“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.
The troupe had pulled up before the hotel, and the women and one man were climbing tiredly down from the wagons, dusting themselves off.
Prophet knew that nabbing the girl now, exhausted after a long wagon ride, wasn’t the kindest way of accomplishing his task. But considering the time constraint, what else could he do? What worried him, however, was Big Dan. As Prophet approached the wagons, he could see the troupe master was easily as big as he’d been described.
“You girls go on in and have your baths and naps and whatnot,” Big Dan said now, as the women gathered on the boardwalk, slapping the trail dust from their dresses and flexing their tired muscles. “I’ll carry the trunks up as soon as I—”
“Yeah, I know—as soon as you’ve had about seventeen beers,” one of the girls finished for him.
Big Dan made no reply; he was in too big a hurry to get over to Dave’s Place, eyes wide with the image of a frothy beer in his fist. He was so distracted that he didn’t even glance at Prophet, who politely tipped his hat as the troupe master thundered past on the boardwalk, big boots fanning up dust with every heavy-footed step.
Prophet paused, his back to the mercantile, and watched Big Dan walk away behind him and turn into the saloon. Prophet was pleased by how things were panning out. With Big Dan cutting the trail dust in Dave’s, it shouldn’t be too difficult to nab the girl. Thinking it over and liking the idea better and better, the bounty hunter reached into his coat pocket for the deputy sheriff’s star and pinned it to his wool vest, making sure it was hid by the left lapel of his new coat. He didn’t want to reveal it until he had to. Enough people around town knew his true identity to box things up good and plumb if they spied the badge.
He turned back to the wagons. Three of the girls had gathered around the back of the last wagon. The fourth was inside, handing down carpetbags to the others.
“Ladies, let me help you with those,” Prophet said as he approached the group.
“Thanks, mister,” one of them said.
“Yeah, thanks,” said another.
“No problem at all,” Prophet said, taking a bag from the girl inside the wagon.
He looked at her and almost recoiled from her beauty—the oval-shaped, elegant face with a narrow, decisive nose and widely spaced blue eyes. She was in her early twenties, a stunning beauty whose green dress clung to her kindly, accentuating the fullness of her breasts and the slenderness of her waist. What really caught Prophet’s attention was her hair, which was the deep umber of hot coals as a raging fire burned down to cinders. It brushed her slender neck in curly waves.
“Much obliged,” she said with an understated smile, lifting her eyes to regard him guardedly from under the brim of her floppy straw hat. The hat gave her the air of a tomboy. A tomboy, that was, with full, pursed lips and skin as smooth as water.
“Uh ... no problem at all,” he said, his heart thumping as he recognized Lola Diamond. The sheriff’s description of her had not done her justice, and Prophet was glad he’d had the good sense to buy new duds. She indeed appeared to be a woman who’d judge a man by his attire. “You must be Miss Diamond.”
“That’s right,” she said, frowning curiously, stepping onto the wagon’s end gate. He took her slender arm and helped her down as she asked, “And you are ... ?”
“Louis B. Prophet at your service, ma’am,” Prophet announced with his best Southern gentleman’s smile. “I’m in the whiskey trade.”
“Whiskey drummer?”
“Oh, don’t worry—I’m not here to sell you whiskey, ma’am. I’m a big fan of yours, and when I saw your wagons pass by the saloon yonder ... well ... I just thought I’d see if I could help you ladies with your bags.”
He exaggerated his Georgia accent, which he’d found to have a soothing effect on women. He smiled disarmingly, lifted the crisp bowler, then set it gently down on his head and glanced behind him to make sure Sheriff Fitzsimmons wasn’t within hearing range. The inimical sheriff would no doubt have gotten quite a laugh from Prophet’s performance, and probably have foiled the whole thing.
“Thanks anyway,” the girl said with a polite smile, “but we’ll carry our own bags.” A cautious one, she. One so lovely would have to be.
“Oh, come on, Lola,” one of the other girls dissented. “I say if the kind man wants to carry our bags, we let him.”
“Me, too, Lola,” another chimed in. “My backs hurts.”
“Hey, thanks, mister!” the third girl said before Lola could object.
