Helldorado (20 page)

“Goddamn you to hell!” Gleneanne clenched both hands at her sides, gritting her teeth. “I’m no worse than you! Why, you’re nothing but a goddamn penny-ante stage and saloon robber. Why, when I found you, you were rolling drunks in alleys because your father had cut you off from your monthly allowance!”

She jutted her chin like a hammer. “And I won’t have you talk about my boy that way! If you talk about him again, Miguel—if you ever mention Sam again, so help me God you’ll regret it. The men I know are bigger and meaner and
tougher
than the ones you know!”

Miguel drew deep on his quirley and blew the smoke toward the stars, laughing. “Well, I guess we’re about to find that out, aren’t we?”

Gleneanne glared up at him. Slowly, her eyes softened, and she opened her hands. “Please, Miguel. Don’t you see, honey, this can never work. We’re gonna get ourselves killed. If not killed, then hunted till the end of our days.”

“It would have helped if you’d killed one of the two hunters that came to town.”

“It would have helped if you’d convinced your father not to hire them.”

“I had no say in that, just as I have no say in anything around the bank in spite of the fact I’m supposed to be the president of the goddamn thing! The old man didn’t consult me on the topic—neither Severin nor my father did!—and I only found out about it when they mentioned it among themselves in passing. . . .”

“Okay, we’ve covered that,” Gleneanne said, reaching up again and placing her hands on his jaws. “The fact is they’re here. The ambush didn’t work and I made a mistake. I hesitated, didn’t do my job. But truth to tell, it wouldn’t have mattered, anyway. Because even with Lou and that girl out of the way, this plan is just rotten to the core. If we continue, we’ll get nothing out of it but blood. Our own blood spilled in the streets of Juniper!”

Miguel laughed again. “You’re sounding like you do on stage!”

Gleneanne chuffed and folded her arms across her breasts. Now he’d offended her work. She knew that, in spite of all the work she’d put into learning how to act on stage, she was no Lillie Langtry. But he didn’t have to throw that up in her face as well. First her fallen ways, then her bastard son—a son who had Prophet’s features, which was why she’d had so much trouble sliding that stiletto into the bounty hunter’s heart the previous night—and now her thespian aspirations.

Aspirations that, like her son, she’d given up on. The son she’d adopted out.

Her aspirations had turned to dust inside her while she’d stacked all her chips, every one, on this handsome, evil jasper before her. This handsome, evil man who had a father and a sheriff to wreak vengeance on . . . and likely get her and himself killed in the bargain.

Miguel gave a sheepish sigh and placed his hands on Gleneanne’s shoulders. “Ah, I was just joshin’, honey. I’m a little nervous, I reckon, with what we got comin’ tomorrow.”

“That’s what I’m sayin’, Miguel,” Gleneanne said, biting back her anger. “I’m nervous, too. Let’s forget this thing. It’s too big, too crazy. Let’s leave here tomorrow, first thing!”

If she was going to get out of here, and away from this ghastly thing they’d been planning together for the past two years, getting all their men and themselves in place in Juniper, she’d have to leave with him. He had money. She had only the few dollars she was paid each week by the theater company she traveled with.

That didn’t mean, however, she wouldn’t get shed of the revenge-happy firebrand as quickly as she could, once she had a sizeable grubstake and could make another go of it somewhere else on her own. If there was one thing Gleneanne O’Shay knew how to do, that was how to make the best of a bad situation.

“That’s out of the question.” Miguel’s voice turned hard once more. He squeezed her shoulders and looked down at her seriously. “We’re going through with this, and when we’re richer than you’ve ever dreamed and sitting pretty in San Francisco, you’ll be glad you didn’t pull out on me.”

“It’s not gonna work, Miguel. I got a bad feelin’.”

“Because of Prophet?” Miguel scowled down at her. “He and Miss Bonaventure will be taken out of the equation soon. Before the last gold shipment pulls into town. We’ve seen the last of them.”

Gleneanne’s stomach turned to ice, thinking about Prophet being gunned down like a rabid dog. The father of the boy she’d never see again. But if her and Miguel’s plan had any chance of working at all, Lou had to be taken down.

She didn’t like it. She didn’t like it at all. Prophet was a much better man than Miguel Encina could ever hope of becoming. The best man she’d ever known. But it was too late to change that part of the plan. It was all set. It was a dog-eat-dog world, and Poor Lou would have to be sacrificed.

