The building was one of those remaining from when the town was a Mexican pueblito. Long, slender, cool, and dark, it was a sun-faded, thick-walled, brush-roofed adobe with an adjoining stable, and whores’ cribs on the second story. Several other adobes sprawled around it and a battered wooden windmill and stock tank. Some of the adobes were occupied, some were not.
The Stud, as it was locally called, was run by a half-breed Apache ex–cavalry tracker whose name was Alfredo Diego. When Prophet had visited the establishment the last time he’d ridden through Carson’s Wash, Diego had appeared in the latter stages of alcoholism—deeply drunk, potbellied, swollen-faced, thin-legged, and cloaked in the stench of a slop bucket badly in need of emptying. He sat, semiconscious, head perpetually sagging, on a stool behind his bar. When he was awake, he swatted flies or tended a pot of beans on his range.
Always smoking.
Always sipping pulque from a crock jug.
He was dressed in a ratty cotton shirt and deerskin breeches. He wore no shoes or even sandals. On his head was a palm-leaf sombrero with a badly unraveling brim.
Diego appeared in no better condition now on Prophet’s second visit to the place. He managed to keep pouring the drinks, however, and that’s all that Prophet cared about. All Diego served was tequila and pulque. Prophet didn’t mind. Pulque, the milky, sour-tasting drink of Old Mexico, was a cheap way to get and stay drunk, as long as you could hold it down, which Prophet had learned to do after several visits to southern Sonora, where the pulque flowed like fresh snowmelt in the northern Rockies.
When Diego’s two plump Mexican whores were not upstairs moaning while some jake grunted between their spread knees, they tended bar or swamped out the place or hauled in firewood that kept the pot of beans perpetually bubbling atop the small range that occupied a little closetlike alcove behind the counter.
Prophet had never seen many customers in the Stud at one time, and he didn’t over the next two days he spent in the pleasingly grim, liquory shadows, drinking pulque, eating beans, smoking, conversing with Diego, and gambling with whoever came in—mostly local ranch hands who stayed for a couple rounds of stud or red dog and a mattress dance or two.
He’d intended on having his own ashes hauled, but there was a blandness and distractedness in the eyes of Diego’s two whores that he didn’t find enticing or even welcoming. He didn’t blame them for not enjoying their jobs, but he preferred whores who did.
Or maybe it was just a blandness and distractedness in himself that kept him from getting the itch to take one of the girls upstairs.
So he drank and gambled to numb his confusion about Butters and Phoebe Dahlstrom and her dead husband and George Hill and, last but not least, Louisa and Jonas Ford.
After the first afternoon and night in the Stud, Prophet staggered back to his room at the Rio Grande. The next morning, he checked out of the Rio and took up temporary residence in the Five Card Stud.
Despite the unappetizing whores, he liked it there. It was cool and dark and the pulque was freely flowing as well as cheap, and if he did decide to partake of a mattress dance—well, you couldn’t get any cheaper than Diego’s whores. He didn’t care for the phony frills of other parlor houses.
He could have left Carson’s Wash and ridden south toward Mexico, but he felt compelled to remain in town until the matter with Charlie Butters was resolved. He preferred to be hidden away here at the town’s seedy edge where he was anonymous and most of the more respectable folks didn’t wander. He’d always felt most comfortable on the wrong side of the tracks. He’d eventually learn, one way or the other, of the outcome of Butters’s murder trial.
Then he could ride on.
The second night, Prophet played stud poker with seven Mexicans fresh off the range. He didn’t play with all seven at once, because two were usually upstairs making the whores squeal and moan with a little too much vigor. They were all getting along just fine until the pulque had flowed a little too much like that Rocky Mountain snowmelt in the springtime, and one of the Mexicans started to give Prophet the woolly eyeball.
Prophet tried to ignore the dark, threatening stare until the Mexican said with low menace in deeply accented English mixed with border Spanish, “Señor, if you would be so kind as to roll up your left sleeve for me . . . ?”
Prophet turned to him and smiled. “Say what again, partner?”
“If you would be so kind as to roll up . . .”
