“That’s a damn shame.”
“What’re you doing here, Lou? Still in the bounty-hunting business or you give it up? That and your pact with Ole Scratch?” Sivvy clucked with disapproval.
Prophet poured some liquor from an unlabeled, cut-glass bottle into a thick red goblet, threw back the shot, and poured out another one. It wasn’t rye, but it would do after a long day. “Once you make a pact with Scratch, Sivvy, there’s no goin’ back. No, sir, I’m still high-steppin’ with my tail up, havin’ as much fun as I can find, and in return I’ll likely be shoveling coal for as long as the Devil needs my services.”
“You shouldn’t talk so,” Sivvy counseled. “He might just hear you and hold you to it.” More splashing, and then her voice deepened as though she were scrubbing her neck. “So, what brought you here? Don’t tell me the fork-tailed one had a hand in this, too—our meeting again!”
Prophet sipped his drink, then set the glass on a varnished oak table beside the massive bed and began unbuttoning his shirt. “Nah, a girl brought me here. It ain’t what you might think. I’m tryin’ to get her to settle down. She’s had a tough time. A bounty hunter. A damn purty one. And a young one. She’s got no business in the business, and I figured this was as good a place as any to drop her, hope she sends down a taproot. So far, so good,” he added, hearing the sadness in his own voice.
Sad? What the hell was he sad about, for chrissakes?
“What’s this girl’s name?” Sivvy asked.
“Louisa.”
“Really?”
“A crazy coincidence.”
“You learn this girl to hunt men, did you, Lou?” Prophet chuckled as he shucked out of his denims. “I reckon Louisa learned me as much about the owlhoot hunt as I learned her and probably a little more.”
Water splashed loudly, and then Sivvy’s red head appeared above the privacy screen, her delectable tresses pinned into a comely but careless French braid. “What in the world made you decide to bring her here?” Her head moved as she dried herself, frowning over the screen at Prophet, who’d sat in a chair in the middle of the room, dressed in only his socks and longhandles, holding his drink in one hand on a thigh. His shell belt hung over the back of the chair.
“My friend Hell-Bringin’ Hiram said it was quiet here. And the folks were law-abidin’. I figured Louisa wouldn’t be tempted so to strap her guns on once I finally got ’em off her.”
“Yeah, the folks are law-abidin’,” Sivvy said, tossing a white towel over the privacy screen and bending down out of sight. “Them that’s still alive, that is.”
She said this last so softly that Prophet had barely heard her.
He frowned at her as she straightened, then walked out from behind the privacy screen, wearing nothing but a single strand of pearls jostling across her jiggling, cherry-tipped, flour-white orbs. Prophet was about to ask her what she’d meant by that last comment, but the vision of her there, moving toward him slowly, gracefully, shaking her head so that her hair tumbled deliciously across her shoulders and down her breasts caused his throat to swell almost painfully and his tongue to stick to the roof of his mouth.
And then as Sivvy got down on her knees and began peeling his longhandles down his legs, he just got too distracted.
A long while later, after he and Sivvy had fallen asleep, something woke him.
He opened his eyes to see the hall door close. It latched with a faint click. In the room’s dense darkness he’d seen a pale figure slip out in front of the door. Now, lying with his eyes open, fully awake, Prophet stared at the door’s black rectangle from behind which he could hear Sivvy say in a harsh whisper, “What the hell are you doing here?”
A man spoke in a slightly hushed tone: “We came to tell ya . . .”
Sivvy must have shushed him, because his voice trailed off.
More softly, but loudly enough for Prophet’s keen hearing, he said, “Came to tell ya he’s here. They’re both here.”
“I know,” Sivvy hissed.
She must have said something else or made a gesture, because the man in the hall chuckled and said even more softly than previously, “You do work fast—I’ll give you that, Miss O’Shay.”
“Get outta here. I’ll talk to you later.”
“You gonna . . . ?”
“Go!”
