lichen-flecked granite boulders. Prophet kept his eyes skinned for
bears, as this was grizzly country.