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

by Peter Brandvold

  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!”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  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 formi
ng 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.

  The air was sooty and hot. Pine resin popped and sizzled as the flames jutted high against the sky. Beams collapsed, thundering and showering sparks.

  “I reckon it depends on how you look at it,” Prophet said, easing the kid along beside him. “Could be just the beginning.”

  Epilogue

  Prophet remained in Bitter Creek for a few days to help clean up after the fire.

  To his surprise, most of the townspeople, including Frieda Schwartzenberger, decided to stay and rebuild and to run the town the way a town should be run—with a democratically elected mayor and town council and a marshal hired for the benefit of all. Bitter Creek was their home. They had nowhere else to go.

  Only the businesses along Main Street had burned. Still, it would be a long rebuilding process. The night before Prophet decided to leave, a town council was elected. During the council’s first meeting, held in Frieda’s cafe, Ralph Carmody was elected mayor and his grandson, Ronnie Williams, recovering nicely from the bullet wound in his side, was named town marshal.

  Prophet’s going-away gift to the town was his reward money, found in Ralph Carmody’s charred bank vault. The twenty-five hundred dollars, combined with the small fortune found on Henry Crumb’s getaway horse, would give the town the financial boost it needed toward getting back on its own two feet.

  Prophet’s going-away gift to Frieda was a private, carnal love dance carried out under the second-story eaves of Gertrude’s Good Food. A three-quarter moon slanted milky light through the window over the bed, limning Frieda’s heels crossed over the small of the bounty-hunter’s broad back.

  Frieda’s next-door neighbor—a widower farmer named Frank Roderus—was awakened three times in two hours by curious feral-like love screams carried on the wind. Thinking them only wild cats, he grunted, spit, and sank back onto his pillow.

  Prophet was saddled up and riding the eastern trail from Bitter Creek when the sun rose from behind a hat-shaped rimrock and spread its pink light across the sage. Three hours later, he paused to let Mean draw water at a trailside spring. Suddenly, the dun raised its head and whinnied.

  Prophet’s hand touched his Colt while his eyes roamed the eastern horizon, finding a horseback figure silhouetted against the sky. The rider came on slowly. Prophet sat, his right hand caressing his pistol grips.

  You never knew who you were going to run into out here. Prophet just hoped whoever it was wasn’t trouble. He’d had enough trouble over the past few weeks. He wanted to go about his business unharassed, maybe wander down toward Glenwood Springs and wallow in the healing waters for a time.

  As the rider approached, the lines around Prophet’s eyes deepened gradually, the eyes themselves taking in the black Morgan and the female form of the rider, the ratty brown poncho, the long hair curving over slender shoulders, and the tan felt hat with chin strap.

  She was fifty yards away when he muttered disbelievingly, “Louisa?”

  Suddenly, she heeled the Morgan into a run. Mean whinnied again and rippled his withers at the Morgan’s familiar scent.

  Prophet grinned as her haughty hazel eyes and dimpled chin came into focus. It really was her. He thought by now she’d be in Denver City. “Louisa.”

  Louisa reined the Morgan to a halt, neck-reining the black horse quarter-wise to Prophet and Mean. She furrowed her blond brows, pursed her rosebud lips, and placed one churlish fist on her hip. “Lou Prophet, where have you been?”

  “Loui
sa, what in the name of the hounds of hell are you doin’ out here?”

  Her voice was matronly admonishing. “I sent telegram after telegram to Bitter Creek and received not one reply.”

  “The telegraph office was out of commission for a while.”

  “Don’t tell me you’ve been in Bitter Creek this entire time!”

  “Well, yeah, that’s—”

  She pooched her pink lips in disgust. “So you found a soiled dove and decided to while away a couple of weeks under the sheets?”

  Prophet opened his mouth to object, but she cut him off. “Lou Prophet, you are the vilest, laziest creature the Good Lord set forth on this land. Living only to drink the devil’s juice and couple with fallen women!”

  Prophet found his ears warming like a scolded schoolboy’s. “Louisa, that just ain’t true. I been—”

  Louisa slapped her hands to her ears. “Please don’t assault me with the craven details!”

  Prophet glared at her. “Louisa, I’m trying to tell you, I been—”

  She squeezed her eyes shut. “Please stop!”

  Finally, he sighed and leaned over his saddle horn, jutting his chin and screwing up his eyes. “Louisa,” he shouted, “would you please just tell me what in the hell you’re doin’ here!”

  She removed her hands from her ears and opened her eyes. “When I couldn’t contact you through the telegraph from Denver City, I decided to start scouring the countryside for you. Bitter Creek was the last place I saw you.”

  He grinned, happy to see her, churlish as she was. “So, now you found me. What’s up?”

  “We have a job to do, Lou Prophet. It’s a big job. Too big for me alone.”

  Prophet shook his head. “No jobs for me. Not for at least a month. I’m wrung out.”

  “I told you I didn’t want to hear the details of your devil party.”

  He started to snarl a rebuttal, but again she cut him off. “Quit horsing around, Lou. We have trouble in the Southwest.” She reined the Morgan around and canted it back the way she had come. “Come on,” she yelled behind her. “I’ll tell you about it on our way to Cheyenne!”