There was the soft tread of boots. The door clicked, and a vertical strip of light shone in the wall where the door was, and Prophet closed his eyes. He heard the soft tap of bare feet on the carpet. The door clicked again.
Sivvy moved across the room, around the end of the bed, and then he felt the bed sag slightly as she crawled back into it.
Prophet rolled onto his back and said abruptly, “Visitor, Miss O’Shay?” He couldn’t keep the irony out of his voice.
The girl gasped then covered it with a laugh. “You know how it is—bein’ famous and all.”
“I reckon.”
“And it ain’t all that late . . . for an actress.”
Sivvy rolled against him, kissed his shoulder, and ran her hand down his belly. Her warm, soft hand slid down even farther. But even the former saloon girl’s beguiling fingers couldn’t keep Prophet from wondering who her visitor had been.
And what they were up to.
17
LOUISA AWAKENED THE next morning in love.
Or at least in the expectation of love. She hadn’t known Miguel Encina long enough to really be in love with him, and she was far too guarded a young lady to let herself be carted off on gilded emotions by dimpled cheeks, warm brown eyes, and a rich mop of curly chestnut hair. Not to mention money and a stable life.
But she felt downright airy. Buoyant. Light as a dancer.
As she sat up in her canopied bed in her room at the Golden Slipper and raised her arms for a good, long stretch, her silky honey-blond hair falling back away from her face, she felt as though stardust were dancing off her eyeballs.
What had ratcheted up her emotions a notch was Miguel telling her all about his jagged back trail—a trail that might have led to a wasted life if his father and Sheriff Severin hadn’t come to his rescue—if you could call tossing him into a deep, dark mine pit rescuing him. But it had done the trick, though Louisa doubted that Miguel’s harrowing four days in the mine shaft had been his only savior.
The young man must have wanted to be saved from his life of crime. Otherwise, his “salvation” would probably have only turned him further away from the straight and narrow. Like a whipped and beaten dog, it would have made him even wilder, meaner. Untamable.
Deep down, he was good. And like Louisa and strong steel, he’d been tempered by hot fires. He was a good young man, with a tested soul, and he’d likely make some deserving young woman a good husband.
Maybe a woman like Louisa herself.
She lowered her arms. Her skin tingled with a subtle craving. The feeling amazed her because no man had ever had that effect on her besides Lou. But she felt it now, and as she did she tossed her covers back and stared down the length of her long, creamy, delicately curved body.
Lou had remarked that she had the body of a debutante, though he’d pronounced it “deb-ya-tent,” with accents on the first and last syllables. She was glad to see now that her debutante’s body showed only light patches of purple where Montoya had abused her. Even the cigar burns were healing, the former round scabs on her hips and thighs and belly showing only round patches of pink.
The ride up from Mexico in the clean, dry air, and all the spring water she and Prophet had drunk, and the wild food they’d shot and grubbed themselves had worked miracles.
After Mexico, she hadn’t given her body to Lou. She hadn’t been ready to give it to any man. But as she cupped her firm, pale breasts in her hands now, squeezing gently, feeling a response in her loins, she knew she was ready to give herself to Miguel. To have his hands on her, to feel his lips on hers, his body on hers, making her feel like a woman.
She wouldn’t rush it, though. And she
wouldn’t let him rush it, either. She’d been raised to lay with a man only after she’d married him, and while her wild life on the bounty trail had rearranged her values as well as her priorities and given her appreciation for the satisfaction of her natural carnal desires when they were often all she had, the values she’d been raised with in Nebraska were still inside her, dormant but waiting for her to return to them and the life they were meant for.
A life with a good man and a family in a civilized town. A garden and a chicken coop. Wash days. Prayers before meals. Church on Sunday. Picnics along the river.
A rich life gentling into a seasoned, sweet old age.
Cupping one breast, she ran her other hand across her flat belly, groaning with the pleasure of lying naked in silk sheets. She’d scoffed at such luxury when she’d been on the hunting trail, unable to fathom a life not directed at hunting down killers, but now she found herself wanting to remain here.
