The Devil's Lair (A Lou Prophet Western #6) (27 page)

Crumb stared at the rimrocks, behind which
the sun was slowly sinking, cloaking them in spruce-green shadows.
The rifle fire died. Ten seconds later, two more reports sounded,
then two more, and another.

Crumb stared toward the bloody canyon, mouth
agape, his own blood draining from his face. He sat on the tired
dun stony-eyed for several minutes.

Finally, he let the built-up pressure in his
lungs escape in a slow sigh, and turned his gaze eastward, where
the horse trail rose and fell over the tawny-green prairie toward
Bitter Creek.

All was not yet lost. If he could get back
to Bitter Creek ahead of Prophet, he could get his money from the
safe in the depot station and give the town a parting gift it
wouldn’t soon forget …

He reined the dun eastward and heeled it
hard.

“
Come on, ye son of a bitch.
Move!”

It was full
dark when Henry Crumb trotted
the dun along the outskirts of Bitter Creek. He halted the wary,
sweat-lathered horse under a cottonwood and stared ahead at the
night-shrouded Main Street lit dully by lights from the two
saloons.

Finally, he reined the horse off the trail,
wove a northern course amidst the cabins and scattered stables and
privies, and drew rein in the alley behind the stage depot.

He climbed stiffly down from the saddle,
threw his saddlebags over a shoulder, and spanked the dun’s left
hip. The exhausted mount stumbled forward a few steps and stopped,
reins hanging, head drooping.

Crumb fished his keys from his pocket and
unlocked the building’s rear door. He stumbled inside, feeling his
way down the dark hall, and turned through the low gate into the
depot’s main office. He tossed the saddlebags onto the floor near
the Wells-Fargo safe hulking blackly against the room’s east wall.
When he’d gotten a lantern lit on the roll-top desk, he doffed his
gloves, rubbed his hands together, and squatted down before the
safe.

The lantern cast shadows about the room,
illuminating the safe’s silver-plated dial.

A sound rose behind the office door to
Crumb’s left.

He froze and turned to the door.
Unholstering his revolver, he slowly turned the knob and gave the
door a light shove, throwing it wide.

A short, dark silhouette stood before him,
bulky in loose-fitting clothes, long black hair hanging about
sloping shoulders. Crumb glanced left, saw the half-open window,
the straw pallet, food tins, and bottles strewn about the floor.
The smell of soup and stale sweat assaulted the mayor’s nostrils.
Someone had been living in the depot.

“
Ay-eeeeeeeee!”

He was returning his gaze to the silhouette
when the cry raked his ears.

The figure bounded toward him, slammed him
back against the door frame. The fetid body odor thickened. As he
struggled to regain his balance, sharp fingernails clawed at
Crumb’s face and neck, raking the skin. Red and white lights
flashed behind his eyes.

Incensed by the pain, Crumb threw his left
arm out savagely. Mad Mary screamed as she flew back against the
desk. She half-turned, an animal-like warble growing up out of her
throat, and leapt again toward Crumb.

She was three feet away when he thumbed back
the hammer of his extended Colt and pulled the trigger.

Her scream changed pitch as she flew back
against the desk, clung there for a moment, then rolled to the
floor. She sobbed and grunted, kicking her legs.

Panting, feeling blood running down his face
and neck, Crumb angled the Colt toward the half-breed whore and
fired two more shots.

Mary gasped. Her left knee dropped. She lay
quiet beneath the smoke webbing the darkness.

Crumb stared distastefully down at the
unmoving form cloaked in darkness. Mad Mary was the first person
he’d ever killed by his own hand. Repelled, he turned away, shook
the fog from his head.

He glanced around anxiously. Had anyone
heard the shots? He hurried to the two broad windows facing
Main.

The only movement was two drovers leaving
the American, wobbling slightly as they untied their horses from
the rack and climbed unsteadily into their saddles, chuckling.
Crumb released a breath, worry leaving him. In Bitter Creek,
gunshots were no more cause for concern than barking dogs.

