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

by Peter Brandvold

  “Shut up!”

  Her scream on top of the gunshot still echoing in his head made Prophet’s temples pound. Enough of this. He reached down, grabbed Polk under both arms, and heaved him to his feet, then shoved him out into the foyer.

  “Goddamn her to hell!” the druggist wailed. Stumbling forward, he dropped to his knees, rolling up the runner around his shoes.

  “Outside, Polk.” Prophet jerked the man to his feet, then gave him another shove toward the front door. ‘Time to get sobered up, old son.”

  Polk turned to yell back toward the parlor, “You’ll never get any more gifts from me, you goddamn, double-crossing bitch. Your father wanted you to marry me! That was his wish!”

  “Shut up!” Fianna’s voice broke on a sob.

  Prophet turned the druggist around, shoved him through the inside door, across the porch, and out through the screen door. Polk stumbled down the brick steps and fell in the front yard.

  He was making wheezing, grunting, crying sounds. Insane sounds. The sounds of a man so overcome with emotion he was like an animal.

  Prophet hunkered down beside him, grabbed a fistful of the man’s collar, and shook. Polk’s head flopped back and forth. “You the bastard been taking potshots at me, Wallace? Huh? Are ya?”

  He stared into the man’s eyes. Polk stared back, glassy-eyed crazy, like some leashed stud dog heated up over some forbidden bitch two houses down. But for a moment, they acquired a genuinely befuddled cast, lines forming in the bridge of his nose.

  He either didn’t understand or didn’t know what Prophet was talking about. Probably the latter. He’d just proven he wasn’t much of a shot.

  Prophet sighed and straightened. He had a mind to throw the druggist in jail with Leo Embry. But that wouldn’t change anything that had happened here tonight. Polk wasn’t a killer, just a hophead obsessed with a woman who didn’t want him.

  Glaring down at Polk, Prophet saw the wedding band on the man’s finger. “Stay away from the lady,” he ordered. “Whatever you had goin’, or thought you had goin’—it’s over. Go on home to your wife.”

  He turned, started back to the house, then stopped. Polk had leaned forward and was grinding his forehead into the grass, as though trying to burrow into the earth.

  Prophet stared at him a moment, sucking his tooth. He really needed to get out of this town. “Polk, Polk ...”

  Polk looked up at him, tears streaming down his cheeks.

  “You can pick your revolver up at the jailhouse tomorrow:’

  With that, Prophet turned to the house. As he did so, he saw two figures standing in the yard next door, silhouetted against the twilight sky. Neighbors. Behind the house, a dog was yipping. A horse whinnied in a pasture.

  Prophet threw a neighborly hand out. “It’s all right, folks. Just a little misunderstandin’.” As he walked back into the house, he wondered how long it would take for this gossip to make the rounds.

  The druggist, the bounty hunter, and the dead marshal’s daughter...

  He found Fianna where he’d left her, sobbing on the floor beside the table. He was about to kneel down beside her when he saw the cigar box next to her bourbon glass, on the smaller table beside her chair.

  Curious, he went over and picked up the box, tipped it to the wan light filtering through a window.

  Barely covering the bottom of the box was a fine, white powder. He knew what it was before poking a finger inside, then touching the powder to his tongue.

  Cocaine.

  One of Polk’s “gifts,” no doubt. Prophet had never indulged in the drug himself, but had been in enough opium dens across the West to recognize it.

  A little made you sweet and dreamy. Too much turned your wolf loose. Fianna lay on the floor, knees beneath her, sobbing into her arms and crying, “Daddy, Daddy, don’t leave me!”

  She turned her head, saw Prophet holding the box and watching her with distaste.

  “Give that to me,” she sniffed, lifting her head and extending an arm. “Hand me the box.”

  “Nope.” Prophet flipped the lid closed, set the box on the table, and crouched over Fianna, lifting her by the arms. “Time for bed.”

  He picked her up easily and, one arm under her neck, the other under her knees, carried her out of the parlor and into the foyer. “Okay,” she said, regaining her saucy tone, “we can do that too.”

  “You need a long night’s sleep. Then tomorrow should be a little better than today, and the next day better than that.”

