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

by Peter Brandvold

  Finally, the hardcase behind him grumbled, “Oh, for chrissakes!” and swung his leg up, connecting his polished brown boot with Prophet’s ass. Dress flapping around his legs like batwings, Prophet flew through the door and hit the ground on his face.

  “Auntie!”

  “Oh!” Prophet cried. “Oh! Oh! Oh!”

  He lifted his head, spit dirt from his lips, and peered around. The other passengers stood around him, hands raised above their heads, faces flushed with fear. All the outlaws were mounted, forming a semicircle around the stage. The young mother had left her baby on the stage, apparently believing it safer there, and its hysterical cries rattled eardrums.

  “Auntie, are you okay?” Louisa cried, dropping to her knees beside Prophet, who continued to moan and covertly study the hardcases.

  Glancing at Louisa, he saw that she was doing the same thing—feigning concern for him while stealing looks at the owlhoots, getting each one fixed in her mind, waiting for the right moment for her and Prophet to make their moves.

  “Tell that old bitch to shut up!” one of the riders yelled at Louisa.

  “Leave her alone,” a chubby, pig-eyed young rider interjected. “She can’t help it if she’s afraid.”

  “Good Lord, that’s an ugly woman!” another exclaimed.

  “Didn’t I tell you?”

  “Man, I see what you mean.”

  “Shut up—she can’t help it she’s ugly.”

  “Shut up your ownself, Little Mike. If she tried to snitch a bite off your supper plate, she’d turn ugly in a heartbeat.” The rider slapped his thigh and laughed, pleased with himself.

  “All of you, shut the hell up!” the leader said, sitting his big Appaloosa behind the stage driver and the shotgun messenger. Both stage men stood wide-eyed, hands raised high, looking at Prophet expectantly.

  The leader jerked his hard, anvil chin around the group. “Mahoney, Brennan, Little Mike—fetch the strongbox and fetch it quick!”

  “I can’t climb up there,” the fat man complained.

  “Get your fat ass up there,” the leader barked, “or I’ll have Brennan carve you a new asshole with his shotgun.”

  Grumbling, the fat man holstered his six-shooter, climbed awkwardly out of his saddle, hitched his pants up, and tossed his reins to one of the others. He and Mahoney and Brennan headed for the stage.

  Prophet had turned onto his ass, keeping his dress down over his legs, his veil over his face. He kept moaning and groaning while Louisa sat beside him, patting his back and assuring him everything would be all right.

  Meanwhile, she jerked her head around at the hard-cases, stealing cunning glances at each, waiting ...

  Horses blew and the baby cried. The stage squawked under the weight of the three men climbing to its roof. The farmer, his wife, and the businessman watched them skeptically.

  “This girl here is coming with me,” said the blond hardcase with the colored spectacles. He grabbed Louisa’s right arm, jerking her to her feet, her straw hat tumbling off her shoulder. “Look at her, boys—ain’t she something?”

  “Take your hands off me, you maggot!”

  The blond hardcase laughed. “And she’s got spunk too. Boy, oh, boy, is she gonna be fun under the blankets tonight!” He slapped her hard across the face. Louisa cursed and dropped to her knees, bowing her head, her blond hair falling over her face.

  Prophet gritted his teeth with fury, but his voice was appropriately high-pitched and beseeching. “Leave my niece alone ... Don’t hit her ... Oh, please!” Behind the veil, his eyes were hard. The blond hardcase was going to pay for that slap in spades.

  “Stand up here—let me get a look at you!” the blond hardcase barked, jerking Louisa again to her feet.

  Prophet could tell the man’s strength was too much for the girl. He wanted to make his move, but checked himself, waiting. If Louisa could hold on until the men trying to free the strongbox on the stage roof had started climbing down, so much the better ...

  Louisa tried to slug the hardcase, but the man was too fast for her. He grabbed her lashing fist with one hand. With the other, he grabbed the top of her dress and jerked his hand back, ripping the garment off her shoulder, exposing her white chemise and a good portion of her milky cleavage.

  Louisa shouted a curse not found in most young ladies’ vocabularies—most men’s, for that matter. Especially not one with Louisa’s angelic face.

