The Devil and Lou Prophet (5 page)

Now she pulled the brim of her hat
down lower, protecting her face from the sun, and scowled as she
rode with the reins of the two-horse team lightly in her gloved
hands. Lola Diamond, as she preferred to be called these days, was
not happy. Not only was she once again traversing the freight roads
and army trails of the middle of nowhere, crooning and dancing
every night for drunk miners, gandy dancers, cowpokes, freighters,
and outlaws in every tumbleweed town and stage stop in southern
Montana, she was having to drive a wagon while “Big Dan” snored off
a hangover in the box behind her.

How in the world had she ended up
here? she wondered, casting a look about the sun baked plain
rolling off in every direction, relieved by knolls and ridges,
occasional buffalo wallows and brush-lined water courses. Here and
there a rock shelf jutted up, scaly with ancient sandstone, and the
far western horizon was a toothy, dark blue line of mountains—no
doubt another godforsaken range in which some backwater mining town
sat, or a roadhouse, and where Big Dan would have her and the other
girls playing tomorrow night or the night after or the night after
that.

Big Dan seemed to love these forlorn,
off-the-beaten-path places. He’d no doubt run up against the law
somewhere in his seedy past, and didn’t want to be seen anywhere he
might be recognized. Lola preferred places a little more hopping,
where there was more of a chance some agent from a big-city
playhouse might discover her and give her a chance to achieve the
kind of fame she’d not only been born for, but worked hard at
attaining practically her entire life.

She’d been born in Utica, New York, to
a mild-mannered, unambitious father and an ambitious, hardworking
mother who ran a boardinghouse and who gave her beautiful,
precocious Margaret Jane acting lessons by accomplished East Coast
thespians. When Margaret Jane was twelve, her mother sold her
boardinghouse, and she, Margaret Jane, and the reluctant father
hopped the Union Pacific to take advantage of the acting and
singing opportunities offered by the burgeoning seaport of San
Francisco.

Only Margaret Jane and her mother made
it to California, however, the father having fallen ill and dying
during a layover in Kelton, Utah. Not to be thwarted, the stalwart
Olson women journeyed on to San Francisco, where Mrs. Olson secured
for Margaret Jane singing and dancing stints galore, but only in
perilous bars and taverns along the waterfront. No jobs were
available in the more respectable theaters, which, the Olsons were
exasperated to learn, had been monopolized by a few local families
with connections, one of which was the Booth family, made infamous
by Edward’s assassination of President Lincoln.

Compounding young Margaret Jane’s
problems, her mother died of food poisoning, leaving Margaret Jane,
then sixteen, utterly alone. What saved her from the horrors that
befell most young women alone and down and out in San Francisco was
an older actress and singer named Naomi Tate, who invited Margaret
Jane to accompany her and her traveling theatrical troupe to the
wild and woolly—but highly profitable—mining camps in the northern
territories.

Things went well in that rough country
populated by cowboys, Indians, miners, and outlaws, and the
playbills identified Margaret Jane as “Amber Skye”—the stage name
had been Naomi’s idea—until the troupe headed back to San
Francisco. Liking the wild and woolly West, making good money
there, and believing it was there she would one day be discovered
by the right talent scout, Margaret Jane joined one traveling show
after another, playing in places like Virginia City, Johnson City,
Medicine Bow, Billings, and Bannack—and every roadhouse and stage
stop in between.

It was in Johnson City that she ran into
the trouble that landed her in the Beaverhead country. She
remembered it all now as she squinted off across the sun-scorched
plain, the sharp smell of sage bringing tears to her eyes. At least
she thought it was the sage. Maybe it was the memory of that
horrible night back in Johnson City, after she’d gotten through her
usual string of numbers at the Stockmen’s Hotel, had gone to bed,
then gotten up for water and heard the trouble in Hoyt Farley’s
office ...

No. She didn’t want to think of that
now. It was too terrifying a memory. She, Lola Diamond, as she’d
been known since her last night in Johnson City, had to keep her
head up and stick to the back country where, hopefully, no one
would recognize her. In a few months she’d make enough money
working for Big Dan that she could book passage back to Denver or
San Francisco, where certainly her considerable experience would
secure her a job ... somewhere.

