The Devil's Lair (A Lou Prophet Western #6) (23 page)

“
I heard the shooting,” she said,
a sponge in her hand. “Vat happened?”

Prophet told her.

Silently, she turned, disappeared into the
kitchen, and returned a minute later with two steaming coffee cups.
When she’d set one cup in front of him and had sat down before the
other one, looking distracted, he said, “Tell me what Lovell’s
doing here, and so help me, if you get a look like you just
swallowed the whole hog—”

She looked at him hopefully. “You really
don’t know, Lou?”

“
If I knew I wouldn’t be askin’
you.”

“
Crumb didn’t tell
you?”

“
Didn’t tell me
what?”

“
They vork for him. They’re
his—how do you say it?” She flexed her arm, until her right bicep
bulged.

“
Muscle?”

“
Muscles. That’s it.”

“
Muscle for what?”

She rose quickly, moved around
the room pulling shades over the windows, and retook her seat
across from him. Keeping her voice low, she said, “Mr. Crumb owns
the town. All of ...
us
... ”

Prophet frowned. “What’re you talkin’
about—‘owns’?”

“
He owns all the land Bitter
Creek vas built on. He bought it from the railroad for very little
money, ven they decided not to run a line through here. But then
prospectors discovered gold along the creek. People like my
grandparents came here and bought land from him. The mining vas
very big and the miners needed supplies and saloons and vomen and
home-cooked food and ...”

“
I get the point,” Prophet
interrupted. “So they bought land from him and built their
businesses. Then what happened?”

“
The gold vent out.
Pinched
out.”

“
The miners left.”

“
Exactly.”

Prophet sat heavily back in his
chair. “Let me see if I got this right. You all paid
mucho dinero
for your land,
assuming the boom would make you all rich. But the boom went bust,
and now you’re all stuck with land and property you can’t pay
for?”

“
Veil, ve get traffic to and from
the mines to the vest, and vith the business from the ranchers
who’ve moved into the valley ...” Her voice trailed off.

Prophet cocked his head and squinted one
eye. “The boom busted, but you’re still making money. What’s the
problem?”

She leaned over the table, her
eyes wide, voice hard. “It’s not enough to pay off Mr. Crumb’s
loans. Each month he takes half of our incomes to pay only
the
interest
on loans ve couldn’t pay off if ve had twenty lifetimes.
‘Tributes,’ he calls them.”

“
So let him foreclose, and get
the hell out of here. You can all make fresh starts
elsewhere.”

“
He von’t foreclose. He von’t let
anyone who owes him money leave Bitter Creek. He owns the bank,
everything ... even several of the larger ranches.”

“
Well, hell,” Prophet said,
slamming his thumb down on a spoon, which flipped and rattled back
down to the table. “He can’t do that! It’s illegal. Me an’ Jeff
Davis
lost
the war!”

Quietly, she said, “He has done it,
Lou.”

“
With Whitman’s help, I take
it?”

“
Yes.”

“
And Dean Lovell.”

“
Yes.”

Prophet thought it over, frowning down at
the spoon by his cup. “He paid Whitman a wagon load of money to
make sure none of you slaves fled the farm, so to speak. But how
did Lovell fit in?”

“
Marshal Vitman vas just one man,
and he vas old. Besides, he vas not as evil as Mr. Crumb needed,
nor as capable. The Scanlons and the Thorson-Mahoney bunch vere
proving too much trouble for him and his young deputy. So Mr. Crumb
hired Lovell’s gang to make frequent stops here, to spend a few
days, to run off the troublemakers, and beat a few citizens to
remind us all vat vould happen if ve didn’t make our payments ...
or tried to leave.”

Prophet chuckled at little Henry Crumb’s
enormous balls.

“
It is not funny, Lou. People
have died here, innocent people trying to flee. I have seen Mr.
Crumb order men and even vomen vipped on Main Street.”

Prophet stared across the table at her.

