The Devil and Lou Prophet

  Issuing classic fiction Yesterday and Today!

  Call him man-hunter, tracker, or bounty hunter. As long as the cash was cold and the trail was hot, Lou Prophet would run his quarry into the ground before giving up the chase. He loved his work – it kept him in wine and women, and was never, ever dull. And his newest job sounds particularly attractive…

  Her name is Lola Diamond. She’s a showgirl, a chanteuse, and a prime witness in a murder trial that’s going on without her. Prophet is supposed to find her and “escort” her to the courthouse, whether she likes it or not. But even as Prophet and his lovely charge battle each other, some very dangerous men are moving to make sure the pair never reach the courthouse alive. And Lou Prophet is about to find out that even the best hunter can become someone else’s prey…

  THE DEVIL AND LOU PROPHET

  By Peter Brandvold

  First Published by Berkley Books in 2002

  Copyright © 2002 by Peter Brandvold

  Published by Piccadilly Publishing at Smashwords: December 2012

  Names, characters and incidents in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each reader. If you’re reading the book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Published by Arrangement with the Author.

  Cover image © 2012 by Westworld Designs

  For my brother-in-law,

  Terry “Bubba T.” Cline of Dalton, GA.

  The South will rise again!

  I am one, my liege,

  Whom the vile blows and buffets of the world Have so incens’d that I am reckless what I do to spite the world.

  —Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act III, Sc. I

  Chapter One

  The man-hunter lost the tracks of his quarry forty miles west of Three Forks. He cursed a good note, as was his way—cursed himself, his horse, the day, the approaching dusk—then got back on his ugly, hammer-headed dun and rode hard for another mile and a half. Between a low, rocky hill and a spring, he picked up the tracks again in the mud the spring made as it trickled across the trail.

  “Ha-ha!” Prophet congratulated himself. “There you are, you sons o’ bull-legged bitches!”

  He kicked the horse into a canter, leaning out from his saddle as he followed the tracks through a valley that deepened into a gorge, and then rose into mountains, firs climbing around him on rocky slopes, the clean, fresh smell of pine in his nose. Lion scat lay on a small, saucer-shaped rock sitting shoulder-high along the trail. There were deer tracks galore.

  Prophet figured he was a good two miles beyond the spring when the smell of pinesap was tinged with the smell of cook smoke. He immediately halted the mountain-bred hammerhead, the meanest—and best—horse he’d ever owned, and lifted his nose.

  “Yep, that’s pine smoke, Mean and Ugly,” he told the horse. “Where in the hell’s it coming from?”

  The horse was sniffing, too.

  Not wanting to ride into a camp of the men he was hunting, Prophet slid out of the saddle with a catlike grace remarkable for a man his size—six-three, two hundred and ten pounds, none of it lard—and tethered the white-socked dun to a lightning-split cedar. Peering cautiously from beneath the funneled brim of his sweat-stained half-gallon Stetson, he shucked his Winchester ‘73 from the saddle boot and quietly followed the shod prints of the four horses, stepping lightly so as not to kick rocks and give himself away.

  The game trail he and the others had been following emerged from the pines and snaked down a ledge, twisting around granite boulders tufted with moss and split occasionally by gnarled fir roots. It planed out in a grassy meadow where a sod-and-log cabin sat about fifty yards from a barn and a corral. Four horses milled in the corral. Outside the cabin, a man was splitting wood in hide britches, red flannels, and suspenders, a blue bandanna flopping around his neck in the chill spring breeze.

  It looked to Prophet like a buffalo camp or a horse outfit. By the shabby state of the buildings and corral, Prophet figured it hadn’t been much of anything except a hideout for roving outlaw bands for a good five, ten years. Outlaws weren’t much for keeping up appearances.

  Prophet went back to his horse for his field glasses. While there, he grabbed the spare six-shooter from his saddlebags, snagging it behind his cartridge belt, and returned the Winchester to its boot. He had a feeling this was going to be a job primarily for the sawed-off double-barreled shotgun hanging from his saddle horn by a worn leather strap.

