Staring Down the Devil (A Lou Prophet Western #5) (5 page)
Read Staring Down the Devil (A Lou Prophet Western #5) Online
Authors: Peter Brandvold
Tags: #pulp fiction, #wild west, #cowboys, #old west, #outlaws, #western frontier, #peter brandvold, #frontier fiction, #piccadilly publishing, #lou prophet
Having
second and third thoughts about accepting the Russians’ offer to
guide them to Arizona, Prophet clutched his Winchester in both
hands as he made his way through a crevice in a rimrock, frowning
and gazing around warily.
He and
the Russians had been on the trail for nearly a week. He figured
they were about a hundred miles south of Denver. They had several
weeks of travel ahead, and Prophet thought it pure loco that they
had not taken a train as far as Durango. The countess, however, had
nixed the idea as soon as Prophet had voiced it. She wanted to be
in control of her own schedule. Besides, she didn’t like American
trains.
They were noisy, smelly, and
congested with
“simple people.”
She’d
bought the coach from the Ellison-Daniels stage line in St. Louis
and outfitted the rig to her own specifications. That’s how she and
Sergei had traveled to Denver and how they intended to travel
throughout the West, Sergei in the driver’s box, she in the coach
reading and napping and sipping afternoon cordials while smoking
her French cheroots.
Prophet thought it the most decadent thing he’d ever seen. The
Russians acted like they were on some extended rich man’s picnic.
Already one of the stage horses had thrown a shoe, another had
almost pulled the whole contraption — countess and all — into a
ravine, and Sergei had almost snapped an axle when he’d rammed the
coach into a rock.
To top
it all off, neither the countess nor
Sergei
had told Prophet why they were look
ing for
the countess’s sister. All he knew was that Marya Roskov was
somewhere in Arizona and that the countess Natasha wanted to find
her and bring her back to Boston.
That
was all he knew and, as the countess had informed him in her
highfalutin tone, all he needed to know for now. If it hadn’t been
for the thousand dollars he’d already pocketed and his humiliating
morning with Louisa Bonaventure, Prophet would have told these
uppity royals where they could drive their wagon. Before he started
a job, he wanted to know what the job — the whole job —
entailed.
He
wasn’t sure, though, that in this circumstance he really wanted to
know. Deep down, he had a bad feeling. Anyway, he’d be south for
the winter. He’d never liked snow.
It was
seven o’clock in the morning of their fourth day on the trail. From
his watch atop a nearby ridge overlooking their camp, Prophet
thought he’d seen movement. He’d worked his way over to investigate
while the countess and Sergei slept.
“Shoulda woke ‘em up,” Prophet thought. “Let them do a little
worryin’ for a change. Damn foreigners . . .”
He came to the
end of the crevice and stepped into a box canyon of sorts, lined
with strewn boulders appearing milky in the dawn light.
Prophet looked around, listening. It was too quiet. He
half-turned to his right in time to see a figure leaping from the
rocky escarpment above him. He didn’t have time to raise the
Winchester before the Indian was on him, plunging a knife toward
his chest.
Prophet dropped the Winchester as he reached for the knife,
the force of the leaping savage bowling him onto his back. The
Indian landed on top of him, howling, cursing, and punching Prophet
with his left fist while trying to wrench his right free of
Prophet’s grasp.
Prophet fought for the knife, but the young Ute had an iron
grip. Holding the kid’s right hand with his own left, Prophet
dropped his right hand to his Colt, whipped it out of its holster,
and stuck the barrel in the kid’s ribs.
The
brave froze, staring with sudden terror into Prophet’s
eyes.
“You
done bought it, kid,” Prophet said through gritted
teeth.
The
shot was muffled by the brave’s belly.
The kid jerked,
giving a startled cry and groan. He slumped sideways. Prophet gave
him a shove, scrambling to his feet.
Two
more braves appeared before him, crouched and fiery-eyed, long
black hair whipping in the morning breeze. They wore cotton shirts,
hide loincloths, and beaded moccasins. One was a few inches shorter
than the other’s five-eight or-nine. The shorter brave wore a
soldier’s faded blue kepi.
Prophet brought
the gun up.
Seeing
the Colt, the braves hesitated. They were armed with nothing more
than the knives in their hands. Prophet hoped that, seeing the
score, they’d have sense enough to run.
Their doubts did
not last, however. Black eyes dancing with fury, they leaped toward
the bounty hunter at the same time. Prophet stepped back,
crouching, and triggered the Colt twice, the reports echoing off
the rocks. Screaming, both braves stopped, jerked back, and fell.
