Staring Down the Devil (A Lou Prophet Western #5) (11 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
The
other man was somewhat smaller than the mulatto, with a wispy blond
mustache and greasy, sandy hair spilling out from under his
curl-brimmed hat. A white man, he wore a Mexican poncho, and two
tied-down Colts with ivory grips. One of the Colts was in his hand,
the polished gun-metal winking in the bright sun.
Prophet raised his hands halfheartedly, squinting against the
sun, which the men had been shifty enough to get behind them.
Prophet didn’t say anything. Neither did the others for several
seconds. Then the mulatto stretched a grin, flashing big teeth with
a gap in the right side of his mouth.
“My
friend, Prophet. Don’t you remember me?”
Prophet studied
him.
The
mulatto, whose name Prophet remembered was Kevin Kimbreau,
chuckled. “Oh, yeah, you remember.”
“Remember what?” Kimbreau’s partner asked him.
Kimbreau nodded at Prophet, his grin dying on his lips. “He
run me down in a little roadhouse in Wyoming last year. Found me
drunk after a night o’ whorin’. Slapped the shackles on me and took
me to see the judge in Whitestone.”
“They
shoulda stretched your neck, Kevin,” Prophet said, canting his head
so his hat brim blocked the sun, “for what you did to that poor
schoolteacher and that kid.”
“They
were going to,” Kimbreau said, laughing. “Had the gallows all built
and everything. Then I tunneled out. Killed a farmer and stole his
horse.” He grinned crazily at Prophet, taunting him. “Cut his
throat.”
“That
wasn’t nice.”
“Look
who’s talkin’ nice. You wasn’t nice, sneakin’ up on me like that,
then punchin’ me after you had me shackled.”
“You
tried to make a run for it.”
“I
don’t cotton to bein’ punched, ‘specially by a stinkin’
Rebel.”
Kimbreau’s friend said, “Just shoot the son of a
bitch.”
“Maybe
he’d like to punch me,” Prophet said. “Is that it, Kevin? You wanna
fight with fists?” Prophet smiled a challenge, buying time as well
as an edge.
“Sounds good to me,” Kimbreau said. He tossed his reins to the
other man and slipped easily out of his saddle. “Make me feel real
good to beat the holy hell out of you, Reb. Then I’m gonna go get
me some o’ that Russian gal.” He lifted his carbine toward Prophet
again and said, with all humor wrung from his flat-featured face,
“Get off that there ugly horse and take off your
gunbelt.”
“Now,
you can insult me all you want, Kevin, but it piss-burns me good
when I hear my poor, defenseless horse slammed,” Prophet said, his
wry tone belying his concern for the countess and Sergei. He had a
feeling the other cutthroats in the gang had stopped the stage. “He
can’t help how he looks.” With no quick movements, Prophet
dismounted, dropped his reins, and unbuckled his cartridge
belt.
“Toss
it over there,” Kimbreau ordered.
Prophet tossed the cartridge belt with gun and bowie knife
several feet to his right. “Now what about your own belt?” he asked
Kimbreau.
“You
ain’t exactly in any position to set terms, are you?”
Prophet shrugged regretfully and fashioned a lopsided grin. “I
reckon not.”
Kimbreau tossed
his carbine to his partner, who smiled over the neck of his
buckskin horse, enjoying the show. Leaving his cartridge belt on
his hips, Kimbreau shucked off his hat and buffalo coat, and rolled
up his shirtsleeves. Meanwhile, Prophet removed his own hat and
coat.
Kimbreau stepped forward and raised his mallet-sized fists,
grinning. “This is sure gonna be fun.”
Prophet stepped forward and raised his own fists. He and the
mulatto circled each other several times. Prophet jabbed the air,
feinting, shuffling his feet and staring deep into Kimbreau’s eyes.
The mulatto followed in a circle, feinting and jabbing, as though
testing the air between them.
Kimbreau grinned. “You gonna throw a punch or just
dance?”
“Well,
I reckon,” Prophet said. He stepped toward the big mulatto,
bringing his right arm back as if for a haymaker. He checked the
swing, stopped, and lifted his right boot instead, bringing it up
and forward with venom, soundly burying the toe in Kimbreau’s
crotch.