  Gripping the Richards coach gun before him, he returned to the ledge overlooking the meadow. Squatting down behind a boulder, he lowered the shotgun to his side and trained the glasses on the cabin. The man chopping wood had his back to Prophet. None of the other men appeared to be out and about. They’d had a long ride from Three Forks, where they’d robbed an express office and where Prophet had picked up their trail. The other three were probably sacked out like March lambs.

  Prophet lowered the glasses and stared out across the meadow, his gray-green eyes catching the light of the west-angling sun. A grin broke across his rugged, sun-seared face with the thrice-broken nose. “Perfect. You just sleep tight, pards.”

  Prophet returned the glasses to his saddlebags, and then made his way down toward the meadow, clutching the barn blaster out before him and weaving around boulders. He stopped several times to cast a gander at the cabin and to check on the man splitting the wood. The outlaw kept his back to Prophet, until at last he disappeared inside the cabin with an armload of wood.

  By that time, Prophet was halfway down the trail. He paused behind a boulder through which a fir had grown, and scanned the meadow once again. The man who’d been splitting wood had obviously stoked the cabin’s stove, for the tin chimney was belching smoke like a steam locomotive on a sharp upgrade.

  “Easy, hosses, easy,” Prophet told himself. “What the hell you going to do—do-is-do in the front door and ask what’s cookin’?”

  He crouched, turning his back to the rock, and ran a thoughtful hand along his jaw. How in the hell was he going to take all four of the men in the cabin without getting himself killed? It didn’t matter what happened to his quarry, for the wanted dodgers read “Dead or alive,” but Prophet needed to stay above ground in order to collect the two-hundred-dollar reward per head and have one hell of a good time spending it.

  He slid another look around the boulder and saw the smoke puffing from the chimney, thick white pillows of it tearing on the wind. The smell of pine was sharp in the clean, chill air. Far away, a hunting hawk screeched, and for a moment Prophet envied the bird its defenseless prey—a burrowing critter or a magpie’s nest rife with eggs.

  “I’ll get ’em, goddamnit, I’ll get ’em,” he whispered reassuringly, staring at the smoke-belching chimney. A soft light entered his gaze and the corners of his mouth lifted slightly. “And I know just how I’m gonna do it, too.”

  He grinned and looked around for a rock a little bigger than the chimney. Finding one, he picked it up, hefted it, and stole another look at the cabin. The windows were silhouetted, so he couldn’t see if anyone was looking out, hut the lack of activity told him that if they weren’t sleeping they were no doubt seated or reclining on cots. They had no reason to think they’d been followed. Prophet had been a good half-day behind them.

  He stole around the back, where stove-length logs were stacked to the low-slung roof. Pressing his ear to the log wall, he listened. The wall was so thick he could hear little but an intermittent hum of desultory conversation, as though the outlaws were playing a casual game of cards. Satisfied no one inside was savvy to his presence, he carefully climbed atop the wood pile. From there he flung himself ever-so-daintily onto the roof, which was sod framed with wood, sliding his shotgun ahead through the grass.

  Hefting the rock, he sat on his butt and pushed himself along carefully, one slow movement at a time, until he reached the chimney. Squelching a snicker but allowing himself a self-congratulatory grin, he set the stone over the chimney pipe. Only a few wisps of smoke escaped around the sides of the uneven rock. He sat there for several seconds, grinning and listening, the wind kneading his hat.

  Finally, an exclamation erupted through the sod beneath his ass, followed by the muffled sound of chair legs scraping the puncheon floor. Prophet turned to crawl to the front of the cabin, where he intended to order the men to surrender as they ran out the front door to escape the smoke. He hadn’t moved more than a foot, however, when the sod and wood planking sank beneath him. There were two sudden, shallow drops and the dismaying sound of splintering wood.

  Prophet froze, eyes widening.

  “Oh, shit.”

  The roof sank still further. Then it opened with a terrific crack, and Prophet went through the hole like a man falling down a well.

  “Sheeee-iiiiitttt!”