“I heard you the first time, Pancho,” Prophet said, though he hadn’t learned the man’s name. In his own drunken state, he was growing contentious, as well, and not feeling as given to smoothing feathers as he normally would have been. “Why do you want me to roll up my sleeve? You think I got cards up there, do you, Pancho?”
The Mexican blinked beneath the brim of his steeple-crowned sombrero. Smoke from the cornhusk quirley sagging from the right side of his mouth caused him to narrow one eye.
The other Mexicans stopped playing to look at him curiously.
“Por favor, señor, do not take offense. But if you would be so kind . . .”
“Go ahead and say what you’re thinkin’,” Prophet said, hardening his jaws and staring drunkenly at his drunken opponent sitting almost directly across the table from him. “If you think I’m cheatin’, go ahead and tell me, straight up, you think I’m cheatin’.”
Prophet’s sawed-off Richards lay on the table to his right. He dropped his cards to the table and laid his right hand over the neck of the shotgun’s stock.
“There you are, you old devil!”
The exclamation was as loud as it was unexpected, coming as it did from a female. It shattered the menacingly masculine and grave key of Prophet and the Mexican’s conversation. Lou turned to his right and removed his hand from the Richards in time to catch Phoebe Dahlstrom in his arms.
“I’d heard you were still in town!” the girl said, wrapping her arms around his neck as she squirmed around in his lap. “I checked every watering hole in town. Then I remembered this place, and here you are, you trail-worn reprobate. No surprise at all! Have you missed me?”
She nuzzled Prophet’s neck and then turned to the Mexican, who frowned at her curiously, apprehensively. “Who’s this fella?” Not waiting for Prophet to say anything, she flung her right hand across the table. “I’m Phoebe Dahlstrom. The former Mrs. Maxwell Dahlstrom . . .”
“Sí, señorita,” said the Mexican who’d had the beef with Prophet. He gave a slow, respectful dip of his chin. “I know who you are.” He glanced at the other Mexicans sitting around him. They had a brief, silent conversation and then started swiping their coins and silver certificates off the table, casting quick, anxious glances toward the beautiful woman in Prophet’s arms.
“Are you leaving?” Phoebe asked with mock disappointment.
“Forgive us, señorita,” said the Mexican who’d tangled with Prophet, and threw back a cup of pulque, the milky liquid dribbling down from the corners of his mouth. He ran a grimy sleeve across his mustached lips and rose from his chair. “We are due back to the rancho by midnight.” He gave a wobbly, drunken bow, doffing his sombrero and holding it over his heart.
“Wait,” Phoebe said, frowning and sticking her fingers up Prophet’s left sleeve. “What’s this?”
She pulled out the ace of hearts. She looked at Prophet, who gave a sheepish grin and a shrug. Phoebe flicked the card to the Mexican. It bounced off the buckle of his cartridge belt and fell to the floor.
The Mexican snarled a Spanish curse at Prophet. He tipped his face to the ceiling, from which the sounds of feral coupling emanated, and yelled, “Nos vamos! ”
He and the others stumbled out the batwing doors. Leather creaked and bits and bridle chains rattled as the Mexicans mounted their horses.
Diego sat his stool behind the counter, his perpetual quirley dangling from one corner of his mouth, lips quirking a wry grin at Prophet, who sat with the beautiful Widow Dahlstrom in his lap.
Phoebe turned her ga
ze from the still-swinging batwings to Prophet, pressing her full breasts against his chest. “I hope I didn’t interrupt anything.”
“As a matter of fact . . .”
“Don’t be a wet blanket,” Phoebe admonished. “Those men are hardtails from one of the oldest Mexican spreads around, and they consider this their territory. Besides, it was five against one. I likely saved you from a cut throat and a deep ravine. Or was that what you were wanting?”
“Just a little diversion.”
Prophet glanced toward the batwings. Two hatted figures stood, one on each side of the door, silhouetted against the starry sky behind them. A candle flickering on a wall identified Melvin Handy and Lars Gunderson, both cradling Winchester carbines in their arms.
The two Mexicans who’d been fornicating in the second story ran down the stairs at the back of the room and, tucking their shirttails into their pants, hurried toward the doors. They looked around, incredulous, frowning curiously at Prophet and the woman and then halted briefly, cautiously, before Handy and Gunderson.