The mulatto bent
forward, wailing and covering his crotch with his
forearms.
“Why,
you
— ” Kimbreau’s partner
raged.
“Sorry, Kevin, but I don’t have time for a fair fight,”
Prophet said.
Before
the man could level his six-shooter,
Prophet reached behind his head for the Arkansas toothpick he
wore in a slender sheath down his back. He sent the wicked-looking
weapon tumbling end over end until the rider’s chest impeded its
flight, swallowing it right up to its leather-wrapped
hilt.
The
rider dropped his Colt and grabbed at the toothpick with both
hands, grunting and cursing and trying to dislodge the weapon from
his breastbone.
Meanwhile, Prophet swung his leg toward Kimbreau again,
bringing the toe of his boot up savagely to the underside of
Kimbreau’s chin. The raging mulatto flew backward with another
deafening cry and hit the ground on his back. He lay there like a
landed fish, his neck broken, kicking his feet and swiping a hand
toward the six-shooter on his hip.
Knowing he needed to hurry — the countess and Sergei were no
doubt under attack by the other hardcases — Prophet stooped to grab
his gun from his holster and shot the mulatto twice in the chest.
He looked at Kimbreau’s partner, who still sat his buckskin horse
stiffly, both hands wrapped around the handle of Prophet’s Arkansas
toothpick, the poncho around the buried blade slick with gushing
blood.
The
light was leaving the man’s eyes as his head fell slowly to his
chest.
“If
you’ll excuse me,” Prophet said, reaching up and yanking the knife
from the man’s chest, “I gotta run.”
When
he’d cleaned the blade on the man’s denim-clad thigh, Prophet ran
to Mean and Ugly and mounted up. He galloped off, hearing the thud
of Kimbreau’s partner hitting the ground.
Prophet had just spurred Mean into a wind-splitting gallop
when several pistol and rifle shots echoed in the north, back where
the stage would be. The bounty hunter cursed and spurred Mean even
faster, hoping he wouldn
’t be too late to
lend Sergei a hand.
But then the
shooting stopped, an eerie silence descended, and Prophet had a bad
feeling. . . .
He
rode to the base of a stony ridge, swung down from the saddle, and
shucked his Winchester ‘73. He scrambled up the ridge, using his
hands to push himself up the steep incline, slipping several times
in the shale. Near the top, he doffed his hat, then crawled to the
ridge, easing a look over the lip and down the other
side.
He
drew his lips back from his teeth when he saw the stage halted on
the trail below, behind the four sweat-shiny bays. One man in trail
garb stood around Sergei, who was on his knees, one hand extended
for support. The Cossack’s bare head was tipped toward the ground.
His free hand clutched his side, dark with blood, as was his right
shoulder.
Holding a rifle in the crook of his arm, the hardcase was
smoking and grinning up at the stage roof, where another man was
cutting the ropes securing the Russians’ luggage to the brass
rails. Prophet couldn’t see the countess, but he heard her
screaming in Russian from inside the coach, which rocked and
shivered and caused the bays to look back at it, ears twitching.
One of them whinnied.
Sergei
lifted his head and turned toward the coach. “Countess!” he
shouted. The hardcase stepped toward him and casually swung his
rifle butt against the Cossack’s head, laying Sergei out on his
back.
“You
sons o’ bitches,” Prophet growled.
He
levered a round in the Winchester’s chamber, rested the barrel on
the lip of the ridge, and planted a bead on the man nearest Sergei.
He fired, and the bullet took the man through the back of his head,
throwing him forward, limbs akimbo.
The
man atop the stage looked up, clawing at the revolver on his hip.
Prophet squeezed the Winchester’s trigger. The man flew backward
off the roof with a clipped shriek.
The
Winchester’s two reports echoed as one around the narrow canyon in
which the stage was stopped. The echo finally died as Prophet
hurried down the other side of the ridge, arms thrust out for
balance.
He realized
someone was screaming.
