The Devil and Lou Prophet (19 page)

“
Better get down and give
your horse a drink. I’m gonna be pullin’ out again in about two
minutes.”

She was so outraged at his insouciance
that her vision swam, and she wanted to scream. Instead, knowing
she could very easily be left behind again, she scrambled down from
her saddle and, taking his cue, filled her hat from her canteen and
fed the water to her horse.

Meanwhile, Prophet donned his wet hat
and retrieved his field glasses from his saddlebags. She watched as
he climbed a low butte, using rocks and sage clumps for handholds,
creating small sand slides in his wake. He gave little indication
that his leg was hurting, other than to grunt now and then. He sat
near the top of the butte and trained the glasses on the country
behind them.

“
You see anything?” she
called to him.

He didn’t say anything as he peered
through the glasses. Lowering them, he turned and descended the
butte, sliding on his butt over the steepest grades. Limping
slightly as he approached his horse, he said, “He’s back there, all
right. Him and that Big Fifty.”

“
How do you
know?”

He forked leather, took the reins in
both hands, and the horse scuttled sideways and back several steps.
“Lady, I may not have a whole lot of proper schoolin’, but I’ve
been on the owlhoot trail long enough to know when a man with a big
gun’s doggin’ me, and one’s doggin’ me now. Bank on it.”

He spurred his horse into a trot,
disappearing around a shelf. She watched him, flabbergasted, and
hurried to mount her horse. “Well, wait for me ... goddamn you,
Prophet!”

A mile and a half as the crow flies
behind Prophet and Lola Diamond, Dick Dunbar rode his mouse-brown
gelding, leaning out from his saddle as he read the sign left by
Prophet and the girl’s mounts.

Dunbar was a tall, thin man with
close-cropped brown hair, a severe, sun-seared face, and a bushy
brown mustache drooping around the corners of his grim mouth. On
his head was a sweat-soaked bandanna beneath a weather-beaten derby
hat he’d swiped from a businessman he’d killed in Alder Gulch two
weeks ago. He’d stolen the hat not because he thought it went
better with the rest of his attire—faded chambray shirt, rawhide
suspenders, dusty broadcloth trousers, and cartridge belt and
holster—but because it didn’t. He liked the contrast of the hat
with the rest of his scruffy clothes and savage-looking weapons,
including the big, fifty-caliber rifle perpetually poking out of
his saddle sheath.

He thought the hat gave him
distinction. It was also a trophy, for the man it had belonged to
had been one of Alder Gulch’s more prominent businessmen who had,
for some reason or another, gotten on the enemies list
of

Dick Dunbar’s primary employer: Billy
Brown.

Billy Brown was why Dunbar was here
now. Two days ago he and the other three in his band—the three
who’d been so shamefully greased by Lou Prophet and the
showgirl—had gotten a cable from Billy’s men in Johnson City,
telling them to intercept the stage from Henry’s Crossing and kill
the red-haired showgirl named Lola Diamond and anyone and everyone
in her company. The cable hadn’t said why. They never did, and
Dunbar had learned not to question Billy Brown’s motives. But it
did say that once the girl was dead, Dunbar and his three
associates would be paid one thousand dollars in cash.

One thousand dollars split four ways
came to two hundred and fifty dollars, not bad for one girl. One
thousand unsplit was even better, and that’s why Dunbar felt little
but disdain for his fallen comrades, and embarrassment for the way
they’d so stupidly walked into Prophet’s trap, like calves walking
into quicksand. Imagine getting gunned down by a showgirl, which is
what had happened to the stupid Sonny Lane!

“
Well, I won’t tell ‘em,
Sonny,” Dunbar said now as he studied the hoof prints in the tough
sod. “I guess that’s the least I can do, after you got me on with
Billy Brown and all. I’ll just say Prophet drygulched all four of
us, and I got away ... somehow.”