  She tried kissing him, but he pulled his head away.

  “Where’s your bedroom?”

  “Upstairs,” she said through a sigh, wrapping her arms tightly around his neck and snuggling against him. “You feel nice.”

  “Don’t do that,” he said, breathing heavily as he climbed the stairs.

  She nibbled his neck, feeling warm and soft in his arms. Her lips and teeth sucked and chewed at his neck, raising his temperature. “Can that shit,” he growled. “Is this your room?”

  She was too busy nuzzling his neck and licking his ear-lobes to answer him. Before him, a door stood ajar. He shouldered through it. In the dull light through the window, he saw a brass bed with a ruffled pink skirt, brushes, combs, and other female accoutrements strewn upon a dresser. On a small writing desk, books and papers were piled. The air smelled like her—lightly sweet nectar— minus the bourbon.

  He laid her on the bed and tried to rise, but she kept her hands clasped around his neck. “No, don’t go,” she gasped. “Stay with me.”

  “Sorry, lady,” he said, working her hands loose, “but I don’t take advantage of liquored-up women.”

  “Oh, do!” She clung to him with a desperate, carnal need that was almost palpable. Her breath was hot against his face. “Please stay. You won’t regret it!”

  She lifted her head, clamped her mouth over his, and thrust her tongue between his teeth. He tried to straighten, but she clung to him. He tried pushing her away, but the kiss and the musky warmth of her body against him drained the strength from his arms.

  Stoked by hers, his own desire rose. He tried to fight it off, like an old lady chasing the same old neighborhood cur off her porch for the hundredth time in a year. But that cur would have none of it. It knew the old lady wasn’t serious. She’d snarl and poke at him, but eventually she’d soften to his feeble yelps, warm to the charm in his eyes, put away the broom, and fetch him a bone.

  That’s what Prophet was doing now as he lowered himself and the girl back down to the bed—fetching his old, amorous, flea-bit mutt another bone, one of many he’d thrown it over the years. He kissed Fianna’s cheeks, nuzzled her neck, smoothed her hair back from her face, and entangled his tongue with hers.

  As he ran his big hands across her narrow shoulders, he removed the nightgown and the wrapper in one fell swoop, laying her out naked and pale before him—a long, willowy length of curving woman.

  Her slender legs kicked as she begged him to take her. Her pale, almond-shaped breasts were exposed by the last of the day’s feeble light washing through the room’s single window, the nipples erect.

  “Please,” she whined, grappling with his cartridge belt, shoving at it, pulling, trying to get it off. ‘Take me!”

  He heaved up on his knees, removed the belt, and dropped it to the floor. She was already pulling at the buttons of his denim jeans. He nudged her hands away, opened his jeans, slid them and his underwear down to his ankles. She reached for his member, ran her hands up and down its iron length, pressing it against her belly and sobbing, “Now!”

  And then he was lying between her raised knees, propped on his arms, thrusting. She locked and unlocked her ankles around his back, pulled at his hair, clawed at his shirt, crying, “Harder! Harder!”

  As he lay toiling between her knees, grunting, wheezing, and reeling, he knew he was making a big mistake. At any time, the man who’d been trying to ambush him could sneak into the house, or crazy Wallace Polk could return to finish the j
ob he’d started.

  This was the crazy kind of thing that got bounty hunters killed. Thinking with your pecker was a good way to get your head shot off.

  But knowing that and being able to do anything about it were two different things. Prophet had made the same mistake before. But as he toiled and sweated atop Fianna Whitman’s writhing body, feeling her skin stick to his, her mouth drawing wide and taut with every plunge of his body into hers, he knew he’d make it again.

  And he’d continue to live as long as his luck held. When his luck ran out, he’d die. It was as simple as that.

  But there were worse ways to go…

  He reflected on that as, ten minutes later, Fianna lay curled against him, sleeping with her head on his chest, one naked knee curled over his.

  He’d pulled up his jeans, but he hadn’t buttoned them yet. He would in a minute. But first he’d lie here, make sure she was fast asleep before he slipped away. He didn’t want to wake her, but he also needed rest.