The blood bubbling from their chests turned bright red in the
climbing morning sun.
“Damn
younkers,” Prophet griped, scowling at the bodies.
He
leaped atop a boulder pile and swept his gaze around, looking for
more would-be attackers. He saw little but rock, purple shadows,
and sage tufts, but there had to be a larger band around here
somewhere. He just hoped they hadn’t heard his pistol shots. If
they had, there would be more braves here in a minute.
Deciding he had
little time to spare, Prophet left the bodies where they lay, and
hurried back the way he had come. He slipped and slid in the gravel
as he descended the last ridge, and saw that the Russians were up
and about — Sergei building a breakfast fire and the countess
sitting on a canvas chair by the coach, brushing her hair to a keen
shine.
“Load
up,” Prophet said as he approached, a little breathless. “We got
Injun trouble.”
“Injun
trouble?” Sergei said, squatting by the fire.
“That’s what I said.” Prophet grabbed his saddle. “Load up,
and be quick about it.”
“Are
you sure, Mr. Prophet?” the countess asked him. “It seems so
peaceful out here.” She looked around with an ethereal expression,
appreciating the morning with its birds and freshening
breeze.
“I
take it you didn’t hear my pistol shots?” Prophet asked, his
irritation building.
Sergei
and the countess looked at each other blankly. “We heard nothing,”
the countess said.
“Three
braves jumped me a couple of ridges over. I don’t know if they’ve
been following us or just happened onto me this morning, but we
need to assume the worst — that there’s a larger band nearby — and
fog it out of here.”
He turned toward
his horse, his saddle in one hand, rifle in the other.
“Lou,
are you sure you did not fall asleep and were dreaming?” Sergei
asked with a patronizing smile. “I mean, we heard no shots. . .
.”
Prophet turned to the big Cossack, anger burning his gut. “For
one thing, mister, I don’t fall asleep on night watch. For another,
I don’t dream up trouble for the fun of it. Now, if you didn’t hear
those pistol shots — good. Maybe no one else did, either. But it
would be pure loco to assume they didn’t. So if you and the royal
wouldn’t mind” — he glanced at the countess still sitting in her
canvas chair, ivory brush in her hand — “haul ass!”
Face
red with exasperation, Prophet whipped around and stalked off
toward his horse. Sergei glanced at the countess Natasha and
shrugged. “I think our Mr. Prophet is dreaming, for I heard nothing
and I have the ears of a young wolf,” he told her in French. “But
let us humor him this morning, eh,
ma
cherie?”
“I
suppose that would be best,” she agreed, rising, the corners of her
mouth turned down. “But we’ll have to stop for tea later. I simply
cannot live without my tea. ...”
They
rode that day and then another, and Prophet, keeping a keen eye on
their back-trail, saw no more Indians. He knew the Russians thought
he
’d been imagining things, and for that
reason he almost wished they would see some Utes — a whole warrior
band bearing down on them from a rimrock, arrows notched and lances
ready to fly.
But that would
have been cutting off his nose to spite his face. . . .
These Russians
could sure be irritating.
That night they
camped in a narrow canyon sheltered by pines and junipers and
cooked the deer Prophet had shot earlier.
The
next morning Prophet climbed a hill
above
the canyon and raised his field glasses.
Slowly he made a hundred-and-sixty-degree scan of the
surrounding countryside — broken prairie bathed in morning
sunlight, with the first front of the Rockies looming sagely on his
left, their peaks mantled in snow.
A chill wind
whistled through a scraggly pine. Prophet lifted the collar of his
sheepskin coat. It was cold this high in the foothills, and it was
bound to get higher and colder before they descended into the
Arizona desert.
Swinging his gaze back to the camp, he
watched with disbelief as Sergei washed the
coach with a sponge and soapy water from a wooden
bucket. White sleeves rolled up his arms, a stogie jutting from his
mouth, the Russian scrubbed away as though on a general’s polished
rockaway.
Meanwhile, the
countess reclined against one of her half-dozen steamer trunks
beneath a fringed silk parasol. She smoked a cheroot while reading
a leather-bound book the size of a hatbox.
“Jesus
H. Christ,” Prophet grumbled.
Why
did he always find himself in the most outlandish situations? Was
it that pact he’d made with the devil years ago, after the War?
