The Devil and Lou Prophet (7 page)

The troupe had pulled up before the
hotel, and the women and one man were climbing tiredly down from
the wagons, dusting themselves off.

Prophet knew that nabbing the girl
now, exhausted after a long wagon ride, wasn’t the kindest way of
accomplishing his task. But considering the time constraint, what
else could he do? What worried him, however, was Big Dan. As
Prophet approached the wagons, he could see the troupe master was
easily as big as he’d been described.

“
You girls go on in and
have your baths and naps and whatnot,” Big Dan said now, as the
women gathered on the boardwalk, slapping the trail dust from their
dresses and flexing their tired muscles. “I’ll carry the trunks up
as soon as I—”

“
Yeah, I know—as soon as
you’ve had about seventeen beers,” one of the girls finished for
him.

Big Dan made no reply; he was in too
big a hurry to get over to Dave’s Place, eyes wide with the image
of a frothy beer in his fist. He was so distracted that he didn’t
even glance at Prophet, who politely tipped his hat as the troupe
master thundered past on the boardwalk, big boots fanning up dust
with every heavy-footed step.

Prophet paused, his back to the
mercantile, and watched Big Dan walk away behind him and turn into
the saloon. Prophet was pleased by how things were panning out.
With Big Dan cutting the trail dust in Dave’s, it shouldn’t be too
difficult to nab the girl. Thinking it over and liking the idea
better and better, the bounty hunter reached into his coat pocket
for the deputy sheriff’s star and pinned it to his wool vest,
making sure it was hid by the left lapel of his new coat. He didn’t
want to reveal it until he had to. Enough people around town knew
his true identity to box things up good and plumb if they spied the
badge.

He turned back to the wagons. Three of
the girls had gathered around the back of the last wagon. The
fourth was inside, handing down carpetbags to the
others.

“
Ladies, let me help you
with those,” Prophet said as he approached the group.

“
Thanks, mister,” one of
them said.

“
Yeah, thanks,” said
another.

“
No problem at all,”
Prophet said, taking a bag from the girl inside the
wagon.

He looked at her and almost recoiled
from her beauty—the oval-shaped, elegant face with a narrow,
decisive nose and widely spaced blue eyes. She was in her early
twenties, a stunning beauty whose green dress clung to her kindly,
accentuating the fullness of her breasts and the slenderness of her
waist. What really caught Prophet’s attention was her hair, which
was the deep umber of hot coals as a raging fire burned down to
cinders. It brushed her slender neck in curly waves.

“
Much obliged,” she said
with an understated smile, lifting her eyes to regard him guardedly
from under the brim of her floppy straw hat. The hat gave her the
air of a tomboy. A tomboy, that was, with full, pursed lips and
skin as smooth as water.

“
Uh ... no problem at all,”
he said, his heart thumping as he recognized Lola Diamond. The
sheriff’s description of her had not done her justice, and Prophet
was glad he’d had the good sense to buy new duds. She indeed
appeared to be a woman who’d judge a man by his attire. “You must
be Miss Diamond.”

“
That’s right,” she said,
frowning curiously, stepping onto the wagon’s end gate. He took her
slender arm and helped her down as she asked, “And you are ...
?”

“
Louis B. Prophet at your
service, ma’am,” Prophet announced with his best Southern
gentleman’s smile. “I’m in the whiskey trade.”

“
Whiskey
drummer?”

“
Oh, don’t worry—I’m not here to
sell you whiskey, ma’am. I’m a big fan of yours, and when I saw
your wagons pass by the saloon yonder ... well ... I just thought
I’d see if I could help you ladies with your bags.”

He exaggerated his Georgia accent,
which he’d found to have a soothing effect on women. He smiled
disarmingly, lifted the crisp bowler, then set it gently down on
his head and glanced behind him to make sure Sheriff Fitzsimmons
wasn’t within hearing range. The inimical sheriff would no doubt
have gotten quite a laugh from Prophet’s performance, and probably
have foiled the whole thing.

“
Thanks anyway,” the girl
said with a polite smile, “but we’ll carry our own bags.” A
cautious one, she. One so lovely would have to be.

