The Devil and Lou Prophet (26 page)

“
There!”

Prophet jerked a look up the ridge
above him, to a nest of rocks he recognized. “Okay, Lola, now, now,
now!” he shouted.

Before the last word, he heard the
booming report of Dick Dunbar’s Big Fifty. It sounded like one of
the Howitzers that had thrown grapeshot at him during the War
Between the States, and it made the hair stand on the back of his
neck. It was not an unwelcome sound, however. With each boom
resounding off the canyon walls, he clucked to his horse, and
grinned, continuing up the wall toward the peak.

Boom! sounded the gun. Then, after the
five seconds it took Lola to reload the single shot beast...
boom!

He was only about thirty yards from
the ridge when he heard a rumbling, as though from a distant storm.
He checked his horse down to a stop, and twisted around in his
saddle, giving his gaze to the men behind him. The Big Fifty’s
shots had slowed them down, and they were scattered along the
mountain below him, looking frantically around, rifle butts on
their thighs, their horses slipping in the loose gravel. Hearing
the rumbling, several looked behind them, at the opposite canyon
wall.

Panting, Prophet grinned as the
rumbling grew in volume until it sounded like the thunderhead was
careening over the canyon with a vengeance. The ground vibrated,
and Prophet felt his own bones resounding like a tuning
fork.

He glanced at the opposite wall as several
boulders, prompted by the Big Fifty’s probing balls and cannon-like
booms, peeled loose from their precarious moorings. As if slowed
down somehow, they tumbled downward, smashing others as they went,
starting the rockslide Prophet had once been so afraid of and now
welcomed like rain after a long drought.

Prophet gave a rebel yell as he
crested the ridge.

Hunkered in the nest of rocks, where
Prophet had deposited her earlier, the showgirl snugged her cheek
up to the gun’s heavy stock once more and squeezed the trigger. The
gun flashed and boomed, bucking like a horse, throwing her into the
rock behind her and nearly bouncing out of her grasp.

Unfazed by the tumult, she turned her
head up at Prophet and grinned.

“
That’s some fancy shootin’
for a showgirl!” he whooped, casting his gaze back down the
canyon.

The floor was a pillow of billowing
gray dust. The roar was deafening and the ground shook as though it
were about to crack and heave like a California quake.

Prophet tossed his reins to Lola and
dismounted, walking to the lip of the ridge. He stared down, rifle
in his hands. The cries of the men and horses, crushed by the
falling rock, rose on the resounding roars. Gritting his teeth,
fingering his rifle and listening. Prophet waited.

He didn’t have to wait long. Two
riders, managing to ride clear of the slide, appeared
simultaneously out of the dust. Prophet knelt, took aim, and fired.
The man left his saddle with his arms splayed, landing in the
jumbled rocks around him. His horse turned and reared, giving a
loud, ear-piercing whinny.

Prophet fired at the other man, who
crouched at the last second, dodging the slug. Prophet jacked
another round into the chamber, but before he could aim again, two
more riders appeared out of the billowing dust, teeth gritted, eyes
black as kill-crazy grizzlies.

Turning, Prophet said to Lola, “Mount
up!” and climbed onto his own sweat-lathered horse.

Turning back toward the charging
riders, Prophet lifted the Winchester and fired, covering Lola as
she ran several yards down the mountain’s backside and mounted her
horse waiting for her under a wind-torn conifer. When she was in
the saddle, Prophet gigged his own horse out ahead of her, leading
the way down the mountain, through the tall pines peppered with
aspens and box elders.

As they rode, the bullets zinging
around them and thunking into trees told Prophet that at least a
handful of Brown’s men had survived the landslide. They’d crested
the ridge, and were now galloping behind them, probably about fifty
or sixty yards away—well within Winchester range.

When they reached the bottom of the
mountain and had splashed across a shallow creek, Prophet halted
his horse and turned to Lola. “Okay, just like we planned now! Keep
riding!”

Her horse facing him sideways, Lola
stared at him from beneath the brim of her straw hat, wincing as
though in physical pain. “You be careful, Lou!”

