Staring Down the Devil (A Lou Prophet Western #5) (28 page)

Clark
grinned and turned his revolver on Prophet. “Be my pleasure, Boss.
Been wan-tin’ to do that for a long time. . . .”

The
barrel of Clark’s revolver yawned wide at Prophet’s face. Prophet’s
insides boiled.

He was
trying to decide which way to dodge when Clark suddenly yelled and
grabbed his left leg, bending at both knees. His gun barked, the
slug ricocheting off the ceiling above Prophet’s head and into the
floor behind him.

Instinctively Prophet ducked and saw Sergei’s hand come away
from Clark’s leg, leaving the six-inch arrow Prophet had removed
from the Russian’s back in the side of the bodyguard’s thigh.
Wasting no time, Prophet dived for his gun as Gay turned his own
revolver on him and fired.

The
bullet spanged off the floor behind Prophet. Gay fired again.
Prophet grabbed his Colt and rolled right, avoiding the second
slug. He stopped and, propped on his right shoulder, extended the
gun, aimed carefully so he wouldn’t hit the countess, and
fired.

The Colt jumped,
spitting smoke and fire. The bullet took Gay just below his
hairline. The crime boss gave a grunt and flew backward off his
feet. He landed half in and half out of the cave, his dead eyes
staring wide at the sun.

Prophet turned to Clark, who’d fallen to both knees but who
was now cursing furiously as he swung his revolver on Prophet.
Prophet snapped his Colt around and shot Clark twice in the chest,
laying him out against the cave wall. Clark dropped his gun. His
boots twitched, and then he lay still.

When Prophet shot
Gay, the countess had dropped to her knees and covered her head
with her arms. Now Prophet looked at her.

“You
okay?”

Slowly she
lowered her arms and nodded. Marya ran to her older sister, dropped
to her knees, and engulfed her in her arms.

“I am
so sorry, my sister!” the younger countess exclaimed. “I am so, so
sorry. I nearly got you killed!”

Meanwhile, Prophet turned to Sergei, who had propped himself
against the cave wall, wincing painfully but his color improving.
“Thanks, hoss,” Prophet said.

Sergei
waved it off. “What was I supposed
to do,
my dear Prophet? Lie around while you got your ass
shot?”

The Western slang
sounded ridiculous, voiced in the halting, Russian-accented
English. Prophet chuckled and walked to the cave entrance, looking
cautiously around. He saw no other men, no other horses but the two
standing about fifty yards up the canyon, nibbling a tuft of bunch
grass.

“Do
not feel so bad, Marya,” Sergei said behind Prophet. “At least you
did find your treasure, no?” The Russian chuckled.

Marya
pulled away from Natasha, her face brightening. “Yes! It is not all
for nothing. I found the treasure. We will be rich
forever!”

Natasha smiled. “At least, you think you found the
treasure,
ma cherie.”

“Oh, I
did, I did!” Marya climbed to her feet and turned to Prophet. “Will
you help me open the chest, Mr. Prophet?”

“Be
happy to, miss.”

He followed the
girl back into the cave shadows. A moment later they returned,
Prophet carrying the treasure chest by its two leather end straps.
The chest was a little bigger than a good-sized toolbox. Prophet
figured it weighed nearly seventy pounds.

He set
it down with a grunt, in the sunlight at the cave’s entrance. He
inspected the rusty padlock and drew his Colt. “Everyone turn
away.”

He aimed at the
lock and fired. The lock clattered as the bullet pierced it.
Prophet gave it a yank, and it fell from the hasps.

He
turned to Marya. “It’s all yours,” he said, and sidled away to give
her room.

Marya
glanced meaningfully at Natasha, then at Sergei, her eyes bright
with expectation. Rubbing her hands on her thighs, she said, “I am
almost afraid to open it.”

“Open
it, Marya,” Natasha urged. She appeared as eager as her younger
sister to see what was inside the chest.

Marya looked up
at Prophet, grinning. Then she turned to the chest, placed her
hands on the lid, and opened it.

