The Devil and Lou Prophet (6 page)

“
Oh, yes, he would,” she
said, rocking the girl gently back and forth in her arms. “It’ll
take you a while, but eventually you’ll learn how to tell the
snakes from those men who’ll walk the straight and narrow with a
girl.”

Audrey lifted her head to look into
Lola’s eyes. “You find any of those men yet, Lola?”

Lola looked away, frowning. “No,” she
said at length. “No ... for all my talkin’, I haven’t found any man
like that myself.” She held the girl for a while longer, then she
pushed her away and smiled. “But I’ll tell you as soon as I find
more than one, and you can have first pick of the pack. How’s
that?”

Audrey smiled through a sob and nodded
her head.

“
In the meantime, I think I
hear a snake right now,” Lola said.

Audrey frowned. “Huh?”

“
Wait.” Lola bent down,
lifted the hem of her dress, and removed a small, silver-plated
pistol from a sheath strapped to her calf. Turning, she swung the
pistol around toward a stand of high grass and chokecherry shrubs,
and squeezed off a round. The gun cracked sharply, spitting smoke
and fire.

“
Wait!” erupted a man’s
voice from the brush. “Wait, goddamnit, Lola! It’s me!”

“
I know it’s you!” Lola
returned. “It’s you trying to get a peek at four women tending
nature, you pathetic son of a bitch.”

There was a thrashing in the weeds,
and a bush moved, but Big Dan did not show himself. “Don’t
shoot!”

Lola had a mind to go ahead and plug
the dirty bastard, but then where would she be? She could take over
the troupe herself. If anyone asked about Big Dan, she could say
he’d gotten overly randy one night—which wouldn’t be a lie, the way
he was always pawing the other girls, and had even talked Minnie
and Glyneen into sleeping with him for special favors—and she’d
plugged him. The other girls would probably even corroborate her
story.

The only problem was four women
without a man were sitting ducks out here, for anything that
happened along. They certainly couldn’t ride into the mining camps
they played every night without a man riding shotgun. Big Dan was
worthless most ways, but he was a big son of a bitch, and he
wielded a shotgun well.

Lola lowered the gun to her side. “Get
back to the wagon and do your job for a change. You ever try that
again, you bastard, I’ll shoot you between the eyes.”

“
Okay, Lola, okay,” Dan
said, snapping twigs and rustling branches as he made his way out
of the bushes, his hands raised to his chest. “I was just havin’
fun, Lola.” He grinned. “Don’t take it so serious. The others
don’t— right, Glyneen?”

The other girls had gathered around Lola
when they’d heard the gunshot. Now Big Dan, grinning like a naughty
schoolboy, draped an arm around Glyneen and Minnie as he made his
way back toward the wagons. “You two know how I am, don’t you? Big
Dan just likes to have fun ... ” He went on talking as he walked
with Glyneen and Minnie on either side of him, giving truckling,
inaudible answers to his pandering questions.

Lola turned to Audrey, who smiled
devilishly. “Would you really have shot him?”

“
Right between
the eyes,” Lola
said.

She turned to stare across the creek
and the bending weeds rising on the other side to a low sandstone
ridge. Everything was made so terribly small by the sky that Lola
wanted to cry. Her mother was dead, and here she was toting a
pistol on her leg and fending off randy troupe masters in Indian
country.

Where were the silk top hats and
leather buggies, ladies decked out in crinoline and lace? The
thirty-dollar rooms and the caviar? Where were the big shows with
her name in large, fancy letters, the bejeweled social circles in
which her mother had wanted her so desperately to romp?

“
Come on, Lola,” Audrey
urged, tugging on her sleeve. “We’d best get back to the wagons.
It’s on—”

“
Yes, I know,” Lola sighed,
unwillingly emerging from her reverie. “It’s on to Henry’s
Crossing.”

She brushed her sweat-damp hair back
from her face and started toward the wagons. Could her life get any
worse?

“
Well … look at you!”
Sheriff Fitzsimmons exclaimed, looking up from his newspaper as Lou
Prophet entered his office. “Good Lord, man—what you got going
now?”