  Jerking herself free of the man’s grasp, she stumbled and fell on her ass between two horses. The startled mounts skittered sideways as their riders laughed and whooped at the girl’s exposed flesh.

  “Leave me alone, you blowfly!” Louisa screamed, red-faced with genuine anger.

  “That’s quite a tongue on you, bitch!” the blond hardcase snapped, gritting his teeth.

  As he moved toward Louisa, Prophet was about to make his move.

  A gun exploded.

  Prophet’s hands froze, and he jerked his startled gaze at the stage. The three riders were crouched over the strongbox. In Mahoney’s hand, a gun smoked. He fired another round at the lock, sparks flying.

  “Got it,” he said. He opened the lid, glanced inside, and said, “Must be close to ten thousand dollars here!”

  “Throw it down,” the gang leader commanded. Turning to the blond hardcase, he said, “Barker, throw the girl over your horse. We don’t have time for that now.”

  Barker cared more about Louisa than the strongbox. Red-faced with fury, he stepped brusquely toward her and dropped to a knee.

  “I’m warnin’ you—leave me alone, you son of a bitch,” she spit through gritted teeth, leaning back on her hands.

  “Leave my niece alone!” Prophet wailed.

  He glanced at the stage. The three men rolled the strongbox to the edge of the roof and dropped it over the side. It landed with a clanging thud, blowing dust and frightening several horses.

  His attention riveted on Louisa, Barker didn’t turn.

  “I’m warnin’ you, you pile of stinking dog shit,” Louisa said. “You touch me again, you’re gonna be sorry.”

  “Oh, please leave her alone!” Prophet cried.

  “Barker, we don’t have time for that!”

  Barker sprang forward, grabbed her dress with both hands, and ripped the garment all the way down to her waist. He frowned and stared down at the black gunbelt and pearl-gripped Colt, which looked twice as big as it actually was on her slender hips.

  Prophet smiled ruefully, and in his normal voice chided, “She told you to leave her alone …”

  Before the sentence had died on his lips, Louisa had clawed the six-shooter from her holster and compressing her lips angrily, thrust the barrel into Barker’s gut.

  Barker’s face blanched instantly as he stared, dumbfounded, at the Colt stabbing his breastbone.

  “Die, devil!” She pulled the trigger.

  Barker gave a jerk, his spectacles falling down his nose, eyes and mouth springing wide, blood splashing the horse behind him as the slug tore through Barker and into the leg of the rider on his left flank.

  As Louisa thrust Barker away from her, she jumped to her feet. Crouching, she commenced firing at the other dumbfounded hardcases, who stared, frozen, their mouths drawn wide.

  Prophet waved to the stage passengers and yelled, “Get down! Get down!” as he thrust off his black cape and veil and grabbed the sawed-off double-barreled shotgun hanging from a leather lanyard down his back. Aiming the gun from his waist, he tripped the left trigger and watched the face of one hardcase turn to strawberry jelly.

  He slid the barrel toward the gang leader, who was holding the Appaloosa steady with one hand while leveling his rifle. Prophet tripped the shotgun’s right trigger. The Appaloosa pitched a half second after Prophet’s buckshot tore through the man’s chest, and the man twisted and plunged down the Appy’s hip with a groan.

  Only about three seconds had passed since Louisa had shot Barker.

  Above the frightened horses’ whinnie
s and the screams and yells of the passengers, who’d dropped and buried their heads in their hands, Louisa’s Colt blazed with purpose—bang! bang! bang!—and the hardcases dropping from their pitching, crow-stepping mounts attested to the accuracy of the girl’s aim.

  Meanwhile, Prophet dropped the barn-blaster. He was reaching for his own Peacemaker strapped to his right leg when he saw Mahoney, kneeling before the stage, level his pistol on him.

  As the gun blasted, Prophet threw himself backward. He hit the ground on his shoulder, clawed the Peacemaker off his leg, and twisted around to his belly.

  He leveled the Colt and fired. His chest sprouting blood, Mahoney flew backwards against the stage and dropped, wracked with death spasms.

  Prophet swung the gun to his left, looking for a target. Seeing little but powder smoke and prone bodies, he turned right.

  No target there either.

