Staring Down the Devil (A Lou Prophet Western #5) (13 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
Young Marya
Roskov awoke with a start as her bedroom door flew open. Opening
her eyes, blinking sleepily, she saw him standing there in the open
doorway, wearing nothing.
Morning light washing through the room’s two windows set deep
in the adobe wall revealed him in all his repugnance and horror — a
tall, long-boned man with a bulging paunch. The top of his head was
nearly bald, but the stringy, cloud-white hair on the sides hung to
his shoulders. His heavy lids flapped over his eyes. He stepped
into the room and closed the door.
“I’m
back. Did you miss me?”
“Why
would you ever doubt it?” she said, with enough playfulness to keep
from raising his ire, but with enough scorn to tell him how she
really felt.
He
threw the covers back, revealing her in a silky lace gown he’d
bought her in Broken Knee. His eyes raked her young, firm body, and
she gave a shudder of revulsion.
“I met
a man who plans to run for Territorial governor in the next
election. He’s investing in the mine and going to open a general
mercantile in Broken Knee. Soon I will be the richest man in the
Southwest.” He crawled onto the bed, snuggled against her, stroked
her tawny hair, and kissed her very gently on the lips.
“I am
very happy for you,” she said tonelessly. She’d never hated anyone
as she hated him. She’d never feared anyone as she feared
him.
“I
brought you something,” he said cheerfully, as though he were
speaking to a woman there of her own accord, one who would not slit
his throat if given the chance.
She stared at
him.
“Another dress.”
Her
indifference must have registered in her hazel eyes, for he smiled
ruefully and said, “My women do not go around in jeans like you
were wearing when we first met — jeans and a ratty old shirt and
hat.” He chuckled. “No, no, no. My women wear only the finest
dresses in the land.”
She
said nothing to this. She did not like dresses. But then, she
didn’t like anything about this situation she found herself in,
being held prisoner by this madman in his mountaintop adobe house
above the village of Broken Knee — his village.
“Don’t
worry, Marya,” he cooed in her ear, blowing her hair back from her
neck. “You’ll get used to the dresses, as you’ll get used to me . .
. when you finally realize you have no choice in the
matter.”
His
breath smelled like something dead. She wrinkled her nose and
fought back a
gag.
She
didn’t say anything. She wished he would just go ahead and mount
her and get it over with.
He
stroked her hair again and kissed her. “Have you decided, my
pretty, to tell me your little secret?”
She
smiled coyly. “What secret?”
He
nuzzled her neck. “You know the one.”
“Oh,
that one.” It was hard to speak without the rage and revulsion she
felt toward this man who had imprisoned her here and pretended they
were more than what they were — captor and captive.
“Yes,
that secret.” He lifted his head and smiled into her face. His cold
eyes sent a shiver up her spine.
It was
not only his eyes that made her shiver. She’d seen firsthand the
horror he was capable of when he’d killed her old friend, Bert
Moriarty. Bert had teamed up with her to look for gold in the
Pinaleno Mountains. Only, Bert hadn’t realized he’d been leading
her off to the prison of Leamon Gay’s stony, mountain house, an old
hacienda once occupied by a Mexican rancher and situated high to
discourage attacks by marauding Apaches.
How could Bert
have known?
How
could he have known such an evil man existed on earth, much less in
the mountains where Bert and Marya were looking for a cache of lost
Spanish treasure? How could he have known he’d meet up with such a
man who would kill him in the crudest way possible and imprison
young Marya in the hacienda — at the veritable and literal edge of
the rocky, sun-seared earth?
Poor Bert . .
.
“Yes,
that secret,” Leamon Gay repeated now. He nipped her neck gently.
It hurt only a little, but she recoiled inside. She knew the pain
he was capable of inflicting.
“No,
I’m not ready to give up that one yet,” she said. “A girl can’t
give up
all
her
secrets, you know.”
She
blinked to clear her vision. Still, she saw Gay thrust his knife
into Bert’s belly. She saw the blood flow over the hilt, heard Bert
scream. . . .
Gay
chuckled. “Oh, you are a little demon, aren’t you?” He crawled
between her legs, which she opened for him. She wanted him to get
on with his ravenous coupling so she could follow through with her
plan to avenge Bert’s death and to escape this madman once and for
all.
Gay
kissed her hungrily, nipped her lip as he pulled away. Rising up on
his arms, he stared down into her face, only a faint smile now
tugging at his thin, sunburned lips. His eyes were at once sharp
and merry. “You do know that if you weren’t such a lovely little
thing you’d be dead by now, don’t you?”
She pursed her
lips, staring back at him, not saying anything.
Bert’s eyes found her, filled with terror and
pleading. And then they dimmed and rolled
back into his head. . . .
Gay
lifted a hand to her right shoulder, slid the strap of her
nightgown down her arm, revealing her small, firm breast. He gazed
at it wolfishly, his tongue slightly protruding the knife slash of
his mouth. His long white hair caressed her skin, which pimpled
with revulsion. “I’d have tortured the truth from you and then let
you die as our good friend Bert died.”