Gleneanne realized now that she could beg Miguel until sunrise tomorrow, but there was no changing their part in it, either. Seeing something in the young banker’s eyes, she narrowed one of her own and canted her head slightly as a pang of jealousy nipped at her consciousness.

“What’s the matter? You sorta wishin’ things were different with that blond-headed pistoleer?”

Miguel dropped his hands from Gleneanne’s shoulders.

A chill rippled through the former Sivvy Hallenback. Was Miguel considering double-crossing her, as she was considering doing to him?

She stepped back as she said tightly, “You sorta wishin’ you hadn’t given the order to gun them both? Maybe just Lou? Spare the blond . . . maybe let her take my place in your crazy plan?”

It was so dark that she didn’t see the hand snapping toward her until it was too late. A more vicious blow than before, it spun her around and sent her sprawling in the pine needles and gravel, her head reeling.

“Maybe, maybe not,” Miguel said, standing over her and balling his fists at his sides. “You best remember whose plan it is and who has the power to change it. In the light of that, you might want to take care how you talk to me in the future, Miss Gleneanne O’Shay.”

With that he flicked his cigarette stub at her, spun, and walked away in the darkness.

Pushing up on her hands and knees, Gleneanne shook her head to clear the cobwebs. She heard the squawk of tack as Miguel mounted his horse. Thuds sounded as he cantered past her, heading back toward town.

“If you’re still a part of this,” he said over his shoulder, “I’ll see you in town tomorrow. If not, I’ll see you in hell!”

The thuds of his galloping horse dwindled to silence.

Gleneanne heaved herself to her feet, sobbing quietly, utterly confused and frightened, and staggered back to the copper-bottom mare.

“HEY, PROPHET!” ORRIE Hitt called. “Casol’s comin’ like his hoss’s tail’s on fire!”

Prophet, who was riding ahead of the wagon the next day, with Louisa riding on his right, turned his horse off the trail and hipped around to see Juventino Casol bounding down the rise behind the caravan. The Mexican rode crouched over his saddle horn, sombrero flopping in the wind behind him, dust rising in the wake of his galloping white-socked black. Hitt stopped the wagon, hauling back sharply on the mules’ ribbons and bellowing.

The other two guards, Sawrod and Brewster, halted their own mounts behind the wagon and turned, shucking rifles from saddle scabbards and levering shells into chambers.

“What do you think’s his problem?” Brewster said, spitting a cigar stub into the dust beneath his horse.

“Looks like he seen a ghost,” said Hitt.

Prophet glanced at Louisa, who returned it warily. The Mexican had been watching their back trail from a half-mile out, and he’d obviously spied something out of whack. Prophet gigged Mean and Ugly back along the side of the trail, skirting the wagon, while Louisa remained ahead of it, her rifle in her hands and her gaze directed up trail in case they were about to be ambushed from the front.

Prophet was ten yards behind Sawrod and Brewster when the Mexican checked his sweat-silvered black down, breathing hard. He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Three riders. Been shadowing us a while. Whenever I ride back to get a better look, they disappear, like phantoms. When I ride ahead I look back and there they are again, keeping pace with the wagon but neither speeding up nor slowing down.”

Casol sleeved sweat from his black brows. “I don’t like it.”

Prophet didn’t like it, either. It had all the ear notches of a bushwhack.

“You fellas keep movin’,” he ordered. “Me an’ Louisa’ll hang back and check out Casol’s shadows. Keep your eyes skinned.”

Nodding, Hitt shook the ribbons over the mules’ backs, bellowing, “Giddyup there, ya dunderheaded cusses!”

“We’ll wait for you just beyond the canyon yonder,” Brewster yelled behind him as he, Casol, and Sawrod cantered their mounts after the wagon while Louisa turned her pinto off the trail and held back.

When the wagon was gone, she turned to Prophet. “Wait here?”

“Why not?”

“How’s your neck?”

Prophet raked his gloved left hand under his shirt collar and winced. “That bitch is really pokin’ me. But it ain’t just recent. She started proddin’ me hard in the middle of the night. Didn’t sleep much after three a.m.”

Louisa stepped down from her saddle and led her pinto into boulders and brush along the trail’s west side. “You could hang up your guns and start telling fortunes for a living, Lou.”

“Maybe I’m just gettin’ rattled.”