He’d vowed to shovel all the coal ole Scratch desired down below,
as long he could live and drink and fornicate to his heart’s
content on this side of the sod, forgetting all about those he’d
seen killed and mangled at Chickamauga and Ringgold and Kennesaw
Mountain.
“Maybe
I shoulda read the fine print in the contract,” Prophet mused,
watching the Russian washing the coach. “I shoulda known that deal
was just too good to be true.”
He lowered the
glasses and started down the ridge.
Ed
Champion trotted his coyote dun over the lip of the ridge and
descended the draw. The horse snorted and blew as its hooves bit
deep in the loose clay. At the draw
’s
brushy bottom, Champion reined the horse right and soon smelled the
fire and the aroma of scorched coffee.
Wade
Snelling stood before the fire, his Spencer rifle in his hands, a
wary expression on his face. When he saw it was Champion, his
shoulders relaxed and he told the others squatting around the fire,
“It’s Ed.”
“What
took you so long, hoss?” Earl Cary said to Champion, lifting his
little round pig eyes over the rim of his smoking coffee
cup.
“Took
me awhile to find their camp. That bounty hunter has them bedded
down in a little ravine. I think it’s doable, though.”
“You
sure, Ed?” Bobby St. John asked snidely. “Sure you don’t want to
wait another week or two? Maybe they’ll ride up to us and invite us
to all their money and whatever gold they have, and, hell, maybe
they’ll throw in the girl while they’re at it.”
Champion scowled. “You think I’m overcautious, that it,
Bobby?”
“Oh, I
didn’t say that, Ed,” the one-eyed St. John said. From his perch on
a rock, he grinned into the fire.
“I
didn’t see any reason to rush things,” Champion said. “They’re
goin’ in our direction, for chrissakes. Why not wait till the
opportunity seems right? That Prophet — he’s savvy. I can tell by
the ground he chooses for camping every night. And the Russian
don’t look like no tit-suckin’ calf, neither.”
St. John sipped
his coffee, adjusted the patch over his right eye, and continued
grinning into the fire.
“Buford, bring me a cup o’ that coffee,” Champion demanded,
still steaming over St. John’s jibe.
The
bastard didn’t have any respect for Champion — that was obvious.
St. John was too new to the group to realize what happened to those
who questioned Champion’s authority, not to mention his brass.
Well, maybe he’d just find out — sooner rather than
later.
When
young Buford Linley had brought Champion a mug of coffee, Champion
took a sip, blowing ripples. “Well, what’d I just say?” he yelled.
“We’re gonna do it. Now! Move your sorry asses! You, too, St.
John!”
All the boys
around the fire jumped to their feet and hustled over to their
horses tied to a picket line several yards away. All but St. John,
that was.
The
one-eyed cowboy from Texas sat on his haunches another thirty
seconds, took another two ponderous sips from his coffee, then
tossed the dregs in the fire. Only then did he stand, stretch, kick
one foot out as if to clear the creaks from his knee, and saunter
over to his horse. He dropped the cup in his saddlebags.
Champion watched him, his broad nostrils flared in a snarl.
“Proddy son of a bitch,” he muttered, lifting his hat and running a
hand brusquely over the bald dome of his head. “He’s gonna rue the
day he ever galled my ass . . . that’s for damn sure.”
A few minutes
later all the men were mounted. They gathered around Champion, who
was still drinking his coffee.
He
said, “They’re in a little ravine about two miles south. Follow me
and stick close and for god’s sake keep your traps shut, and no
smokin’.” He looked at St. John. “Understand?”
St. John looked
back at Champion and smiled, showing all his teeth.
The
others said they understood, casting cautious glances at the silent
St. John, then shuttling them back to their leader. With a grunt,
Champion tossed out his coffee grounds, stowed the cup in his
saddlebags, and reined his horse back the way he’d come.
It was
getting dark, the first stars appearing. The eight-man party rode
slowly up the side of the ravine, onto the ridge, and out across
the rolling prairie, heading south. Fifteen minutes later Champion
reined his horse to a stop at the mouth of a dark ravine opening
onto a gurgling creek swathed in beech trees.
Quietly he told
the men his plan. Then he and young Buford Linley rode out of the
ravine, turned left at the creek, and followed the meandering game
trail downstream. They rode side by side in silence as the last
light bled from the sky and a beaver slapped the water, flushing a
grouse from a thicket.
As they rode,
Champion released the hammer thong over his Colt and loosened the
revolver in his holster, getting set for the dance, as they say,
and imagining what that pretty little Russian bitch would feel like
under his blankets tonight.