Prophet flushed, embarrassed, and looked
down at his new duds. True, he might’ve overdone it, but he knew
that, for women, first impressions were key. While he wasn’t trying
to seduce Miss Diamond in the customary sense, he was in a
way.

He shrugged. His tooled black boots
squeaked as he lifted onto the balls of his feet. “Just decided it
was time I cleaned up a little, is all.”

The sheriff worked his nostrils as he
sniffed the air. “What’s that smell? That you, too?”

“
Just had a shave and a
haircut,” Prophet said, rubbing his clean jaw. “Told the barber to
give me the works.”

“
Well, that he did, all right. If
you don’t leave soon it’s going to take me a good month to air the
place out.” Fitzsimmons grinned, pleased with the joke. The grin
broke into a deep-chested chuckle as the gray-haired little man
leaned back in his chair and laced his fingers over his belly. “Oh,
I see.”

“
What?”

“
This is for that showgirl,
that Lola Diamond.”

Prophet played dumb. He knew Fitz
wouldn’t understand—not at his age, not at any age. “What do you
mean?”

“
These new duds and the
haircut and that smelly water—that’s so you’ll make a good
impression on her. You’re gonna try to court her while you’re
takin’ her back to Johnson City—see if you can’t get a little more
out of the ride than a hundred and fifty greenbacks.” Fitzsimmons
winked and nodded his head, washed-out eyes flashing.

“
That ain’t it at all,
Sheriff,” Prophet said. He sat down in the chair before the old
man’s battered desk. “This is just my way of trying to make the
woman feel at ease. If I approach her dressed like I usually
am—well, hell, she’ll probably turn tail and run. And her boss’ll
probably pull a gun and fill my ass with buckshot.”

Fitzsimmons squinted his eyes
skeptically. “So this is just to charm her, you mean—so you can get
her on the stage without any fuss?”

“
Exactly.” But Prophet
began to wonder if that were entirely true. He did have a soft spot
for good-looking women, and if this girl was a showgirl, she had to
be attractive.

Fitzsimmons’s face reddened, his
nostrils swelling. “Yeah, I believe that just like I believe all
your other cockamamie horse hocky. Now tell me what the hell you’re
doin’ here, so I can get rid of you and your stench.”

Prophet flicked a speck of dust off
the arm of his new coat and said offhandedly, “Just wanted to say
adios, Sheriff, and see if McCreedy sent anything else while I was
... enjoying myself.” He frowned, shifting his gaze to the door
behind the sheriff.

Noticing the sudden change of expression,
Fitzsimmons turned, his swivel chair squeaking as he shot a look
behind him and said, “What ... what the hell you lookin’
at?”

“
You got somebody back in
the cell block?”

“
Huh? Yeah ... I got a kid
some drovers brought in two days ago ... a horse thief waitin’ on
the circuit judge.” Fitzsimmons turned back to Prophet, his downy
eyebrows knit. “Why?”

“
I thought I heard
something ... a diggin’ sound.”

“
A diggin’ sound?” The
sheriff turned back to the door and paused, listening. To Prophet,
he said, “I don’t hear nothin’.”

Prophet shrugged. “Must just be my
ears goin’ bad. Never mind. Anyway—”

“
Now just a minute, goddamnit!”
the sheriff said angrily, waving Prophet silent. “I better check it
out.” He produced a ring of keys from a desk drawer, climbed out of
his chair, and disappeared through the cell block door.

Immediately Prophet rose from his seat,
swung around the desk, and started opening and closing drawers. He
stopped when he found what he was looking for—a five-pointed deputy
sheriff’s star. He pocketed the badge, shut the drawer, and quickly
returned to his seat just as Fitzsimmons reappeared.

“
I’ll say you’re hearin’
things,” the sheriff grouched as he moved toward the desk. “The
kid’s dead asleep back there.”

“
I could have swore I heard
diggin’ sounds.” Prophet said with a shrug. “Must’ve been all that
shootin’ in the cabin. My ears still feel like they’re full of
cotton.”

“
Well, they’re full of
somethin’.” Fitzsimmons opened a desk drawer, tossed the keys
inside, and slammed it. Sitting back down with a grunt and a curse,
he said, “Now what’d you say you’re doin’ here?”