Louisa shook her head. “It’s starting to add up.” She glanced back at Prophet, who was leading Mean and Ugly up behind her while peering north along their back trail. “The bushwhackings in Juniper. Now Casol’s three riders. Must mean a holdup’s on the way.”

“I don’t know.” Prophet scowled as he led Mean around behind a boulder snag and looped the horse’s reins around a cedar branch. “My tail’s up, girl. Somethin’ don’t feel right in my belly, so I got that to go with the cold finger against my neck.”

“You keep on, you’re gonna need a sawbones soon.”

“You don’t feel nothin’ unusual?”

“Maybe I’ve been relying on you too long.”

“Or maybe you’re just feelin’ all fuzzy and gooey over that banker’s boy.” Prophet set his rifle on his shoulder and stole slowly around the boulder, heading toward the trail but keeping his head down.

Following close on his heels, Louisa said, “If any man could ever do it . . .”

Prophet gave a caustic snort. He hunkered down behind a boulder, edging a look over the top. The trail snaking through pinyon pines was quiet, only a jackrabbit nibbling fescue in the shade of a gnarled cottonwood.

“Let’s hole up here.” Prophet sank to his butt and raised his knees. “Should be able to hear ’em when they pass by. When they’re just beyond us, we’ll haul down on ’em, get ’em off their hosses fast, find out what they’re up to.”

Louisa sank down beside him, rested her back against the boulder. “You think they’re just gonna come right out and say, ‘Oh, darn, you caught us. Yes, we’re after the gold, all right. Badmen’s what we are.’”

Prophet gave her a sidelong look as he dug his makings out of his shirt pocket. “I been in the business long enough to know a gold thief when I see one. If they’re drovers, they’ll have shit on their boots. You can tell a prospector from a couple miles out. They smell like enclosed places and bacon grease. Most gotta wild look in their eyes.”

“And what do gold thieves look like?”

“Greedy sons o’ bitches,” Prophet chuckled, dribbling chopped tobacco onto a leaf of brown paper troughed in his fingers. “And they’ll be sweatin’ it.”

“You’re not gonna smoke that?”

“What do you think I’m rollin’ it for?”

“You know how I hate the smell of tobacco smoke.”

“So get downwind of me.” Prophet chuckled again, this time wryly. “Lordy, I hope that young Encina boy knows how easy it is to twist your panties.”

“It’s only easy for you,” Louisa said, getting up and moving to his other side, upwind of him, before sitting back down against the rock once more. “No one could ever twist ’em like you could.”

Prophet lit the quirley.

“You don’t think they’ll smell it?”

“I ain’t no fool, girl. I know which direction’s the wind’s from. That’s why I’m sittin’ over here and not on the other side of the trail. I can smell them from here—them and their hosses.”

Louisa looked at him, her eyes crossing slightly with skepticism. “You can really smell a man and a horse from thirty yards?”

“Thirty yards, hell!” Prophet drew deep on the cigarette, blew it toward the ground, and watched the wind carry it straight out away from him. “I can smell a miner from a hundred.”

He felt Louisa’s eyes on him. He turned to her. She stared at him, smiling obliquely. She reached over, tugged the brim of his battered hat down a little, and said with the thickness of emotion in her voice, “I’m gonna miss you.”

“You think so?”

She nodded. Leaning toward him, she pecked his cheek, then rubbed her own cheek on his shoulder.

Prophet draped his arms over his knees and stared into the brush and rocks beyond him. “I raise a stink for fun, but that Miguel kid’s a good young man. I got a sense about folks.”

“I hope you’re right.”

“You got a good sense about him?”

Louisa hiked a shoulder. “I did have a good sense. Last night. But after I slept on it—I don’t know—maybe he just seems a little too much like the young buck from every girl’s dream. Too much of a shine on him.”

“You’re just nervous,” Prophet told her, filing ashes off his quirley with his thumbnail. “You tried settlin’ down before and it didn’t work out. You don’t think it will this time, neither. But he is only the first younker you met here, so if he ain’t the one, there’s plenty more where he came from.” He chuckled. “But maybe not with as much money.”

“Money’s nothing, Lou.”

“To some, it sure as hell is.” Prophet frowned and craned his neck to look around the boulder toward the trail. “Where the hell are them two, anyways? Were we chinnin’ so hard we let ’em get around us?”