The Devil and Lou Prophet (13 page)

Prophet turned sharply to his left as a
loud snore rose, pumping his heart and nearly buckling his knees.
It was Mike Clatsop, fallen asleep in the rocking chair, head back,
jaw rising and falling as he breathed. A light in the curtained
window shone on the pink pate of his bald head.

“
Sorry for the trouble,
old-timer,” Prophet mumbled, lighting the cigarette and turning to
the barnyard. He squatted on his haunches, smoking and
thinking.

As many men would be sent as needed.
If that was so, who would the next be and when would they come?
Tonight? Tomorrow? The next day?

If that was so, why was he doing this?
Why didn’t he just turn the girl loose? Prophet could mail the
money back. It wasn’t much in the first place, and McCreedy should
have told him the danger he’d face if he took the job—if McCreedy
knew. But there was the problem of Prophet’s debt to the Johnson
City sheriff, who had saved him from a good, old-fashioned neck
stretching down in Kansas, all those years ago.

Prophet brought the quirley to his
lips and drew deep. Blowing smoke, he lowered his head and shook
it, feeling the knot of anger and defiance in the pit of his
stomach. He wasn’t quitting. Not only because he’d never quit
anything he’d started in his life, but because someone wanted him
to.

It was his own stubborn pride that
might very well get him and the girl killed, but he wasn’t a
quitter, and he could no more change his nature than the color of
his eyes.

He finished the cigarette, stubbed it
out on the ground, and retrieved his saddlebags, shotgun, and rifle
from the luggage boot. He hauled them upstairs, found an unoccupied
room, and changed back into his trail clothes, embarrassed about
the failed ruse. What suit could hide what he was—a
six-foot-three-inch, bull-necked, ham-handed Georgia hick turned
witless bounty hunter? She’d seen through him from the get-go. And
the badge fiasco!

“
You’re about as dumb as
they come, Prophet,” he scolded himself, stomping into his old
boots. His face cracked a smile at the snug, familiar fit of the
old leather, the calluses rubbed by the others thanking him almost
audibly.

Decked out in blue jeans, buckskin
tunic, blue bandanna, and weather-beaten hat, he headed downstairs
with the new suit and boots rolled under an arm.

“
Here you go, Pop,” he said
to the old man washing up at the stove. “A new suit for Sundays.”
He tossed the clothes on a chair and walked outside.

The two boys stood beside the stage,
looking up at the rooftop luggage rack, where Frank Harvey still
lay, wrapped in rope. Mike Clatsop snored in the rocker.

The boys turned to him. The one with
the scraggly muttonchops said, “Gramps said we’re s’posed to bury
him.” His voice was dull, his eyes wide with
apprehension.

“
So you haven’t seen a dead
man before—that it?”

“
That’s right,” the other
boy did not hesitate to admit.

Prophet smiled. “I’ll take care of it.
Just hunt me up a shovel, will you?”

Prophet climbed onto the
stage.

“
You’re gonna need help
gettin’ him down from there,” Muttonchops said.

Prophet shook his head as he straddled
Harvey’s body, slipping his knife from his belt sheath. “Gettin’
him up here was a bitch,” he said, cutting the ropes holding Harvey
to the luggage rack. “Gettin’ him down’s the easy part.”

He resheathed his knife, grabbed an
arm and a leg, and, with a grunt, rolled Harvey over the side. The
dead man landed in the dirt with a heavy thud.

“
Jesus, mister!” protested
the boy with only the mustache.

“
He’s dead, for
chrissakes,” Prophet said. “What were you two gonna do—bust your
guts for a bag of bones?” Climbing down, he shook his head. “Never
send boys to do a man’s work.”

Prophet stood between Frank Harvey’s
legs and, imitating a draft horse between two shafts, lifted the
dead man’s ankles to his sides. He dragged him out behind the barn,
one of the boys following. When he found some soft earth over a dry
creek bed, the weeds and bushes glittering in the starlight, the
other boy brought a shovel, and Prophet began to dig while the two
boys stood there silently watching, awfully fascinated.