“
Oh, come on, Lola,” one of
the other girls dissented. “I say if the kind man wants to carry
our bags, we let him.”

“
Me, too, Lola,” another
chimed in. “My backs hurts.”

“
Hey, thanks, mister!” the
third girl said before Lola could object.

“
No trouble at all, no
trouble at all,” Prophet sang, hefting all four carpetbags under
his arms. “Show me the way, ladies!”

Hauling the carpetbags, Prophet
followed the tired, trail-weary women into the hotel, and then
waited while they registered. When Lola and one of the others had
gotten their room keys, Prophet followed them up the stairs,
admiring the way the green dress clung to the redhead’s legs,
tracing the contours of her shapely thighs as she walked. In spite
of the pain that hefting the bags inspired in his shoulder, he was
growing more and more fond of his job.

“
Much obliged,” Lola said
dully as she stood in her open doorway. The girl she was sharing a
room with had gone in ahead of her. The other two had already gone
into the room next door, and had closed the door after effusively
thanking Prophet for his help. “I’ll tell Dave over at the saloon
to draw you a beer on Big Dan,” Lola added as she turned away and
started closing the door in Prophet’s face.

“
Well, uh ... ” Prophet sighed.
Here it was, the moment of truth. “I’m afraid I won’t be hanging
around. And I’m afraid ... ” He let the sentence trail off, feeling
like a genuine shit heel for what he was about to do. But he had a
strong sense that getting her to Johnson City in four days meant a
great deal more to Owen McCreedy than what the sheriff had
expressed in his note.

Deciding to let the subpoena speak for
itself, Prophet pulled it out of his shirt pocket and handed it
over. “Here ... this is for you.”

She frowned. “What’s this?” She took
the paper, unfolded it. and began reading. Almost instantly, her
face paled. Her rich lips parted as she inhaled deeply. She lowered
the document to her side and narrowed her eyes at him. “What the
hell’s a subpoena?”

Silently amused by the girl’s salty tongue
but caught off-guard by the question, Prophet said, “Well ... it’s
a ... a legally binding document ... that says ... well ... that
says you have to accompany me down to Johnson City, to testify at a
hearing.” Suddenly unsure what a subpoena was himself, and calling
on the deputy sheriff’s badge for backup, he drew his coat back
from the star only long enough for her to glimpse it. He doubted
she knew the difference between a deputy sheriff’s star and a
deputy marshal’s badge, but he figured she could read the writing
engraved on the tin. “Louis B. Prophet, deputy U.S. marshal. That
paper says you have to accompany me to Johnson City. The sheriff
there wants to talk to you.”

“
You’re here to arrest
me?”

“
No, ma’am,” Prophet said,
vehemently shaking his head. “I’m here to escort you to Johnson
City.”

She took several steps back, slapping
a hand to her chest. “Well, I won’t go. I can’t go!”

“
Miss, I’m
sorry—”

Before he could finish the sentence,
she slammed the door. Prophet jammed one of his new boots between
the door and the frame, halting the door so suddenly it cracked.
The girl screamed and threw her weight against it. She was no match
for the bounty hunter, who heaved it open with a grunt.

The girl gave up on the door, ran across
the room, grabbed a pitcher, and tossed it at Prophet. Heavy with
water, it made it only halfway, hitting the floor with a thunderous
bang. Dumbfounded, Prophet stared at the water spreading across the
floor. He saw the girl hike her leg on a chair and reach inside her
dress. Having seen this move before, Prophet lunged for her,
grabbed her wrist, and removed the hideout gun—a .32-caliber
Hopkins and Allen, an underpowered little snub-nose but reasonably
effective at close range—just as she removed it from the sheath
strapped to her thigh. She cried angrily, jerking her empty hand
from his grasp and falling against the dresser.