“No trouble at all, no trouble at all,” Prophet sang, hefting all four carpetbags under his arms. “Show me the way, ladies!”
Hauling the carpetbags, Prophet followed the tired, trail-weary women into the hotel, and then waited while they registered. When Lola and one of the others had gotten their room keys, Prophet followed them up the stairs, admiring the way the green dress clung to the redhead’s legs, tracing the contours of her shapely thighs as she walked. In spite of the pain that hefting the bags inspired in his shoulder, he was growing more and more fond of his job.
“Much obliged,” Lola said dully as she stood in her open doorway. The girl she was sharing a room with had gone in ahead of her. The other two had already gone into the room next door, and had closed the door after effusively thanking Prophet for his help. “I’ll tell Dave over at the saloon to draw you a beer on Big Dan,” Lola added as she turned away and started closing the door in Prophet’s face.
“Well, uh ... ” Prophet sighed. Here it was, the moment of truth. “I’m afraid I won’t be hanging around. And I’m afraid ... ” He let the sentence trail off, feeling like a genuine shit heel for what he was about to do. But he had a strong sense that getting her to Johnson City in four days meant a great deal more to Owen McCreedy than what the sheriff had expressed in his note.
Deciding to let the subpoena speak for itself, Prophet pulled it out of his shirt pocket and handed it over. “Here ... this is for you.”
She frowned. “What’s this?” She took the paper, unfolded it. and began reading. Almost instantly, her face paled. Her rich lips parted as she inhaled deeply. She lowered the document to her side and narrowed her eyes at him. “What the hell’s a subpoena?”
Silently amused by the girl’s salty tongue but caught off-guard by the question, Prophet said, “Well ... it’s a ... a legally binding document ... that says ... well ... that says you have to accompany me down to Johnson City, to testify at a hearing.” Suddenly unsure what a subpoena was himself, and calling on the deputy sheriff’s badge for backup, he drew his coat back from the star only long enough for her to glimpse it. He doubted she knew the difference between a deputy sheriff’s star and a deputy marshal’s badge, but he figured she could read the writing engraved on the tin. “Louis B. Prophet, deputy U.S. marshal. That paper says you have to accompany me to Johnson City. The sheriff there wants to talk to you.”
“You’re here to arrest me?”
“No, ma’am,” Prophet said, vehemently shaking his head. “I’m here to escort you to Johnson City.”
She took several steps back, slapping a hand to her chest. “Well, I won’t go. I can’t go!”
“Miss, I’m sorry—”
Before he could finish the sentence, she slammed the door. Prophet jammed one of his new boots between the door and the frame, halting the door so suddenly it cracked. The girl screamed and threw her weight against it. She was no match for the bounty hunter, who heaved it open with a grunt.
The girl gave up on the door, ran across the room, grabbed a pitcher, and tossed it at Prophet. Heavy with water, it made it only halfway, hitting the floor with a thunderous bang. Dumbfounded, Prophet stared at the water spreading across the floor. He saw the girl hike her leg on a chair and reach inside her dress. Having seen this move before, Prophet lunged for her, grabbed her wrist, and removed the hideout gun—a .32-caliber Hopkins and Allen, an underpowered little snub-nose but reasonably effective at close range—just as she removed it from the sheath strapped to her thigh. She cried angrily, jerking her empty hand from his grasp and falling against the dresser.
Prophet stuck the pea shooter in his cartridge belt, his mind reeling. He hadn’t expected a reaction this violent. He’d thought the deputy U.S. marshal guise would sedate her, resign her to the fact she was going to Johnson City whether she wanted to or not. The plan hadn’t worked, and he was dumbfounded and perplexed. He had a wild female on his hands, which, he was quickly discovering, was akin to wrestling a wounded bobcat in a Conestoga wagon.
The problem was a dull ache in his brain: How do you restrain a woman without hurting her?
“Listen, miss ... please ... I—”
His voice was cut off by the other girl, who jumped to her feet screaming like a banshee.
Prophet turned to her, opening his hands acquiescently. He stopped when he heard thundering footsteps and raised voices behind him. Turning to cover his flank, he was too slow to see Miss Diamond dart forward, hiking her dress above her ankles and lifting her right foot until it had connected soundly with his groin.