His face tightened as he considered
the “somehow.” He decided not to mention the girl opening up with
her pea shooter. He certainly wouldn’t admit that she’d sent him
running for his horse after the last of the other three men were
killed and he’d momentarily lost his nerve when the Big Fifty had
misfired and the shell had jammed in the breech. He’d say he’d
sensed the trap but couldn’t convince the others, who rode into it
while Dunbar stayed behind, pleading with his brave but foolhardy
compatriots to no avail....

Yeah, that should cover Dunbar’s ass.
Billy Brown couldn’t fire him for that. The last thing anyone
wanted was to be fired by Billy Brown, because when Billy Brown
fired you, he usually killed you in some sneaky, underhanded way
when and where you least expected it. Billy Brown didn’t like
leaving any loose ends, and ex-employees definitely fell into that
category.

Satisfied with the story, Dunbar
heaved a sigh of relief. Approaching a stretch of open ground, he
turned his head to make sure the buffalo gun was still in his
saddle boot—the damn thing always misfired when the barrel got
hot—then gigged his gelding into a gallop, wanting to eat up some
ground between himself and the two he was following. It sure would
be nice if he could get this thing over with before nightfall. He’d
get himself a good night’s sleep, then head back to the main trail
to Johnson City first thing in the morning.

It would take him another half day to
reach town as it was, packing the girl’s body for the reward money,
and he couldn’t wait to get his hands on that thousand dollars. As
long as he’d been killing folks for hire—going on seven years now,
and that wasn’t counting all the years he’d spent killing Yankee
farmers and small-towners with Quantrill’s raiders down in Missouri
and Arkansas— he’d never once had that much money in his pockets at
one time.

Soon the tall, thin gunman with the
sunburned face and grim eyes beneath the curled brim of his dusty
bowler came to the edge of the badlands. He halted his horse and
spat a wad of chew on a flat rock two feet to his left.

“
So this is what you had in
mind, eh. old boy?” Dunbar said, sending his gaze over the pocked
and gouged gray landscape before him.

He’d recognized Prophet when he’d
glassed him before he’d tried to ambush him and the girl with the
Big Fifty. Prophet had a reputation as a man you didn’t mess with,
and that was why Dunbar had decided to take the long shot, which
had been nudged wide by a sudden wind gust. He rarely missed from
that distance, and he sure as hell wouldn’t miss again. The damn
cannon wouldn’t misfire, either, because he’d finish the job with
his first two shots.

Also, he’d cut the distance in half. Out
there, where he saw a telltale feather of sun-bleached dust lifting
about a mile ahead—the dust of two fleeing riders, he was
certain—it wouldn’t be at all hard to get that close. With all
those buttes and rocks for cover, why, a man could practically ride
into another man’s camp unseen.

Dunbar pulled his bandanna down to his
eyes, mopping the sweat from his brows, then shoved it back up on
his forehead. Grinning, he gigged his horse into the
canyon.

“
Damn, Prophet … you’re makin’
this too easy.”

Black flies
buzzed
.

Cicadas moaned.

The sun beat down on the pale sand and
clay, on the dusty yucca leaves, on the sage, and on the rocks
strewn here and there about the canyon floor. Lola felt it through
her hat. It burned her neck and hands. She had to fold her dress
closed to keep it off her exposed leg. She was a fair-skinned girl,
and prone to coloring.

There was no water. At least, they
hadn’t stopped for any fresh, which meant there probably wasn’t
any. To Lola, it didn’t look like a place where there would be much
water, except in the rainy seasons—April and September probably.
Now the deep, wide gash through which they rode looked like the dry
bottom of a long dead lake honeycombed with narrow, winding
canyons.

It was an eerie, quiet place, these
badlands, with no sign of other people and few of animals. Like
several other natural places Lola had visited on the frontier, it
had the feeling of having been abandoned by God. Eternity reigned
here, the blue sky bowling overhead. It felt like either a
sanctified place or an evil one. Lola wasn’t sure which.

But she didn’t want to die here. She
didn’t want her bones to become like the ones she saw in the eroded
gravel banks, chipped and ground by time, woven into the earth’s
changing seams, and forgotten.