When he’d dug for a short time, he
handed the shovel to the boy with the muttonchops, who dug for
another ten minutes.

“
That’s deep enough,”
Prophet said. He’d been smoking and keeping an eye on the
yard.

He rolled the body into the grave and,
cigarette dangling from his mouth, covered the hole with dirt,
patted it smooth. “Well, that about does it. Wasn’t so bad,
eh?”

“
Aren’t you gonna cover him
with rocks?” the boy with only the mustache asked,
troubled.

“
What for?”

“
So critters don’t dig up
his bones. There’s wolves prowl around here.”

“
They can help themselves,”
Prophet grunted.

He returned the shovel to the boy with
the mutton-chops and started back to the yard, the boys following
silently behind him. When he came around the barn, he stopped
suddenly, adrenaline jetting in his veins.

Two saddled horses were tied to the hitch
rack before the house, lathered like they’d been ridden hard to get
here.

Scolding himself for not keeping a
closer watch on the yard—he was going to get that girl killed
yet—Prophet made a beeline for the house and jerked the screen door
open. Stepping inside, he raked his eyes across the lantern-lit
room.

Two men, broadened by the shadows cast by
the lanterns, sat at a table close to the kitchen. They were
drinking coffee, and they looked up quickly as Prophet stepped into
the room.

Silence yawned as the two factions
regarded each other like unfamiliar dogs. The faces of both
strangers were silhouetted against the lantern hanging on the wall
behind them. Their hats lay on the table, their longish hair
sweat-matted to their scalps. Both wore hide vests, dusters, and
bandannas. Prophet couldn’t see their guns, but he knew they were
packing iron.

Finally, one of the newcomers said,
“Hidy,” and brought his cup to his lips and drank.

“
Hidy,” Prophet said.
“Didn’t know we had company.”

“
Just rode in.” the taller
of the two men said. He sat facing Prophet directly. The other man
sat to his left, facing the outside wall and holding his cup to his
face with both hands.

Prophet sauntered over to a table,
pulled a chair out, and sat down. “Musta rode in mighty fast,” he
said, grinning. “Those horses are lathered a bit.”

The two strangers said nothing to
this. Prophet could hear someone moving around in the kitchen,
opening and closing a squeaky range door.

“
I’m Prophet,” the bounty
man said, conversationally, trying to feel the two men out, hoping
they hadn’t been sent for the girl, while the alarms in his head
told him otherwise.

“
That right?” said the tall
man. He glanced at the other man; his dark eyes having acquired a
humorous cast, they slid back to Prophet. “We’re Smith and
Jones.”

He looked at his partner again and
grinned. His partner laughed. He covered his mouth when the woman
came out of the kitchen with an angry sigh, carrying two steaming
plates. She set the plates before the men, glanced at Prophet with
a scowl, then turned back toward the kitchen.

“
Oh, miss,” the tall man
called, extending his cup. “Could I have more coffee?”

“
Yeah, me, too,” his
partner chimed in.

The woman went into the kitchen and
returned with the black enamel pot, holding the handle with a
leather mitt. She slopped coffee into the men’s cups while they
ate.

“
What about you?” she said,
shooting a look across the room at Prophet. “You want coffee,
too?”

Prophet figured she couldn’t get much
angrier, so he went ahead and voiced his wish. “You have any o’
that pie left?”

Unexpectedly, her eyes softened. “You
liked that pie, did ye?”

“
If you weren’t already
married, you would be ... first thing in the mornin’.” Prophet’s
eyes slitted flirtatiously.

She snickered and went into the
kitchen, from which a tinny clatter issued. She reappeared a moment
later with a big piece of pie and a stone mug of coffee, so black
it would have floated a horseshoe.

“
Much obliged,
Mrs.—”

“
Hill,” she finished for
him, her haughty demeanor returned. She set the coffee pot on the
newcomers’ table and addressed them automatically. “Now I’m
cleaning up the kitchen and going to bed. I don’t serve all night
long. Help yourselves to more coffee, but when it’s gone, it’s
gone. No gambling and no roughhousing on the premises.”