He’d
just bottomed out on the canyon floor when a man burst through the
stage door. He wore a patch over his right eye, and he clutched the
other eye now with his hands. Blood was oozing from that eye and
streaming down his face.
“You
whore!” he raged. “You blinded me, you whore!”
He cursed and
cried as he danced around blindly, clutching what had been his one
good eye. Finally he stopped, clawed his revolver from his
cross-draw holster and squeezed off two shots, swinging the gun
around, trying to get his bearings.
“You
whore! You blinded me, you goddamn
whore!”
He was about to
squeeze off a third shot when Prophet jacked a round, lifted the
rifle to his cheek, and shot the man through the neck. The blinded
hardcase flew off his feet and landed hard on his back. He gurgled
and spat for several more seconds before his limbs relaxed and he
gave a long, final sigh.
Prophet heard the thorough braces groan, and turned to the
stage. The countess stood crouched in the doorway, her torn basque
covered in blood, her cheeks smeared. In her hand she held a small
dagger. From the slender blade, blood strung to the
ground.
Seeing Sergei,
she dropped the dagger, jumped to the ground, and ran to the
Cossack who lay unconscious on his back.
“Sergei!” she cried. “Oh, Sergei — please don’t
die!”
Prophet made sure
all the attackers were dead, then hurried over to Sergei, who was
conscious now and groaning painfully as the countess knelt beside
him, squeezing his hand and begging him not to die.
“Let
me have a look,” Prophet said as he knelt across from the countess
and inspected the Russian’s wounds.
“How
does it look?” Sergei asked, lifting his head to study the blood on
his shirt.
“I’ve
seen worse,” Prophet said. “The one in the shoulder doesn’t look
too bad; the bullet must have gone straight through. But there’s
one down low here in your side. It’ll have to come out
pronto.”
The countess
groaned, her face bleached with worry. Sergei squeezed her
hand.
“Come
out?” Sergei blinked at Prophet, groggy but dubious. “What do you
mean it will have to come out?”
“Just
what I said. Don’t worry, I’m no sawbones, but I’ve mixed lead
before.”
He
told the countess to gather wood and build a fire. “I’m going to
get my horse.” He had a good surgical knife in his saddlebags, plus
a bottle of whiskey.
“The
countess does not build fires,” Sergei objected as Prophet stood
and started up the ridge for his horse.
“Oh,
Serge, shut up!” the countess retorted, worry quaking her voice. “I
can build a fire as well as any Cossack!”
In spite of the
circumstances, Prophet grinned as he climbed the ridge, slipping
and clawing at sage tufts.
When
he’d led Mean and Ugly to the canyon floor, the countess had a
small fire burning not far from Sergei, whose head now rested on a
red satin pillow the countess had apparently retrieved from the
coach. Prophet didn’t like the Cossack’s pale features and dilated
pupils — he’d obviously lost a lot of blood and was probably in
shock — but Sergei managed some wrath.
“Russian royalty does not build camp-fires!”
“Out
here everyone is equal,” Prophet said as he knelt down by the fire
and spread out his possibles bag. “That’s what I like about the
frontier.”
The
countess fed a slender branch to the growing flame she’d coaxed to
life using pine cones and dead grass. “I am not as spoiled as you
have tried to spoil me, Serge,” she said, lifting her long straight
nose as she babied the guttering fire.
Prophet smiled
thinly as he knelt beside the Cossack and produced a slender
skinning knife from an oiled leather sheath that bore a small
silver disk in which the Southern cross had been engraved. The
sheath had been with him since the war. He swept the blade through
the fire several times, then offered Sergei a bottle and a chunk of
rawhide.
“There
you go, Serge. Take you a few drinks of that busthead there, and
bite down on that leather when I start cuttin’.”
“What
does the leather do?” the countess asked, moving near to inspect
the procedure.
“It
will keep me from shattering my teeth
when
I lock my jaws,” the Cossack growled.
He
grabbed Prophet’s forearm in his meaty fist and heaved up off his
shoulders, giving the bounty hunter a sinister glare. “If I die, it
will be your duty to protect the countess from any and all evils
she may encounter on your precious frontier. Do you
hear?”