  Yep, there were worse ways to go, all right. But now that his passion was spent, he lay here in the dark room, atop the quilts, listening for any strange sounds that might mean the drygulcher was near... or that Wallace Polk had returned.

  The only sounds were two dogs barking desultorily and a cow complaining in a pasture south of town. The house creaked when the breeze kicked up, fluttered the lace curtains out from the window. A wagon passed near the house, clattering over ruts.

  The girl opened her mouth as she slept, and a thin trickle of drool puddled on Prophet’s chest.

  He stared at the ceiling, running the night through his head, trying to figure out what had driven Wallace Polk and Fianna Whitman to nose dope.

  Prophet suspected that, in her case, it had something to do with her father, possibly about how he’d acquired his relative wealth as well as the grisly way he’d died. He might have been taking graft from saloon owners or confidence men, possibly whiskey traders, gunrunners, or rustlers. It was a common enough practice amongst poorly paid Western lawmen. If so, he and Fianna had been living on dirty money.

  But what about Wallace Polk? What had rubbed his fur in the wrong direction?

  Prophet wasn’t finding anything out lying here—not that he really wanted to. He’d leave the town to its secrets once his reward money arrived and Henry Crumb returned.

  And good riddance to Bitter Creek and its dunder-headed, drygulching townsfolk…

  Prophet slipped out from beneath the girl, covered her with a quilt, and dressed quietly in the dark room. A few minutes later, he stepped out the front door and stood in the yard before the porch. Gazing cautiously around the yard, he expected to see a gun blossom somewhere off in the darkness that had closed over the town.

  After a quiet minute, he built and lit a quirley and headed back toward the main drag. He was nearly halfway there when he had a feeling he was being followed.

  Twice he stopped, taking cover in the shadows of a chicken coop and under an outside staircase, watching and listening, smoking the quirley cupped in his left palm.

  He saw nothing but the wind nudging shutters, a stray cat slinking behind an empty whiskey barrel, and Mad Mary coupling with some wheezing oldster in the alley behind the post office.

  As he crossed Main, someone blew the glass out of the jailhouse only a foot right of his right shoulder. He hit the ground a second after the rifle’s bark had reached his ears.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Prophet rolled behind the stock trough and clawed his Colt from his holster.

  He peered over the trough’s lip, casting his gaze across the street. Seeing no movement nearby—just the three dark hulks of the Main Street businesses directly across from the jailhouse—he looked to his right.

  Nothing there but a few horses tethered to the hitch rack before the Mother Lode, the light gilding the worn ranch saddles. Two doors beyond the Mother Lode was the town’s second saloon, the American. Smaller and with no whores or faro tables, it did less business. Still, three cow ponies and a buckboard were tied out front.

  But there were no men in the street. No scudding shadows. No vagrant light winking off a rifle breech.

  Prophet cursed. If the bastard wanted him dead so damn bad, why didn’t he show himself and fight like a man?

  Hoping to attract another shot that would give the shooter’s position away, he leapt to his feet, stood still for a second, then bolted left and dropped to a knee, holding the revolver out before him.

  Nothing.

  Cursing like his grandfather used to curse at cotton-mouths in his fishing hole, he ran directly across the street. He pressed his back to the front wall of the women’s millinery, looked around, and moved slowly to the building’s west front corner.

  He stole a look around the corner to the rear.

  Seeing nothing but trash littering the sage between the millinery and the harness shop, he eased slowly back toward the rear. He was halfway there when a dark figure came around the rear corner, heading toward him.

  Prophet’s heart surged. He dropped to a knee. “Hold it there!”

  The figure stopped and threw up his hands. “Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!”

  Prophet jogged toward him, Colt extended.

  “Don’t shoot!” the man repeated as Prophet approached. “I’m an innocent man!”

  He was bulky and bearded, wearing a tattered bowler and a duck vest. An old, war-model Colt hung on his right hip. But there was no rifle. And Prophet’s bushwhacker had definitely fired a rifle.

  Prophet lowered his .45. “What the hell were you doin’ back there?”