In a taut voice, she added, “Lovell vould
spend a few days at a time here. Then he and his men vould leave,
and ve could never be sure ven ve vould see them again.” She
paused. “But ve always saw them again.”

Prophet laughed again, his eyes glinting
darkly. “Shit.”

She leaned toward him, a sorry
smile pulling at the corners of her full mouth. “And now they are
dead?
All
dead?”

“
Deader’n hell. I’m glad I didn’t
know it was Dean Lovell. Mighta made me hesitate ... and get
ventilated.”

Frieda threw her head back and laughed.
She clapped her hands together once. “Lou, do you know vat this
means?”

“
It means Crumb’s gonna be mad as
a hornet when he gets home. ‘Specially after I throw his fat ass in
his own jail.” A thought hit Prophet as he sipped his coffee. He
set the cup back in its saucer. “What’s Polk’s part in this
play-pretty?”

“
You know about Mr.
Polk?”

“
Had a run-in with him over at
Fianna Whitman’s last night. He was in the saloon earlier, and I
got the impression he wasn’t too pleased about my airing out
Lovell’s hide.”

Frieda bunched her lips angrily. “He is
rat! A ... stoolie bird...”

“
Pigeon?”

“
Yes, pigeon.”

“
How?”

“
The only one who could pay off
Crumb’s loan. He comes from a vealthy family. He is ... the vord is
... remittance man. From England. Ven he paid off his loan, he
bought in with Crumb … only he doesn’t think anyone else in town
knows.”

Prophet just looked at her, waiting.

“
He is Crumb’s partner and acts
as his stoolie pigeon,” Frieda said. “He has job vere he sees many
people every day, overhears our conversations. He spends every
night in the saloons, eavesdropping on men for hints someone might
be thinking about running away. It didn’t take many killings and
beatings before ve all got vise to who vas ratting the conspirators
out.”

“
Neat.”

“
Ha! Yes, neat!” Frieda
exclaimed.

“
And with Crumb running the
telegraph and controlling the stage depot, he’d know exactly what
messages were going in and out and who sent them.”

“
Lou, do you know vy I am alone
here? I am alone because Crumb killed my grandparents. Not
directly, but the strain ... and the vorry ...”

“
I’m sorry, Frieda.”

She looked at him through tear-washed
eyes. “And ... and you are not going to help him …”

“
Did you really think I
was?”

“
No,” she said, shaking her head.
“But the others ...”

“
That’s why all that silence in
the saloon earlier,” Prophet said. “They assumed I was in with
Crumb and Polk.”

Frieda scrubbed tears from her pink cheeks
with a corner of her apron, sniffed, and smiled. Reaching across
the table, she grabbed his hands in both of hers and said in a
husky voice, “Lou, I am going to make love to you tonight ... like
no voman has ever made love to you before.”

“
Frieda, I shouldn’t stay. I got
a lot on my mind tonight, and I still have someone lookin’ to turn
me toe-down…”

“
Nonsense. You have given me my
freedom, and I vill stay and I vill reward you vith my
body.”

Before he could respond, she’d bolted onto
his lap and was squirming around on him and kissing him. His
objections died in his throat.

A few minutes later, he found himself
upstairs, slowly stripping the clothes from her deliciously fleshy
body while caressing her breasts, pinching her nipples until she
shuddered and gasped as she pushed him onto his back.

Breathing hard and grunting, she opened
his pants, found what she was looking for, and went to work with
all the thrilling magic she’d promised.

Frieda’s ministrations quelled the gunfire
in his head so that within an hour after they’d started frolicking
in her squeaky bed, he felt as limp as a worn-out fiddle string.
When they were finally through, Frieda doctored his arm and fell
asleep on his chest.

He slept deeply, woke refreshed, and lay in
bed going over the Bitter Creek situation in his head.

Finally, he dressed quietly so not to awaken
Frieda, scanned the yard through the windows, and went outside. He
was walking north along the trail toward Main fifty yards away,
when a gun cracked and his hat was ripped from his head.