With that, she tossed a lock of stray
hair back from her face, returned to the kitchen, and started
priming a squeaky well pump. Prophet picked up his fork and sliced
into his pie, eyeing the newcomers eating with noisy
abandon.

He chewed a forkful of pie
thoughtfully and swallowed. “Who’s Smith and who’s
Jones?”

The tall man looked up from his plate,
both cheeks bulging as he chewed. When he opened his mouth, Prophet
could see a biscuit. “He’s Smith an’ I’m Jones.”

Prophet nodded. He forked pie into his
mouth and said, “Where you from ... Mr. Smith and Mr.
Jones?”

The short man turned his head sharply
to Prophet, squinting his eyes. “Well, ain’t you the snoopy
one!”

“
Easy, Morg—” The tall man
glanced at Prophet. “I mean Jones. He’s just bein’ friendly, that’s
all. Ain’t that right, Mr. Prophet?”

“
That’s right,” Prophet
said, one hand on his right thigh, close to his gun. These two
looked handy with iron, but they didn’t look any handier than he
was. The problem was there were two of them.

“
That’s right,” Prophet
said, staring over his coffee cup. “Just bein’
friendly.”

Smith shoved another forkful of beef
in his mouth. “Me and Jones here,” he said, pausing to swallow,
“we’re up from Kansas ... headin’ for the gold fields west of here.
Gold-seekers, you might say.” He lifted his gaze to Prophet while
he ate. and winked. “Hell, ever’body else is diggin’ for El Dorado.
Why can’t we?”

“
Mighty tempting, I have to
admit,” Prophet said. “Kansas, you say, eh?”

Smith nodded as he chewed. “Abilene.
We worked for a spread thataway.”

“
Oh, really?” Prophet said,
setting his coffee down and taking up his fork. “I worked a few
spreads down there myself. The T-Bar and Hoffman’s
Lazy-H.”

Jones glanced at Prophet, sneering,
then turned to Smith. “Now I s’pose he wants to know who we rode
for—snoopy bastard.”

“
Easy, Jones, easy,” Smith
said, patting his partner’s wrist. To Prophet, he said, “It’s
getting past his bedtime. Jones always gets cranky when he’s up too
late.”

“
I see.”

“
We rode for a man called
Breckenridge.”

“
Breckenridge?”

Smith was swabbing his plate. “Hear of
it?”

“
Sure, I heard of it,”
Prophet said. “That’s about the biggest spread in Dawson County. At
least, it used to be.”

“
Still is ... as of two
weeks ago,” Smith said.

Prophet nodded and studied the two men
warily, perplexed. They did indeed look like drovers. They might
have gotten tired of the long hours, back-breaking work, and poor
pay, and decided to head for the mining camps. They might have
given Prophet the obviously phony names just for the fun of it.
Cowboy humor. But why the lathered horses?

The bounty man knew little enough
about these men to know he’d have to keep a close eye on them
tonight— if they stayed over, that was, and Prophet had a feeling
they would.

His suspicion was validated when Smith
finished his coffee, sat back in his chair, and stretched. “Well,
Jones, what you say we bed the horses down in the barn and mosey
upstairs for some shut-eye?”

“
I hear that.”

The two men scraped their chairs back,
stood, and headed for the door, Smith tipping his hat at Prophet as
he passed. Prophet cracked an affable smile and offered a nod. When
they were gone, he sat trying to figure a plan to protect the girl,
alone in her room, with these two men in the same house.

But they didn’t know what room she was
in. Prophet reminded himself. Which meant they’d probably wait till
morning to show their hand, when she appeared. That’s when Prophet
had to be ready. He wished she’d let him sleep in her room tonight,
but he knew his chances of that were nil. Attempting to do so might
not only get him another boot to the groin, but give her room away,
as well.

He finished his coffee, went to the door,
and looked out. The barn doors were open, spilling light on the
hard-packed, hay-flecked earth. Deciding to head upstairs before
Smith and Jones returned, to get himself situated and ready for
anything. Prophet made for his room and lit the lamp on the
dresser. He picked the sawed-off Richards off the bed and hefted it
thoughtfully in his hands.