Muttering to each other in Spanish, they brushed past the two Dahlstrom riders and headed outside. Soon, the thuds of their horses were fading into the night.
Phoebe looked around Prophet to her two men standing by the doors. “Mel, Lars—leave us, please.”
Handy stepped forward, scowling. “What . . . what do you . . . ?”
“I said, leave us, please, Melvin.”
It was as though the foreman couldn’t believe his ears. “Where would you like us to go? We can’t leave you here alone, Mrs. Dahl—”
“As you can see, I’m not alone,” Phoebe said, her voice growing louder, steelier. “And I don’t care where you go. Just make it not here.” She gave him a wide-eyed glare.
Handy stared at her for a full five seconds. Then he gave a caustic grunt, turned, and stomped out of the cantina. Gunderson followed him.
As their spurs chinged into the distance, Phoebe smiled at Prophet. “I can think of a better diversion than a stiletto in your belly.”
Footsteps sounded at the back of the cantina. The two whores were coming down the stairs in their skimpy cotton dresses, hair disheveled. They were both barefoot. Like the men who’d abandoned them upstairs, they looked around incredulously, dark eyes fixing with mute fascination on Prophet and the woman in his lap.
They walked around behind the bar to stand in silence near Diego.
Prophet looked at Phoebe. She was a warm, supple weight in his lap. He felt her breasts pressing against him. Her breath puffed against his lips. It smelled like wine.
“What are you doing here?” Prophet asked her.
“I’m bored at the Rio Grande.” Phoebe looked around. One of the whores had started sweeping in a desultory way, keeping one eye skinned on the two gringos who were now the only customers. “I went to your room. When you weren’t there, I inquired with the manager, Dressler, and he said you’d checked out. He didn’t think you’d left town, however.”
She slid her head to his and kissed him. Her lips were plump, sensuously yielding. “Very mysterious, Mr. Prophet. Very, very mysterious.”
“Nothin’ mysterious about wantin’ a little time alone,” Prophet said. “To drink, gamble, an’ whore.”
“Oh, have you been with the whores?” Phoebe arched a brow and turned to the two girls of topic. Returning her gaze to Prophet, she asked, “Which one?” She waited. “Both?” Again, she waited, and when a response wasn’t forthcoming, she said, “Or . . . neither?”
Prophet’s heart thudded as her eyes probed his. Her mouth was perfect, her nose a fine, straight line before him. He could see fine bits of copper, like gold dust on the bed of a pure, shallow stream, glinting in her irises. Her lush brown hair fell loosely over his hands on her shoulders. He thought he could feel the beating of her heart ever so slightly nudging her body from within.
“Like I said,” she said, just above a whisper, “I can think of a better diversion than a long, cold sleep at the bottom of a deep ravine.”
Prophet reached around her for his shotgun. He slung the lanyard over his right shoulder and then, sliding his right hand under her legs and wrapping his left arm around her back, he rose from his chair.
She drew a deep breath as he lifted her against him.
She pressed her lips to his once more.
He kicked away his chair, walked around the table, and strode to the back of the cantina. He climbed the stairs with the young woman in his arms. She smiled up at him as he gained the second story, walked down the dingy hall that smelled like sweat, sex, and cheap tobacco, and nudged open his door.
He walked into the room and tossed the pretty widow into his bed.
Chapter 15
Prophet woke when she rolled against him, groaned, and pressed her cheek against his chest. He opened his eyes, saw gray light pushing through the room’s single window. It was touched with the gold of an imminent sunrise.
“Hell,” Prophet said, clearing sleep from his throat, raking a hand down his face, then tenderly slapping her shoulder. “We’re burnin’ daylight. We’d best get movin’, part—”
He stopped himself.
Phoebe turned her head on his chest to stare up at him from over his chin. She arched a brow. “Partner?” Her lips shaped a rueful smile. “You’re getting your women mixed up, cowboy.”
Prophet flushed.
“It’s okay,” she said. “I don’t mind.”