He
removed the other strap, laying bare the other breast. He kissed
it, tongued the nipple.
Bert’s eyes closed as he stumbled back,
clutching at the knife in his belly. Held by two
of Gay’s men, a knife at her throat, Marya
watched her old friend fall to the ground
and
die.
“You
do know that, don’t you?”
She
nodded, swallowed, trying to get a rein on her fear, on her
revulsion. “Yes.” Her voice was a whisper.
“Good.”
While
he grunted on top of her, bunching his ugly face as though in pain,
she casually dropped her left hand over the side of the bed. She
felt around for the knife she’d smuggled out of the kitchen and hid
beneath the mattress. She probed at the mattress with her fingers,
moving them up and down and up again, her movements growing
frantic. Her heart pounded.
The
knife wasn’t there!
But it
had to be there. She’d put it there just last night, in
anticipation of his return from town. . . .
Suddenly he stopped. “What’s the matter?”
She
snapped her gaze at him, trying to arrange an innocent expression.
“What do you mean?”
“What
are you looking for?” His voice and eyes were dull.
She
shook her head slowly. “I was not looking . . .
nothing.”
“Is
this” — his right hand grabbed something from the rumpled quilts
beside him, and he thrust it toward her face so quickly it was all
a blur — “what you’re looking for?”
She screamed and
whipped her head sideways. Missing her face by inches, the knife
plunged into her pillow with a popping and tearing sound. Feathers
flew. When Marya opened her eyes again, she saw him staring down at
her savagely, his face turkey red, the dangling white hair
contrasting it sharply.
“Is
that what you’re looking for?” he raged. Then he laughed madly.
“Silly girl — you think I don’t know how much you despise me?” He
laughed again.
She lay still,
her head down, waiting for the final blow, knowing there was
nothing she could do to stop him. He was a powerful man. She was
only a girl, barely eighteen years old, barely over a hundred
pounds.
“No!”
she cried, fear overcoming her. “No, please! Don’t kill
me!”
“No,
please, don’t keel me!” he mocked her accent. He grabbed her chin
brusquely, turned her head to face him. “Don’t worry, my sweet
little Russian queen. I’m not going to kill you just
yet.”
He pulled the
knife from the pillow, tossed it on the floor in a cloud of
feathers. He went to work on her again, and when he was done, he
climbed hastily off.
Staring down at her, he said, “But if you haven’t told me
where the treasure is in forty-eight hours, I will turn you over to
my Mexican miners. And when they’re done with you, if there’s
anything left, they’ll sell you to the Apaches. Those red savages
will know just how to get the utmost pleasure from a little polecat
like you.”
Leamon Gay
turned, picked up the knife, and padded barefoot out of the
room.
Behind him, Marya
Roskov drew her arms tight across her breasts, raised her knees,
and turned onto her side, sobbing.
The
coach squawked and clattered into the little mountain town of
Broken Knee later that same day. Sergei was back in the
driver
’s box, and Prophet was back atop
Mean and Ugly.
He’d
led the way up the trail that wound through the barren, rocky
mountains under the scorching desert sun and leveled out finally
between two rows of false-fronted buildings so new that the smell
of pine still tanged the air. Those buildings constructed from
adobe still looked wet. Even the sign standing along the road,
proudly announcing BROKEN KNEE, appeared as though it had been
painted and erected only yesterday by an optimistic booster. The
sun hadn’t faded it yet, as it did most things in this neck of the
woods.
Prophet felt a bit faded himself, as desert trailing was wont
to do to a man. He gazed around at the hustling little town,
wondering where he and the Russians would find the countess’s
sister amidst all these coverall-clad miners and dusty mules and
sun-bleached ore wagons and no-account drifters squinting out from
under the awnings before saloons, whiskies and warm beers clenched
in their hands.
It was loud for
such a tiny, haphazard-looking berg nestled between enormous
mountains strewn with orange boulders and saguaro cactus. Tin-panny
music clattered from several saloons. Whores laughed, men guffawed
and whooped, mules brayed, steel-rimmed wheels churned the dusty,
packed street, and chickens squawked nearly everywhere. Crows cawed
from atop the wood facades.
Above
it all rose the raucous thunder of the stamping mill that stood
about a hundred yards beyond the other end of town and another
hundred yards up the mountain. That’s where all the ore wagons
appeared to be heading as they trailed in from the west. The empty
ones clattered back down Main Street, curving through a narrow pass
in the western ridge, into the desert and, presumably, to the mine
that had lured this sweaty, dusty humanity and din to these
wretched mountains.
Prophet grinned
up at a scantily clad whore flaunting her wares from a flophouse
balcony as he halted Mean and Ugly, the coach pulling up
behind.
“Need
some lovin’, cowboy?” the whore asked.
She was a hefty
blonde with purple feathers in her hair.
