The Devil and Lou Prophet (24 page)

If Billy Brown had twenty-five men
riding for him, Prophet was sure all or nearly all would be at
Miner’s Gulch tomorrow at noon. Twenty-six men, including Billy
himself, against one broken-down bounty hunter and a
showgirl.

Prophet had to smile at that. He shook
his head. He had to be nuts. All he really had on his side was his
knowledge of the canyon, for he’d helped out a mining buddy there
several years ago, when some silver and a smattering of gold
remained, before the silver prices fell and the frequent rock
slides made it too dangerous for even the most die-hard of
pick-and-shovelers. Mining wasn’t his style—never had been. He
liked the saddle too much, the feel of a horse beneath him, and he
liked moving around too much, which was funny, since the Prophet
clan had lived in the north Georgia mountains for
generations.

He’d had to go and turn out the black
sheep of the family.... Or was it the war that had made him
restless, the memories making him run ... ?

When he finished the cigarette, he poured
a cup of coffee and cleaned his guns, finishing up with the Big
Fifty he’d taken from Dick Dunbar. Tomorrow, he’d need all the help
he could get.

He finished his coffee, drank water
from the stream, and bedded down, hoping against hope that the trap
he intended for Billy Brown wouldn’t snare him and Lola, as
well....

Owen McCreedy was stretched
ou
t in one of
the jail cells when he heard the front door open and Perry Moon’s
voice. “Boss?”

McCreedy sat up slowly, dropping his
feet to the floor. Rubbing the sleep from his eyes—when was the
last time he’d slept for more than two hours at a time?—he said,
“Yeah, back here. I’m comin’.”

Yawning, he stood, rubbed his bristly
face, patted his sandy hair down, and walked heavily out the cell
door, down the short hall, and into his office. Perry Moon’s
saddlebags and rifle were lying just inside the door, but Moon
himself was nowhere to be seen. McCreedy frowned curiously. Then
Perry himself appeared in the door, carrying the packs and panniers
he’d taken off his pack horse and in which he’d carried two weeks’
worth of provisions. The packs looked plenty light now,
however.

When he saw McCreedy, the young deputy
stopped suddenly, boyishly wide-eyed. “Did ye get him,
Boss?”

McCreedy shook his head. “Not
yet.”

“
Oh, dang it all, anyway!”
the tall twenty-two-year-old complained, his face twisted with
dismay. McCreedy had always thought Perry’s name fit him, for his
face was moon-shaped, though now it was covered with a thin beard,
and the knobs of his cheeks and nose were peeling from sunburn. His
clothes were filthy, and McCreedy could smell the lad from
here.

As he came through the door and set
the pannier next to his saddlebags, McCreedy said, “I bet you were
running low on supplies.”

“
Oh, I still had some
coffee and flour left, and a little sugar. It wasn’t no problem.
Boss. Pa always said a man could survive his whole life on just
flour and coffee from town. The rest he could find out in the
wild.”

“
Yeah, and your old man
nearly did just that, didn’t he?” McCreedy said, remembering
Perry’s father, Jake Moon, one of the original settlers of Johnson
City who’d been lured to the region by silver and gold. Eight years
ago, he’d died in a rockslide in Silver Canyon.

“
He sure did.”

“
Well... I’m sorry I had to
put you through that. Perry. Two weeks alone in those mountains is
a long time, but I thought it was better than you having some
so-called ‘accident’ here in town. Your ma never would’ve forgiven
me for that.”

Perry was kneeling down, pulling articles
out of the saddlebags. “Well, I ain’t afraid of Billy Brown, but I
see why you wanted me to lay low for a while.” He stood with
several boxes of forty-four cartridges and placed them in the
bottom drawer of McCreedy’s desk. Closing the drawer, he turned to
the sheriff with a brooding look on his face. “So what are we gonna
do about Billy, Boss?”