Unfortunately, she had a job to do. Wishing she’d not been so eager to take the gold-guarding job—that was one time her knee-jerk defiance of Prophet’s often too-patronizing wishes had backfired—she swung her feet to the floor and walked naked over to one of the room’s two windows and threw the curtain back. She stared out the fine, unwarped glass into the blue-misty dawn of a clear mountain morning.
Birds chirped as they flitted over the rooftops of Juniper, which were limned in soft pale light while the southern ridge leaned away, its rocks and pines bathed in purple. Someone had been sweeping, but now the snicks of the broom stopped. Louisa looked down into the street to see a man standing outside the opera house straight ahead, holding a broom and grinning up at her.
She frowned, puzzled. Then, with a gasp and crossing her arms on her breasts, she stumbled straight back away from the window.
“Pervert,” she groused, feeling her face warm with anger.
There was one bad thing about living in town. She had to mind how she was attired when peering out her own window to see how the day was shaping up.
Hearing the snicks of the broom across the boardwalk fronting the opera house once more, Louisa went to the washstand, filled the marble basin with water, ducked her face in it, then straightened quickly, tossing her head from side to side and using her hands to rub the cold water up through her hair.
When she’d finished giving herself a quick sponge bath, she dressed in her freshly laundered clothes—cotton camisole, knee-length pantaloons, cotton socks, calico blouse, wool riding skirt, red neckerchief, and tan felt hat. She strapped her matched Colts around her waist, quick drew each to make sure there were no impediments, then grabbed her saddlebags and rifle and headed out.
As she made her way to the cafe on the first floor, she pondered her situation.
She shouldn’t have taken the gold-guarding job. She’d come here to settle down, and it probably looked odd for a girl being courted by the banker’s son to be guarding his gold shipments. She’d make this run today then resign her position and look into the job being offered at the haberdashery.
She wasn’t sure she really wanted to wait on persnickety old ladies in feathered hats and gauntleted gloves buying buttons, piping, bolt goods, and such, but she could manage it until something else came along. Maybe she’d rent a house—unlike Prophet, she had a rather large nest egg stashed away in her saddlebags—and raise chickens to sell to the Juniper eateries.
It was only five thirty, but the Golden Slipper’s cafe was open. Louisa was the day’s first customer. She had her usual pancakes, bacon, and tall glass of goat’s milk. She ordered two pancakes instead of her usual one. Normally, when on the trail—and she was always on the trail—she ate a minimal breakfast to keep her edge up. Sometimes just a handful of beans washed down with creek water.
Nothing like an overfilled belly to slow a bounty huntress down.
But since she was trying to settle down and become civilized again, she could do with more grub in her belly and even a little extra tallow on her bones. It wasn’t the fashion in town to be too thin. Besides, a civilized girl needed curves and the extra sustenance for the hard work it took to make a home.
When she finished her breakfast, she headed over to the livery barn behind the hotel to saddle her horse, then headed over to the Muleskinner’s Inn on the other side of the opera house that occupied much the same place in Juniper that churches did in Mexican pueblos—the center.
She saw Prophet as she approached his dingy hotel that looked as though the first strong wind would scatter it like stove sticks. He was sitting on the porch in a wicker chair, kicked back against the front wall, spurred boots crossed on the railing. His hat was tipped back, a quirley smoldered between his lips, and a stone coffee mug smoked in his right hand.
The bounty hunter’s despicable horse stood saddled at the hitchrack fronting the shabby place, twitching its ears that were frayed from many fights. Louisa’s brown-and-white pinto whinnied anxiously as it approached the hammer-headed dun, and Mean and Ugly swished his tail and gave a customarily belligerent snort.
Prophet sipped his piping-hot belly wash and watched Louisa draw her horse up just out of biting distance of his dun. The blond looked up at the building, gave her head a condescending little wag, and crossed her gloved hands on the saddle horn. “Sleep well?”
