The Devil's Lair (A Lou Prophet Western #6) (3 page)

The man
’s screams died as the horse faded
from view.

Slowly, glancing at the hardcases sprawled
around him, Prophet climbed to his feet. He frowned, whipping his
head this way and that.

“
How come I count only five?” he
asked Louisa.

“
The sixth one’s heading that
way,” Louisa said, glancing after the runaway horse.

“
But there were
seven.”

Seconds stretched.

A man
’s shout rose above the cries of the
baby the woman had left inside, apparently out of harm’s way.
Prophet’s glance jerked to the stage. His right shoulder blade
bloody, J. D. Brennan sat in the driver’s box, releasing the brake
and slapping the reins fiercely over the six-horse team, yelling
like Satan on Sunday.

“
Hyaaaaaaaaaa! Hyaaaaaaaaa,
team—hyaaaaaaaaaaaaa!”

The team jumped off its rear hooves and
leapt into its halters, digging its hooves into the trail. The
stage bolted forward as though propelled from a cannon, the door
slapping its frame and popping open again, the baby crying even
more fiercely than before.

His feet screaming inside the
undersized shoes, Prophet raced for the carriage, dived for the
boot, and grabbed the rawhide straps. Behind him, the young mother
screamed,
“My baby!”

As the Concord raced across the meadow,
fishtailing on the sandy trail, Prophet clung to the straps, his
feet dragging.

Grunting and gritting his teeth with the
effort, he reached his left hand up, grabbed the top of the luggage
boot, then reached up with his right. He dug both hands into the
leather, heaving himself upward until he hooked his right foot onto
the boot.

The bouncing carriage beat and pummeled him,
and several times he nearly lost his grip and went tumbling onto
the trail. His hat and wig had blown off, but the dress whipped
against his legs, the collar digging into his neck.

Finally gaining a solid purchase with his
right foot, he heaved his body onto the boot. The stage hit a
pothole, and he jerked sideways, instinctively reaching up with
both hands. Only his left found the brass rail on the carriage
roof.

His fingers closed around it as
he slid off the boot and dangled down the stage
’s left rear corner, shoes
digging at thin air. The door roared like gunfire each time it hit
the frame without latching, setting up a ringing in Prophet’s left
ear.

Inside, the baby wailed, its voice trembling
with the bouncing stage.

Grunting and cursing, twisting
and slamming against the carriage, Prophet glanced at the trail
passing below in a blur of rocks and grass and short stretches of
open sand. The stage hit another pothole, bouncing viciously, and
Prophet
’s
left hand slipped.

He cursed, twisted around until
he faced the carriage, reached up with his right hand, and closed
it around the rail. Cursing and grunting, buttons popping from the
dress, the shoulder seams tearing, he chinned himself up over
the
Concord’s
roof until both arms were straight out below him. He swung both
black shoes up and threw himself forward against the passengers’
trunks and carpetbags.

Heaving a sigh of relief, he lay
for a moment, bouncing against the stage roof, staring at the clear
blue sky. When he
’d caught his breath, he pushed himself to his knees and
began crawling toward the driver’s box.

He
’d moved only two feet when J. D. Brennan
swung his head around. Holding the team’s ribbons in his right
hand, he aimed a six-shooter across his right shoulder with his
left hand and fired.

Prophet threw himself left and, doing so,
nearly threw himself off the stage. He rolled back to his right as
Brennan fired again, but the stage was bouncing too much for the
hardcase to get an accurate shot.

Brennan turned back forward when the stage
swerved. Prophet slid a carpetbag from under the straps securing it
to the stage roof. When Brennan turned back to him, extending the
gun and firing again, Prophet threw the carpetbag.

The bag hit the gun, casting the
slug wild, then bounced off Brennan
’s wounded shoulder, off the driver’s box,
and over the side.

“
Son of a whore!” Brennan
shouted, wincing with pain as he clutched his shoulder.