Prophet stuck the pea shooter in his
cartridge belt, his mind reeling. He hadn’t expected a reaction
this violent. He’d thought the deputy U.S. marshal guise would
sedate her, resign her to the fact she was going to Johnson City
whether she wanted to or not. The plan hadn’t worked, and he was
dumbfounded and perplexed. He had a wild female on his hands,
which, he was quickly discovering, was akin to wrestling a wounded
bobcat in a Conestoga wagon.

The problem was a dull ache in his
brain: How do you restrain a woman without hurting her?

“
Listen, miss ... please
... I—”

His voice was cut off by the other
girl, who jumped to her feet screaming like a banshee.

Prophet turned to her, opening his
hands acquiescently. He stopped when he heard thundering footsteps
and raised voices behind him. Turning to cover his flank, he was
too slow to see Miss Diamond dart forward, hiking her dress above
her ankles and lifting her right foot until it had connected
soundly with his groin.

Prophet had taken a direct hit in the
balls a few times in the past—in his line of work, it was nearly
unavoidable—but he couldn’t remember any man kicking him this
hard.

He doubled over with an enormous groan
and a sigh, automatically bringing his hands to his crotch. Giving
an angry cry, the girl punched him twice in the head, upending his
hat and staggering him sideways.

He fell to his knees and glanced up.
All four girls were gathering around him—concernedly, defensively,
angrily. It didn’t take them long to assess his apparent threat to
one of their own. One kicked him in the shoulder, another in the
ribs. Screaming oaths he’d never heard from female lips, another
pulled his hair and socked him in the ear so hard that the entire
right side of his head went numb.

Amid the blows from foot and fist,
Prophet tried gaining his feet. Before he could do so, he heard
boots thump into the room, the floorboards complaining above the
din of the admonishing women. Turning and lifting his head
slightly, he saw the man with the big nose standing just inside the
door, outside of which three or four other hotel guests had
gathered, looking shocked and confused.

The man was aiming one of his fancy
pistols at the girls. His mouth was a dark slash across his face,
and his heavy brows were knit, but there was a humorous flash in
his eyes. One at a time, the girls saw him. They fell instantly
silent, mouths agape, eyes sliding between the gun and the gaze of
the man wielding it.

When the room had quieted, the man
said to Prophet reasonably, “I was just walkin’ by when I heard the
commotion ... uh ... Marshal. Looks like you need a little
help.”

Still clutching his bruised balls,
which felt as though they’d swollen to twice their normal size,
Prophet gave a grunt and a feeble nod. Blood trickled from his cut
lip. He flushed, embarrassed. “Obliged.”

“
Which one you after ... or
all of ’em?”

“
Just this one
here.”

Lola’s eyes darted to Prophet.
Clenching her teeth stubbornly, she shook her head. “I will not go
with you.”

Someone from the doorway cleared his
throat. “You ... you want I should call the sheriff?” a man’s thin
voice inquired.

The well-dressed, big-nosed man
half-turned to the doorway. “I don’t think that’ll be necessary,”
he said. “This man here’s a deputy U.S. marshal. He was trying to
arrest one of the girls when they all attacked him ... the poor son
of a bitch.” The man addressed Prophet pityingly. “You all right
... Marshal?”

“
I’m all right,” Prophet
managed, his voice pinched. He got his feet beneath him and pushed
himself standing, releasing his balls, which dangled there,
burning. The pain abated in increments almost too small to
register. He felt the hot flash of anger unique to a man who’d been
attacked in that sensitive male region.

“
I can handle it now,” he
said, drawing the revolver from his holster and staring hotly at
Miss Diamond, who cowered behind the others.

The man asked, “You want I should lock
these others in the next room?”

Prophet’s eyes rolled around as he
tried reorienting himself against the ringing in his ears and the
pain in his loins and lip. “I reckon that would be a good idea,” he
allowed, his voice sounding to him like a distant chirp.

“
All right, ladies, you
heard the marshal,” ordered the man. “In the other room. Let’s go,
or I’ll drop the hammer on you. Oh, pipe down! Move!”

When the man and the other three women had
left, the women throwing caustic looks at Prophet and concerned
ones at Lola, Prophet started toward her. She backed up against the
bureau and crossed her arms defiantly across her chest. “I refuse
to go!”