Prophet merely grunted. Louisa didn’t need to know he’d spent most of the night at the same hotel she had, in the company of the actress known as Gleneanne O’Shay, though he hadn’t slept a wink after the actress’s mysterious caller had left. After Sivvy, as he preferred to call her, had gone back to sleep, Prophet had dressed quietly and tramped over to the Muleskinner’s where he’d had a big breakfast in the shabby, makeshift kitchen before fetching his horse.
He’d considered asking Sivvy outright who the man in the hall had been, but his manhunter’s sixth sense had told him he wouldn’t get any straighter answer than the one he’d already gotten. And he didn’t want to tip his hand about his suspicions.
Damn perplexing, though. And disappointing, too. He liked Sivvy and had figured she liked him. She’d certainly acted like she’d liked him, judging by all the racket she’d made, writhing beneath him. Had she only been playing him? If so, for what reason?
The gold he’d be guarding was the only thing he could think of.
“How was Mr. Fancy-Pants?”
“You mean Miguel?”
“Is that his name? I forget.”
Louisa spread her pretty lips slightly as she stared over her horse’s head at Prophet. “He’s handsome.”
“Too much hair, you ask me. But I reckon girls like hair.” Prophet sucked his quirley, blew the smoke out over his boots. “He steal a kiss?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know.”
“Not really. I was just makin’ conversation.”
Louisa glanced at Mean and Ugly, who was eyeing her horse owlishly, the pinto looking away as it tensed its withers. “You’re up early. I figured I was going to have to bang pots over your head.”
“You know that ice-cold witch’s finger that pokes the back of my neck from time to time?”
“What about it?”
Prophet sipped the hot mud again and winced at the burn in his throat. “It’s pokin’ again.”
Louisa frowned. She knew not to take Prophet’s premonitions lightly, however superstitious they seemed. He was a hillbilly from the Georgia mountains, birthed by witches and raised with talismans on his crib, and he’d grown up with weird Appalachian legends and evil hexes.
His dark presentiments had proven real more than a time or two in the past. They’d saved both their lives, in fact.
“What’s it about, do you think?” Louisa asked him.
Prophet hiked a shoulder. It wouldn’t do her any good to know what had spawned his unease. “We’d best just keep our eyes open today.”
“You think those men who ambushed us were here for the gold, and they might have friends who are still after it.”
“Like I said . . .�
��
Prophet let his voice trail off as the door on his right flank opened, scraping across the veranda’s warped floor, the window curtains jostling. A man stepped out, followed by three more.
They were a ragged-looking but well-armed crew, three holding either Henry or Winchester rifles, the last one holding a long-barreled, double-bore shotgun on his shoulder, two bandoliers filled with shells crossed on his chest.
As the men filed out, their eyes found Prophet, who’d instinctively dropped his hand to his holstered revolver. Louisa kept her hands on her saddle horn, leaning forward slightly, but her pistols were in easy reach. The newcomers stopped on the porch, making no sudden moves with their guns.
The first man rolled a stove match from one side of his mouth to the other. He was tall, with thick red hair hanging over his forehead, beneath his gray, flat-brimmed hat, and his gray eyes had an insolent air. He wore a gold ring a little larger than a wedding band in his right ear. “You Prophet?”
“All depends,” Prophet said mildly.
“It’s him,” said the man with the shotgun, whom Prophet suddenly remembered from outside the cantina last night. He was the pewter-haired man wearing large Texas spurs, called Sawrod. “He almost got tangled up with Dryden last night.”
The man beside Sawrod was the Mex, Casol, who’d also been outside the cantina last night and had made disparaging comments about the procedures of the local law. He grinned under his low-crowned straw sombrero, black eyes flashing. Under them were heavy purple bags. The whites of his eyes were a deep bloodred. Obviously, he’d drunk his share in the cantina last night.
“I’d like to see that,” he said, staring at Prophet. “A big man like him against Dryden.”
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