He fired again before Prophet could dodge,
but the stage bounced at the same time, and the bullet tore into a
trunk. Standing with his feet spread, arms thrown out for balance,
Prophet crouched, grabbed another bag, and threw it.

As the hardcase turned toward
him, the bag hit Brennan full in the face, nearly knocking him out
of the driver
’s box.

As he began turning back and
whipping the gun over his shoulder, Prophet dove forward, wrapping
one arm around the hardcase
’s neck and one hand around the gun, shoving it
down.

Brennan triggered a shot, which
tore into the floor of
the driver’s box. The stage careened as the horses
spooked, then fishtailed as the team increased its
speed.

As the two men wrestled for the
gun, the stage swerving this way and that across the trail, Brennan
flicked the trigger back until it locked. Twisting right, he thrust
the Navy Colt toward Prophet
’s ribs. At the same time, he slowly maneuvered
his finger under Prophet’s grip toward the trigger.

Knowing he was about two seconds
away from having daylight carved through his middle, Prophet heaved
on the gun with all his strength. He felt
Brennan
’s
wrist give. The stocky Brennan was tough, but he was sitting too
awkwardly to use his strength to his full advantage.

Prophet twisted the
man
’s hand
toward Brennan’s own ribs.

“
Nooooooo!” Brennan raged,
watching the barrel snug up against his bloodstained
shirt.

Prophet squeezed the
man
’s hand
until Brennan’s index finger compressed the trigger. The gun barked
and jumped. Brennan jerked, stiffened. His eyes glazed as his face
blanched. His muscles relaxed.

Jerking the
man
’s gun
from his slack hand, Prophet tugged his collar, rolling Brennan’s
lifeless body off the stage. He watched the hardcase sail down and
back, hit the ground, bounce, and roll into the brush along the
trail.

Prophet looked around for the
reins. Several of the ribbons had dropped from the box and were
dragging along the ground, bouncing as hooves stomped them. Several
more were lying on the floor of the driver
’s box.

Prophet picked them up, sat
down, planted his old-lady shoes against the
footrest, and sawed back on the
ribbons.

“
Whoa, horses.
Whoa-ahhhhhhhhhhh!”

After the stage disappeared, the passengers
gathered in the shade at the edge of the meadow—all but the shotgun
messenger, who sat atop the strongbox in the middle of the trail,
his shotgun across his knees.

The young mother was
inconsolable, howling into her husband
’s chest while the driver and the
businessman, sitting against tree boles, looked on with tongue-tied
concern.

“
Your baby’s just fine,” Louisa
tried to assure her, casually nibbling a piece of jerky she’d
retrieved from her dress pocket. A lone surviving button holding
her dress closed, she stood staring up the trail. “J.D. Brennan has
five hundred dollars on his head.” Louisa chewed and stared in the
direction the stage had gone. “Lou won’t let him get
away.”

The mother heard none of it. She
cried,
“My
baby, my baby!” punching her husband’s chest with her fists and
burying her face in his shirt.

“
Shhh, now, Alice.”

Ten minutes passed. Finally, the stage
driver pushed slowly to his feet, staring east. The stage and
horses appeared at the edge of the meadow, moving toward the group
at a walk.

“
Look!” the Jehu yelled,
pointing. He laughed.

Louisa watched the stage angle across the
meadow, drawn by the plodding, lathered, hang-headed team. Prophet
sat high on the front seat, his black dress hanging in tatters down
his muscular arms and legs, exposing his faded red balbriggans.

He
’d taken off the black shoes and
stockings, and his bare, blood-smeared feet were propped on the
footrest. His mussed brown hair, touched with gold by the
west-angling sun, slid around in the breeze.

In one hand, he held the reins
of the lathered team. In his other arm, he cradled the
blanket-wrapped baby. Crouched over the child, he made exaggerated
goo-goo faces and gurgling sounds, then lowered his head to nuzzle
the child
’s
cheek.