And where no one from Johnson City would
ever find her ...

As the big wheels of the wagon rolled
along, the horses’ hooves thumping on the well-churned trail,
kicking up the alkali dust like flour, the snores behind Lola
suddenly ceased. A moment later Big Dan stuck his head through the
white canvas cover. He blinked his eyes and smacked his lips as he
crawled onto the seat beside Lola.

“
See any
Indians
?” he
asked.

Lola jerked him a startled look.
“Indians?”

Big Dan chuckled deeply. “Guess not.
That’s good.”

“
You said the Indians were
peaceful in these parts,” Lola reminded the big, red-bearded
man.

He was twisting the upswept ends of
his mustache, badly in need of trimming. With his idiotically
protruding eyes, scarred nose, and huge, ungainly frame, he looked
more like a bouncer in some Leadville saloon than the master of a
road show. But then a bouncer in a Leadville saloon was exactly
what he’d been two years ago, before he’d inherited the wagons,
costumes, and horses from his cousin, the former owner, who’d died
from a knife wound during a saloon brawl.

Only one of the show’s original
actresses had remained with the show, but it wasn’t hard recruiting
actors and singers in these parts, where everyone but the miners
seemed dissatisfied with his or her current occupation, and was
desperate for money. For Lola, who had met Big Dan only a month
ago, it had been either sign up with the man, who’d been pulling
out for the Beaverhead country the next day, or get her throat
slashed and her body thrown to the dogs at the Johnson City
dump.

Big Dan pulled a flask from an inside
pocket of his frock coat. Lined with red satin, it was another
trophy he’d inherited from his cousin, and about two sizes too
small. Big Dan’s round shoulders strained the seams, and the cuffs
stopped well short of his wrists. “Mostly the Injuns are right
peaceful around here, but you never know. The Bannacks are raisin’
hell over Utah-way, so you never know what the Blackfeet and Crows
are gonna try pullin’. Sometimes one tribe gets a hell-raisin’ idea
from another ... ” He shrugged, uncorked the flask, and raised it
to his lips.

Lola’s cheeks flushed with anger. She
scrutinized the man with narrow-eyed disdain. “You might have told
me that before you decided to nod off.”

Big Dan took another slug from the flask,
smacked his lips, and recorked the bottle. “Sorry ... I wasn’t
feelin’ too good.” He gave Lola a sidelong glance, grinning
wolfishly and stealing another of many looks down her
dress.

“
Well, you seem to be
feeling fine now. Here”—she tossed him the reins—”you can have your
job back.”

Dan chuckled and returned the flask to
his coat. Taking up the reins, he grinned. “You sure are pretty,
Lola. You’re the prettiest girl in my troupe. I sure wish you’d
give me a poke.”

Accustomed to his crude advances, she
merely rolled her eyes. “If wishes were horses, Dan ...”

He grinned through his beard. “Never
know—might be fun.”

Lola sighed and looked off. Here she
was, miles from civilization with this tawdry troupe of underpaid
actresses and this moron, who didn’t know Shakespeare from
vaudeville and who accosted her with his goatish hunger every
chance he got.

Holding the reins at his chest, Dan
nudged Lola with his elbow and winked. “I didn’t say I’d pay ya for
it, Lola.” He guffawed. “If I don’t pay, it ain’t whorin’— now,
ain’t that right? Haw, haw, haw!”

She gave a long, tired sigh and turned
to the man showing his long horse teeth under his mustache as he
grinned, pleased with himself. “When are we gonna stop? I got
nature to tend, and I bet the other girls do, too. Looks to me
there’s a creek right over there.”

Big Dan pulled a watch from his pocket and
flipped the lid. “Well, it’s already one o’clock. I’d like to make
Henry’s Crossing by three. It’s gonna take us a while to set up,
an’ I know you girls are gonna wanna have naps and baths like ya
always do ... ”

Anger flashed in Lola’s eyes as she
turned sideways to face the big man. “Listen, you scoundrel—I drove
this wagon all morning while you slept off your hangover. Now you
stop so we can pee and the horses can drink, goddamn
you!”