Prophet had taken a direct hit in the balls a few times in the past—in his line of work, it was nearly unavoidable—but he couldn’t remember any man kicking him this hard.
He doubled over with an enormous groan and a sigh, automatically bringing his hands to his crotch. Giving an angry cry, the girl punched him twice in the head, upending his hat and staggering him sideways.
He fell to his knees and glanced up. All four girls were gathering around him—concernedly, defensively, angrily. It didn’t take them long to assess his apparent threat to one of their own. One kicked him in the shoulder, another in the ribs. Screaming oaths he’d never heard from female lips, another pulled his hair and socked him in the ear so hard that the entire right side of his head went numb.
Amid the blows from foot and fist, Prophet tried gaining his feet. Before he could do so, he heard boots thump into the room, the floorboards complaining above the din of the admonishing women. Turning and lifting his head slightly, he saw the man with the big nose standing just inside the door, outside of which three or four other hotel guests had gathered, looking shocked and confused.
The man was aiming one of his fancy pistols at the girls. His mouth was a dark slash across his face, and his heavy brows were knit, but there was a humorous flash in his eyes. One at a time, the girls saw him. They fell instantly silent, mouths agape, eyes sliding between the gun and the gaze of the man wielding it.
When the room had quieted, the man said to Prophet reasonably, “I was just walkin’ by when I heard the commotion ... uh ... Marshal. Looks like you need a little help.”
Still clutching his bruised balls, which felt as though they’d swollen to twice their normal size, Prophet gave a grunt and a feeble nod. Blood trickled from his cut lip. He flushed, embarrassed. “Obliged.”
“Which one you after ... or all of ’em?”
“Just this one here.”
Lola’s eyes darted to Prophet. Clenching her teeth stubbornly, she shook her head. “I will not go with you.”
Someone from the doorway cleared his throat. “You ... you want I should call the sheriff?” a man’s thin voice inquired.
The well-dressed, big-nosed man half-turned to the doorway. “I don’t think that’ll be necessary,” he said. “This man here’s a deputy U.S. marshal. He was trying to arrest one of the girls when they all attacked him ... the poor son of a bitch.” The man addressed Prophet pityingly. “You all right ... Marshal?”
“I’m all right,” Prophet managed, his voice pinched. He got his feet beneath him and pushed himself standing, releasing his balls, which dangled there, burning. The pain abated in increments almost too small to register. He felt the hot flash of anger unique to a man who’d been attacked in that sensitive male region.
“I can handle it now,” he said, drawing the revolver from his holster and staring hotly at Miss Diamond, who cowered behind the others.
The man asked, “You want I should lock these others in the next room?”
Prophet’s eyes rolled around as he tried reorienting himself against the ringing in his ears and the pain in his loins and lip. “I reckon that would be a good idea,” he allowed, his voice sounding to him like a distant chirp.
“All right, ladies, you heard the marshal,” ordered the man. “In the other room. Let’s go, or I’ll drop the hammer on you. Oh, pipe down! Move!”
When the man and the other three women had left, the women throwing caustic looks at Prophet and concerned ones at Lola, Prophet started toward her. She backed up against the bureau and crossed her arms defiantly across her chest. “I refuse to go!”
“So you said.” Prophet quickly holstered his pistol, grabbed the girl, and tossed her face down on the bed.
“How dare you!”
“Oh, I dare, lady—I dare,” Prophet snarled, grabbing a towel from the commode stand.
Towel in one hand, he wrenched one of the girl’s arms behind her back and knotted the towel around her wrist. She screamed and cursed and kicked, but Prophet had her pinned to the bed with his knees. Swinging his arm out, he grabbed her other flailing hand and tied it to the first.
“You can’t do this to me!” the girl shrieked so loudly that Prophet thought his eardrums would burst.
“Watch me!” With that, he grabbed another towel, looped it over her face, slid it into her mouth like a horse’s bit, and tied the ends behind her head.
It didn’t silence her, but it certainly piped her down.