“
I will! Now
ride!”

She reined her horse around and heeled
him into a gallop along the stream, disappearing into woods about
fifty yards away. Prophet turned his horse behind a knoll,
dismounted, and ground-staked the reins. Winchester in hand, he
crawled to the top of the knoll, jacked a shell in the breech, and
fired just as three riders appeared in the clearing at the base of
the mountain.

The man on the left leaned back in the
saddle, a hole through his forehead, while his horse rode past
Prophet and continued downstream at a gallop. The others were
sawing back on their reins, aware of the ambush. Prophet squeezed
the Winchester’s trigger and unsaddled a rail-thin man with a
scraggly beard. The riderless horse followed the first
downstream.

Prophet jacked another shell and slid
a gaze around the crest of the knoll. All he saw was woods and the
vague outline of a horse and one leg of its rider, hidden behind a
tree.

“
Prophet, goddamnit, you
double-crosser!”

Prophet knew the raspy shriek belonged
to Billy Brown.

“
Rode right into it, too,
didn’t you, stupid bastard.” Prophet laughed.

“
Where’s the
girl?”

“
Long gone. Just you and me
now, Billy.”

“
I still have three men
left, Prophet. And we’re gonna fill you so full of holes your own
mother won’t recognize you.”

Prophet was about to respond when guns
opened up from the woods, smoke puffing from under the pines. At
the same time, the man in the bowler hat bounded out from behind a
thick-trunked tree, shooting a pistol in Prophet’s direction, and
galloped his horse downstream.

Jerking his head back behind the
knoll, the bounty hunter wheezed a curse. Brown was going after
Lola while these other three men pinned Prophet down.

Prophet jerked his rifle around the
knoll and squeeze off two quick shots before the hammer fell
benignly against the firing pin. Empty.

Shit!

Wanting to get after Lola as quickly
as he could and frantically thumbing shells out of his cartridge
belt and into his rifle’s receiver, Prophet heard the gunfire and
the slugs tearing into the mound behind him, throwing up chunks of
dirt, pebbles, and sod.

“
He’s empty,” someone
called. “Storm him!”

Prophet’s heart danced and his fingers
shook as he thumbed the cartridges through the receiver’s door. One
slipped out of his sweaty fingers. Hearing horses pounding around
him, he bent to retrieve it, blew the dust off the brass casing,
and slipped it into the breech.

The pounding of the hooves was all around
him ...

Turning to face the woods and
scrambling atop the knoll, he jacked a shell in the chamber of his
rifle and clawed his pistol off his hip. Two riders bounded toward
him, firing their rifles. Prophet blew one off his horse with the
Winchester, and shot the other man twice in the chest with his
Colt. Knowing that one more lingered in the trees, Prophet ran that
way, between the two riderless horses coming to a harried halt and
pivoting to run in opposite directions.

Smoke puffed from the woods. Keying on
it, Prophet dropped to a knee and cut loose with his Winchester,
levering one shell after another. He’d fired all eight rounds when
a dry voice rose.

“
All right. All right. I
give up. My guns are empty.”

“
Step out here, you
bastard.”

A man stepped out from behind a pine.
Surrendering, he raised his pistol in one hand, rifle in the other.
He was the man Prophet had seen earlier, with long red hair and
Custer-style mustache. He stared at Prophet dully. Then his
impudent mouth lifted a grin. Prophet raised his pistol and blew a
hole through the man’s chest, sending him backwards into the woods,
blood spurting through his expensive wool vest and black
cravat.

“
Never shoulda smiled like
that,” Prophet grumbled as he wheeled and ran behind the knoll for
his horse. Forking leather, he kicked the mount into a gallop,
heading upstream toward Billy Brown and Lola, his fear for her
safety spreading like a cancer throughout his loins....

Lola rode hard, but her heart wasn’t
in it. Gunfire cracked behind her. She was so worried about Prophet
that she felt as though each crack sent a bullet through her
spine.

