The Devil's Lair (A Lou Prophet Western #6) (24 page)

Ten minutes later, Prophet came to a
clearing where a sorry-looking tangle of peeled-log corrals huddled
close to a shack fronting a mining portal cut into the high canyon
wall. Prophet slipped out of the saddle and tethered Mean in a
natural trough. Holding the Richards in his right hand, he crept to
the floor of the canyon and hunkered down behind a boulder sheathed
in shrubs.

The sun had found the canyon and was
gaining strength even at this altitude. Chipmunks prattled from
overarching limbs. Prophet scrubbed sweat from his brow and stared
across the pinon-studded canyon floor at the cabin.

Smoke curled from a tin chimney pipe. A
piebald and a blue roan milled in the corrals, a saddle draped over
the top slat, near the gate.

Prophet studied the cabin for a long time,
watching and listening with his hawk’s eyes and ears. He was wary.
The man had to know Prophet could track him here. The son of a
bitch could be waiting with a rifle.

Prophet scrubbed his jaw with his left
hand, considering making his way to the cabin’s rear. The front
door opened. The man appeared in a blue shirt and long denim coat,
cartridge belt and holster buckled around his waist.

Prophet’s eyes narrowed. A short bulldog
with close-cropped sandy hair and long sideburns headed for the
gray-board privy off to the right and went inside.

Prophet hunkered down, watching, feeling
the adrenaline spurt. The man was either trying to bait Prophet
into a trap, or he was suicidally stupid. Based on the man’s
previous ineptness, he was probably stupid.

Prophet bolted out from behind the boulder
and ran across the canyon floor, crouching and weaving between
shrubs, keeping an eye peeled on the cabin for other shooters.
Nearing the privy, he ran on the balls of his feet, stopped before
the door, and raised the Richards.

A single, explosive blast of double-aught
buck blew away the locking nail and put a hole big as a wheel hub
where the knob used to be. Prophet stuck his left hand through the
hole and gave the door a yank.

It flew back and Prophet bounded forward,
short-barreled barn blaster extended in his right hand.

“
Mother of Christ!”
yelled the bulldog,
sitting on the privy’s single hole, jeans and summer underwear
bunched around his boots. He reached across himself for the Colt
Navy to his left.

“
Want the other barrel?” Prophet
asked him.

The man gulped as he stared fearfully down
the Richards’s yawning maws.

“
Who are you?” Prophet
asked.

The man didn’t say anything.

Prophet thrust the Richards to within six
inches of the bulldog’s face. The man recoiled against the privy’s
back wall, nudging a small calendar hanging from a nail, and turned
his head to one side, blinking fearfully, awaiting the
blast.

“
Wales,” he screamed. “I’m Edgar
Wales! Please don’t shoot me. My momma’s back in Denver... and I
send her money.”

“
Why are you potting for me,
Edgar Wales?”

Prophet thumbed back the Richards’s right
trigger and snugged the barrel up to Wales’s jaw. “Looks like your
momma’s gonna be diddlin’ drifters for Colfax Avenue
pimps.”

“
Ralph Carmody hired me!” Wales
yelled, adding in a softer voice, “And ... and several other
businessmen from Bitter Creek.”

Prophet’s blood warmed. “Why?”

When the man just grunted and
pressed his head to the privy’s rear wall, wincing, Prophet poked
the barrel hard against his jaw.
“Why?”

“
Oh, Lordy,” Wales whined,
squeezing his eyes shut and panting. “ ’C-cause they think you
throwed in with Crumb. They want you outta the way so’s ... so’s I
can ambush Crumb and his new marshal when they ride back to town
... Oh, Lordy, please don’t shoot me. I just work for Mr. Boggs out
to the Lazy Z. I’m a good shot with a long gun, but I ain’t
no
real
killer! I reckon I’m as good as they could find since
Carmody’s grandson refused to do it, but I’m just a plain ole
thirty-an’-found cow waddie!”

He turned his head. His eyes widened,
surprised to see that Prophet had withdrawn the shotgun.

“
Stand and pull your pants
up.”

Wales studied Prophet skeptically. “Wh …
what you gonna do?”