Damn. Didn’t this fella ever
rest?

Wheeling eastward, Prophet dropped to his
belly and brought the barn-blaster up. A gun sparked fifty yards
ahead, the slug kicking up gravel two feet before the bounty
hunter’s face. The shooter was too far away for the shotgun.
Prophet unslung the lanyard from his shoulder, set the shotgun
aside, and palmed his Colt.

The rifle cracked again.

Prophet fired two quick rounds at the gun
flash on the shadowy prairie, waited, then fired two more. The
shooter returned two shots from several yards left of where he’d
originally shot from.

Prophet winced as one slug tore a branch off
a shrub just ahead and right. The other slug whipped harmlessly
over his head and spanged off a rock behind him.

Casting another glance along the prairie, he
saw the shooter—a slender silhouette from this distance—retreat
toward the northeast, running. Prophet muttered an oath, bolted to
his feet, and gave chase, leaping over fallen mesquite branches,
rabbit brush, and sage tufts.

When he saw the shadow stop, he leapt to his
right, rolling off a shoulder and coming up to see two muzzle
flashes. He emptied his own pistol at the purple dot moving against
the milky eastern horizon.

He’d run fifty yards when he lost the
dot.

He continued running, but
stopped suddenly when the shooter bounded up from a swale on a
piebald horse, making a hard, fast beeline toward Prophet, the
hooves pounding, the horse blowing, the rider hunkered low over the
animal’s neck and yelling, “Gid-up, goddamn ye. Gid-up now
...
go
!
”

Prophet brought up his Colt and thumbed
back the hammer. Remembering he’d fired his last round, he cursed,
dropped the revolver back into its holster, turned toward the
oncoming horse, and crouched defensively.

The rider clawed his own
revolver from the holster on his right hip. Prophet dove left as
the man fired three er
rant rounds. When the man was thirty feet away, he
again raised the revolver and fired, but the jouncing saddle threw
off his aim, and the slugs plunked harmlessly into the
turf.

Prophet flung himself behind a
rabbit bush, and the man
’s last two shots whistled over his head. The
bounty hunter peered over the shrub. The horseman checked down his
piebald only ten feet away. Cursing, the man neck-reined into a
retreating turn.

Prophet bolted out from behind
the shrub and threw himself against the horse, clawing at the
shoulder of the gunman
’s long denim coat.

Doing so, he looked up into the square,
fair-skinned face, thin lips twisted into a snarl, the deep-set
eyes hooded with exasperation.

Prophet
’s hand slid off the man’s shoulder.
The rider jabbed an elbow hard against the bounty hunter’s
forehead, igniting sparks behind Prophet’s eyes.

For a moment, the world dimmed, and then the
bounty hunter felt himself rolling over the sagebrush and low rocks
as he watched the rider angle away. The gunman spurred the piebald
savagely. The horse dug its rear hooves into the prairie, whinnied,
and galloped west.

“
I’ll be back, ye son of a
bitch!” the fair-faced gunman yelled over his bobbing left
shoulder.

Prophet rose onto his knee. Catching his
breath, he gritted his teeth and watched the drygulcher merge with
the northern hogbacks.

“
No, you won’t, fella,” Prophet
wheezed between breaths. He heaved himself to his feet and took
mute inventory of his minor aches and pains. Still staring after
the rider, he brushed the dirt from his torn denims. “I’m after you
now.”

Prophet retrieved his
hat and the .45 that
had fallen from his holster when he’d jumped at the gunman, and
saddled Mean and Ugly. A quarter hour after the attack, he was
following the gunman’s trail through the hogbacks north of Bitter
Creek, the roofs of which the sun slowly gilded behind
him.

A mile north of town, the drygulcher had
followed a small creek, then turned up a steep hill through
scattered aspens and pines. Following the sign, Prophet crossed two
ridges, rising deeper into the mountains. By the time the sun had
climbed halfway up the eastern sky, he reached an obscure canyon
where the gunman had picked up an old mining road.