A dark cast shading his features,
McCreedy went to the stove and poured himself a cup of coffee.
“Well, that’s why I had Fred fetch you, Perry. The girl didn’t
show, so’s there hasn’t been a hearing or trial. But something
happened earlier that makes me believe she and Prophet might still
be alive. A rider stormed into town earlier—one of Billy’s riders.
He had urgent news for Billy, and something tells me that news has
something to do with Prophet and the girl. The man looked like
someone had hornswoggled him good. He wasn’t happy at all.”
Thoughtfully, McCreedy blew on his coffee and sipped.

The deputy was locking his rifle in
the gun rack. “You think they got Proph on the run?”

“
Either that or holed up
somewhere. Maybe in a line shack or an old trapper’s cabin, and
they’re havin’ a hard time rootin’ ’im out.” McCreedy shook his
head. “I don’t know ... it’s hard to figure. If that’s the case,
why didn’t Billy and his men ride out immediately?”

“
Maybe he figured it’d look
too suspicious—him ridin’ out with a pack like that, right after
that hombre stormed in here so fast. Maybe he figured you was
watchin’.”

Pursing his lips and nodding, the
sheriff said, “That could be.” The only problem with young Moon’s
scenario was that McCreedy didn’t think Billy Brown respected him
enough to worry whether or not he was watching.

“
I don’t know,” McCreedy
said disgustedly, after a long silence. “Maybe it doesn’t have
anything to do with Prophet and the girl. But I brought you back to
hold down the fort. If Billy and his men leave town, I’m going to
trail ‘em, see where they head. So why don’t you run over to the
Excelsior and get yourself a big steak and plate of beans, then go
on home for a bath and some shut-eye. Come back here first thing in
the morning.”

“
Sounds good to me, Boss,”
Perry Moon said with a tired sigh, picking up his saddlebags and
heading for the door.

“
Oh, Perry,” McCreedy
called. He tossed the lad a coin. “Here’s for that meal. Tell ‘em
you want the best in the house.”

“
Thanks, Boss,” the lad
said, glancing at the coin and smiling.

“
See you
tomorrow.”

“
First thing.”

As the deputy led his horses toward
the feed barn, McCreedy stepped outside and cast his gaze up the
lamp-lit street to the Nuremberg, where all the windows were lit, a
half-dozen horses nosed the hitch-rail, and the sounds of the
roulette wheel clattered in the cool mountain air.

He turned, pulled a chair outside, and
sat under the portico, watching the Nuremberg for signs of anything
suspicious—namely Billy Brown heading out with his riders. McCreedy
didn’t think he’d leave at this time of night if he hadn’t left
earlier, but he wasn’t taking any chances. When he did leave—if he
left—McCreedy wanted to know about it, so he could dog
him.

At one A.M., McCreedy decided nothing
was going to happen. Needing at least a few hours’ rest if he was
going to be at all effective tomorrow, he retired to the cell in
which he’d been sleeping earlier, and lay down with a weary
groan.

When would it end? When would he
finally have Billy Brown behind bars? When could he finally
retrieve his wife from the Holbrook farm, where he’d sequestered
her after arresting Billy? When could he and Alice start living
their lives again?

Fortunately, he was so tired that the
questions didn’t haunt him long. Before he knew it, sunlight
streamed through the barred window above his head, and he heard
boots clomping on the wood floor, getting louder as they
approached. “Boss?”

It was Perry Moon.

“
Oh, shit!” McCreedy
griped, swinging his feet to the floor. “How long did I
sleep?”

“
Well... it’s pret’ near
nine o’clock.”

McCreedy was pulling his boots on.
“You see any movement around the Nuremberg, Perry?”

“
That’s why I came in to
wake ye. Billy Brown and Clive Russo just had a couple horses
brought up from the feed barn. Fred Miller came and told
me.”

“
Fred?”

“
Yeah, when I delivered my
horses last night, I told him to let us know if Billy called for
his saddle horse.”

“
Goddamn—that’s good
thinkin’, son,” McCreedy said, putting a hand on his deputy’s
shoulder. The young man had been McCreedy’s deputy for only three
months—the last had been scared off by Billy Brown— but he was
catching on quick. “Thanks.”

“
Before I come to wake ye,
they were still tied to the hitch-rack,” the proud deputy called to
his boss, as McCreedy stomped down the hall and into his
office.

