The Devil and Lou Prophet (8 page)

“
So you said.” Prophet
quickly holstered his pistol, grabbed the girl, and tossed her face
down on the bed.

“
How dare you!”

“
Oh, I dare, lady—I dare,”
Prophet snarled, grabbing a towel from the commode
stand.

Towel in one hand, he wrenched one of
the girl’s arms behind her back and knotted the towel around her
wrist. She screamed and cursed and kicked, but Prophet had her
pinned to the bed with his knees. Swinging his arm out, he grabbed
her other flailing hand and tied it to the first.

“
You can’t do this to me!”
the girl shrieked so loudly that Prophet thought his eardrums would
burst.

“
Watch me!” With that, he
grabbed another towel, looped it over her face, slid it into her
mouth like a horse’s bit, and tied the ends behind her
head.

It didn’t silence her, but it
certainly piped her down.

“
You see, there’s more than
one way to skin a cat,” Prophet said, standing, jerking her off the
bed, and leading her out the door. He paused to retrieve the girl’s
carpetbag, which she would need on the journey.

The man with the big nose was standing
just outside the other room, that humorous light still flashing in
his eyes. “Got her?”

“
Yeah, I got her,” Prophet
grumbled, heading down the hall, hearing the other girls pounding
on the locked door of their room.

When he was downstairs and crossing
the lobby with the girl in tow, he stopped suddenly as Big Dan
thundered into the building, face flushed from drink and outrage.
Someone had apparently fetched him when they’d seen what was
happening to his girls.

“
Just what in the hell do
you think you’re doin’!” the troupe master shouted, spittle flying
from his lips.

Remembering how effectively the
technique had worked for the girl, Prophet waited until Big Dan was
three feet away. Then he kicked the half-drunk troupe master
squarely in the balls. The man cried out, doubling over, and
Prophet brought the butt of his revolver down on the back of the
man’s head with a resolute smack. His lights going out like a blown
lantern, Big Dan hit the floor so hard that dust sifted down from
the rafters.

“
Now,” Prophet said,
regarding the other three people in the lobby, “if you’ll excuse
us, Miss Diamond and I have a stage to meet.”

“
What’s this all about?”
the hotel clerk inquired.

“
None of your business,”
Prophet grouched.

Shoving the girl out ahead of him, he
stepped onto the boardwalk and started across the street. He no
longer cared who tried to get in his way. After what he’d been
through, he was itching to shoot someone.

He didn’t have to, however. Except for
people stopping to stare warily at him and the gagged and bound
girl, the walk to the stage office was uneventful. Fitzsimmons was
conspicuously absent. Not wanting to show either involvement or
uninvolvement in Prophet’s kidnapping of the girl, he’d probably
gone fishing.

Prophet approached the stage station
just as the fresh team was being buckled into place by two
wranglers. Prophet gave the tickets to the agent, who stamped them
and returned them to Prophet along with the war bag, rifle, and
saddlebags Prophet had left with the man earlier.

“
Whatcha got goin’ now,
Lou?” asked the dusty driver as Prophet guided Miss Diamond to the
stage. Prophet recognized Mike Clatsop, a longtime stage driver
with whom Prophet had killed many a whiskey bottle and beer keg in
roadhouses throughout the northern territories.

“
Well, Mike,” Prophet said
with a weary sigh, handing over his and the girl’s luggage, “Owen
McCreedy wants her down in Johnson City. Don’t ask me why,” he
added with a caustic snort.

As Prophet wrestled Lola into the
coach, the driver chuckled. “With her all bound up like that, and
you dressed fit to kill, I figured you musta got yourself hitched!”
The guffaws rolled up from deep in Clatsop’s chest.

Prophet climbed into the coach and sat
beside the girl, who was still struggling with her tether and
cursing him through the towel. From behind his metal cage, the
station agent railed, “Pull ’em outta here, Clatsop—you’re behind
schedule the way it is!”

“
Ah, go diddle yourself,
Henry!” Clatsop retorted. He secured Prophet’s and the girl’s
luggage in the coach’s back boot, then grudgingly climbed up to the
driver’s box.

