Chapter 20
The music the buxom little countess danced to was being played by instruments Prophet had never before encountered.
There was a five-man band. No, a five-man-and-one-woman band.
The light was weak at the room’s rear, and Prophet hadn’t noticed the stout, older, black-haired woman seated in an upholstered armchair and playing a strange-looking stringed instrument laid flat across her lap. Her hair was pinned severely atop her head, which she lowered and sort of rolled from side to side with the oddly sonorous twanging sounds that rose from her fingers as they flicked across the strings.
One of the men was playing a guitar with a triangular body! The others were playing a fiddle and various wind instruments, one of which resembled a very long meerschaum pipe with a broad, ornately flared bowl. The men were all decked out in gaudily embroidered costumes with high, red velvet, conical caps, and they bent their knees and jostled to and fro as they played. The old woman played the flat, stringed thing on her broad thighs from her chair, moving only her hands and her head.
Prophet found himself staring so long at the dancing countess, intoxicated by the girl’s smoldering sensuality not to mention the thrilling way she moved, the inadequate bodice of her colorful dress jostling enticingly, that only when his knees began to buckle did he realize he was about to pass out from exhaustion.
He didn’t think any other man in the room was conscious of his presence. All eyes were on the girl.
The men at the long table along the far wall appeared to be in the countess’s party. There were a good dozen of them, maybe more. They were dressed more fashionably than the others, their mustaches and beards immaculately clipped. Most were from the countess’s home country. Prophet recognized several of the large, dark-bearded, straight-backed men from the veranda earlier. Even sitting, they owned a military bearing.
Prophet saw the fancy Dan sitting there—Rawdney Fairweather—between an older, bespectacled man Prophet assumed was the Dan’s father, Senator Wilfred Fair weather, and the younger, dark-haired and neatly bearded gent, Leo, who’d accompanied Rawdney on the street earlier, when he’d confronted Prophet about the countess’s carriage.
About its demise, to be exact.
All of the men at the table over there, dressed in dark suits, with fur coats hanging from their chair backs, a heavy cloud of tobacco smoke billowing over their heads, clapped their hands in time with the music and thumped their feet on the floor. They smiled with admiration touched in no small amount with leering lust. Even the old senator, whose craggy cheeks were flushed above his thin, charcoal beard, was no doubt imagining the countess dancing in his private quarters sans the fancy dress, clad in only that earthy, bewitching smile.
The old man—as old or even older than the senator—who sat at the end of the table nearest the front wall and smoked a long-stemmed, brass and ivory pipe, was likely the count himself. The countess’s father. There was a distinct family resemblance though he must have been pushing seventy.
Leaning forward, elbows on the table, he appeared short and squat, but his bearded face was regal, the eyes the same liquid black as the girl’s. Long, thick, coal black hair was combed straight back over his head and tucked behind his ears. There wasn’t a thread of gray in it, as far as Prophet could tell. Shiny with pomade, it licked down over the back of the collar of his fine, metallic red coat richly adorned with gilt stitching, including two golden eagles spreading their wings high on each breast.
Prophet lifted his right boot, about to drop down the steps and head toward the bar, then stopped. He saw now that at least one of the men at the table of the countess’s party was aware of his presence.
None other than Rawdney himself was glowering at him, eyes narrowed, his pale forehead glistening like polished pearl in the light of a guttering lamp hanging low above his head. Prophet smiled, pinched his hat brim to the fop. Rawdney curled one half of his thin mouth in a silent snarl.
Adjusting the saddlebags and rifle sheath hanging heavy on his left shoulder, and the Richards hanging down his back, the bounty hunter dropped down the five steps to the main floor and strode heavily toward the bar.
As he did, he glanced at the countess once more. Her dark eyes were on him. They seemed glued, in fact, their expression unreadable. She turned away suddenly, blushing ever so slightly, as she performed another acrobatic leap and pirouette.
Prophet gave a lusty groan as he turned his own gaze from the girl’s ravishing succulence and continued to the bar at the back of the smoky room, the music and the girl’s dancing reverberating through the floor beneath his boots. A barmaid, the only one in the place, it appeared—a rotund, dour-looking young Indian woman—was just then making her way toward the count’s table with a tray of frothy beer schooners.
A beefy man with a beard but no mustache stood behind the bar, smoking and watching the countess while yet another fellow—a full-blood Indian with long, scraggly black hair—stirred a pot on the big range behind the bar.
The barman eyed Prophet a little warily as the bounty hunter approached, bristling as Prophet was laden down with weapons, including the Richards poking up from behind his broad back.
“Room,” Prophet said, noting the tingling in his toes as they began to thaw once more. “A hot bath. A steak. Rare. And a bottle. No, make that two bottles of your best firewater.”
The barman scowled at Prophet. He canted his head toward the count’s table then slid his gaze toward the four or five other tables at which rough-hewn townsmen sat, also enjoying the entertainment.