He holstered his pistol, hurried back to the
safe, turned the dial a few times, and opened the heavy door.
Quickly, he stuffed the bundled greenbacks and silver coins into
the bags, dragged the bags to the front door, opened the door,
looked cautiously up and down the street. Relieved to see that
Prophet had not yet caught up to him, he headed west along the
boardwalk.

A few minutes later, he returned to the
depot station with a saddled piebald horse he’d taken from the rack
before one of the brothels, and two five-gallon cans of kerosene
he’d swiped from the mercantile, to which he had a key as he had a
key to every business in town.

He retrieved the saddlebags from the depot
building and heaved them over the horse, behind the saddle. It took
him several minutes to position the horse at the north edge of town
and then to dribble kerosene at a dozen strategic locations along
Main, tossing lit matches as he went.

He’d made a complete circle and was back
inside the depot station, tossing kerosene around the office, when
the cries of “Fire! Fire!” rose in the west.

Crumb tossed the empty kerosene can into the
room in which Mad Mary lay dead. Then he flicked a match alive on
the telegraph key and tossed it into the glinting, snaking kerosene
pool on the floor.

The kerosene whooshed as it ignited. Crumb
wheeled ahead of the ignition’s hot wind, and he bolted out the
depot’s rear door, intending to sprint north to his horse. He’d
taken only two steps, however, when a young man’s voice rose to his
left. “Hey!”

Crumb wheeled, saw a slender figure
crouching there, a rifle in his hands. Crumb jerked his gun up and
fired without aiming. He was surprised to hear the kid yelp and
twist around, stumbling and falling as he clutched his right
side.

As he crouched in the shadows behind the
depot, Crumb’s blood raced. Fear lanced him; his head
reeled.

“
Kid!” someone yelled.

Hooves pounded beyond the woodshed to
Crumb’s right, growing louder as they neared.

Cursing, he wheeled and ran back into the
depot, heading for the front door. Flames leaped and wheeled around
him. Smoke swirled, stinging his eyes and sucking the breath from
his lungs. Holding an arm over his mouth, he fought the door open,
bolted off the boardwalk, and ran, coughing, across the street.

“
Crumb!”

He wheeled, bringing his pistol up, and
fired at a tall, broad-shouldered figure galloping toward him on a
snorting hammerhead from the west front corner of the depot
station.

Prophet ducked as the pistol flashed, heard
the bullet whistle to his left. He reined Mean to a skidding halt,
raised his Winchester, and fired. His slug plunked into the grocery
store as Crumb turned and ran into the shadows of the buildings
along Main, shoes thumping along the boardwalk. Crumb was turning
down an alley when Prophet levered the Winchester and fired
again.

Crumb gave a shrill exclamation and
disappeared down the alley.

Prophet lowered his rifle and turned to look
behind him. The kid lay in the alley behind the station house,
heaving onto his elbow while clutching his right side.

“
I’m okay,” Ronnie yelled,
throwing up a hand. “Git that son of a bitch!”

Prophet gigged the horse forward slowly,
peering east down Main, his jaw tightening. Flames leapt and roared
from nearly every other building along both sides of the street.
Smoke broiled from the windows and flame-lanced holes in the roofs,
mushrooming toward the stars.

The saloons and cabins had emptied, and
the citizens were scurrying about with water buckets, their shrill
yells and shouted orders rising amidst the conflagration’s roar.
For a half second, Prophet considered helping, but there was no
use. Crumb had set the fires so strategically that in a few
minutes, the whole town would be engulfed.

Hearing the mercantile’s windows shatter
and rain onto the boardwalk as an explosion rocked the building,
Prophet steadied his startled horse with a firm hand on the reins,
and galloped down the dark alley after Crumb.

At the alley’s end, he stopped, whipped
his head right and left. Seeing nothing, he reined Mean left,
trotting along the back of the buildings, peering down the
smoke-choked space between each. When he’d ridden to the town’s
east end and seen nothing but burning buildings and the terrified
citizens forming bucket brigades, he turned Mean back west down
Main.

“
Lou?”

He whipped his head around. Frieda was
carrying a sloshing water bucket from a stock trough, her face
streaked with soot. Handing the bucket to the town’s blacksmith at
the head of a bucket line before the harness shop, she whipped her
exasperated gaze to Prophet.