As he did so, Prophet drew a
handkerchief from his pocket and mopped his brow and dabbed at his
cracked lip. His chest was taut with strained nerves. He hadn’t
realized how stressful collecting bounty on one pretty redhead
could be.

“
Hold on!” a deep male
voice called as the stage started off.

“
Climb aboard, mister, but
watch those wheels!” Clatsop called from the driver’s
box.

The door opened, and another man
jumped aboard. All Prophet could see was his shoulders and bowler
as he pulled himself through the door, crouching, then turned to
pull the door closed behind him. The stage knocked him off balance,
and he swayed this way and that, reaching for the ceiling straps.
The door swung wide as the stage tilted to the right.

“
I got it,” Prophet said,
getting up, grabbing the door, and latching it.

Grabbing the walls and ceiling straps for
balance, he struggled back into his seat. Beside him, the girl gave
a sharp intake of breath, as though startled.

“
What—?” Prophet started,
stopping when he saw the face of the man who’d just climbed
aboard.

It was the well-dressed hard case, a
grim smile stretching his thin, chapped lips and swelling the veins
in his enormous nose.

“
Ain’t this a coincidence?”
Prophet said.

“
Ain’t it,
though?”

“
Where might you be
headed?”

“
Johnson City,” the hard case
said, cutting his dull gray eyes at Lola, who stared at him with
unadulterated hate. “I see you finally got your prisoner settled
down.” He grinned until his cheeks dimpled. Prophet could tell he
was unaccustomed to smiling.

The bounty hunter glanced at the two
Remingtons resting against the man’s thighs, the man’s hands not
far from the gutta-percha grips. Apprehension was a bug buzzing
around in the back of Prophet’s head. He’d seen just too much of
the man of late. Coincidence? Maybe. Henry’s Crossing was a small
town. While Prophet couldn’t understand what business the man would
have with him or the girl, he wasn’t taking any chances.

“
Yeah, she’s a lamb,”
Prophet grumbled, glancing at the girl. She turned to him, eyes
flaring.

“
Right pretty,” said the
stranger.

Prophet shrugged. There was nothing
like kicking a man in the balls to make a girl look ordinary. “I’ve
seen prettier.”

“
Not around here you
haven’t.”

“
I’d take that towel from
her mouth if she thought she could keep her mouth shut.” Prophet
looked at her again. She returned his gaze, containing her anger,
eyes beseeching him to remove the gag.

“
I don’t know—wildcat, that
one,” the stranger said with a grin.

Prophet untied the towel from around
her head. She made a dry spitting noise, as if to rid her mouth of
lint, and shook her head violently, whipping her hat off. It fell
on the floor. Hands tied, she left it there. She flashed her angry
eyes at Prophet once more but, catching herself, said
nothing.

The stranger laughed. She looked at
him, then back at Prophet. The noise the stage made as it rumbled
down the road was loud enough that only Prophet could hear her when
she said, leaning toward him, “He’s been sent to kill
me.”

Prophet glanced at the
stranger.

“
I beg your pardon?” the
man said, knowing he’d been talked about.

Prophet thought for a moment,
wondering how to play it. He glanced at the man’s pistols again and
felt a strange sensation at the base of his spine.

Deciding to play it straight—why
not?—Prophet said, “The lady says you’ve been sent to kill
her.”

The man didn’t say anything for about five
seconds, shifting his gaze between Prophet and the girl. “Who would
send me to do that?”

“
Billy Brown,” the girl
said.

“
Who’s Billy Brown?” the
man asked her, beating Prophet to the punch.

“
You know who Billy Brown
is as well as I do,” she said disdainfully, blue eyes flashing
fire. “He’s the bastard who cut Hoyt Farley’s throat in his own
saloon. He’s the man who hired you to kill me before I could
testify against him.”

Keeping both eyes on the stranger. Prophet
tensed. He found himself admiring the girl’s sand. If she really
thought the man had been sent to kill her. it took guts to face him
down like this. But maybe she didn’t think she had anything to lose
...