The
girl’s eyes widened and her face blanched. She blinked several
times, as if to clear her vision. She said something in Russian
which Prophet translated as “Oh, my god!”

Prophet looked inside the chest. “Well, I’ll be jiggered,” he
said.

“What
is it? What is it?” Natasha cried, crawling over to peer
inside.

When she did, her
eyes lost their luster.

“Is it
gold?” Sergei asked from his place against the wall.

Silence hung
heavy in the cave for nearly a minute as Prophet, Marya, and
Natasha stared dully into the treasure chest. Flies buzzed, the sun
beat down, and cicadas whined outside.

Prophet gave a slow nod, his features flat.
“Yeah, you’re rich, all right,” he said
slowly.
He reached into the chest and
dipped up several handfuls of Marya’s “treasure.”

“Rich
in horseshit and rocks,” he said, letting the dried horse manure
and stones fall back into the chest.

Marya
stared at it. Slowly her eyes welled with tears. “No!” she cried,
dropping to the cave floor and covering her head with her
arms.
“No! It cannot be!”

Prophet shook his head, sifting through the rocks and horse
manure. “No treasure in here,” he said, feeling sorry for the girl.
“Not even a pinch of gold dust.”

“Bert
... he would not do this to me!” Marya cried. “He would
not!”

“Come,
little sister,” the countess said, kneeling down beside the crying
girl. “Let us go outside and get some air.”

Natasha was giving her sister a hand up, when Prophet, still
sifting through the dried dung in the chest, said,
“Wait.”

The women turned
to him, as did Sergei, who arched an eyebrow.

Prophet clawed out several handfuls of the dust. “Seems to be
a false bottom to this thing,” he said, leaning back to look at the
outside of the chest, then clawing out more dung and rocks. He’d
thought the chest had seemed inordinately heavy for only shit and
stones.

“Sure
as hell,” he said at last. “There is.”

“What?” Marya said with gravity, her eyes regaining some of
their luster as she pulled away from Natasha and knelt down again
beside Prophet.

She
sat there in hopeful silence, hands on her knees, as Prophet used
his bowie knife to pry up the chest’s false bottom — a thin wood
plank. As he lifted it out, his eyes widened and the muscles of his
face reshaped themselves into soft lines.

Marya sat with a
similar expression, her jaw dropping.

She
said nothing for several seconds as Prophet lifted out one gold bar
and then another and another, until four bars, sparkling brassily
in the desert sunlight, sat before the awestruck young countess.
Marya’s eyes seemed to sparkle of an inner gold light of their
own.

Prophet cuffed his hat back on his head and stared down at the
gold. “Hellfire and damnation,” he said, blowing a long breath
through puffed cheeks. “Would you look at that!”

“What
I want to know,” Prophet said to Marya over dinner two nights
later, “is why your prospector friend didn’t take out the Morales
gold as soon as he found it.”

The
four of them — Prophet, Sergei, and the two countesses — sat
together in the Gay Inn’s posh dining room. They’d made it back to
Broken Knee the day before without incident.

Sergei
was still shaky, and he drank vodka with a Russian’s abandon, but
the wound was healing nicely. They’d reported to the sheriff only
that Gay and the other bodyguards had been killed by Apaches. In
spite of the crime boss having owned ninety percent of the town, no
one had seemed all that distraught.

Marya’s gold was hidden away in one of the Countess Natasha’s
turtlebacked steamer trunks, awaiting departure for Denver and then
back East. Prophet figured the bars were worth at least a hundred
thousand dollars.

Marya
wiped her mouth with a cloth napkin and turned to Prophet. “He
thought that, with all the bandits in the area, it was safer right
where it was, until he mustered out of the army. Unfortunately,
Bert imbibed too much too often, and bragged about the find in a
Broken Knee saloon. Apparently, one of Gay’s men overheard. I was
with Bert when Gay attacked us, on our way here from the fort. One
of Gay’s men killed him.”

Natasha swallowed a chunk of steak and asked, “How was it you
found yourself with Bert,
cherie?”