“Maybe
later,” Prophet said. “In the meantime, what’s the fanciest hotel
in town?”
The
whore shrugged and sucked on the wooden tip of her cigarette.
“There ain’t nothin’ fancy in Broken Knee, sugarplum. But the best
place is the Gay Inn over yonder. The bedbugs are under ten pounds
and the spiders don’t charge ye for the stings.”
“Why’s
it called the Gay Inn? They have a lot of fun over
there?”
The
whore laughed as though it was the funniest thing she’d heard all
morning. “Leamon Gay owns it, like everything else in this
town.”
Prophet considered the information, remembering what Riley
Fergus had told him about Leamon Gay. “Much obliged,” he told the
whore, raising his hat.
“No
problem, honey,” the woman said. “Come see me sometime. You and
your friend.”
“We’ll
do that,” Prophet said. He turned to Sergei, who regarded the whore
appreciatively. “Why don’t we head over there first and make the
countess comfortable? I’ll take the coach and horses over to the
livery barn.”
“Do
you think it is appropriate for a lady?” Sergei asked, scrutinizing
the hotel about forty yards up and across the street.
It was a
three-story, unpainted building with a wide veranda. THE GAY INN
had been painted above the awning in bright red letters. There was
a patio of sorts, covered with gravel and from which a single
saguaro jutted, its right arm twisted around behind
itself.
“Doubt
it,” Prophet said.
Sergei
nodded grimly, obviously not approving of the town. He waited for a
thundering ore wagon to pass, then shook the reins over the bays’
backs and headed for the hotel.
When the countess
and Sergei had gone into the Gay Inn behind the two young men
hefting their luggage, Prophet led the bays to the livery barn and
dismounted before the two wide doors that seemed to beckon him into
the cool shadows within.
He’d
never been so tired of the sun in his life. He secured a couple
stalls from the hostler and parked the coach out back, where the
hostler assured him it would be safe from the criminal element
Prophet knew to be part and parcel of any booming berg like Broken
Knee.
“Tell
me,” Prophet said as he left Mean and Ugly’s stall, where he’d
watched to make sure the hostler fed the horse plenty of oats and
cool well water. “You ever seen this girl?”
Deciding there was no time like the present to get started
looking for the countess’s sister — the sooner he found her the
sooner he could get out of this hellhole — he’d fished Marya
Roskov’s picture from his shirt pocket. The countess had provided
him with the picture of the young blonde with a delicate,
fine-featured face and expressive eyes.
“No,
never seen that one,” the hostler said. His name was Jorge Assante,
he’d told Prophet — a barrel-chested Mexican with a round, unshaven
face and a floppy straw hat. “I see plenty like her, though. Maybe
not that pretty, but cheap. Try the Opera Hat Tavern or, better
yet, try the —”
“No,”
Prophet said, shaking his head. “This girl isn’t a whore. She might
be looking for gold.”
“A
girl? Looking for gold, senor?” The Mexican was incredulous. “Not
around here.
Muy
dangerous!
Muchos bandidos
and Apaches! Besides, Senor Gay — he doesn’t like
anyone sniffing around his mountains. Unless they work for him, I
mean. No prospectors.” Assante shook his head. Eyes wide with
gravity, he ran his index finger across his throat.
“That
a fact?” Prophet asked, remembering that one of the Miller twins
had made the same gesture when speaking of Gay.
Shaking his head slowly, the hostler walked back into the
shadows to retrieve the fork he’d been using to muck out the stalls
when Prophet had ridden up.
To his
back, Prophet said, “So this guy is a pretty big hombre around
here, eh?” He was fishing for information — anything at
all.
The
Mexican didn’t say anything. He took up his fork and walked into a
stall.
Prophet persisted. “Just how powerful is this Gay fella,
anyway?” If Gay didn’t like prospectors intruding on what he
considered to be his mining rights, he might have been responsible
for Marya’s disappearance. It was worth looking into,
anyway.
The
hostler stopped. “Take my advice, senor,” he said softly, just
loudly enough for Prophet to hear. “Go and enjoy the town. Spend
some money. The liquor is good, for a mining town. And the women
are not bad. You will have a good time ... as long as you do not
ask about Senor Gay.”
Prophet studied the man thoughtfully. Jorge Assante returned
to his work, the sunlight angling between the upright boards of the
barn’s outer walls bisecting him in angles, revealing his dirty
denim shirt and snakeskin galluses, the sweat runneling the
hay-flecked dust on his face.
Prophet grabbed
his saddlebags, Richards ten-gauge, and Winchester, and left the
barn. As he turned right, heading for the Gay Inn, he heard a soft
whistle. He stopped and turned.
A man
was sitting in the alley between the livery barn and a general
store. His back was propped against the barn, between two crates.
Prophet could see only a few inches of pin-striped trousers,
expensive black boots, and the man’s face peering over the barrel
between him and Prophet.
Or
what was left of the man’s face. It had been beaten to a bloody
pulp.