“
Crumb!” she cried, pointing her
finger west. “He ran that way!”

Prophet put the steel to Mean, lunging west
around the scurrying fire-fighters silhouetted against the toothy
flames.

By now nearly every building was burning,
burnishing the night sky with a coppery glow. Several men and women
had given up and stood looking around in shock; some slumped on
stock troughs, some rested on knees in the street, holding
handkerchiefs to their mouths.

Prophet whipped his head right and left, his
rifle in his right hand. He came to the west edge of town, halted
Mean, and stared off into the darkness beyond the burning town.

A gunshot snapped behind him. The slug
whistled over his left shoulder. He ducked his head, whipped
around, and extended the rifle out from his chest. Then he froze,
heart leaping.

Crumb stood before the burning depot
building, his head peeking out over the shoulder of young Ronnie
Williams. The kid clutched his bloody right side with his left
hand.

Crumb, who was Ronnie’s height, stood just
behind and slightly left of the boy, the barrel of his six-shooter
pressed against the kid’s right ear.

The orange flames leaping from the burning
stage depot were reflected in both men’s sweat-slicked faces. The
heat from the flames caused their clothes to cling to their bodies.
Prophet glanced beyond them, saw that the thick smoke concealed
them from the other citizens concentrated on the other end of
Main.

“
Give me your horse!” Crumb
shouted at Prophet. He thumbed his revolver’s hammer back. “I’ll
kill him,” he warned, poking the head against Ronnie’s ear. The kid
stretched his lips wide with a pained wince.

Prophet ran through his options, finding
none that didn’t get young Ronnie killed, except for turning Mean
over to Crumb. He lowered the Winchester’s barrel and climbed
slowly, heavily out of the saddle.

“
Lead it over here!” Crumb
shouted above the roaring flames.

Prophet took two steps forward and
extended the reins to Crumb, who shoved Ronnie aside. The boy fell
in the dirt. As Crumb grabbed the reins, flames stabbed suddenly
from the depot building’s right front window. It took Prophet a
half second to realize it wasn’t flames. It was a giant, flaming
bird, wings spread, burning head thrown back, blazing feathers
showering sparks.

The bird gave a long, shrill cry as it
dropped from the window and lighted on Henry Crumb’s
back.

“
Ey-eeeeeeeeeeee! “

The cry cut through the fire’s roar and
caromed toward the stars.

Crumb slumped under the bird’s weight, and
he dropped his revolver. Flames from the burning bird showered the
Bitter Creek mayor, setting his clothes on fire.

“
Help me!” Crumb shouted,
stumbling in circles, trying to shake the bird from his back. “Oh,
God! Help me!”

Prophet stood frozen in place, watching the
grisly spectacle, realizing the bird was Mad Mary and that her
hands and legs had probably melted to the mayor by now.

Prophet knew there was nothing he could do
to help either of them. Others, having heard Mary’s shriek and
Crumb’s beseeching wails, came running through the smoke. They
stopped when they saw the two people engulfed in flames, dancing a
bizarre Virginia reel over the wheel ruts.

Finally, Crumb fell to his knees, every
inch of his clothing now aflame, Mad Mary’s arms wrapped around his
neck, thighs clinging to his hips.

Crumb threw his head back and wailed
incoherently. It was a deep, warbling cry rising above the
thundering flames. Prophet and a half-dozen sweat-soaked,
soot-streaked people stood in a semicircle around Crumb, who fell
face down in the street. Mary fell on top of him, still clinging to
his back.

Blanketed in flames, both bodies lay
still.

Bits of burning hair and clothes rose like
cinders on the wind.

Prophet wrinkled his nose against the
pungent smell, and turned to Ronnie, half-reclining in the street.
The kid’s eyes were dark with pain.

Keeping his gaze on the boy, the bounty
hunter said, “Someone get the sawbones!” He reached for the boy’s
arm. “Let’s get you away from the fire.”

“
The town’s finished, I reckon,”
Ronnie grunted miserably as Prophet led him west between burning
facades, one arm slung over Prophet’s neck.