Marya
shrugged. “I worked in restaurants and hotels to finance occasional
prospecting trips in the mountains. I had a wonderful time…until I
ran out of money and couldn’t find a job.” She sighed.

“I had
no money and nowhere to go but back home.” She turned to her
sister, a beseeching expression on her pretty, hazel-eyed face. “I
love you and momma and you, too, Serge, but I was not yet ready to
go home. I wanted still to be in the American West. I love the
West, and I was afraid that if I left, I would never come
back.”

“So
you stayed without telling us where you were,” Natasha said, her
tone lightly castigating. “But I still do not understand how you
came to know Bert.”

“Bert
found me camping alone in a dry riverbed down near Bisbee. He was
very kind. He taught me how to ride, to pan, and to use a rifle and
a single jack, and where to find different minerals. The Indians
left us alone. He’d been a soldier, but the Apaches had known him
for his kindness and generosity.” Marya’s voice grew quiet and sad,
her eyes pensive.

Brightening, she added, “Once, we even camped with a band of
Pimas.”

The
Countess Natasha stared at her sister with mute amazement, shaking
her head. “Marya, you are the black goat of our family.”

“That’s…sheep,” Prophet corrected. “Black sheep.”

“Whatever,” Natasha said, still regarding her sister with
befuddlement and wonder. “You will never cease to amaze me, my
sister.” She pulled Marya close to her and kissed her
temple.

“We
are rich,” Marya said. “If we invest wisely, we will never have to
worry again about money.”

“Yes,
after we give Lou his share, we will have more than enough to make
the family secure in Boston,” Natasha said, pouring herself a fresh
cup of coffee from the silver pot.

“Wait
a minute, wait a minute,” Prophet cut in, turning to Natasha. “I
told you, that’s your money. I don’t want anything more than the
fee we agreed on in Denver.”

Sergei
spooned sugar into his coffee and regarded Prophet skeptically.
“What do you have against money, my friend Lou? You have earned an
equal portion of the gold.”

“No
offense,” Prophet said. “But not on your life. Do you realize what
that kind of money would do to a man like me? Why, between the
booze and the women and the gambling sprees, I’d be dead within the
year!” He shook his head. “A man like me needs only enough money to
keep him and his horse fed. And for a few drinks with the ladies on
weekends, of course.”

Prophet winked at
Sergei, who threw his head back, laughing.

Later,
they filed out of the hotel, Natasha and Marya walking arm-in-arm,
still catching up in hushed French and Russian. The countess’s
stage was parked before the hitch rack, the two matched bays
looking ready and rarin’ for the long trek back to Denver. Prophet
had agreed to accompany the trio back north, scouting the way and
riding shotgun.

Prophet didn’t mind. The money was good, and it was too hot
for him in this country, anyway. The senoritas could wait. Besides,
he’d gotten rather attached to his and the countess’s late-night
trysts.

As he
untied Mean and Ugly from the hitch rack, the horse, as he often
did, gave Prophet’s shoulder a playful nip.

“Ouch!
Goddamnit, Mean. Why in the hell did you do that?”

The horse nicked
its ears and shook its head, pleased with itself. Prophet was about
to give the dun a good sock in the jaw when Sergei sidled up to
him.

“Uh,
Lou,” the Russian said in a low voice, watching the women board the
stage, holding the hems of their traveling skirts above their
ankles. “I just wanted to thank you.” He seemed to
hesitate.

“For
what, Serge? Diggin’ that arrow out of your back? You done already
thanked
me.”

The big Russian
smoothed his thick, black mustache down with his right hand,
thoughtful.

“No,”
he said. “You see, I know that the countess Natasha is, well, very
beautiful. And I know that she has — how do you say? — eyes for
you. I just wanted to thank you,
you know,
for not letting your man’s lust get the best of you.”

He
clapped Prophet on the shoulder. “You know what I am saying, Lou? I
am thanking you for not taking advantage of the countess’s
innocence.”

Prophet arched a brow. “Her innocence. Yes. Well, Sergei,
never let it be said that Lou Prophet ever took advantage of a
girl’s
innocence.”