The man was staring at her, brows
furrowed. He turned his head to one side, regarding her askance.
“Miss, I don’t have the foggiest notion what you’re talking about.”
His eyes slid to Prophet. “Do you, Marshal?”

Prophet didn’t say anything for
several seconds. “Who’s Hoyt Farley?” he asked Lola, keeping his
eyes on the stranger, watching his hands without staring at them
directly. He figured the man would telegraph any move with his
eyes.

She jerked a look at
him. “You don’t
know?”

He flushed, hesitating, feeling the girl’s
hot gaze on him. Apparently, a deputy U.S. marshal involved in the
case would know the name of Hoyt Farley. “Hey, I’m just ... just
... transporting a witness to a county sheriff.”

A knowing grin pulled at the nostrils
of the stranger’s large, pitted nose.

“
He’s the saloonkeeper
Billy Brown killed,” the girl said impatiently.

“
Saloonkeeper?” the
stranger said, shuttling what appeared a genuinely baffled gaze
between Prophet and Miss Diamond.

“
Saloonkeeper?” the girl
mocked him, not buying his performance—if performance it was.
Prophet couldn’t decide. He didn’t know either one of these people
well enough to read them.

To the girl, he said with a heavy
sigh, “So ... you’re saying Billy Brown sent this man to keep you
from talking to Owen McCreedy.”

“
That’s exactly what I’m saying.
Now do you see the danger you’ve put me in? I just hope you’re
better at handling your six-gun than you were at arresting
me.”

Prophet flushed, not at all liking how
complicated his life had suddenly become. He didn’t like the girl,
and he didn’t like the stranger sitting across from him. Situations
like this were hard on a man’s self-respect, not to mention his
nerves.

“
I don’t know what she’s talkin’
about,” the man said to Prophet. “My name’s Bannon and I’m just
headin’ for the faro tables down in Johnson City.” He stopped as a
thought came to him. “Oh, I know ... it’s these Remingtons,” he
said, indicating the two irons on his hips. He chuckled and gave
his head a wag. “Yeah, these two ladies—Ruth and Alice, I call
’em—they’re mostly for show, if you know what I’m sayin’. I’m in
the poker profession—a gamblin’ man—and you’d be surprised all the
ornery bastards I have to contend with.”

“
That right?” Prophet
said.

“
Sure. I mean, hell, when you
rake the felt of someone’s hard-earned cash, well, you better look
out. Especially if they’ve been drinkin’. They’re liable to pull on
you—especially if they don’t think you’re handy with iron. I have
to make it look as though I’m handy.” He patted one of the
gutta-percha grips lovingly. Prophet’s heart thumped, and he slid
his hand closer to the butt of the forty-five on his right
hip.

“
Easy there, pard,” the man
said, detecting the movement. “Don’t get itchy.”

“
I won’t if you
won’t.”

Bannon’s voice was even, his
expression cool. “I was just explainin’ why the girl’s
afraid.”

“
Well, why don’t we just
leave Ruth and Alice alone for now?”

A thin voice rose above the knock and
rattle of the stage and the sharp reports of the driver’s
blacksnake. “I second that motion.” Prophet and Bannon turned to
the wizened old man sitting on the other side of Miss Diamond. He
was staring at them warily, obviously in no mood to see lead flung
around the coach’s tight quarters.

It was the first time Prophet was more
than vaguely aware of others aboard the stage. In addition to the
old man, there was a middle-aged woman and a boy who appeared to be
traveling together. The boy sat to Bannon’s right, directly across
from Miss Diamond. The woman sat next to the window, on the other
side of the boy. Fear shone brightly in her eyes, but the boy
shuttled his eager gaze between Prophet and Bannon, apparently not
the least bit wary of a lead swap. He seemed to be thoroughly
enjoying the festivities.

Prophet lipped his hat to the woman
and the boy, smiling reassuringly, then looked at Bannon, who
returned his gaze with a benign smile. Prophet wondered if the man
was telling the truth. Was he lying, or did Miss Diamond have an
overactive imagination? She was an actress.