The Devil and Lou Prophet (9 page)

For the sake of the others, Prophet
extended his hand. “Lou Prophet.”

Bannon shook it. “Wayne
Bannon.”

“
Nice to meet you,
Wayne.”

“
Likewise.”

“
And ... uh ... thanks for your
help back in the hotel.” Prophet offered a sheepish
smile.

Bannon shrugged. “I was just passin’
by and heard the commotion, that’s all.”

“
You were stayin’ at the
Waddy’s, eh?”

“
I’m a regular there.”
Bannon looked at Miss Diamond and touched his hat brim. “Sorry
about your trouble, ma’am. I hope everything works out in your
favor.”

She sneered at him, then turned away
to gaze hatefully out the window.

“
Game of cribbage?” Bannon
asked Prophet after they’d ridden another mile or so in silence. He
produced a cribbage board from an inside pocket of his frock
coat.

Prophet hesitated. Then he shrugged.
What better way to keep an eye on the man’s hands?
“Sure.”

The man had handily won two rounds and
was well on his way to winning a third when the stage slowed to a
halt and the driver called down, “Horse rest! Fifteen minutes to
stretch!”

When the stage had come to a complete
stop Prophet opened the door. He had started to get out when Miss
Diamond said, “Wait. Why don’t you let him go first?”

Prophet glanced at Bannon, who
shrugged and chuckled. “Sure, I’ll go.”

Bannon climbed out. Prophet followed,
then turned to help Lola, the boy, and the middle-aged woman. The
old man came out last, wagging his head. “I thought for sure you
two were going to have a shootin’ match in there.”

“
This man causin’ trouble, Pop?”
rumbled a guttural voice behind Prophet.

Prophet turned to see Frank Harvey, a
former bounty hunter Prophet had known and hated for years. They’d
fought in most of the saloons between Milestown and Dodge heard
that the man had started riding shotgun for a stage company. It
would have to be this one. He just hoped Harvey didn’t mention
anything about bounty hunting in front of the girl. He wanted her
to believe he was a deputy marshal for as long as
possible.

“
Hi, Frank. How you
doing?”

“
You causin’ trouble on
this here stage?” Six-six and broad as a barn, the rolled-up
sleeves of his threadbare long Johns revealing a maze of tattoos on
his post-sized arms, Frank Harvey stood holding a double-barreled
shotgun across his chest. His thick, curly beard was covered with
clay-colored dust, and his floppy hat looked as though he stomped
and pissed on it regularly.

“
Not a bit, pard,” Bannon
intervened. “There was a misunderstanding a few miles back, but it
was all my fault. I have a short fuse, you see, but I’m much better
now.” He reached into his frock coat and produced a flat silver
box. “Cigarillo? They’re Cuban.”

Harvey’s eyes were still on Prophet,
like those of a half-wild dog bristling for a fight. His nose
worked as he smelled the expensive tobacco, however, and his gaze
gradually drifted from Prophet to the cigarillos. “Yeah ... all
right,” he chafed, selecting a smoke with his sausage
fingers.

“
Good man,” Bannon said,
leading Harvey away as though attracting a dog with a
bone.

Prophet gave a slow sigh of
relief.

“
You’re right popular
today, Marshal,” the girl quipped. Giving her back to him, she
said, “Would you mind releasing me, so I can tend to
nature?”

Reluctantly, Prophet cut the tether
with his Arkansas toothpick. There was no sign of the other three
passengers, who’d wandered off to answer their own nature
calls.

“
Just remember,” Prophet
scolded, “there ain’t nowhere to run out here. Besides, I’m a
pretty fast runner myself.”

He was taken aback by the brazen look
she returned.

“
You know, Marshal,” she
said with an exaggerated air of perplexity, “I never did get a very
good look at that badge of yours.”

“
Huh?”

“
Why don’t you wear your
badge out where folks can see it?”

Prophet looked down at his chest, his
vision beginning to swim as his nerves started dancing once more.
“Well... ’cause ... uh ...” For the life of him, he couldn’t come
up with an answer. Fidgeting, he glanced at the driver, grateful to
see he was on the other side of the team, checking the horses’
hooves for loose nails and shoe wear.