“
Haven’t figured that out yet.
Get up.”

Awkwardly, keeping his eyes on the
Richards, Wales stood and pulled up his pants, tucking in his
shirt. When he’d buttoned his fly, he reached for his pistol
belt.

“
Leave it,” Prophet said. “Get
those hands raised.”

Wales sighed with chagrin and raised his
hands. Prophet backed up and turned. Still watching the
barn-blaster extended from Prophet’s waist, Wales stepped out of
the privy.

“
The corral—move,” Prophet said,
waving the shotgun toward the horses.

“
Listen, mister,” Wales said. “I
was just doin’ what I was told... what they paid me for. Me, I mind
my own business mostly, herd cattle for Mr. Boggs. I
don’t—”

Wales jerked around, grabbed Prophet’s
shotgun barrel in both hands.

Prophet didn’t even have time to shout a
warning.

Wales gave the blaster a jerk. The sudden,
violent movement thrust Prophet’s finger against the right trigger.
Instantly, the Richards bucked.

The shotgun’s explosion was partially
muffled by Wales’s belly. The single barrel of double-aught buck
lifted Wales straight up off the ground and back about six
feet.

He hit the turf on his back, offering a
strangled cry, hands feeling for his guts, which were no longer
there but had been blown through his spine and deposited on the
sage and sand behind him.

Wales kicked his legs, bending his knees
against the pain. He stared up at the sky and moved his lips as
though trying to speak, lifting one hand, waving one finger as
though there were one more thing he wanted to say.

Prophet crouched over him, hands on his
knees. Wales’s deep-sunk blue eyes rolled around in their sockets,
turning glassy. “What’s your momma’s name?” Prophet said. “I’ll
write her, tell her what happened.”

Wales’s eyes fluttered. “I don’t... have
no ... momma,” he rasped, blood welling up from his chest and
throat and dribbling down his chin. “Never did have ...
none.”

His head turned to the side. His chest fell
and did not rise again. His feet jerked, and then he lay still.

Prophet straightened. “Dumb
bastard.”

Feeling bad about taking down the cow
waddie, he broke the Richards open, extracted the two spent shells,
and replaced them with fresh ones. He glanced down at the dead man
again.

“
Dumb bastard,” he repeated. He
looked around the cabin, then slung the Richards across his back
and tramped over to the corral.

A quarter hour later, he’d tied Wales to
the back of the dead man’s horse and was leading him back to Bitter
Creek, Mean and Ugly fidgeting at the smell of blood. “Come on,
Mean,” Prophet cajoled as they turned south onto the old mining
road. He was in no mood for the horse’s melodrama. “It ain’t like
you never smelled blood before.”

In town, Prophet inquired at the bank for
Carmody, then rode over to the Mother Lode. He tied Mean to the
hitch rack, cut Wales’s blanket-draped body free from its rawhide
ties, and slung the cadaver over his shoulder.

He pushed through the batwings and looked
around the dim tavern. Burt Carr was swabbing the bar with his left
hand, the bandaged right hanging at his side.

Janice lounged against the bar in a crimson
dress, black feathers in her hair, a matching bruise sheathing her
left eye. Both turned to watch Prophet, as did Sorley Kitchen,
hunkered over a beer at the other end of the mahogany.

Seeing Carmody, Prophet crossed to the table
around which the banker and several other businessmen were taking a
beer and poker break, cigars smoldering in ashtrays. Prophet paused
before the table.

The men looked up at him and seemed
startled.

“
What the …?” Milt Emory drawled
around the cheroot in his teeth.

Prophet bent his knees slightly and gave
the body a heave. It hit the table with a crash, cards scattering,
beer mugs hitting the floor and shattering. The blanket fell from
Wales’s body, revealing the glazed eyes and gaping, ragged wound.
Blood smeared the table.

Carmody leapt from his chair, a fan of
cards in one hand, a cigar in the other, a scowl on his red face.
“What’s the meaning of this?” he bellowed, shuttling his
exasperated gaze to the dead man. The banker’s jaw
dropped.

“
Your assassin done got his
lights blown out... not to mention his guts,” Prophet
said.

Carmody’s eyes grew wary.