“Can’t you see I got a full house tonight? I got one room left but no time to haul water to it. You can have it for three dollars. I’ll sell you the stew Henry is cooking and I’ll sell you a bottle of good liquor. Grub an’ whiskey’s five dollars. Eight dollars total.” The barman extended his pudgy palm. “Payable up front.”
“You’re gouging on account of the storm. Rooms in a stink hole like this likely go for a dollar, maybe six bits on any other night.”
The barman smiled.
“And I bet your best whiskey goes for seventy-five cents.”
“Ain’t you the wise man? If you’re looking for baby Jesus, he’s out in the manger.”
Prophet gave a wry chuff. He reached into his coat pocket and flipped a coin in the air. The barman jerked his hands up with a start and caught the coin against his chin, flushing with annoyance. He opened his hand.
He arched a shaggy brow at Prophet. “That’s an eagle.”
“There’ll be one more ten-dollar gold piece after I’ve had my bath and eaten my steak.” Prophet had scavenged the money off one of the dead men, who no longer had use for it now that he was sleeping the last, long sleep, likely frozen up as solid as a tombstone out in the livery barn.
The bounty hunter extended his hand across the bar. “Key.”
The barman looked at Prophet’s hand. He glanced behind him at the big Indian, who, with a corn-husk cigarette dangling from between his lips, returned the glance with a shrug and then turned back to his pot. Ashes from the cigarette tumbled into the pot. The barman reached under the bar for a key and set it in Prophet’s hand.
“Fourteen. Third floor. Far, far end,” he added with a satisfied snarl.
“Thunder juice.”
When the barman had handed over two labeled bottles, Prophet stuffed them into his coat pockets. He made his way along the bar to the broad staircase opening at the far right end of it, near where the countess had been dancing.
She’d stopped now and, flushed from exertion, stood near the long table, Rawdney Fair weather hovering over her, fawning shamelessly. He held one of her small hands in both of his hands, patting it and fairly sniveling over the girl, rising anxiously up and down on the balls of his feet.
Just as Prophet turned to mount the stairs, the girl, who must have been watching him out of the corner of her eye, swung her head toward him. Again, their eyes met. They held briefly. Rawdney saw the quick, furtive exchange and raised his own gaze to Prophet, his eyes and mouth hardening.
Prophet pinched his hat brim to the dandy, chuckling, and mounted the stairs, climbing up into the shadowy bowels of the creaky old building, which groaned and shuddered against the gusts of the cold Dakota wind.
An hour later, he dozed in a hot tub, his hunger sated by an entire bottle of whiskey as well as the succulent steak that Henry had delivered to him, after the Indian had brought the copper tub and filled it with near-scalding water. Prophet dozed despite the raucous music still hammering through the floor from the main drinking hall below.
Footsteps sounded on the hall outside Prophet’s door, rousing him slightly.
The footsteps stopped. There was a light tap on the door. He barely heard it above the music from below.
Prophet lifted his head, frowned at the door. He hadn’t had an opportunity to lock it, as he’d been soaking in the tub the last time Henry had come and gone.
Prophet blinked sleepily, half-drunk. “Who is—”
He hadn’t had time to finish the question before the door was thrust open. The little countess waltzed straight into the room, followed by two big men in gaudy red uniform tunics and deerskin trousers stuffed into the high tops of fur-trimmed leather boots.
The little countess stopped before Prophet, planted her fists on her hips, and glared down at him, eyes blazing. In badly broken English, she shrieked, “Are you the bol’shoy ublyudok who broke my carriage?”
“Hey, now!” Prophet said.
He automatically completed his reach for his Peacemaker, which he’d hung from a chair near the tub, always in close reach. But he was so sluggish from steak, whiskey, and fatigue that he’d moved too slowly. One of the big men who’d entered with the girl reached around Prophet and grabbed the pistol before Prophet could close his hands around the grips.
The big man, ginger bearded and with frosty gray eyes set beneath thick ginger brows, barked something in a foreign tongue, which Prophet figured was Russian, and rapped the barrel of Prophet’s own revolver across the bounty hunter’s forehead.
“Ow!” Lou pressed his hands to his head, just below his hairline.
Scowling against the pain from the bruise the frosty-eyed Russian had tattooed him with, Prophet looked up at the little countess still glaring down at him with her fists on her hips. Now she was smiling, eyes slanted like a devilish cat’s.
Prophet drew a breath and let it out with: “Get the hell out of my room, you little polecat!”
The countess’s eyes snapped wide again, fairly stabbing bayonets of pure rage at the naked man in the tub. She glanced at the men to each side of her and stepped back, pursing her lips in a savage, menacing smile.
The man to each side of Prophet closed on him. As he placed his hands on the edge of the tub, trying to hoist himself up and out of the now-tepid water to where he had a better chance of defending himself, each big Russian grabbed one of his arms. They pulled him up out of the water.