He made a beeline for the window and
looked out at an angle, up toward the hotel swathed in morning
sunshine. Billy Brown and Clive Russo had just stepped through the
Nuremberg’s double doors, pulling their gloves on and adjusting
their hats—the squat, thick-set Billy and the six-foot, slender
Russo with his ostentatious red mustache and goatee, which, it was
said, a Chinese courtesan washed and combed every morning in his
room across from Billy’s in the Nuremberg.

“
Yeah, here they come,”
McCreedy breathed.

He grabbed his gunbelt from the peg by
the door and strapped it around his waist, then walked to the gun
rack for a thirty-thirty. He grabbed a box of shells from a desk
drawer. Having seen Perry’s horse at the hitch-rack, he said, “I’ll
take your horse. I’ll see you in a couple hours ... I
hope.”

“
If ye don’t?” Perry called
as McCreedy headed out.

McCreedy thought about this. “If I
don’t, you just got a promotion.”

The sheriff stepped outside and cast
his gaze to his left, where Brown and Russo were cantering their
horses eastward, away from McCreedy. They turned right and
disappeared behind a blacksmith shop, the chimney of which filled
the bright air with sooty black smoke. McCreedy shoved his rifle
into Perry’s saddle boot, mounted up, and gigged the horse past the
Nuremberg, tracing Brown’s course around the blacksmith shop and
down First Street, which curved around a mountain. Along the
mountain’s base, falling-down shanties belched breakfast smoke, and
a three-legged cur barked at McCreedy’s horse trotting
past.

“
Go lay down, Lucky,” the
sheriff growled, checking the horse’s frightened
sidestep.

First Street played out down a steep
grade. At the bottom of the grade and about a half-mile from Main
Street sat the rodeo grounds, in a wide, fiat bend in the river.
Just before McCreedy came to the road forking off to the grounds,
he dismounted his horse and tethered it to a cottonwood along a
rocky butte. Stealing along the butte, he removed his hat, and,
keeping the butte between him and the rodeo grounds, stole a look
toward the river.

Near the rough wooden spectator bleachers,
Billy Brown and Clive Russo were cantering their horses toward a
loose pack of riders—over twenty by McCreedy’s estimation. All were
armed with pistols, rifles, and knives, extra cartridge belts
looped across their chests. They watched their approaching boss and
his segundo— ready to ride, the kill-lust plain in their
eyes.

McCreedy’s heart rattled a harried
rhythm as he watched Brown and Russo bring their horses to a halt
before the army. Billy’s head jerked as he issued orders. Then he
gigged his horse through the crowd, Clive following, and headed
across the rodeo grounds toward the tree-lined river reflecting the
morning sunshine. The grim warriors reined their horses in
360-degree circles, and galloped up to their leader as Brown and
Russo reached the river.

McCreedy whistled softly as he watched
the group splash through the river and mount the butte on the other
side. What he could do against twenty-five men, he had no idea, but
it was too late to swear in more deputies. If he did nothing else,
he could see where they were headed and what they were up to. If
they had Prophet cornered, he owed the man a hand, however
feeble.

He waited until they’d all disappeared
down the other side of the butte and were gone, only their chalky
dust lingering in the cottonwoods. Then he turned, untied his horse
from the cottonwood, and mounted up, galloping toward the
stream.

Brown and his men were deep in the
mountains when Billy called a hall to rest the horses, as they were
showing signs of altitude fatigue.

“
Billy, you think we should
leave a couple men behind to watch our back trail?” Clive Russo
asked as his boss stood holding his horse’s reins while puffing a
cigarette down to his fingers.

“
You thinking McCreedy
might’ve followed us?” Brown said with a caustic snort.

Russo shrugged. He’d removed his hat,
and his thin red hair hung wetly to his shoulders. “Never know. Why
take a chance?”

“
Well, I ain’t afraid of
Owen McCreedy, but if it’ll make you feel better, Clive
...”

Russo turned to where the men milled
along the trail ambling through the pine forest. Gentle, shaded
slopes lifted on both sides. Birds and squirrels chittered. The
ground was dappled with sunlight and gave off the smell of moist
earth and pine needles.