“
All right, all right!” Big
Dan relented, swinging the horses toward the creek. When they
approached the cut-bank, he said, “You got a half hour. No more,
an’ that’s final. These wagons are pullin’ out at
two-thirty.”

Lola hardly heard the last two
sentences, for she’d jumped down from the wagon before the horses
had halted, and was walking back along the trail as the other two
wagons approached, driven by two other actresses— Minnie Calhoun
and Glyneen Night. All the actresses took turns driving the second
wagon. When they weren’t driving, they usually slept in the wagons
or looked over song sheets or playbooks, or sewed
costumes.

“
Mr. Big-Shot’s givin’ us a
nature break, girls,” Lola called. “Pull up yonder.”

She beckoned as she turned and started
down the shallow bank, heading for a stand of cottonwoods in a wide
horseshoe of the creek, about a hundred yards away. The other
actresses climbed down from their wagons. The two younger girls.
Glyneen Night and Audrey Fare, still had enough energy after the
arduous journey from the last gold camp to jostle each other and
laugh as they approached the cottonwoods. Lola was only twenty-one,
still young by most standards, but in the last month or so she’d
felt old. Old and angry and tired.

She pulled up her dress, dropped her
bloomers, and squatted behind a cottonwood. Audrey Fare rustled the
grass as she approached and squatted behind a tree only ten yards
to Lola’s right. Audrey was only a year younger than Lola, but
because of Lola’s superior beauty, talent, and mysterious past,
Audrey looked up to her, in much the same way Lola had once looked
up to the dynamic, worldly Naomi Tate.

“
Lola,” the girl said as
she peed. “Can I ask you a question?”

“
As long as it’s not
personal,” Lola snapped.

She’d made it clear after she’d joined
the troupe that she would entertain no questions regarding her
immediate circumstances; no questions regarding what she was
obviously running from back in Johnson City. Naturally the others,
including Big Dan, were curious, since Big Dan had hired her in the
middle of the night and she’d abruptly appeared the next morning as
the wagons were heading out of town.

“
Oh, it’s not about you,
Lola,” the girl said mournfully. “It’s about me. Do you think
Harvey’ll stay true?”

“
Harvey?”

“
You know—the gent I met in
Lofton?”

Snickers rose from a tree behind
Lola.

Lola turned angrily. “Minnie, you hush
your mouth!” To Audrey, she said regretfully. “Honey, how long did
you know the man?”

For several seconds there was only the
sound of the prairie breeze churning the cottonwood leaves high
above their heads. Cloud shadows swept the gurgling creek and the
clover, mustard, and foxtails along its banks.

“
Two nights,” Audrey said.
She stood holding her dress above her waist as she adjusted her
bloomers.

“
Did you allow him to ...
well ... you know ... ?”

Audrey shrugged passively. “Well ... yeah
... ”

Minnie snickered again behind the
other tree.

“
Did he promise himself to
you before or after you gave yourself?” Lola asked
Audrey.

More snickers, louder this
time.

“
Minnie, I don’t want to
have to tell you again!” Lola cried. The snickers
ceased.

“
Before,” Audrey said
thinly.

Lola got her bloomers in place, smoothed
her dress down over her legs, and walked over to Audrey, who stood
holding herself before the cottonwood. Her thin blond hair blew
about her face.

“
Well, I’m not going to
sugarcoat it for you, sweetie,” Lola said, taking one of the girl’s
hands in hers. “But any man who promises himself to you after he’s
known you only a night or two is either a jasper or a peckerwood—a
varmint of the lowest kind. A snake in the grass. Most likely, he
promised himself just so he could get in your drawers. Now that he
got what he wanted, he’s no doubt promised himself to two or three
other girls since we left Lofton.”

“
Oh, Lola, he wouldn’t!”
the girl cried.

Lola put her arms around her. She knew
what it was like to be hurt by a man. It had happened to her once,
when she was only sixteen. You grow up fast in this business. She
knew one thing, though—she’d never let it happen again.