“
I’m not on Crumb’s side, you
wooden-headed shoat,” Prophet said. “You got this dumb bastard
cored for nothin’.”

Face creased with disgust, he turned and
was walking toward the door when Carmody said, “What about the
reward money?”

Prophet turned back, frowning. “What
reward money?”

“
The money the express company
wired here. Crumb said he was holding it for you. It’s in my
vault.” Carmody glanced at the other businessmen, who looked
confused. “I thought you’d bought in with Crumb…”

“
Like Polk,” Emory
said.

Prophet stared at the men and scratched his
ear. His money had come in. Crumb had duped him into staying.

In spite of himself, he chuckled, plucked
a previously rolled quirley from his shirt pocket, stuck it between
his teeth, and grabbed Carmody’s cigar.

He glowered at each man in turn as he
touched the cigar to his quirley. Puffing smoke from the side of
his mouth, he tossed the cigar back to the banker, who fumbled with
it, brushing hot ash from his suit.

“
If I had any brains,” Prophet
said, “I’d ride out of here and keep on ridin’. But my ma always
said I didn’t have the good sense I was born with, so I reckon I’m
gonna stay long enough to throw Crumb and Polk in their own jail.
What happens to Bitter Creek after that is up to you.”

Quirley smoldering between his teeth,
Prophet turned and pushed through the batwings. He walked across
the street, scaled the raised boardwalk before POLK’S HEALTH TONIC
AND DRUG EMPORIUM in a single bound, turned the doorknob, and
frowned.

Locked.

He backed up and peered in a window.

“
He didn’t open today,” said an
elderly, heavy-set woman passing on the boardwalk behind
him.

Prophet stood back and peered at the
building, puffing the quirley in his teeth with consternation.
“Well, I’ll be—”

A shrill scream rose in the south. It died
only to rise again, so horror-pitched that it pricked the hair on
the back of Prophet’s neck and ran chills up and down his
spine.

Letting the quirley drop from his teeth, he
turned around, grabbed his Colt, and ran. Boots pounding, he
lurched past the Mother Lode and jogged down the space between
buildings.

The scream rose again, trilling throatily.
Homing in on it, Prophet dashed through a yard, scattering chickens
and startling two horses in an open stable. Behind a board shack, a
tall, skinny man in coveralls stood peering south.

Prophet stopped and followed the tall
man’s gaze.

Mad Mary cowered in the yard before the
Whitman house, about fifteen feet from the front porch. Suddenly,
her head rose and her mouth drew wide. She loosed a scream like a
Blackfoot witch conjuring evil Sioux-bedeviling spirits.

Prophet walked slowly toward her, gazing
around, seeing nothing but the surrounding shacks, privies,
stables, and a few neighbors who’d been drawn by the screams.
Hearing the squawk of a screen door, he raised his eyes to the
Whitman porch.

The screen door opened slowly.

Fianna Whitman stepped onto the porch in a
dark blue dress with white lace around the collar and sleeves, her
hair pulled back in a bun. Holding her stomach with her right hand,
she moved stiffly forward and slowly descended the steps.

She faltered, grabbed an awning post,
teetered as though buffeted by a stiff breeze, then sank slowly
down to the steps.

Prophet ran into the Whitman yard.

“
Fianna?” He crouched down beside
her, saw the blood matting her left breast.

Her eyes were soft and rheumy from
shock.

Prophet turned to the men trailing over
from the saloon, drawn by Mary’s screams, and yelled, “Get the
doctor!” He turned to Fianna and, his voice low, asked, “What
happened? Who did this?”

Her eyes narrowed briefly, as though
against a sudden pain spasm. “Wallace,” she said just above a
whisper. “He couldn’t get it through his thick head that we ...
never …” She swallowed, panting. “Lou, he’s gone to warn
Crumb.”

She winced. Sweat beaded her forehead,
pasting her hair to her cheeks. Then the pain spasm passed, and her
eyes found Prophet’s again, her full lips quirking another half
smile. “Lou?”

Prophet slipped his right arm behind her
head, cushioning it from the step. He slid up close beside her, to
keep her warm. Blood oozed from her left breast.