  Losing his shotgun, he smashed through a table covered with cards, tin cups, and whiskey bottles, and hit the floor with a crash. Men were yelling and smoke was billowing. Stunned and aching and trying to regain the wind the table had knocked out of him, Prophet turned on his side, throwing off rubble. He looked around the room,
but the smoke was too thick to see anything but intermittent, moving figures staggering away from the table, arms flung over their burning eyes.

  “What-in-the-hell?” one man yelled.

  “Law!” another bellowed.

  Above the cursing, coughing, and chinging spurs, Prophet heard the unmistakable sounds of gun hammers clicking back. The sound sent adrenaline jetting through his veins. Knowing he’d be dead in seconds if he didn’t react fast, he gained his feet, hunkered down on his heels, drew one of his two Colt .45s, and fanned the hammer, jerking in a complete circle as he fired. When the first gun was empty, he drew the second, pivoting this way and that and letting go a cacophony of gunfire that had his ears ringing so loudly he could barely hear the shouts and cries of the men he was ventilating.

  By the time the second gun was empty, the room was so full of smoke that Prophet couldn’t breathe, and his nose, eyes, and lungs were on fire. The cabin was deathly silent. He searched for the door, hitting solid wall several times before he found it, and ran out choking and wheezing, clutching his throat with one hand, his empty gun with the other.

  A gun barked behind him. A slug tore into the ground a foot to his left. Turning, squinting his searing, running eyes back at the smoke-filled cabin door. Prophet saw a tall man, with a savage face and a thin beard, staggering and taking awkward aim with a six-shooter. The man’s shirt was covered in red, and blood dripped down his left cheek.

  He fired again as Prophet dropped to a knee, thumbed back the hammer of his Colt, and squeezed the trigger, the hammer hitting the firing pin with a sickeningly benign ping.

  Prophet’s pulse pounded as he remembered the gun was empty. Both guns were empty!

  The man kept coming, staggering, choking, and squinting his eyes. He thumbed back his gun hammer and fired, the slug tearing into a corral slat behind Prophet, who dropped his empty Colt and reached for the Arkansas toothpick on his belt. He flung the knife at the approaching gunman. Because of the ringing in his ears and burning eyes, his aim was off; the blade sailed over the man’s left shoulder and clattered against the house.

  “Hah, hah!” the man roared. “Now what are you gonna do, you son of a bitch!”

  The gun came up and barked as Prophet ducked, shoulder-rolled to his right, and came up making a bee-line for a water trough.

  “You’re a dead man ... whoever you are!” the bandit raged, staggering after Prophet like a half-blind madman, gun raised and ready. The gun barked again, the bullet thunking into the wood in front of Prophet, who cowered behind the trough.

  Prophet’s heart was racing and his ears were ringing. Hands shaking, he stuck out his right leg, jerked up his faded denims to just above his boot, and pulled the double-barreled derringer he kept in a small, homemade sheath strapped to his calf.

  “I’m gonna fill you so full o’ lead you’ll jingle when they drop ye in the hole!” the gunman raged as he approached the trough. He fired his Colt, and Prophet felt the burn of the bullet notching his ear.

  Wincing against the pain. Prophet brought up the hideout gun, forcing his burning eyes open, knowing this was his last shot, and fired just as the bandit brought his own revolver up and was stretching a scraggly grin. Prophet’s slug took the man through the throat, making a penny-sized hole. The man froze, his eyes widening. Automatically, he dropped his gun, bringing his hands to his throat. He was as good as dead, but to finish him, Prophet fired another round through the man’s forehead.

  The man staggered sideways, took one step back, and fell on his face, sighing as he expired.

  Prophet stared at the man through his burning eyes, then at the cabin. Smoke billowed through the open door. Strings of it trailed out of the new hole in the roof. His shotgun was in there, but he’d wait for the smoke to clear before he retrieved it.

  Prophet sighed and looked around like a full-grown man newly born, trying to gather his wits. The past few minutes had passed so quickly and intensely that now, with it all over and finding himself still alive, he wasn’t quite sure what to do with himself. His ears still rang but the pain in his eyes was abating.