Prophet leaped out of the tub, raging, trying to fight, but they held his arms fast, one on each side of the tub. While the ginger-bearded Russian stepped behind him and wrenched both his arms behind his back, the second man, wider and shorter than the first and with one brown eye and one eye that was eggshell white, drew his right fist back, bunching his lips with fierce determination.
Prophet canted his head to one side, accidentally timing the move perfectly. The one-eyed Russian’s fist glanced off his left jaw. With an enormous explosion of indignant rage, Prophet bulled forward and, before the one-eyed Russian could cock his fist for another blow, Lou slammed his head against his forehead.
As the man howled and stumbled backward, slapping his hands to his left temple, Prophet heaved his torso forward, giving a bearlike roar. He jerked his arms up and around from behind him. Since his arms, like the rest of him, were wet, they slipped easily from the ginger-bearded Russian’s grip.
Wheeling, Prophet swung a hard right cross that smashed savagely against the ginger-bearded man’s left cheek, sending him barreling sideways into the room’s front wall. Prophet wheeled again to see the one-eyed Russian rushing toward him, bringing his right fist up again, that determined look compressing his mouth.
Prophet ducked. The ginger-bearded Russian’s fist whooshed through the air where his head had just been.
Prophet was big—two hundred–plus pounds on a frame nearly six and a half feet tall. But even tired and drunk, he was as lithe as a cat, especially when he was raging with as much fury as he was now. He stepped forward and slammed his right fist into the one-eyed man’s left ear.
“Oh!” the man said, his head jerking to one side, eyes snapping wide. His head shook, reverberating from the blow. His ear turned snow-white then rose-petal pink.
Prophet slammed his fist into the same ear again, again, and again, driving the man across the small room to the front wall. As the one-eyed man slumped there, stunned, blood issuing from his torn ear, Prophet hammered his head three more powerful times.
Prophet turned. The ginger-bearded man stood before him. The Russian was smiling despite the blood leaking from the left corner of his mouth. A broken tooth appeared between his lips. He spit it out then bolted forward, snarling like a rabid panther and closing his big hands over Prophet’s face, trying to work his thumbs into the bounty hunter’s eyes.
Prophet tipped his head back, keeping the man’s thumbs out of his eye sockets. He tried to shrug out from under the man’s solid grip to no avail.
Both men bellowing and snarling and cursing in their own native tongues, they struggled there against the wall for nearly a minute, hands clawing at the other’s face, before Prophet finally jerked his arms up, breaking the ginger-bearded man’s grip on his head.
He head-butted the man then smashed two left jabs against his mouth.
The man stumbled backward, lips smashed, giving a shrill cry as he fell into Prophet’s tub crossways, making the water splash up and over the edges and onto the floor. Prophet walked over to him, leaned down, and smashed the man’s face twice more—first with his left fist, then with his right.
That turned the man over sideways, and he wallowed lengthways in what remained of Prophet’s bathwater, blinking rapidly, eyes rolling back in his head.
Breathing hard, Prophet straightened. He stumbled backward then regained his balance. He looked around, saw the countess sitting in a chair by the door, her left leg crossed over the knee of the other leg, beneath her frilly skirt.
She had her arms crossed on her lovely bodice. Her eyes raked him up and down. Her expression was unabashedly brazen, ripe lips slightly parted, olive-colored cheeks tipped with pink. She returned her gaze to Lou’s and quirked her mouth corners up into a beguiling, ambiguous half smile.
Suddenly self-conscious, he grabbed a towel off a near chair and held it over his privates.
The countess glanced at her fallen accomplices—one in the tub, one on his knees to Prophet’s left, pressing his forehead against the floor. The girl’s face colored up like a stormy sky. She shot up from her chair, and, bent slightly forward at the waist, sliding her accusatory glare from one man to the other and back again, bellowed loudly in Russian.
Prophet couldn’t have distinguished her harsh tongue from the language of the wildcats, but he could tell she was berating both men roundly. By the furious flush rising in her perfectly formed cheeks, she was likely castigating their bloodlines and manhoods, to boot.
The man in the tub, wincing against the verbal bombardment, hoisted himself out of the water. He fell over the side to the floor then worked himself to his feet. His face was badly smashed, nose turned sideways. His wet uniform tunic was spotted with soapsuds. He gave Prophet an indignant but also a faintly admiring glance then stumbled over to the door.
Slumped under the countess’s unrelenting denouncements, he slogged out.
The one-eyed man finally maneuvered his head, which appeared to be a heavy burden for him, up off the floor near the front wall. While the countess continued to harangue him, he trod heavily to the door, tripped over the tub, then stumbled into the hall and disappeared.
The countess turned her beautifully flushed cheeks and angrily crossed eyes to Prophet, standing seven feet away from her, holding the towel over his privates.
“You have beaten two Cossacks senseless,” she said, her tone coldly accusing. “Do you know what this means?”
Prophet had no idea. He was still searching for an answer when the countess extended her right hand out to her side, grabbed the door, and slammed it.
“It means I am yours for the rest of the evening!”