It was true. He’d woken up thinking that it was Louisa snuggling against him. He’d wanted it to be so, though he hadn’t been fully conscious of the thought. He’d also half imagined that it had been Louisa he’d been making love to the night before. Sometime later, Phoebe asked, “Any regrets?”
Prophet gave a ragged sigh and relaxed against his pillow, half sitting up against the headboard. “Nary a one.” Suddenly, it was true. Louisa was with Jonas Ford, after all.
Phoebe chuckled with satisfaction as she cleaned him with a corner of the sheet.
He reached down and tucked a sleep-mussed lock of her hair behind her right, china-white ear. “I bet Melvin Handy’s not feelin’ near as good about you bein’ here as I am.”
She asked, “What does that mean?”
“It occurred to me last night, when we were still downstairs. You and Handy . . .”
He knew he didn’t need to finish the sentence.
She shrugged a shoulder, blinked slowly. “A minor dalliance.”
“When your husband was alive?”
“Sure.” Again, she arched a brow. “Are you judging me, Lou?”
“I’m no one to judge, believe me.”
“I believe you. I’m the one who found that card tucked up your sleeve, remember?”
Prophet smiled. “How do you feel about Melvin?”
“I told you,” she said, her voice growing taught with annoyance. “He was a minor dalliance, Lou.”
“Is that how he sees it?”
She scowled, as though the question were absurd. “I don’t care how he sees it!”
Prophet studied her. He wanted to ask her about the baby, as well, but he could tell that he’d probed far enough for one morning. Besides, the lies she told or didn’t tell . . . the child she’d had out of wedlock . . . were none of his affair.
He had the very poignant feeling that after last night and this morning, the lovemaking as well as the impertinent question, he’d worn out his stay in Carson’s Wash. If only in his own eyes. It was time to ride on.
He’d done what he’d come to do. He had most of the five hundred dollars in his pocket. It was time to head to Mexico.
Prophet leaned forward, took her gently in his arms, and kissed her.
“It’s been nice knowin’ you, Mrs. Dahlstrom.”
He dropped his feet to the floor.
“Are you going?”
“High time.”
As he rose and, wincing against the dull throb of a pulque hangover directly behind each eye, began stumbling around
for his clothes.
“You’re not going to stay for the hanging?”
Prophet chuckled. “I’ve seen enough hemp stretched.” He sat on the edge of the bed to pull on his longhandles. “I tell you what I will do, though. I’ll send over a jug of coffee from the Rio Grande.”
She smiled with genuine surprise and delight. “You’d do that?”
“Hell, after last night, what I want to do is follow you around for the next three months like a loyal puppy dog, wanting more of the same. You do know how to please a man, Miss Phoebe.”
She watched him with that same serene expression, in silence, as he dressed. Just before he left, he drew the covers up over her legs and planted a parting kiss on her temple.
Groaning and working the kinks from his neck, loaded down with his gear, Prophet headed downstairs. He stumbled through the empty, semidark cantina, which smelled like stale smoke, spilled pulque, and scorched beans. He could hear Diego snoring in a back room.
He let himself out the front door, shifted the gear on his shoulders, and ambled south along the winding street that was turning salmon now as the sun lifted its molten orange head above the eastern desert.
Hoof thuds rose on his left. He turned his head to see two horseback riders walking their horses past a wide gap at the rear of two abandoned adobe hovels on that side of the ragged street. They were silhouetted against the sun, so Prophet couldn’t see any details. He’d caught only a brief glimpse of them, anyway. They’d ridden out from behind one building, crossed the far end of the break, and disappeared again behind the next building to the north.
Probably a couple of ranch hands heading home after a night in a whore’s crib.
Prophet walked into the lobby of the Rio Grande a couple minutes later and set his gear on the floor against the wall, keeping his shotgun slung over his neck and shoulder. The Rio’s manager, whose named was Mort Dressler, was down on one knee, running an oiled cloth over the desk’s oak facade.
He gave Prophet a dubious look. “It doesn’t appear to me that Diego treated you nearly as well as we did here. If you’ll forgive me, Mr. Prophet, you look like hell.”
Stagecoach to Purgatory Page 26