“You see, there’s more than one way to skin a cat,” Prophet said, standing, jerking her off the bed, and leading her out the door. He paused to retrieve the girl’s carpetbag, which she would need on the journey.
The man with the big nose was standing just outside the other room, that humorous light still flashing in his eyes. “Got her?”
“Yeah, I got her,” Prophet grumbled, heading down the hall, hearing the other girls pounding on the locked door of their room.
When he was downstairs and crossing the lobby with the girl in tow, he stopped suddenly as Big Dan thundered into the building, face flushed from drink and outrage. Someone had apparently fetched him when they’d seen what was happening to his girls.
“Just what in the hell do you think you’re doin’!” the troupe master shouted, spittle flying from his lips.
Remembering how effectively the technique had worked for the girl, Prophet waited until Big Dan was three feet away. Then he kicked the half-drunk troupe master squarely in the balls. The man cried out, doubling over, and Prophet brought the butt of his revolver down on the back of the man’s head with a resolute smack. His lights going out like a blown lantern, Big Dan hit the floor so hard that dust sifted down from the rafters.
“Now,” Prophet said, regarding the other three people in the lobby, “if you’ll excuse us, Miss Diamond and I have a stage to meet.”
“What’s this all about?” the hotel clerk inquired.
“None of your business,” Prophet grouched.
Shoving the girl out ahead of him, he stepped onto the boardwalk and started across the street. He no longer cared who tried to get in his way. After what he’d been through, he was itching to shoot someone.
He didn’t have to, however. Except for people stopping to stare warily at him and the gagged and bound girl, the walk to the stage office was uneventful. Fitzsimmons was conspicuously absent. Not wanting to show either involvement or uninvolvement in Prophet’s kidnapping of the girl, he’d probably gone fishing.
Prophet approached the stage station just as the fresh team was being buckled into place by two wranglers. Prophet gave the tickets to the agent, who stamped them and returned them to Prophet along with the war bag, rifle, and saddlebags Prophet had left with the man earlier.
“Whatcha got goin’ now, Lou?” asked the dusty driver as Prophet guided Miss Diamond to the stage. Prophet recognized Mike Clatsop, a longtime stage driver with whom Prophet had killed many a whiskey bottle and beer keg in roadhouses throughout the northern territories.
“Well, Mike,” Prophet said with a weary sigh, handing over his and the girl’s luggage, “Owen McCreedy wants her down in Johnson City. Don’t ask me why,” he added with a caustic snort.
As Prophet wrestled Lola into the coach, the driver chuckled. “With her all bound up like that, and you dressed fit to kill, I figured you musta got yourself hitched!” The guffaws rolled up from deep in Clatsop’s chest.
Prophet climbed into the coach and sat beside the girl, who was still struggling with her tether and cursing him through the towel. From behind his metal cage, the station agent railed, “Pull ’em outta here, Clatsop—you’re behind schedule the way it is!”
“Ah, go diddle yourself, Henry!” Clatsop retorted. He secured Prophet’s and the girl’s luggage in the coach’s back boot, then grudgingly climbed up to the driver’s box.
As he did so, Prophet drew a handkerchief from his pocket and mopped his brow and dabbed at his cracked lip. His chest was taut with strained nerves. He hadn’t realized how stressful collecting bounty on one pretty redhead could be.
“Hold on!” a deep male voice called as the stage started off.
“Climb aboard, mister, but watch those wheels!” Clatsop called from the driver’s box.
The door opened, and another man jumped aboard. All Prophet could see was his shoulders and bowler as he pulled himself through the door, crouching, then turned to pull the door closed behind him. The stage knocked him off balance, and he swayed this way and that, reaching for the ceiling straps. The door swung wide as the stage tilted to the right.
“I got it,” Prophet said, getting up, grabbing the door, and latching it.
Grabbing the walls and ceiling straps for balance, he struggled back into his seat. Beside him, the girl gave a sharp intake of breath, as though startled.
“What—?” Prophet started, stopping when he saw the face of the man who’d just climbed aboard.
It was the well-dressed hard case, a grim smile stretching his thin, chapped lips and swelling the veins in his enormous nose.