“
Just sayin’ goodbye,”
Prophet said, standing and heading for the door.

Fitzsimmons watched him suspiciously,
chewing his mustache. “Bye? You came to tell me bye?”

“
That’s all,
Fitz.”

“
That’s Sheriff Fitzsimmons
to you, Prophet!” The red-faced badge-toter paused to scrutinize
the bounty hunter with befuddled disdain, the muscles at his jaw
hinges twitching for all they were worth. “What the hell are you up
to?”

“’
Bout six-three,” Prophet
quipped, stepping out the door. “See ya, Sheriff.”

“
Not if I see you first,
Prophet,” Fitzsimmons yelled. “And you be careful you don’t hurt
that girl. Remember, she ain’t no prisoner... she’s a
witness!”

“
I’ll remember that,”
Prophet said.

“
And for godsakes, leave
the door open!”

Leaving the office door standing wide
behind him, Prophet headed across the street, hoping to be safely
out of town before Fitzsimmons discovered the badge missing from
his drawer. Prophet hadn’t asked for the badge because he knew
Fitzsimmons wouldn’t have given him one. To wear a sheriff’s star,
you had to be deputized, and Fitzsimmons was more likely to
deputize one of the girls at the Queen Bee than Lou
Prophet.

Walking quickly, the bounty hunter
went back to the hotel, retrieved his gear, and paid his bill. He
delivered his rifle, shotgun, and saddlebags to the stage office.
He didn’t want to be carrying anything but the subpoena when he
approached the girl. That accomplished, he went over to Dave’s
Place and ordered a beer from the scowling, cadaverous bartender
who was trying to get a new keg primed as he snapped at his
ten-year-old helper.

Prophet paid his nickel and headed for
a table not far from the big plate-glass window. He noticed another
man sitting nearby—the tall, hard-looking gent with the hub-sized
nose he’d passed on the street when he’d been heading for the
sheriff’s office. He’d noticed the man first because of his nose,
then because the man was wearing a suit, and, being in the suit
frame of mind, Prophet had given it a quick appraisal. As he had,
he’d noticed the two Remingtons tied low on the man’s thighs—a
fancy brace of forty-fours in hand-tooled holsters.

The man was obviously a gunslick, but
gunslicks were not out of place in Henry’s Crossing, one of the
wilder towns on the northern frontier. You got all kinds coming
through here, with the river trade being what it was, and with the
mining country all around. Not to mention the cattle herds moving
in. Not long ago Prophet had earmarked Henry’s Crossing as the next
Abilene—not a nice place to raise a family by any estimation, but a
profitable haunt for a man of Prophet’s profession.

He didn’t pay the gunslick more than
passing attention. Sitting down with his beer, he slumped back in
his chair and watched the busy street beyond the window, where a
steady flow of freight wagons kicked up dust and dropped it thick
on the shipping crates, kegs, and mining equipment that lined the
ferry docks, waiting for the big mule wagons that would haul it to
every saloon and mercantile within a hundred square miles. One team
after another rocked and rattled by, the curses of the skinners
rising on the warm April air. Men laughed and cajoled, horses
whinnied, dogs barked, chickens clucked, and the cottonwoods along
the wide, green river churned their silver-edged leaves.

Watching and drinking, Prophet waited
for the traveling theatrical troupe, which would no doubt pass
before this very window, and thought about how he was going to get
Miss Lola Diamond separated from her troupe and on the stage, which
was due to leave at five-thirty this afternoon. He hoped she made
it by then. Since her show started at seven, he thought she would.
If not, he’d have to wait for the next stagecoach, two days hence.
Leaving that late would make it tough to get into Johnson City on
time. Remembering the urgent tone of Owen McCreedy’s letter,
Prophet watched the traffic with growing anxiety.

It was nearly four-thirty when Big
Dan’s Traveling Dolls and Roadhouse Show rolled past the saloon
from the east, the covered wagons separated by about thirty dusty
feet, the ungreased wheel hubs squawking like geese. Prophet
exhaled a long, relieved breath and tipped back the last of his
third beer. Standing, he donned his hat, walked outside, and headed
for the Waddy’s Cottage.