After about a mile, she halted her horse
along the stream she’d followed onto a grassy saddle bordered by
buttes. She turned her horse around and stared tensely back the way
she’d come, hoping she’d see Prophet riding toward her. Against her
better judgment, she’d fallen head-over-heels in love with the
strapping Southerner, and she shuddered at the thought of Brown’s
gunslicks killing him.

Finally, she saw someone galloping toward
her along the stream. Her heart lifted expectantly, and her gaze
intensified. When the rider was a hundred yards away, a shudder ran
through her. Her heart grew heavy, her stomach cold. The rider was
not Prophet. His short stature, wide shoulders, watch fob, and gray
head—apparently, he’d lost his hat in the fracas—bespoke Billy
Brown!

Lola gave an involuntary scream and
jerked her horse around, then spurred him into a gallop up the
trail. She went fifty yards, until the stream curved into a
foliage-choked gorge. Halting, she swung her frantic gaze around,
then took a game trail into a narrow valley. Looking behind, she
saw the rider closing in, head lowered against the wind, arm
winging as he slapped his horse’s rump.

“
No!” Lola screamed,
turning her head back to the trail.

Leaves and branches swiped at her from
both sides. She had no idea where she was or where she had gotten
off the trail Prophet had told her to take. At the moment, she only
cared that she stay ahead of Billy Brown.

Turning a corner in the trail, she got an
idea. She looked behind her and heard the hooves of Brown’s mount.
Quickly, she twisted the reins to the left and urged the horse up
the wooded mountain slope. She hoped to lose Billy here, in the
dense brush and fallen logs. The going was slow, however—much
slower than she’d anticipated. The horse was winded and the
blow-down trees brought it to complete stops before it bounded
half-heartedly over each, blowing raucously, spittle stringing from
its nostrils.

On the open ridge, she stopped to rest
the horse. Looking back the way she’d come, she saw and heard
nothing until a pistol cracked. She gave a start, her face turning
gray, eyes widening with fear. The gun cracked again, the slug
clipping a branch only two feet from her head. The horse whinnied,
and, tired as it was, reared several feet in the air, turning away
from the noise.

Heart beating an Indian war dance in her
chest, Lola gave the horse its head, and the animal plunged down a
steep mountain grade covered with talus. The horse went down on its
knees several times, Lola hanging for dear life to the horn,
gritting her teeth and squeezing her eyes closed. Just before
bottoming out on the valley floor, she swept her gaze back up the
mountain and turned deathly chill at the sight of Billy Brown
sitting his stationary mount, aiming a pistol at her.

She heard the bullet zing past her ear
a half second before the report.

“
No!” she cried as the
horse came to the bottom of the grade. “Go, go!” she
urged.

The horse clopped and splashed across
a stream, a weathered-gray cabin appearing on her right. Wasn’t
this the cabin Prophet had shown her earlier in the morning, when
they’d been planning their attack and escape routes?

It was a fleeting consideration, since
it did nothing to help her escape Brown now, who was thundering
down the mountain and gaining several feet on her with every lunge
of his stallion. Lola ducked under an aspen bough, aimed her horse
down the trail hugging the stream, and heeled it hard, slapping its
rump with her left hand. She tossed a look over her shoulder and
was not surprised to see the stout, suited man behind her, watch
chain flopping across his vested belly, gaining enough ground that
Lola could see the fiendish grin stretching his lips.

He extended his pistol toward her and
squeezed off another shot. Instinctively, Lola ducked her head and
turned back to the trail streaming beneath her, feeling her heart
shrink and her pulse slow as she neared the end. Prophet was no
doubt dead, and soon she would be, as well....

Behind her, Brown slapped his horse’s
rump with one hand and squeezed his gun and reins with the other.
He grinned as he watched the horse and girl grow closer, getting
larger and larger as his stout stallion shrank the ground between
them. He only had one bullet left in his gun, so he wanted to make
sure he sent it home—either into the horse or the girl herself.
Either way, the girl would die ...