“
My baby!” the mother wailed,
tearing loose from her husband’s arms and dashing across the meadow
to the stage.

Behind her, smiling proudly at
Prophet, Louisa said,
“Told you.”

A half-hour
later, the stage rattled into
the little ranching burg of Bitter Creek—an assortment of
businesses and ramshackle huts grown up around a stage station and
post office in a lonely Wyoming basin.

The carriage churned up dust on the wide
main drag and swung to a halt before the stage office sitting
between a livery barn and a bathhouse.

The carriage door popped open,
and out stepped Lou Prophet, cutting a ludicrous image in the
widow
’s weeds
hanging in torn, dusty strips about his six-foot-three-inch bulk.
He’d exchanged the pointed, torturous black shoes for his
well-worn, undershot boots.

Still, as his feet hit the
ground, he winced. The women
’s shoes had taken their toll, and he wasn’t sure
his feet would ever be the same again.

“
Here we are, folks—the end of
the line,” he said, holding the door wide.

The young woman with the baby
was the first to emerge, still looking wan with relief and holding
the child
so
close to her breast that Prophet worried the kid was going to
suffocate.

“
I can’t tell you how grateful I
am,” she said, clutching his arm. “You, too, miss,” she told Louisa
coming out behind her. “Bless you both.” She hugged Louisa, then
pulled away, once again looking the young, female bounty hunter up
and down. “How did you learn to … do what you
do … so well
?”

“
Practice,” Louisa said,
characteristically taciturn.

A man
’s voice lifted to Prophet’s right.
“Good Lord, what do we have here?”

Turning that way, Prophet saw two
middle-aged men standing on the raised boardwalk. The one on the
left was balding, clean-shaven, and wearing a green visor and
sleeve garters.

The other was several inches
taller, bearded, and paunchy. He wore a suit with a five-pointed
star pinned to his brown wool vest, but he had the weathered,
saddle-seasoned look of a man who
’d once ridden the cattle paths, maybe
even a few owlhoot trails.

The depot master and the town marshal most
likely. They must have been having coffee and doughnuts together.
The little depot master had a half-eaten doughnut in one hand, a
stone coffee mug in the other. The marshal held a coffee cup as
well, and he had crumbs in his beard.

Both men were frowning up at the
Concord
’s
roof. Prophet, the driver, and the shotgun guard had tied the dead
owlhoots to the roof, wrapped in their own bedrolls. Their horses
were tethered to the luggage boot.

The driver had climbed down and
was off-loading luggage for the waiting passengers.
“That there’s the
Thorson-Mahoney Gang, Mr. Crumb—all laid out like ducks ready for
the stew pot!”

The depot master blinked up at
the blanket-wrapped bodies.
“The Thorson-Mahoney bunch,” he said, glancing at
the marshal standing beside him, “is up
there!”

“
They hit us about ten miles
outside town,” the Jehu said, handing the young farmer his
carpetbag. “The big hombre there in the widow’s weeds and this
young lady here filled ’em so full o’ holes they wouldn’t hold a
thimble full of water.”

“
These two took on the
entire
Mahoney
Gang?” the marshal asked, shifting his incredulous gaze
from Louisa to Prophet, who held the dress’s hem above his boots
with one hand as he pulled himself up the side of the stage with
the other.

The driver told the depot master and the
marshal the whole story, the young farmer and the portly
businessman fervently interjecting details. Meanwhile, Prophet
produced the Arkansas toothpick from the leather sheath hanging
down his back, just below his collar, and began hacking at the
ropes tethering the bodies to the brass rails. One by one, he
rolled the dead men over the side. They landed with loud thuds,
several discharging air upon impact.

The little depot master and the bearded
marshal stared, gaping.

As Prophet eased himself into
the driver
’s
box, then down to the right front wheel, the marshal stepped down
into the street, kicked over one of the bodies, and opened the
blanket. He canted his head this way and that and said, “Sure as
hell—this is Little Mike Ensor!”