“
Let me see your badge,” Miss
Diamond demanded, marching forward and yanking the right side of
his coat back, revealing the badge. She leaned in close and
squinted her eyes. “Huh! This doesn’t look very professional at
all. Why, this badge is upside down!” Her voice was an axe,
chopping him in two.

“
Uh ... well ...”

“
And you know what else?”
She jerked another look at the badge, pantomiming another close
inspection, then returned her vilifying gaze back to Prophet. “It’s
not a deputy U.S. marshal’s badge at all. It’s a deputy sheriff’s
star.” She waited, her eyes wide and expectant, chest heaving, her
face flushed with anger.

Prophet stood there, an oversized
schoolboy caught looking up girls’ dresses on the playground. He
didn’t know what to say. His mouth opened several times before he
managed to get words through it. “It ... is ... ?”

“
Yes, it is,” she said so tightly
Prophet thought her jaws would crack. “Hmmm.” She put a finger to
her lip, mimicking deliberation. “What do you suppose that means?
That—maybe, possibly—you’re not actually who you say you
are!”

Prophet could not meet her gaze.
Slowly, he removed the star from his vest and tossed it in the
dust. “All right,” he said. “You got me. I’m not a deputy U.S.
marshal.”

“
A deputy sheriff?” she
mocked.

“
I’m not a deputy sheriff,
either. I’m ... ” He didn’t know how to say it. He was afraid that
once she learned his true profession, she’d kick him in the balls
again.

“
Yes?” she said, crossing
her arms over her breasts, waiting.

“
I’m a bounty
hunter.”

He looked at her. She just stood
there, arms crossed, hair beneath her hat lifting slightly in the
breeze, staring at him as though at a mildly interesting
statue.

“
But the subpoena is one
hundred percent real,” he assured her. “The sheriff from Johnson
City hired me to issue it and to see that you made it to his
office. And that’s what I intend to do.” His features grew stern as
he touched the butt of his Peacemaker, hoping to defuse any idea
she had about attacking him. He wondered how many times he could
dust off his dignity before there was nothing left to dust off. In
ten years of dogging badmen, he’d never felt this uncomfortable.
Oh, to be rid of this woman!

She stared at him thoughtfully. “Well,
you’re a big man, Mr. Prophet, so there’s little I can do against
you. All I can do is try to convince you that if you go through
with this, you and I are both going to die.”

It was Prophet’s turn to look
skeptical. “Don’t you think you might be just a little too
emotional?”

“
You don’t believe our Mr.
Bannon is out to kill me?”

“
I didn’t say that ... ” But he
was skeptical. He’d known a lot of short-trigger men, but Bannon
didn’t seem the type. He was no doubt handy with his Remingtons,
but he was a card man first, a killer only in a pinch.

Miss Diamond started to respond but
was interrupted by the driver approaching with a shoe hammer in his
hand. Prophet saw that the other three passengers had returned but
were lingering several yards away, near the back of the coach.
Having overheard the argument, they were glancing guardedly at him
and Miss Diamond.

“
Okay, folks,” the driver
called. “Time to board up.”

The girl looked around. “Where’s
Bannon?”

“
He’s by the tree, smoking
with my pal Harvey,” Prophet said.

She turned to the driver, who was
returning his hammer to a tool box. “Driver, I haven’t taken my
comfort yet. I’ll be just a minute.”

The driver turned his head and
frowned, but before he could say anything, she was already
addressing Prophet. “You keep an eye on Bannon.” Then she headed
east around the rocks.

“
Women,” the driver said,
drawing on his cigarette.

“
I’ll say,” Prophet
agreed.

They stood there smoking and chatting,
Prophet keeping one eye skinned on Harvey and Bannon smoking by a
tree several yards away. He wasn’t concerned about Miss Diamond
trying to escape him out here, for on foot she would have been in
more trouble away from him than she was with him. Finally, he saw
her returning, holding her dress up as she moved through the tall
grass.