  Never a man to go long with unloaded guns, he sat on the edge of the water trough and thumbed brass into the chambers of his two Colts. As he worked, his swirling thoughts slowed steadily into backwaters, and he became aware of a numbing pain high in his back. Flexing his shoulder daintily, he realized he must have separated the damn thing when he’d fallen through the roof.

  “Goddamnit,” he cursed, twirling the cylinder of his second Colt. He’d found through considerable experience that a rope and a strong horse worked rather well at popping bones back in place.

  Prophet shook his head and started for the barn. The big man sighed.

  “Helluva day.”

  Chapter Two

  The next morning, turned on his sore shoulder, and groaned with pain. He felt like someone had hammered a dull rail spike deep in the joint.

  Opening his eyes, he stared around the cabin, half-hoping he’d find himself in the Waddy’s Cottage in Henry’s Crossing, clean sheets beneath him and the smell of breakfast emanating from the kitchen downstairs.

  No such luck. He was lying on a spindly cot in the ancient cabin, the morning sun glaring through the four-by-four-foot hole in the roof, beyond which occasional birds fluttered. As his vision cleared, he saw the blood splattered on the walls and smeared on the floor, making several gruesome trails to the door and outside.

  He’d dragged the bodies out last night, after he’d jerked his shoulder back into its socket and the smoke had cleared. He’d decided not to head for Henry’s Crossing until morning, as his arm had been too sore to lift the cadavers onto the horses. Also, the trail was dangerous at night, haunted as it was by roving outlaw bands and renegade Indians.

  He’d boiled coffee over an outdoor fire, eaten some jerky and stale biscuits he found in his saddlebags, and used a few tips of his whiskey bottle to relieve the pain in his shoulder enough to conjure sleep. He’d slept rather well, too, in spite of the shoulder, the ceaseless yammering of coyotes and wolves, and the coppery smell of blood in the cabin.

  Throwing his blanket aside, he swung his legs to the floor, stomped into his boots, donned his hat, and headed outside, working the kinks out of his neck. Gazing across the shabby yard, which the morning sun had discovered and painted a soft gold, lightly brushed with a fuzzy breeze, he inspected the bodies laid out side-by-side before the corral. The outlaws’ horses stared at Prophet across the prone, blanket-covered figures of their former owners, as if to say, So what now, hotshot?

  Prophet’s shoulder barked at the mere thought of wrestling those bodies onto their mounts, but that’s exactly what he had to do. He couldn’t wait around here another day. His grub was low, for one thing, and this was outlaw country, for another. Bounty hunters and outlaws rarely mixed without fireworks.

  He approached the bodies, squatted down, and threw the blankets back from the pale faces, belligerent-looking even in death. He recognized McTeague and Clawson, having cowboyed with both down on the Staked Plain one summer. The other two—a burly, middle-aged hombre with a long gray beard, and a tall, stringbean fellow with receding blond hair and hand-tooled Texas boots— he didn’t know.

  Hoping he hadn’t made a mistake, he reached into his shirt pocket for the descriptions, and let out a sigh of relief. Since he’d turned to bounty hunting six years ago—after having tried everything from soldiering and scouting to bartending, cowboying, riding shotgun for a stage line, and even wearing a deputy sheriff’s badge for a year—he’d had nightmares of drawing down on the wrong man, one of the many hazards of the job. Witness descriptions were not always accurate, and neither were the pen sketches on wanted posters. And Prophet would have been the first one to admit, if only to himself, that he got a bit careless at times, having been raised by a Georgia cotton farmer who believed the best way to approach any obstacle was head first. You could reflect once the dust settled.

  In bounty hunting, however, the slightest mistake could put you on the wrong side of the law in a heartbeat, make you a target of your own breed. Odd how that made the job both nasty and compelling, Prophet thought now, stuffing the papers in his pocket. He knew it was not to his credit that he liked doing what he did, and he could understand the revulsion of others. But there was just something dangerous enough about it to make every other job look dull.