Chapter 8
Prophet had just taken the last sip of his whiskey.
The blatant impertinence of Phoebe’s question nearly caused him to spit the bourbon across the table at her. He managed to swallow it down after a few seconds wrestling with it, then glanced toward Louisa once more.
It was as though Louisa herself had heard the question. She met Prophet’s glance with a glance of her own, and a raised eyebrow.
Prophet looked back at Phoebe Dahlstrom and, blushing again, said, “If Ma Prophet taught this ole possum-poker one thing it was to not go around talkin’ out of school.”
“Oh, come on,” Phoebe said, pooching out her bottom lip in a feigned pout. “I let you see the dust under my rug.”
“You didn’t need to.”
She studied him, frowning. She glanced once more at Louisa, who had returned her own attention to Jonas Ford. Turning back to Prophet, Phoebe gave a whimsical half smile and said, “I had a feeling . . .”
Prophet sipped his beer, set it down, and fiddled with the handle. “About what?”
“You love her, don’t you?”
Prophet sighed. He felt a wall going up inside him. A protective wall. He felt as though he was not only protecting himself from an eccentric young woman who knew few bounds, but Louisa, as well.
“Cat’s got your tongue again, Lou.”
Prophet yawned. “I must be gettin’ old,” he said, glancing toward the windows. The sun was getting low but was not yet down. Long, dark shadows leaned out away from the buildings on the north side of the street. “I do believe I’m going to have a smoke and roll into the mattress sack. We’ll be getting an early start after Butters.”
He leaned back and reached into his pants pocket.
“I’ll get this,” Phoebe said. “My treat.”
“Not a chance. You pay me the five hundred for Butters, and we’ll be more than square.”
“Lou.” She leaned over the table again, pinning him with a lusty, smoky gaze. “I’d like you to spend the night with me.”
Prophet frowned. “Mrs. Dahlstrom, your husband hasn’t been dead . . .”
“I lied.” Phoebe looked down at her hands in her lap. “I didn’t love him. I married him for the very obvious reason that I knew it would hurt and infuriate my father. Here’s another little bit of truth for you.”
Prophet literally braced himself in his chair.
“I didn’t love Erik, either. I just hated my father while at the same time admiring the tyrant that he was and wishing I could be more like him. More like him and Max and the General. I wanted to make my own way. I wanted to dominate and crush and build things in my own vision of how they should be built. Then burn it all down if I so chose. That’s hard when you’re a woman. So I wanted to marry Erik. When he was taken from me, I married the next best thing. In fact, marrying Max was an even sharper, deeper sword in my father’s heart.”
“So . . . why are you so incensed that . . . ?”
“That my father had Butters kill Max?”
“Never mind,” Prophet said. “I’m a little thick, but I think I can see it.”
She leaned back in her chair. “Tell me.”
“Killing your husband was an assault against you. He was invading your territory. Now you want to lash back at him. Make him pay. Exact the final revenge for your mother.”
“There you have it.” She gave a dry half smile.
“Please don’t tell me I’m smarter than I look,” Prophet said. “I get that all the time and it hurts my feelings.”
“Sleep with me tonight.” There was a definite, firm urgency in her voice. “You will not regret it.” She blinked slowly. “I guarantee you.”
Prophet glanced at Louisa. Doing so, he caught her glancing at him. She looked away quickly. Too quickly.
To Phoebe, Prophet said, “You’re beautiful as all hell, Phoebe . . .”
“If she wasn’t here, you’d do it, wouldn’t you?”
“Like I was sayin’, you’re beautiful as hell, but I don’t think I’m up to it tonight. I’ve been feelin’ like a black cat’s been loungin’ around on my grave all day, and for some reason the cat hasn’t gone away.” In some ways, the feeling had gotten worse. “Besides, I’ve always found trouble in mixing business with pleasure.”
Phoebe pursed her lips, nodded. “All right, then. I hope you realize what you’re denying yourself. I hope you wake up in the middle of the night with one hell of a . . . craving.” Her cheeks dimpled as she smiled.
“No doubt I will.”
“If so, and you decide to remedy your mistake, I’m in room eight. The end of the first-floor hall on the left.”
Prophet chuckled. “You sure know how to ride roughshod over a fella, don’t you?”
“I’ve built a life around it.”
Prophet rose, tossed a couple of silver dollars onto the table, stuffed his hat on his head, adjusted the holstered Colt on his thigh, and said, “Good night, Phoebe.”
“Good night, Lou.”
Prophet did not look at Louisa and Jonas Ford before he turned around and walked out of the dining room.
* * *
Prophet had a cigarette out on the hotel’s front veranda. As the sun drifted out of sight, taking its light with it and sending a refreshing chill along the main street of Carson’s Wash, Prophet walked up to his room and had another drink.
Then he went to bed.
It took him a good, long while to get to sleep. A lot had happened this day. Men had tried to kill him for reasons he wasn’t sure of, and they’d likely try again. They might even make a play this very night.
But he was accustomed to that.
What was really bothering him, he realized as he lay there in the dark, staring up at the pressed-tin ceiling, was Phoebe Dahlstrom. She bothered him even more than Louisa and Jonas Ford. Phoebe’s words were like ghosts haunting him though he wasn’t sure why. He’d known plenty of folks driven half-mad by life’s circumstances. Hell, he often put himself in that category.