“
What are you gawkin’ at?”
Prophet turned to see Frank Harvey standing behind him. The driver
had gone around to mount the stage on the opposite side.

“
None of your
goddamn—”

“
Climb aboard, Prophet, or
you’re gonna be sportin’ this up your ass,” Harvey said, holding up
his double-barreled shotgun for Prophet’s inspection.

“
Boys, boys,” Miss Diamond
scolded, stepping between them.

“
Let me give ya a hand
there, miss,” Harvey said, offering a paw.

“
Thank you.”

Prophet rolled his eyes as she took the
shotgun rider’s hand. She stumbled. “Oh, darn!” she exclaimed. “My
shoe.”

She bent down just as a gun popped. A
bullet whistled through the air where her head had been a moment
before, and plunged into Frank Harvey’s chest with a
thump.

Harvey grunted and stiffened as
he shuffled back agai
nst the stage.

“
Everybody down!” Prophet
yelled. As several more shots thundered, the slugs sizzling through
the air to thump into the stage and ring off the iron-rimmed
wheels. Prophet grabbed the girl and shoved her down behind a
rock.

Crouching beside her, he drew his
six-gun. Four more bullets spanged off the rock in quick
succession, whining and echoing throughout the spoon-shaped valley.
Rock shards rained. The older woman screamed, and Mike Clatsop
bellowed curses from behind a boulder six feet from Prophet and the
girl. The horses were fussing and stomping, threatening to bolt.
The jehu drew his revolver and loosed a shot westward. Behind his
rock, Prophet couldn’t see what the driver was shooting at, but he
knew it was Bannon.

“
Where is he,
Mike!”

“
Behind that rock out
yonder—thirty yards, the son of a bitch!” Clatsop loosed another
round. Bannon responded with two rounds of his own, but they were
aimed at Prophet and the girl, not Clatsop.

“
He wants you bad, son!”
the jehu yelled at Prophet.

Hunkered down beside him, cowering,
Miss Diamond screamed, “I told you, you stupid son of a
bitch!”

Ignoring her, Prophet slid a look
around his rock. There were several boulders and shrubs strewn down
the side of a butte before him. He detected movement behind one and
was about to shoot when Bannon bounded up from behind the rock.
Prophet aimed quickly and fired. The slug kicked up dust about a
foot beyond the gunman, who disappeared behind more boulders and
shrubs. Prophet knew he’d be heading down the crease between the
two buttes behind him. He was apparently trying to escape the scene
of the botched assassination, and there was nowhere else to
go.

Prophet looked at the girl, curled in
the fetal position with her arms over her head. “Stay down. He
could circle back.” Bounding out from behind the rock, he yelled,
“Stay with the stage, Mike! I’m going after that
bastard.”

He ran past Bannon’s boulder,
following the flattened weeds through the shrubs and into the
crease between the buttes. Bordered on both sides by more rocks,
scraggly, waist-high weeds, and gnarled chokecherry shrubs, the
crease led down a steep grade to an arroyo. Prophet followed the
grade to the bottom of the arroyo—slowly, shrugging away tree
limbs, wary of an ambush.

A spring runoff gurgled. Tracks of
deer and coyote scored the soft mud. Walking with his gun held
before him, Prophet came upon the prints of high-heeled
boots.

Cautiously, swinging his head from left to
right, Prophet followed the prints along the arroyo. Firs, box
elders, and aspens grew along the sides—thick in places, thinner in
others. The faint scent of pine mixed with that of the acrid water.
A shrill cry rose, and Prophet ducked, jerking a look to his right.
A magpie lifted off a pine branch about halfway up the rocky bank,
the vacated branch bobbing behind it, the magpie careening up and
behind Prophet, screeching.

Prophet swallowed, sighed, and gave
his eyes back to the trail. It followed the soft sand and dirt at
the bottom of the arroyo for another thirty yards, ending abruptly
near a deadfall aspen. The last two boot prints stared up at
Prophet tauntingly.

Where the hell... ?