  “You the new marshal? Oh, shit.” His voice was deep and gravelly, as though he’d smoked cigars since he was ten. “Well... uh, I wouldn’t want this gettin’ back to my wife, but uh ...”

  “Come on!” Prophet urged. “Out with it!”

  He jerked his thumb over his right shoulder. “You know, Mad Mary ...”

  “Ah,” Prophet said dryly, remembering the oldster he’d seen wrestling with the whore a few minutes ago.

  “I seen a man run back this way, though,” the old man said. “Kinda interrupted me, if you know what I mean. And at my age, when you’re interrupted, it ain’t all that easy—”

  “Which way’d he go?” Prophet shouted, peering into the darkness over the man’s left shoulder.

  “Straight back toward the windmill yonder.”

  Prophet ran that way, past a woodpile and the remains of one of the town’s original tent shacks.

  “Now, Marshal, don’t go blabberin’ about seein’ me back here!” the old man called, his voice fading in the distance. “My wife wouldn’t understand!”

  Prophet ran along the south side of a post-and-rail corral, hearing the windmill clatter ahead. Approaching the windmill and stock tank, he slowed, swung his Colt from left to right. There wasn’t much out here but a few widely spaced houses on brushy lots, a few small barns, corrals, and gardens amongst the rocky knobs and cedar clumps.

  It was all cloaked in darkness, with no sign of the gunman.

  Prophet walked to the other side of the stock tank and stared off into the ravine curving along the south edge of town. Nothing there either.

  Once again, the man was gone.

  Prophet brought his gaze in closer to his boots, hunkered down on his haunches, saw several fresh hoofprints. He studied the tracks by lighting several matches one after another, but saw nothing to distinguish the sign. No loose nails, splits, or shoe cracks.

  He ran his sleeve across his mouth, stood, and holstered his pistol. He felt like raging into the darkness, daring the son of a bitch to get back here and fight like a man, but what good would it do?

  Turning, he headed back toward Main, entered the jail-house, and fumbled around in the dark to light a lamp.

  “What was that shootin’ about?”

  Prophet held the lamp high, casting the glow into the cell where Leo Embry stood, a few feet back from the door. The bandage on his head shown bone-
white and rumpled against his youthful face with its grim eyes and smattering of red pimples around his mouth. His lips formed a sullen line.

  “Bullet ricocheted off the wall and buzzed around in here like a bee.” Leo’s tone was indignant.

  Prophet set the lamp down, grabbed the key ring from the desk, and opened the door. He had enough on his mind without having to worry about Leo Embry. Swinging the door wide, he stepped aside and said tiredly, “Get out of here, kid. If I see you in town again, I’m gonna cut your ears off.”

  When the kid just stood there, slow to comprehend, Prophet yelled, “Go on! Git! Get on back to where ya came from and stay there! You’re no more a gunfighter than I’m a Baptist missionary.”

  The kid gave a surprised start, eyes snapping. “Y-you’re gonna let me go?”

  “Shake a leg before I change my mind.”

  Springing into motion but wincing painfully, Leo grabbed his hat off the cot and set it tenderly on his head. Leaving the cell, he sidestepped Prophet like a wounded bear, then made a beeline for the main door.

  With one quick, skeptical glance over his shoulder, he turned right and disappeared, leaving the door standing wide open behind him.

  Prophet shut the door and sat in Whitman’s squeaky chair.

  Who in the hell was trying to shoot him?

  He doubted it was a professional. A short-trigger artist would have gotten in close and stayed there. Not taken a shot, then run with his tail between his legs. It was definitely someone good with a rifle, someone who lived around here. A stranger would stand out during the day. Another relative of someone Prophet had lately taken down?

  No way to know till the man showed himself. Prophet just hoped he’d be alive to see the son of a bitch. What he needed at the moment, however, was a bellyful of vittles. The commotion had made him hungry.

  He walked over to Gertrude’s Good Food, where the cheery Frieda served him a fried steak with potatoes, a hot buttered roll, green beans, and several cups of tar-black coffee. She didn’t do much flirting, what with several traveling salesmen at nearby tables, but her suggestive gaze held Prophet’s several times, and she brushed her plump hip against his arm more than once.