  The baby bawled fiercely from inside the stage. The woman sobbed into her open hands, her shoulders jerking. Her husband, lying face down beside her, draped his arm across her back protectively.

  The driver and shotgun messenger lay nearby. Hearing no more gunfire, both men lifted their sunburned faces warily, glancing around.

  Prophet looked at Louisa. She was crouched on one knee, her second pistol—a .38 pocket gun—smoking in her right hand. She too was looking for more targets.

  Hearing a yell, Prophet turned to look back the way the stage had come. About a hundred yards away, a horse galloped off into the distance, its rider hanging by a stirrup, hauled across the brush-tufted terrain like a doll dragged by a careless child.

  The man’s screams died as the horse faded from view.

  Slowly, glancing at the hardcases sprawled around him, Prophet climbed to his feet. He frowned, whipping his head this way and that.

  “How come I count only five?” he asked Louisa.

  “The sixth one’s heading that way,” Louisa said, glancing after the runaway horse.

  “But there were seven.”

  Seconds stretched.

  A man’s shout rose above the cries of the baby the woman had left inside, apparently out of harm’s way. Prophet’s glance jerked to the stage. His right shoulder blade bloody, J. D. Brennan sat in the driver’s box, releasing the brake and slapping the reins fiercely over the six-horse team, yelling like Satan on Sunday.

  “Hyaaaaaaaaaa! Hyaaaaaaaaa, team—hyaaaaaaaaaaaaa!”

  The team jumped off its rear hooves and leapt into its halters, digging its hooves into the trail. The stage bolted forward as though propelled from a cannon, the door slapping its frame and popping open again, the baby crying even more fiercely than before.

  His feet screaming inside the undersized shoes, Prophet raced for the carriage, dived for the boot, and grabbed the rawhide straps. Behind him, the young mother screamed, “My baby!”

  As the Concord raced across the meadow, fishtailing on the sandy trail, Prophet clung to the straps, his feet dragging.

  Grunting and gritting his teeth with the effort, he reached his left hand up, grabbed the top of the luggage boot, then reached up with his right. He dug both hands into the leather, heaving himself upward until he hooked his right foot onto the boot.

  The bouncing carriage beat and pummeled him, and several times he nearly lost his grip and went tumbling onto the trail. His hat and wig had blown off, but the dress whipped against his legs, the collar digging into his neck.

  Finally gaining a solid purchase with his right foot, he heaved his body onto the boot. The stage hit a pothole, and he jerked sideways, instinctively reaching up with both hands. Only his left found the brass rail on the carriage roof.

  His fingers closed around it as he slid off the boot and dangled down the stage’s left rear corner, shoes digging at thin air. The door roared like gunfire each time it hit the frame without latching, setting up a ringing in Prophet’s left ear.

  Inside, the baby wailed, its voice trembling with the bouncing stage.

  Grunting and cursing, twisting and slamming against the carriage, Prophet glanced at the trail passing below in a blur of rocks and grass and short stretches of open sand. The stage hit another pothole, bouncing viciously, and Prophet’s left hand slipped.

  He cursed, twisted around until he faced the carriage, reached up with his right hand, and closed it around the rail. Cursing and grunting, buttons popping from the dress, the shoulder seams tearing, he chinned himself up over the Concord’s roof until both arms were straight out below him. He swung both black shoes up and threw himself forward against the passengers’ trunks and carpetbags.

  Heaving a sigh of relief, he lay for a moment, bouncing against the stage roof, staring at the clear blue sky. When he’d caught his breath, he pushed himself to his knees and began crawling toward the driver’s box.

  He’d moved only two feet when J. D. Brennan swung his head around. Holding the team’s ribbons in his right hand, he aimed a six-shooter across his right shoulder with his left hand and fired.

  Prophet threw himself left and, doing so, nearly threw himself off the stage. He rolled back to his right as Brennan fired again, but the stage was bouncing too much for the hardcase to get an accurate shot.

  Brennan turned back forward when the stage swerved. Prophet slid a carpetbag from under the straps securing it to the stage roof. When Brennan turned back to him, extending the gun and firing again, Prophet threw the carpetbag.

  The bag hit the gun, casting the slug wild, then bounced off Brennan’s wounded shoulder, off the driver’s box, and over the side.