Something told him he’d find out soon why the young woman had disturbed him. Maybe before he was ready.
He wasn’t sure when he’d nodded off. He realized he’d fallen asleep only when several light taps sounded on his door, hoisting him out of a shallow slumber.
Instinctively, he jerked his head up off his pillow and slid his Colt from the holster buckled around the right-front bedpost. He clicked the hammer back as he tossed the covers aside then, clad in only his longhandles, rose and walked to the door.
He stood to one side of the doorframe to avoid a possible shotgun blast through the door panel.
“Who is it?” he said, tipping his head close to the door.
“Me,” was the quiet response from the hall.
Prophet set the Colt on the dresser. He twisted the key in the lock, and, frowning, opened the door. He crossed his arms, leaning against the doorframe.
Louisa stood in the hall. She wasn’t wearing a hat. Her hair spilled messily across her shoulders. Prophet could see her silhouette by the dull lamplight slanting through a window at the hall’s far end.
“Are you alone?” she asked, keeping her voice low in the dark hall.
“Yeah.” Prophet gave the door a tug then released the knob and let the door’s momentum open it. The hinges chirped faintly.
Louisa stepped inside. She appeared a little wobbly on her feet.
Prophet closed the door.
Louisa looked toward the bed. “Was she here?”
“Just left.”
Louisa jerked her right hand back and flung it forward. Her fist glanced off his left cheek. She flung another punch and another. Prophet halfheartedly held his arms up to ward her off as she silently punched at him. She punched mostly air and his shoulders and chest. She wore out quickly, breathing hard.
“You’re a skunk,” she hissed.
“You’re drunk.”
Prophet stepped around her, wrapped his arms around her waist, picked her up, and threw her onto his bed.
She grunted as she hit the mattress. When she stopped bouncing, she pushed up onto her elbows and looked at him through the mussed blond hair hanging in her face. Her words were slurred and garbled with emotion. “You’re still a smelly possum.”
“I lied.” Prophet sagged into a ladder-back chair by the dresser. “She was never here. We parted in the dining room, and that was it.”
Louisa just stared at him. It was too dark in the room for him to see her expression, if there was one.
“Where’s Jonas?” he asked her.
“In his room.” A pause. She swept her hair back with both hands. “He kicked me out.”
“Kicked you out?”
“The man’s a gentleman,” Louisa sobbed. “He said I was inebriated and that it would be beneath us both to continue on our current course. He did not compromise the honor of young women not at their best.” She smiled, sobbed, shook her head, sniffed. “He said that.”
“Ouch.”
“The skunk’s a gentleman.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Yes, well . . . Do you have something to drink?”
“Fresh out of sarsaparilla.”
“I want whiskey.”
“It looks to me like you’ve had more whiskey tonight than you’ve had in your entire life. No more whiskey.”
She lay back against Prophet’s pillow. “I want to get good and drunk.”
“Why?”
“I just do.”
Prophet rose from his chair, walked over to the bed, slid his hands beneath her back and legs, and slid her over, making room for him. He lay down beside her and hooked his arm behind his head and stared up at the ceiling.
“Why?”
Louisa drew a deep breath. She turned toward him, drew her knees toward her belly, and pressed her forehead against his side. “You see the damnedest things on this job, Lou.”
“Tell me about it.”
“The last savage I hauled in didn’t have a bounty on his head. I stopped at his place, a little tumble-down ranch just south of Amarillo, near Palo Duro Canyon, to water my horse and buy a little parched corn. A white man, middle-aged. Short, chubby, grizzled little man who seemed sort of bashful. He invited to me to stay for supper and to bed down in his barn. He had a wife. Half-Comanche. And a daughter. They seemed nice enough though the wife and daughter didn’t say anything. They served me a nice meal.
“I heard strange sounds coming from beneath the floor. Groaning, whimpering sounds. I asked about it and the man only chuckled and shook his head. The wife and daughter stared down at their plates. I got up and walked over to a cellar door, and the man tried to come up behind me to bash me over the head with the locking plank for his cabin door. I laid him out with the barrel of my Colt, then lit a lamp and went down into that cellar.”
She stopped, pressed her forehead more snugly against Prophet’s side.
Lou reached down and ran his hands through her hair. “What was down there?”
“A dozen girls,” Louisa said in a little-girl voice of her own, voice quavering slightly. “A dozen girls of various ages. Some white. Some Indian. One black girl. All chained up. Filth all around. He’d been holding them there. Two of the oldest ones were pregnant.”
“Jesus.”
“Turns out that girls had been disappearing from around Amarillo for years. He’d been taking them. Him and his wife.”
Prophet sighed.
“What makes people do such things, Lou?”
“I wish I knew.”
“Now, will you give me a drink?”
“No.”
She hardened her voice. “You’re rotten.”
“I know. Jonas isn’t. When we’re done with Butters, you stay here with Jonas. Settle down, finally. Settle down with a man who dresses nice and don’t stink.”
“You’re jealous.”
“Just the same, you do it.”
Keeping her forehead pressed taut against Prophet’s side, she said softly, “Yeah.”