But then, if she were killed here,
whoever killed her would probably take her back to Johnson City for
the reward. They’d tie her to the back of a horse, and when they
got to town, they’d lift her head by her hair, showing her face to
Billy Brown. What would happen to her then? Would they bury her, or
take her out in the country and throw her into some
canyon?

How odd it felt to be hunted... for
your body to be worth more dead than alive.

“
Watch it—rattlesnake,”
Prophet warned as Lola, aroused from her reverie, heard the angry
hiss.

She looked around and saw a thick
diamondback coiled beneath a yucca plant, flicking its tail and
tongue, glaring through its coppery eyes, flat as pennies. Her
horse contracted its muscles and bucked slightly, veering sideways,
then continued down the trail, about thirty feet off the rump of
Prophet’s mount.

Lola said nothing, just gritted her
teeth against her misery—against the heat, her parched throat,
sand-gritty eyes, burning shoulder, and aching thighs—and squeezed
the reins. Her and Prophet’s horses blew and swished their tails at
flies as they walked, heads down, shod hooves ringing off
stones.

After two hours of steady riding,
Prophet stopped to water the horses. While Lola rested in the shade
of a gnarled shrub, he limped to the top of a butte shelving over a
deep-cut canyon, its walls packed with white bone chips and gravel,
and scanned their back trail through his field glasses.

“
He back there?” she asked
when he returned.

“
Oh, he’s back there, all
right,” Prophet said, replacing the glasses in the case hanging off
his saddle.

But from the way he’d said it. she
couldn’t tell if he’d seen the man with the big rifle, or if he was
just relying on his own intuition again, that sixth sense he seemed
so proud of. She would have asked him, but his demeanor had become
so sour she decided against it. She just got back on her horse,
afraid of being left behind, and rode.

They rode so hard that by late
afternoon her butt and the backs of her legs were chafed raw and
blistering. No matter how she sat, she couldn’t get
comfortable.

“
Prophet... please ... I have to
stop,” she begged. “I’m not used to this … ”

He said nothing, just kept riding
straight ahead, swaying with the rhythm of his horse, which he kept
to a walk, saving it for a gallop when and if a gallop were needed.
Lola was lonely and frightened. Her shoulder ached. She wished
Prophet would talk to her, but the big bounty man said nothing. He
silently, grimly led the way, kicking up the fine, brown dust
behind him.

It was nearly dark when he finally
stopped for the day. She’d been dozing in the saddle and was
surprised when her own horse came to a halt. She looked around and
saw that they were in a hollow surrounded by tall buttes and
boulders, a few gnarled shrubs resembling pines. There was a cool
breeze which played in Lola’s hair and dried the sweat on her
face.

Lola tried to dismount but found that
her legs and seat were too sore to move. She felt as though her
skin had grown into the saddle.

“
What are you waiting for?”
Prophet asked as he hurriedly stripped the leather off his
mount.

“
I-I can’t move,” she said
weakly.

She’d never fell this hopeless and
weak. Right now she didn’t care if the man with the big gun
strolled right into their camp, put his big gun up lo her head, and
pulled the trigger. Here was as good a place to die as
anywhere.

Prophet grumbled something as he
tossed his saddle in a small alcove that had been carved out of a
butte. He approached her, said, “Here,” and helped her out of the
saddle—none too gently.

“
Ouch!”

“
Be quiet!” Prophet
hissed.

“
You opened up my shoulder
again ... and ... and my butt hurts!” She lowered her head and
sobbed like a child.

“
Well, crying ain’t gonna
help. Sit down over there by my saddle and let me get the leather
off your horse. I’ll tend that shoulder in a minute.”

She did as he ordered, not so much
sitting as reclining gently on her side, and watched him unsaddle
her horse and stake both animals to the gnarled tree only a few
feet beyond the camp. He obviously wanted the horses close. Why? In
case they had to make a run for it? So they’d warn him if the man
with the big gun came calling?

“
I cannot gel on that horse
again tomorrow,” she told him as he approached and knelt by her
side.