  “Son of a whore!” Brennan shouted, wincing with pain as he clutched his shoulder.

  He fired again before Prophet could dodge, but the stage bounced at the same time, and the bullet tore into a trunk. Standing with his feet spread, arms thrown out for balance, Prophet crouched, grabbed another bag, and threw it.

  As the hardcase turned toward him, the bag hit Brennan full in the face, nearly knocking him out of the driver’s box.

  As he began turning back and whipping the gun over his shoulder, Prophet dove forward, wrapping one arm around the hardcase’s neck and one hand around the gun, shoving it down.

  Brennan triggered a shot, which tore into the floor of the driver’s box. The stage careened as the horses spooked, then fishtailed as the team increased its speed.

  As the two men wrestled for the gun, the stage swerving this way and that across the trail, Brennan flicked the trigger back until it locked. Twisting right, he thrust the Navy Colt toward Prophet’s ribs. At the same time, he slowly maneuvered his finger under Prophet’s grip toward the trigger.

  Knowing he was about two seconds away from having daylight carved through his middle, Prophet heaved on the gun with all his strength. He felt Brennan’s wrist give. The stocky Brennan was tough, but he was sitting too awkwardly to use his strength to his full advantage.

  Prophet twisted the man’s hand toward Brennan’s own ribs.

  “Nooooooo!” Brennan raged, watching the barrel snug up against his bloodstained shirt.

  Prophet squeezed the man’s hand until Brennan’s index finger compressed the trigger. The gun barked and jumped. Brennan jerked, stiffened. His eyes glazed as his face blanched. His muscles relaxed.

  Jerking the man’s gun from his slack hand, Prophet tugged his collar, rolling Brennan’s lifeless body off the stage. He watched the hardcase sail down and back, hit the ground, bounce, and roll into the brush along the trail.

  Prophet looked around for the reins. Several of the ribbons had dropped from the box and were dragging along the ground, bouncing as hooves stomped them. Several more were lying on the floor of the driver’s box.

  Prophet picked them up, sat down, planted his old-lady shoes against the footrest, and sawed back on the ribbons.

  “Whoa, horses. Whoa-ahhhhhhhhhhh!”

  After the stage disappeared, the passengers gathered in the shade at the edge of the meadow—all but the shotgun messenger, who sat atop the strongbox in the mid
dle of the trail, his shotgun across his knees.

  The young mother was inconsolable, howling into her husband’s chest while the driver and the businessman, sitting against tree boles, looked on with tongue-tied concern.

  “Your baby’s just fine,” Louisa tried to assure her, casually nibbling a piece of jerky she’d retrieved from her dress pocket. A lone surviving button holding her dress closed, she stood staring up the trail. “J.D. Brennan has five hundred dollars on his head.” Louisa chewed and stared in the direction the stage had gone. “Lou won’t let him get away.”

  The mother heard none of it. She cried, “My baby, my baby!” punching her husband’s chest with her fists and burying her face in his shirt.

  “Shhh, now, Alice.”

  Ten minutes passed. Finally, the stage driver pushed slowly to his feet, staring east. The stage and horses appeared at the edge of the meadow, moving toward the group at a walk.

  “Look!” the Jehu yelled, pointing. He laughed.

  Louisa watched the stage angle across the meadow, drawn by the plodding, lathered, hang-headed team. Prophet sat high on the front seat, his black dress hanging in tatters down his muscular arms and legs, exposing his faded red balbriggans.

  He’d taken off the black shoes and stockings, and his bare, blood-smeared feet were propped on the footrest. His mussed brown hair, touched with gold by the west-angling sun, slid around in the breeze.

  In one hand, he held the reins of the lathered team. In his other arm, he cradled the blanket-wrapped baby. Crouched over the child, he made exaggerated goo-goo faces and gurgling sounds, then lowered his head to nuzzle the child’s cheek.

  “My baby!” the mother wailed, tearing loose from her husband’s arms and dashing across the meadow to the stage.

  Behind her, smiling proudly at Prophet, Louisa said, “Told you.”

  Chapter Three

  A half-hour later, the stage rattled into the little ranching burg of Bitter Creek—an assortment of businesses and ramshackle huts grown up around a stage station and post office in a lonely Wyoming basin.